San Andreas (2015)

This has been said before, but can you really slam a dumb movie for delivering on exactly what was advertised? I have a hard time doing it. San Andreas is exactly what you'd expect. A two-hour roller coaster ride of destruction porn. This isn't rocket science here. It's not even seismology (don't even get me started on the science).

Fortunately, it doesn't waste much time with setup or character backstory. Sure, it's there, but San Andreas isn't about that, and I'm glad it didn't focus on that too much. It helped that it does have a great cast that seemed committed, despite the ridiculousness of it all. I saw an unexpected emotional range from The Rock. He's really trying, at least, and he's an easy guy to root for. My only complaint about his performance is that he didn't try to punch the ground in an attempt to stop the quake. That's what the Hulk would've done anyway.

As with most of these disaster movies, there are a few too many moments of amazing coincidence. How are the main characters always so fortunate to avoid getting crushed or killed? How do they always luck out and find each other just at the right moment? There's also the typical asshole character that the quake manages to provide comeuppance.

There were a few times the effects looked a little sloppy and unfinished, but for the most part it all looked pretty great. For as much destruction as there was, I'm surprised it looked as good as it did. Whatever the budget was, it clearly went all to the effects.

The pacing is great and I never once felt bored or checked my phone to see how much time was left. That alone is a good thing. I have to admit that I found it thrilling. You're not really given much time to think about it, as you're assaulted by the visuals.

If disaster porn is your kind of thing, then San Andreas is right up your alley. It's entertaining and delivers on exactly what was promised. Definitely worth a matinee.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)

I guess I spoke too soon about August surprising me so far.  Here comes a sequel nobody was asking for to a movie that barely anyone remembers.  I honestly almost forgot there was a first Percy Jackson film.  I can barely recall a single detail about it, other than I didn't care for it.  You might wonder why I even bothered seeing Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.  Well, what else am I going to do on a Wednesday night?  Plus I'm a nerd for any kind of fantasy film.  I still went into this with an open mind, 'cause you never know, it might be a pleasant surprise.  Sometimes a sequel can be an improvement, especially when the first wasn't that good.

Sea of Monsters figures the audience didn't remember the first Percy Jackson film either, as there's a brief narration that sets the story up.  However, if you're going to open with someone narrating, you might want to encourage the lead actor to not read it like he's bored, which is how Logan Lerman sounded.  Better yet, get Anthony Stewart Head to class it up by reading it, since he plays Chiron.  I don't remember "Giles" being in the first film, and it turns out he wasn't.  Chiron was played by Pierce Brosnan last time.  Outside of the primary trio, I don't think there's a single returning actor from the first film, which is a shame because if you go back and look at the cast list, it's star-studded.

This is going to be spoiler-ridden, by the way...

We come back to Camp Half-Blood to catch up with Percy and friends.  There's some weird "capture the flag meets king of the hill" game they're playing that only seems to establish that Clarisse (Leven Rambin), daughter of Ares, is extremely competitive with Percy.  She's practically a bully, but Percy tries to take the high ground with her.  I don't think it's any coincidence that Percy is very similar to "pussy".  Anyway, Percy is introduced to his half-brother, Tyson (Douglas Smith), who's a cyclops.  Tyson kind of looks like young-Brendan Fraser in Encino Man, which was all I could think about anytime I saw him.  I guess being a cyclops is bad because Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) hates him with a passion simply because he is one.

After an attack on the camp by a robot-bull-transformer-thing, they learn that the tree that protects the camp with a magical force field has been poisoned, leaving the camp vulnerable.  However, since nobody seems to have been seriously hurt in the attack, this doesn't seem like that much of a threat.  The only thing that can heal the tree is the Golden Fleece, which is in the Sea of Monsters, otherwise known to us as the Bermuda Triangle.  There's a prophecy that Percy is destined to either save or destroy Olympus, so he, Annabeth, Tyson and Grover the Satyr (Brandon T. Jackson) embark on a quest to recover the Fleece.  Another demigod, Luke (Jake Abel, who might as well be called young-Kevin Bacon), who I guess was presumed dead, also wants the Fleece.  He needs it to resurrect Kronos, the father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon.  You still with me?

