2016 has already brought about some pretty disappointing action flicks. London Has Fallen was an unintelligent joke; Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice was a spiritless disaster; and early reports on X-Men: Apocalypse aren’t too encouraging. Hopefully, things will still pick up a little bit. Captain America: Civil War was good, and summer films like Jason Bourne and even Suicide Squad look promising. But in the meantime, the disappointing flavor of the year so far has inspired a look back at some other major letdowns in the action genre in the last 10 years.

Without further ado, let’s look at some films that fit that label.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Do you really need to read yet another bashing of the abominable Spider-Man 3? I’m guessing not. Suffice it to say the first two films were good; and the expectations were high for the third. Even the game was good. The film, however, was an unmitigated disaster.

Quantum Of Solace (2008)

Speaking of disappointments following high expectations, Quantum Of Solace might have been one of the worst Bond movies of all time, right on the heels of one of the best. Fans were excited after Daniel Craig’s dynamite debut as 007 in 2006’s Casino Royale, and instead of a worthy sequel the studio churned this piece of garbage out. Quantum Of Solace really could have been compressed into a 30-minute add-on to the Casino Royale DVD. It was essentially an epilogue to the Vesper Lynd love saga, and 106-minute runtime could hardly fool you into seeing it as more.

10,000 B.C. (2008)

It may sound silly to discuss 10,000 B.C. as if it could have been good, but it’s important to remember the context. In the past five years or so we’ve gotten so used to historical epics flopping that it’s become unusual for one to succeed. But 10,000 B.C. followed the likes of Troy (2004), King Kong (2005), 300 (2006), and even Apocalypto (2006). Massive, visually ambitious films about human history or mythology were on a little bit of a run. But as the reviews state it better than I ever could, 10,000 B.C. stopped that run in its tracks.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

The 20th Century Fox X-Men movies had already been a little bit hit-and-miss heading into 2009. But Hugh Jackman’s take on Wolverine was (and still is) pretty much universally beloved, and fans ate up the idea of a standalone spinoff. Unfortunately, however, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was completely soulless, no matter how much fun Jackman was.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

Sure the title was absurd, but Cowboys & Aliens seemed to have the potential to start an awesome new franchise. Jon Favreau directed just a few years after his Iron Man triumph, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde starred, and the whole thing looked delightfully self-aware and ridiculous. Unfortunately, it was a little bit of a mess. Rather than a set of sequels, all that’s left a few years later is this site’s slot machine based on the film (or the comic). The slot reel gets some points for introducing itself with “Shoot up them thar aliens pardner,” to be sure. And among a selection of other themed slot games it’s actually great fun, with some alien shooting features to help invigorate the reel. But if you’d said early in 2011 that this would be all that was left of the idea five years later I wouldn’t have believed you.

Taken 2 (2012)

Taken can rightly be called one of the most popular action movies of the 21st century so far. Liam Neeson’s uncompromising depiction of a deadly dad whose daughter was kidnapped by a human trafficking ring was simply awesome to watch. And in the era of Bourne and a Bond resurgence, let alone in a world where the Fast & Furious series stretches to seven films and beyond, Taken seemed to have genuine franchise potential. Then Taken 2 came along with a shamelessly uninventive rehashing of the original that reached an incredible low point when a dumpy, anonymous villain nearly took Neeson down in hand-to-hand combat. No thanks.

John Carter (2012)

Like 10,000 B.C., it’s hard to remember this movie ever having a chance. However, when you consider the budget of $250 million that Disney sank into the project, as well as the fact that lead actor Taylor Kitsch was one of the most popular actors on television coming off his turn on Friday Night Lights

The list could go on and on. But looking at these selections it’s actually easy to be encouraged about the state of action films in 2016. There have been some bad ones, but I’m not sure any were bad enough to join this company.

In a sea of bad movies about college frat houses, Neighbors 2 rises to the top alongside decent movies like Animal House and Old School.

This is the kind of movie you honestly don’t expect much from. Dumb dick joke bro comedy about college that’s been done to death. We’ve seen it dozens of times before, both in good and bad iterations. Movies like Van Wilder, Animal House, and Old School are a few of the higher watermarks, keeping in mind that’s a relative statement. There is some real garbage in this genre.

As such, I didn’t pay much attention to Neighbors and I had little intention of giving its sequel much thought. Then a couple of trailers caught my eye.

Unlike most of these movies, Neighbors 2, as the subtitle would success, is about a sorority. This is a difference that does matter. The focus on all three of the previously mentioned films is the male college experience, and in two cases fraternities. But why is it usually frats and rarely sororities?

Quite early in the film it establishes the reality that sororities can’t throw parties. Only frats can and the girls can go there to party. It’s also established quite early that parties at the frat house are not always the best experience for the ladies. It has the potential to be an uncomfortable and pressure-filled experience, if not a dangerous one. Some of the young women looking to jump into the sorority experience decide the smart move is to make their own way and start a sorority outside the system. But it’s about more than partying; it’s about feeling safe and comfortable.

Naturally, they choose to start this sorority in the same house as Zac Efron’s frat from the first movie. And they even enlist his help in establishing it.

Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne are back, this time with baby number two on the way and in the process of selling their house. In the face of this pack of party animals moving in next door, they have to somehow complete sale and escape to the suburbs.

First and foremost, this movie is filled with funny performances from very funny people. Rogen and Efron play off each other well. Rose Byrne is hysterical. And the young women that comprise the sorority, particularly Chloe Grace Moretz, are epic, taking gross out ‘frat humor’ in a distinctly female direction, for lack of a better term, and own in it. This is a movie that casts Hannibal Burress as a cop, a role being reprised from the first film, and he does it well. The sequence of him and Jerrod Carmichael shutting down drug dealers is amazing.

But there’s unexpected depth in this film, too.

The mission of the sorority is a response to a real problem of sexism and danger that exists in this frat for young women. This movie does not shy away from this reality, and hits it head on. While Sorority Rising uses this for comedy, the movie doesn’t diminish the severity of the problem.

Zac Efron’s alpha douche bro actually plays a big part in attacking this issue. When the sorority girls meet him, he can’t figure out why they wouldn’t just want to go to frat parties. They point out the inherent and blatant sexism to him. He stops, thinks about it, and is almost immediately horrified by everything he was party to during that era of his life. The simple message of, ‘stop and think’ is a surprisingly poignant one.

The nature of the relationship between Rogen and Byrne is an accurate one. They are constantly trying to convince themselves that their children are not going to grow up and move on with their own lives, a reality that becomes very apparent when Kelsey Grammar shows up to reprimand his daughter at the behest of Rogen and Byrne. The final moments of the film feature an extremely bittersweet moment with the young parents and their oldest daughter. Acceptance of this future comes with difficulty.

Even Zac Efron’s alpha douche bro has a solid arc. His friends are moving on with their lives and leaving him behind. Instead of moving on, he finds a way to relive old glories by facing off against Rogen and Byrne again. But he also tries to find redemption for past misdeeds by helping the sorority, even if he doesn’t know it. There is a lot more than expected going on in this movie.

Sorority Rising was so intriguing that I actually went to a video store and rented a copy of the first movie.

Yeah, you read that right. I rented it. I went to a brick and mortar building then gave someone money to borrow the movie for a specified amount of time. That is still an option that exists. But I digress.

Again, there was a lot of surprisingly well-executed frat humor with more serious undertones in Neighbors. Zac Efron’s search for meaning in his life starts here. Rogen and Byrne are brand new parents coming to terms with their changing roles. And both parties are trying to avoid reality by hiding behind this overblown adversarial relationship. That strategy of avoidance continues in Neighbors 2 with the sorority caught in the middle.

In amongst the frat-now-sorority jokes and low brow comedy, there are more than a few salient points being made in these movies. And the success of transitioning this style comedy to a group of women in college instead of men is an important one. Anyone concerned that Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising could not live up to the pedigree set by Van Wilder, Animal House, and Old School can check those concerns at the door.

For this style of comedy, Sorority Rising is as good as it gets.

Witness originality in a summer full of sequels and reboots with The Nice Guys, pairing the unlikely and hilarious duo, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.

If you told me that a dark detective comedy set in 1977 Los Angeles starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling would work, I would have called you a liar.

Right to your lying, shrew-like face.

You liar.

And then I would have had to eat those words.

The Nice Guys is easily one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in years. A private investigator and a tough guy for hire team up to unravel a plot involving the Detroit auto industry, the Department of Justice, and the porn industry. And it all takes place in late 70s Los Angeles. None of this should work but somehow it does.

Russell Crowe plays Jackson Healy, the guy you call when the only way to solve a problem is by paying a middle-aged man to punch someone else in the face. It’s on one such mission that he meets Gosling’s Holland March, a mediocre and disreputable private investigator who can just barely stay sober long enough to get the job done. But he’s also not half bad at finding clues and solving the occasional case.

Crowe and Gosling are really good together on screen, something you may have picked up on if you happened to catch them handing out an award together at the last Oscars. Primarily, Gosling is the comedy and Crowe is the straight man he plays off of though Crowe has more than his fair share funny moments. Anjourie Rice, who plays Gosling’s daughter, also adds to the film, as a source of comedy, empathy, and a narrative push.

The chemistry between Crowe and Gosling is undeniable, and is the driving force of this story. If two different actors play these roles, this whole thing falls apart.

This is easily Russell Crowe’s best performance in years. Whenever you watch his films, it can be hard to take him seriously because he takes himself too seriously in real life. In this role, he seems to let his guard down and actually pokes fun at his own reputation. Healy is constantly questioning his own place in the world as a tough guy and what value it has. The film comes before his image in this case. And pairing him with Gosling is genius. He’s one of those actors that you just never know quite expect from. In this movie, it’s ridiculousness on every conceivable level. He’s a drunken lunatic with a gun who doesn’t know the difference between Munich and eunuch.

And their partnership all starts with the death to a pornstar, then twists and turns its way through so many aspects of the era.

The waning power of Detroit.

The gas crisis.

The rising porn industry.

