The World's End

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Plot: Gary King (Simon Pegg) gets his old friends together to reenact a bar crawl from their youth. They are old friends who don't see each other much starting a night of drinking. As they go from bar to bar, they find their old town is stranger and stranger. Soon they are being watched, then chased, then worse.  (If you need to know more -- look closely at the movie poster.) At the final bar, called The World's End, the movie reaches its comic, absurdist, sci-fi climax. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The  ramp-up from drinking movie to strange craziness is so perfectly smooth; that is one of the best features.  At the beginning The World's End feels just like a hundred other drunken comedies, and it is funny too, but slowly it takes a right turn into delightful strangeness. Simon Pegg plays a great party animal who is fun and also pitiable. 

The dynamics between the guys is strong through out the movie, and the fact that the characters keep changing just adds to the tension. 

I liked how the names of the bars foreshadow the scene to come. I wondered what the Two Headed Dog was, going to be and it was great. Cool and funny.  The Bee Hive was also clever and cool. 

The soundtrack is very good. I bought four songs. The special effects were initially humorous, but steadily more menacing.  I noticed that several of the actors were amputees, which shows these were old-school, low budget special effects. 

Overall, I loved this movie. Funny. Fun-to-watch. Lots of interesting dialog. 

Cast: Simon Pegg 

Directed by: Edgar Wright

Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg

Rating: 3.5 stars: Loved it. This movie will never stop rotation on late night TV. Not quite weighty enough for 4 stars though. 

 

More: Did you notice the down arrows in the last bar's tap? 

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Elysium

Plot: In 2154, the 1% have moved to an orbiting satellite called Elysium, and the working class on earth is kept in line by robot soldiers. Max (Matt Damon) lives in a run-down, police-state version of Los Angeles, and the movie starts with robot police breaking his arm him at a bus stop for no good reason. He has the bone set by his childhood friend Frey (Alice Braga,) although Frey works at the hospital, she can't get health care for her daughter who is dying of leukemia. Max goes to see his parole officer, who turns out to be a robot too, and then he goes to work where he builds robots. He suffers an industrial accident, gets irradiated, and has only five days to live. Max goes to see his underworld friend Julio (Diego Luna), who is a crime boss, a hacker and a revolutionary. Julio sends Max to steal secrets from the brain of defense executive John Carlyle (William Fichtner.) He does that, and is immediately  hunted by human agents from Elysium Defense Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) to get the secrets back. In order to capitalize on the secrets, Max, Julio, and Frey fly up to Elysium, and this trip leads to the movies final scenes. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Elysium is a heavy political satire with left-leaning class warfare. The visuals are always great, dark, creepy and cool. The visuals are the best part -- much like District Nine. 

Matt Damon does a good job with the role; Max is the everyman upon whom this crazy situation is thrust, and gradually he rises up and starts a revolution. Jodie Foster is outstanding. She is steely tough; I just wish she were in the movie more. The acting is always good.

Despite the good performances, the thought-provoking themes, the movie isn't that fun-to-watch. The relentless dreariness never stops, and the few attempts at humor don't work -- like the unfunny scene at the parole office with the robot agent. 

Elysium makes no effort to have the science make sense. (Someone called it Lazy Science Fiction.) Everytime something happens in the movie that can't really happen, it is distracting, and it reminds me that I am watching a movie. Then I tell myself, yes, this detail does not matter-- but it interrupts.  For example, no one would have screwed the exoskeleton in over Matt Damon's T-shirt. They would have take the T-shirt off first. Not to mention that they wouldn't have left the bolts sticking out and bleeding. 

Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, 

Directed by: Neill Blomkamp

Rating: 3.0 stars: Cool visuals, solid performances and a thoughtful subject matter make this a good movie. Yet it is less than the sum of its parts. A little too preachy.  

 

[Minor Spoiler] More: After the revolution, the first thing is free health care for the masses. 

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Despicable Me 2

Plot: Gru is raising the three girls from the first movie when he is recruited by Lucy to find a villain who happens to be hiding out at a local shopping mall. Gru and the Minions interrogate the shop owners. Gradually Gru develops a crush on Lucy, just as daughter Margo develops a crush on a boy at the mall.  Later some Minions get kidnapped, and this leads the final scenes.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Despicable Me 2 is a cheerful movie that has both funny parts and sincere parts. It has a big heart that I liked. Having said that, it has a number of dumb parts too.

The Minions are the best, and I like the cleverness of the Minions' slapstick physical humor. I also like whatever language they are speaking. Almost gibberish, but with enough recognizable words to make it fun. It is like Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland. The internet tells me in addition to English, French, Italian and Spanish words, DM2 had Filipino words. There is a link to one of their songs below.

Directed by: Pierre Louis Padang Coffin, Chris Renaud

Lead Animator: Pierre Avon
Voices: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig
Rating: 2.0 stars: perhaps close to 2.5 on the strength of its good heart, but maybe not since it is a little too much of a kids movie. Recommended.

