FANTASTIC BEASTS and FOUR FALL FILMS

‘FANTASTIC BEASTS’ and Four Fall Films

Just Touching on the Movies I’ve seen but have been too busy to write about

Life—it’s busy. There’s 8-hour workdays five times a week, plus grad school homework, karate practice, time with friends, time with the roommate, sickness, vacation, and all sorts of things.

Let’s be straight about this: if I wasn’t in grad school and didn’t have that obligation, I probably would be all caught up on my movie reviews. But since my Saturdays are usually devoted to homework now, and Sunday is a lot of hanging out with the roommate or running errands, I’ve been seeing movies on Friday nights, breaking my typical routine of seeing Saturday matinee showings and then going straight home to write about them. As a result, I’ve gotten home and been too tired to write a review afterward, and then—it’s just slipped by.

That said, all the movies I’ve seen this fall have been notable in some way, so I wanted to at least toss out a few thoughts on each, going in order, starting with the most recent.

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM         

Grade: B-

Five and a half years after the last Harry Potter film was released in theaters (summer 2011’s Deathly Hallows – Part 2), here we get a feature film-length version of a fictional book that was mentioned once or twice throughout the seven-book Potter series. Written by Potter scribe J.K. Rowling, and directed by David Yates—who directed the last four Potter films—Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the first of, I would guess, many “Harry-Potter-Extended-Universe” movies we’re likely to get.

I adored Harry Potter. The books, anyway. I wasn’t a huge fan of the movies, particularly the entries Yates directed (2007’s Order of the Phoenix through the aforementioned series finale). I didn’t know Yates directed Fantastic Beasts going in, but, once it was over, I was not at all surprised to see his name atop the credits. Beasts has the same dark, dark tone (and color palette) as the other wizarding films Yates directed.

This movie is not about Harry Potter. Neither our scar-headed hero nor his parents have even been born by the year in which Fantastic Beasts takes place. This film is about Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a bookish wizard from England who, in 1926, arrived in New York City with a mission to research some magical creatures he’s heard have flourished on this side of the pond. Scamander, who has never been to America before, immediately notes the differences between the underground magical world in America, and the one he left behind. There’s a Madame President (Carmen Ejogo) atop the magical hierarchy instead of a Minister, the biggest magic school around here is called Ilvermony (as opposed to Hogwarts), and a non-magic individual is referred to as a “no-maj” (for no-magic) as opposed to a “muggle”, and wizards are generally directed to interact with them as little as possible.

Scamander is fine keeping a low profile, but, alas, magic does not mix well with the non-magical world. A pet of his gets loose, leading to an unlikely series of events in which Scamander and a no-maj he met named Kowalski (Dan Fogler) are the unlikely guests of a pair of witches (a disgraced magical government agent played by Katherine Waterson and her mind-reading sister, played by Alison Sudol) as multiple magical creatures run amuck in the city and a government agent (Colin Farrell) sniffs out their trail. Meanwhile, a sinister, invisible magical force is creating havoc and terror in the city—one that Scamander has had nothing to do with, and one that is threatening to reveal the magical world once and for all.

I’m glad to know J.K. Rowling wrote the screenplay and was directly involved—thus, these are her ideas, and not just someone trying to add onto her creation. Thus, there are the usual cutesy, clever magical touches: pictures that move; dishes that wash themselves; clocks that tell a lot more than the time; a briefcase that contains an entire hidden world; paper memos shaped like critters that actually fight each other. Some of the fantastic beasts of the title get ample screen-time as well, and they’re really something—gorgeously-rendered CGI creatures that fly, climb, swim, horde jewelry, and even run around on amorous rampages.

The main problem I had with Fantastic Beasts was its uneven tone. I know this is the Harry Potter universe, where exciting magic usually goes hand-in-hand with doom and gloom, but for a brand-new story, it was a little bewildering. In one corner, we have the magic and whimsy of Newt Scamander’s adventures with a gob-smacked but likably-curious no-maj, and in the other corners we have Colin Farrell’s cold-eyed government agent, an invisible destructive force that snatches the life out of people, and a pale, anti-magic crusader (Samantha Morton) who beats her children and intimidates orphans. It all makes sense (mostly) once it unravels, but, until then, these other, darker passages are more annoying than anything. As viewers, we’re quite content to watch Scamander and his no-maj hurry around trying to round up the mischievous magical creatures. And then all of a sudden we’re watching poor, pale, cringing Credence (Ezra Miller) sullenly taking off his belt and handing it to his mother so she can whale on him for, I don’t know, saying the word “magic” or something. There are some interesting ideas here, but, as was my opinion with all four of his Potter films, Yates doesn’t seem very adept at balancing them or making some of these elements particularly viewer-friendly.

The one problem with seeing Rowling as the screenwriter is knowing that all of this, even the elements that did not fit, were of her creation, when she rarely (if ever) made a creative misstep through her seven-novel series. The cast is fine (with Redmayne, Fogler and Sudol in particular giving likeable turns), but, overall, Fantastic Beasts is lacking a little magic.

HACKSAW RIDGE

Grade: B

Hacksaw Ridge is imperfect, but it centers on a remarkable true story that needed and deserved to be told. Directed by Mel Gibson (his first directorial effort since 2006’s Apocalypto), Ridge tells the story of Desmond Doss (played as an adult by Andrew Garfield), a young man from central Virginia who, after nearly killing his older brother during a childhood fight, decided to dedicate his life to God and to helping people. When the US entered World War II, he signed up to fight, as patriotic as any young man. However, his religious convictions meant he would not kill in the line of duty, or even handle a weapon. Regarded with incredulity by his commanding officers (Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington) and with contempt by fellow Marines like Smitty (Luke Bracey), Doss barely avoided a court martial and served alongside his unit in the bloody campaign for Okinawa near the end of the WWII Pacific campaign. It was at a murder-hole of a hill named Hacksaw Ridge that he made his legend—after American units were forced to retreat before a terrifying Japanese assault, Doss treated and saved 75 wounded men from the front by dragging or carrying them out of the kill zone.

This is a movie of two halves—a quaint, overly-simplistic prologue containing the cliché, forced budding romance between Doss and his real-life sweetheart, Dorothy; and the visceral, terrifying, war-is-hell second half. That’s no joke. Maybe it’s no surprise to hear that the man who directed Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ, and Apocalypto has created another blood-and-guts movie about war, but to see it is another. Any ideas any viewer might have that war is cool, exciting, or glorious in any way is in for a rude awakening—Hacksaw Ridge is as gory and shocking as any war-based film or TV series to date, including Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and the HBO series The Pacific. Garfield gives a tremendous performance, and he’s given able support by Vaughn, Weaving, Bracey, and Worthington (who utters the real life-lesson of the movie that resonated with me: “the men may not believe like you do, but they believe in how much you believe.”). The movie’s not perfect, but it is an astounding testament to courage, in honor of the real life Doss, who won the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

DOCTOR STRANGE

Grade: B+

The Marvel Cinematic Universe just keeps on rolling. The well-oiled machine this time churns out Doctor Strange, about a hotshot brain surgeon (Benedict Cumberbatch) turned manipulator of time and space. After suffering debilitating injuries in a car wreck, the unemployed, humbled Stephen Strange receives an ambiguous tip about a spiritist cult in Nepal. At first, he’s cynical, but he soon learns astonishing secrets of the universe from the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and bookkeeper Wong (Benedict Wong). Showing a surprising knack for the magical theatrics, Strange ends up being the first line of defense in an ancient war against the darkest forces of the universe.

Generally speaking, Strange isn’t a major departure from the usual superhero origin story. But the intriguing screen presence of Cumberbatch, the solid supporting cast, and next-level graphics and concepts make this one of the better first films in the Marvel canon—surely stronger than efforts like Thor, The Incredible Hulk and Ant-Man.