One thing I couldn't get out of my head at the beginning of the film is that this camp is full of the half-blood children of Olympian gods.  Are they all deadbeat dads?  They just go around spraying their seed everywhere and then ditching the mothers.  Classy.  A running subplot in the film is that Percy has been trying to communicate with his father, Poseidon, only to never get any response.  Later in the film when they catch up with Hermes (Nathan Fillion), he reveals that he's Luke's father, but not that he's Darth Vader, which would have been awesome.  He tells Percy to tell Luke to apologize for not being around and not to be angry at the world for his mistakes.  Hermes is too busy to tell him?  Later on, even Luke asks why Hermes couldn't tell him directly.  So yeah, the Olympian gods are terrible fathers.  Fillion's appearance was the highlight of the film though, and I would have totally given the whole thing a pass if anyone would have called him "Darth" as a joke.  "Will you deliver this message to my son, Luke?"  "I'll be sure to let him know, Darth."

I said earlier that the protective shield going down didn't feel like that much of a threat, and that's probably one of the biggest problems with Sea of Monsters.  There's no urgency at all to this quest, and you don't feel that there are any real stakes.  Any mistake is immediately corrected, and nobody dies or sustains any permanent injury, so it never feels like there are any consequences.  Finally, we reach the climax and Kronos swallows a character whole.  For a second I thought things were about to get real, but then a good guy is swallowed and you already know that they're both going to come out okay.  Plus, the power of the Fleece was to heal anything.  Moments later, Annabeth is stabbed while they are still in possession of the Fleece, yet they still go through the exercise of pretending she dies?  We know the Fleece is going to bring her back.  It's all pointless.

While on this quest, they always seemed to be winging it without any distinct plan.  There are a few times Percy leaps into action only to quickly find that he's backed into a corner without any way out.  How do you plan on getting out of this, Percy?  He always does though, sometimes being saved by some random object or character that you had no idea was anywhere around.  Then you see that Percy has really powerful control over the ocean, and I had to wonder why he didn't just lead with that.  If you have that kind of power, why not use it right up front?

Based on the acting, it didn't seem like anyone cared about the film.  Everyone feels like they are going through the motions.  Then again, there's no real depth or growth to the characters, and they are generally uninteresting.  Percy spends much of the film wondering if he's good enough or strong enough, but this is just kind of glossed over with any defining moment.  Besides Nathan Fillion, the other bright spot was Stanley Tucci, but he's always great.  He has a running gag of forgetting everyone's name, which was the only thing I found humorous about the movie.  Then again, maybe he forgot everyone's name because he didn't want to be there either and didn't bother memorizing them.

I can't blame the cast for not being all that invested when having to recite such awful, lifeless dialog.  This is some of the worst dialog I've seen in a while.  All the attempts at humor fall flat, and it's irritating because there were times where you could hear a funnier version of something said in your head, or imagine that a slightly different character reaction would have made all the difference.  I wonder how long ago Marc Guggenheim wrote this screenplay and why they didn't bring someone in to try and punch it up.  There's nothing clever or witty about it at all.  This is the guy that wrote Green Lantern though, so that might tell you something.

The special effects varied from decent looking to really awful.  The budget was around $90 million, so I guess it's passable for what they had to work with.  Some of the visual effects were for things that had no real point.  The aforementioned bull seemed to only exist in the movie because they really wanted to have a Transformer for the kids.  Some of the centaur and satyr effects were painful to look at.  There's a giant cyclops at the end that looked like something that would have barely been passable in a TV movie, or something that came out ten years ago.  I'd say the best effect were how unnaturally blue they got Alexandra Daddario's eyes to look, but those are all hers.  How is she not a bigger star?  Would someone please put her in something decent?

Ultimately, this is a kid's film and I could see my nephews really enjoying it.  I'm just disappointed that this didn't strive for something more.  You can make a fantasy film that appeals to more than just kids.  Director Thor Freudenthal (yes, Thor) has only directed kid's films up to this point and you can tell.  There are parts of the film that I can't imagine any adult enjoying, like the cab scene, which I found extremely irritating.  It's mercifully only about and hour and forty minutes, so I wasn't completely bored with it or caught myself checking my watch.

It's not so bad that I was angry, but Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is a dated, lame movie that felt like something that should have gone direct to video or would have been better suited to TV.  The story and characters give you nothing to care about, and I can't recommend anything about it.  It's harmless, but little more than eye candy for kids.  I'd advise you to pass it, but it's safe enough to rent for your kids at some point.  Don't waste your hard earned money to see this in the theater, or you might encourage them to make another, and they teased another sequel at the end.  Don't do it!

1.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) - Movie Review

Oh, Leatherface, how the mighty have fallen.  Is the real reason you wear the mask so nobody will recognize you after all of these terrible movies?

