Iron Man 3 – Revisited

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I had planned on getting through a couple more old reviews prior to Avengers Endgame being released, but best laid plans and all of that. I did want to revisit one of my favorite characters from the MCU and it is fitting to go with the character that kicked things off.

In May of 2013 I caught Iron Man 3 opening weekend and was captivated by it. My initial reaction was a bit overboard (see for yourself Hello Summer ). I have seen the film multiple times since that first night experience and as I reflected on the film later, I had some serious issues with it and found myself scratching my head trying to figure out why I actually liked it… I STILL don’t have an answer.

The movie was based loosely (very loosely) on the Extremis and Mandarin comic storylines. On the surface, it provides a great deal of popcorn chomping action…in fact it probably provides too much action and one of my biggest problems, the wrong type of action.

You have a great beginning with Stark completely affected by the events of The Avengers and is trying to cope with what he has been through and what it means for humanity…basically unable to do anything but work, trying to make the world “safe again”.

I was originally excited that Shane Black would take on the writing/directing for an Iron Man outing, but at the end of the day they were not a great fit and Black managed to turn Stark into a bumbling punchline, revisiting some of the earliest gags of the first movie (Tony flailing while coming to grips with the capabilities of the suit.) as he suits up with the brand new Mk 42.

The amount of screen time dedicated to Stark outside the suit was also a bad choice. Tony is a thinker not a fighter and yet Black forced him to fight on his feet using conventional weapons. It was funny, but not in the good way.

Numerous panic attacks set off by the mere mention of New York, and you have a Stark that is nothing like Stark…even his “Demon in a Bottle” days were more put together.

The addition of the child sidekick was a horrible, horrible choice, making that portion of the film cringeworthy at best and had zero place in the film.

Happy was equally bad, turning him into an overbearing control freak…he just wasn’t Happy 😉

The Extremis thread was solid, but the use of “The Mandarin” was a joke (literally). Kingsley was fantastic in the buildup and just sad in the “payoff”. On a side note – The Mandarin sounded like he was channeling Richard Nixon.

Tying back to the 10 rings from the first Iron Man was interesting or rather might have been, but Black did absolutely nothing with it. Just a throwaway wink and a nod to folks who had been along for the ride.

Extremis Pepper was also interesting but over way too soon and underdeveloped.

End it all with the massive Iron Men battle and you end up with a REALLY expensive fireworks show after a very lack luster main event. It also seems the ending worked out well for figure collectors and Hot Toys – Iron Man 3 who had about 40 products released relating to the film (several of which sit on my shelves). The more I revisited this ending the worse it got for me, feeling completely out of place with the franchise and the characters. Oddly enough Avengers: Age of Ultron managed to pull off a similar sequence since it was not completely over the top.

Black in hindsight was a poor choice for the movie both in the director’s chair and writer’s room.

At the end of the day Iron Man 3 is my third least favorite film from the MCU, coming out just ahead of Thor and Thor: The Dark World, but at the box office it stands as the 5th
Ranked MCU
film both in terms of Domestic ($409 Mil) and Worldwide ($1.2 Bil) returns.

I am excited to see how Endgame will play out and even more curious to see what awaits us in Phase Four.

-Woji

Iron Man 3

2 GUNS – “Revisited”

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Back in 2013 I caught a trailer to this flick and I was pretty excited about it (check this out to see just how excited – 2 Guns!).

I DEFINITELY caught the movie opening weekend and I have seen it multiple times since then, but for some reason I never actually posted a write up on it…which I discovered tonight as I set about doing a “revisited” review.

So let’s dive in…

2 Guns it turns out (another surprise) is based on a series of graphic novels from Boom! Studios. It stars Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Bill Paxton, and Edward James Olmos.

The story is about a pair of criminals scheming to rip off a Mexican drug kingpin and the drama that follows.

