The Martian (2015)

Just to get this out of the way, I haven't read the book, so there will be no comparisons or anything like that. This is a movie review. I can barely read in the first place. On a related note, I talked to a couple after seeing The Martian that was all too happy to tell everyone within earshot that Andy Weir was his cousin. I had to fight every fiber of my being to respond, "Who's that?" Seriously though, The Martian is the kind of movie that makes you want to read the book.

The Martian doesn't waste any time. Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is stranded on Mars in the opening moments of the film. Since that's the whole premise of the film, might as well get it out of the way, right? No sense in building that up for 30 minutes when the trailer reveals this. Watney must figure out a way to make his supplies last and contact home. As said in the film, he sciences the shit out of it.

It made me happy to see a film where everyone is smart. Hell, the main character of the film is an astronaut-botanist. How geeky is that? Matt Damon might be the main character, but the hero of The Martian is Science. Anything that gets people interested in outer space and celebrates Science is already winning my book. Doesn't hurt when Neil deGrasse Tyson tweets that The Martian got "crucial science right." He did also say that it's still fantasy, but some of those comments seemed to in jest.

It's a testament to Matt Damon's acting and charisma that The Martian stays entertaining even when watching long stretches of just talking to himself, or doing repetitive tasks. Like many stranded films, it can be hard or tedious to watch a guy struggling to survive if you don't like the actor or can't root for the character.

The Martian is a good example of a great cast that isn't wasted. They exist in the Goldilocks zone where everyone's screentime and performances are just right. It's is also very funny with a lot of sharp dialog. I didn't realize Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) wrote the screenplay, so perhaps its humor shouldn't have surprised me as much. The script also does a good job of explaining everything just enough that it's not too complicated, so nobody will get lost. It's not bogged down with jargon or techno-babble.

I'm glad to see Ridley Scott knock one out of the park again. Feels like it's been a good decade since he really nailed a film, so it's nice to see him return to form. I was worried that he might have totally lost it

Funny, thrilling, and best of all, smart, The Martian hits on cylinders. This is one of the most entertaining films of the year, and you don't need to be a fan of the book to enjoy it. It's a must see!

5 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Monuments Men (2014)

I heard the working title for The Monuments Men was Monument's Eleven.

Okay, I didn't actually hear that, but that's the vibe I got while watching The Monuments Men. George Clooney assembles a team, albeit an older one, but still happens to include MATT DAMON, to steal back a bunch of stolen art from some asshole. Sound familiar? Same general story, different locale.

In this case the asshole was Hitler, who had the Nazis going around Europe stealing works of art. So, not only was Hitler a genocidal maniac, he was a selfish hoarder. A team led by Lt. Frank Stokes (Clooney) is tasked with finding, recovering and returning these works of art. There's also concern that Hitler will destroy it all when they lose the war (since this is based on true events, we all know it's not going to go well for Hitler). Plus, the Russians are also trying to loot the art for their own collection.

Joining Stokes' team is Bob Balaban, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville and Bill Murray. It's a great cast and they play well off each other, but we spend so little time with any of them that it seems like a waste. I can't recall many movies where I felt like Bill Murray was underused, but it happens here. Everyone is off in smaller, two man teams, rarely spending any time together as a full group. We barely learn anything about the Men as a result. Much like I complained in Lone Survivor, I could hardly remember any character's name by the end of the film.

Matt Damon spends most of his time with Cate Blanchett, but can you blame him? I'd much rather spend time with her than a bunch of guys. Blanchett plays a French national working at the Louvre who also wants to recover the art, but doesn't trust Damon and the American's intentions. Like the rest of the cast, Blanchett was underused, and it's a shame to get someone like her and have her do so little. She's not even on the poster, so it's not like she was cast for her star power or box office draw. There's nothing in the role that they couldn't have just gotten a lesser known, French actress. This isn't a knock on Blanchett, but more the lack of development in the characters.  Nobody is really required to do any heavy lifting.

The Monuments Men also runs a tad too long. After many, many scenes series of them driving back and forth, going through various art caches, it gets a little repetitive. Some scenes felt totally unnecessary. The narrative is very scattered as it randomly jumps around without any rhyme or reason.

There's very little tension (again, we know how it's going to turn out), and many of the moments where they attempt to build some suspense are immediately diffused with humor. It's surprisingly light, despite being framed around World War II and people dying around them. There are many times where it tries to pull on the heart strings a little, but fails to connect and comes off as sappy, especially with the overstated score.

I can see how George Clooney was trying to make a statement about the importance of art as their grander purpose, but this gets lost in the inconsistent tone of the film. Of Clooney's directed films, this is the weakest I can recall and felt like more of a pet project where he assembled a few friends to make a film.

