And now, a note
As some of you might already know, I spent a number of weeks on vacation last month in various remote parts of the world (Stalingrad!). As such, this threw my schedule into more chaos than it typically is in even at this time of year, and I was unable to give proper reviews and attention to a handful of movies I saw, and liked. Though the films below are now pretty much all out of theaters, I wanted to record, for the record, my thoughts on a trio of films that you may or may not have seen, such that if you did miss them, you have a chance to make up for it on Netflix or other such services.
I also wanted to take the chance to talk about a film that deserves no longer review, but we'll get there...
Three films you should see if you haven't already (and one you should not)
Sleight
Alternate Title: Straight Outta Frankenstein
One sentence synopsis: A young man with a passion for street magic gets tangled up in the drug world while trying to find a way out for himself and his sister.
Oh, and there's also mad science.
All of the participants do a reasonably decent job with the material, particularly Latimore, and Seychelle Gabriel, playing Bo's girlfriend Holly (and whose previous appearance in a movie I saw shall not be spoken of). Neither one are transcendent, mind you, but this is a genre where the primary competition is Pras in Turn it Up, and both of them manage to clear that low bar with fair ease. Dulé Hill, meanwhile, tries his best to be a menacing gangster in the vein of Denzel Washington from American Gangster, talking a big game and smiling a lot before switching on the screaming tirades and machete mutilations, but is hampered by the fact that Dulé Hill has always appeared approximately as intimidating as a bowl of soup, regardless of the role. The story is entirely predictable, from the gradual descent into moral quandaries to the beyond the pale threats of the villainous gang leader, to the final rousing scene in which our hero finally stands up to the violent thugs who are oppressing him, but the details, tinged as they are with the unhinged, keeps things reasonably fresh, even if we know where the movie is ultimately going.
In the end, I have to admit that I liked
Sleight a good deal more than I expected to. There are, after all,
always new ways to tell a well-worn story, and while Sleight never quite
lives up to the zaniness of its premise, it does enough to avoid being
just another stale rehash of one of Hollywood's oldest tales. And given
that I've seen movies with literally a thousand times its budget come
up with literally a thousandth of its sincerity and charm, I'm certainly
not going to gainsay an interesting movie for not being anything more.Final Score: 7/10
o-o-o-o-o
Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2
Alternate Title: Daddy Issues
One sentence synopsis: The Guardians discover Starlord's semi-divine father while fleeing from a host of old foes hellbent on taking their revenge.
Guardians of the Galaxy was a spectacular movie in more senses than one, proof positive (if ever it were needed) that Marvel's infinite universe of magic and wonder could extend beyond basic superhero stories and into other genres like Space Opera. I loved Guardians, but was concerned about the possibility of a sequel, so delicate was the balancing act it performed, trying to be both totally irreverent and totally sentimental at the same time. And perhaps returning writer/director James Gunn knew that, for this time he has put together a movie that is much heavier on the sentiment while going a bit lighter on the irreverence. I suppose there probably wasn't much of a choice.
Now a semi-organized band of douchebag mercenaries/bounty hunters for hire, the Guardians have made themselves a host of enemies across the galaxy, partly because of the Marvel Cosmos being filled with officious dickheads, and partly because the Guardians themselves are the same kleptomaniacal, violent lunatics that we all fell in love with back in 2014. On the run from several different gangs of heavily armed assholes out for their heads, they encounter Kurt Russell (his character has a name, but it's basically Kurt Russell), who has been searching for them so that he can reveal to Starlord that he's his father, and that he's a God. Because of course he is. At the same time, half the galaxy is chasing down the rest of the guardians, be it Gamora's sister Nebula (Dr. Who's Karen Gillian), screaming mad and desperate for revenge, Ravager captain Yondu (Michael Rooker), now exiled from his fellow space pirates for child trafficking and looking to find Starlord for purposes he himself likely doesn't know, or an entire host of gold-painted douchebags called the Sovereign, who want to lay waste to the Guardians because they are assholes (and because Rocket, in perfect raccoon style, stole everything of theirs that wasn't nailed down. A lot of these subplots exist simply to give some of the other Guardians something to do for most of the run-time, but I'm hardly going to complain about that, resulting as it does in things like an opening battle sequence filmed completely offscreen as a backdrop to the adventures of baby Groot's misadventures, David Hasselhoff cameos, two enormous battle sequences where one of our heroes disposes effortlessly of so many heavily-armed ravagers that the sequence becomes gut-bustingly funny, and best of all, Sylvester Stallone making an appearance as a Ravager admiral with ties to Yondu. Sly seems to be sending up his performance in Judge Dredd, which given the tone of this movie, is beyond hilarious, and if this leads to him appearing in future Marvel films, so much the better.