 

More: Here is a link to the Minions singing the YMCA song on Youtube.

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The Way Way Back

Plot: Duncan (Liam James) rides in the way way back of an old station wagon on the way to his Mom's/Pam's(Toni Collette's) boyfriend's/Trent's (Steve Carell's) beach house. At the beach, the adults spend the whole time flirting and drinking, while the teen girls ignore Duncan. Duncan goes to a water park where he meets the cool manager Owen (Sam Rockwell) who trusts Duncan, unlike his family. The other water park workers are nicer and more agreeable than his relatives too. This is a summer vacation movie, so you can probably guess how it ends.   [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The first half of the movie, where Duncan's awful  family life is set-up, is nearly unendurable. I was thinking about leaving the theater. It is not funny, or cool, or interesting, or clever. It is one cringe-worthy scene after another where the stupid adults say stupid things and Duncan just sits there radiating hate with a sneer on his face.  Woody Allen could make these awkward adult conversation scenes interesting and cute, but writer directors Faxon and Rash weren't up to it. 

In the second half, Duncan gets to the water park, and we are entertained by the fun-loving antics of Sam Rockwell's Owen. Owen is like a big brother to Duncan, and the writers intended to make these quirky characters into a substitute family, but that never really works.  

Steve Carrell's acting is probably OK, but he played an unfunny jerk, so it was wasted on me. Toni Collette is likable -- and she has some good facial acting. Sam Rockwell is funny, but he more of a cartoon than a character. Really all the characters are pretty cartoon-like. 

Way Way Back has elements of a good movie, but it didn't work for me. I don't understand why the Sundance Film Festival endorses weak movies like this, but it seems to be a pattern.

There isn't much of a message in the movie -- perhaps to develop more self-confidence. While promo materials called this a 'coming of age movie,' Duncan does not deal with any adult issues or do anything more adult than learn to use his powers as a water-slide monitor to ogle girls' asses. Seriously, I thought the ass ogling was insensitive, distasteful and not funny. Is that really what coming of age means? 

Cast: Liam James, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, 

Directed by: Nat Faxon, Jim Rash

Rating: 2.0 stars: not recommended.

 

More:  Did this movie occur in the past or in the present? That old station wagon with rear facing seat was from the past. Certainly all the music was old, and the Star Wars action figures too. On the other had, Duncan had an iPhone. The whole film could have been in 1985 except for that iPhone.

The movie is called the Way Way Back which might imply it is from the distant past of the writers. I expect there is a draft of the movie somewhere, that actually was set in the eighties. 

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RED2

Plot: Frank (Bruce Willis) and Marvin (John Malkovich) get involved with a plot to detonate a bomb in Moscow. Frank's civilian girl friend Sarah (Mary Louise Parker) come along, and is jealous of Russian spy Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones). We meet former English spy Victoria on the way to rescue crazy, genius scientist Bailey (Anthony Hopkins) who is locked up in London by MI-6. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: RED 2 is a spy comedy where the ridiculousness of senior citizen tough-guy spies combine with spoofs of the CIA, MI-6 and Russian bad guys for a light and funny movie -- with a high body count. It's not a spy movie or an action movie; so don't come expecting that. 

For example, one of the big gags is Victoria (Helen Mirren) cooling killing men, always men, by the roomful. 

My highlight is Anthony Hopkin's Bailey acting like he is having psychotic delusions of a roomful of people -- very funny. 

Good soundtrack. Solid special effects, but I am hard to impress since I saw Pacific Rim last week. 

Cast: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Anthony Hopkins Bryng-hun Lee, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Directed by: Dean Parisot, who has generally directed TV in the past. 

Rating: 3.0 stars; one of the better comedies 

 

Cover of Red 3 Comic

More: The title RED2 is not very imaginative. It is based on a three part comic book series from 2003-4. 

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Pacific Rim 3D

Plot: Kaiju, giant sea monsters from the bottom of the Pacific, are destroying cities on the coasts. More and more Kaiju are coming, and the people of the world build Jaegers, giant robots, to fight them. Jaegers need two co-pilots each to run them, and the pilots need to 'drift,' or mind-meld with each other and with the Jaeger to fight effectively. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) was a great pilot when he worked with his twin brother, but when the brother was killed, Raleigh retired. Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) drags him out of retirement to battle Kaiju in Hong Kong, and teams him up with Japanese cutie Mako Mori (Rinko Kikushi). Both Raleigh and Mako have tragic incidents in their pasts which they re-experience as they 'drift' into each other's brains. In the end, the Kaiju keep getting stronger and smarter, and the last Jaegers need to battle them in a desperate plan to "cancel the apocalypse." [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Pacific Rim gets the Summer action movie right. The visuals are striking with lots of attention to detail. The fight scenes are dramatic, and watching fight is exhausting. Having two pilots is clever since they need to communicate, so you can listen into what they are thinking, and of course it allows from the romantic tension between Raleigh and Mako.