The elements serve as set pieces for a narrative that is unique and one heck of a period piece. Setting this in 1977 is so unbelievably important. Despite everything they’ve seen in their respective careers, there is a certain naiveté to the heroes that you couldn’t plausibly have in 2016. No, in 2016 you get Jason Bourne when confronted with any level of conspiracy. That naiveté is so important to the story yet far too easy to overlook. We have to believe that the heroes believe anything but a multi-faceted conspiracy would be remotely possible.

All of that being said, it’s not the most innovative plot. As the story unfolds and the plan reveals itself, things fall into place exactly where you’d think they should. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. The old joke when watching 70s cop/detective shows was that the most recognizable guest star was always the one who did it. And that rule holds true here. There is a certain level of familiarity in the plot elements that helps it connect with the audience. This movie stands outs in its own way, thanks to the performances of its leads.

It’s important to note that this movie isn’t a light-hearted romp, as funny as it is. Things get brutal at times when Crowe’s character is handling things his way. Gosling’s on screen daughter quickly establishes herself as his compass and Crowe’s conscience. She plays a key role in the film, keeping the boys on point when they lose their way. She also drives her drunk father around when he can’t get behind the wheel despite not even being close enough to driving age.

The Nice Guys takes some surprisingly standard plot elements and turns them into something brilliant, in no small part to the on screen chemistry of Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. It has the chance to be the sleeper hit of the summer. And that’s particularly impressive when you consider how many adaptations, sequels, and reboots are floating around.

The power of something original is still highly potent and intoxicating.

For some weird reason (probably because he has kids), William went to see Angry Birds. Now it just seems like he’s a really angry bird.

Last weekend was just another opening day weekend in May with what could have been a tentpole for animated movies this summer. As an avid sci-fi/fantasy/comic book/animated movie buff, I took my children to see both Angry Birds and Captain America: Civil War.

Caveat: my twins are eight. Caveat part two: Someone else already did a review of Civil War, which means that I got the rotten end of the deal by having to review Angry Birds, much like having to see it.

In case you have been living under a rock for the last seven years, Angry Birds is one of the earliest smartphone games — probably the one that paved the way for so many more. And since Hollywood has to rehash everything, someone decided it was a good idea to ‘expand’ and recycle the game’s core story into a movie.

In an eggshell, pigs come to Bird Island, con the birds, set explosives, steal the eggs and destroy the birds’ nests, er, homes. The birds then build a boat to go to Piggy Island, because they can’t fly?! Thus they must be shot in a slingshot over the walls to break into the castle to rescue the eggs.

This movie is nothing more than an extended and enhanced gameplay trailer with lines given to the characters. The latter third of the movie could have been taken shot for shot from one of the many iterations of the game.

Unfortunately, the first two-thirds of the movie did not have any redeeming qualities either. For example, the voice cast was mostly comedians with a few major thespians thrown in for flavour. Despite the flock of talent trying to lift this movie up, it was potty humour and physical comedy at best without anything of substance for adults to laugh about.

Caveat part three: My kids laughed at and liked Angry Birds more than Captain America.

And the best/worst example of why this flightless film is funny to children was Josh Gad’s voicework for the fast yellow bird, Chuck. If you liked him as Olaf in Frozen, chances are you will love him here. Otherwise, most adults taking their children to see this movie will immediately recognize and dread hearing that voice throughout the entire movie.

Most animated movies, especially those in the Disney/Pixar and even Dreamworks camps, have figured out that the way to really sell these movies is to pander to the kids while giving the adults enough veiled humour that it’s not annoying. This movie was just foul — there was no attempt.

There was also no attempt at a redemption in this movie. The angry red bird — appropriately named Red — was unrelentingly angry throughout the whole movie. If anything, by the end of the movie, if the kids take any message away, it’s that it’s OK to be angry and sometimes you just have to let it out and be destructive and abusive of situations.

Speaking of destructive and just plain stupid writing — how do you make an omelet by boiling eggs in green water? Why is it that there is only one bird on the whole island who can fly? Why does one bird shoot destructive sparkles out of her tailfeathers while another can blow up a building, but not himself?

Why is it that Hollywood still thinks it’s a good idea to make movies out of games? Come on, who could forget such classics as Battleship or Super Mario Brothers? Next in line — Warcraft and Fruit Ninja!

Please, someone tell them the bird is overdone and will bust open like a Griswold Christmas turkey if you try to suck any more life out of these game plots.

Is X-Men: Apocalypse the big screen stinker of a comic book adaptation that everyone keeps saying it is? Well, yes, and no, says Ian Goodwillie.

In a blockbuster season packed with sequels, adaptations, and reboots, many of them based on comic books, it takes a lot to stand out. And 2016 is a harder nut to crack than ever after crushing box office hits like Deadpool, Captain America: Civil War, and, to a lesser extent, Batman v. Superman. Enter the latest installment of Fox’s mainstay comic book movie franchise, X-Men: Apocalypse.

This time around, it’s 1983 and things have been relatively peaceful for 10 years. Xavier’s school is flourishing. Magneto has gone dark. The world appears to be accepting mutants. Well, superficially and only to a limited extent. Vaguely tolerating might be more accurate than accepting.

Then, Moira MacTaggert accidentally lets out Apocalypse, one of the world’s first and most deadly mutants, and all Hell breaks loose.

Apocalypse is a straight up summer blockbuster explosion fest. The story lacks the balanced depth of Civil War or the cohesiveness of Deadpool. It’s a little more reminiscent of the sloppy narrative in Batman v. Superman. There’s almost too much going on in this film at times, too many mutants doing too many different things. This movie times out at almost two and half hours, which is just too much for a superhero film. And that includes any of the previously mentioned movies with run times longer than two hours.

The overall timeline has also gotten so convoluted after Days of Future Past that it’s hard to tell what fits where anymore. The rules of this possibly new narrative are hard to discern. Did the X-Men meet Nightcrawler for the first time in X2? Or is it decades earlier in this movie? There also appears to be two completely different winged Angels, one in X3 and one in Apocalypse. And while Wolverine’s appearance is a superb call back to the comics, it just added time to the movie and really confused Jean Grey’s place in the movie version of Logan’s development.

Oddly enough, this convoluted timeline is true to the X-Men comics in a way. The constant time bending and use of alternate realities has made their overall narrative virtually incomprehensible even if you have read it all regularly since the 1960s. In that way, the movies now reflect the comics.

While many of the characters in this film are shallow and one dimensional, probably because there are too many of them to develop each one correctly, Quicksilver once again steals the show. Unlike everyone else in the film who is devoted to either saving the world or destroying it, Quicksilver is driven by a desire to connect with a father that doesn’t know he exists. There’s actually more to this character than being drawn into the same good/evil archetype. That alone makes him engaging but he also offers the core source of levity in what is otherwise a bleak film.

Alternatively, Magneto is driven by the most conventional and clichéd of reasons. He becomes Magneto because of the death of his mother. He returns to being Magneto in this movie when his wife and daughter are killed. These are female characters who exist only to be sacrificed to Magneto’s arc. And this is particularly pointless in Apocalypse.

When Apocalypse recruits Angel, Psylocke, and Storm to be part of his team of Horsemen, he pretty much just asks them and they’re in. Frankly, they agree to this whole ‘kill most of humanity’ thing with relatively little coaxing and quite quickly. Magneto, on the other hand, apparently required the unnecessary death of his family and a field trip to Auschwitz to convince him to jump in. This is the guy who has taken a very anti-human stance in the past but he required a significant amount of coaxing to join the new anti-humanity team. And as unnecessary as the death of his wife and daughter are, the trip to Auschwitz is even more gratuitous. If you want to see the definition of awkward in a comic book film its people in ludicrous costumes milling about the remains of Auschwitz until one of them levels it.

The reality is that none of this was necessary. They could have easily just had Apocalypse give Magneto a three-minute speech to convince him to do exactly what he’s always wanted to do and the audience would have been perfectly fine with that. Plus, cutting all the scenes relating to his dead family and Auschwitz would have saved at least 20 to 30 minutes of time.

Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy are all great again in this film. It’s a hard not to enjoy their performances as they’ve got great on screen chemistry. A story that really focuses in on all three together would be very interesting. And Olivia Munn did a solid job as Psylocke but she needed more screen time to develop the character. She’s basically just a set piece in this movie, which is far less than she could have been. If they ever seriously attempt an X-Men film universe or TV series, she would be a good headliner.

As long as it is, as unfocused as it is, and as incomprehensible as it can be, Apocalypse is still at least a solid big screen watch. Just really don’t think about it too much. Movie-goers have just been spoiled by big screen gold like Deadpool and Civil War. Set your sights a little lower than that and you’ll be fine.

Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, based on the ‘unfilmable’ JG Ballard novel, is a boldly realized vision and a biting, knowing comment on where capitalism takes us.

High-Rise opens with the monstrous concrete luxury tower invoked by the film’s title. The tower’s cascading top floors look as if the structure was designed to topple over — we soon discover, though, the overturning of the high-rise very much takes places from the inside out. The building offers our narrator, Laing [doctor, eligible bachelor, and casual misanthrope], played by Tom Hiddleston, a sort of indulgent isolation from the outside world. Venturing out into the world seems awfully primitive when one can shop for groceries at the in-house market, play squash at the exercise facility, or find companionship at one of the facility’s daycares, masquerade parties, or orgies. The building’s mastermind, Royal [Jeremy Irons] has designed a facility in which its residents not only have very little reason to leave, but the value of their very existence predicated on graduating to a higher floor.

Director Ben Wheatley’s superb realization of the J.G. Ballad novel of the same title is an overwhelming simulacrum of a 1970s utopia — the building and its characters equal parts elegant and haunting. It’s one of those ‘unfilmable’ novels, yet is executed with a precise and assured vision, frequently reminding of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece, Brazil. The residents in High-Rise live an unblemished existence until the building’s utilities begin to fail, and the occupants of the lower floors, those banished to the “shadows,” begin to rise up. The building, despite its lifeless exterior, begins to transform to some kind of rabid creature, perhaps designed only as catalyst for their own undoing. There’s a type of cynical humour here, Wheatley smirking at the inevitable breakdown of advanced civilization to something barbaric when given its unlimited freedoms. Murders, suicides, riots, and orgies begin to mount, painting a vivid portrait on the nature of capitalist society through Wheatley’s beautifully perverse images.