It disappointing for me when watching these newer Texas Chainsaw installments.  The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was one of the few slasher films in my adult life that actually scared me.  I remember renting it for the first time, watching it alone in the dark, and then being afraid to get up from the couch to go to bed.  I walked backwards up the stairs, so nobody would sneak up from behind me, but then realized that Leatherface could already be hiding upstairs, so I had to keep looking over my shoulder.  That's part of the fun of horror films for me. How you let you imagination get the better of you. Leatherface is such an icon in the horror genre, too.

So, after all that I'm sure you're thinking I hated the newest installment in the series, Texas Chainsaw 3D, right?  Well, you're wrong!  While far from a good movie, it's actually quite bad, I actually enjoyed this way more than I thought I was going to.  There were a few things about it that I actually liked.

The way the movie began was the first surprise.  It starts with showing you a brief recap of the original, 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then picks up immediately after as a direct sequel, ignoring all other installments in the series (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).  There's actually a cameo from the original Leatherface in this scene (Gunnar Hansen).  If you've ever wondered how can some loony family and their mentally challenged, chainsaw wielding kin can run around unchecked in Texas killing people, well this actually addresses that.  A local policeman (Thom Barry) shows up asking the family to give up Jeb Sawyer.  Yes, you heard it, Leatherface's real name is Jeb.  They actually agree to this, but just as it's about to happen, a bunch of gun toting Texans show up to deliver some Texas justice.  All hell breaks loose and the house is burned down, with everyone in the house presumed dead.  You know how that's going to work out, right?

In the aftermath, an infant is found in their garage, and one of the members of this lynch mob take this child and raise her as their own.  The movie then fast forwards a good twenty years or so and we meet Heather (Alexandra Daddario).  She receives a note saying a grandmother she had no knowledge of has died, and then learns from her parents that she was adopted.  There's never any doubt from this point on whether or not she was the baby found all those years ago.  The thing you'll be asking yourself though is how the grandmother was able to track this baby down considering it was stolen from a garage (you do get a little explanation of this at the end). Anyway, Heather was left her grandmother's mansion, and she and a few friends take a road trip to check it out and handle the paperwork.

Once they arrive at the house, it's not too long before Leatherface (Dan Yeager) shows up and is back to his old antics.  From there it's the typical things seen in horror films.  You see a bunch of attractive, forgettable, and unlikable people making idiotic decisions that get them killed.  Like why would a person running from someone in an open field hide in a coffin in a freshly dug grave? Why not wear a flashing neon sign that says, "You can kill me right here!"  The deaths are bloody, but hugely unoriginal for the most part.  I wasn't expecting any kind of Rube Goldberg-esque kills that you see in the Final Destination or Saw films, but some creativity would have been nice.  Some of the kills you'll find yourself laughing at, which I think was why I wasn't as irritated by this as I normally would be.  It's not particularly scary either, with it mainly relying on predictable jump scares.

The problem is that this film is just lazy and inconsistent.  There's something that happens at the beginning of the film that if Heather would have listened to, then the whole movie wouldn't have played out like it did.  I guess that's how all these movies have to go these days.  It just really irritates me when a movie hinges around not doing things that any normal person would have done in the same situation.  It also takes way too long to get going.  It's not a particularly long movie, so it puzzles me that it would take as long to get to the killing.  Nobody sees a movie like Texas Chainsaw for the story.  I don't think directory John Luessenhop understood this.

However, there's this kind of dark twist to the film toward the end that actually piqued my interest. I won't spoil that twist here, but I got excited for a second that they were going to do something really different.  The problem is that they don't explore it enough.  Why put a good idea in a film if you're just going to be lazy about executing it?  It's a shame.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that there were four different people credited with the writing.  How in the hell does it take four people to write a film about Leatherface?  No wonder there was a lot of inconsistency in the story.

Once again, the 3D is terrible and doesn't do anything for the movie.  You don't even have a choice to see it in regular 2D either, at least not at my theater.  There's no point in paying a premium to see bad 3D.  It seemed like it was primarily was used for lots of close-up, point-of-view shots of Tania Raymonde's (from Lost) ass.  She has a nice ass, so I'm not exactly complaining about that though.  However, I do have an issue with the ultimate tease they do at the end where Alexandra Daddario's shirt is torn down the middle, but somehow each side of shirt just manages to clings perfectly to her large boobs.  R-rated slasher films should not be teasing their audience with almost nudity.  What's the point?

If you're a fan of the Texas Chainsaw films, or slasher films in general, I didn't actually think this was the worst thing you could watch.  I had some fun with it since my expectations were so low. However, it's lazy, dumb, not scary, lacks any kind of creativity, and doesn't follow through enough on the one interesting thing they try to do.  This is a rental even if you're a fan.

1.5 (out of 5) Death Stars