Honestly
though, the focus this time isn't on the zaniness but the characters,
which is not exactly what I expected from Guardians of all movies, but
looking back is probably the correct move. Starlord's lingering
abandonment issues from having lost his mother and having been kidnapped
by space pirates as a kid continue to haunt him, while both Gamora and
even Rocket, of all people, get some excellent moments circulating
around their place in a misfit surrogate family like the Guardians, and
the distance between what they claim their place is and what it actually
is. The film never moves into telling instead of showing, but it's
plain that Gunn is more comfortable with the characters this time, and
more willing to explore the dynamics between them in greater depth than
the previous movie, five-way-origin-story as it was mixed with a
galaxy-devouring threat, had time to do. The core theme of the film
though is fatherhood, surrogate or otherwise, as evidenced by Kurt
Russell trying to make up for lost time with his demigod son, Yondu's
remarkably complex relationship with Starlord, one explored throughout
the course of the film with surprising depth and even pathos, Nebula and
Gamora's shared experience being raised by an abusive monster in
Thanos, and even Sly's own semi-father relationship with Yondu (okay,
I'm stretching here, but I wanted to shoehorn the fact that Stallone is
in this film into the review once more).
So does this mean that
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is just as good as its predecessor?
Well... no. It's not far off, to be fair, but with this much emphasis
on secondary characters and on the sentimental possibilities of certain
characters' stories, someone kind of has to get the shaft. Both Dave
Bautista's Drax and Zoe Saldana's Gamora have very little to do in this
film save for sitting around commenting on the actions of other
characters, including those of Pom Klementieff's Mantis, a fairly
forgettable throwaway who doesn't bring enough to the film to justify
her existence there. The writing isn't quite as sharp as it was last
time, the film needing to spell more of its emotional core out rather
than let it flow organically. The difference is one of degrees, but
it's there, palpable in that the sequel to a movie that created a
surrogate family without once using the word 'family' now has to
actually hammer the point home with considerably less finesse. There's
also the question of the missing humor. Not that Guardians 2 isn't
funny mind you, it's just not as
funny as the last film, in part because the movie is concentrating on
other matters, but also because the simple fact that the characters
embody their archetypes is no longer good enough. Rocket being
homicidal despite being a furry little procoynid, or Drax speaking in
utterly literal statements all the time is no longer good enough to
carry the film. In fairness to Gunn, it's clear he and the cast knows
this, but nevertheless, some of the edge that carried Guardians through
the original minefield of sentiment and saccharinity has clearly been
lost, and will need to be freshly honed in the sequel.
All that
being said, Guardians of the Galaxy's second chapter is a really good
film, the best superhero movie of the year so-far, and a worthy addition
to the illustrious Marvel canon. It may be a little less fresh than
its predecessor and it may feel unavoidably like filler at points, but
when the filler is this good, it's hard to get upset.Final Score: 7.5/10
o-o-o-o-o
Your Name
Alternate Title: Freaky Friday the 13th
One sentence synopsis: A young man in Tokyo and a girl in the Japanese countryside begin spontaneously switching bodies, and struggle to discover who each other are.