SNOWDEN

Grade: B+

I’ll go ahead and say I liked Snowden the most of any of these five films. That may be due to the fact that I gained a lot more knowledge about a name I’ve heard a lot for a few years now. It could be due to another exceptional turn by Joseph Gordon-Levitt—one of the most gifted young actors around—plus the best Shailene Woodley performance since The Descendants. It may be because I truly agreed with Snowden—the end should not justify illegal and unethical means, such as spying on nearly everyone in the world via pretty much any means (cell phones, computers, etc…) possible. It is for that reason—that former special forces operative Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the most dubious secrets of his former employers, the CIA and the NSA—that the real Edward Snowden still lives in Russia (with real-life girlfriend Lindsay Mills, Woodley’s character) under threat of certain trial and imprisonment for treason. As if to hammer home the point, at the end of this well-acted, eye-opening, conscientious flick, the real Edward Snowden makes a key, poignant cameo as himself, stating that he just wanted to wake up every morning knowing that he was going to do the right thing. I think we could all learn something from that.

SULLY

Grade: B

For a movie that was directed by Clint Eastwood, that stars the ever-popular Tom Hanks, and is about a real-life incident in which 155 people were saved from almost certain death by a quick-thinking airline pilot—it’s amazing that Sully, though solid, pretty much has no reason to exist. As was true of Snowden and Hacksaw Ridge, it’s based on an amazing true story. On January 15, 2009, airline pilot Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, along with co-pilot Jeff Skiles (the always-good Aaron Eckhart), was piloting US Airways Flight 1529 out of LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Barely a minute into the flight, the airbus flew through a flock of birds, some of whom became entangled in the jet engines and caused the plane to plunge in a downward trajectory. Believing that he did not have time to turn back to LaGuardia or head for nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, “Sully” (as everyone, even his wife—played by Laura Linney—calls him) made the decision to make a “water landing” on the Hudson River. It would later be proven by simulators that this almost certainly saved the lives of all passengers and crew on the plane, let alone potential lives on the ground in New York City. But the National Transportation Safety Board (embodied here by Anna Gunn, Mike O’Malley, and Jamey Sheridan) wasn’t convinced, and they investigated Sully and the incident, believing he’d endangered people when better options were available.

It sounds interesting, right? But considering the whole incident lasted about two minutes, there isn’t much to go on. The movie is 96 minutes long, and that’s kind of stretching it. There’s a great message in this story—a professional’s wisdom and piloting experience, the quick reaction of the New York City police and fire department that rescued everyone from the Hudson within minutes, the NTSA made a mountain out of a molehill, everyone survived—but this movie suggests that maybe this story is more ideal material for a documentary. It’s a great story, and a decent film (Hanks is great, of course, Eckhart is solid, and the plane sequence itself is intense), but it’s over quick.

******************************************************************

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

Directed by David Yates

Screenplay by J.K. Rowling

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterson, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller, Carmen Ejogo, Samantha Morton, and Jon Voight

Length: 133 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense action and scary moments

HACKSAW RIDGE

Directed by Mel Gibson

Screenplay by Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Luke Bracey, Sam Worthington, Teresa Palmer, Vince Vaughn, Hugo Weaving, and Rachel Griffiths

Length: 139 minutes

Rated R for strong, graphic, bloody violence and gore, language, and some emotional content

DOCTOR STRANGE

Directed by Scott Derrickson

Screenplay by John Spaihts, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill

Based on the Marvel comics by Steve Ditko

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Benjamin Bratt

Length: 115 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense action, language, emotional content and some scary moments

SNOWDEN

Directed by Oliver Stone

Screenplay by Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone

Based on the books ‘The Snowden Files’ by Luke Harding, and ‘Time of the Octopus’, by Anatoly Kucherena

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo, Rhys Ifans, Tom Wilkinson, Joely Richardson, Nicolas Cage, Ben Schnetzer, Scott Eastwood, Timothy Olyphant, and Edward Snowden as Himself

Length: 131 minutes

Rated R for strong language and sexuality

SULLY

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Screenplay by Todd Komarnicki

Based on the book ‘Highest Duty’ by Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow

Starring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O’Malley, Anna Gunn, and Jamey Sheridan

Length: 96 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense scenes (including a plane crash), language, brief bloody images, and some emotional content

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Hell or High Water

Grade: B+

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Gil Birmingham

Premise: Two brothers carry out a pair of low-key busts in Texas banks, bringing a tough but elderly sheriff onto their trail

Rated R for language, bloody violence, and a scene of sexual content

Whew, finally! After three months of (mostly) dreadful big-budget, over-the-top, branded and packaged cash-grab releases that were starting to ruin even this writer’s faith in the magic of movies comes a small, low-key, well-acted cops-and-robbers yarn that feels like a breath of fresh air. Mixing a talky screenplay about good old boys and a crotchety old coot in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with simple, often breathtaking shots of western scenery, and an underlying message of humans’ morality and tendency toward violence, Hell or High Water definitely won’t be a film that captures the attention of the popular culture—and it may not be the most original one, either—but it reminds you what moviemaking can be when quality, not money, is the most important factor.

Plot

Widowed Sheriff Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) is mere weeks away from retirement when a case comes across his desk. It’s not sexy, but it catches his attention nonetheless. It seems a pair of local cowboy types has pulled off busts of two local Texas Midlands Banks, taking only the cash in the drawers and then hustling out. They tend to do so in the early morning, when the banks aren’t busy. Since there are no bodies and a rather small bottom line stolen (about $40,000), the case is far too plain to attract large-scale attention, but Sheriff Hamilton senses a chance to get back in the game and have one last adventure before he hangs up his badge. So, he and his laconic half-Native American/half-Mexican partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) hop in their truck and head out to investigate.

The good old West Texas boys carrying out the busts are a pair of brothers, one fresh from prison and both crippled by generations of poverty and the recent passing of their mother. Tanner (Ben Foster) is the hothead, a wild man who would probably rob the banks for the thrill of it, even if he got no money. Toby (Chris Pine) is the gentler soul, one who doesn’t like handling guns or harassing anybody but needs money for overdue child support and mortgage payments. After pulling off three local busts, the boys hang around a casino where they do some drinking and gambling and Toby considers how to best utilize the winnings to benefit his estranged sons. Then they decide to pull off one more bust, this one at a bigger bank, one that just so happens to be down the road from where Hamilton and Alberto have been investigating.

What Works?

Cops-and-robbers movies are always interesting, especially when you get to know both sides, and especially when they take place in Texas, where everyone is folksy, sporting cowboy hats and thick accents, and toting guns. Similar to the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men, Hell or High Water is a fine cocktail of the thrill of law and crime and the provincial touches of good old Texas. It also conjures memories of that film in that it builds slowly, bit by bit reveals the stories and lives and motivations of both sides, and yet takes it sweet time getting to anything particularly dramatic. In that way, it’s not “Hollywoodized”, which is nice. And when the drama and action comes, it makes it that much more impactful, because it feels real and lived-in and not computerized and artificial like the action in this summer’s biggest titles.

The screenplay by Taylor Sheridan—a former Sons of Anarchy actor who wrote last year’s savagely-gritty drama Sicario—is a small marvel, weaving entire lives and worlds out of fairly short conversations between people speaking in heavy accents and backwoods verbiage. Working with this fine material, the actors shine. Bridges’ Sheriff Hamilton looks and talks a lot like the actor’s take on Rooster Cogburn in the 2010 remake of True Grit, but the lawman the Oscar winner plays here is not just a seasoned, tough man, but an old man. Hamilton may have the heart of a younger, more adventurous man, but he is haunted by his increasingly solitary life and the retirement home existence that likely awaits him. Bridges, 67, is perfectly-cast. Ben Foster all but steals the show as the fierce and unpredictable Tanner, the actor rebounding nicely from his embarrassing turn in this summer’s woeful Warcraft. Star Trek’s Chris Pine is very effective as a man torn by obligations and loyalty. And Gil Birmingham plays nicely off Bridges’ old-man chatter as the butt of Sheriff Hamilton’s many jokes.

With its ranch sceneries and roads bordered by open plains, Hell or High Water looks great. It also has more than a few laughs, and yet it gradually builds the tension. Many audience members will be spellbound, waiting for things to explode. And they do.

What Doesn’t Work?

There isn’t a lot that fails to work in this well-crafted film. The movie certainly does bear a lot of similarities to many films of this genre (No Country For Old Men included), but it has a DNA all its own. My one complaint would be that, though there are life-or-death stakes present in criminals fleeing the law, the movie often feels as if it’s too simple and is going nowhere. Good as the writing and acting is, the focus is small, and once the major conflict is resolved, there aren’t a lot of places for the movie to go.