Wheatley is hitting all the right notes in tone, social relevance, and comic absurdity for a proper satire, and is indifferent [to the lament of some critics] to the worthless notes of narrative structure and coherence. But the film’s messy form is necessary in its telling of the civilized becoming unravelled. A society of excess, consumption, and rapid decay play to a flood of beautiful sounds and often incomprehensible montages, all ingredients necessary to concoct the lawlessness of a dystopia. If you allow yourself to be taken by it, it’s an intoxicating vision — dark, poignant, funny, and, like any good satire, hits that terrifying place that feels a little too familiar.

After Prince’s passing, we sat down and watched the movie that helped launch his career to iconic status — the bizarre and hilarious Purple Rain.

After the death of Prince, society collectively sifted through our record collections to remember the man and his musical legacy. We talked (or wrote) about how his music touched our lives. When the Broadway Theatre quickly put together a screening of the 1984 film Purple Rain, I was out of town and unable to attend, but it made me realize I hadn’t seen the movie since I was a kid. I stumbled across a Blu-ray online for $8.00 and a week later I was on the couch, three beers deep, throwing on this piece of ‘80s pop culture. All I remembered about it from childhood was that it wasn’t very good, kind of boring, with some good musical performances.

What a funny thing memory is. Purple Rain is many things, but boring is not one of them. It’s actually quite batshit insane. I’m surprised the movie hasn’t been featured on an episode of the excellent podcast/love letter to bad movies, How Did This Get Made?.

In the film, Prince is a Minneapolis musician named The Kid. While he’s a talented songwriter fronting a band called The Revolution, he’s got problems. People don’t get his music and a rival band led by Morris Day is nipping at his heels. Even the owner of the club where both bands have their residence is planning to dump The Kid for a manufactured girl group featuring his girlfriend, Apollonia. On top of all that, his father is an abusive drunk who likes to do most of his talking with the back of his hand. Strangely, Prince is playing a weird version of himself; so are most of the other people in the movie, including his real life frenemy, Morris Day (Prince and his onscreen parents’ are pretty much the only ones not going by their real names).

The movie didn’t exactly set Hollywood on fire, and in fact, was almost not distributed because Warner Bros. found it rightly goofy and bizarre. But PR man Howard Bloom convinced them to release the property at the zero hour. It was all part of a plan, along with the soundtrack, to make Prince a global superstar, which obviously doesn’t seem silly in hindsight. The movie didn’t have to be great (or even good, apparently) to plant Prince’s persona in the public consciousness.

Purple Rain is hilarious, pretty much from the beginning. One of the opening scenes sets the tone, as Prince rides through a dirty Minneapolis hood on his purple Bat-cycle, wearing his signature purple Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, trying to be Brando tough, but coming off as some kind of Lynchian Pee Wee Herman. He looks like he fell out of a different movie, if not a different dimension.

A few scenes later, he’s dirt biking off road with the Prince-cycle, which is clearly a city bike, across dusty trails and over grassy hills, awkwardly standing up in the saddle, jiggling like Jell-o. He takes Apollonia to a creek, where she strips down, wanting him, needing him to make sweet, sweet love to her. But he pretty much leaves her there, for no apparent reason, other than to be a dick. In fact, he’s a total creep to her throughout the film — even lashing out like Bing Crosby to belt her across her pretty face several times. It’s so unexpected that you actually feel the sting of the smack for a split second — I reacted with a hand to my own face and a loud, “Ow, fuck!” I’m guessing the film was trying to make some sort of statement about violence begetting violence, you know, like, when doves cry and all that, but it’s just bizarre, scary, and often unintentionally hilarious. It comes across as slapstick (no pun intended).

There are no likeable characters in the movie, except maybe Apollonia, and the only person who’s not chomping the scenery is Morris Day (though even he has a bonzo Abbott and Costello ‘who’s on first’ routine with his valet/Smithers). Prince comes off as just unsympathetic as all the antagonists, with nary a scene to get you to take his side. Even the family abuse scenes are so ham-fisted and weird that you don’t really sympathize with him. He’s mean to his band, his woman, and pretty much anyone who crosses his path. According to Prince-lore, the shitty way he treats his band in the movie is the same way he treated them in real life.

The Kid seems afraid of girls at the creek, which prompted me to wonder if the character was supposed to be gay or androgynous. But fast-forward a couple of scenes and to quote Jesse Ventura in Predator, The Kid becomes a “sexual tyrannosaurus.” He’s all up in there, writhing and throbbing and quite literally fingering Apollonia on a bed (and I’m sorry if it’s gross, the way I said that, but that’s less graphic than the way it plays out on screen, by far).

“Holy shit, he’s going to pork her, Dad,” I shouted to my wife (I was a few beers deeper at this point). Again, what is meant to be sexy is unintentionally hilarious. As a side note, why is he a somewhat successful, sexy, soulful adult musician that lives with his parents and can’t take ladies back to his house? Just because he’s called The Kid, am I supposed to believe that he’s a teenager? (Prince was 26 at the time).

The music scenes are sublime, which is obviously what Broom was counting on to launch Prince into the stratosphere. Some of the music was apparently even recorded live (the lip synching you do see is much better than some of the off kilter ADR in the actual dialogue). Prince wrote all the songs in the movie, including Morris Day and the Time’s songs and even the piano song that The Kid’s dad plays. The film won an Oscar for Best Original Score (though the song Sex Shooter was rightly nominated for a Razzie) and of course, the soundtrack was one of the most seminal albums of the 80s.

All that said, the music is also what makes the movie make even less sense. At the end, he plays his bandmates’ song to win over the crowd and show that he’s still got it, or that he’s not too far out there, or whatever everyone’s problem was with him was. Of course, this is total nonsense, because that song is Purple Rain, which sounds the same as the rest of the great Prince songs he’s been playing the whole movie. Though, it’s not like he could be playing shit music the whole movie until the finale; plot be damned if this was to be a showcase for Prince himself.

Like I said at the start, I was sorely misremembering Purple Rain, even if it makes sense that I wouldn’t have noticed how bizarre and funny it was in grade five or six. Seeing it again as an adult, I can’t claim that it’s a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. However, it’s pretty fun. It’s a wacko nostalgic mindfuck of epic proportions, unapologetically awful but amusing.

But Purple Rain is also more than that in moments, especially in hindsight after Prince’s passing. If you can look at it more as a snapshot of a time and place and worry less about the fact that it makes no sense, it becomes something greater. Between the music and some of the darker Nicolas Winding Refn-type moments, like neon lights illuminating the dark corners of alleys, Purple Rain becomes as cool as fuck in places. Think Drive or Michael Mann’s Thief. It’s a pop culture communiqué that drove the broad strokes of Prince’s pouting, sexual persona into the brains of the masses. It’s a weird, funny, beautiful, movie. A curiosity. A Pee Wee Herman rock star cartoon reality, but darker, more purple.

We begrudgingly check back in with our heroes in a halfshell to find that Michael Bay and company are leaning hard on the 90s cartoon.

Saying this movie is better than the first isn’t saying much. But it is. And that’s about all it has going for it in a summer overloaded with blockbusters.

Out of the Shadows is the second of the Michael Bay produced movies to feature the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters. In addition to April O’Neil, Shredder, Splinter, and the titular characters, Rocksteady, Bebop, Baxter Stockman, Krang, and Casey Jones have all been added to the roster. The core of the story is Shredder and his crew trying to help Krang bring the Technodrome to Earth as part of a plan to rule it.

At this point, Bay and company are leaning on the 90s cartoon hard for inspiration in addition to a bit from the comics.

The addition of Stephen ‘Green Arrow’ Amell to the cast as Casey Jones is a welcome one. On Arrow, Amell plays the dark and brooding lead character. In this movie, his iteration of Casey Jones is a little more light-hearted and quite a bit different from Green Arrow. It works. Though he doesn’t wear the hockey mask anywhere near enough.

And then there’s Baxter Stockman, scientist and ally to Shredder. He’s played by Tyler Perry. Yes, that Tyler Perry. I didn’t recognize him in the trailers and it took me a few moments to realize who was playing Stockman. But you have to give credit where credit is due on this one and give props to Perry for playing the mad scientist well.

After those two bright spots, this movie is a bit of a s@#T show.

The story is pretty straightforward. Stop the bad guys, save the world. There’s nothing wrong with that as that plot pretty much describes most comic book based films. But a significant portion of the characters telling the story are mediocre CGI.

Michelangelo. Donatello. Raphael. Leonardo. Splinter. Krang. Rocksteady. Bebop.

All of these key characters are CGI, except for the small portion at the beginning before Rocksteady and Bebop are transformed and are still human. There are scenes where Megan Fox is the only actual person on the screen. There are entire scenes that are 100% CGI, without a single live human in sight. And there are scenes where the CGI is just off. It honestly looks a little sloppy at times. The characters are hard to connect to because the just don’t look realistic. The costumes of the 90s films looked significantly better.

Then there’s the origin of Rocksteady and Bebop. In the film, Shredder gets gives the pair a chemical provided by Krang that transforms them respectively into an anthropomorphic rhino and warthog. But there are no DNA samples for either animal in the mix. To paraphrase the explanation that Stockman gives, each subject is reverting to the DNA markers left in their makeup from their ancestral species.

Uh…what?

So, basically this movie is claiming that people evolved from rhinos and warthogs. Or at least that some people did. I’m going to go out on limb and say THAT IS NOT A THING. This is, of course, a fictional story and anything is possible but plot points have to make sense inside this world. This does not make sense. There is no alternate history for how human life evolved in this world.

A brain with a face in the stomach of a robot? That I can accept.

A rat teaching turtles ninjitsu? Sure.

