Films – Page 67 – Spinning Platters

Film Review: Turbo

A cute, formulaic, one-joke movie…but at least it’s not sluggish!

He's going the distance! He's going for speed! — He’s going the distance! He’s going for speed!

Low expectations commonly yield better-than-expected results. In the case of Turbo, a charming result emerges from an incredibly lackluster premise. ‘A snail that goes fast!‘…Okay, not really piquing my interest. ‘And, he races in the Indy 500!’ Snails and racing? No thank you, I’d rather read a book. Turbo doesn’t break any new ground, nor is it distinctly memorable. Its straightforward story is respectable, its characters are pleasant, and the colorful visuals are good. Nearly every joke is about the ‘snails vs. speed’ theme at play, but luckily the movie never slows to a snail-like crawl. But despite the film’s drawbacks, audiences will still be rewarded by Turbo, if only because it’s just not as bad as it seems.

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Film Review: Pacific Rim

Finally, the summer blockbuster we’ve been waiting for! Pacific Rim is smart, compelling, and unleashes an exhilarating fury of battling giants.

A jaeger strolls through Hong Kong streets in Pacific Rim — A Jaeger strolls through the neon lit streets of Hong Kong in Pacific Rim

From here on out, every time I gaze up into the fog-filled night sky that enshrouds the top portions of downtown San Francisco’s office buildings, I’ll imagine a colossal Kaiju smashing through the buildings like tissue paper, the debris raining down upon the dimly lit streets…and a Jaeger behemoth emerging through the haze, crushing the Kaiju’s skull in with a downward punch and throwing the giant beast’s body down the length of Market street. This is the lasting effect of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. The film makes a solid effort to tell an emotional human tale in the midst of a near-future world at war with giant alien creatures. The effort is not lost, but takes a backseat behind the extraordinarily impressive battle sequences. As a science-fiction action movie, Pacific Rim delivers and then some.

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Film Review: The Way, Way Back

Liam James, Steve Carell, and Toni Collette in The Way, Way Back

The first truly great summer movie has arrived today with the opening of The Way, Way Back, a delightful picture that adults and teenagers alike are sure to love. Co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, (who also penned The Descendants), in their directorial debut, have made a sweet, charming, funny film that is destined to become a coming-of-age genre classic.

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Film Review: The Lone Ranger

Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer strut their hero stuff in The Lone Ranger

“Hi-Ho, Silver! Away!”…meh. When Hans Zimmer’s rehashed Sherlock Holmes score kicks into “William Tell Overture” mode, Disney’s new re-imagining of The Lone Ranger is at its best. Unfortunately, this only happens twice. What could have been (and should have been) a fun adventure ends up being an odd concoction of conflicting tones and a bloated story. This “messiness” worked well in director Gore Verbinski’s last effort, Rango, but that film was about an eccentric chameleon in the midst of an identity crisis who ends up tangled in a Chinatown-esque conflict in a wild west animal town. So, it was obviously poised to extend the limits of the bizarre. The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, is about fun adventures. Bad guys vs. good guys. The film is 150 minutes long and easily could’ve been 90 minutes. The few action set pieces are fun and well choreographed, but they lose their effect when they are bookended by a plodding story involving genocide, power struggles, and weird spiritual visions.

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Film Review: Despicable Me 2

Steve Carell as Gru, standing with two adorable minions, in Despicable Me 2

Gru’s minions are so gosh darn adorable and hilarious! The production team behind Despicable Me 2 knows this, hence the endless amounts of advertising for the film featuring the little yellow round bundles of gibberish-speaking joy. Despicable Me 2 lacks the overall charm of the original, choosing instead to focus on minion mayhem, a tireless string of jokes, and adorable slapstick humor. This isn’t to say the film lacks a clever story. In fact, Despicable Me 2 impressively avoids trudging down expected paths. However, the story doesn’t feature the same emotional core as the original, nor does it stay as focused. Despicable Me 2 meanders a bit, but never loses sight of the task at hand — to entertain and have a really good time doing so. Plus…those minions!

