Films – Page 38 – Spinning Platters

Film Review: Assassin’s Creed

The long wait for a good video game adaptation continues.

Atop a perch, the assassins wait to figure out what the heck is happening.

Callum Lynch sits in the mess hall of a secret lab, having just been ported into the memories of a master assassin, his ancestor. He holds an apple firmly in his hand and says, “what the fuck is happening?” Mr. Lynch, you took the words right out of my mouth! His question is one I felt throughout at least 4/5 of the new adaptation of the popular Ubisoft video game series, Assassin’s Creed. There has never been a good video game adaptation (see the list here for proof). There have been entertaining tries and near misses, like the Resident Evil series and Prince of Persia, and there have been lousy ones that have aged into cult classics, like Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter. There has yet to be a universally respected video game adaptation — a film that both audiences and critics enjoy. Some thought the drought would end with Prince of Persia. Nope! Some thought it would be Assassin’s Creed. Nope! The wait continues. Maybe it’ll be the new Tomb Raider film, ’cause it ain’t gonna be the Rampage film, and likely not the final Resident Evil installment. Nevertheless, Assassin’s Creed is a total mess, lacking a coherent story, engaging characters, and even the visuals are disappointing, which is a bummer coming from such a beautifully cinematic game series.

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Film Review: Passengers

Half male fantasy, half space actioner, all catastrophic.

Pratt and Lawrence fulfill their space fantasies.

Bro, imagine you have your own giant resort space ship and you can do whatever you want, right!? Now imagine you get this hot chick with you and then you both get to do whatever you want. WHATEVER. YOU. WANT! How sweet would that be?! Okay, so this stupid male fantasy is the basic premise for the blundering sci-fi actioner, Passengers. It’s all visuals and little substance, complete with mega plot holes and one silly occurrence after another. Passengers isn’t without its thought-provoking moments however (not to be confused with head-scratching moments), it just decides to pass them by and not look back, wasting the charisma of its two talented leads.

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Film Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Star Wars goes rogue and leaves strong character development behind.

rogue-one-gallery40_8c244519 — When Felicity Jones goes rogue, we all go rogue.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the fifth best Star Wars film! Now that I’ve gotten my controversial statement out of the way, let’s continue. We can have the ranking argument later. For now, let’s just concentrate on what’s good and what’s not so good about the first ‘standalone’ Star Wars film, aka the first one to focus a story outside of the Skywalker saga. Except, it’s not exactly a standalone film, nor is it completely focused outside the aforementioned Skywalker saga. In fact, its central storyline comes from the iconic opening crawl that begins the original 1977 Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope. Thus, the odds were always stacked against Rogue One. After all, its story is one in which we, more or less, know the fate of the central characters. So how can a film make us care for characters when we already know how their fates will be sealed? Well, in the hands of director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla), Rogue One is full of impressive visuals and gripping action and just enough interesting characters to get by. There are easter eggs and callbacks aplenty in Rogue One to fully satisfy traditionalist and hardcore Star Wars fans, and enough stylistic changes to fulfill Disney’s initial attempt to launch a series of films meant to explore the expanded Star Wars universe in a way that is new but familiar. Rogue One is far from perfect, but it’s a fantastic movie-watching experience thanks to its exhilarating war movie feel and robust scope.

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Film Review: Collateral Beauty

Collateral Beauty is steeped in laughable melodrama, and not much else.

Will Smith and Edward Norton aren't too happy about anything. — Will Smith and Edward Norton aren’t too happy about anything.

Collateral Beauty could’ve been a great comedy. I have an untested and non-researched theory that ensemble casts are always better suited for comedies, and not dramas. Having numerous A-list stars in a film means that the story will attempt to give each one of them ample time for their characters to develop, change, and come to a satisfying conclusion. You don’t require those per-character time commitments in a comedy, and therefore ensemble dramas suffer from an abundance of promise and not enough deliverables. There are many other things that went wrong for Collateral Beauty. It’s a bad movie, for one. It’s an embarrassing script that somehow made it to the desks of Hollywood execs, who in turn should be embarrassed that they green lit the project. With a total overhaul of the story and characters, the film could’ve and should’ve been a hilarious new spin on the classic Christmas Carol story. Instead, Collateral Beauty is a plodding, preachy, melodramatic piece of manipulative filth. The more I think about it, the more I’m mad at myself for initially thinking that a few scenes were acceptable to watch.

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Film Review: Miss Sloane

Dark look at American politics also a top notch thriller

An emotionally fragile Esme (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, l.) is coached by her unflappable mentor and boss Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain).