Content

Hell or High Water earns its R rating with an abundance of F-words and violence that is quite bloody when it comes. There’s also a brief scene of sexuality, though the interaction takes place in the background of the shot and nothing is clearly seen.

Bottom Line

A nice antidote for the serious moviegoer after a messy summer of underwritten and overblown big-budget misfires, Hell or High Water is a scaled-down classic cops-and-robbers story. It has well-developed characters and action scenes that aren’t blown out of proportion or coming from nowhere. A pretty hard R thanks to some salty language and a few bloody shootouts, this movie has some fantastic cinematography (beautiful landscapes), great writing, and features fine acting turns by Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, and Ben Foster.

Hell or High Water (2016)

Directed by David Mackenzie

Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan

Rated: R

Length: 102 minutes

STAR TREK: BEYOND/ SUICIDE SQUAD

THE CREW AND THE SQUAD

Late-Summer Tentpoles with Large Casts Exemplify the Best/Worst of Blockbusters

What does any great story have?

Think of a classic great story. King Arthur. Romeo & Juliet. Robin Hood. Oliver Twist. Pride & Prejudice. Frankenstein. Harry Potter. The Lord of the Rings. What do they all have?

The answer’s not hard to figure out. They all have great characters. Yes, many of those stories have action, romance, comedy, mystery, fantasy and other great elements that help make great stories, but what makes all that other stuff especially compelling, or worth getting into, are the characters. Characters you can root for. Characters you want to see live, fall in love, fight, win, achieve their destinies, have happy endings.

Two of the last big movies of this Summer 2016 season are chock-full of distinct, colorful characters. In one corner we have a jocular spaceship captain, his cool, logic-driven right hand, and their favorite ship-mates: the chatty, resourceful engineer, the feisty doctor, the plucky young pilot with a Russian accent, the beautiful, whip-smart communications officer, and the even-keeled pilot who has a young daughter as motivation to be safe and succeed on his voyages. In the other corner we have a hard-eyed, cold-blooded government operative and the band of misfits she forces to do her bidding—a quippy but deadly sharpshooter, an upbeat but unhinged former psychiatrist, a heavily-tattooed man who can shoot fire from his hands, a dirty Australian thief who throws boomerangs and likes unicorns, a man with a skin condition so bad he looks like a monster, a chuckling homicidal gangster who wears clown makeup, and a 6,000-year-old witch who takes over the body of a scientist.

The primary difference between Star Trek: Beyond and Suicide Squad is that one movie knew what to do with its characters—put them front and center, let them talk and breathe and develop, and put them in an adventure in which they can all play a part—and the other did not—hastily throwing them together in an overstuffed, poorly-edited story with a half-baked central premise and a pitiful overarching conflict. The former, a second sequel to 2009’s Star Trek reboot, told an exciting adventure but kept its familiar characters (well-established after two films and the classic TV series) at the focus of its camera no matter the expensive visual effects around them, and the latter--though admittedly introducing all but two of its characters for the first time--spent little time introducing its characters and thrust them into the midst of a whirl of effects and cuts and plotlines.

In an age when most movies of note are big-budget, effects-laden films, these two effectively capture the good and bad of the “blockbuster” as we know it. One movie cares about its characters enough to make the audience care, and the story is that much more compelling for it. The other has interesting characters but doesn’t know what to do with them, and it does its characters (and its audience) a disservice in putting them in a clunky stopgap feature.

Star Trek: Beyond                                                                   Grade: B+

Directed by Justin Lin

I’m admittedly biased because I loved the 2009 reboot and its 2013 sequel, Into Darkness, but Star Trek: Beyond will go down as the only truly good movie I saw during the summer 2016 season other than May’s Captain America: Civil War. Beyond wasn’t a movie whose release date I had circled on my calendar, but it turned out to be a far smarter, more engaging, and better-rounded film that nearly all of the bigger-name releases that came out around it.

Celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the inception of creator Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi universe, Beyond opens about halfway into the five-year mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Space travel is fun, sure, but being literally adrift for years has taken its toll on even the notorious adventure-lover James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), the starship’s captain. Just as his birthday arrives and the Enterprise pulls into a high-tech spaceport, the captain secretly puts in an application for a desk job, thinking he might want to settle down and get his bearings again. But when the frantic survivor (Lydia Wilson) of a ship savaged by evil extraterrestrials on a nearby planet comes begging for help, Captain Kirk immediately seeks to lend a hand. But a vicious alien ambush leaves the Enterprise a shattered, ruined hulk on a strange planet, with Captain Kirk and crewmates Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg, also a co-writer of the film), and Chekov (the late Anton Yelchin) looking for other survivors and a potential way to get back to base. Two of their good friends—Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho)—along with the rest of the surviving crew, are in a makeshift prison guarded by the forces of the evil, scaly alien Krall (Idris Elba), who seems to have an axe to grind against the very Federation which Captain Kirk and his crewmates stand for. With Krall aggressive and seeking to destroy the nearest Federation base at his earliest opportunity, Captain Kirk and the others are forced to seek help from a zebra-faced humanoid named Jayla (Sofia Boutella) in order to stop his madness.

Star Trek: Beyond hits almost all the right notes. Krall is a little weak of a villain—nowhere near as intimidating and charismatic as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan from the last installment—someone who might antagonize the crew on an average episode of the show, but most the film's elements are top-of-the-line. The special effects are great, starting with the gorgeous, unique design of the Yorktown space station at which the Enterprise docks early on, and really hitting their stride in the sensational sequence in which Krall’s minions wreck the Enterprise by attacking like insects in destructive waves of tiny ships. There are some fun, classic Star Trek-type moments—Captain Kirk riding a motorcycle around an alien prison to distract the guards during an attempted rescue, the Enterprise blasting Beastie Boys to break up an alien communication signal (“is that classical music?” a confused Dr. McCoy asks), and a starship plummeting straight off a cliff in an edge-of-your-seat maneuver. There’s also some strong sentiment, as the passing of Trek legend Leonard Nimoy is effectively written into the story, culminating in a moment when the younger Spock finds a picture of the entire cast of the original series--a moment that will surely bring a lump to the throat of hardcore Trekkies.

But, of course, what really makes Beyond work is the family-like cast. This is their third outing—almost all of them are contracted for a fourth—and these characters who go back 50 years in the pop zeitgeist are as fun and interesting as ever. I feel certain many, myself included, would watch the seven or so name characters simply interact for a couple hours and be quite satisfied, even if there was no space adventure involved. Like a great episode of a show, Beyond keeps the whole ensemble together most of the movie, but breaks off one pair for a few hugely-effective character-building moments. While Saldana’s Uhura and Cho’s Sulu aren’t given quite as much to do, Pine, Quinto, Urban and Yelchin all shine—as does newcomer Boutella, even behind the kabuki-mask makeup—while Scotty gets a much bigger, more dynamic role thanks to Pegg helping write the script. It’s a fine group that, despite the episodic nature of the these movies (in keeping with the franchise’s TV series origins), makes me want to come back for more.

The family dynamic takes on a special meaning for this film in particular, what with two of the key members of the Trek universe having passed in real life during its development. In Loving Memory of Leonard Nimoy appears mid-way through the end credits, followed shortly by the heart-tugging words For Anton, for the young actor who died in a freak accident less than two months before the movie’s release. This genuinely-good movie makes a fitting tribute.

**Star Trek: Beyond is rated PG-13 for intense action and scenes of destruction, some disturbing images, and brief language.

Suicide Squad                                                                          Grade: D

Directed by David Ayer

When March’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice met mixed (mostly-negative) reviews from critics and fans alike, many said August’s Suicide Squad—which exists in the same part of the fictional DC Comics Universe—could erase memories of that movie and redeem the DC Universe. With the Joker coming back to the series, plus a whole bunch of other notorious characters hitting the big screen for the first time—Harley Quinn, Deadshoot, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc, etc…--Squad looked like it could be the cool, edgy shot-in-the-arm DC (and the summer movie season in general) needed.

Sadly, Suicide Squad is no better than the much-maligned Batman v. Superman. In fact, it’s arguably worse. I summed up my feelings on BvS by calling it “an overlong, overstuffed, big ugly misfire”, and Squad meets all those ignominious criteria as well. This two-hour movie is stuffed to the gills with character intros, extra plot threads, nods to different parts of the DC Universe, cheesy action sequences, musical interludes, and sorta-kinda-funny moments that would be more entertaining if they hadn’t already been in all the movie’s trailers. In contrast to Star Trek: Beyond, which acquitted its beloved, developed characters well by keeping watching them grow through their new adventure, Squad hastily introduces its characters and then hurls them into a cheesy, by-the-numbers plot.