The Monuments Men assembles a great cast and is pleasant enough, but substitutes charm for a compelling story or characters. It's ultimately forgettable, but the kind of film you'd probably enjoy if you caught on cable when flipping channels. Nothing you need to rush out and see, but not that bad either.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

Elysium (2013)

In the year 2154, the Earth has become such a polluted dump that the wealthiest citizens have located to an orbital space habitat called Elysium.  Elysium is beautiful, clean and every home has a medical bay that will cure anything that ails you.  Plus, you have one helluva view.  However, if you're one of the regular folks, you're stuck on Earth living in a shanty town and barely surviving.  There is where we find Max DeCosta (Matt Damon), an ex-con struggling to keep a job a local robot factory.

After an accident at work, Max is blasted with a lethal dose of radiation and is given just five days to live. Getting to Elysium is the only way he'll survive.  Desperate for a way to get there, he makes a deal with another criminal rob a wealthy businessman (William Fichtner).  They fit him with a powerful exoskeleton, as well as some brain doohickey, and off he goes.  Max ends up in the possession of something extremely valuable that's wanted by not only his boss, but Elysium's Secretary of Defense (Jodie Foster).  She dispatches a sleeper agent, Kruger (Sharlto Copley), to bring him in.

Elysium has a great pace and that's due in large part to the fact that it wastes no time in getting the main quest going.  Within the first few minutes you learn all the backstory you need to know about Elysium and Max through a simple series of images, lines of text and flashbacks.  No painful or clunky narration or exposition needed.  When Frey (Alice Braga), a childhood friend of Max's, appears you already understand their relationship and what Frey means to him.  The story itself it fairly straightforward and easy to follow.

Much like Neill Blomkamp's District 9, Elysium has parallels to modern issues like immigration, class warfare and healthcare.  I didn't find Elysium to be as heavy handed as District 9 or found it to be preachy.  You don't see anyone lamenting their situation, or blaming/cursing the upper class for it.  Elysium subtly weaves these thoughts into the story, and it's much smarter than what we usually get during the summer, especially for something that's so effects-laden.  An early attempt to break into Elysium feels like a high-tech attempt to cross the border.  However, when you later realize what city they're in and consider the ethnicity of many of the people, that's the one part that seemed a little too obvious.

Unlike another science fiction film this summer, the technology seemed feasible and consistent for the setting.  If this only took place 40-50 years in the future, it would have seemed a little too implausible.  The effects are fantastic, whether you're looking at scenic shots of Earth or Elysium, the various robots in the world, or ships flying around.  This is one of the best looking films of the year.  Blomkamp again showed he has a flair for inventive and graphic ways of killing people.  If he ever made a sci-fi version of a Saw film, then I'd think we'd be in for some true mayhem.

I did find a few issues with the plot though.  Before I start, I understand without some of these things there'd be no story, but it always strikes me odd when a movie that's otherwise smart misses things to me that would seem obvious.  Like when Max gets trapped and hit with all that radiation, the system detects there's a biological signature present, but there was no failsafe to turn it off, or not activate at all once knowing he's in there.  That seemed like an obvious safety feature that was missing, but they could have been making a point about workplace safety in sweatshop or low-income/third-world environments.

I understand the point the film was making about healthcare, but if all you need to do is lay in one of these machines and it fixes everything, what's the issue with not having them on Earth?  It's not like you ever see money exchange hands on Elysium.  Why can't they help?  You'll see something at the end that really made this point stick out to me.

While the surface shots of Earth show a littered, run down landscape, orbital shots didn't show much damage.  I might have believed how polluted the Earth was if I had seen less blue, or maybe craters showing that there'd been war or some kind of disaster.  With the kind of technology that was available, they didn't have anything that would have been able to clean up the planet?

Perhaps I'm projecting my own idealized, Star Trek vision of the future on Elysium.  I'd like to believe that when we arrive at this kind of technology in the future, that it will be used for the betterment of all mankind, not just the rich.

There were a few weird character decisions as well.  Jodie Foster spoke with a weird accent that didn't seem to belong to any particular nationality.  It wasn't as bad as the accent used in After Earth or Queen Amidala from Episode I, but it was a little distracting because there wasn't a real need for it.  Plus, I swore in the opening scene she spoke with her normal voice, and then it changed in a later scene.  On a side note, Foster can still rock the short haircut with the best of them, and still has one the best set of calves in Hollywood (I have a thing for calves).  Speaking of accents, while Sharlto Copley is from South Africa, his accent was also a little distracting, all things considered.  A few times I found him difficult to understand.  His performance was delightfully nutty though, and a good contrast to Matt Damon's more muted performance.  I found it funny despite lack of finances, Max still had plenty of tattoos.  He was an ex-con though, so maybe they were prison tattoos.  You also see a lot of facial branding or 'white tattoos' on the wealthier folks, but it's never really expounded upon.

