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Summer Movie Series

Jurassic World (2015)

Rated PG-13

jurassic-world

Universal Pictures

The head honcho of Jurassic World is told to beef up attractions for the cloned-dinosaur theme park. The same request must have been made of the creators of Jurassic World, the sequel to the Steven Spielberg-Michael Crichton 1993 box office juggernaut. So the fantastic and improbable dino-Disneyland creates exotic dinosaur hybrids to wow its been-there, done-that, got-the-T-shirt visitors and sate its money-hungry corporate investors. Likewise, we get a film, directed by a competent Colin Trevorrow, trying to make everything bigger, bolder, faster, louder. As a big summer movie thriller it does the job.

In the BloghouseThe visceral response to massive prehistoric beasts chasing and chomping on humans while tossing vehicles around like Matchbox cars is likely a rapid heart beat. And this time, the dinos attack not just by land, but air and sea.

The setup, introducing the half-dozen main players, is swift and employs snappy dialogue.

As a deluxe cruise ship delivers teen Zach (Nick Robinson) and his younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins) to their aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), Jurassic World’s top administrator, we take in the grandeur of this island resort/park/museum/zoo/research facility in sweeping aerial shots. Improbable though it may be, the filmmakers try to ground the festivities in American pastime familiarity: cotton candy and gift shop inflatable dinosaurs; a petting zoo, where little tykes ride cute baby dinos; self-guided tours in clever, transparent spherical vehicles spinning across grassy plains; an elevated monorail circling the park; interactive hologram exhibits. Then there’s the Sea World-like aquatic show, replete with a massive dino-whale blasting out of the pool to snag a hanging snack (a Great White shark!) for the roaring audience in the splash zone.

As this is set 20 years after the original story, we miss grandfatherly and original park creator, the late John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough), but we remember dino-DNA expert Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) who takes on a darker persona this time out.

Owen (Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Barry (Omar Sy, X-Men: Days of Future Past) are introduced as diligent, big-muscled dino wranglers. Owen, in fact, has made himself the alpha male of a pack of velociraptors. We watch him engage the viscous creatures like a lion tamer: firm and confident, but respecting the animals’ predatory natures and keeping his distance with safeguards.

Two other main characters bound into the mix: park bankroller Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan, The Life of Pi), visiting his latest big-dinosaur investment, and Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio), head of the military wing of the corporation who has his own agenda for these hybrid dinosaurs. The new attraction, dubbed Indominus Rex, is teased as the mother of all dinosaurs. We get hints of him through shaking trees, deep-nose snorting and thunderous footfalls—you know the drill.

With the characters in play and the park abuzz with thousands of guests, things slide off the rails before we can get settled. In quick succession, Claire’s nephews break away from their put-upon handler (Katie McGrath) to roam the park sans adult supervision; Hoskins mounts what amounts to a corporate coup; and Indominus pulls a sweet fake-out that hastens his escape from captivity.

The rest is run-or-get-trampled, eat-or-get-eaten thrills, which the movie succeeds at wonderfully. Pterodactyls dive-bombing visitors, raptors tag-teaming against their adversaries and a Jurassic faceoff I won’t spoil. A quick visit to the crumbling site of Hammond’s original Jurassic Park (as John William’s theme leitmotif twinkles on the soundtrack) hits the right note of nostalgia.

I see no type of indemnity clause that could hedge this venture’s bet against a catastrophe of Jurassic proportions, and yet I sense that if we could build this World, people would pay thousands of dollars and travel thousands of miles to sign those waivers and dive right in.

Summer’s here!

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Summer Movie Series

Tomorrowland (2015)

Rated PG

tomorrowland

Disney Pictures

Tomorrowland is the kind of movie that would have inspired me as a kid. Nearly every moment of this film’s runtime is devoted to underscoring the power and necessity of imagination and invention. That our fertile human minds can lead us not only to weapons of destruction and instruments of healing but to a more essential purpose, as thinking beings, of our capacity to shape our destiny in the best of ways. I’m proud to write that as an adult I found this movie inspiring. In this era of bloated politics, cultural indifference, incuriousness and xenophobia, I tapped into the filmmakers’ schema that a through-line of invention is always among the clutter, a path waiting to be exposed and taken. It’s as if the movie is a test of our belief in our better angels, the power of imagination. Those who cotton to that may be moved by the film’s attempts to inspire; those who don’t may dismiss this as corny.