The eccentric title characters are all introduced, and then thrust into action, by federal agent Amanda Waller (Oscar-nominee Viola Davis, playing by far the actual most intimidating character in the movie), who proposes the world counteract the threat of Superman and other powerful extraterrestrials by forming a team of criminals—“the worst of the worst”. These eccentric baddies are all in an underground prison in Louisiana. They include “Deadshot” (Will Smith), a sharpshooter who never misses; Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former psychiatrist who lost her credibility, and, it seems, her sanity, when she fell in love with the nefarious Joker; “Diablo” (Jay Hernandez), a man who can shoot fire from his hands; “Killer Croc” (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), a burly cannibal who has a skin condition that makes him look like a human/crocodile combo; “Captain Boomerang” (Jai Courtney), a rugged Australian thief; and “Slipknot” (Adam Beach), a “guy who can climb anything”. When Agent Waller puts this team of criminals in action, it’s up to decorated Special Ops vet Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) to keep them in line—him, and the tiny explosive computer chips Waller had planted in each criminal’s neck as a warning to conduct themselves appropriately.

With the mysterious Batman (Ben Affleck) lurking in the background and the infamous Joker (Jared Leto) dogging their steps in an attempt to rescue his beloved Harley, the criminals are forced into action when an ancient witch takes over the body of a scientist (Cara Delevingne), turns people into faceless zombies, and tries to take over Midway City (and, tomorrow, the WORLD!!!).

Let me stop you right there. While the opening is both rushed and too long and too cluttered—with most of the characters getting at least a few moments’ introduction if not a whole montage of scenes (which Deadshot and Harley Quinn get)—the characters are eccentric enough, and Davis’ Waller convincing enough, that this all might work…if it weren’t for the witch. The witch—called “Enchantress”—is possibly the most ridiculous movie villain I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Here you have most of this movie taking place in the same moody, grittily-realistic cityscapes as Batman v Superman, and then you have the villain, a half-naked young woman wearing a chain-mail loincloth, gyrating and moaning dialogue in a hilariously-fake foreign language while CGI tentacles come out of her back and fake smoke rises from her body. Her followers—who she creates by French-kissing them—are zombies with oozing, pulsing, featureless lumps for faces. Nothing is bad quite like bad sci-fi or fantasy, and this is bad. More than once, I burst out laughing during the movie just because the movie—about a group of deadly killers pulled out of prison to try and stop a “terrifying evil force”—was just too silly for me to take.

It’s not all the witch’s fault—the rest of this isn’t exactly Shakespeare. I mean, the characters are interesting enough that, if the film around them were better written and better directed, they might really have something (like DC’s rival Marvel’s witty takes on antiheroes in Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool). But the movie has too much in it, jumps around far too much, and has too much of the witch and her (wizard? Warlock? Mummy?) brother rendered in bad CGI to be good. Even Jared Leto’s much-ballyhooed Joker is a disappointment—in his maybe ten minutes of screentime, he’s rendered as a fey, giggling goof, which might be the point of the character (being called the JOKER), but still seems like weak sauce compared to the late Heath Ledger’s depiction of a homicidal anarchist/terrorist in 2008’s Dark Knight.

For the actors, Davis fares best, her stone-faced agent a chilly baddie who could probably have her own movie. Smith is back to entertaining after a few too-serious recent outings (Focus, Concussion, the awful After Earth), and he manages pretty well. Margot Robbie has a ball throwing herself into the role of Harley Quinn—with the smudgy makeup, intriguing backstory, and life-of-the-party flair, Harley has everything…including many little character-building moments spoiled by the trailers. Still, Robbie hits a home run in this hugely-anticipated role, and most of the others fall in her wake. Joel Kinnaman’s straight-laced Flagg, surrounded by all these eccentric wackos, is flat and forgettable. Delevingne should fire her agent, her role is so embarrassing. Akinnouye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc isn’t so much a character as a scaly thing that occasionally mumbles words. Jay Hernandez tries to give Diablo a personality and a soul, but I just kept looking at him wondering why no one ever mentioned he had distracting tattoos all over his freakin’ face. Jai Courtney’s Boomerang is little more than a bunch of tiny weird character moments put together. Adam Beach’s Slipknot is just here to get his head blown off.

Needless to say, it’s disappointing that Suicide Squad falls on its face. Its main villain is pathetic, its plot flimsy, its “supervillain” characters not very super or villainous, its opening is too full, and its three endings all contradictory. It strikes the wrong tone—it makes people who had wanted to see it for months laugh at how silly and dumb it was.

***Suicide Squad is rated PG-13 for action and violent content, language, and some disturbing images

Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

Directed by Justin Lin

Screenplay by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung

Based on Characters Created by Gene Roddenberry

Rated PG-13

Length: 122 minutes

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Idris Elba and Sofia Boutella; Also Featuring Lydia Wilson and Shohreh Aghdashloo

Suicide Squad (2016)

Directed and Written for the Screen by David Ayer

Based on the Comic Book by John Ostrander

Rated PG-13

Length: 123 minutes

Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara, Ike Barinholtz, and Jared Leto; with Adam Beach as Slipknot and Ben Affleck as Batman

THE LEGEND OF TARZAN

The Legend of Tarzan

Grade: C+

Starring: Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Djimon Hounsou

Premise: Now living in England with his wife Jane, Tarzan is called to return to the African jungle during a Belgian exploration project.

Rated PG-13 for action, language, and some sensuality

Well, the slate of summer 2016 movies isn’t exactly knocking my socks off so far. Admittedly, I haven’t seen some of the big-ticket movies so far, including the comedy sequel Neighbors 2 or the newest Pixar product, Finding Dory, but The Legend of Tarzan marks the third-straight seriously-underwhelming blockbuster I’ve seen. There was the dull, confusing, C-level fantasy Warcraft, the overcooked, completely unnecessary sequel Independence Day: Resurgence, and now comes Tarzan, which has the visual flair to be a great epic adventure but ultimately proves sadly underwritten.

My favorite version of the Tarzan story (originally conceived by Edgar Rice Burroughs in the early 1900s) is probably always going to be the Phil Collins-scored Disney version that came out in 1999, but this version, directed by three-time Harry Potter auteur David Yates, shows promise early on. Not unlike Deadpool, this movie starts about halfway through the narrative action, revealing the typical origin story stuff only via flashbacks while keeping things moving forward in the present. And the overall premise isn’t bad: a now-domesticated Tarzan returning to the jungle with European explorers? Primitive African tribesmen living in the jungle who are almost as savage as any “beast”? Jane a more rough-and-tumble missionary kid raised in Africa as opposed to a squeaky-clean aristocrat? There’s a lot of potential, and it’s clear serious money and time was spent on the period details and the special effects to convey convincing gorillas and leopards and the like. But none of the main characters are given more than a hint of depth, and, as a result, there’s no chemistry between Tarzan and Jane, Tarzan exhibits a total lack of personality, the villain is a smug, boring caricature, and a potentially high-stakes story about the exploitation of the jungle and its natives via the European slave trade holds almost no weight. It’s disappointing because this movie had the visual appeal, a fine cast of actors, and the right pieces, to be a really compelling updated adventure for a classic character.

Plot

Raised by a band of gorillas in the jungles of the Congo after his shipwrecked British parents died, Tarzan (Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard) has returned to England, married his sweetheart Jane (Margot Robbie), and assumed his birth name of John Clayton III, and his rightful title of Lord of Greystoke. Viewed as a celebrity by a fascinated public, John is recruited to revisit the Congo by the Prime Minister (Jim Broadbent) to drum up interest in a colony who could turn the land’s natural resources into a profit for England and its European allies. Reluctant at first, Tarzan is persuaded by a plain-spoken American named George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson), who hints to Tarzan that the land he’s returning to is being plundered, and its people enslaved.

