Captain Marvel - Movie Review

Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening, Djimon Hounsou, Clark Gregg, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan and Rune Temte.
Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet.
Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck.

★★★

The 21st entry into the MCU is really a prequel episode if you want to take the timeline in chronological order. We not only meet Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in 1995, but also we get our first looks at Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) 13 years before they would have met Iron Man.

We first meet Captain Marvel as "Vers", a Kree warrior who's part of the fight against the Skrulls. You don't really need to know much more about the blue-tinted Kree v. the shapeshifting Skrulls, as it doesn't take long for the battle to spill to Planet C-53, aka Earth, where Vers finds herself having memories as though she used to be human. A young Agent Fury wants to investigate this lady who supposed fell from the sky to put a hole through the roof of the local Blockbuster video store, and we're off!

Larson and Jackson have natural chemistry together, and it's fun to see Jackson let his hair down, so to speak, as a younger more optimistic Fury, who has yet to deal with Loki and Hydra and everything else he's going to face. I really liked the way Vers was written, but I can't say I'm always a fan of the way Larson portrays her. I thought her coldness in the previews was going to be due to her being an alien, but there's definite humor and playfulness written in the character that Larson doesn't always pull off.

I really liked that it was set in the 1990's and all of the fun they had with that. (The music cues, the slow internet speeds...)

I thought Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One, Ready Player One, Robin Hood) was going to be playing his umpteenth cardboard villain as Telos, Skrull leader, but the character had a lot more depth than I expected and that to me is when Mendelsohn is most interesting.

This is one of the few Marvel movies where it's best to avoid spoilers, as the story did take a turn I wasn't expecting. And yes, stay for all of the credits.

Carol will be back in Avengers: Endgame, which is only a few weeks away, and I'm looking forward to seeing her interact with other Marvel characters, especially Thor and Ant-Man. (Everyone should meet Ant-Man!) Besides, Larson will be more comfortable in the role by then.

Glass - Movie Review

Starring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard.
Written & Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

★★½

I loved Unbreakable. I liked Split. After the hit of Split and the buzz afterwards, the studio would have happily financed Glass, but Shyamalan wanted to do it himself so he could have 100% control. This is a movie that really could have used a producer to reign him in and give script notes. The last time Shyamalan got too full of himself and refused to accept what the studio was telling him was when he ended his Disney deal and took his next film elsewhere under condition he could make it the way he wanted. That movie was Lady in the Water.

This movie isn't as bad as that one, but I really wanted to like this movie and it had too many issues to ignore. I am glad I saw the reviews were bad so I went in with low expectations.

I really liked this movie for a good while. Past the hour-mark, it was still a solid thumbs-up for me. We get reintroduced to the unbreakable David Dunn (Bruce Willis), still fighting bad guys in his poncho. We see what he and his grown son (Spencer Treat Clark) are up to. We also see that split-personalitied Kevin (James McAvoy) is free, and that the more malevolent ones in the Horde (what all the personalities who aren't Kevin are called) are running the show, as he's holding four teenage girls hostage in some abandoned brick factory. (I love abandoned brick factories as a movie setting. Almost as much as catwalk-and-steam factories for Act 3 action showdowns.)

David brushes up against Kevin and sees where the girls are. They have a showdown, but both wind up getting arrested and tranquilized and taken to a mental health facility. Enter Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who specializes in patients with delusions of being superheroes. It's a very narrow field of research. Oh, and also at this facility? Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson).

Now if you haven't seen Split, like my wife, this movie is very confusing and terrible. I have, so I understood everything about the lights switching personalities in Kevin, or why former kidnap victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) has sympathy for a couple of the personalities inside there. But there are other ways the movie goes wrong.

First of all, Shyamalan is very fond of characters looking right in the camera to give their dialogue, giving the audience the POV of the character he/she is talking to. This is done quite a bit with Paulson, and we are unable to look away when her dialogue starts getting really clunky and repetitive. "Stop making Paulson look at us and explain everything!" The more she's forced to give over-expository dialogue, the worse it gets. Which is exactly how I felt when watching Lady in the Water. This makes the middle of the movie lose a lot of its pacing, but I was still okay with that.

Act 3 comes, and Shyamalan builds up to this twist that isn't really that great, or at least if he hadn't hung SUCH a lantern on it. But even as we get there, the climax is start-stop-start-stop, like a car that starts but dies as soon as you hit the gas. We also lose track of what everyone's doing during the final showdown. The last half-hour could have been done in fifteen minutes just as effectively, and it wouldn't have felt so clumsy. It also would have been nice if he'd had a couple more million in the budget to make the special effects look better.

Now I really enjoyed the three main guys in their roles. McAvoy bounces around all of the personalities with precision. One line and I have no doubt which of the dozen or so from the Horde is currently in charge. Willis looks more engaged here that he has in at least a decade, and Jackson really buries himself nicely into the role of Mr. Glass. It's one of my favorite characters of his.

