Avengers: Age of Ultron
Dir. Joss Whedon
The first Avengers film grossed over $1.5 billion dollars worldwide, becoming the third-highest grossing film ever (behind Titanic and Avatar) and had the single highest opening weekend in North America. It was huge. So naturally, the industry went haywire trying to figure out how to repeat this success, and here we are now drowning in superhero movies. It was bad before, but at this point it's reached critical mass, with Marvel and DC planning films out to nearly a decade in advance! Although I consider myself a fan of the genre, I'm growing extremely weary of it at this point, and after watching Age of Ultron, I've never felt closer to the superhero bubble bursting.
Although the acting talent is wonderful, and there are some nice little "Whedon-isms" throughout, this movie has barely any room to breathe, and feels too much like a set-up for future Marvel films, I'd argue even more so than Iron Man 2; no Marvel fan will admit this though! The movie starts out with an extended action scene that was well choreographed, but just felt like a giant CGI clusterfuck with no weight to the characters. It feels like watching a video game cutscene. Many plot points begin and remain unresolved for future movies (there's a decent chunk of the film in Africa that has no bearing to the plot other than to sow the seeds for Black Panther), and it feels like the film is trying way too hard to connect the dots between every single Marvel character ever introduced - including the sidekicks like Falcon and War Machine. Probably the single scene in the entire film I wholeheartedly enjoyed was the only one that kept things "real": the Avengers are simply hanging out together at Stark's pad and try to lift Thor's hammer as a party game. We actually get to see the characters riff off each other in a natural way that doesn't feel like they're speaking in catchphrases or huge-stakes rabbling.
Maybe this just isn't for me. I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier for its tactile feel and political undertones, and I loved Guardians of the Galaxy for its humor and visual design, but Age of Ultron feels like a mindless Saturday morning cartoon to me. Its humor feels forced, the action isn't really that exciting for me because it has that ultra-clean computer-generated look to it, and the characters, though really well handled by Joss Whedon, are so plentiful and divided up equally that none of them end up feeling totally fleshed out. I know I'm in the minority here, but I just don't get why The Avengers continually gets a pass from everyone.
Rating: C+
Unfriended
Dir. Levan Gabriadze
Unfriended has one of the most unique concepts for a "found footage" movie I've ever seen; the entire film takes place on a computer screen, with the characters implementing apps like Skype, Facebook, Youtube, and more to tell its story and ratchet up the tension. It's such a brilliant conceit, and one with a ton of potential, but Unfriended, though getting the "computer" stuff right on the money, is a disastrous, unintentionally funny pile of dog doo.
The film is about a group of teenagers on a group Skype chat, with Blaire Lily (Shelley Hellig) as the lead girl. It's been one year since Blaire's BFF committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied following her drunken exploits posted on YouTube. And now, her ghost has hacked into the Skype chat, and starts to torment, harass, even...KILL off these teens one by one, as this "ghost" coerces them into airing their dirty laundry in front of everyone.
The characters in this film are so stupid it will make you cringe. The movie devolves from an intriguing murder mystery to a Skype call version of Jerry Springer, with the teen characters left alive all shouting various "gotcha" moments at each other ("you slept with so-and-so?!" "I can't believe you cheated on her with so-and-so!"). I think if the filmmakers made the film feel a little more plausible it could have been the next Paranormal Activity, which smartly kept the scares very minimal (all it took was a creaking door for that movie to scare you, not a fat kid shoving his hand into a blender - less is more, guys!). The truth is, it's not scary at all. It's a dumb teen slasher movie told in a unique way, yes, but it's still dumber than a bag of rocks.
Rating: C
Ex Machina
Dir. Alex Garland
Alex Garland may be a first time director, but his writing work on Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and Sunshine definitely gave me high hopes for Ex-Machina, a story about a computer tech nerd wrapped up in a strange experiment involving an Artificially Intelligent robot. Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a young, ambitious programer chosen via lottery by the company's mysterious CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), to travel to his remote high-tech house in the mountains for a secret project. The project is a fully functional humanoid AI named Ava (Alicia Vikander), and Caleb is tasked with simply figuring out whether or not she passes the 'Turing Test,' which uncovers whether a being is just AI or a truly sentient thinker...or is it Caleb who is being tested? This single-location sci-fi film has all sorts of twists and turns, fantastic acting from all three leads, and lest I forget some interesting facial hair going on with Oscar Isaac. Ex Machina is definitely one of my favorite films so far this year!
Although this is a relatively small movie, the CGI is fantastic, along with its overall look and tone. It's like if Chappie was shot by the cinematographer of The Social Network. The way the film builds tension, and plays with audience expectations is amazing, and I really felt like I was in the hands of a Hitchcockian master behind the camera, bringing me along this journey. It's hard to review a film like this without spoilers, but I loved this movie, even though there were a few moments here and there that felt just a hair too convenient (I'll just say it's a little convenient that Nathan happens to be an alcoholic). Still, I totally recommend this to any serious sci-fi fan; it may be a little slow for action junkies getting high off mindless Avengers movies, but Garland proves himself a director to watch out for.
Rating: A
Timbuktu
Dir. Abderrahmane Sissako
Watch Trailer
I saw this one like three weeks ago, so I apologize if my memory is hazy! But Timbuktu was recently nominated for Best Foreign Feature at the Oscars; it's basically a very fly-on-the-wall poetic film that explores the immediate effects of the infiltration of ISIL soldiers in a small city. The film shows firsthand just how absurd and insidious these fundamentalists are; in one scene a soldier catches a group of people singing, which is against Sharia law, but they are singing the praises of Allah, so he phones his superior to ask what to do. Girls are forcibly taken from their families to be married off to much older men, and any small offense can lead to lashings and stonings. It's just a sad state of affairs.
The cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful, with a Terrence Malick-level sense of composition, but there's also a Malick-level of pacing. Timbuktu can be painfully slow at times, but I appreciated the sense I got of these people's lives; I felt like I was transported to another world (a different, scarier, harder world), even though this stuff is going on right now. The way the film uses the different languages of the area to show clashes within communities was also very interesting. Overall, I really liked the film, but even at a short 96 minutes it felt pretty long.
Rating: B
No comments:
Post a Comment