Reviews

Lo and behold, we have a good DC Universe movie! I despise Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad. Hate them. Loathe them. I named Suicide Squad the worst movie of 2016 and would have done the same for Man of Steel had I been doing such lists that year. But there was one sliver of hope in Batman v Superman and that was, ironically, Wonder Woman. There was a brief moment at the end of that film that I actually enjoyed. It was when Wonder Woman finally showed up in costume and the so-called superhero trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman stood side-by-side. It was a moment that I had waited to see since I was a kid and, for a brief moment, I felt like a kid and had a huge smile on my face. Then the movie continued and I resumed hating the world. But I kept a small hope that a Wonder Woman movie could get this trainwreck back on track. And this movie mostly delivers on that hope. Mostly.

This is an origin story and I usually don't like origin stories. But, considering it has taken such a ridiculously long time for Wonder Woman to get her own movie, I suppose she deserves it. We begin on the hidden island of Themyscira, where Wonder Woman is growing up and training among her fellow Amazons. Hidden from the rest of the world and training for the eventual return of Aries, the God of War, all goes well until a British spy named Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine) crashes into the island. Wonder Woman hears of the ongoing World War happening beyond the island and insists that Aries must be the cause of it. She accompanies Trevor to the outside world with the intent of going to the front line and combating Aries. The film takes a lot of liberties with the source material, but I am okay with that when the changes work in the context of the film. For example, I love the Burton and Nolan Batman movies and they take massive liberties. While this isn't quite as good as those, it is good enough for me to give it a pass.

Most of this movie works really well. Wonder Woman looks perfect and, unlike most other characters in these movies, actually acts like her comic book counterpart. Both Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are great and their chemistry together is strong. Even the usually cringe-worthy fish-out-of-sea jokes work here primarily because Gadot and Pine work really well together. I laughed at several moments that could have felt forced and cheesy in other films. The musical score is excellent and Wonder Woman's theme perfectly embodies the character. The supporting characters are generally strong as are the action scenes. There is one sequence that deserves special mention: The No Man's Land Sequence. This is when Wonder Woman, seeing the brutality of war, has her screw-this moment. Emerging from a trench, she storms into No Man's Land (symbolism!) on her own, charges the German trench, kicks the living crap out of everything in sight and single-handedly frees an occupied village. It is a perfect summary of the empathy-fueled rage of the character. For anyone that has been wanting to see Wonder Woman on the big screen, this sequence alone is worth the price of admission.

So this movie is about 80% awesome and I was ready to write a completely glowing review. Then the last 20 minutes happened. Be warned, there be spoilers ahead….Wonder Woman spends the whole film convinced that Aries is behind the war. I spent the entire movie hoping that she was wrong and she would have to learn that humans can just be awful without any sort of evil influence. Sadly, that doesn't happen and Aries is behind it all. This leads to a massive, CGI-filled battle that feels like it is from a completely different movie than the preceding 2 hours. The tonal shift is jarring and feels like the result of a note from studio executives saying "we need more stuff to blow up!!" It's dumb and betrays what the rest of the film establishes. If I had written the film (and Warner Bros., please call me; I can help), this film would have been 20 minutes shorter and ended on a more somber note. But, no, we need to have a CGI monster to fight because, damn it, that's how these movies are supposed to end. Disappointing.

Aside from that gripe, this is quite good and I recommend seeing it in theaters. I own thousands of DC comics and it is a huge relief for me that this is actually a solid movie. But, don't worry. The Justice League movie is right around the corner, so Affleck and company are once again poised to steal my Wonder Woman-inspired happiness and convert it back into seething hate. So, I have that going for me. Which is nice.

I am continually baffled by the popularity of this series. It's not that I don't like dumb action movies. If you want to run a marathon of c-grade Van Damme and Seagal movies, I'm in. I'll bring the beer and we'll have ourselves a night. The problem here is that the characters in these films are the worst humans on the planet outside of terrorists. These are the people that pull into the bar parking lot doing 80mph in 10-year-old BMWs, order a round of Fireball shots, put $50 of worth of Drake on the jukebox and ask the bartender to crank it while everyone else in there is trying to watch a ballgame. These characters are the dregs of society and I got tired of their nonsense five movies ago. And yet here I am reviewing part 8. Because I'm an idiot.

Anyhoo, when we last left the gang they had crashed some cars in an unlikely fashion and Vin Diesel mumbled some hackneyed crap about family. Picking up from that cliffhanger, we find that Dom (Vin Diesel) is now being blackmailed into turning on his friends by a hacker named Cipher. No, really, her freaking name is Cipher. So, Mr. Nobody (tragically played by Kurt Russell, who deserves better) brings together Dom's old team to stop Dom and Cipher before they gain control of a nuke. Did Dom really turn on everyone? Is the old gang really being torn apart? Were you dropped on your head repeatedly as a child? If the answer to the last question was "no," then there is likely little suspense to be gained from the first two questions.

