Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

It's basically a two hour car chase wrapped in a slick music video (with a little bit of the Man of Steel soundtrack thrown in). At times Fury Road feels like some kind of fever dream or drug trip. A campy B-movie done extremely well. It felt very much like something born out of the 80's.

If you're looking for story or character development, you won't get that here. This is all crazy action from the get go and it never lets up. I was tense in my seat for a majority of the film. You'll notice that despite the speed of it all, you can follow all the action. It's shot extremely well, with no shaky cam or quick cuts. There were a few times there seemed to be some artificial sped-up effect going on, but that was kept to a minimum.

There's also great stunt work here, and it's so refreshing to see what appears to be all practical effects. This isn't a CG-fest. It's a gorgeous film, with great use of contrast in color. Fury Road is a visual feast, and it's mesmerizing.

As much as I was excited about Tom Hardy being cast as Mad Max, I just didn't get much from him. I felt the real driving force was Charlize Theron. She's a total badass! Expect a lot of cosplay as Furiosa in the future. I also thought Riley Keough stood out, but that might have been how her hair and eye color popped on screen.

I think the story issue for me is that the whole post-apocalyptic, 'we're out of oil/gas' thing doesn't work for me anymore. I think a more realistic story would be to have a future where while we are out of oil, Elon Musk has now seized control and is aligned or at war with Google.

Fury Road is highly entertaining and definitely worth seeing on the big screen, but for me it just lacked a little to really sink my teeth into. Honestly, I don't really see me watching it again. Maybe if I start doing drugs and need something to watch...

4 (out of 5) Death Stars

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) - Movie Review

What if I told you that Obi-Wan Kenobi, Al Swearengen, Beast from X-Men: First Class and the Dad from Easy A were all in a movie together?  Slam dunk, eh?

Actually, that's not totally respectful to Stanley Tucci, but I couldn't think of his character's name from The Hunger Games.  Could anyone though, except for you nerdy book-readers?  I'm kidding of course, as I'm actually reading The Hunger Games right now.  What the hell was I talking about again?  Oh yeah, Jack the Giant Slayer.

Jack the Giant Slayer is the latest in the re-imaging of classic fairly tales, combining elements from both "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Jack the Giant Killer".  This is one of the times where I felt the expansion on the existing tale worked well.  You get a little more backstory about their world and then they added more typical fantasy elements. It's done in a way that felt natural to the story.  It still manages to not be all that deep, so I didn't feel afterwards that this was a world I wanted to visit again.

The basic premise hasn't changed.  Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is an orphaned farmboy living with his uncle.  He's sent into town to sell off a horse and cart.  The cart gets stolen right away, and then a monk dupes him into trading the horse for a small pouch of useless, 'magic' beans.  Yes, Jack is kind of a screw up.  Jack does (unsuccessfully) try to defend the honor of Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), so at least he's a nice guy.  It turns out Isabelle is a princess who is expected to marry Roderick (Stanley Tucci), but she's not having it and wants to have adventures of her own.

This leads to her getting lost and finding Jack's house.  While taking shelter from the rain, one of the beans gets wet and a giant beanstalk grows upwards rejoining the human and giant realms.  Isabelle is carried away to the giant realm, so the King (Ian McShane) orders a small group of soldiers, let by Elmont (Ewan McGregor) to rescue her.  However, the giants haven't forgotten the humans (the humans have forgotten all about them) and how delicious they taste, so they are anxious to get back down to the human realm for some snacking.  It's up to Jack, the nice screwup, and Obi-Wan to stop them.

The main issue I had with Jack the Giant Slayer was that I felt it was all kind of lifeless.  There's no zip at all to the dialog, and not much chemistry between any of the characters.  I think it's the same problem the Star Wars prequels had in that there's so much CG that the actors don't react naturally to what's going on around them since nothing is actually there.  I will say that the CG is good, actually great in a few places, but I still got that sterile feeling I get from movies that use too much of it.  It's like The Hobbit, where sometimes you feel like you're watching a video game cutscene.

