Movie Reviews

I can’t remember when I saw the first footage for The Lego Movie (2014), but I do remember thinking to myself that it would be the geekiest, most reference-laden work of 2014.  Indeed, if any film tops this one in its insistence on crossing genres and referencing geek cultures from comics, films, books, and, hell, even Legos, then that would be a feat unto itself.  As it stands, The Lego Movie is sort of like that friend who beats everyone at Trivial Pursuit every single time because he spends too much time on the Internet or with his nose buried in Netflix or the library stacks (or her, for that matter).  And I mean that in a good way.  What makes this such a lovable film is the fact that it shows so much love to the communities from which it borrows, not just in terms of the Lego work, where franchised media properties are well represented, but in terms of the worlds from which those properties originate.  This is, in point of fact, a film for geeks, and it is a film I think everyone should see, if only to count off all the jokes based on DC characters or pirates or Star Wars or a number of other geeky things.  Expect a drinking game upon the DVD release. The Lego Movie follows Emmet, a regular construction worker in a regular town with a regular job and a deep desire to be like everyone else.  Indeed, in this ordinary city, everyone is like everyone else.  Everyone sings the same happy song (“Everything is Awesome“), enjoys the same television, and goes through life with the same hopes and dreams:  to be part of the team that is the city.  But when he stumbles upon a mysterious woman searching the ruins of a building, Emmet discovers the Piece of Resistance and learns that he is the Special, tasked with preventing Lord Business from freezing the entire world just as it is with the Cragle (crazy glue with some of the letters missing).  With his world thrown into chaos, Emmet must discover who he really is and how to put the world back to rights. If it’s not already clear, I loved The Lego Movie.  For the most part, there aren’t a lot of good geeky movies that reference things that I actually know, and so to sit there in the theater laughing at jokes that were funny on their own to everyone else, but also funny to me on a different level was a treat.  Much as Pixar’s films frequently engage their audiences on multiple levels (jokes for kids that work for adults and vice versa), this is a comedy film with multiple levels of engagement.  That’s not an easy thing to do, and so I have to give this film major props for keeping me, and my less-geeky friend, utterly entertained from start to finish.  The geek-minded, I’m sure, will find so much to love about this film based solely on its referential nature; indeed, this is the kind of film built just for us, and it knows it.  There’s an almost charming awareness in the film — surely translated from the geek love of the writers and cast — as if it were subconsciously crashing down the 4th wall to share with us its own in-jokes. All of this referential humor is supported by a stunning cast of voice actors (and equally stunning and hilarious characters or caricatures).  Batman (Will Arnett) is the caricature we’ve all known and loved, but with a side of emo-EDM artist and frat-douche; it’s hard not to find him hilarious, even as we recognize the qualities that make him a horrible person.  The clueless Emmet (Chris Pratt) gives solid grounding to the film, as he is the closest character to us — not a ninja fighter, not a wizard, just a guy lost in a world of craziness (maybe not as much like us after all).  Even his boneheaded ideas — the bunkbed couch — are fodder for hilarity; they also happen to be important to the plot, which gives depth to the comedic elements.  It’s too easy to make jokes for the sake of the joke, but to make that joke central to the development of the plot requires some degree of writing skill.  Additionally, Morgan Freeman’s turn as Vesuvius, a Gandalf-esque figure, adds a certain gravitas to the cast, if only because it’s Morgan Freeman playing a silly wizard with crazy light eyes, and Elizabeth Banks’ rendition of Wyldstyle, the “love interest” and biggest ass kicker of the film, adds some much needed sass to main cast (the Lego fight scenes are hilarious, by the way).  There are even brief appearances from Green Lantern (Jonah Hill), Superman (Channing Tatum — oddly enough, not dancing without a shirt on), Wonder Woman (Colbie Smulders), and more.  Throw in Liam Neeson as Bad Cop/Good Cop, a two-faced (literally) caricature of the classic cliche, and Will Farrell as Lord Business, the high-style, crazed villain, and you have an exceptional comedy cast. It’s here that I’d like to talk a little more about one character in specific.  A lot of people have talked about the treatment of Wyldstyle throughout this film.  Some have suggested that she is unfairly shafted here, that it should have been her that got to be “the Special” or perhaps that she simply fell into the trap so many female characters do:  the love interest/object.  Much of this is true, in a sense; Wyldstyle is coded as “love interest” from the second Emmet sees her — the camera shows her in slow motion, waving her Lego hair in the wind for an inordinate amount of time — but I must admit that I found this less a reflection of the film’s adherence to the tropes of Hollywood than a deliberate play on the absurdity of the trope itself.  I also always viewed her as a major supporting character, as Emmet seemed central from the start.