It’s an interesting twist on the buddy movie, carefully walking the tightrope between action and comedy, much like the Fast and Furious series. Director Baltasar Kormákur does a decent job with the overall pacing, alternating between the action and comedy before either take over the experience, though he does push the comedy right to the edge a couple of times – the one liners are traded like gunfire between all of the major characters, but the overall wit of the Blake Masters screenplay keeps the audience laughing in the best way possible.

Paxton and Olmos are awesome in their portrayals of two versions of villains – one as spooky CIA operative and the other as maniacal Mexican drug lord…both are over the top, but in the context of the film it fits perfectly.

The chemistry of Washington and Wahlberg is solid, but there are times when Wahlberg borders on completely annoying, but those moments pass quickly enough to not pull you out of the overall experience.

There are a few nice surprises over the course of the flick (like the appearance of a grumpy Fred Ward) and the final battle is pretty wild – well worth the 109 min running time.

BOTTOM LINE:

The movie lived up to the hype of trailer and still holds up more than five years later. Super solid action/comedy that I look forward to catching again in the future. Definitely give it a look.

RATING:

8/10

2 Gun

Back At It – Countdown to Endgame

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It has been a loooooooong time since I have updated, but that is obvious to anyone who has seen the archives.

With Avengers: Endgame rapidly approaching, I figured that it would be fun to spin this back up and see where it leads.

To dust off the cobwebs I will be revisiting a few of the previous films to see how my opinions of them have changed.  The first new discussion will begin with the Endgame.

Roll film!

-Woji

Chappie – Good Robot Design, Bad Movie.

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Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie opened yesterday and on the surface it’s a movie about a police robot that is given consciousness and the troubles that result from this action.

The trailers for the movie looked pretty damn cool, on par if not better than District 9 and Elysium, in fact they felt a bit like District 9 but with a robot rather than an alien.

The original concept was pretty simple and might have been able to hold up the story, but more ideas are introduced as the movie progresses, things like: God vs Man, AI super-intelligence, and The Singularity and that is where things fall apart.

The timeline for the movie is such that ALL of the tech aspects are beyond belief. The world of Chappie is 2016 but with the current state of Robotics/AI we are nowhere near the ability to have a free-moving / unmonitored robotic police force and then you add in the development of self-aware software that has been worked on seemingly by one engineer over the course of the three years preceding the movie and you have a Techno-comedy of Grandma’s Boy / Johnny Mnemonic proportions.

Don’t get me wrong, this movie is nowhere near as bad as Johnny Mnemonic, but it IS another shining example of how Hollywood really has NO IDEA about technology.

There is an early scene where Dev Patel’s character comes home and says that he has terabytes to code and compile that evening. I actually laughed out loud in the theater, thankfully the theater was nearly empty. We then see a montage of Dev’s character Deon finishing up the consciousness program that will become Chappie. The only thing that I can think of to explain this is that the District 9 aliens must have brought some new compilers and hard drive technology with them since Deon was able to compile his code in under a minute and store it on a pocket hard drive. At that point, if you are still in the theater, it’s probably a good idea to remove your brain for the remainder of the film, especially the part later where Chappie uses a stack of a certain video game console to be a slave to a certain company’s laptop, to perform a certain feat of technological wizardry…(facepalm).

The real stars of the movie are the Character Designers and VFX folks who brought Chappie to life on screen, definitely great stuff there. The human side of things…well, not so much. There were flashes of potential, but in the end, the characters were all pretty much 1 dimensional puppets. The protagonist/antagonist relationship between Deon and Vincent is multi-layered with a project vs project / greed based competition on the surface, a bit deeper you have the Nerd / Alpha interaction, and then finally (and not so subtly) the Man/Tech vs God angle where the apparently ultra-religious Vincent finds Chappie to be an abomination that must be destroyed with zero consideration for the humans he kills in the process.  Sigourney Weaver has even less character than Jodie Foster from Elysium.

BOTTOM LINE:

The pacing of the movie is good, as the 120 mins flies by, but one can’t help but wonder if Blomkamp left critical character development on the cutting room floor in an effort to keep the film at 2 hrs.