Another issue I had was that you have this great cast, and then don't really get to do much.  I was hoping that Ewan McGregor would get to show his swashbuckling, Jedi swordplay chops (even though I still hate Obi-Wan for what he did to me), but he doesn't get much of a chance to fight.  He actually loses his sword pretty early on in the movie, and then in the one hand-to-hand fight he has it's with Stanley Tucci, who's holding his own against him, despite not being a trained soldier.  You'd think a trained soldier would be able to beat the crap out of an aristocrat in like two seconds.  Stanley Tucci plays 'obviously evil guy' and has a creepy henchman (Ewan Bremner). They were about as generic as villains can get.  I was disappointed that there wasn't much to Ian McShane's character either.  There's just not much for him to do other than deliver his lines.  He seemed kind of bored with it.

I did like Nicholas Hoult and Eleanor Tomlinson (who reminds of me of a young Rachel Weisz), even though I didn't think there was a ton of chemistry between the two.  They are attractive and easy enough to like, but again, there's just not that much beneath the surface of their characters.

I'm going to harp on the dialog again.  It's actually not bad, but it's disappointing that there wasn't anything really clever about it.  Most of the humor came from fart jokes, and I only heard kids laughing at those moments.  There's this scene at the end (it's in the trailer, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong from the film), where the main giant catches Jack and he goes, "Who are you?"  Jack replies defiantly, "It's Jack!"  As if the giant knows who Jack is, or that should mean something to him.  Dialog really fails when it's just for the audience, and not for the characters in the film.  It would have been great if the giant replied, "And that means 'what' to me?"  The screenplay by Darren Lemke, Dan Studney and Christopher McQuarrie (never a good sign when there's three writers), really needed some punch up.  I'm surprised especially with McQuarrie's involvement, as he has written some great stories in the past.

When I heard Bryan Singer was involved, I took that as a mark of quality, as I figured he was just producing.  I was very surprised to see he actually directed it, as I didn't think he would have made something that's so clearly a kids film.  There is a lot of action and with the effects being as good as they are, that aspect of the film is entertaining and it's biggest strength. Jack the Giant Slayer isn't boring and well paced for a two hour film.

Even though this is PG-13, I didn't think there were any particularly scary images, and I didn't see any of the kids in the audience covering their eyes.  It'll depend on the kid, of course, but it might be a little too much for kids under 5.  The whole movie I thought about how much my nephews (8 and 5) would like it.  Contrast this with both X-Men and X-Men 2, which were both PG-13, and while also not bloody, both films felt so much more adult.  There are a lot of deaths in the film, but the film was largely bloodless or the camera cuts away at the point of impact.  Most of the deaths are of the video game variety, and involve disposable 'red shirt' characters.  The characters are so disposable that they didn't even bother with giving them decent names, if they were given names at all.  One of the guards name was "Bald".  Yes, he was bald.  I kept waiting for "Four Eyes" and "Porkins" to show up.  Anyway, I really think they could have gotten away with giving this one a PG rating.

Jack the Giant Slayer is sometimes fun and has really good effects, but ultimately a little too flat to be considered great.  They assembled a great cast, but then didn't give them much to do or anything interesting to say. If there had been a little more wit about it, then I think this would have had a much broader appeal, but it's ultimately a kids film. If you have a kid in that 5-12 range, then I think you can take them to a matinee and won't be too bored yourself. For anyone else, this is a rental.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

Warm Bodies (2013) - Movie Review

Teresa Palmer could bring me back from the dead, too.  I'm telling you, blonde chicks from Australia are my weakness.

If you've seen the trailer for Warm Bodies, I already know what some of you are thinking, "Oh that's just great!  They Twilight-ified zombies now, too!  What's next? ManBearPig?  The Loch Ness Monster?"  I'll be honest, I also had this concern, and I went in thinking there was a good chance I wasn't going to like this at all.  While Warm Bodies does skew toward that audience, I have to give director Jonathan Levine (50/50) credit.  He managed to balance the humor and young romance elements really well.  Warm Bodies could have been a cheesy, pandering film for tweens, but its humor actually makes it something that works for most audiences.