So.  They remade RoboCop (1987).  And while I’ve been looking forward to it for months, it wasn’t until some of my friends said “it was surprisingly good” that I decided, “alright, I’ll see it in theaters.”  Unfortunately, my friends are liars (love you guys). If you’ve seen the original RoboCop, then you already know the basic story.  The 2014 reboot, directed by Jose Padilha, alters the original concept as follows:  in 2028, OmniCorp, a high-tech military contractor, has teamed up with the military to combat crime and terrorism abroad, using robotic enforcers.  OmniCorp’s CEO, Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton), wants to bring this technology to the United States, but the public and Congress fear the absence of the human component.  In steps Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman), an overzealous Detroit police officer who is seriously injured in an assassination attempt after discovering dirty cops within the DPD.  In order to sway public opinion, OmniCorp repairs Murphy’s body to create RoboCop, a cyborg which will, we’re told, end crime for good.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), the human component almost always gets in the way… Honestly, that description is pretty crap.  Trying to explain what this movie is about without simply saying “a guy becomes a robot and fights crime; things don’t go according to plan” reveals a lot of what’s wrong with this film.  How do I describe the massive disappointment that is the remake of RoboCop?  I could say that this film is a testament to the fact that good things from the past are better off left alone.  We would have been better off receiving some kind of Final Director’s Cut version of the 1987 classic.  The studios could have given us a cool box set with documentary material and a remastered film — maybe they could have shoved an mp3 download for the soundtrack and a RoboCop figurine in there, too…or the box could have sung to us as if it were an advertisement for that spoof Robocop musical from Funny or Die.  Or maybe the box could have been a mini-RoboCop that actually walks to you when you call it.  All of these would have been better uses of the studio’s money. Alas, what we’ve been given here is little more than a sad, bloated, confused little “update” of a film.  Sure, the writers tried to add some more stuff about downloading data and memory overloads and other techno mumbo jumbo, but in the end, it’s just a mess of a film that wishes it could capture the feeling of the original. A mess.  That’s what I’m calling it.  RoboCop is not unlike the first Hobbit film in that it tries to do so many different things at the same time, but without any clear tie between them all.  In the first half hour of the movie, we’re presented with a satire of FOX News or Glenn Beck (seems like both), a commentary on the use of military drones and robots in the Middle East, questions about the use of said machines in the U.S., police corruption and rampant crime, a buddy-cop drama, the shock of prosthesis, what it means to be human, how memories are not easily controlled, human autonomy, and a whole bunch of other minor threads I won’t talk about here.  There’s so much going on in the beginning of this film that I’m left with a series of questions:  What exactly is this movie about?  Is it a commentary on drones?  Is it a commentary on the human condition through the use of cyborg tech?  Is it about the police?  Is it about corporate greed and the desperate push for technology?  Is it about human relationships?  WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT? I ask these questions because I think it’s obvious from the start that this film is about something.  It has a message or a point.  It wants us to follow that point to its logical conclusion and ask ourselves to consider the possibilities.  But the film asks so many fucking questions that I can’t fathom how we are supposed to go from Point A to Point B to Point C without jumping from Question #2 to Question #13154.  The end of the film seems to suggest that question we should have been asking is the one about corporate greed and human autonomy, with a side of human relationships, but the beginning of the film and the middle are all over the place, jumping from a narrative about politics to one about technology to one about the police to one about family relationships to one about X and Z and Y and Q.  There’s no narrative cohesion here.  RoboCop is a film that tries to do so much at once that it loses sight of what made the original so good:  it set up its major concerns right from the start and did its best to keep those in sight.  In the reboot, the main “issue” of the original (the idea of one’s memories clouding one’s programming) is saved until more than halfway through.  Sure, the original takes a while to get to that point too, but the reboot goes about it by showing us normal Murphy-as-RoboCop (combating all of his “I’m a robot” worries and family problems), reverting him to the RoboCop we remember from the original (the corporate greed is coming!), and then proceeding with the “but his memories will take over” bit.  It’s a mistake of order — too much back and forth. If the structure of the narrative doesn’t provide a sense of cohesion, then the tone of the film doesn’t help either.  RoboCop cannot decide if it’s a blistering satire or a serious thinking flick.  From the start, we’re presented with Samuel L. Jackson’s patently absurd Pat Novak, modeling himself, I assume, after FOX News and Glenn Beck.  Novak provides our introduction to OmniCorp’s involvement with the military, but all of that is funneled through an insanely biased mockery of cable news.  Unlike in the original, which was itself a withdrawn satire,