When Tarzan, Jane and George arrive again in the Congo, they find the indigenous tribes Jane was raised with, the schools she and her father built, and the house she was raised in. They also find the remnants of the gorilla clan, which now views Tarzan as an outsider. And they cross paths with Belgian explorer Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), a slick-talking and slick-dressing emissary of King Leopold of Belgium, who seems to be in cahoots with the chief of a local clan of sinister tribesmen (Djimon Hounsou). Shortly it becomes clear that Rom is hostile to Tarzan and Jane, as well as the native African community they hold dear.

What Doesn’t Work?

Like I said before: a domesticated Tarzan living in London with Jane gets a chance to go back and connect with his homeland, not to mention getting to let loose the inner vine-slinging, rough-housing ape man of legend when some baddies cross him—how can they possibly mess up a film with that premise? Well, I’d say the way they messed it up is two-fold: First, they turned something with as classic a feel as Tarzan into your average summer blockbuster, with a perfunctory romance, perfunctory sidekick, perfunctory villain who needs defeating, etc… Second, they produced a film that is lifeless. That’s right—after a promising beginning, a movie about a man raised swinging on vines in the jungle and wrestling with his gorilla brethren feels dull and hollow almost immediately. Alexander Skarsgard’s empty expression and bland line readings don’t help. The man’s an impressive slice of muscular beefcake, for sure, but this version of Tarzan is joyless, witless, and has little discernible personality. Worse, he has nary a shred of chemistry with his classic love, Jane. The only hint that there’s anything special about this man at all (except for his ability to swing from vines), is that he can imitate a number of different animals’ mating calls. Silly as that sounds, it is something that could be unique and interesting about a man raised by apes (hello, foreplay!), and I’m sure there was more in the tool shed. There’s a lot wrong with this film, but the main thing they did wrong was create a largely-blank page of their main character, especially one as intriguing as Tarzan of the Apes.

I wonder if it’s truly Skarsgard’s fault. None of the characters in the movie are given much depth or color at all, thanks to a script that hurries quickly through by-the-numbers set-up sequences and rarely stages a conversation longer than about ten lines of dialogue. There’s no chance for traction amongst any of the characters (with the possible exception of Samuel L. Jackson, if only because he’s playing himself). The lack of characterization is noticeable quickly, and the gulf only grows wider thanks to the movie’s uneven pace.

This largely dooms the actors. The attractive Robbie has an open accessibility that’s very appealing, and she’s here given a Jane that has a little more color (she’s bilingual, she, too, was raised in Africa, she teaches children about her experiences in the Congo), but it’s ultimately—and obviously—just a damsel-in-distress role. Thankfully for Robbie, she’s already become a megastar for playing Harley Quinn in the upcoming Suicide Squad—this less-victorious outing won’t hurt her career.

I wonder if the same can be said for Christoph Waltz. The man sashayed his way to fame in Quentin Tarantino films, playing uber-intelligent, morally-skewed, wily, smily characters, but Leon Rom is about the fourth character he’s played who’s basically just a watered-down, non-Tarantino-written version of that archetype. It’s an even bigger bummer of a role than his turn as the underused bad guy in last year’s James Bond film Spectre. Rom is a typical blockbuster baddie—slick-dressing and ambitious, going about his business with a chip on his shoulder thanks to a poor upbringing, and sporting a peculiar signature weapon. It’s an immediately forgettable turn, worth mentioning only because the man who plays it has played some truly outstanding roles in other, better movies.

The flashbacks in the movie are handled unevenly, the big action climax is rushed and way too easy, and the movie otherwise struggles with contrivance. A vicious gorilla gets the upper hand on Tarzan and doesn’t kill him because…? The sinister tribesmen in the jungle who were such a big plot point randomly disappear and aren’t seen again because…? Oh, and there’s the poor editing in the action sequences. From an ambush by spear-throwing tribesmen to Tarzan fighting a train-car full of Belgian army officers to Tarzan’s mano-a-mano with a gorilla, the editing is choppy and indirect, hinting at cool action while rarely actually showing any of it.

What Works?

As I mentioned, right from the get-go, this movie has a lot of things working in its favor. First, it’s about the inherently interesting fictional person of Tarzan – man raised by apes. Second, it isn’t just another origin story but hints at the intriguing second and third acts in Tarzan’s life. Third, it’s visually impressive, with the CGI jungle animals rendered even more impressively than similar creatures were in April’s The Jungle Book. There was definitely a big-time, epic adventure saga here. But, as mentioned, the filmmakers missed it with a far too simple and by-the-numbers script.

It’s not all bad. Robbie works hard to make Jane compelling—it helps that she has the star-on-the-rise appeal of someone about to hit the big time. Samuel L. Jackson does his usual loud, sharp-tongued shtick we’re so well-accustomed to (at least the PG-13 version), but it’s actually welcomed here, as his is the only character not heavily dulled by the movie’s poor writing; we’re so familiar with his personality that we don’t need much to gain familiarization. He also gets a quieter monologue about the dehumanizing impact of war that’s the deepest thing the movie has to offer. And Djimon Hounsou, so poorly utilized here for a two-time Oscar nominee, manages to drive home the crux of the movie’s big emotional conflict with just a few lines, and a vivid, pained facial expression. 

There are other factors as well. It’s nice of the movie to acknowledge the indigenous peoples of Africa and to suggest Jane’s upbringing as a missionary gives her some extra knowledge of the culture, the land, and the language. We do get the classic awkward/cute meeting between Jane and not-yet-civilized Tarzan in flashback—his awkward sniffing is weird/fascinating to her at first, but she quickly rebuffs him when he tries to inspect between her legs. And, when Samuel L. Jackson’s babe-in-the-woods explorer needs a helping hand to keep up with Tarzan and some of his indigenous buddies, it’s amusing to see him piggy-backing (“legs, too”) on Tarzan for a vine-swinging ride.

Content

Though there’s some intense action and Waltz’s baddie does some nefarious baddie things, it’s not graphic, in keeping with PG-13 blockbuster status. A couple nice tribespeople and a pack of gorillas get mowed down in non-bloody massacres by Waltz’ men, and a couple people get strangled or impaled with spears, though I daresay you’ll see nary a drop of blood spilled. And I’m pretty sure Samuel L. gets to indulge in some gratuitous PG-13 cusswords. 

Bottom Line

The Legend of Tarzan has a lot working in its favor, from great special effects and good visuals, a talented cast, and a Deadpool-style non-linear telling of its story, where it hints at the origins of Tarzan but moves on to give us more interesting stuff like a domesticated Tarzan who’s been living in England returning home to the jungle where he was raised. With better writing, it could have been a pretty great epic. But, alas, the script is rushed and by-the-numbers, turning Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fascinating, beloved character’s story into Tarzan: The Typical Summer Blockbuster, complete with a bland hunk (Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard as Tarzan), an underdeveloped damsel-in-distress (Margot Robbie AKA soon-to-be-Harley Quinn as Jane), a central couple with zero chemistry, Christoph Waltz playing the Christoph Waltz role of smug, scheming villain, Samuel L. Jackson playing himself, an overwrought-yet-too-easy action climax, and just an overall sense of feeling like a lengthy trailer for a longer, fuller, better movie. I didn’t think this movie would capture my affections quite like the 1999 Disney version has, but I was still hoping for a lot more than this pretty-but-hollow flick.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

Directed by David Yates

Screenplay by Craig Brewer and Adam Cozad

Based on the 'Tarzan' stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Rated PG-13

Length: 109 minutes

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE

Independence Day: Resurgence

Grade: C

Starring: Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Jessie T. Usher, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe, William Fichtner, Brent Spiner, Judd Hirsch, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Travis Tope and Sela Ward: Also with Joey King and Vivica A. Fox

Premise: On the twentieth anniversary of the worldwide alien invasion of 1996, a new, terrifying alien ship arrives to wreak havoc on humanity.

Rated PG-13 for action violence, intense scenes of destruction and peril, and some language

Why oh why didn’t they wait to release this on the actual Independence Day, or at least as close as possible? Then there at least would have been some sentiment accompanying this film…

Why a movie called Independence Day was released a week and-a-half before the holiday when it could have been released at the beginning of the holiday weekend (Friday, July , for instance) is anyone’s guess, as is why, exactly, anyone in Hollywood thought it was a good idea to make a fast, funny sequel to a pretty open-and-shut twenty-year-old science fiction film. Director Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) is back and trying to destroy the world just like before, but the movie, to describe it in the appropriate words of on one IMDB user comment, is “big and dumb, and a bit of fun”. This movie is fun—I won’t deny that. But boy, is it dumb, not to mention completely devoid of any of the sense of real dread or drama that accompanied its semi-classic 1996 predecessor. Where the original was one of the first big, epic special-effects blockbusters that had potentially world-ending consequences, this is a neat, tidy, barely-two-hour film wrapped in overwhelmingly-glossy CGI, neat contrivances, nice coincidences, and massive plot holes—one in a seemingly never-ending parade of glossy computerized world-in-peril blockbusters.