The concept that humans evolved from a variety of animals? Yeah, not so much. Krang and Shredder are just lucky their thugs used to be a rhino and a warthog. What if their ancestors had been a vole and a chihuahua? Scary stuff.

The other big disappointment is how small a role Shredder and Krang actually play. Shredder gets a small amount of screen time and uses it primarily to direct traffic. He personally does very little. The same is true of Krang, though he at least gets a fight scene with the Turtles.

The partnership between Shredder and Krang in this movie is a strange one, though it’s a core part of the animated series. Krang essentially kidnaps Shredder and asks for his help in bringing the Technodrome to Earth so they can conquer it as a team. Shredder is completely unphased by the existence of both alien life and other dimensions, and is almost unbelievably eager to side with a brain with a face in the stomach of a robot. For a hardened criminal, Shredder is surprisingly trusting. He dives in head first with almost zero questions.

Oh, and the Turtles ride around in garbage truck that shoots manhole covers and has giant mechanical arms that swing nunchucks.

Out of the Shadows has some decent action and some genuinely funny moments, thanks in large part to Will Arnett. If you turn your brain right off and just let the movie wash over you, there’s a real shot you could just enjoy it as a relatively serviceable summer blockbuster.

It’s also one of those films that comes apart pretty quickly when you start pulling at loose threads. And there are more than a few of those.

But it is, for whatever this is worth, better than the first movie.

Here comes the much anticipated, long awaited sequel to 2013’s Now You See Me! Wait. Does anyone even remember that there was a first movie?

The first problem this unlikely film franchise has going against it is the cute title.

If you didn’t see the first movie, and you might have due to the silly title, it’s basically a heist film where the robberies are perpetrated by a group of stage magicians called The Horsemen. As you watch, you start seeing far grander schemes falling into place, some that are more elaborate than others. And if you haven’t seen the first movie but you’re trying to watch the second, you will be somewhat confused by the story because of this.

The events of the second movie are a directly the fallout of the actions of The Horsemen in the first. The people they screwed over have come for payback and The Horsemen now find themselves a step behind those they either victimized or inflicted justice upon. It kind of depends on your perspective.

One of the interesting angles of these movies is The Eye. Apparently, there is a group of Robin Hood-esque magicians who use their abilities to right societal wrongs.

I think.

The movies aren’t particularly clear on who The Eye are and what they do. For heist movies, there are a surprising number of layers and complexities to the story.

Most of the key cast have returned, except for Isla Fisher which left a hole in The Horsemen. Lizzy Caplan fills that space and actually adds a whimsical element sorely missing from the first movie. Unlike most of the characters in these movie, Caplan’s actually seems to enjoy being a magician. They rarely seem to be having fun so her spark lightens the mood. Ultimately, it’s a well-stocked cast, including Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Dave Franco, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and the newly added Daniel Radcliffe. Michael Caine is particularly menacing in this film. And the duality of Morgan Freeman’s character is both unexpected and engaging.

Harrelson is particularly amusing, playing his character’s twin brother. Each man is ridiculous in his own way and plays their part in the schemes. Harrelson is his own antagonist. And it’s damn funny.

This is one of those movies that has all the rights parts. A good cast. An inventive story. Intriguing twists. So why isn’t it doing better?

It’s a long movie for what it is supposed to be, over two hours in length. There are scenes that are expository, unnecessary, and long. There are times when it just drags. When it moves, it moves fast and requires a lot of explanation. And now we’re back to the unexpected levels. When you have magicians working as thieves to complete secret missions for a mysterious organization, constantly leaving the audience wondering who is running a game on who, a lot of unanswered questions are consistently left behind in the wake.

Sometimes that’s a good thing. It builds intrigue. Other times, it’s incredibly unsatisfying as you don’t get the answers you might need. Both scenarios are true in Now You See Me 2.

By the end of this movie, you have a slightly clearer picture of who and what The Eye is but nowhere near enough. They seem to be a massive organization with tentacles stretching everywhere. But we’ve still only caught glimpses of what this organization is, something that will hopefully come into focus in future films. But it’s not told in an intriguing enough way to bait us into wanting the answer. The narrative coyly dances around the answers too much, leaving the watcher confused and unsatisfied in regards to certain elements.

Now You See Me 2 has done reasonably well at the box office having just recently broken even. And that’s even counting international numbers. That may pick up yet as producers spent quite a bit of time in the movie pandering to Chinese audiences by setting much of the film in Macau. It actually works quite well for the story. Macau makes an excellent setting for the mysteries and intrigue surrounding a centuries old organization of magicians. And it’s not a city from the region frequently used in Western films like Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Beijing.

The move hasn’t paid off so far, though. But that is in part due to the fact Now You See Me 2 opened against Warcraft which has dominated Chinese box offices. Given time, Now You See Me 2 will hopefully turn out to be profitable, especially considering the future plans for the franchise.

Now You See Me 3 was reputedly already in development before Now You See Me 2 hit theatres. The Eye, The Horsemen, and the story surrounding it all will hopefully come into focus in future films.

Just don’t drag the reveal out for too long. It makes for a boring performance.

Did Warcraft beat the curse of the video game movie adaptation? Well, it’s tolerable. But just barely. Get back to the old drawing board, guys.

Video game film adaptations have a terrible reputation. Sometimes it’s because they’ve deviated too far from the source material like JCVD’s Street Fighter. Sometimes it’s because the vision of the filmmaker is just too ridiculous like Super Mario Bros. And sometimes it’s just because the movie is just a piece of crap like…well, pretty much all of them. Making one that’s even remotely watchable is an accomplishment by itself, let alone making one that anyone would qualify as good.

Where does Warcraft land on the scale of utterly unwatchable nonsense to tolerable? Surprisingly, it’s actually tolerable. But just barely.

Blizzard’s multi-million dollar multi-media franchise has been a money-making bonanza for years. For all of the games, books, comic books, and other adaptations, this 2016 release is the first live action film made in what will inevitably be a franchise.

It’s a very standard fantasy story. Humans teamed fighting orcs with dwarves, elves, and mages on the periphery. The orcs seek a new world to call home and are willing to use dark magic to get it. The humans fight with magic of their own. These are all set pieces we’ve seen before. Cough, cough…Lord of the Rings…cough. That doesn’t matter, though. Unlike other fantasy films, this one imbues the orcs with more nuance and motivation. Some question what they are doing and why. They are more than just mindless hordes bent on destruction; they are sentient beings trying to survive.

As an action fantasy film, Warcraft is quite enjoyable. There are decent characters and solid action scenes, even if a large percentage of those scenes are straight CGI. Frequently, you’re just watching an animated feature. But it’s not without its flaws and they can be big ones.

Mainly, it’s just too damn long and that’s because there’s just too damn much going in it. With a run time of just over two hours it drags as the end closes in. A lot happens in this movie, causing the plot to become diluted and unfocused. The story is constantly bouncing from moment to moment, character to character, and leads to a highly unsatisfying ending. Much like Batman v. Superman, this is not a movie with a complete story. It is setup for something bigger, the first act of a larger story. And because this movie is mostly table setting for future stories, there is little payoff to all the setups. That will hopefully come in subsequent movies but leaves the story in a largely open place at the end.

And the funny thing is they tell you as much in the opening.

While Warcraft isn’t a bad movie, overall it’s still pretty meh. Box office results in North America have been exceedingly disappointing when you consider the large production budget. It would have been a major loss for the studio behind the movie had it not been for the international numbers, particularly China.

Much has been written about the growing importance of the Chinese market to Hollywood. There are a growing number of movies that bomb in North America but do very well there, and Warcraft is a prime example of that. “Frequent” is a deceptive term as the Chinese government allows very few foreign films to screen and those that do must meet strict requirements. But meeting those requirements, which range from pandering to censorship, has become key. In the case of Warcraft, it had a budget of $160 million but to date has only brought in $38 million in North America. Internationally, and primarily in China, Warcraft has brought in $339 million. That effect can be found in a variety of box office results for big budget films that were North American bombs but huge successes in China and received sequels because of it.

There will be more films in the Warcraft franchise but don’t be surprised if they don’t end up in wide release in North America. This franchise might end up with its primary home being on Chinese theatre screens with a limited release in other parts of the world.

In the end, Warcraft is a decent fantasy action film that just needs more focus and a tighter run time. If they can accomplish that, the filmmakers behind it might end up scoring big box office numbers on both sides of the Pacific.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, from The Lonely Island, has its moments, but its weighed down by too many factors to become a classic comedy.

Expectations are a funny thing. I walked into The Nice Guys expecting a great movie and got it. I walked into Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising expecting crap and got a funny movie with surprising depth. I walked into Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping expecting an exceedingly funny movie and got…well, I’m not sure what I got.

The Lonely Island, comprised of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer, have carved out a significant comedy pedigree for themselves over the past decade. They found success on SNL, primarily with Samberg in front of the camera while Taccone and Schaffer were behind it. They have released a series of successful digital shorts and videos as well as comedy albums. While they have been involved in other film projects, not to mention Samberg’s starring role in the epically funny TV series Brooklyn Nine-Nine, they also created the cult classic film Hot Rod that achieved new levels of ridiculousness. It is incredibly funny and highly underrated.

Popstar represents the biggest film project under the banner of The Lonely Island; it is a relatively big budget Hollywood film released during the summer blockbuster season.

And it is not their best work.

Popstar is a mockumentary following Conner4Real, a fictional rapper turned popstar, as he is releasing his second solo album and preparing to go on tour. Due to his own hubris, the whole thing falls apart and he must find redemption to repair his career, relationships, and damaged ego. It’s quite blatantly mocking the genre of popstar documentaries, popumentaries, like Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

Mockumentaries about music are a hard nut to crack. This is Spinal Tap nailed it so well that trying to go back to that well inevitably draws comparisons. And virtually any movie will come up short in that contest, including Popstar.

The problem with this mock popumentary is that it is specifically going after Bieber’s. It’s not that the genre as whole, or Bieber specifically, doesn’t deserve to be made fun of; the problem is that it’s not a universal touchstone. The bulk of the audience interested in going to Popstar probably has never sat through a popumentary focused on stars like Justin Bieber or Katy Perry. The mockumentary part is easy to connect with but the specifics are lacking to a large percentage of the audience.