Chappie is not the worst movie I have ever seen, I’m looking at you Open Windows (2014), but it is far, far, far from the quality of District 9 and Elysium. Hopefully this was just a stumble and that Blomkamp can recover with the new Alien film.

RATING:

6/10

Chappie_03072015

 

Captain Phillips

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I have to start out by saying that when I first saw the trailer for Captain Phillips, I could not have been less interested. It had Tom Hanks, it was about modern pirates, and it took place mostly on a big ship…it looked about as interesting as watching grass grow. As the Hollywood hype machine kicked into high gear, the trailers became more interesting and intense. I decided to keep an open mind and check it out, like with last week’s Gravity, and once again I was pleasantly surprised.

The script is fairly tight with only one area of annoyance, one that almost had me regretting my decision to catch the movie. The first five minutes shows the Captain and his wife having a conversation while driving to the airport. It felt so unnatural, so unbelievable, so stunted that I just wanted a FF button so I could get on with the movie. The rest of the film was filled with excellent/snappy dialog and a healthy mixture of scenery, so the viewer is not stuck looking at a boat for over 2 hours.

The pacing of the film was excellent as well, with tension filling the majority of the 134 min running time. At no time did I even consider checking my watch, which is definitely something with the modern “mega-films”. There was a sense of urgency for the multiple groups of interest in the story and it made for a riveting viewing experience. One thing that did feel missing in hindsight was a lack of reaction from the shipping company. The viewer got to see the result of their reaction, but there wasn’t a human element to it, no face to put to the response, but then again, that might have been then entire point.

The funny thing about this movie is that it got me thinking about a number of things.

My initial thought was about the oppression and desperation that must exist for these pirates. At one point a pirate tells Hanks that his last haul was for $6 mil and Hanks asks what the pirate is doing there then. I would imagine that $6 million in Somalia would be enough to live on for several generations, but rather than the “spoils” going to the pirates, they were kicked back to the warlords and bosses, I am guessing in exchange for continued living.

The second thing it got me thinking about is our military response to this event and how it would be different in a different situation. I am guessing that pirates taking over a family yacht would have gotten a lot less support from the government, than this giant corporation’s cargo ship.

Lastly I was thinking about the mission parameters given to the SEAL team. It fell in line with my thoughts on the actual response to situation. Had the situation been anything less than large corporate asset, I am guessing the mission parameters would have been drastically different.

So I left the theater thinking about what I had seen, definitely a good and surprising thing these days.

BOTTOM LINE:

A tight, tense drama about survival set on the high seas. Hanks turns in a great performance as the imperiled Captain Phillips, probably the best thing he has done in years. It’s not my pick for Best Picture, but I can see it heading into Oscar season on the list of contenders. If you are looking for a good movie with a dose of reality along the same lines as Argo and are not afraid to think, definitely check this out.

RATING:

8.5 / 10

Dario Argento’s Dracula

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When I saw that Dario Argento was doing a take on the Dracula story, I had high hopes. His past work had me hopping for a surreal, violent, and bloody movie…basically a “real” vampire tale. The trailer for it erased any notion of that actually happening as it had the look and feel of one of the Dracula movies from the 70s, namely: low production values, poor script, poor acting, and poor special effects.

I figured I had an idea of what I was getting into when I decided to watch it, simply put…I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There are so many things wrong with this film it is difficult to know where to start.

The script, written by Dario along with three other writers according to IMDB, is almost laughable. Throwaway conversations and scenes mixes with scenes that should have been thrown away. Dialog that will make you reach for a bottle or search for a wall to bang your head against…anything to ease the pain.

There was incredible acting, incredibly bad that is, but I guess you can only do so much with the lines you are given. One of the most laughable was the scene where Asia Argento’s character, Lucy is standing naked in the bath while Mina Harker washes her down and asks about the large puncture marks on the back of her leg. Lucy says something like “oh, that? It’s just an insect bite”, which is of course followed by a scene that has to be seen to be believed.