Glass is a movie easy to pick apart. I could really rip on a lot more elements in this movie, but after I've slept on it, I'm still glad I saw it, as it mostly lived up to my low expectations. It's an entertainingly bad movie. But man, the potential it had... It could have been so much better.

The Hitman's Bodyguard is #1

For the weekend of August 18-20, 2017, The Hitman's Bodyguard was the last hurrah for summer. The reviews weren't great, but the trailer was funny enough that the star power of Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson helped this movie find an audience.

Logan Lucky had better reviews, but the marketing never quite crackled. I hope it finds an audience. It's a fun heist movie.

Notable was the expansion of Wind River, the next crime drama from Taylor Sheridan, who wrote last year's Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water.

Opens August 25
LEAP! with the voices of Elle Fanning, Dane DeHaan and Carly Rae Jepsen.
BIRTH OF THE DRAGON with Philip Ng, Terry Chen and Billy Magnussen.
ALL SAINTS with John Corbett, Cara Buono and Barry Corbin.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage - DVD Review

Starring Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Toni Collette, Deepika Padukone, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Rory McCann, Kris Wu, Michael Bisping and Samuel L. Jackson.
Written by F. Scott Frazier.
Directed by D.J. Caruso.

★½

I must admit this movie was even cheesier than I thought it would be. When xXx first came out in 2002, it was supposed to be an edgier, hipper US antidote to James Bond, with a focus more on extreme sports and stunts rather than unreal gadgets. Vin Diesel thought he was too big a star to return for the sequel, so a quickly forgotten xXx 2 with Ice Cube looked like the end of a franchise before it could even begin.

Fast-forward a few years, where Vin Diesel movies that aren't part of the Fast & Furious franchise lose money, and it made sense for him to see if he could resurrect this. Domestically no, but overseas it made enough money to justify another movie, if the producers are so inclined.

Cage is a rebel, and when he's recruited to stop a handful of xXx-trained mercenaries who steal a superpowerful device called Pandora's Box (which is very similar to the Eye from F&F), there's always that edge of when he's going to ditch the government agents watching him and go rogue. It's the type of movie where whereever he goes, he's greeted by sexy young women who want to sleep with him. When he meets other people, they are surrounded by scantily-clad young women who serve as eye-candy, security, or whatever else excuse the filmmakers can conjure.

Even the geeky IT girl is played by the gorgeous Nina Dobrev, and she can't wait to tell Cage her safeword. Seriously.

So there are some cool stunts, some bad green-screens, and the whole thing felt so full of cliches that if they'd cast everyone 25 years older, you'd have The Expendables 4.

At least it had Donnie Yen as the antagonist. He was by far the best part of the movie.

Kong: Skull Island - Movie Review

Starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Tian Jing, Corey Hawkins, John Ortiz, Jason Mitchell, Toby Kebbell, Thomas Mann, Shea Whigham, Eugene Cordero, Marc Evan Jackson, Terry Notary and Richard Jenkins.
Written by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein & Derek Connolly.
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

★★★

This is like a Jurassic World sequel in a good way. Assemble the crew, get them to the island, and then let the monster-movie hijinks ensue!

It's 1973. Vietnam is winding down. John Goodman gets things rolling as the man who's seen satellite photos of the mysterious Skull Island and wants to lead the expedition. He gets funding from a skeptical senator (Richard Jenkins). He finds some experts and a military escort to go with him. This movie actually borrows a lot from Vietnam movies in their looks, sound, and feel. Particularly Apocalypse Now. They have to helicopter through a severe storm just to get to the island.

They don't know what they'll find, but they're greeted by King Kong. Kong is the star of the show. He knocks their helicopters down and the survivors are forced to scramble and make their way to a rendezvous point on the other side of the island in three days. Along the way they meet a lot of other fantastical creatures. (I'm okay with a giant spider, but why was there only one giant spider?) They also meet a WWII pilot (John C. Reilly) who's been stranded there for 27 years.

Oscar-winner Brie Larson plays a photojournalist, Tom Hiddleston is top-billed as a survivalist/tracker, Samuel L. Jackson is the colonel who turns into Ahab after Kong kills so many of his men. It's a true ensemble effort. Straight Outta Compton's Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell are here, as two very different characters.

Bring on Kong v. Godzilla!

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Movie Review

Starring Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris O'Dowd, Judi Dench, Allison Janney, Terence Stamp, Rupert Everett, Kim Dickens, Lauren McCrostie and Finlay MacMillan.
Written by Jane Goldman.
Directed by Tim Burton.

★★★

Some actors should just not be forced to try an American accent, and Chris O'Dowd is one such actor. The Irish actor best known for the BBC comedy The IT Crowd makes Ewan McGregor sound like Robert Redford. But that aside he plays Franklin, father of Jake (Asa Butterfield, a Londoner who's slightly more successful at sounding like a native Yank.)