Spoiler alert:  Technically, I’m going to spoil this movie for you.  Not all of it, mind, but enough of it that you’ll know the major plot elements and what not.  I say “technically” because nothing in this movie is all that surprising, except that it’s horribly disappointing for any Riddick fan.  You already know the basic story; you just don’t know the new characters. What follows is not a review in the traditional sense.  There’s no “structure” here.  I have so much to say about this movie that I’ve decided to rant my way through many of the things that I either enjoyed or hated with a passion.  So what you’ll see below is a collection of thoughts, organized by titled sections.  You don’t have to read it all if you don’t want to — pick and choose as you see fit. OK.  Let’s get to it. —————————————————————– I’ve seen quite a few films this year, but Riddick (2013) is the only one I’d give a Prometheus Award to.  What’s a Prometheus Award?  Basically, this award should be given to every sequel or prodigal return which does everything wrong despite having every opportunity to get it very right.  Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (from which the award would derive its name) is the epitome of failing to meet expectations.  You can find out why I think that here and here. The premise of Riddick is this: At some point after becoming Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, a reluctant-leader Riddick decides to hunt down his homeworld, Furya, which only Vaako knows about because the previous Lord Marshall deleted all the maps (except there were maps in The Chronicles of Riddick, so whatevs).  After convincing Vaako that he can have the throne all to himself if he’ll just take Riddick to what remains of Furya, they head off into the night.  Riddick is betrayed by Vaako’s men and left to die on a sulfur tomb planet (not Furya).  But it’s Riddick, so he survives.  While trying to survive on this hostile world (full of aliens and things), Riddick steals a strange dog-like creature puppy, raises it as his own, and then heads off to better pastures, where he discovers a mercenary supply outpost.  And then things fall apart.  Some super rainstorm is coming, and Riddick, for some reason, knows it means trouble (alien monsters!) and decides to trigger the emergency beacon at the outpost, set some traps, and then get off world.  Murder ensues. There you go. Now for my thoughts: Logical Gap #1:  Riddick is Two Different People Inside His Own Head Early in the film, Riddick tells us that he’s been stuck on this sulfur tomb planet from hell because he essentially lost his animalistic instinct (or, in normal people terms, he got soft).  So he resolves himself, via internal monologue, to rediscover his animal instinct so he won’t get stabbed in the back again.  OK.  Good so far.  Sounds fine to me. Oh, wait, no.  So what Riddick’s mind actually meant when he said that was this:  I want to get my animal instinct back, but really I’m just going to do what I’ve done since the end of Pitch Black and make attachments to other living things even though I just said doing so will get me killed.  Basically, Twohy sets up this perfectly acceptable narrative about Riddick’s desire to return to his old ways, but then ignores it completely.  We never expected the character to keep his power as Lord Marshall anyway, so having Riddick return to his roots as a slick-shit killer (Toombs!) make total sense.  Only that’s not what actually happens.  Instead, Riddick’s first act is capturing a crazy-ear dog puppy to use as a guinea pig, but since the thing is so damned cute, he just has to raise it as his own.  And so begins Riddick’s version of A Boy and His Dog. None of this would be a problem, except that Riddick’s internal monologue tells us that’s exactly what he won’t do.  So is it that Riddick is confused about his own terminology, or are we supposed to assume that Riddick’s own mind is an unreliable narrator?  This is one of many logical inconsistencies in the film… Emotional Buttons Not Pushed Properly On the subject of A Boy and His Dog, it became clear to me that the dog critter thing was destined to die, and the film gives its mercenary characters numerous opportunities to do so.  We’re supposed to feel suspense as the dog gets closer and closer to what is obviously set to be his death, but not because we feel for the dog (the only character worth caring about, honestly), but because it’s supposed to do something to Riddick. The problem?  Riddick has his little 15-second “I is sad about dead friend” moment, but afterwards he returns to his old self.  When he threatens Santana with death, we’re supposed to think it has something to do with the fact that Santana shot the dog in the head, but the dialogue is so stilted that there’s no way for us to separate “this moment” from any other moment in Riddick’s life.  He always threatens death and then kills some character we’re all not supposed to like anyway, but the reason we don’t like Santana is the same reason everyone else doesn’t like him:  he’s a piece of shit.  Riddick knows this before Santana kills his dog, so what should have been a great opportunity for Riddick to go a little off the rails with crazy “you killed my dog, so I’m going to cut off half your face before I kill you” talk, he just says “you die in the first 5 seconds,” giving other characters the opportunity to say “that was 5 seconds” after Riddick does kill Santana. Basically, what we know about Riddick from the previous two films disappears in these moments.  We know he’s not just a slick-shit killer (Toombs!).  He also has a kind of heart buried in all that