Overall, Elysium is well acted and there are no weak performances, but it's really not the focus of the film.  There aren't a lot of character moments, and outside of a scene or two I never felt much emotionally.

Lastly, I was really irritated in the camera work in parts.  Once again, there's too much shaky camera.  Even in some of the earlier flashback scenes of Max this is used and simply unnecessary.  When we reach the climactic fight, it suffers from dizzying tight shots, quick cuts and camera movements that make it extremely difficult to tell what was going on.  This is really becoming a plague on movies, and I'm disappointed that Blomkamp went this direction, especially when I don't recall any this at all in District 9.

Oh, and as always MATT DAMON!

Despite it's flaws, Elysium is still a smart, thought-provoking and highly entertaining sci-fi film.  It's easily one of the best looking films of 2013.  While it's a bit of a step down from District 9, it still cements Neil Blomkamp as one of the top sci-fi filmmakers out there.  Don't hesitate to check it out.

3.5 (out of 5)

The Bourne Legacy (2012) - Movie Review

Rental month continues with the latest installment to the Bourne franchise.  I guess it would have to be a franchise now, as The Bourne Legacy is neither a reboot nor a direct sequel to The Bourne Ultimatum.  The events of Legacy seem to take place around the same time of the events of Ultimatum, but I'm not entirely positive of that, as it's been a while since I've seen any of the previous Bourne films.  In fact, I would strongly recommend that you refresh with at least Ultimatum before seeing Legacy if you have the time.

The movie starts with a shot of Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross in the mountains retrieving an object.  Then, you're taken back to Stacy Keach and Edward Norton talking about shutting programs down and containment.  There are lots of callbacks and references to the previous films as they are doing this.  There are tons of code names and terms being thrown arond and it was tough to keep it all straight without a cheat sheet or something.  This goes on for a large portion of this 135 minute movie.  At times I felt like you could have called this The Bourne Meeting.  It really felt like much of this movie was Edward Norton's character talking about shutting things down, ordering people around and trying to do damage control.

While this managed to keep my interest, since it is a good cast and it's well acted, I kept wondering when they were just going to get on with it.  There are very few action sequences in the entire movie and most of the early scenes with Aaron Cross are very short.  It's not until almost the last 20-30 minutes until it really takes off.  I just wish there had been more of it or maybe quickened the pace the first hour or so.  They simply took too much time to tell the story they did.

Cross's main motivation in the film is to get more chemicals.  They explain that there are two types of chemicals these agents take: a green pill and a blue pill.  Once enhances the body, and the other their mind.  The catch is, if you don't take them at regular intervals or run out, your abilities degrade rapidly.  They mention these 'chems' a lot, and with all this talk of greens and blues, I couldn't shake the craving for M&M's throughout the film.  I had to pick up a bag after the movie.  Bring M&M's if you plan on seeing this.

Anyway, so Cross runs out of drugs and is simply trying to get more so he can retain his abilities.  That's it.  He's not trying to expose anyone, there's nobody he wants to kill, or anything like that.  This leads him to seek out Rachel Weisz, one of the scientists that used to do work with the agents.  Weisz is also on the run once the cover up operation is in effect and everyone starts getting killed.

What keeps your interest are all the performances.  Jeremy Renner is focused as Cross.  Renner is one of those actors that you just can't take your eyes off of even when he's not saying anything.  The scenes with him and Weisz were very interesting.  Edward Norton was good too, but they didn't really give him much to do and it kind of felt like he was just playing Edward Norton.  There's not much to any of these people as far as character development or personality.

It's unusual that this is called The Bourne Legacy when the screenplay by Tony and Dan Gilroy (Tony also directed) has very little to do with the the actual Bourne book of the same name.  The story is after the original director backed out of Legacy, Matt Damon did too - MATT DAMON! - so they went back to the drawing board and decided to do another movie set in the same universe, but not actually about Jason Bourne.  I actually don't mind that they did this.  It opens up the possibility of bringing in other actors or going down different paths if they do additional movies.  At the same time, they could have simply continued with the Bourne story and just cast different actors, similar to what they do with Bond.  Oh well...

While I don't think The Bourne Legacy is a bad movie, I was a little disappointed.  It's strong cast keeps you interested, but there's too much behind the scenes action and not enough focus on the main character.  It's slowly paced and doesn't have the same punch (literally) as the previous films.  This is something much better suited for a rental.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars