Game Addict (Ready Player One, 2018)

In the future, life is so bleak, everyone hangs out in the virtual reality of the Oasis. There, everything is focused around the 80’s pop culture that it’s creator, Halliday was obsessed with. People have video game avatars inspired by various films and they spend all their time and money in the Oasis. Upon his death, Halliday announced a competition to find an Easter Egg that grants the winner the ownership of Halliday’s fortune and the Oasis itself.

Apparently, it was so hard, only a few people are still trying. On one side are folks like Wade (in the Oasis he goes by the name Parzival) and his friends Aech, Sho and Daito. The other involves an evil corporation run by Sorrento that wants the Oasis to exploit it. Wade pines for the mysterious and legendary Art3mis.

I am going to be honest here. I tried reading the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I could not finish it. It was absolutely awful. So, filtering it through Steven Spielberg is probably a necessary move. Because the movie is not totally terrible.

It has some really dumb stuff. I mean, Wade is obsessed with Art3mis but has only known her avatar. In real life she ~~is disfigured~~ has a birth mark on her face. This is how we know how big of a guy Wade is…he doesn’t care. He still thinks she is beautiful. This is Olivia Cooke, who plays the character:

So…yeah…he is a prince. The film is obsessed with filling every shot in the Oasis with pop culture references. We see King Kong, Chucky, Freddy, endless video game characters, Parcival drives the delorean from Back to the Future, Art3mis drives the motorcycle from Akira, we see the van from the A-Team and the Batmobile. It becomes sensory overload.

The characters are very, very by the book and not terribly interesting.

I mean, the most interesting characters are Aech, Sho and Daito. And the cast is all pretty good. I mean, you have a supporting cast that includes Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, Ben Mendelsohn and Lena Waithe.

The visuals are top notch. I mean, the action scenes are fun to watch for the most part.

So, basically, Ready Player One is okay. Better than it’s source material, but pretty well below some of Spielberg’s strongest popcorn material.

August 7, 2018 0

Look Ma! A Sequel! (Deadpool 2, 2018)

Okay….before I write up this review…give me a moment to go check out Twitter to find out how I should really feel about Deadpool.

Okay. Well… let us try this as spoiler free as possible. First, I cannot believe they killed Professor X twice in the film.

Oops. Boy off to a bad start. Let’s try this again. Deadpool 2 is a sequel to a film from 2016 that was called Deadpool. It featured a bunch of characters from a comic book, also called Deadpool. It was pretty well received and now we have this movie. In this movie, some characters from the first film show up again, including Deadpool. Some new characters also show up. There are fights, people die, there is swearing and lots of Ryan Reynolds. It is a sequel to a movie.

What? You want more?

Fine.

So, Deadpool would have been a perfectly fine film to leave as a one off. But apparently movie studios like money. Part of what made the first film work for so many is it had a rather irreverent approach to Super Hero films. Wade Wilson is a sarcastic mercenary who, in the first film was subjected to tests that left him severely scarred, but unable to die. He can recover from most any wound. That film centered around his relationship to Vanessa. In this film, we find his life bordering on blissful, until one of his contracts results in tragedy.

Deadpool finds himself, somewhat unwillingly, into trying to save a mutant kid from the time traveling Mutant Cable. Things go haywire and violent stuff happens.

While the main theme of family does not always quite come together, the film is still ambitious in how it tries to give a character who cracks jokes to the theater audience an emotional through line. Sometimes it works and other times not so much.

Where the film works best is it’s humor. The jokes come at a pretty fast pace, but Reynolds has a certain charm that allows for most of the jokes to land. There is an ongoing bit where Deadpool and new teammate Domino debate if “being lucky” is a real super power or even remotely cinematic. But the filmmakers have a lot of fun with Domino’s amazing luck.

The film managed to surprise me repeatedly. I just had certain expectations due to “Comic Book Movie” that managed to surprise and entertain me. Brolin’s Cable is played straight which works very well against Reynold’s rapid fire motor mouth. I found Domino to be a blast in this film. My one complaint is that I wish we got more Teenage Negasonic Warhead in this film, as she was such a highlight of the first film.

So, the first film was a bit stronger in how tightly it kept to the story, but honestly, I found myself (and the audience I was with) laughing throughout the film. I enjoyed this one, and think in some areas, they may have even made some improvements.

May 18, 2018 0

Alien Bomb Coming Through! (Transformers: Age of Extinction, 2015)

The title of the review comes from an actual line in the film. Of course, nothing seems to challenge Michael Bay’s toy based Franchise…as of this writing there are three more films (one being a Bumblebee spinoff film) in the pipeline. There is no stopping it…not even this film. It picks up ten years after the destruction in Chicago. They have repaired and now the government is trying to wipe the Autobots and Decepticons out entirely. To that end they have a space robot helping them who has an agenda of his own.

Nobody knows where Optimus Prime is…and it turns out he suffered massive damage and is now asleep in an abandoned movie theater. He is found by failing inventor Cade. Cade and his hot daughter are on the verge of losing their house. His friend Lucas, hot daughter Tessa and her street racer boyfriend escape their house after government agents show up to claim Optimus Prime (who Cade revived). Much of the film seems to be going in the direct of Cade finally being less distrustful of his daughter and accepting her boyfriend Shane. Shane shows himself to be highly competent throughout much of the film. So it makes sense that maybe they become friends.

They discover that businessman/genius has been building his own robots, his pride and joy being Galvatron. You can probably see where this goes way wrong. Eventually he teams with Cade to save the planet from a bomb left by the Robot Bounty Hunter who reveals that the folks who created the Autobots and Decepticons want to take them back and get rid of them. Basically, it is the plot from Prometheus.

Remember my thoughts on Cade and his relationship to his daughter and her boyfriend? Boy was I wrong. For some reason they opted to make Shane totally incompetent and a complete fool that Cade has to suffer through. And when Cade saves the days? His daughter grabs her boyfriend and gives him all the credit for saving them. It is a sudden and unnecessary character change to make Cade look good, but it just does not work in any way. It is not even funny.

This is a better film than Revenge of the Fallen, but then, that is not saying much. But it does have Optimus Prime Riding a Robotic T-Rex.

August 5, 2016 0

Four or Five Moments (Deadpool, 2016)

Tim Miller’s Deadpool is hilarious and fun. A darkly comic take that brings the pages to life by simply understanding the character. The movie is also extremely crass, full of over the top cartoonish violence, raunchy humor, some nudity and plenty of profanity. This is not for everyone, and if you find those things hard to get past, I would recommend skipping this one. It is also not for your kids. This film earns it’s ‘R’ rating.

Honestly, it is a bit amazing this film got made. While attempt to parody and mock super-hero film have been attempted, they are really never successful. They never seem to understand the thing they are lampooning. Miller, Ryan Reynolds and the writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have given us a surprisingly clever film. It is a bit amazing that they even got the opportunity to make it. After the disaster of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (The first attempt at playing the character by Reynolds), the idea of a Deadpool movie was shelved by the studio.

Then, somebody leaked test footage of a sequence that was created to pitch the shelved film. The response was so overwhelmingly positive the film got greenlit and Miller and Reynolds went to work.

And what they gave us is one of the most unique super-hero movies we have seen, while still fitting into that world. Reynolds bring snarky charm to Deadpool, also known as Wade Wilson. Wilson has been experimented on and his latent mutant genes activated. He takes damage, but due to a healing factor, all his wounds fix themselves. So, like a real life Wile E. Coyote, he gets abused relentlessly, but keeps coming back. A lot of the film’s humor comes from this.

There is a running gag that Colossus is always trying to get Deadpool to change his ways and join the X-Men. And along with the sullen Teenage Negasonic Warhead, he spends the film trying to get Deadpool on that path. And these two characters are great additions. They fit into the world well.

The real success is pulling off the character of Deadpool. Constantly cracking wise, he spends the film talking to the audience. In one scene Colossus is startled by a comment from Deadpool, not understand why he made his comment. Deadpool explains that he is not talking to Colossus…he is talking to “Them”. Them is the audience. Wilson is constantly breaking the fourth wall. Instead of narrating the film, he just turns and talks to the audience. He is fully aware he is in a movie universe.

One of the other fun aspects is that Reynolds is merciless to himself. There are numerous slams of his previous film outings and even a slam on himself as a talent. And the film’s opening credits (which kept me laughing even after I got the gag, it just stayed funny) effectively let you know the film’s sarcastic attitude. This is not your regular X-Men movie.

Of course, the movie is definitely set in the Fox Marvel X-Men Universe. This has caused some consternation among some geek sites, as they cannot reconcile the difference between Daniel Cudmore’s Colossus in the previous X-Men films and the version we see in this film, who appears older and is voiced by Stefan Kapicic with a thick Russian accent. This is pretty easy to reconcile, as the Days of Future past altered the timeline. It is entirely possible Colossus came from Russia when he was older.

I found myself liking all the characters in Wilson’s circle. There was an oddball charm in his relationship with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). His roomate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) is a riot. T.J. Miller’s bartender (he runs a bar for mercenaries) Weasel is a fun character (his best line comes right before Deadpool goes to take out his villain, Francis (Ed Skrein). Francis really hates Deadpool because he is so mouthy…and Deadpool refuses to call him by his chosen villain codename… Ajax.

Anyways, while I have repeatedly expressed concern that the film will not be successful for precisely the reasons I enjoyed it, I am more than pleased if it succeeds, as it could open the doors to more creative takes in superhero films. There are a lot of them on the slate, and it would be great if they all sought to set themselves apart from the crowd.

February 13, 2016 0