The average viewer will probably leave satisfied, I’ll give it that. And I had a decent time watching it and would watch it again. But mostly I’m just disappointed that this sequel had to go and put a damper on one of the first big, awesome films of my childhood.

Plot

**It’s hard to imagine many people not having seen the original Independence Day, but, in any case, viewing it is not a complete necessity. There are many remaining characters, but their dynamic should be easy enough to pick up.**

In a more futuristic 2016, the world, led by American Madam President Lanford (Sela Ward), is celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the War of 1996, in which an extraterrestrial race of city-sized alien ships attacked earth and were defeated only after nearly annihilating the human race. As it turns out, not only did humans defeat the aliens, but we also learned from them and adapted their technology, so that our earth and space defenses are light years beyond what they were before. Two young pilots represent the strides humanity has made—Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) helps maintain a huge laser cannon at the moon’s high-tech space defense center, and Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Hughes), the stepson of the late hero Captain Steven Hiller (who was played by Will Smith), is Earth’s Mightiest Young Hero, on a first-name basis with President Lanford and leading an elite international team of earth-and-space fighters.

When the aliens return, two old heroes are among the first to know it. Former cable repairman David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) has become a highly-touted scientific mind, and he’s in Africa looking over remains of an old spacecraft from the ‘90s when the craft unexpectedly starts powering up. Meanwhile, the oft-quoted President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), who has been left haggard and tormented by his experiences with the aliens, starts having vivid dreams including a beacon seemingly summoning the aliens to earth. In short order, the aliens show up in a huge ship that dwarfs the city-sized saucers that attacked last time, quickly lay waste to earth’s most high-tech, space-based defenses, and plant themselves noisily on earth. Even nuclear-protective bunkers prove little defense against the laser-blasting extraterrestrials. Jake and Dylan manage to board the alien ship but find their weapons are of little use. Only Dr. Okun (Brent Spiner), the head scientist at the Area 51 laboratory who was left comatose for nearly two decades following a very close encounter with the aliens and has suddenly awoken, seems to have any inkling how it might be possible for humanity to stop this invasion.

What Doesn’t Work?

To be frank, there’s a lot that doesn’t work. Resurgence is pretty entertaining in the moment, but if you stop to think logically for a second, the problems and clichés with the movie will come swarming to your mind like the little alien fighter ships that constantly barbecue our human aircraft in these movies. First and most obviously, this Independence Day musters none of the dread and menace that made the first film a smash hit us-against-them underdog story, not to mention an edgy, intimidating viewing for a then-eight-year-old like me. Perhaps it’s not this movie’s fault that the original was among the first humanity-in-peril/earth-in-jeopardy blockbusters of the type that have become very commonplace nowadays, but the fact that Resurgence is unlikely to make anyone shudder—or so much as blink—with its visuals of alien ships hovering over entire cities just underlines how far we’ve come (or how far we've fallen--whichever). The special effects are fine, but unimpressive.

And that’s not to mention that the human…um “drama” in this movie is basically a rehash of what was in the first, or at least of what’s also regularly seen in summer blockbusters today. Will-they/won’t-they couples that obviously will? Check. Dweeby government type who learns to let loose and help fight the aliens? Check. Hopelessly close-minded government types? Of course. Obviously-doomed characters (including a couple of the returning cast members from the previous film)? Uh-huh. Characters who only speak in one-liners or heroic trailer-ready sound bytes? Obviously. And how about would-be climactic action sequences in which it looks like the good guys won but they obviously didn’t because the movie’s only an hour in and it’s obviously going to be two hours, so something clearly didn’t work? Yeah, that, too. Particularly bemoanable material for me included an embarrassingly-wasteful side plot including Judd Hirsch’s returning character and a couple of random kids who added nothing to the story, and a couple of different moments where our main characters managed to break through a previously-impenetrable alien shield just because they kept shooting. Would it have been possible for a no-name to keep shooting and break through the same alien shield? I bet not.

What Works?

Independence Day: Resurgence is a pretty fun viewing—certainly more entertaining than Warcraft, the last film I saw and reviewed. Director Roland Emmerich and his four co-writers manage not to make things too easy, and to add some interesting material that could set up an intriguing sequel. A couple deaths manage to hit home. And the movie presses the nostalgia button nicely with by bringing back both of the Area 51 mad scientist actors (Brent Spiner and John Storey), hinting that Vivica A. Fox’s character got a major job upgrade from stripper to nurse between films, and even including a brief but poignant appearance by the late Robert Loggia, who played one of the higher-ranking military commanders in the first film. It’s also nice to just see Jeff Goldblum in a big film again.

Most of the cast are playing parts that have been done a million times, are painfully clichéd, or are really poorly-written (even spilling tears adds little to the portrayals of practically all the movie’s 20-something pretty faces). However, two actors managed to bring some gravity to their performances, and I’m happy to say they’re both returners. Perhaps it’s because Bill Pullman is best known for this part and because he hasn’t been seen onscreen much lately, but Pullman’s Thomas Whitmore might be the most dimensional and interesting character in the film. Though most of his dialogue is clichéd or in the line of rousing speeches like he gave in the original, his presence is a nice mix of nostalgia and some actual character layers. And though it’s preposterous that Brent Spiner’s Dr. Okun survived his encounter with the aliens in the first film, his mad scientist energy and enthusiasm is a nice tonic from the stale action-hero doings of the “kids” and the murmurmings of the government types.

Content

Really young kids might be intimidated by the huge spaceships, big explosions, a few closeups of the gooey aliens, or by a few of the “big” deaths, but there’s nothing particularly off-putting or edgy about Independence Day: Resurgence. There’s a lot of action, a lot of things blow up, people worry about the future of humanity, and humanity wins. Hooray.

Bottom Line

Independence Day: Resurgence isn’t terrible—there’s just nothing special about it. I don’t know if the first movie is generally considered a “classic”, but it was a groundbreaking special-effects spectacle that made alien invasions seem awesome and epic and scary. The sequel, 20 years later, dripping in glossy CGI and featuring a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears 20-something action heroes, doesn’t feel any different from countless Transformers or Marvel movies or other big blockbusters in which the End of the World is at stake. Plus the action is by-the-numbers and the characters aren’t particularly memorable. The absence of an actor with the magnetism of Will Smith doesn’t help (sorry, but Liam Hemsworth is not the same). There’s definitely a few exciting action scenes, some good special effects, and some of the older returning actors (Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Brent Spiner) have nice moments, but most of the movie is clichéd and corny and easy-to-predict. There are a million plot holes. And they’re setting the table for…a sequel.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Screenplay by Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, and James Vanderbilt

Based on Characters created by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin

Rated PG-13

Length: 120 minutes

WARCRAFT

Warcraft

Grade: C

Starring: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Schnetzer, Ben Foster, and Dominic Cooper,
And As Orcs: Toby Kebbell as Durotan, Daniel Wu as Gul’dan, Anna Galvin as Draka, and Robert Kazinsky as Orgrim

Premise: When a dark sorcerer creates a portal allowing hordes of monstrous, bloodthirsty orcs to attack a kingdom of humans, it’s up to the humans’ wizard Guardian and a band of heroes and outcasts to find a way to stop them.

Rated PG-13 for strong violence, gory/disturbing images, and some emotional content

I went into Warcraft knowing it wasn’t going to be great. I’ve never played any version of the popular World of Warcraft game from Blizzard Entertainment, and I didn’t figure a movie starring ugly CGI troll-ish orcs as some of its main characters would exactly be Shakespeare. I didn’t even think its fantasy elements would make it a Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Chronicles of Narnia. I just hoped it would be a reasonably entertaining live-action/CGI mash-up, like a cheaper, less allegorical Avatar.