In the BloghouseWhen we think of the imagination it took to allow man to travel beyond the planet and walk on the surface of the moon, or even imagining a day when it would be commonplace for men, women and children to board a pressurized tube of aluminum and plastic to be hurled hundreds of miles and hour, tens of thousands of feet about the ground as a form of commercialized travel, how did we get to a time and place where that kind of ingenuity is buried under the latest political wrangling or financial scandals or reality-TV obsession? We don’t invent things anymore, we stand on the shoulders of inventions we now mock, while repackage them in the latest colors, slim shapes and hipster slogans.

Imagination and those who celebrate it are often punchlines these days. And yet from our earliest imaginings we’ve created motion pictures and automobiles and computers and microwave ovens and antibiotics and x-ray machines.

Tomorrowland presupposes that most of us have grown up and away from ideas of awe and visions that stir us to move in wonderfully radical directions. We’re resigned to our fate of future days that will erase, decade upon decade, our joy of possibilities and possible better times. Who today looks ahead and envisions days of abundant resources and peaceful cultures and cooperative nations? But what of this mythical place where the imagination could be allowed to run free? The story jumps off at New York’s 1964 World’s Fair, where we meet the best, brightest, boldest thinkers and imaginers.

One such thinker, 10-year-old Frank Walker with his self-made jetpack (of course!) in tow, will attend the fair with the intention of changing the world with its possibilities. While a fair official (Hugh Laurie) sees promise in Frank but dismisses the boy as not yet ready for prime time, a curious little girl, Athena (Raffey Cassidy), thinks otherwise, seeing something urgent in Frank’s imagination. The boy is surreptitiously invited to a world beyond the world he thinks he knows. This prologue gives us a marvelous glimpse of Tomorrowland—a gleaming, Disney Kingdom-like wonderland of rockets and flying trains and inventions as small as a button pin and as large as the sky—before we’re catapulted to the present day where we meet Casey (Britt Robertson), a wise-beyond-her-20 years daughter of a NASA scientist (Tim McGraw). Casey, already a dreamer, makes a spectacular and brief visit to Tomorrowland and doesn’t hesitate to chase its possibilities. This puts her in the sights of powerful forces who’d rather not have the place discovered and will use deadly means to keep things secret.

She eventually connects with a much older, disillusioned Frank (George Clooney) who has long put his residency of Tomorrowland behind him, as well as, perhaps, the promise he once held as a boy. Clooney does wonderful work as the craggy, jilted Frank who nevertheless maintains a little-boy longing in his eyes. It’s great to see Casey’s imagination reignite his.

Casey’s plight aligns her with Frank and a still-young Athena as Casey uncovers not just the wonders of the future, but, as grownups know, its frightening uncertainties as well. The stakes—at first the exposure of Tomorrowland, then the possible end of the real world itself—felt like serious business to me. But don’t let my crowing about the film’s underpinnings make you think there’s no fun to be had. There are great action set pieces, including giant robots fighting, a time-freezing weapon, a journey into space and through a wormhole, an attack on a country house decked out with a most impressive defense system, and a fight that takes place in two time streams.

What does it say about a film that gambles its success on the hopes that the audience buys into a dream? It saddens me to see this film turn out low box office numbers and negative reviews, basically making the film’s point of humanity’s time-worn nature to run headlong into cynicism and doubt, instead of it daring to dream, to believe that better, yet-to-be-imagined days lie ahead.

No matter. I was inspired and I hope younger viewers, who are our tomorrows, will be as well. I found the last shot of the film powerful. Does that make me a sap, or hopelessly optimistic?

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Summer Movie Series

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Rated R

madmax_fr

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mad Max: Fury Road is told almost entirely in terms of action. It’s an extended chase from Point A to Point B and then back. That director George Miller elevates this chase to visual, sonic and kinetic elegance proves that you can turn nearly any story into a great film if you know what you’re doing.