The effects are some of the worst I think I have seen in a “professional” film and rival some student effects reels. From the 3D town flythrough for the opening credits to the abysmal character effects, the audience will spend their time laughing or wondering how these types of effects are even possible in the modern age of cinema.

There is also a bit of a “creep factor” to the movie when you consider that Asia is Dario’s daughter and she spends the most time naked in the movie.

BOTTOM LINE:

This is not just a bad vampire movie, it is just plain bad. A Dracula film that brings nothing new to the table in terms of the story and fails to deliver a compelling vampire tale in general. If you are a fan of the Christopher Lee Dracula films of the 70s and “True Video” video games of the 90s, definitely check this out, but know what you are getting yourself into. Everyone else should bar their windows and put up the garlic.

RATING:

1 / 10

GRAVITY

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I have to admit, when I saw the first trailer for this all I could think was “Phonebooth in Space”…the trailers that followed did nothing to change my mind, but then I read an article on opening day where Alfonso Cuarón talked about how you can’t watch Gravity like a normal movie. The headline made me chuckle. I said to myself “If I need a director to tell me how to watch his movie then they are doing something wrong.” I continued reading and was amazed at how much credit he gives the viewer and their ability to “get” what is going on without being told outright “Holy shit, there’s a big flaming rock coming right for us!” or something along those lines as Hollywood has a habit of doing. Had it not been for that article, odds are I probably would have never seen Gravity and would have missed what is probably the best movie of the year and most likely the best movie about space that I have ever seen.

The story is about a group of astronauts that run into difficulty (to say the least) while undertaking a mission and the lengths they go to in order to survive and make it home.

The visuals are beyond amazing…and I am not usually a fan of 3D, but I believe that 3D (IMAX if possible) is the best way to see this picture. The 3D effects are subtle, but realistic and put you with the astronauts. The film doesn’t resort to cheap tricks to showcase the 3D, it just lets them happen naturally.

The camera work is great, allowing the viewer to pick up on little things as they occur with the director refusing to quick cut to important objects in order to lead the viewer by the nose and it is extremely refreshing.

Bullock and Clooney are a great match. It is great to see Bullock get away from the dingbat roles she has been playing as of late and she more than proves that she can hold down a dramatic lead. Hopefully she sticks with this as opposed to the mind-numbing comedies. Clooney, as always, is the boss…every scene he is in is rock solid.

Pacing and storytelling are fantastic, alternating between high action, calm, and building through high tension to more action…and for the first time in a loooooong time I was left wondering exactly how it all would end.

There is only one part of the movie that slightly bugged me and it was leading toward the finale (no spoilers), but upon reflection the scene definitely seems possible, if not totally plausible.

BOTTOM LINE:

Gravity proves that you don’t need 3+ hours to tell an epic tale. This is a fantastic movie that will perhaps be undone a bit by the mysterious ad campaign that preceded it, but hopefully the curious will spread the word as I am and get people into theaters to see this most excellent film. This, as it stands, is my movie of the year and I have a hard time imagining anything coming even close to topping it. Go see this movie.

RATING

9.8 / 10

RUSH

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A Hollywood retelling of an EPIC battle.

My history with Rush has had its ups and downs. When I heard that Ron Howard was doing an F1 film I was positive that it was going to be a waste of time and film considering his recent efforts…and then I saw the first trailer. When that first trailer ended I watched it again, several times in fact just to make sure it was real. One thing was certain, I HAD to see the movie.

The movie is the retelling of the epic battle for the 1976 F1 World Championship between James Hunt and Niki Lauda.

The movie is beautifully shot and I could watch the racing sequences on a loop. There is definitely something about the old F1 cars that the modern ones are missing, a sense of character perhaps. The film mixes slow motion with normal speed during the racing sequences to great effect and thankfully it is not overused.