Shortly after the movie started, I began to panic, as its early scenes hinted Warcraft was dead on arrival—horribly-written, filled with one-note characters whose names I could barely understand, going to and from places whose names I couldn’t pronounce, and not the merest hint of traction anywhere except in battle scenes. At that point, I thought “oh, crap, this is going to be a lousy movie that could only possibly appeal to people who’ve played the game and must be grinning at all the famous place/character references I’m not getting”. I felt sure I was in for two hours of torture. Well, slowly, I began to realize the movie was developing a pulse—one still very feeble compared to the likes of LOTR, but one nonetheless--so that I actually felt the weight of the stakes in the later going and wanted to see what happened. And then…huh? Unexplained plot twists, way-too-easy contrivances, a rushed ending, and…oh, they’re setting up a sequel…why, of course! Ultimately, I would say, while Warcraft only met the lower half of my expectations/hopes, it was decent enough. I doubt I’ll see the sequel(s), but it was still a more engaging time at the theater than, say, Anchorman 2 or Pixels—the worst movies I’ve seen in theaters in recent years.

Plot

In an ancient, primitive alien world dominated by the tusked, muscle-bound, troll-like orcs, an intimidating overlord named Gul’dan (voice/movements of Daniel Wu) has gained followers by his powerful use of a dark magic called the Fel, which largely involves draining the life energy from beings and using it for his own purposes. Having gathered huge amounts of followers (and prisoners whose life energy he can use with the Fel), Gul’dan decides to send a “war band” (a large scouting party) of orcs through a massive, Fel-powered gate portal and see what they find. If they find a world with resources and, more importantly, kingdoms to conquer and people to rule, they will send the entire “horde” (orc population) through to complete the conquest. Draining the life energy from hundreds of prisoners, Gul’dan sends his war band through the portal.

They arrive in the lush kingdom of Azeroth, which is ruled and kept safe by King Lane (Dominic Cooper) and his brother-in-law Lothar (Travis Fimmel). As villages and towns are plundered and corpses keep piling up, Lothar—along with a young sorcerer-in-training named Kadgar (Ben Schnetzer)—is sent to seek guidance from the wizard-like Guardian (Ben Foster). Kadgar and the Guardian deduce that the very dangerous Fel is at the center of whatever is happening, and that its power will only grow unless they can find the source. They get more information after a scouting party led by Lothar catches an orc prisoner, Garona (Paula Patton), who has a green tinge to her skin and has the prominent lower teeth of the orcs but is otherwise more human than the others. She informs them that Gul’dan is just gathering prisoners whose life energy he can use with the Fel to open the gate portal once more, to unleash the horde. Lothar, King Lane, Kadgar, and the Guardian all promptly begin to argue over the best way to go about attacking the enemy forces. Things get more complicated when they are approached by an orc named Durotan (Toby Kebbell) who claims to be against Gul’dan and who, along with his followers, wants to fight with the humans against the evil overlord.

What Works?

I’ll give Warcraft credit—even though the features of the completely-CGI orcs aren’t very pretty, they’re impressively rendered, and you can even understand most of their dialogue. Moreover, the drama amongst the orcs, what with the scheming Gul’dan, a good guy/bad guy turncoat named Orgrim, and Durotan’s struggle with whether to rebel against Gul’dan, is often more compelling than the human drama (yes, I realize this is both a good and a bad thing, but there you go). Yes, sadly, most of the human characters are paper-thin and are played with barely an ounce of actual feeling. That said, Paula Patton and Ben Schnetzer make impressive contributions, infusing their characters with as much meaning as any characters could in this half-baked CGI brouhaha. Schnetzer’s Kadgar actually does more within the movie’s two hour span than the rest of the cast put together. Unsurprisingly, Warcraft is at its best and most compelling on the battlefield—even if this is the kind of action movie where the bad guys kills scores of nameless, faceless CGI characters but can barely touch the recognizable good guys, who dispense of much larger foes with little trouble. Warcraft does have a couple one-on-one orc battles that prove exciting. And, I have to give the movie credit, in a nod to the famously-unpredictable George R.R. Martin—who penned the popular fantasy series Game of Thrones—in a surprising turn of events, one good guy snuffs it in a moment of high action, in the kind of moment in which the good guy nearly always triumphs in cheap action movies like this one.

What Doesn’t Work?

Oh, boy. Put it this way—Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Game of Thrones, all these popular, pedigreed fantasy franchises—Warcraft is none of these. The orcs have names and accents that are hard to understand, the names of places in the movie are either hard to pronounce/understand or completely forgettable, and a couple of the more important human characters have no defining traits at all. The writing is poor, so I won’t entirely blame the actors for the latter...but King Lane has to be the most boring monarch ever portrayed in fiction—Cooper’s portrayal has no personality whatsoever. As his brother-in-law, accomplished warrior Lothar—the closest thing the movie has to a traditional hero—Vikings’ Travis Fimmel mostly grins stupidly and murmurs weak one-liners like he’s embarrassed to be saying them (which he probably is). And yes, the script here has the audacity to try and write Patton’s actually dimensional character into a “passionate romance” with the lazily-penned Lothar—probably THE most pathetic, forced, chemistry-free movie romance I’ve ever beheld. And I was dreadfully sad to see Ben Foster—he of the very compelling performances in 3:10 to Yuma and The Messenger—slumming through the role of the Guardian, playing the powerful but weary bearded wizard like a grunge band member with a bad hangover.

Mostly, the movie is cliché, at times hard to follow (and hard to care about), and has little discernible narrative flow. It also doesn’t help that nearly everything in the movie—from the humans/elves/dwarves dynamic to the humans-versus-CGI creatures angle to the evil warlock dynamic to the dashing hero/brave, outcast woman romance—has been done before, and done much better, multiple times. It’s not hard to think of those movies and yearn for their depth and creativity.

Content

The most off-putting thing about Warcraft is that it’s cheesy and seems like it’s only for fans of the game. Otherwise, there are a few gory details in the way of killings and maimings of both humans and orcs, not to mention Gul’dan’s way of sucking the energy out of power leaves their bodies shrunken and twisted. This isn’t an especially hard, heavy PG-13, it’s just a matter of watching and caring.

Bottom Line

I vowed I was going to see Warcraft (despite no exposure to the game) and I did. I didn’t expect it to be very good, but I hoped for the best—maybe an Avatar-esque humans-meet-CGI characters throwdown, and…well, I probably won’t ever watch it again and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is not a fan of the game, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Incredibly, it did develop a pulse once it got going, there are a few compelling characters, the graphics are pretty decent, and there were a couple actual, honest-to-God twists that threw me…this from what was overall a pretty poorly-written film. Oh, but it’s another one of those movies that becomes annoying to watch when you realize this whole movie was basically setting up a sequel you doubt you’ll pay money to see.

Warcraft (2016)

Directed by Duncan Jones

Screenplay by Duncan Jones and Charles Leavitt

Story and Characters by Chris Metzen, based on Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft”

Rated PG-13

Length: 123 minutes

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

X-Men: Apocalypse

Grade: B

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Rose Byrne, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Evan Peters, with Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers/Cyclops

Also Featuring: Lucas Till as Havok, Josh Helman as William Stryker, Alexandra Shipp as Ororo Munroe/Storm, Olivia Munn as Psylocke, and Ben Hardy as Angel

Premise: An ancient, all-powerful mutant awakens from hibernation and attempts to take over the world. Wise Professor Charles Xavier, hardened fugitive Raven, and some of their choice students rush to stop him and the oft-tortured Magneto from wiping out all humans.

Rated PG-13 for violence and some bloody images, language, and some scary/emotional content

While X-Men: Apocalypse is above average for a summer action movie, it registers as roughly average for a superhero film in this day and age. The X-Men movies have always been a little deeper and had a little more subtext than the traditional origin stories and rights-retaining sequels from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Apocalypse seems especially average after the top-of-the-line superhero offerings that have already come out this year—the terrifically-unorthodox Deadpool and the intensely-exciting Captain America: Civil War. Indeed, I daresay this is the first X-Men movie (besides the infamous Wolverine Origins botch), that ultimately feels like a formulaic, nothing-special superhero movie. Since this installment is not an exciting reboot like 2011’s First Class or a franchise-altering consummation of all that came before like 2014’s Days of Future Past, it offers a straightforward plot that feels too predictable: a powerful evil arises, the X-Men band together, Magneto causes trouble, the world finds itself in all-humans-are-going-to-get-killed-by-mutants jeopardy, the old hands and some new faces have to band together and find their strength, and….they save the world. It has an intriguing opening prologue, a fine cast, and some fine moments of exploration in its world of mutants, but ultimately lacks the emotional depth or sense of real danger or intrigue that have classified the finer superhero offerings of late.