In the BloghouseHow many car chases have we witnessed in action films? At this point, what can be done to distinguish a good car chase from all others? I’d say distinctive style, which Miller has in spades, harkening all the way back to 1979’s Mad Max.

The character Max Rockantansky has been reimagined for a new generation. Tom Hardy is even less chatty than Mel Gibson’s iconic version, who had three films of his own. We meet this new Max as he’s eating a live lizard and repairing his supped up ’73 Ford Falcon “Interceptor,” a holdover from the original film. We know he’s lost his family because of the fleeting images that haunt him. And while he’s ostensibly the hero, the film’s about Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa (get used to names like that, the film’s loaded with them). Her haunted eyes, prosthetic left arm and branded neck tell us she’s endured things beyond belief. In a post-apocalyptic world we’ve known from the previous films, Furiosa lives in one corner, The Citadel, ruled by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who uses women as chattel (for milk, pleasure and breeding), while hoarding a water supply from the dusty, dirty masses. He’s supported by his War Boys henchmen, also dusty and dirty but better fed and given vehicles.

Furiosa takes a stand and escapes with Joe’s five wives, two of whom are pregnant. Hiding the women within a tanker, Furiosa turns a supposed fuel run into an escape agenda to her homeland—and the chase is on. During the run she crosses paths with Max and Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of Joe’s cancer-addled War Boys.

The rest is Miller magic. The post-apocalypse has never looked so bleak yet wonderful. Miller reminds us he’s a visionary. Masterful, whether he’s packing the frame with visual puns and throwaway imagery or dazzling with beautiful wide-angle vistas. One haunting scene shows humans lumbering on stilts across a dried-out, poisoned landscape like giraffes on a bombed-out Africa veldt. And the colors! They explode from flames and flair-gun tendrils and blowing sand and dust from cascading rocks. The chase takes us through canyons, across sinking fields, along bone-dry wastelands, past a grassy oasis and into impossible sand storms.

To say nothing of the people inhabiting this world: wiry and muscled, sun-blasted and chalked-up, mutated post-nuke hellions and soft-skinned beauties. The inhabitants are scarred with brandings and tumors and tattoos, and festooned with tribal paint, leather and furs.

Miller’s vision extends to the vehicles, which are basically characters themselves. We have motorcycles and tractor trailers, customized dune buggies and sedans and retrofitted trucks with cranes and scoops, and double-decker wagons. Machinery is fetishized with artifacts and spot welded into hybrid monstrosities, adorned with banners and long flexible poles that support swaying War Boys; even moving scaffolding support huge bass drums that set the pace, and a heavy-metal guitarist whose riffs spew dragon-fire.

Water, food and foliage may be scarce, but not gasoline. These big-wheeled vehicles boom and zoom through vast desert and salt flats with abandon, heedless of fuel or repair needs.

Forget over-the-top, this film is custom made to rev us up and beyond, around, underneath and through its chase-plot by any means necessary.

Any character development we get is through sorrowful gazes or crazed expressions or primal screams or knowing grunts; Miller’s a pro at this. Amid the chaos he knits in his themes: vengeance, solidarity and finally redemption. I remember again his skill at sketching dozens of characters—and vehicles—from corky traits, blunt visuals, and above all, action.

This movie totally succeeds in its agenda. It’s action-packed, visual astounding, simply plotted and completely contained. Every moment works.

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Summer Movie Series

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Rated PG-13

avengers-team

Marvel Studios

The tyranny of Ultron, from its inception to its final battle with a reorganized Avengers team, seems to last only a few days. Hardly an age, but the title is the least of this film’s problems.

Everything seems right on paper: Booming, action-packed scenes, moments of character development, humor (always in supply in Marvel films—take note, DC!), dire global stakes, shifting alliances. But something about the whole affair seems disjointed. Maybe it’s because you can only expect so much return on this superhero investment. Most of the heroes have already had two or three movies to themselves, plus their grouping for the first Avenger’s film (2012). Maybe it’s finally too much of a good thing.

In the BloghouseBecause the first film surprised with its steady stream of humor, this time we expect to be entertained by jokes, setting up more of a challenge to be funny. Each hero gets his/her moment, but nothing that really expands these characters. We watched Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) struggle morally in the last two Iron Man films with the weapons and technology he created. We’ve seen Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, Her, Lucy) confront her shadowy past as recently as Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is given a surprising backstory that I didn’t entirely believe. The film doesn’t seem to know what to do with Thor (Chris Helmsworth), and for the first time Captain America’s earnestness and pining for the good old days seems a bit annoying. I couldn’t bring myself to invest in the Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch subplot; the super-twins (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen) are basically more characters poured into the mix.

There were moments to enjoy, no doubt. A highway chase/fight scene woke me up, and the team lounging after a party has a warm touch that evokes the best of the original film. James Spader lends a great voice to Ultron, the nemesis borne of Stark’s well-meaning-but-misguided attempts to protect the planet, but the character itself seems a little too self-important (Yes, I get that Ultron takes on characteristics of its maker Tony Stark; it’s still too much!) and surprisingly not the best strategist. Wouldn’t a higher level of artificial intelligence spend more time on its mission and less time jumping into futile fights with superheroes? How many battles do we need of super-people and robots who can’t really hurt each other destroying architecture for miles around? And speaking of battles, was it just me or did the cinematography and CGI seem choppy, Michael Bay-ish?

A budding romance between Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Black Widow seemed awkward, forced by the screenwriters. Black Widow had more chemistry with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) in Winter Soldier. The film is cluttered with characters—Nick Fury, Maria Hill, War Machine, Dr. Selvig, Dr. Cho—although I know it was meant to be cluttered with characters. The first film seemed easily digestible, funny, exciting. This time I’m struggling to care for the crisis, surprised at the forced jokes, more surprised that the big action set-pieces underwhelmed. I will give the film credit for the awesomely executed floating city, and Vision (Paul Bettany) is a sight to behold.

Marvel’s been incredible successful at bringing these heroes to the big screen, individually and as a team effort, but I’m wondering—despite the influx of new heroes (Falcon, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man)—if we’ve told all the stories (Civil War and Black Panther notwithstanding) that are interesting to tell. If you love superhero movies, come what may, See it; otherwise, Skip it.

 

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Danny Collins (2015)

Rated R

danny-collins

Big Indie Pictures

Danny Collins isn’t as famous as Al Pacino, who plays the fictional aging rock singer in this film, but Danny’s type of fame will do well enough. He’s recognized nearly everywhere he goes, not just by long-time fans but also youths familiar with his celebrity.

In the BloghouseBefore he was a celebrity living off his name and long-ago hit songs, he was a talented singer/songwriter. So talented, in fact, a circa ’70s interview he did for a Rolling Stone-like periodical caught the attention of John Lennon.

It transpires that Lennon was moved by the interview and wrote an admiring and encouraging letter that included Lennon’s phone number. The skittish Danny, who was eager for success but apprehensive of stardom, could have benefitted from such a letter. Alas, through couldn’t-believe-it-if-it-weren’t-based-on-true-events circumstances, Danny wouldn’t receive the letter for more than 40 years. By the time it’s gifted to him by his steadfast manager (the great Christopher Plummer) he’s going through the motions of fame. Trophy girlfriend, fair-weather friends, casual drugs, expensive gated home and sports cars. He slogs through his performances as best he can, singing songs he’s long since tired of, resigned that he is more celebrity than singer.

The letter blasts him free of absorbing thoughts that he’s in the final throes of his life, sending him on a new trajectory. He packs up, dumps the girlfriend and sets off on a quest to find the life he should have had, and tie up some loose ends.

Up to this point the film has moved briskly and Pacino keeps Danny engaging, no doubt. When Danny checks into a rinky-dink New Jersey hotel to get back to writing the songs that Lennon-endorsed Danny Collins was supposed to have written years back, Danny’s likeable personality really comes into focus. In quick order he charms the hotel valet (Josh Peck), the young concierge, and more intentionally the hotel manager (a wonderfully low-key Annette Bening).