When a line is repeated more than once in a film – especially in a film that is a high stakes political thriller – you know the screenwriter is giving you a clue to the film’s secrets. So when ruthless political lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane (a fierce Jessica Chastain) tells us that “lobbying is about foresight, about anticipating your opponent’s moves, and devising counter measures…. It’s about making sure you surprise them, and they don’t surprise you,” take it to heart as you study the machinations of the dueling lobbyists in Miss Sloane, director John Madden’s smart, absorbing new drama.
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Film Review: Jackie

Jackie isn’t a normal biopic, allowing for a deeper understanding of its subject.

Natalie/Jackie gives us a tour of the White House

It’s only due to my familiarity with Natalie Portman, having seen so many of her films, contrasted with Jackie Kennedy’s unique accent and vocal delivery, that it took me a few scenes to grow accustomed to Portman’s version of the former first lady’s speaking style and mannerisms. At first the attempt sounds forced and peculiar, but then again (and you should do some quick YouTube research), so did Jackie’s actual voice. Overall, Portman does an excellent job, with her imitation utilized to great effect. There’s also very impressive art direction by White House production set veteran Halina Gebarowicz (House of Cards and Veep), an impactful and memorable film score by Mica Levi (Under the Skin), and sensible editing to keep Jackie to-the-point and flowing. But we’ll get to all of that a bit later. Jackie isn’t your normal biopic. Rather than a sweeping account spanning decades covering her upbringing, political life, the JFK assassination, and her life after, the film focuses solely on the assassination, including the days before and after it. It’s a risky move that completely pays off.

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Film Review: Office Christmas Party

This party is less than the sum of its party-goers.

OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY

Office Christmas Party must’ve been conceived when the six writers credited with the story and screenplay (red flag!) compiled a list of “Crazy sh-t that can happen at a Christmas Party!” Unfortunately, they then attempted to create a plot to surround the list of items in order to package all of it into a film. A better idea would’ve been to integrate the items directly into the story — like, say, having the main characters do these crazy things in order to advance the story. Nope. Thus, Office Christmas Party is a raunchy, foul-mouthed, sometimes funny holiday R-rated comedy that doesn’t fully utilize the amazing comedic chops of its extensive cast. It fights for laughs and prefers to show us an assortment of inconsequential montages of crazy party antics. They’re fun, but not funny. There’s just enough charisma from a few of the cast members to make Office Christmas Party worth attending. Just barely, though.

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Film Review: Moana

Moana is beautiful, adventurous, and musically gifted.

Animated Moana gives a miraculous multi-dimensional performance.

Yesterday I watched Moana. Today I listened to the soundtrack about eleven times through. Yesterday I questioned the benefit of seeing films in 3D. Today I feel that a film can truly benefit from non-gimmicky 3D. Yesterday I wondered when there’d be a new Disney song, besides “Let It Go”, that I’d welcome getting stuck in my head. Today I’ve had three Moana songs stuck in my head and love’em all. Do you catch my drift? Disney has delivered a beautifully animated film that holds true to the traditional spirit of Disney animated feature canon while adding new depths to characters and story structure. Moana is a cinematic gift — a film that is accessible and enjoyable to all audiences, re-watchable, boasts a stellar soundtrack, sets a new standard for animated environments (though I feel like I say that every six months), and has one of the most admirable female heroes ever put on screen. Yup, I mean it, too.

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Film Review: Allied

Polished, pulpy WWII tale how they used to make’em, for better or worse.

Like reading a dime novel from off the shelf of your local supermarket, Allied supplies a quick dose of melodrama, suspense, humor, and twists. It’s similarly digested easy, immediately emotional, and just as quickly forgotten. Director Robert Zemeckis has delivered his fair share of sensationalism, from Romancing the Stone to Forrest Gump to The Walk, and many memorable films in between (trust me, you’ve seen a lot of them). My semi-belabored point is, Zemeckis is no stranger to managing exaggerated storylines and overly dramatic plots. In Allied, he sets each scene like a stage play, without any noticeable complexity or vagueness. The complexity is left up to the characters. Yes it may be subtle, but while creating a blatant sense of the time period, the old school art direction also compliments the twists at the heart of the story — after all, this is an elaborate spy game. Pitt and Cotillard bring their serviceable ‘B’ game (not their best work but far from their worst), inflicting just enough charm and charisma into the plot to carry the somewhat nonsensical and ultimately forgettable story forward.

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Film Review: Nocturnal Animals

Ford’s newest picture well worth the wait

West Texas ne’er-do-well Ray Marcus (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, middle) warily answers questions from lawman Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon, l.) and crime victim Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal, r.).

Tom Ford, the American fashion designer turned filmmaker who first garnered accolades for his cinematic talents back in 2009 with his Colin Firth-helmed picture A Single Man, finally returns seven years later with his follow up, another film inspired by a novel. With Nocturnal Animals, based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan, Ford again both directs and writes the screenplay, and proves that his first success was no fluke. Ford’s patient fans have been rewarded for their long wait with another visually stunning, captivating picture.
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