Plot

**If you know the gist of the X-Men, you won’t be lost, but there are constant references to both 2011’s First Class and 2014’s Days of Future Past. General knowledge of both would be helpful**

It’s the mid 1980s, and ten years have passed since Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his longtime friend Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) saved the president and the White House cabinet from vengeful mutant Magneto (Michael Fassbender) at the climax of Days of Future Past, earning the mutant community some nods of approval from the general populace. But some stigma still exists. When their respective powers reveal themselves, troubled teenagers Jean Grey (Sophie Turner, from TV’s Game of Thrones) and Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan) have little choice but to make their way to Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in upstate New York. Jean is telekinetic. Scott’s eyes shoot powerful, destructive laser beams. Charles Xavier has a place for them both. Meanwhile, his old friend Raven plucks another troubled young mutant—the blue, tattooed, teleporting Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee)—from obscurity, and old frenemy Erik Lensherr/Magneto lives a quiet, anonymous life as a factory worker in Poland.

Meanwhile, another old ally of Xavier’s—CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne)—learns of a secret Egyptian cult that still worships an ancient, powerful being who was said to exist long ago. Said cult has found his remains hidden in a long-forgotten tomb. And when they chant ancient spells over him, En Sabah Hur (Oscar Isaac) awakens. Worshipped as a god until he was betrayed by some of his would-be followers and forced into hibernation in an ancient Egyptian pyramid millennia ago, En Sabah Hur (soon to be called Apocalypse) discovers that mankind has run amok and forgotten they used to literally bow down to his powers. Ready to restore the ancient ways, he begins gathering followers—troubled mutants whose powers he can utilize—including outcasts like Storm (Alexandra Shipp) and Angel (Ben Hardy), little-noticed sidekicks like Pslocke (Olivia Munn), and the ever-troubled, human-hating Magneto, who stumbles back onto the world’s radar after a terrible accident. Charles Xavier, of course, will have nothing to do with humans being obliterated, so he re-allies himself with MacTaggert and Raven—and other old friends Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Peter ‘Quicksilver’ Maximoff (Evan Peters)—to stop Apocalypse in his tracks.

What Works?

Bryan Singer directed the series’ two best movies, 2000’s X-Men and 2003’s X2: X-Men United, and Matthew Vaughan directed 2011’s successful, ultra-likable reboot First Class. Singer’s directing here, and while Apocalypse is not nearly as good as that trio, it exceeded my expectations, given that I’d heard some less-than-enthusiastic things about it going in. While the movie starts to lose its way with a typically over-long action climax, it remains true to the X-Men style by delivering some exciting, kick-butt action, some affecting and relatable character development, a few fun/funny moments, and a few choice character cameos. Not as well-rounded or gripping as Captain America: Civil War, but still a fine film.

Unlike 2014’s Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse does not feature Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page, Halle Berry, James Marsden or Famke Janssen, all regulars from the original 2000-2006 trilogy. In fact, the latter three have now been recast younger, hinting that their days in the leather spandex of the X-Men are truly over. But Apocalypse doesn’t suffer much for their absences, buoyed as it is by the truly reliable trio of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, who starred in the last two entries and could easily make a watchable team for years to come. This series made a star of Fassbender, and, while he’s somewhat shortchanged by the script in this movie’s second half, the always-terrific actor’s commitment and emotional force early on prove that Erik Lensherr/Magneto is not only this series’ most enduring antagonist, but a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions. Meanwhile, McAvoy has become to Charles Xavier what Daniel Craig has been to James Bond—the actor who truly fleshed him out as an individual and made him a thinking, feeling, real human being. McAvoy doesn’t have the inherent majestic coolness of Patrick Stewart, of course, but he’s a fine center for this franchise as a warm, determined, kindly, emotionally-vulnerable presence.

And then there’s Lawrence, who was already a proven, Oscar-nominated commodity (for 2010’s Winter’s Bone) when she first joined the series in First Class, and has since become one of the most popular movie stars in the world. Just 25, Lawrence is already an old hand at starring roles, with even her prime X-Men roles third banana in her career to her massively-successful Hunger Games series and her Oscar nominated- and winning- work in black comedies and dramas. Her performance here isn’t as openly emotional as either of her two chief male costars’, and she doesn’t spend nearly as much time in the blue Mystique get-up as she did before, but she has a very nice, sentimental/nostalgic moment when she gives the new team young’uns pep talk, reflecting on her first major mission (in First Class). It’s a nice moment, not just because it recalls a better film in the series or because it’s well-written, but because, given the massive success Lawrence has seen since in the five years since that film—even though she’s barely older than the likes of Sophie Turner and Tye Sheridan—it feels like a legitimately lived-in, nostalgic, looking-back moment. Plus, given the large role granted to Turner as the young Jean Grey, it feels like Lawrence could be passing the torch to the series’ newest ingénue.

Speaking of Turner and the younger cast, they do fine work, with Sheridan granted a plumb role as the young Cyclops, Peters back for another go-round as the scene-stealing Quicksilver, and welcome returns from Nicholas Hoult and Lucas Till. It particularly threw me to see Turner and hear her speak in an “American” accent, as I’m quite used to her native tones from her six seasons of work on Game of Thrones.

What Doesn’t Work?

Two me, there were two main things that did not work: the overdrawn action climax (which is precisely what makes this movie feel formulaic and ruins a lot of narrative momentum) and Apocalypse himself. The former is typical of many action movies—and, indeed, it was the easy-to-anticipate over-drawn action climax of Days of Future Past that muddled my feelings on that film, which started especially strong but didn’t need to go such a predictable, formulaic action-movie route. I had a feeling that would happen with Apocalypse, and I wasn’t wrong. It’s especially troubling when the lengthy climax revolves around Apocalypse being impervious to the good guys’ powers until they all decide to just try harder at the same time, and wa-la, it works. This cliché slog to the close ruins, as mentioned, a very effective narrative arc for Magneto, which is a real shame (Magneto’s fate by the end credits is also a disappointment that was likely arranged just to ensure further X-Men sequels).

Apocalypse himself is a disappointment, and not just because—though he’s said to be the X-Men universe’s most powerful antagonist—you know going in he’s likely a one-and-done character for the series. With a vaguely-defined grab-bag of powers, a goofy accent, a yawn-inducing god complex, and unconvincing makeup/costume, it’s a shame that charismatic Oscar Isaac was saddled with this role. Coming off winning roles as the enigmatic mad scientist in Ex Machina and the heroic resistance pilot in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Isaac is unable to make Apocalypse anything more than a one-movie bad guy who needs to be just threatening enough to ensure the movie has a conflict.

Content

The X-Men movies are always a little heavier than the average superhero film. It’s still a PG-13, with only occasional cuss words, and little in the way of sexual content, but the action can get pretty intense at times. There are a fair share of heavy emotional moments in the film, not to mention plenty of humans (and a few lesser mutants) getting off-ed in creative ways (in one sequence, a bunch of heavily-armed soldiers are mauled by a familiar character in a brief cameo).

Bottom Line

X-Men: Apocalypse is pretty good for a summer action movie, but relatively unimpressive for a superhero movie in this day and age (it can’t hold a candle to this year’s earlier hit superhero flicks, Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War). The trio of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence proves as winning and effective as offer, some newly-cast actors in familiar roles acquit themselves well (including Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner), and there are some cool action scenes and a few funny moments. But Apocalypse proves an underwhelming villain, and Apocalypse ultimately feels like the most formulaic, by-the-numbers X-Men movies so far. No, it’s not as bad as The Last Stand or Wolverine: Origins, but it feels the most like a movie that was just made because the producers know they can squeeze money out of it. But, hey, hopefully this is a blip on this year’s superhero movie radar screen, and August’s Suicide Squad and November’s Doctor Strange will be better.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Directed by Bryan Singer

Screenplay by Simon Kinberg

Rated PG-13

Length: 144 minutes