The same issue pops up on a smaller scale with the scenes mocking TMZ. The person I went to Popstar with was aware of TMZ but has never seen the TV show. As such, those scenes were completely lost on her, which is too bad since they featured Will Arnett and Chelsea Peretti. These scenes are a prime example of how Popstar gets too bogged down in a never-ending stream of cameos that don’t really go anywhere.

This movie is kind of an embarrassment of riches in the cameo department. Bill Hader. Maya Rudolph. Joan Cusack. Martin Sheen. A string of musicians, including Usher, Adam Levine, Seal, Carrie Underwood, and Nas. But many of these cameos were in the trailers and what you see is what you get. Bill Hader appears for the exact jokes that are in the trailers and that’s it. Same for Joan Cusack. Same for Martin Sheen. Tim Meadows and Sarah Silverman play larger roles, and they’re both great. Others don’t. Joan Cusack in particular is a shame as the movie plays the ‘mother wanted to be famous and is doing by proxy through her son’ card briefly but never really digs into it. And underutilizing Joan Cusack is always a waste of talent.

The core problem is the structure of the story. The overwhelming majority of the plot is the build up to the inevitable fall that is telegraphed from moment one. The path to redemption makes up the last 10% of the movie. This structure just doesn’t work.

Consider Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, one of the funniest movies of the last 20 years. While they have extremely different subjects and narrative styles, these two movies are quite similar at their cores; successful protagonists who lose everything due to their own arrogance and must learn humility to rebuild their lives. In Talledega Nights, Ricky Bobby’s fall from grace due to his own hubris comes early in the film. The bulk of the movie is about finding redemption, with the comedy growing from the ludicrousness of that path. The fall comes far too late in Popstar. The buildup drags on while the path to redemption is too quick, which is unfortunate as that’s where the comedy in a story like this lives.

In the end, none of that is the point of Popstar. It is in reality a series of funny sketches and songs loosely strung together on a paper-thin plot. And it that regard, it work. There are some outrageously funny scenes, moments, and characters, enough so that it makes watching the film fun. But it lacks the brilliance of This is Spinal Tap, the comedic arc of Talledega Nights, and the heart of Hot Rod. It’s fun for a quick watch on a Saturday night but it’s also not something you’re going to keep coming back to like any of those three movies.

The Lonely Island is a great comedy team who has a lot more funny movies, videos, songs, and more to give us. That’s a guarantee. Popstar is another step on that path.

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Kevin Hart have enough laughs and chemistry to save Central Intelligence from its own tired ideas and much overused tropes.

It’s like a Hollywood producer started with the idea of partnering Kevin Hart and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in a movie, then wrote the script.

Central Intelligence is the story of the high school loser making good then coming back to team up with the high school hero who didn’t. This time, the loser, Dwayne Johnson, became a physically massive CIA agent and the hero, Kevin Hart, became an accountant who doesn’t like his life. Now, Johnson is on the run, accused of treason, and Hart has to pick a side. Does he turn his friend in or stand by his side?

Look, it’s not the most original plot on the face of the Earth but that’s not surprising. This is a straight up studio comedy. But it works.

There are more than a few good laughs in Central Intelligence, some from Hart but mostly from Johnson. His character of Bob Stone is ridiculous and seemingly incapable of knowing how to act in a virtually any normal situation though he’s also one heck of a CIA operative. That may come from a history of being bullied that led into joining the CIA. Bob doesn’t like bullies at any level. Regardless, his character is the source of much of the overt comedy. Hart, on the other hand, plays the straight man to perfection, giving Johnson a great board to play crazy off of.

Hart is a huge comedian right now, both on the big screen and on his stand up tour, but being the straight man is always a challenge. Credit where credit is due on this one. Hart does the job well and even manages to give out a few solid laughs in the role. He plays the fish out of water perfectly, as he did in Ride Along with Ice Cube. The difference here is that Hart’s character, Calvin, doesn’t want in on the action at all and has to be forced/convinced/tricked into helping.

This movie comes down to the relationship between Johnson and Hart. There are more than a few other great actors in the film, including Jason Bateman, Amy Ryan, and Aaron Paul. But it’s Johnson and Hart that make it work.

And without that dynamic, the movie would be a resounding flop.

The reality is that there are three huge clichéd movie tropes in one film; the high school loser emerging as a hero, the awkward buddy cop paradigm, and the funny/inept spy movie. All of these concepts have been done to death. And all of them have been done better. That’s why the dynamic between Johnson and Hart is so important. They are just engaging enough to put these tired premises over.

Both characters have high school issues to deal with, specifically that who they were in high school shouldn’t define them now. Johnson’s Bob needs to get over feeling like the loser people told him he was. Hart’s Calvin Joyner needs to get over feeling like a loser because he didn’t become the person people told him he should be. While Bob ropes Calvin into helping him in the film, they help each other reconcile their present realities in the end.

I could make a list of movies with comparable plots but I think it might be more fun if you do that yourself. Turn your list in at the end of class for extra credit.

And I have to admit that there is a lot of comedy to be found in Bob’s obsession with Calvin as the high school hero. Bob is stuck in high school and perceives Calvin to still be the same guy, which Calvin clearly does not. Bob’s hero worship complex is cute at times, and borderline stalker-ish at others. You end up in a strange halfway point between funny and frightening.

It’s also important to give the movie credit for the reveal on who the true villain is. Right up until the last moments, you are still questioning who is the bad guy in this situation. Even in the final moments the moviegoer is still wondering which side of the line Bob is actually on. Is he the hero? Or is he manipulating Calvin? In the end, it plays out pretty much like you would expect it to but even making you question that perceived certainty is a success.

There is nothing new or innovative about Central Intelligence. It’s a straight up Hollywood summer comedy vehicle for two stars who are definitively hot right now. But it delivers just enough laughs to make worth the price of admission.

Finding Dory, the sequel to the smash hit Finding Nemo, shows that Pixar hasn’t lost the things that made them great in the first place.

Pixar has a pretty solid pedigree. Even at their worst, their films are pretty much better than anything else on screen. But busting out a sequel 13 years after the original film and having it be successful? That’s a tall order even for the highly respected animation giant.

Finding Nemo was massive smash at the box office and was loved by any critic still in possession of a soul not consumed by bitterness. Marlon the clownfish’s journey to find his missing son was an expertly told story with vibrant characters and heart-wrenching moments. Along the way, Marlon meets another fish named Dory, a regal blue tang, who has short term memory issues. She helps him rescue his son and returns home with them. Set a year later, Finding Dory is about the clownfish duo helping her reconnect with own family after she finally remembers she has one.

But does the sequel hold up to the original? Emphatically yes.

This is easily one of the best animated features in the last decade, which is saying something in a year that also saw another John Lasseter produced film named Zootopia hit screens. And like Zootopia, Finding Dory will be another box office monster.

The animation in this film is gorgeous. The technology has advanced greatly since the first film, which still holds up visually, but Pixar has taken full advantage those changes. This is easily one of the best looking films they’ve ever produced. The incredible visuals are highlighted in the character of Hank the seven armed octopus, voiced by Ed O’Neill of Married with Children and Modern Family fame. His movements are fluid and believable, and his color changing camouflage techniques are a stunning achievement. But he’s also a great example of another of Pixar’s great skills.

The development team at Pixar is incredibly talented at creating characters that draw you right in. That includes every step from each character’s individual conceptualization all the way to their execution, and in particular casting the right voices. Among other returning cast members, Ellen Degeneres is back the role of Dory and she does it well. She infuses the character with joy, optimism, suffering, hope, fear, and love, all at the same time. Her performance stood out in the first film for a reason and it’s just gotten better in the second.

Oddly enough, one of the best examples of how great they are at creating amazing characters is a common loon named Becky. She never says a word. In fact, there is quite obviously something wrong with this bird. But the Pixar crew find a way to make her one of the most interesting, engaging, and loveable characters in the film. When she is on the screen, you are fully engrossed in her character. Period.

The key to Pixar’s success has always been not putting the technology ahead of either the characters or the story. All three are developed in unison, to consistent success. The same is true in this film.

In Finding Dory, Pixar found a way to balance what made the first film work with new concepts and new characters to create something original in the context of the world created first film. Finding Dory is a completely different film from Finding Nemo while staying true to the world it created.

One is not simply a rehashing of the other.

Pixar is an animation giant. Even those movies that aren’t box office gold are still better than 90% of the movies you’re going to see that year. And it would be easy to find fault with this movie, to pick at plot holes and other issues. But I just can’t. Finding Dory is just too enjoyable, too engaging. It’s one of those films that you walk out of smiling, and you’re better for having watched it. Before walking into it I thought Zootopia was a shoe in for an animation Oscar. Now, it looks like it’ll have some solid competition.

And definitely stay to the end of the credits. The after credits scene answers one big question left over from the first film. It might be my favorite post-credits scene since Nick Fury stopped in to talk to Iron Man about the Avengers.

See Finding Dory. There isn’t any rust on this franchise.

I Saw the Light is another amazing performance from Tom Hiddleston, but it serves as a warning that we need to reform the biopic genre.

It feels like Tom Hiddleston is all that I see on my TV anymore, having just watched The Night Manager, High-Rise, and now I Saw the Light. And perhaps I should be jealous, as my wife gets a certain glint in her eyes when she sees him (especially his nude sunbathing scene in High-Rise). I’m not upset though, because I might have a little man-crush on him as well.

Unfortunately, I Saw the Light does him a great disservice, even though he works like hell to bring life to the film. It is the story of country music star Hank Williams, which should hold some pretty fascinating fodder for storytelling, but alas, is not well-mined here.

In fact, it has me griping about a need to rethink the way we make biographical movies, in a post-Walk Hard world. I Saw the Light is another biopic that tries to leapfrog from career/life milestones to cram them all in, instead of working to get to the truth about the person. Most of the (especially music) biopics I see feel this way, like Straight Outta Compton or the recent James Brown film Get On Up. Though at least those movies entertain on some level, especially the latter.