These movies don't really lend themselves to coherent analysis, as they are mainly excuses to put good-looking people in stupid action sequences while occasionally yelling something inane for the trailers. As such, I just have a few random thoughts. First, these movies actually became more entertaining when they introduced The Rock and Jason Statham, which is likely because they have more charisma than any of the original cast. Unfortunately, they are sidelined for much of this entry and we are left with the nonexistent suspense of Dom's story for much of the running time. That makes this far less entertaining (and I use that word loosely) than the last couple of movies. Second, the movie doesn't even have as many extravagant action scenes as the last couple of films. As dumb as Furious 7 was, it at least through increasingly preposterous action sequences at you constantly. That distracted the audience from the plot, which was a good idea. With fewer distractions, one has more time to think about things and that is not a luxury with this series. Finally, this movie has an almost adorably quaint concept of hacking. Cipher (seriously, her name is Cipher) can literally hack any machine on the planet with a few keystrokes. I wondered if the producers went back to 1995, grabbed the guy that wrote Hackers and asked him to write this script without any updates about how this stuff actually works. They should have just cast Angelina Jolie and made her the same character from Hackers. I at least would have gotten a laugh out of that.

I don't like this series, but this may be the worst one of the bunch. The action scenes are surprisingly dull, the characters are awful and the writers seem to have even stopped trying. I just wanted it to end. Dear god, did I want it to end. But don't you worry, Fast & Furious fans. Parts 9 and 10 already have release dates set. So do some exhaust work to your Jettas, blast some Chance the Rapper tunes and your heroes will be back before you know it. I need a drink.

Wow. I don't even know where to start with this trainwreck. King Arthur is one of those classic stories (like Robin Hood or Zorro or Tarzan) that Hollywood likes to dust off every decade or so, spend an ungodly amount of money on it and then promptly regret it. There have been many King Arthur movies over the years, but this one is something special. This movie is hilarious. I laughed so hard that I cried at one point. The problem, of course, is that this isn't a comedy. But I haven't laughed this hard at the movies since Crimson Peak (note: also not a comedy).

This adaptation (and I use that term pretty damn loosely) begins with Camelot under siege by the evil wizard Mordred who controls evil elephants the size of skyscrapers (elephants, of course, being native to medieval England). Arthur is a child at this point and witnesses his father's death at the hands of his uncle, who was secretly conspiring with Mordred (I think). Arthur gets away and is brought up in poverty until he eventually pulls the sword from the stone and begins a quest to retake the kingdom. Even if you only have a passing knowledge of the Arthur legend, you may have noticed that I didn't mention a few key characters. Characters like oh, I don't know, freaking Merlin. And Lancelot. And Guenevere. And Morgana. Aside from a brief mention of Merlin, none of them are in this movie. That would be like remaking Star Wars and not mentioning Han Solo, Darth Vader, Princess Leia or the force. Maybe they were saving them for the sequel, which we sure as hell aren't getting. It is one thing to take liberties with a story that has been told a million times. It is another thing to leave out the main characters.

Let's talk about the editing in this film. One of my core beliefs with film editing is that the audience should be able to tell what order the scenes should go in. This movie somehow manages to fail that criterion. Scenes are interspliced with preceding scenes so that you are simultaneously watching an action scene and the scene in which the characters are planning what to do in the action scene. Did that sound confusing? Try watching it. I often didn't know if a scene was taking place in the immediate past, present or immediate future or if it was a dream or a hallucination. There is one scene that I still can't figure out when it was supposed to take place. That is an almost stunning failure of basic narrative structure. Additionally, large patches of time are covered in montage sequences. Arthur's entire upbringing and a sequence when he is dropped off on Kong Island to fight monsters to make him stronger (or something) are glossed over in about two minutes of quick-cut scenes. Word around the interwebs is that the film's original cut clocked in at a mighty excessive 3 and ½ hours and their solution to this was to edit entire groups of scenes together into these montages to get the movie down to 2 hours. If you make a 3 and ½ hour fantasy epic, then release that and put an intermission in the middle. Don't butcher it and make me pay full price for a nearly incomprehensible Cliff's Notes version of the damn thing.

Also, Excalibur has been upgraded in this film and can now turn Arthur into The Flash. When wielding the sword, he seems to slow down time and can casually mow down dozens of people single- handedly. Why doesn't he just do that all the time, then? Good question. Even in the final battle with the big bad (who looks suspiciously like Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat), he completely forgets that he could end the fight in 2 seconds. The only conflict or suspense in this film only exist because the hero conveniently forgets that he has super powers. Similarly, he has a female wizard friend (let's call her Not-Merlin) that can control animals. She spends the whole movie controlling birds and dogs and whatnot, until the end when she suddenly summons a snake the size of the freaking Lincoln Tunnel that decimates a room full of bad guys. Dumbass, why didn't you do that in the first place? If I was Arthur, I would ask Not-Merlin why she has been screwing around this whole time when her death serpent could have solved all of this before the opening credits ended. Movie, if you are going to give such powers to your characters, you also have to give reasons why they can't just solve all their problems with such powers. Otherwise, you have failed.