The loose ends involve wriggling himself into the life of his adult estranged son. The son (Bobby Cannavale) has a wife (Jennifer Garner) and daughter and no intention of having a relationship with his long-absent father. Danny’s well-written introduction to the family (Garner shines) effectively sets the stage for the first father-son encounter.

The film’s not so much about the plot, but there are key twists I will not spoil. And it’s not even about whether Danny will succeed in writing and singing this comeback song, though Pacino makes us root for him.

Cannavale, Garner, Bening and Plummer are all wonderfully realized character and each has at least one well-written scene that allows them to shine. This is one of those movies where you don’t mind spending time with any of the characters because they’re all interesting and say interesting things. But it’s all held together by grandmaster Pacino who knows this character inside and out. I like that Danny’s smart (he’s often taking notes) and is remarkable at reading people and assessing situations. The flashy-but-outdated clothes, hair style and cheesy songs don’t keep us from seeing what a good heart the man has, or what a warm-hearted, humorous film this is.

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It Follows (2014)

Rated R

it-follows

Radius-TWC

With Oculus (2013), The Babadook (2014) and now It Follows, I’m beginning to believe again in my beloved and disappointing mistress, the horror genre, which for years has left me with heartache and heartburn. These recent gems bring hope that there are writers, directors, producers mining this genre who aren’t simply beholden to teen-demographic pandering, PG-13 half-assery and unnecessary remakes.

In the BloghouseHow’s this premise strike you? Jay (Maika Monroe), a post-high school teen whiling away waning autumn days with her sister and friends, goes out on a date with a cute guy she’s had her eye on. After a sexual encounter in the backseat of his car, cute guy informs her that during sex he “passed” something on to her. If that isn’t a horrifying setup right there, then what he’s passed on certainly is: a creature that can look like anyone, even those she loves, will begin to pursue her at a leisurely, but determined pace. “It’s very slow, but not dumb,” Jay is warned. It will unceasingly stalk her by slowly walking toward her—day or night, in empty places or crowded rooms. Only Jay (and those who have/had the curse) can see it, but it’s real. The brief and brutal opening scenes involving a previous female victim of this curse informs us of what this thing might do if it gets ahold of Jay. Cute guy tells her that if the creature kills her, it returns its attention to the last person to pass it on, and so on. It’s in his and Jay’s best interests, he says, for her to quickly sleep with someone else to move the curse on down the line.

With that setup, taking the teen-sex-equals-death horror trope to new extremes, It Follows builds up more tension than I would have imagined. It’s easy to outrun the thing, unless you’re unfortunate enough to allow yourself to get trapped in a corner, but its relentlessness is what terrifies. Jay can’t ever let her guard down to sleep, to attend classes at the community college. Even being surrounded by loving friends who can’t see the creature offers little comfort. It’s always out there, in some form—familiar or hideous, naked or clothed—walking toward her.

Somehow, director David Robert Mitchell’s film is able to evoke fear simultaneously in wide-open, populated areas and closed-off, isolated spaces. Think about that for a moment. When was the last time a horror film got you coming and going like that? At a park, in school hallways, at the beach, someone among the throngs of people is walking toward you—only you—with the intention of doing things to your body and mind you can’t dream up in nightmares. Hiding away in a sealed-up room or boathouse doesn’t leave you with an exit plan when something comes wrapping at the door or crashing through a window. So effective is the director’s use of wide shots (who or what is that moving in the distance behind Jay?), that any time he moves in for close-ups and tight shots, I tensed up wondering what’s occurring just out of frame. Poor Jay. She wasn’t a virgin to begin with, but was sex worth this? And as things become increasingly hopeless will she turn to sex again as a means to sidestep this curse? Certainly a pair of lustful friends are more than willing to help out. But Jay understands that sleeping with someone could condemn him to death.

Adding to this tense and intense film is the director’s sure hand at fashioning a dreamlike atmosphere. Sure, there’s the intrusive sync score that’s an intentional homage to ’80s soundtracks from horror maestro John Carpenter. Sure, Mitchell tries to affect a timeless quality by giving the film a retro look: tube televisions, phones with cords, cars your father drove. But above all, I think the director’s efforts are in service of tapping a visceral nightscape of inescapable terror that ultimately wears you down. This film: not only does it follow, it lingers.