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Film Review: The Heat

Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in The Heat

Is it possible for The Heat to be anything other than what you expect? Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy join together as the most lovable pair of odd couple style cops. Of course it’s going to be cheesy and predictable and, if everything goes as well as hoped, thoroughly entertaining. In the hands of director Paul Feig I don’t know how it could be bad. Continue reading “Film Review: The Heat”

Film Review: White House Down

Jamie Foxx is Mr. President and Channing Tatum is Mr. Hero in White House Down

We say a picture is worth a thousand words. If my math is correct, a two hour and seventeen minute movie, therefore, should be worth 197,280 words (at 24 frames per second). Why, then, when White House Down ended, did my friend turn to me and say, “There are no words…”, and begin conjuring up fantasies of what he could have been doing for the previous 2+ hours instead? The answer is that White House Down is a terrible movie that misses all of its marks. It is not the fun explosion-filled action spectacle we used to expect from director Roland Emmerich in the mid-late 90’s and early 00’s. It’s better than 2012 and worse than Anonymous, although comparing WHD to 2012 is like comparing dirt to mud. It’s a shame this movie falls so far short because it had all the right ingredients in place for it to be a loud summer escapist romp. Instead, White House Down belittles its own silly story by trading in ‘silliness’ for ‘stupidity’. It is chalk full of stale acting and uninspired thrills, complete with a genuinely shocking amount of unrealistic moments (yes, even for a film about the White House being hijacked).

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Frameline Spotlights: C.O.G. / In the Name Of

From June 20-30, Frameline: The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival is showing an eclectic lineup of films steeped in social, political, and sexual themes, pushing the boundaries and bringing audiences closer to the incredible stories of numerous individuals and communities, both fictional and real. Tickets for screenings are available at http://ticketing.frameline.org/festival/. Here is a glance at two of this year’s festival entries:

C.O.G. (USA, 2013)

Jonathan Groff is a sour apple in C.O.G.

Based on the unassuming essay by David Sedaris and under the steady direction of Kyle Patrick Alvarez, C.O.G. is the piercingly honest tale of a young man’s escape from his privileged Ivy-league world into the apple orchards and Christian community of a small town outside Portland, OR. The sold out audience at the Castro Theatre laughed, cheered, sat silent, and gasped, and left with a welcome sense of renewal, as if the film’s flawed characters had challenged each of us to examine ourselves in a way we hadn’t considered for some time.

C.O.G. screened on Saturday, June 22nd. For more info on the film, visit the film’s festival page or C.O.G.’s official website at http://www.cog-movie.com/

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Film Review: Monsters University

Monsters in Monsters University — Scary monsters are scared in Monsters University

It has been nearly twelve years since Monsters Inc. made its theatrical debut, introducing audiences to one of film history’s most imaginative storylines and a memorable duo of lovable Monster protagonists, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman). It was Pixar’s fourth feature film and became an instant classic, one that still ranks high up on most people’s “what’s your favorite Pixar film?” list. Because of the place Monsters, Inc. held in our hearts, we all became cautiously optimistic yet filled with trepidation with the announcement of the prequel, Monsters University. We wondered why Pixar would even bother returning to a world that was so perfectly captured in a tightly bound film that had no cause for story extensions. The answer may be shrouded in dollar signs, or, perhaps like Toy Story 2 & 3, the Pixar team just could not abandon these lovable monsters forever. When all was said and done, Monsters University was greenlit and it has now finally arrived. The finished product is a playful “origin” story, filled with substantially more satirical humor rather than original humor, but also showcases a larger cast of lovable characters and genuinely touching moments.

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Film Review: World War Z

Brad Pitt (and his fictional family) in World War Z — Brad Pitt keeps his cool (with his fictional family) in World War Z

Fans of the book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks can either rejoice or fume at the fact that the new film adaptation is almost entirely its own unique entity. An opening credit claims it is “based” on the book. Sure, it does share the same title, and I can confirm that there are some borrowed story elements. However, the action-packed narrative of the World War Z movie is extremely different from the book, in which a collection of post-pandemic interviews conducted by an agent of the U.N. Postwar Commission (Max Brooks, as a fictionalized version of himself) reads like a non-fiction history book. In my opinion, a faithful adaptation of the book would work best in the form of a ten part HBO mini-series. But, since the Brad Pitt action spectacle is what we must see to satisfy our WWZ cravings, then we will just have to make do. Luckily, it really is not that bad. In fact, it is quite entertaining. WWZ lacks the heart and layered character portrayals we hoped for due to its connection to the phenomenal source material, but it remains a worthwhile blockbuster that contains a lot of thrills, impressive visuals, and a fun frenetic pace courtesy of numerous rewrites, reshoots, and a healthy dose of unpredictable plot turns.

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