This movie is a perfect storm of modern cinematic crap. It's too dark (both literally and figuratively), it's terribly edited, it has awful CGI that reduces every threat to a video game character and it sacrifices character and story in favor of flashy nonsense that insults the audience's intelligence. If you want to watch a King Arthur movie, I highly recommend watching Excalibur from 1981. It's not a perfect film, but it's a hell of a lot better than this pile of crap.

The original Alien is one of the greatest horror films ever made. Aliens is one of the best sequels ever made. Then they made more movies that ranged from awful to merely forgettable. Alien: Covenant falls into the merely forgettable category. It is not a bad movie. But considering that the idea of Ridley Scott making a new Alien movie was merely a fanboy pipedream for decades, mediocrity is a colossal disappointment.

Covenant is a sequel to Prometheus and a prequel to Alien (got that?). Oddly enough, it manages to be a sequel to Prometheus without directly following up on the events of that film and a prequel to Alien without directly leading into the events of that film. Prometheus ended with Shaw and David heading off to the Engineers' home planet to finally ask of our creators the timeless question that lies at the core of humanity's very existence: WTF? We don't get that movie. We get a brief flashback explaining that David killed the Engineers by using their own bio weapons against them, then took up residence on another planet and has been playing mad scientist for the last decade or so. He lures a ship to his planet with a distress signal and then murderous hijinks ensue. In many ways, this reminds me of Alien 3. Important characters and plot threads are disposed of off-camera before the movie begins and then it essentially dives into an inferior remake of the original movie. It is like a fan fiction side-story that somehow became a real film.

Odd story choices aside, the underlying problem here is that I just don't care. Not once while watching Alien did I wonder where these things come from. I knew that it was a killer alien and I never really needed additional information. Scott has created an entire series of films to answer questions that I never asked in the first place. Despite its flaws, I enjoyed Prometheus largely because it managed to be a prequel to Alien while still doing its own thing. I feel like a more interesting movie took place between Prometheus and this movie, but Scott listened too much to audience criticisms of Prometheus and decided to instead just give us an Alien rehash. Additionally, it does more to confuse the timeline than clarify it. At the end of Prometheus, I could have filled in the blanks and drawn a dotted line from the end of that movie to the beginning of Alien. This movie takes that dotted line on a meandering detour and the mysterious transmission to the Nostromo that kicks off Alien doesn't seem to be getting much closer. All of this explanation and backstory does nothing but demystify the aliens and the events of the original movie (assuming that we ever get to those events).

Speaking of demystifying the aliens, the special effects in this movie are awful. If you regularly read my reviews (which I appreciate), you know that I don't like computer effects. I really don't like computer effects in horror films. I really, really don't like computer effects in sequels/prequels to horror films that are considered landmark accomplishments in special effects. The creature design and effects in the original Alien are among the best ever, and the computerized versions of them just look like cheap imitations that are unworthy of the original's legacy. But, you say, the computer effects allow for more range and mobility. Yeah, that's part of the problem. Much of the suspense of the first film is derived from the characters being stuck in dark, confined spaces with a monster lurking in the shadows. In this movie, the thing is out running and jumping all nimbly-bimbly like in broad daylight. It looks fake, it looks silly and it drains any sense of dread or mystery from the creature.

As a standalone film, this isn't terrible. But it pales in comparison to the first two movies and, in the context of the series, just feels unnecessary. If you aren't a horror nerd like me, you probably won't have an attachment to the material that will prevent you from enjoying it as just a decent horror movie that will kill two hours. But if you haven't seen Alien or Aliens, you need to stay home and watch those classics instead.

I don't even know what this movie is. I expected it to be a thriller based on the trailers, but that isn't really accurate. There isn't any suspense or a central conflict or really even a villain. It doesn't have enough of a perspective to be a satire. I guess it's a drama, though it isn't particularly dramatic. Watching this movie may have been one of the most bland, emotionless experiences of my life. It is the kind of movie that I can barely muster the energy to discuss, though I must do so before I completely forget that it exists. Based on the fact that it took me my whole drive to work this morning to remember how it ended, the clock is definitely ticking.

Emma Watson plays a young customer service rep named Mae that gets hired at a social media company called The Circle that is run by Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt. The company seems intent on putting miniature cameras all over the world to create a completely linked, transparent society. The legal and logistical problems with this are never addressed, so let's just go with it. Mae then volunteers to be the first person to wear one of these cameras 24/7. Then some stuff happens and eventually it ends. None of the stuff is linked together in a way that would assemble a meaningful plot, so I don't know what to tell you.

There is no arc or structure to this film. Stuff just happens without consequence or meaning. Mae sometimes seems to be ethically offended by the company, but then she will do things like volunteer to wear the camera and suggest that the website be required by the government and used for voter registration. The villains aren't really villains, they are just the dudes running the company. They don't do anything more evil than any real-life social media executives do. If Tom Hanks is meant to be villainous, then that is some awful casting because the guy is just too damn likable. Tom Hanks could set me on fire and I would still want to grab a beer with him if I survived. Mae's ex-boyfriend (I think) seems to hate social media (never explained why) and spends his time in a log cabin hunting deer. The website members chase him down to put him online, causing him to drive off a bridge and die (there are no consequences to this). Mae's friend (played by Karen Gillan, also known as the blue girl in Guardians of the Galaxy) looks increasingly depressed and strung out as the movie goes along, but I'm not sure why. Is she jealous? Is she having an ethical dilemma? Did Taco Bell remove her favorite menu item? Could somebody please ask this girl what's wrong? She seems troubled. Am I rambling? That happens when you discuss movies without any sense of narrative structure.

The movie doesn't even seem to have a stance on its own subject matter. The main character can't decide if what she's doing is right or wrong. The company executives have their secret email accounts brought public by Mae at the end, but I have no idea what's in those emails or if there is anything incriminating. The company still exists at the end. The last scene is Mae smiling when she is swimming and sees drones flying around her. Why the hell is she smiling? Is she against this or for it? Did anything bad come of the emails? Is there a single repercussion to anything that happened? Why the hell does this movie exist?

I spent much of this film with my mind wandering. I wondered if I should try fishing. I wondered what the difference is between jelly and jam. My mind desperately tried to give me something to focus on other that the coma-inducing film on screen. This is the kind of movie that didn't even make me angry. When it ended, I was just left scratching my head and questioning my choices in life. Oh, and apparently it features the last performance by Bill Paxton. That dude deserved better.

What the hell is Phoenix Forgotten, you ask? Well, dear reader, that is a great question. I had never heard of this movie until it appeared on the release schedule a couple of weeks ago. I never saw a single trailer or commercial for it. It features a cast of unknowns, is from a first-time director (Justin Barber) and was even released from a first-time distributor (Cinelou Films). Yet somehow, this pile of nonsense was given a nationwide theatrical release and, according to the arbitrary rules that I've established for myself, that means that I have to be the one person that goes to see it. You're welcome.

Phoenix Forgotten is a found-footage movie inspired by the real-life sighting of a UFO flying over Phoenix in 1997. Following the sighting, three teenagers suspect that something strange is afoot, so they grab some hand-held cameras and head into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland to investig-……sorry, wrong movie. They grab some cameras and head into the desert to investigate. After wandering around for an eternity or so, they start to see and hear strange things, they get lost, their compass stops working and they start to realize that there really is a witch in the woo-…. sorry, wrong movie again. They start to realize that there really are aliens in the desert. This footage is mixed with documentary footage, set in the present day, of the sister of one of the kids trying to investigate their disappearance. The sister's story literally goes nowhere; the movie doesn't even return to her after the 1997 footage ends. I'm not a betting man, but I would wager that the original intent was for the footage of the three kids to be the entire movie and the filmmakers added the sister when they realized they didn't have enough material for a feature-length movie.

Nothing happens in this movie. Nothing. I mentioned that the sister's entire subplot is just filler to pad the running time, but not a damn thing happens for most of the 1997 footage either. It's like your most boring friends are forcing you to watch home videos of a hiking trip that they took, but the sadistic bastards rented a movie theater for the ordeal. As a found footage movie, we know how this is going to end. It will end the same way all these goddamn things end. The camera will get real shaky, there will be some loud noises, the camera will fall to the ground and text will appear saying that the characters were never seen again. I spent what felt like an eternity watching these jackwagons wander around the desert waiting for an ending that is more inevitable than the last act of Titanic. I checked the running time as I left the theater and couldn't believe that it is only 87 minutes. I thought I was in there for hours. I expected the sun to be rising and giving me the finger as it rose above the horizon. But, no. Time just stood still for me as I experienced the horror of sitting through this.

This movie feels like a film student's senior thesis that was accidentally released to theaters. When this is available on demand/Netflix (which should be in a few hours or so), I challenge you to lay down, put this on and try to make it to the end of the movie without falling asleep. There are no other rules to this game. You can make a pot of coffee using Red Bull instead of water and substitute cocaine for sugar if you want. I bet that you will still fail. If you succeed, your reward will be losing 87 minutes of your life that you will never get back. Good luck!