I like how the kids give simple, natural performances; the lack of snarky, meta-dialogue that passes for cleverness these days is actually refreshing. When the finale at an abandoned public pool brings us to the head-on confrontation we’ve been awaiting and dreading, it’s a bit of a letdown only because everything else has been so effective. Turns out, what the creature might do is a more unnerving prospect than what it actually does.

I don’t need a sequel to this, which I’m sure is coming, but I would like to see more genre films strike out for original territory and tone, even at the risk of alienating the demographic that doesn’t seem to have a problem throwing money at mindless, gory, easily forgotten horror films.

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Quik Flix Hit – Summer Movie Roundup

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In the Bloghouse

 

Time for a look back at the summer’s best and worst in the 2014 Summer Movie Roundup.

 

 

 

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Edge of Tomorrow

Godzilla (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy

Lucy

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

X-Men: Days of Future Past

 

RELATED: See all of Marvin Brown’s reviews from his film archive.

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Summer Movie Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Rated PG-13

guardians_of_the_galaxy

Marvel Studios

This summer superhero action flick is going to be a hit because its emphasis is on humor and music—two elements that enhance any film when done well. We get to see things blown up real good, but mostly we like the songs and the banter and brawling between the Guardians. Marvel smartly gambled that audiences needing a respite from the onslaught of first-string superheroes might give this a try.

In the BloghouseThe Guardians is a ragtag team of, you guessed it, outlaws forced to combine its talents and snarky comments to take on a force bent on the destruction of, you guessed it, the galaxy. The enemies, the instruments of destruction, the far-flung interstellar locales, the double-crosses all fall within the scope of this kind of movie. But when Star-Lord pops a worn cassette tape into his Walkman and starts jamming out to earthbound hits circa 1970s, you smile at the absurdity and go along with it. Why not? Sure, we’re light years from earth and decades ahead of modern times, but why should that hinder our love for The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”?

Each of the five Guardians left an impression on me, but for my money I liked Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a genetically altered raccoon who’s sadly aware of his manufactured nature and really into heavy weapons. That he doesn’t look ridiculous piloting starships or blasting away with guns at least as large as himself is a testament to the f/x team. I also like human Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), aka Star-Lord, who’s handsome, skillful, arrogant—the qualities always evident in superheroes—but more importantly good-hearted and repeatedly willing to make bold sacrifices for others. The kids will like Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a treelike being whose mode of communicating consists entirely of the phrase “I am Groot!”

There’s a sad-sweet prologue of young Peter confronting his dying mother that’s well executed but gains depth when we return to the moment late in the film and truly recognize its value. I also like how the movie established pretty quickly that each of the Guardians for the most part like and accept each other. It’s a time saver. We know they’re going to make good teammates, they know they make good teammates so why waste time pretending like they’re not?

Guardians of the Galaxy goes down easy and certainly leaves space for a sequel—that’s the Marvel way. I suspect it’ll do even more business on video when those who didn’t think they had a taste for it finally see it at home and realize how much fun it is. And the music? Come on! “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” “Ooh Child.” “Cherry Bomb.” “Come and Get Your Love.” And its use of “Hooked on a Feeling” steals away that song’s long association with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

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Summer Movie Series

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Rated R

sin_city

Aldamisa Entertainment

I was gobsmacked as I watched the first Sin City in 2005. Not only was it visually sumptuous, but its noir-drenched characters were smartly drawn and its bleak interconnecting stories, individually and collectively, engaged. Every frame of the Robert Rodriguez–Frank Miller codirected effort vibrated with originality and purpose.

In the BloghouseI was deflated watching this sequel. Not only was there nothing new to the proceedings, its visuals seemed to rest firmly on its laurels. No real effort seemed to be made to one-up the masterful look of the original. The films boast crisp, hyper-real black-and-white cinematography, with color splashed in here and there for effect. To recreate the look of Miller’s groundbreaking graphic novels, the films employ stylized camera angles and movement, smoke and shadow, jump-cuts, smash-cuts, projection, animation—everything.