Pacific Rim's  plot is more fantasy than sci-fi, as giant robots a cool way to fight sea monsters, but probably are not the most sensible way, and there are similar gaps elsewhere.  Within the realm of fantasy, Pacific Rim is a lot of fun.  Even though it has monsters, it is not a horror movie. I appreciated monsters not springing out of dark shadows into my face. The super-giant monsters were always easy to find.

Pacific Rim has a truly globalized setting with most of the movie in Hong Kong, and more than a few lines of Japanese from Mako. The movie is just escapist drama, but it does pack the message of cooperating to solve our common problems.

Overall Pacific Rim was fun-to-watch. The characters are engaging enough, though stereotypes. The fight scenes are gripping and actually tired me out while I was watching them.

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro

Rating: 3.0 stars: Fun-to-watch, exciting, always interesting, but still a little too campy to be rated higher. 

More: You gotta love Ron Pearlman is Hannibal Chau, the dealer in dead Kaiju parts. So tough and so cool. 

Even More:.  I liked the 3D. As I said before, this movie looked great. 

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Lone Ranger

Plot: An old Tonto (Johnny Depp) tells a story at a museum to a young boy about a band of Texas Rangers that get ambushed, and only one survives -- who becomes the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger/John Reid (Armie Hammer) goes after the band of outlaws for revenge. The outlaws work for silver miners and railroad interests. The Comanche Indians are threatening the settlers including the John Reid's sister-in-law and his nephew. The story has fantasy and magical elements. The Ranger's horse Silver is magic spirit horse who rescues them in deadly situations. In the climatic battle, the Lone Ranger and Tonto battle on a train to foil an evil railroad man's scheme to get rich on Texas silver. At the end, there are some jokey references to classic Lone Ranger tropes, and after the credits Tonto returns to walk into the horizon. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: A deeply strange movie with more symbolism and absurdist humor that I expected from Disney. Lone Ranger reimagines the story centered on Tonto who is a Shaman, and who creates and aids the Lone Ranger with magic. The battles are family-friendly and campy. They are knowingly and ironically unrealistic. 

I can see why Lone Ranger was poorly reviewed; it does not fit into a movie genre. People expecting an action movie are disappointed by the comedy and the absurdity.

In many ways, Westerns can't be written in the 2010's because the white Americans are too guilty about the way Native Americans were treated. The Native Americans can not be bad guys because this triggers a chain of causation about why they are bad -- Are they reacting to just provocation? -- Are they products of white-man-created poverty that leads them to strike out in rage? Disney is not going to deal with these questions because they come too close to justifying terrorism. Here, American Indians sit out conflicts while white Americans battle each other.

In this context, Tonto has moved from being a the Lone Ranger's helper in the 1930's original radio show to being a Shaman. Now the Lone Ranger is not a solitary hero -- he used to be the LONE Ranger after all. Now he is the vehicle that Tonto is using to bring justice and advance the Indian Spirit symbolized by the crow.  This rethinking of the story to modern sensibility and the camp violence leads me to label it Post-Modern.

There are few women in the script, Reid's sister-in-law Rebecca (Ruth Wilson), and the brothel owner Red Herrington (Helena Bonham Carter) -- who is wonderful as always. Of course, prostitutes are way over-represented in movies, but that is a topic for another day. I expect Rebecca has a big role in the sequel. 

The closing battle has the William Tell Overture playing and the fighting is stylized, comic style fighting. There is almost no blood and surprisingly little injury. 

Cast: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Ruth Wilson, Helena Bonham Carter

Directed by: Gore Verbinski

Rating: 2.75 stars, maybe it deserves 3.0  -- Really strange. Always interesting. I was glad I saw it. On the other hand, it was not fun-to-watch in popcorn, summer-movie sense. This movie could be a classic though.

 

More:  The crow is the spirit of the Indian. Tonto wears it on his head because he identifies with it.  The crow dies when the village is massacred, and it is nurtured when the young boy hears the story. When Tonto does something he spreads bird seed to bring the spirit of the Indian back. When he says the bird can't tell time, he is saying the Indian Spirit is timeless. They boy is supposed to carry on the mission of the Lone Ranger in modern times. When the rabbit eats the scorpion, they are saying nature is still out of balance, and needs help.  At the end Tonto walks on, indicating he is a timeless Shaman.

Yet More:  Tonto's make -up is based on a 2006 painting by Kirby Sattler.

Still More: Tonto means "fool" in Spanish and related languages. The other Indians seemed to know that.  Kemo Sabe means "trusted scout."

It keeps coming: Johnny Depp claims American Indian ancestry, but is not enrolled in any tribe.