Your Name comes to us from the CoMix Wave Films studio, a studio whose pedigree is second only to the legendary Studio Ghibli itself, and not by much at that. Though nowhere near as well known in the States, CoMix Wave is responsible for several classic masterpieces of the Anime film world, including 5 Centimeters per Second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and The Garden of Words. The majority of CoMix Wave's films, including the aforementioned three classics and Your Name itself, come from director Makoto Shinkai, CoMix' Miyazaki (though he disputes this characterization). Shinkai's specialty has always been labyrinthine films with complex, philosophical plots, rather than the more artful fantastical fare that Ghibli focuses in, and Your Name is no exception. At its core, the film is about two young people, Taki, a university student in Tokyo, who works nights as a waiter to make ends meet, and Mitsuha, a high school student from a small town in rural Japan, who serves as a shrine priestess in the local Shinto temple, and who is otherwise bored stiff by her small town's limited horizons. For reasons neither of them can understand, the two begin body swapping one day, waking up in one another's lives for a day at a time. Communicating with one another by leaving text messages on their smartphones, the two try and puzzle out what's happening without actually having physically met, at least until...
... well never
mind the until, really. Let's just say the plot gets real complex real
fast, as Taki and Mitsuha try and discover what seems to be happening
here, and why. All of this, however, takes place before the backdrop of
gorgeous animation, classical in style for anime, though not if one is
only used to the Ghibli films. The focus here is on quotidian
animation, fireflies at night, the glint of torchlight on painted faces,
a weed-filled vacant lot near the outskirts of a town, cramped Tokyo
apartments, that sort of thing. It's a far cry from the hyper-extended
fantasias of films like Paprika or Spirited Away, but no less beautiful
for the lack. The characters, as well, are more subdued than the
customary anime stock types, less explosive screaming and sweat drops
than the typically-madcap pace of Anime allows for (I don't want to
paint with too broad a brush here, but Anime does
have its tendencies). The characters are well written, and sharp
enough to follow along with the twists of the plot, and the film overall
has a charming, romantic quality to it that translates well out of
context, cultural and otherwise.Unfortunately, the need to translate out of context is pretty vital, because Your Name, for all its charming simplicity at points, is a tremendously complicated film, involving not only body swapping but time travel, astrophysics, spiritualism, hallucinogenic drugs, memory loss, and a pair of narrators, both of them unreliable. Readers of this blog know that I've got nothing against a complex plot, I sang the praises of Cloud Atlas for years after all, but Your Name stuffs so much intricacy into its runtime that it is legitimately difficult to follow. This is not an uncommon problem with more adult-oriented anime (not that kind of adult-oriented... well maybe that kind too). Ghost in the Shell's films and TV shows both involved complex philosophical-political discussions about everything from cognitive theory to tax policies in parliamentary governments, smashed into the middle of a modern techno-thriller. Your Name, though, is supposedly a lightweight romantic drama, which periodically gets so dense that the audience is expected to simultaneously keep track of intricate animation, complex subtitles, and explanatory super-titles used to illustrate untranslatable subtleties of grammar and wordplay within the sub-titled dialogue. Watching a film while reading two books at the same time is a tall order for anyone, and it's for that reason that, contrary to all of my snobbish tendencies, my recommendation for those who do go looking for Your Name is to find a dubbed copy, and reduce the parallel tracks you have to simultaneously juggle to two or so.
Honestly, Your Name is quite a good film, though its
indulgence of far too much complex gamesmanship keeps its from being a
great one. It bears very little in common with most of the popular
anime which we of the non-Otaku world encounter, but it's no less of a
film for it, a highly-complex telling of a very simple story, done
without the melodrama and artifice that such stories would normally be
lathered with, either in Japan or here. And given the number of people I
know who absolutely adore this film, I'd bet that if you're willing to
put work into decoding it, Your Name may just wind up surprising you.Final Score: 7/10
o-o-o-o-o
Megan Leavey
Alternate Title: The Arf Locker
One sentence synopsis: A marine with a troubled past bonds with her bomb-sniffing dog while deployed to Iraq.