My concerns went away in the opening moments, when we hear the inner monologue of a zombie (Nicholas Hoult), who has more going on his head than his appearance would indicate.  He's been a zombie so long he remembers nothing of his old life or even how he became a zombie.  He doesn't even remember his name, other than it started with an "R".  This monologue gave the film a Zombieland feel to it, and I was surprised at the humor.  I laughed out loud a few times.

R is conflicted about being a zombie and wished he could communicate or have some kind of connection with someone. When zombies become too far gone and completely give up, they become 'bonies', which are little more than skeletons that will kill anything with a heartbeat.  He does have a best friend "M" (Rob Corddry), but their interaction consists of looks and grunts, but sometimes one of them can manage to say something like "hungry".  While out on a hunt for brains, R sees Julie (Teresa Palmer) and something sparks in him.  Not wanting her to be killed by his fellow zombies, he takes her to safety.  The more time they spend together, the more R regains his humanity.  Eventually, other zombies notice this connection and something triggers in them, as well.

Warm Bodies evolves into what is a surprisingly sweet romantic story.  Yes, the Twilight comparisons are inevitable, but the big difference between the two is that the lack of meaningful dialog is intentional as zombies can't speak all that much.  Plus, there still managed to be way more chemistry between R and Julie despite that lack of dialog.  Nicholas Hoult did a good job of physical acting and saying a lot with his eyes and facial expressions.  It also helps that Teresa Palmer has a lot more charisma about her than Kristen Stewart.  I've always liked Teresa Palmer though, and I don't understand why she hasn't broken out more.  She's been the best thing about several movies I've seen her in like Bedtime Stories, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and I Am Number Four, but for some reason it hasn't translated to bigger films.  I think this might be the one that finally gets her more exposure.

I was surprised to see John Malkovich in this as Julie's father, and he walks that line between wondering if he's evil, or just a protective father in desperate times.  Rob Corddry was great as M, and managed to steal just about every scene he's in despite that you can count the number of words he says on all your fingers and toes.  I think without Corddry for comedy relief the movie wouldn't have been as strong.

I think I might need to cut back on the late night showings for some of these movies, as I was in a bit of a zombie-like mental state to not even realize the Romeo and Juliet angle of Warm Bodies until someone else pointed it out to me.  I was so oblivious to it, that I didn't even notice that the main characters were R and Julie.  I won't go into the parallels too much, since I didn't even make the connection on my own, but there are definitely some familiar elements here.

Warm Bodies isn't perfect.  It definitely has flaws, but they were forgivable.  After a strong opening, it does falter a bit with the tone and pacing.  I'd like to say that Levine's script (based off a book by Isaac Marion), could have used some punch-up, but considering the circumstances, there's not much he could have done without making the zombies start talking a lot, and that wouldn't have worked.  There's some obvious product placement from Corona and BMW, but someone had to help pay for the film.  I enjoyed the soundtrack, but I think it tried too hard to be cute with its choice of music, and some of the songs I think would have worked better had they been used in different parts of the movie.

Another thing you see is that when a zombie eats a brain, they absorb the memories from them.  I actually thought that was a cool aspect, but when you're watching R recount the memories of one of his victims, they were in the third person.  Wouldn't any memory you've absorbed, still be in first person perspective?  When I remember events in my life, I don't actually see myself in them.  At least it gave Dave Franco more screen time.  I know some may get upset with how they treat zombie mythology, but I was never bothered by it, and if you start talking about the 'science of zombies', then I'm gonna have to remind you that zombies aren't real.

I also found it kind of funny that even though R is a zombie, with all the scars and grime, he's still looks like a frigging model.  I can see why this movie could be an ultimate fantasy for women.  You've got a model-looking boyfriend that doesn't speak much, hangs on your every word, protects and does all of these sweet things for you.  Pretty good deal, right ladies?

These are all mainly nitpicks, but  I still can't help but think the film missed a few opportunities to really be great.  It didn't ruin my overall enjoyment of the film.

Warm Bodies isn't perfect, but it's a sweet romantic story with a likable cast.  It doesn't quite cash in on its premise, but there are enough clever and funny moments to still make this stand out in the zombie genre and I found it very entertaining.  I recommend checking it out.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars