action

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

/ swampflix / 9 Comments

EPSON MFP image

onehalfstar

campstamp

When I began watching the Mission: Impossible movies recently, I expected a similar trajectory for the series that I experienced with The Fast & The Furious. I assumed that the Tom Cruise super spy franchise would start with an ungodly mess of rap rock era machismo, but eventually find its way into something a little more respectable & cohesive. What I found was that the first film was a surprisingly classy action flick from a precious moment in pop culture that came just before America’s rap rock dark times. The first Mission: Impossible film was campy, sure, but it was also excessive & dated in an entirely enjoyable way that I thought wouldn’t come until much later into the series.

It turns out that the rap rock garbage fire I was expecting from the first film was actually well & alive in the the second installment in the series, Mission: Impossible 2. M:I-2 ditches the Brian De Palma sense of 60s chic for a laughably bad excess of X-treme 90s bad taste helmed by John Woo. The drop in quality from the first film to the next was so drastic that it’d almost be more believable if M:I-2 were a spiritual sequel to Woo’s ludicrous Nic Cage trashterpiece Face/Off than it having anything to do with Brian De Palma’s film at all. He even recycled the slow-motion dove flapping from Face/Off, which was released just a few years before this stinker.

Almost everything pleasant about the first Mission:Impossible film is absent in the second. De Palma’s over-the-top abuse of camera trickery is replaced by straight-faced action movie blandness accompanied by non-sarcastic record scratches. Any enjoyment derived from the removal of faces in the first film is ruined here by an unrestrained overuse of the gimmick (this really should’ve been a second Face/Off film). The Danny Elfman score from the first film was supplanted by (I’m not kidding, here) a goddamn Limp Bizkit cover of the film’s original theme. Even Tom Cruise’s hair got douchier. He’s got these awful, long-flowing locks that swing in the breeze as he shows off his leather jacket on his super cool motor bike that he slides around on while shooting his gun with wild abandon. God, I hate this movie. Pretty much the only element of the first film that comes through unscathed is Ving Rhames, who remains a delight in every scene he’s afforded.

Here’s to hoping that the series bounces back from what has got to be its darkest hour. In the year 2000, when this film was released, I was a dumb kid who probably would’ve loved a Limp Bizkit soundtracked love letter to late 90s X-treme marketing & Tom Cruise’s shitty, shitty hair, but fifteen years later I’m desperately missing the campy, but classy 60s super spy homage of the first film. If the series somehow keeps spiraling down in quality this drastically (an Impossible proposition if I’ve ever heard one), I don’t think I’m going to make it to the other side.

-Brandon Ledet

Terminator Genisys (2015)

/ swampflix / 9 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

campstamp

In the recent flood of reboots, remakes, reimaginings and good, old-fashioned sequels that have effectively taken over Hollywood, there’s been an occasional uproar about what these films are doing to the credibility of the films they’re resurrecting. A few rehashes of long-dead properties have been lauded as critical darlings (such as the fever dream action monster Mad Max: Fury Road), but a lot of them have been met with aploplectic rage, such as Paul Feig’s not-even-released-yet take on Ghostbusters. Part of what Feig is getting flack for is tampering with the original formula, trying his damnedest to give his reboot its own reason to exist, and being met with a resounding opposition that claims he’s “ruining their childhood.” It’s sort of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t endeavor, creatively speaking, since studios are pouring so much money into these retreads instead of fresh material, but it’d also be entirely pointless to just remake the original film faithfully, except with temporal markers like smart phones & drone-operated cameras to provide modern context (like in the utterly useless Poltergeist remake).

Terminator Genisys has a fun time not only acknowledging the fact that reboots & sequels have a tendency to tarnish the memory of the films that came before them (according to a hypersensitive few), but it revels in the idea. Using the time travel paradox theme from the first couple films in the series, Genisys tinkers with & dismantles its predecessors in a dismissive, disrespectful way that feels alarmingly bold for a film that eventually amounts to a long string of chase scenes. The first hour of the film features a jumble of timelines that interact not only with the 1984 & 1991 stories told in The Terminator & T-2: Judgement Day, but also fleshes out some of the 2024 revolution, makes a pitstop in 1972 that changes the whole game of the first film, and sets up an entirely new Skynet timeline that needs to be dismantled in 2017. It’s a doozy of an opening sequence that features cheap, literal imitations of exact scenes from the earlier movies & repurposes them for its own ends, the implications of how it unravels the first two films be damned. I respect its moxy in this respect, even if the execution was far from flawless.

There’s a televised news report in Terminator Genisys that features the hilariously self-aware headline “Has Genisys gone too far?” This plays like a direct nod to how the film is not only disrespectful to its audience as Terminator fans, but also calls them out as a bunch of technology-obsessed dolts who would allow a computer program to end human existence as long as it promised to make their lives easier. The idea of a killer app that links all of the world’s smartphone technology into one conveniently vulnerable control is far from unique. At the very least, I’ve already seen that concept play out twice this year in Furious 7 & Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s still interesting to see it tie into an action movie’s larger overriding idea that its own audience is worth disdain. There are so many shots of people emptily gazing into their smart phones as a doomsday scenario swirls around them that even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s give-the-people-what-they-want one-liners like “I’ll be back” feel like a dig at the audience’s expectations. It’s so weird to see a film both fulfil movie-goer’s desire to see an old scenario play out yet again & subvert that desire by tearing apart the timelines of the original films by making them irrelevant, or as Schwarzenegger’s cyborg says of himself in this film, obsolete.

Speaking of Arnold, he’s the only enjoyable member of the film’s cast, performing with a weary, but endearing charm that says both “I’m too old for this shit” & “This is all I know how to do”. As a lifelong fan, I’m delighted by the idea of Arnold stretching himself to try new things, but if that means more snoozers like Maggie instead of the one-liner-fueled killing machine performances like in Genisys & the surprisingly enjoyable The Last Stand, I’m also more than happy to just see him filling this role for the rest of his life. No one else in the cast makes much of an impression at all, which (along with a who-cares 2017 climax sequence) tampers my enthusiasm for the film a bit, but that’s okay too.

Look, this is a franchise that’s already been dragged through the mud. Its first two entries are undeniable classics, but Terminator 3 & worse yet, Salvation weren’t exactly memorable cinema. Although I admire Terminator Genisys‘ mission to go back in time & effectively murder its predecessors, it’s an impossible mission. No matter what, those movies still exist & they’re still great. You can revisit your un-ruined childhood anytime you want through Netflix or blu-Rays or murderous smart phone apps or whatever you like, really. They’re still there. We just now also have a serviceable sequel that jumbles the timelines of those films into a barely-coherent mess just to watch its audience squirm under the pressure. I happen to find that tactic pretty hilarious, even if it did have trouble sticking the landing.

-Brandon Ledet

Jurassic World (2015)

/ swampflix / 8 Comments

EPSON MFP image
fourstar
After raking in a total of $524.4 million its opening weekend, Jurassic World broke box office records and took the world by storm. Everyone has seen it, wants to see it, and they just can’t stop talking about it. The hype is really similar to the release of Jurassic Park back in 1993. I was a wee one at the time, but I remember everyone going bananas over it because it was going to be the biggest dinosaur movie of all time. Prior to its release, most films about dinosaurs were just silly (Prehysteria!, The Land That Time Forgot, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, etc.). The excitement died down for the second film, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), and the third film, Jurassic Park III wasn’t as big of a hit either. I seriously thought that the third film was going to be the end of the Jurassic Park franchise because trilogies are the way to go nowadays. After hearing about the fourth installment, I spent a good amount of time searching for updates, watching the film’s trailers, and perusing down the toy aisles admiring the movie’s many action figures. I was more than ready to have this film blow my mind.

Dr. John Hammond’s dream of creating a dinosaur theme park finally comes true in Jurassic World, and it’s absolutely phenomenal. The attractions include a Tyrannosaurus rex feeding, a Mosasaurus feeding & splashdown, and a futuristic sphere that allows park goers to roll alongside a variety of herbivores. Even though Jurassic World is the king of all theme parks, its attendance rate begins to decline. In order to bring more people into the park, a group of geneticists create genetically modified female dinosaur called the Indominus rex. This dino-hybrid was beyond rad. She was really smart, terrifying, and a total killing machine. The CGI effects for this dino as well as all the others were some of the best that I’ve ever seen. There’s a great scene where a large amount of Pterosaurs break out of their aviary and attack the visitors (this is when Jimmy Buffet has his cameo), and the effects are gorgeous. It’s easily one of my favorite parts of the movie.

Prior to this chaos, the Indominus escapes from her caged environment (surprise, surprise), and she just starts killing everything in her sight. The film’s female lead, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), is the park’s operations manager, and her two distanced nephews are visiting her. The two boys end up venturing out too far at the same time the Indominus escapes. She panics and gets the assistance of the park’s raptor trainer, Owen (Chris Pratt), to locate her nephews. Pratt was great as Owen, the motorcycle-riding raptor man. I really loved how Owen was the Alpha of the raptor crew and had spiritual connection with them so much so that I had way too many crying moments for a movie about a dinosaur theme park.

While the film was an amazing action-packed thrill ride, it did have its share of flaws. The worst part of the film was the portrayal of the female lead, Claire. She’s a stereotypical ball-busting, cold-hearted career woman that’s clueless when it comes to taking care of kids. Well, because women can’t be career driven and compassionate at the same time. That would be crazy! I can’t help but compare Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) from Jurassic Park to Claire because the two were leading female actors in Jurassic Park movies, but the difference between the two is night and day. Sattler was intelligent, considerate, and a complete equal to the film’s male lead, Dr. Grant; however, in Jurassic World, Claire runs around in heels depending on the protection and guidance of Owen. What’s so sad about this is that there is a 22 year difference between the two films. I think at this point, everyone is tired of seeing stereotypical, unrealistic female characters in film, and it’s a shame that such an impactful and monumental movie failed to be forward-thinking.

Jurassic World is definitely worth seeing in theaters, and it’s definitely worth the couple of extra bucks for the 3-D experience. The predictable plot and characters aren’t the main selling point for this movie. It’s all about the dinosaurs! They’re the ones that steal the show and make the film’s 2 hour length seem like a few minutes.

-Britnee Lombas

Tomorrowland (2015)

/ swampflix / 11 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

Don’t believe the (negative) hype. Brad Birds’ live action Disney epic Tomorrowland is a great kids’ movie. Three weeks into the movie’s theatrical release, it’s still $20 million dollars short of recouping its budget and most of that money came from outside of the United States. Tomorrowland might eventually break even, but considering those numbers & its middling critical response it’s still hard not to see it as an all-around flop. That fact has little to say about the movie’s quality, though. Just as with Disney’s other most infamous live action flops, The Rocketeer & John Carter, Tomorrowland is a little hokey & old-fashioned, but also way better than its reputation indicates. Actually, I’d even go far enoguh to say it’s an easy best out of the three.

Although it’s admittedly a ham-handed parable about the power of positive thinking, Tomorrowland also manages to be the exact kind of smart-scary-dark-ambitious kids’ media that people are supposedly hungry to make a comeback, the kind that doesn’t treat its pintsized audience like dolts. It’s not afraid to confront children with big sci-fi ideas like parallel universes & the ways utopias can devolve into dystopias. It’s also not afraid to feel dangerous. People get scuffed up, occasionally die even, in a way that suggests that actions have consequences. Characters zip around in jetpacks & rocket ships, but never in a way that feels completely safe from bodily harm. After suffering through the horrendous ad for the Minions sequel that preceded the film, it was refreshing to see Disney take a chance on something that challenges their younger audience’s imagination, intellect, and desire to be scared. It was also a bummer that it was a gamble that didn’t work out for them financially.

In an alternate reality, a George Clooney-starring sci-fi fantasy epic about saving the world from its inevitable demise through sheer optimism might have been a hit. In this world, it’s failed to make much of a splash at all. In a lot of unexpected ways, Tomorrowland reminds me of another live action children’s media flop from the past decade, 2008’s City of Ember. Although City of Ember didn’t do well at the box office, it’s a smart & scary parable that covers a lot of the same ground as Tomorrowland: climate change, the dangers of stagnant thinking & an over-controlling governing body that thinks it knows best, and the idea that optimism and self-actualization can change the course of world’s seemingly hopeless path to self-destruction.

I honestly believe that both Tomorrowland & City of Ember will connect with enough young minds to have a cultural staying power that will only grow as the years go on. In the meantime that kind of gradual cult following is going to do little to encourage studios to take risks on ambitious children’s media like Tomorrowland instead of churning out more Minions sequels or whatever, which is sad considering the vast difference in quality (something I’m guessing about, based solely on an ad). But maybe I should think more positively and hope for the best. The future might be better for it.

-Brandon Ledet

Everly (2015)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

campstamp

Last year’s Keanu-Reeves-avenges-his-puppy’s-death action flick John Wick earned a lot of attention for being a return to form for the shoot ‘em up genre. Its above-average fight choreography, underground crime ring aesthetic, and relentless violence made it a crowd favorite, the thinking man’s mindless action flick. It turns out I’m not much of a thinking man. I liked John Wick well enough, but found it hard to match a lot of its audience’s enthusiasm. It was a decent throwback action flick, for sure, but felt more like a throwback to the late 90s than any other era, far from my favorite era of popular art.

Everly, on the other hand, has none of John Wick’s technical sophistication or cultural cachet. It shares its basic beautiful-person-kills-a-heap-of-faceless-strangers premise, but none of its finesse. I still enjoyed Everly more. I can’t help my trashy self. In Everly, a scantily clad prostitute played by Salma Hayek attempts to reunite with her family and escape a life of indentured servitude through an onslaught of gun violence. Cornered in a condo, Hayek’s Everly has to shoot her way through an army of Japanese gangsters, bumbling bodyguards, and fellow prostitutes to achieve freedom. If this sounds stupid & gratuitous, it’s because it most definitely is. Everly isn’t a film where any themes or ideas are explored in new or interesting ways and the violence is a mere exclamation point. It’s a film where violence is the entire point. It’s a film where a gun-wielding Salma Hayek in a negligee defiantly tells cartoonisly violent gangsters, “Lick my balls.” It’s a stupid film, but it’s also an awesome one.

I don’t mean to pull up any comparisons between Everly & John Wick to say one is objectively better than the other. It’s actually highly likely that fans of one would enjoy the other. I’m more drawing the comparison to point out something about my own tastes. Both Everly & John Wick put familiar, beautiful faces in a trashy cult movie scenario, asking their respective stars to shoot their way out of it; but while John Wick aims for greatness, Everly knows exactly what kind of trash it is at heart and searches for greatness in the gutter. That kind of deliberate simplemindedness isn’t going to go too far with certain audiences, but it does go a long way with me. Again, I can’t help my trashy self.

Side note: It surprised me that the film was set during Christmas. If you’re looking for some campy, violent counter-programming this holiday season, I highly recommend giving this one a spin.

-Brandon Ledet

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

/ swampflix / 24 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fourhalfstar

So, I’m a little late to the table with my review for George Miller’s 30-years-late-to-the-table Mad Max sequel Fury Road. There are a few various reasons for this delay. Before I went to the cinema, I wanted to contextualize the film in the grand scheme of Miller’s bizarrely disparate catalog, so I watched everything he’s directed so far. During this time, I got to revisit some all-time favorites like The Road Warrior & The Witches of Eastwick, discover some new bizarre worlds like in Babe: Pig in the City, and experience the excruciating, frozen depths of Hell thanks to the Happy Feet franchise. It was a confusing time. By the time I made it to the theater for Fury Road, the excitement surrounding the film had reached a fever pitch among a dedicated few who had already seen the film many times over. It’s crazy to think that with the amount of buzz this film has earned it’s never reached the number one spot at the box office, losing out to films critics have been understandably less enthusiastic about: San Andreas, Tomorrowland, and Pitch Perfect 2. This dichotomy of ignored-by-many, obsessively-loved-by-few pretty much sealed Fury Road’s fate as instant cult classic, one that will surely be remembered for far longer than San Andreas or Tomorrowland, before I even got a taste of its ridiculous charms.

During the initial you-gotta-see-this frenzy surrounding the film, I missed a lot of opportunity to find new things to say about it. All I can really do at this point is echo the praise. Yes, it’s one of the best action films released in years. Yes, it has surprisingly satisfying feminist bent for something so thoroughly violent. Yes, it’s an incredible technical feat stuffed to the gills with impressive practical stunts & confident art design. In a time where a lot of movies, such as Zombeavers & WolfCop, intentionally aim for a cult film aesthetic, it’s refreshing when something as authentically bizarre as Fury Road comes along and earns its rabid, isolated fan base naturally. Although the movie is less than a month old, it’s already gathered a cult following so strong that I doubt that there’s any praise I can throw at the film that hasn’t already been bested elsewhere. I loved the film. I thought it was fantastic, wonderfully distinct, up there with The Road Warrior, The Witches of Eastwick, and Pig in the City as one of the best things Miller has ever released onto the world. I still feel like that’s merely faint praise when compared to some of the more hyperbolic reactions out there. Because it’s not my favorite movie of all time, or even my favorite of the year so far, it might be best if I back off a bit from saying anything even vaguely critical and just say it’s great & I’m glad so many people love it.

That only leaves room for a couple details that I feel haven’t been addressed loudly enough. Firstly, it’s been said that because Miller filmed Fury Road in 2D and the 3D release was created in post-production, the 2D release is the superior viewing choice. Having now seen the film in both formats (another reason for the delayed review), I’d advise you to ignore that common wisdom. I enjoyed the 3D version of Fury Road immensely. It not only highlighted in the impressive depth of the chase scenes’ bizarre imagery, but also added a classic drive-in aesthetic layer to the film’s cult movie vibe. I think it’s worthwhile to see the film in 3D while it’s still an option, since it’s less likely you’ll be able to once it leaves the theaters. Another aspect of the film that’s been somewhat overshadowed is the strength of its central villain. A lot has been said about the badass character design & story arcs of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, Tom Hardy’s Max, Nicholas Hoult’s Nux, and whoever the Hell played that weirdo guitar dude, but not nearly enough ink has been spilled on the central antagonist, Immortan Joe. Joe is a nightmarish brute, truly terrifying in both his abusive actions & basic look. When he gets his eventual comeuppance it’s a thoroughly satisfying moment, a fitful end to an eccentric villain who belongs to be recognized along with names like Darth Vader, Cruella DeVille and Freddy Krueger as one of the greatest of all time. Like a Jason Voorhees or a Michael Myers in their respective franchises, Immortan Joe is a large part of what makes Fury Road feel so special.

That’s about all I have to add to the already endless Mad Max conversation. I’d urge you to go see the film, but it’s likely that you already have. I’d praise its charms, but there’s little I can say that hasn’t already been hyperbolically topped. I’d pick at its (very few) faults, but there’s no point in deflating any of the air out of the party balloons. It makes me so happy that a film this strange has been exalted this high this quickly, so there’s not much left to do except to bask in its glory and try to get over these Immortan Joe nightmares. Maybe they’ll stop before I get to Valhalla, but probably not. At least I have these cans of silver spray paint to see me through in the mean time.

-Brandon Ledet

Hyena (2015)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

twostar

I’ve been watching a lot of Nicolas Winding Refn movies lately, trying to make sense of the man’s career. Like with a lot of people, my first introduction to the director was the 2011 Ryan Gosling vehicle Drive, a brilliant film I find compulsively re-watchable. It’s basically become the Beatles record of my DVD collection, something I pop in when I have no idea what I want to watch. It was then a disappointment when Refn’s follow-up, Only God Forgives, was just as gorgeous, but twice as empty & hard to love as Drive. I left the theater incredibly cold from that movie and didn’t warm up to it at all in subsequent viewings. Working my way backwards through the much more impressive Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and so on, I feel like I’m just starting to get a grasp on Refn’s violently somber & grandiose vibe, something I’ve been trying to grasp for years now.

It turns out I’m not the only one who’s been trying to get a grasp on Refn’s aesthetic. The recent crime thriller Hyena plays like a love letter to the Danish filmmaker, with only a few updates tweaked here or there. The problem is that it isn’t even half as interesting as Refn’s worst film (that I’ve seen so far, anyway). Opening with a slow-motion drug bust in a neon-soaked nightclub, the requisite eerily sad music playing, Hyena declares its Refn love early & often. It seems like the only innovation the film brought to the format was the question “What if Refn’s movies were told from the POV of crooked cops instead of the criminals?” It’s not a question that, when isolated, leaves a lot of room for new ideas or even a basic reason for existing, and the resulting film feels like an empty shell because of it.

That’s not to say that, although empty, the shell isn’t good-looking. There’s some occasionally gorgeous imagery scattered throughout Hyena that almost rewards the patience required to make it through its runtime. It’s just unfortunate that the film also decided to ape Refn’s glacial pacing as well as his visual style, which results in long stretches of crooked cop drama that’s extremely difficult to care about. If nothing else, it feels like there’s a promise here that Refn’s style could possibly inspire other directors to take action movies into fresh, unexpected directions, but Hyena merely hints at that promise instead of actually fulfilling it. It might be a while until both audiences & filmmakers alike get a grasp on how to pull off the Refn trick, but Hyena isn’t even the closest attempt released this year. That honor belongs to Refn-collaborator Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut Lost River.

-Brandon Ledet

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

/ swampflix / 25 Comments

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

At this point in the evolution of the MCU, there are nearly a dozen (!!!) films, three television shows, several DVD-exclusive shorts, and an untold amount of tie-in comic books worth of content. Holy shit, that’s daunting. Honestly, I’m just not the right kind of comic book dork to find that amount of MCU content exciting. If there were a Fantagraphics Cinematic Universe you could bet I’d be at the theater for every new release, but that much Marvel content sounds more like work than play to me. Of the eleven MCU films released so far I’ve seen exactly three: Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. To me, the draw of tuning in for these films was that they felt like a highlight reel instead of having to watch all MCU content, which at this point would take days on end.

This approach worked out fairly well with the first Avengers film, which had only(!!!) five preceding films of build-up, whereas I had felt totally left behind at the beginning of its sequel, Age of Ultron. Starting with an in medias res action sequence in the snow and quickly followed by some sciencey montages & well-needed (I’m guessing) R&R, the Avengers team had now left me, the casual viewer, far behind and was struggled for a near 40-min stretch to me back to the table. It took almost the entire first third of the film for me to get invested in the story while all the loud things were going boom, but once I was brought up to speed, I was just as on-board as any other giddy child in the theater. For what it’s worth, I think the exact moment was sometime around when Iron Man was trying to punch The Hulk to sleep or maybe only a few minutes before.

Once Age of Ultron gets rolling on its own merit, disconnected from its place in the MCU, it’s a fairly exciting action spectacle. Cities are destroyed, superhumans run around doing their superhuman things, good triumphs over evil, etc. I just wish it didn’t take so long to get there. The MVPs of distinguishing this movie from its MCU brethren are the newest characters. Not the genetically modified twins introduced in the opening scenes, but the man-made characters that come later in the film, Vision & Ultron. Especially Ultron. As the title hints, the film doesn’t really stand out on its own until Ultron hijacks the plot from the ten preceding movies. He’s such an arrestingly odd, smarmy villain, expertly voiced by James Spader, that he makes all the work that it took to get to him feel worthwhile.

Despite the shaky start, I eventually found myself giving into Age of Ultron’s ridiculous spectacle and even had a few moments where I completely nerded out (particularly in a well-teased moment involving Thor’s hammer) and felt like part of the participatory audience. I’m just wondering how long Marvel can keep pulling off this trick for the casual viewer. According to their current release schedule, Avengers 3 will have at least sixteen films preceding it. Avengers 4 is likely to have nearly two dozen. If it already takes 40min of exposition to rope the casual viewer into these film’s storylines, I’m wondering if they can even continue to take us along at all or if they’ll (smartly) choose to leave us behind.

-Brandon Ledet

San Andreas (2015)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

EPSON MFP image

three star

campstamp

There’s really only one reason to see San Andreas and it ain’t to watch The Rock act outside of his comfort zone. If you really wanted to watch Dwayne Johnson push himself as an actor, I highly recommend checking out Southland Tales or Pain & Gain. If you want to watch buildings fall over and crush countless nameless people while The Rock just happens to be there, San Andreas is the movie for you. The Rock is in full Hercules mode here, just sort-of coasting on his natural charisma as a mediocre film crumbles around him. San Andreas may not be the best possible Johnson vehicle, but it does have something Hercules was missing: incredible visual spectacle. As soon as San Andreas leaves the theaters it’s going to be a forgotten by-the-90s-numbers natural disaster pic, but as long as it’s huge & loud on the silver screen it’s got an impressive 3D spectacle to it that I found myself genuinely wowed by when I wasn’t chuckling at the clichéd dialogue that broke it up (like the earthquakes that break the movie’s California coast into pieces).

Since it’s unlikely that you’ll enjoy San Andreas for its storytelling prowess or emotional resonance, I guess I’ll detail what it has going for it in camp value. First of all, its aping of 90s disaster pics like Daylight & Volcano is so accurate that the whole endeavor feels ludicrously old-fashioned. In a lot of ways, it’s only a half-step up from the corny script of last year’s horrendous Left Behind, which is really saying something. Unlike Left Behind, however, San Andreas is consistently dangerous-feeling from the get-go, almost to the point of sadism. Buildings are ripped in half, people wander around bleeding in a daze, floods & fires complicate the rescue missions, etc. San Andreas knows it has little more to offer than sheer spectacle, so it pushes how much constant carnage it can get away with without devolving into a complete cartoon, something it just barely gets away with. As for traces of camp in The Rock’s performance, he does have a pretty great one-liner when he expertly parachutes onto a baseball field with his estranged wife (“It’s been a while since I’ve gotten you to second base”) and it’s pretty amusing how quickly & without inner conflict he abandons his post as a helicopter-rescue pilot to focus on retrieving his own wife & daughter as millions of other earthquake victims suffer. Other than that & a few amusing scenes in which a cowardly business dude pushes people into immediate peril to save his own ass, the movie doesn’t offer much else camp-wise outside the impressive 3D spectacle of a city collapsing.

With a larger budget, San Andreas could have looked even further back than its 90s-disaster-movie roots and assembled one of those sprawling casts from the days of Big Studio disaster films like Towering Inferno & Earthquake. I’m not saying that they should’ve recast The Rock’s helicopter pilot or Paul Giamatti’s befuddled scientist. It’s more that they felt like a small part of an absent larger whole. If San Andreas were a near-three hour epic overstuffed with every Hollywood star imaginable, but with the same level of impressive special effects it could’ve been something really special. As is, it’s going to lose its significance as soon as it hits VOD & home video, so I suggest seeing it in the theater while you can if you have any interest in it at all.

-Brandon Ledet

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

/ swampflix / 12 Comments

EPSON MFP image

onehalfstar

campstamp

The worst part about hating Jupiter Ascending is that I was really rooting for it. I’m not a Wachowskis super fan or anything (I barely know of their work outside The Maxtrix & Speed Racer); I just liked the movie’s basic concept & attributes. The idea of a sci-fi action-adventure with a female lead hit a lot of my sweet spots right out of the gate, but every one of those elements in the final product fell embarrassingly flat. The female lead, played by Mila Kunis, is for the most part a passenger & an observer while the action swirls around her (she’s a literal princess in need of saving, even). The action itself alternates from occasionally engaging to just painfully awful, anchored mostly by an against-all-odds unsexy Channing Tatum figure skating through the air (thanks to some kind of goofy laser boots) while terrible CGI obstacles crash & burn in his wake. That leaves the film’s sci-fi concepts to carry the load, which they occasionally do in a Richard Kelly kitchen sink fashion, but even those fade to long stretches of unimpressive action sequences. In short, Jupiter Ascending is a failure, when I really, really didn’t want it to be.

I’m just one dude, though! There’s a lot floating around in the film for people to latch onto. Beautiful, futuristic landscapes & architecture are populated with (unbelievably dumb-looking) alien weirdos like CGI lizard minions & humanoid owl things (that look like Ron Perlmen in Beauty and the Beast). Eddy Redmayne gives a (laughably) memorable performance as an evil alien dictator (who is just a wig & a sashay short of a killer drag routine). The aforementioned Richard Kelly brand of too-plentiful ideas contrast an undocumented immigrant’s life as a servant on Earth with distant & lavish alien aristocrats (who cares). There’s some (mildly amusing) honey bee worship (à la Upside Down) that results in the line “Bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty.” Other lines like “Your Earth is a very small part of a very large industry,” and “Time is the single most precious commodity in the universe,” also have a sort of a staying power (even if it’s as a joke). There’s a whole lot to love in Jupiter Ascending, but if you’re like me and have problems arriving on its wavelength, that excess gets ugly quickly.

If I had to boil what’s wrong with Jupiter Ascending down to a single fault it would be that it’s just so thoroughly uncool. I could be wrong and the movie’s late 90s Hot Topic raver aesthetic could be vintage enough to be cool again (if it was ever cool), but from my POV it just feels painfully outdated, like watching your stepdad desperately try to be hip. Imagine if The Fifth Element arrived 20 years late, dead serious (or at least not funny), and about as exciting as The Ice Pirates. Maybe a list of the character names will give you an idea of what I’m describing here: Jupiter Jones, Titus Abrasax, Phylo Percadium, Gemma Chatterjee, Stinger Apini, etc. If these names belong anywhere (and I’m not sure that they do) it’s on a TV screen, clogging up a low-rent Battlestar Galactica knockoff. Much of the film operates this way, feeling like a television show whose special effects budget was afforded way too much money and not nearly enough time to get the details right. I sincerely hope that there are people who have positive experiences with Jupiter Ascending, as I do find it interesting in concept, but it’s a movie I would love to never see or think about again. This might work out just fine, as even while I was watching I felt like it had been released nearly two decades ago.

-Brandon Ledet