Tomorrowland, White God, Tangerines, and Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! Reviews

Tomorrowland

Dir. Brad Bird

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Tomorrowland, like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion before it, is based on a Disney World theme park attraction. However, unlike those films, "Tomorrowland" isn't a ride with some semblance of a "story," it's just the name of a section of the park with lots of shiny futuristic space ship paraphernalia. So how the heck did Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ghost Protocol) and writer Damon Lindelof (Lost, Prometheus) even go about this? Well, besides borrowing the "Disneyland" aesthetic, their ambitions were certainly lofty: Tomorrowland is no less than a call-to-arms to end cynicism and make the future a better, brighter, the-opposite-of-Mad Max wheat field of joy. But while I appreciate the message, and the retro-futuristic design of the effects, Tomorrowland is a complete mess story-wise. 

Mad Max Fury Road, Pitch Perfect 2, Wild Tales Reviews

Mad Max: Fury Road

Dir. George Miller

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In 1979 George Miller created Mad Max, introducing us to a fresh-faced Mel Gibson and creating a new kind of post-apocalyptic world on a shoestring budget. In 1981 Miller upped the ante with its sequel The Road Warrior and crafted some of the best car-based action scenes ever. But in 1985, Miller dropped the ball and made Beyond Thunderdome. Tina Turner, a dumb prophecy plot, and a bunch of children following Max effectively turning the film into Hook-in-the-desert: the movie was a major disappointment. So much so that it took 30 years to get to Mad Max Fury Road. But holy mother of GOD was it worth the wait. Fury Road feels like Miller, possibly regretful about how Thunderdome turned out and having done a number of family films like Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet, just let every bit of repressed fuel-soaked rip-roaring sun-drenched wasteland fantasy pour out of his head and onto the screen. This movie is everything a gritty action movie should be: almost entirely shot with practical effects (with limited CGI), actors who do their own stunts, a world that feels believably fleshed out, characters that have a purpose to the story and bring a layer of depth through mostly physical performances, and probably some of the best road rage action I've ever seen.

Avengers: Age of Ultron, Unfriended, Ex Machina, Timbuktu Reviews

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Dir. Joss Whedon

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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.

Summer 2015 Box Office Predictions

Hulk...want...your money...

Summer is here, so you know what that means: tan lines and air conditioners. And also, of course, my predictions for this season's box office. This year was particularly difficult with a number of films that are teeter-tottering on the edge of being either complete bombs or surprise hits (Mad Max, Tomorrowland), and there's really just no telling what will happen!

Furious 7, It Follows, Maps to the Stars Reviews

Furious 7

Dir. James Wan

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Above all, the Fast and Furious series focuses on the theme of family - I'd argue even over the cars. While the films are extremely stupid, totally illogical, badly acted, and shamelessly panders to its audience, its central cast somehow works well together, and the characters' loyalty to each other (and the hilariously bonkers physics of the car chases), is what holds them all together. When Paul Walker tragically died in 2013 midway through shooting Furious 7, it was unclear exactly how the series would proceed. Ultimately it was decided that instead of re-shooting and re-writing the story to exclude Walker, director James Wan (and Universal) made the difficult decision to keep his character in, splicing in a combination of CGI, unused footage from other films, Walker's brother as a body double, and some re-writes to finish the picture. With all the complications behind the scenes, and with Wan, both a newcomer to the franchise and new to big budget action movies, I was pretty worried this would be a complete disaster. Happily, I can report that Furious 7 doesn't suffer from any issues not already present with the series, and overall is just as loud, dumb, and shut-your-brain-down fun as the last few movies.

Chappie, Force Majeure, Leviathan, Mommy Reviews

Chappie

Dir. Neill Blomkamp

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Following his innovative, action-packed sci-fi apartheid-metaphor movie District 9, Neill Blomkamp disappointed many of us last summer with the lackluster Elysium, a film with an amazing premise, that the rich had fled the planet for a Halo-like spacecraft while the poor stayed on Earth, but was a mess on execution. Chappie marks yet another return to this kind of heavy sci-fi, "slum world" of Blomkamp's, and to be honest I was more expecting a repeat disappointment like Elysium. But despite its status among other critics, I actually ended up loving this movie. It's overloaded with themes (ideas about consciousness, the soul, survival, ego, business, etc), has a number of scenes that stretch believability, and some might be turned off by its close relation to other films (namely Robocop), but none of those things took away from the heart of story for me - the actual titular robot, Chappie.

Kingsman, Still Alice, Song of the Sea, Mr. Turner Reviews

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Dir. Matthew Vaughn

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In the classic action movie Men in Black, an older, experienced white professional man takes on a younger, hotheaded protege with a streetwise attitude, bringing him through secret training in an underground facility to test his defensive skills and class-up his wardrobe. This is almost the same exact plot structure of Kingsman, only it deals with spies instead of aliens - and Men in Black was actually well-made and entertaining. Kingsman is unfunny, cringeworthy, misogynistic, boring, and cliched. It wears its influences on its sleeve (James Bond is the obvious example), but doesn't cleverly deconstruct the genre in any way, it simply references better movies to sound smart and "meta" while being more or less a masturbatory, "dumb" action exercise for Matthew Vaughn.