The Verdict: As longtime readers of this project already know, some weeks do not
offer a lot of choice when it comes to what to see, weeks that offer
either a slate of movies I've already seen, or things like Alien:
Covenant (Prometheus did not warrant a sequel) or The Mummy (now with
90% less fun!). As such, I went to see Megan Leavey despite my
ambivalence towards both subject and cast, in the hopes that, as has
happened many a time, the movie would prove better than my expectations
allowed for.It did not.
Admittedly, it didn't prove much worse either. Megan Leavey stars Kate Mara, older sister of Rooney Mara, and an actress I have never, despite all the stuff I keep seeing her in, decided if I like or not. Marta plays the titular character of Megan Leavey, a washed up kid from some dead-end town on the Atlantic seaboard who joins the Marines due to a lack of options beyond overdosing on drugs, and through a series of misadventures, winds up assigned to the K-9 corps, working with an "incorrigible" German Shepherd named Rex. They don't like one another at first, they bond, they go to Iraq, they get into combat and perform heroically, they have trouble adjusting to civilian life back home, you've seen this song and dance before, both better and worse, in a hundred other movies. So what makes this one different?
Well... not much, to be honest. This one has a dog,
certainly, and that's not nothing, as the dog actor playing Rex is the
best actor in the movie (animal actors often are, I find, mostly because
they have better lines). True, the film has the usual problem wherein
they get the dog to bark a few times and then expect the audience to
pretend that it's a 'wild, uncontrollable beast', but I suppose there's
limited options for getting a nice dog to appear fearsome. There are,
admittedly, a couple of nice lines relating to the business of dogs in
Iraq, such as the one where a soldier tries to scare Megan with tales of
how the insurgents will kidnap K-9 dogs and strap bombs to them before
sending them back to their handlers, only for Megan to respond that,
given that Rex can tear a man's arm off with his jaws at her command,
she's not overly concerned about that possibility (there's a really
awesome action movie to be made here somewhere).There's also the cast, which is somewhat more exalted than one might normally find in movies like this, though the film does not exactly take full advantage of that fact. Common, who I'm finding increasingly ubiquitous in my filmgoing experiences, plays Megan's tough-but-with-a-good-heart sergeant at the K-9 corps, but while on paper this should seem to be a perfect choice, the fact is that Common is not a particularly good actor when forced to play things straight, being wooden and inflexible in all the wrong ways. Granted, there are movies where he can work around this (John Wick 2 for instance), but here he goes into his Selma/Timothy Green style of direct unemotional declarations of his lines, and it just doesn't work. Tom Felton, of the Harry Potter series, has a small role as a veteran dog handler, which seems to have been added to the movie purely to make the young girls coo (which several of them literally did upon seeing him in my screening), while veteran stars Edie Falco and Will Patton get to play Megan's mother and step-father, the former as a bubble-headed shrew, the latter practically without lines. Neither has much chance to do more than play stereotypes. At least they get a better shot than Bradley Whitford though, who is horrifically mis-cast as Megan's blue-collar working stiff father. I love Whitford, I have for years, but he's about as authentically blue collar as Donald Trump, and has about the same ability to pretend as much, and his attempts to portray a salt-of-the-earth character are just embarrassing, given his polished accent and upper-crust mannerisms. Whitford works great in films like Get Out or The Cabin in the Woods, not in this.
Ultimately, Megan Leavey isn't a bad
film. The dog is always entertaining, and Mara is actually pretty
decent given the material, underselling everything heavily, which is the
right call in a story that can easily slide into melodrama. But the
movie overall is really nothing special, a re-hash of American Sniper
with dogs, and of about the same level of quality. Unless you're one of
those who absolutely has to see every movie involving the military out
of some misplaced sense of patriotism (or if you're punishing yourself
with a weekly film schedule), there's just no reason to run out for this
one. If you've seen the trailers, you've already seen the entire
production.Final Score: 5/10
Next Time: We kick off the heart of the summer blockbuster season with style.
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