Watching the first film, I remembered thinking a lot of effort went into how and when to apply color in an essentially colorless landscape. Blood or lips or eyes and teeth or eyeglass lens tipped the viewer to method and motive. This time there’s a randomness to the use of color, like there was a mission to put some color somewhere in every frame, without thought of why (or if) it’s needed.

The plot is a rehash of tales better told the first time around. We return to Basin City, a lethal, sess-pool metropolitan city inhabited by hardboiled lowlifes and dames in distress. In the first film, we spent time with the characters before the mayhem began; this time characters are tripping over each other with nary an arc between them. And remember the visit to Old Town, the red-light district where even the cops are afraid to go? In the original film, it’s populated and protected by prostitutes, several of whom are given names, personalities and things to do. This time, there’s a perfunctory trip to Old Town that renders the nameless women as relevant as any number of thugs running throughout the film.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, 300 Days of Summer) brings bluster and consideration to a role that ultimately is much ado about nada. His plight and fate seemed completely avoidable and he seemed smart enough to sidestep all of it. Jessica Alba’s stripper character Nancy worked better the first time when she was a minor player; this time her expanded role underscores the character’s thinness. Josh Brolin (Oldboy, 2013), who usually engages, here is wasted in a snarling role that’s one note; at least Clive Owen had fun with the same character in the original film. Eva Green as the oft-nude femme fatale is ridiculously obvious from the moment she slinks into a bar until her final moments on screen. I never believed her character. Even Mickey Rourke’s fan favorite Marv (he returns out of chronology) can’t get this mess off the ground. Only Powers Boothe’s power-mad senator brings energy to the proceedings.

What a bust.

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Summer Movie Series

Lucy (2014)

Rated R

lucy18-1

Canal+

Director Luc Besson (The Professional, La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element) has been off his game for some time now. Lucy is a step back to form, but he doesn’t quite get there. The film wants to have more depth than its screenplay allows. In addition to being an action film, a fight film, a philosophical and literal take on the evolution of man, quantum ideas of consciousness, the film wants to explore the end of human existence and what may lie beyond it. Right. But mostly it’s an action film.

In the BloghouseLucy (Scarlett Johansson, Her) is an American studying in Taiwan who hooks up with Mr. Wrong, who inadvertently pulls her into a synthetic drug ring. Forced to be a mule for an improbable narcotic that will either kill you deader than dead, or jumpstart your brain function beyond its known capabilities, Lucy—through a ruptured implant—gets the latter.

At first we know the drill: we’ve seen Johansson as the Black Widow in three Marvel movies now. She can dispatch roomfuls of armed men using martial arts and various weaponry. But once the drug improves her brain function exponentially, who needs weapons when you can control matter … then read minds … then sense emotion in its purest form … then visualize human souls … then affect space and time itself?

Morgan Freeman’s on hand as a renowned scientist whose theories on the mysteries and depths of the human mind are validated by Lucy’s existence. She seeks him out after reading his life’s work in mere minutes. Meanwhile, the leader of the drug ring Min-sik Choi (Oldboy, 2003) wants his product back—by any means necessary. There’s something to be said about a man who continues to pursuit a woman who has stopped bullets midflight and can reverse time itself. He’s pretty cocksure.

All of this can be fun, and if you’ve come to this for the action and fight scenes alone, you’ll get your fill. But in trying to be more than an action film, while not really taking its philosophical components full weight, the movie feels disjointed.

It’s Besson’s incredible La Femme Nikita crossed with 2011’s Limitless (which itself bites off more than it can chew) but isn’t as good as either of those films.

This film might have erred by casting Johansson, who certainly has acting chops and action-film bonafides. Unfortunately, because she brings the expectations of a hide-kicking, name-taking superhero, we’re denied what should have been a jolt from seeing a vulnerable stranger in a strange land transformed into an awesome instrument of destruction and resurrection.

If Besson is trying to speak something to the nature of evolution and violence in society, it gets lost in the clutter.

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