It’s time to tell better stories about some of these people. Why do we need to see the characters from when they were young, working their way up, meeting the seminal people in their lives, and only then try to squeeze some sort of coherent story in there? We certainly don’t do that with other films, at least not as a rule. More of these stories could focus on one particular moment in time and try to reach the heart of the man or woman from there. For example, in I Saw the Light, the movie almost becomes entertaining when Williams wants to do a version of ‘Lovesick Blues,’ but his band and producer are against the idea. Williams does it anyway, and the song became a massive hit and his signature song. You could make a whole movie about this journey, or at least, it could be a longer running subplot. Why did Williams insist on this song? Answer that question and you might be closer to knowing more about the man behind the song.

Chadwick Boseman does a great job of capturing James Brown. O’Shea Jackson Jr. almost makes you think you’ve gone back in a time machine and met Ice Cube. Many actors and actresses are going to great lengths to become these pop culture icons, but the genre is letting them down. Hiddleston sings his own songs here, which could be dangerous when covering such an icon, but works really well. Unfortunately, his performance belongs in a better movie.

The story plods along, not necessarily terrible, but uniformly uninteresting. It focuses too much on his relationships and not enough on his music or his personal demons, of which he had many. Now, perhaps the filmmakers just decided to tell a different story than what I would expect, and that’s fine, I guess. But the movie eventually devolves into a series of dull conversations. Williams was a reckless alcoholic and a complex person and there are legendary stories about him that would be both dramatic and enlightening. He was the father of contemporary country music and in the mere four years between when he became a superstar and before his death at 29, he set the tone for all the performers who came after him. There’s gotta be something interesting to sift from a life like that.

It’s too bad that Williams gets the short end here — I can’t recommend sitting through I Saw the Light unless you’re gobbling down amphetamines to stay awake. Or maybe if you’re a Hiddleston completist. He really does turn in an affecting performance in a movie that doesn’t walk down the path to greatness with him.

Here’s one for my wife:

The new documentary Tickled, about adult tickling competitions of all things, may seem like an innocuous idea, until some more sinister underbellies are entertainingly revealed.

It’s impossible to talk about the new documentary Tickled, playing in many cities across the country as of this Friday, without mentioning the odd, strange case of the phenomenon of ‘competitive endurance tickling’ that serves as the catalyst for the story. But like the little scratch at the back of your throat when you know you’re about to be beaten down by a cold, tickling, as it pertains to this documentary, is merely the tip of the iceberg. It sounds weird to say but Tickled is much more than its easy and quirky logline.

The film, as all good documentaries do, becomes a lot deeper, a lot more meaningful, and a lot more devastating than its humble origins would hint at. By the film’s end you will find some sort of a happy ending and some sort of emotional retribution for the many social atrocities you’ve heard about and borne witness to. A couple’s giggles and playful teasing may seem innocuous enough, but there’s a darker force pulling strings behind the tickling scene with the venomous indifference of a spoiled, moody child. In the end, the worldwide man-on-man tickling action is the least odd thing about this whole story.

David Farrier is a mild-mannered New Zealand journalist who, as we learn in the beginning of the movie, specializes in covering stories that are found off the beaten journalistic path. His interest is piqued — as one’s would be, naturally – after learning of an online endurance tickling competition. There are no skills or knowledge necessary here – competitors must simply remain shackled and allow groups of other young men to tickle them mercilessly for hours on camera. The astronomically sensitive-skinned viewers will know that this can be, in effect, a form of torture for some people. But there’s one person in particular who can’t get enough of it, who bankrolls the whole enterprise, and who gets very confrontational towards our co-director and humble narrator when a little bit of digging threatens to blow the roof off this whole ‘competition.’

What appears on the surface to ostensibly be about exploring another quirky corner of the human psyche quickly gives way to a far more interesting pursuit. Farrier and his co-director Dylan Reeve become threatened, taunted, and verbally assaulted all while the warning of severe legal repercussions are waved underneath their noses. To say more about their journey to uncovering the secrets some folks have tried very hard to keep private would spoil the true joys of Tickled, which is nothing if not subversive of even the wildest viewer expectations.

After its seemingly inauspicious beginning, Tickled quickly becomes more than just your standard exposé piece. For the subjects we meet do become empathetic characters, and their tragedies are indisputably unjust. The lives hurt by this online tickling ring are damaged and mistreated worse than anyone should be for doing something innocent. The tickling is kind of odd, yes, but it’s also harmless. Farrier, Reeve and by extension the audience begin to suspect from the outset that there is something or someone more treacherous and duplicitous pulling the strings. In this mystery identity, Tickled finds itself a true villain. And the film’s uncomplicated directors become unexpected heroes for the manipulated and the bullied everywhere.

Compulsively watchable and ending with a satisfying resolution, Tickled’s tangled web is a legit case where the truth is vastly stranger than fiction. But the documentary’s technical merits may not jump out as cinematic or even above average; indeed, the filmmakers place their emphasis on the journalistic integrity of uncovering the facts and not in making pretty pictures. Farrier is first and foremost a journalist. The filmmaking thing sort of joined in on the ride to help expand his viewpoint.

As our guide through the story, Farrier himself makes for a less-than-compelling narrator (he sounds like he should be doing voice-over for a nature channel special on alligators and not globe-trotting to chase cyber criminals). Small technical caveats and minor quibbles with the presentation style ultimately affect the success of Tickled quite little. Some may find it to be nothing more than a really elaborate riff on Catfish and others still may not be able to get past the odd infliction of the whole tickling thing itself. For curious minds willing to dig much deeper than the surface, however, Tickled will stand as one of the year’s most singular nonfiction experiences.

Its plot is convoluted, but The Secret Life of Pets is still an entertaining family movie with great work from Jenny Slate and Louie CK.

2016 has proven to be one hell of a year for animated features. Zootopia and Finding Dory have dominated box offices around the world. More than that, they have been applauded for superb stories and larger than life characters that you can still relate to. And with Kubo and the Two Strings, Moana, Trolls, and Sing still on the way, it has the potential to even better.

Well, it’s going to be hard to put out a better movie than Zootopia but there could still be some really great animated features this year. But those movies are still coming. Right now, The Secret Life of Pets is in theatres. How does it stack up?

Illumination Entertainment, the studio behind the loveable Minions and the Despicable Me franchise, has carved out a solid reputation amongst animation giants like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks. In addition to the world of Gru, they have several other properties including adaptations of the work of Dr. Seuss, some in the bag and others upcoming. Primarily thanks to the Despicable Me/Minions franchise, they have achieved both box office and critical success. The Secret Life of Pets has continued that trend in spades.

Reviews have been decent. Box office has been amazing. And that’s just after one weekend. It’s easy to see why.

The crux of the story is what your pets do while you’re away. The secret lives that they lead, having parties and going on adventures. It’s exactly what you’d expect; cute, funny, and highly enjoyable. Any other year and that would have been enough to stand out as a stellas animated film but after seeing brilliant animated features like Zootopia and Finding Dory, The Secret Life of Pets falls a little flat.

The story is, at best, muddy. It’s less of a fully conceived arc and more of a series of scenes loosely linked together. While the end of the film is quite predictable, as are many of the plot points, the road to get there is unclear and somewhat convoluted. It kind of bounces between characters, locations, and subplots as it winds its way to the conclusion of the story. In comparison to the big screen animation juggernauts of the past few months, the story just comes up lacking. But it’s still highly enjoyable.

Where this movie succeeds is in its impressively engaging cast of characters. The animals in the film vary from dogs, cats, and birds to alligators, snakes, and hawks. They all have vastly different personalities, and create some amazingly funny moments in their interactions.

Jenny Slate, the voice behind a key character in Zootopia, is back again in this movie as yet another key character and delivers yet another important performance. Slate is a fantastic comedian so it’s great to see her getting fun roles like this. She also a prime example of great voice casting that goes beyond simply bringing in big stars. You may not know Jenny Slate’s work on Kroll Show or Parks and Rec but hopefully you’re getting the chance to get to know her in these huge animated features.

Overall, The Secret Life of Pets is solid film that’s funny an engaging on its own. But Illumination also gives us a little something extra with this one.

The Secret Life of Pets opens with an incredibly funny short featuring the Minions, the characters that made Illumination what it is. The want to buy a blender they saw on TV and decide to try to do yard work to make the money they need. As you can imagine, it goes terribly for them and hilarity ensues. All kidding aside, this short is only a few minutes long but they are an impressively funny few minutes. It uses the Minions perfectly and provides some standout moments.

More movies need to start with an animated short. A new Wile E. Coyote short would have livened up Batman v Superman.

In a year that has delivered some of the best animated features we have ever seen, The Secret Life of Pets stands as a funny and engaging movie that’s well worth the price of admission. Illumination Entertainment has cemented themselves as one of the premiere animation studios out there, and a valuable alternative to the typical options.

Now, we just need to look forward to Despicable Me 3 in 2017. More Gru and friends is rarely a bad thing.

We weigh in on the reboot to the Ghostbusters franchise, a movie that isn’t near as bad as the entitled fanboys wanted you to think.

It is official, ladies and gentlemen. We have officially entered the era when we will have to specify whether we’re talking about Ghostbusters (1984) or Ghostbusters (2016) by adding the year after the name. It’s a reality that Batman fans have been dealing with for years thanks to the varying editions of those films.

A lot of shade has been thrown at the 2016 film leading up to its release. Some people didn’t like the idea of an all-female cast. Others just didn’t like the idea of it being remade at all. I have to admit that I was unsure at first because I fell in the category of those who felt it maybe shouldn’t be remade. The biggest mark against the reboot was the 1989 sequel to the original film, which is terrible. Why does the logo in the sequel have two fingers up? Do the Ghostbusters know they’re in a sequel? And why are half the songs on the soundtrack for Ghostbusters 2 about the plot of Ghostbusters 2? It’s weird watching them do stuff while someone sings and/or raps about them doing stuff. It’s not like Eminem will be rapping about Matt Damon while he fights evil spies.

My apologies for the digression. I have a lot of pent up rage towards that film. Just go watch the Honest Trailer. It will make you feel better.

In any case, if the same cast can’t catch lightning in a bottle again, what chance could anyone else possibly have?

But as new trailers came out, I got increasingly intrigued by the potential that this reboot had. Some people responded with huge negativity to a few minutes of out-of-context footage and decided that they wouldn’t set foot in the theatre. While you can certainly chalk some of that up to the rampant misogyny following through geek culture like a river of pink slime under New York City, others just simply didn’t want to support what they believed to be a betrayal of their childhoods.

The 2016 movie is good. Period. I’m not going to say it’s perfect and that there isn’t room for improvement in sequels, which there will be, but this is still a solid watch.

This time around, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones team up to face a very different batch of ghosts. Bounced from respected academia, the Wiig, McCarthy, and McKinnon set up shop chasing ghosts above a restaurant in Chinatown. Leslie Jones’ character actively tracks them down and joins their team after a paranormal experience of her own.

There are a lot of common points between the movies. Both teams have trouble finding respect due to their beliefs and work. Both fight impossible odds to save New York. Both have similar-ish endings. But the current iteration differs from its predecessor in a few ways, a big one being the relationships of the characters.

Wiig and McCarthy’s characters are childhood friends who started this path together until Wiig bailed to find a career in the world of respectable, academic science. McCarthy continued down that path until she met McKinnon, an engineer with a mind for developing ghost busting gear. The rebuilding of the relationship between Wiig and McCarthy is a driving force at the core of the film. It works but it also leads to a ridiculous moment in the final fight against the big bad where Wiig uses a never-ending tow cable to yank McCarthy out of a magic hole. It’s a moment that is overshadowed by the bigger events surrounding it, and only exists to put a completely unnecessary final point on one subplot.

Beyond that, the story is solid. The villain of the 2016 film is more tangible than the one in 1984. This time, the bad guy is very real and has a devious, nefarious plan the team has to unravel. In the 1984 film, the villain is a long dead architect whose plans are finally coming to fruition.

The core cast all deliver solid performances. As someone who hasn’t been the biggest fan of either Wiig or McCarthy in the past, I can honestly say I greatly enjoyed both actresses in this film. They were funny and engaging. But Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones both killed it. These two current SNL heavy hitters delivered in a big way alongside two women who have become on screen veterans. And then there’s Chris Hemsworth who plays their idiotic receptionist. I have to give credit to the man for taking a role that made him look ridiculous and nailing it.

But for all of this great on screen chemistry, the Bridesmaids effect did rear its ugly head.

Bridesmaids was the last film directed by Paul Feig and starring both Wiig and McCarthy that I watched. I didn’t particularly enjoy it, and a big part of that was the under-utilization of two brilliant comedians, Ellie Kemper and Wendy McLendon-Covey. Important to the film, they kind of just disappear. Something similar happens in this movie. While McKinnon and Jones don’t disappear from the story, the focus is definitely on Wiig and McCarthy’s arc. The Wiig/McCarthy subplot is okay but McKinnon and Jones do not get used to their full potential because of it.

While this is a funny movie, I wouldn’t describe it as laugh out loud funny. While there are some great moments, solid gags, and good chuckles, the comedy is actually a little reserved. The 1984 movie was in many ways a little edgier in its comedy. The 2016 edition could have used a little more of that at times, especially considering the talent in this film. Many of the biggest laughs came from the cameos.

Annie Potts. Sigourney Weaver. Ernie Hudson. Dan Aykroyd. They all made cameos in this movie, and good ones at that. Bill Murray in particular had an excellent cameo that suits his sensibilities perfectly. The filmmakers even found a great way to honor the late, great Harold Ramis. The only person missing is Rick Moranis, and in more ways than one.

This movie lacked a performer like Moranis or a character like Louis Tully. Rick Moranis is a unique comedic genius who left Hollywood to care for his family. He added so much to the original film with subtle things he’s constantly doing in almost every scene he’s in. The new movie lacks an ‘everyday character dragged into an incomprehensible situation’ found in Louis Tully. There are heroes, a love interest, and judgmental authority figures but no random character dragged into the story by the luck of the draw. That perspective helps ground the story.

But these issues are not insurmountable. This is still an easy film to enjoy and a lot of people are. While it isn’t a blockbuster it’s also not a bomb. A $144 million budget has so far translated into a $65 million worldwide gross. There are a few key markets it has yet to open in, and it will in the coming weeks. It also has to overcome the unwarranted negative hype leading up to its release. As word gets around that this movie isn’t a dud, more people will head out to see it.

Hopefully.

The next few weekends will see the release of Star Trek Beyond, Jason Bourne, and Suicide Squad. If you are one of those people that decided against seeing it out of fears your childhood memories might self-destruct or that the studios somehow personally betrayed you, get over it. Don’t cheat yourself out of watching a movie you might enjoy. A total of three generations of my family went to this film and we’re all huge fans of the original. We all also enjoyed this movie.

And you might, too.

Jaws was one of the first templates for the international summer movie, but how much did the increasingly insipid sequel cash ins inspire today’s blockbusters?

The world of popular cinema is stuffed with sequels and remakes, reboots, rehashes, and retreads. Nowhere is this more true than in the summer time when the studios will resurrect anything they can in the hopes of attracting summer movie goers. From reboots no one asked for to sequels no one asked for, the blockbuster season can be tough sometimes when most movie are all about neon lights and flashing colours.

But is that how it has always been? Has it always been about superhero flicks with no stakes, and sequels that are decades later than they need to be? Is there a summer blockbuster out there that actually added to the movie world? That shook up the way we look at life and rocked the very foundation of our society?! A movie that has been talked about so much that desperate movie reviewers who are made physically ill at the thought of another cardboard, one-dimensional Marvel villain being beaten down with no reason to care?

Yes. That movie is called Jaws.

Jaws is the perfect summer movie, so perfect in fact, that it is to blame for how summer movies are released and marketed today.

The first Jaws was a production so plagued with problems and glitches and cast squabbling that everyone figured it was destined to fail, or, sink, if you will. Everyone was surprised when not only did it do well but it had people afraid of the water. Beaches everywhere were full of people who were terrified that Bruce the shark was going to show up and eat their whole family. Jaws still impacts the way people view one of the Earth’s oldest predators, tricking them into thinking that sharks are the Jason Voorhees of the sea. Jaws is also infinitely quotable, will a ton of famous lines that have been spoofed and borrowed for over 40 years. It also has an instantly recognizable theme song that virtually everyone in the world can recognize.

Jaws takes its less is more approach to filmmaking and delivers a thrilling experience that even modern sea creature features have trouble topping. The movie’s leviathan is one of the least convincing animatronics ever filmed, but it doesn’t matter because everything around it is so good. It takes a special sort of movie to keep an audience interested during all those long, far shots of the flat water and sky, yet still holds your attention with simple yet effective storytelling, compelling characters, and just enough tension and scares to keep you on the edge of that seat.

It is infinitely entertaining and forever rewatchable. So what does the first real blockbuster summer movie have to do with the trite, derivative schlock that comes our way all too often these days?

Jaws had pups! Three of them to be exact, and it has spawned dozens of b-movie spiritual successors that have been keeping fans of awful movies, like myself, entertained for years.

Jaws 2 gets a pass, not because it was great, but because it wasn’t Jaws 3-D. Jaws 3-D was a tragic victim of the 80s 3-D craze that turned already not very good movies into hilariously terrible abominations. Jaws 3-D tried to go bigger and better, with a theme park full of victims for its thirty-five (that’s 35) foot sea demon to chow down on. Plus some kind of crazy deep sea observation platform for said victims to become hopelessly trapped in while the angry shark tears Sea World to bits. I have argued for years that Deep Blue Sea took a whole ton of cues from Jaws 3-D, and that is a pretty big strike against it.

Jaws 2 and 3 three are not on the level of useless this inspired this little tirade however. For all the silliness in those pictures, they are still clean, wholesome, shark attack ridden fun. No, we don’t truly get down to the level of the shameless cash-in, don’t truly plunk that big, shiny cherry on the top of the shit sundae until we dig down to Jaws 4: The Revenge. Now we are into to type of hot garbage that inspired crap like Two-Headed Shark Attack, Sharknado and the 1998 version of Godzilla.

The final Jaws movie was a mess, pitting the traumatised wife of sheriff Brody against a supernatural mega-shark that possesses to capability to teleport thousands of miles around the globe, existing only to erase the last of the Brody clan from the face of the planet. It seems that if you kill enough giant sharks, nature has a way of getting even with you. Jaws 4 is the kind of rotten cash in that kills what should never have been a series and inspires dozens of sadistic film makers to produce shark attack pictures with sharks that fly, swim under the ground, hold down minimum wage jobs, and a whole slew of other things that aren’t swimming, eating and making little sharks.

It was a testament to exactly how fast and how far a movie franchise could fall when the studio behind it extended their arms a little to far to grab those summer dollars. It is also a depressing reminder of just how many useless retreads are filling the cinemas these days. For every flick that tries to break new ground or take a story in a new direction, there is another Ice Age movie that was written and directed by a computer program that works solely on demographic market research with a mandate to keep it PG so the kiddies can enjoy it too.

But at least when things get dull and multiplex screens are smeared with nothing but junk we can all travel back to a simpler time when a malfunctioning mechanical shark inspired terror in our hearts and trilled worldwide audiences, inspiring the season of the summer blockbuster. Even if that inspiration ended up giving us a filmmaking culture more focused on taking our money and flashing a strobe light in our faces than actually entertaining us.

By the by, The Shallows was totally average.

Nicolas Winding Refn returns with Neon Demon. Does the film work or does Refn’s belief in creative narcissism threaten to take over and ruin things?

I have been a fan of Nicolas Winding Refn for a few years now, after stellar showings like Bronson and Valhalla Rising, but mostly after Drive, the film where all his strengths came together. Going into Neon Demon, I sort of knew what to expect based on some of the advance reviews, which were polarizing. Of course, it made me think of the follow up to Drive, Only God Forgives.

The first time I saw Only God Forgives, I was baffled. Some cool ideas, but a mess story and character-wise. However, as a few days, and then weeks went by, I found myself thinking about it.  Consumed by it. The atmosphere. The colours. The music. I had to watch it again, and when I did, it was like a shroud being lifted from my eyes. No, I can’t recommend that movie to anyone, but it’s turned into one of those reasonably unlikeable movies that I really dig, like Dune or Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Neon Demon tells the story of an underage model named Jesse who moves to LA and gets sucked into the scene. However, it’s also about the idea of beauty. It presents the LA scene as a place where narcissism is treasured, not seen as a sin of personality. The movie wonders what it would be like to be one of the ‘beautiful people’ and then takes that idea to the nth degree. It’s worth noting I heard an interview about the film where Refn states that he considers narcissism to be an important part of creativity, which is a very interesting, though also extremely dangerous thought.

As expected, the strengths of this movie lie mostly in the aesthetics; as with almost all of his movies, Neon Demon radiates a sublime visual atmosphere, from the ideas, to the set ups, to the colours. This is why most of us film nerds follow Refn down into the depths — we know his visionary light will lead the way.

And of course, his strongest collaboration, even stronger than his stand-in Ryan Gosling, is the work of Cliff Martinez. I got wise to the brilliance of Martinez when I saw Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape and especially Solaris (he also did The Knick, Contagion, and Traffic). Oddly enough, he was once a drummer that played with The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Captain Beefheart. His work with Nicolas Winding Refn is revolutionary. The marriage of visuals and music between these two creators is the stuff of legend and Neon Demon’s music is another chapter in that fable.

All that praise aside, the movie does have its issues, or at least, it’s hard to access it at points, especially towards the end, usually the worst place to deny access in a film. The story is fairly streamlined and well done as Elle Fanning’s beauty navigates the snake pit of the LA scene. For a while, it is a smart exploration of how absolute beauty infects those around it, absolutely. However, the film sort of goes off the rails near the end. It feels like two movies smushed together. And this is not a comment on the horror or violence of the ending — you knew that the film was going somewhere horrifying. I’m fine with that. It is more the execution of that horror.

I don’t want to give too much away, but the stuff that is supposed to be terrifying mostly comes off as unintentionally comedic. It’s almost like Refn and company fell into the open arms of their own narcissism and felt like they could do no wrong.

The big ‘sex’ scene with Jena Malone was apparently much more subtle in the script and they ended up improvising a bit for the finale, throwing ideas at the wall. Some of these scenes become so ostentatious that you can’t help but laugh. Certain scenes spin so far out of proportion that horror become comedy. Things become quite literal toward the end. And the once subtle message becomes sledgehammer blows on the nose of things. Though surely not as bad as Return of the King, Neon Demon also ends a few scenes too late.

Perhaps humour over horror is what he was going for? I do tend to give him the benefit of the doubt as some kind of genius and there’s obviously a gallows humour to some of his work. Is Refn intending to be hilarious? And if so, does the rest of the movie support veering in that direction or does it feel incongruous? Or is it simply a bungling of pretentious and obvious ideas? He can be the king of subtle and the king of on the nose at the same time, swinging wildly back and forth between those two extremes. It works in movies like Bronson and even Drive, but is it too much in Neon Demon?

I’m not sure I know the answer to that question. But I do have to consider, that when he makes comments about the strength of his narcissism it makes me wonder if he could use someone to rein him in sometimes, or at least, in recent years. As we’ve seen increasingly with Tarantino’s self-indulgence, everyone telling you you’re a genius is when narcissism becomes dangerous.

I try not to do this too often, but I think I really need to sit on the fence longer with this movie. As with Only God Forgives, I know I need to see it again before I make a personal decision about it. But for the sake of not being wishy washy, I will say that where Drive had crossover potential, Neon Demon probably doesn’t — so it’s only for fans of Refn, or art film in general.

And even if I end up ranking this lower in his canon, one thing is for certain — Refn is still one of the filmmakers I get really excited about. I know at the least, he’ll present amazing visual and aural candy and at the most, sheer genius. And even the stuff in between is great fodder for discussing what we love or hate about movies. The only thing worse than provoking a negative response to a film, is provoking no response at all, something Refn is never in danger of doing.

Post-script edit:  I listened to the rest of that Refn podcast about the film, and it appears that they shot in chronological order and made significant changes to the story after they started to shoot.  So that meant they had to rebuild the whole story on the fly.  Add that to the improvisation they were doing on set, and it explains a lot about how the story holds together (or, doesn’t in places).  A very interesting way to work, and Refn prizes that freedom of creativity above all else.  So I have to respect that.  But I also wish we could see more of his brilliance in a more focused way, as we have with some past films.  I should also mention that those interested in Refn should check out the documentary My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (which is actually directed by Liv Corfixen, Refn’s wife).  It gives you a window to his work during the shooting of Only God Forgives.

After Star Trek Into Dumbness, the franchise needs redemption. Is director Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame the one to give that to us?

Star Trek has taken a turn in the last few years, from cerebral science fiction to action movies in space. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The franchise had fallen on hard times after the end of Enterprise with little going on. Then J.J. Abrams showed up and an epic reboot returned the franchise to box office glory.

The follow up, Into Darkness, had mixed reviews, in part due to the crew of the Enterprise solving death and in part to the recycling of the epic villain Khan.

Some loved it.

Some didn’t.

But it was more than enough to prompt a third movie in the rebooted franchise. This time, it’s directed by Justin Lin who made a name for himself by helming four of the Fast and Furious movies. An announcement like that did not excite some Star Trek fans. They weren’t interested in the style of action and story Lin might bring to the film.

But that concern turned out to be unfounded. Star Trek Beyond is one hell of a film, a lot of fun to watch, and highly engaging, though not without its flaws.

At this point, the crew of the Enterprise are a few years into their extended stay in deep space. Kirk is questioning his purpose in life as they arrive at Yorktown, the Federation’s new starbase that looks like something out of an M.C. Escher dream. While there, Spock finds out that Ambassador Spock has passed away and that starts him down a similar mental path as Kirk. The next mission arrives with the ship’s captain and first officer not sure about their future with Starfleet.

And then the Enterprise blows up. Don’t act surprised. It’s in all the trailers. They go into an unexplored nebula to save a stranded crew and get straight up ambushed. Not unexpectedly, the mission teaches Kirk and Spock how much they need each other, the Enterprise, and Starfleet. Blah, blah, blah, happy ending.

While there are aspects of the plot that are extremely predictable, it really does work. It moves along at the perfect pace with the right balance of action and dramatic moments to keep the watcher hooked. The cast is, as always, on point and continue to gel wonderfully. Chris Pine does a fantastic job in the moments where Kirk is questioning his life, giving us moments of vulnerability we haven’t seen in the character before. Zachary Quinto is also amazing in scenes where his Spock remembers the late Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. It’s an oddly poignant subplot where reality and fiction cross that’s handled well.

A quick aside here. In addition to being dedicated to the late Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek Beyond is also dedicated to the late Anton Yelchin. The young actor played Chekov and died in a tragic mishap related to a recall his Jeep was subject to just before the movie was released. Hopefully this was an oversight on the part of whoever makes these decisions at theatres but there was a commercial for Jeep products immediately preceding a film starring an actor killed by a Jeep. It was more than a little uncouth.

And back to the review.

Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, and John Cho continue to be great but honestly don’t get as much screen time as you’d hope. It’s still the Kirk/Spock/McCoy show for the most part. But it is hard to argue with the chemistry between those characters, particularly Spock and McCoy. Karl Urban just keeps getting better and better in this role.

Idris Elba plays the movie’s villain Krall, a menacing character who hides a big twist as usual. But unlike the Benedict Cumberbatch turning out to be Khan twist in the last movie, this one isn’t telegraphed from the earliest trailers. Elba is, as always, superb. That being said, Krall’s plan is essentially the same as the last two movies. His motivation is, once again, visiting revenge on the Federation and Starfleet by destroying them both. This time he’s targeting Yorktown rather than Earth but it still feels quite similar.

One of the smarter moves the film has in it relates to another new character, Jaylah. Another victim of Krall trapped on the planet, she helps the crew survive and defeat him. She’s a solid and interesting character but the initial fear is that she’s created to be sacrificed to the story. Instead, she plays a big role and even makes it through the end, hopefully as a permanent new member of the crew. And since Carol Marcus didn’t return after Into Darkness, another permanent female character would be more than welcome.

It’s actually quite surprising how little impact the events of Into Darkness seem to have had on Beyond.

More Klingons, please.

Some reviews have described this movie as a Fast and Furious film in space, a reference to Justin Lin’s previous work. While there are certainly elements of that franchise here, it’s still more Star Trek than that. It has the science fiction heart and soul that you expect from it but definitely has the action edge of Fast and Furious. Lin, with a screenplay from Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, found a nice balance between the two elements.

The climactic battle against Krall’s swarm ships doesn’t do the film any favors. It’s epic fun to watch while still being too ridiculously convenient to be believable. Not to put too fine a point on the ins and outs of the scene, the crew is vastly outnumbered but manages to defeat the overwhelming numbers of the swarm by blasting the Beastie Boys to disrupt their communications. It’s a fun scene in the best of ways and a silly scene in the worst of ways, vaguely reminiscent of Jeff Goldblum defeating the aliens of Independence Day with his Mac. That being said, the Star Trek Beyond scene makes a lot more sense than the Independence Day scene.

I honestly can’t imagine a lower hurdle to get over.

This is definitely not classic Star Trek but it is still a great movie that’s fun to watch on a big theatre screen. And it’s a movie that’s actually worth watching in 3D for once. With the fourth movie already on its way, there will be more adventures of Kirk and company to enjoy. Just don’t expect old school cerebral Star Trek to reemerge on the big screen anytime soon.