The acting is top notch and the cast works exceptionally well together, especially the interaction between Hemsworth and Brühl, at least for most of the movie. There are definitely some scenes near the end where things get a bit over the top, but I would probably put the blame for that more on the script than the actors.

There is definitely a great deal of tension in the movie as the season and drama unfolds, but I imagine it would be less so for someone knowledgeable of the specifics of that season, but it is highly entertaining nonetheless.

While I enjoyed the film, I couldn’t help but feel it rang a bit untrue though, a bit hollow, but I can’t put my finger on why. It could be the high gloss of Hollywood, it could be how everything gets wrapped up neatly, or it could be some of the late movie speeches…something definitely is missing or out of place and as a result takes away from the film, but not so much as to destroy the overall enjoyment of the film.

BOTTOM LINE:

Rush is an enjoyable retelling of one of the most epic battles in F1 history. It looks great, sounds great and doesn’t rely on viewers knowing anything about the sport or the battle, but does come off feeling a bit “Hollywood”. Check it out.

RATING:

8.5 / 10

The Family – Completely Dysfunctional

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The trailer for this was amazing…it had action, comedy, and an awesome cast and crew. Sadly the trailer is the best part of the movie. It is another case where the trailer promises waaaaay more than the movie can deliver.

The story is that of a high level mob guy hiding out in Witness Protection with his family. The entire group has impulse control issues which of course leads to them being moved multiple times to keep them away from the hit squad hunting them down. An interesting if not terribly original story idea, but with Robert DeNiro and Tommy Lee Jones in front of the camera and Luc Besson and Martin Scorsese behind it, one would think there would be a hope of this being pulled off.

The resulting picture is a complete wreck. All of the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes, the story never really develops, leaving the viewer to guess at who DeNiro’s character is and what he knows, the pacing is horribly slow up until the end at which point everything ends up: rush, rush, rush…done, and the turning point is so utterly unbelievable that I almost walked out of the theater.

Only DeNiro and Dianna Agron seemed to be having any sort of fun in the picture; Tommy Lee Jones actually appeared to be in pain in every single scene he appeared in…and Michelle Pfeiffer…ooooof, so so so so over the top, more so than even Drea de Matteo in her Sopranos role.

BOTTOM LINE:

This is a movie with no spark, no life, no soul, and is 1 hr. 51 mins. that you will never get back. Big time pass.

RATING:

3 / 10

The World’s End

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The World’s End is the latest from the team that brought you Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and I can say right off it is funny and action packed.

The story is about a group of longtime friends reuniting to conquer an epic pub crawl from their youth. They find out quickly that you truly cannot go home again as their night explodes into chaos and they become involved in an epic adventure unlike anything they could imagine.

The cast is top notch and work extremely well together, much better than the group pulled together for Seth Rogen’s This is the End from earlier in the summer. Simon Pegg is beyond amazing as the guy that never seemed to grow up and appears content to live out his days as a teenager. He definitely has some of the best lines in the movie and the viewer is left watching and wondering what he is going to say next. The supporting cast of Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, and Rosamund Pike are a great balance for Pegg’s off the wall, almost manic character.

The story seems to be almost broken into two parts, but in the end it resolves into one distinct message, which is great because there was a very real risk of this thing going off the rails and never coming back.

The fight scenes are awesome and funny and yet feel a bit out of place and not very believable…hard to imagine that an entire sleepy British town is made up of professional martial artists, but it is definitely fun to watch.

Overall it feels a bit like modern movie made in the style of the classic 80s flicks, a mythic quest with a dash of martial arts thrown in for good measure.

One thing that made me chuckle is the last names of the main characters (Gary King, Andy Knightly, Steven Prince, Oliver Chamberlain, and Peter Page) are all based on medieval titles and positions.

BOTTOM LINE:

The World’s End is hands down one of the most entertaining films of the summer. Solid cast, great and quirky dialog, and tight pacing make this definitely one to check out. I would go so far as to call it an instant classic. Check it out!

RATING:

9 / 10