Jake is on a quest. After his grandfather dies, Jake follows a set of clues to find Miss Peregrine. Miss Peregrine is the subject of bedtime stories his grandfather would tell him, but he confides that the stories are true. Jake convinces his father to take him to a small island off of Wales, where Miss Peregrine's house is supposedly hidden.

He finds it, and it's a house in the middle of a magic cave. The house is stuck in a time loop from 1943, and in this house live all sorts of peculiar children. One boy is invisible. One girl has a mouth on the back of her neck. And so on.

But there are another set of mutant peculiars who are hunting them. These are a menacing breed led by Barron (Samuel L. Jackson). The design of the mutants is where you can really tell this is a Tim Burton film.

The movie is breezy and enjoyable. Eva Green tends to be great in everything, and she's darkly bewitching here as Miss Peregrine. Like many Burton films, the ending isn't great. In fact, it gets quite convoluted with jumping from time loop to time loop. I lost track trying to make sense of it.

The Hateful Eight - Movie Review

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (R) Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, James Parks and Channing Tatum.
Written & Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

★★★

This is boldly advertised as the 8th film from writer-director Quentin Tarantino. For that to work, we're considering the two volumes of Kill Bill as one movie so we can count the extended version of Death Proof. I only saw the Grindhouse cut of Death Proof so I don't feel like a QT completist. Someday I'll get there.

This movie is a polarizing experience. It features the worst and best tendencies he has. I have no problem with the long running time or the cartoonish violence. QT seems to be challenging the audience by not providing anyone likeable to side with.

While QT had extended to operatic heights with Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, he's shrunken his canvas here to be more like Reservoir Dogs: The Western. Filmed in 70mm, it's gorgeous to look at. We can enjoy the broad, snowy landscapes of Wyoming as a stagecoach tries to outrun an oncoming blizzard. We first meet Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a Union soldier turned bounty hunter, who has put himself and three dead bounties in the path of the stagecoach. He first meets the driver O.B. (James Parks) and then the passengers - fellow bounty hunter and Union veteran John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his prisoner, a murderer named Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Both men want to get to Red Rock to collect their bounties, Ruth on his live one and Warren on his dead ones.

Further down the road, they come across the equally stranded Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a Confederate vet who's on his way to Red Rock to be the new sheriff. The blizzard comes too quickly so they hole up at Minnie's Haberdashery, essentially a large cabin store being run by Bob the Mexican (Demian Bichir) while Minnie's away. Also present are cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), Confederate general Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), and British hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), employed at Red Rock. These hateful eight (plus nice guy O.B.) are trapped under one roof to wait out the storm, and as Ruth surveys the place, he quickly assumes that one of these men is lying about his identity, and that he's really in cahoots with Daisy to save her.

John Ruth might be the one we could root for, with his John Wayne inflection and clear-eyed sense of justice, except he beats on the helpless Daisy under the slightest provocations.

Major Warren could be the one, but when he spins a tale of what he did to a helpless prisoner of his own, it's easy for sympathies to fade.

Daisy? She copes by wearing her broken-toothed smile as a feral mask, but it might have helped if the movie ever explained exactly who she'd killed and why. I actually felt bad for her at the end, and I don't know if that was QT's intention.

Minnie's Haberdashery serves as a microcosm of American society then and now. Then, it's the 1870's, and you have north and south, black and white, male and female trying to figure out what next. I also really admired QT's directing job here. We're aware at (almost) all times where everyone is in the cabin, even as the story needs to hop from this conversation to that. The tension increases and mounts, and it starts to feel more like John Carpenter's The Thing than anything else before it explodes in its gory, nasty finale.

This is one where I think I might like it more on a second viewing, but I can't say it's in my top half of favorites from the director. I think deep down he knows it'll be this way for most people. There's no cheer-worthy scene like Nazis getting killed in Basterds, slavers getting killed in Django, Butch saving Marcellus in Pulp Fiction, or even Mr. Orange shooting Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs. These are all brutish sorts, and I didn't feel like the ending had the payoff he might have been going for.

Turbo - DVD Review

Starring the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Pena, Maya Rudolph, Luis Guzman and Snoop Dogg.
Directed by David Soren.

★★½

It combines the fast pace of Cars with the singing slugs from Flushed Away. Heh. It's an okay animated film for kids. As an adult, I liked the voicework from Paul Giamatti and Samuel L. Jackson, and the actual animation is on the high-end of CG-quality. It just never captured my imagination. Maybe because I could care less about the Indy 500. A better movie would make me care anyway.

Django Unchained - Movie Review

Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Don Johnson, James Russo, Tom Wopat, M.C. Gainey, Dana Gourrier, Laura Cayouette, Franco Nero and Jonah Hill.
Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

★★★½

QT does for slaves here what he did for Jews in Inglourious Basterds - gives them a violent reimagining of history, boiling it down to a revenge flick.  Which is all fine and good.  When Tarantino puts history through his 1970's blaxploitation spaghetti-western worldview, he uses staples from his favorite B-flick genres, and by scrambling events through his prism, we get another ironic staple.  Cinematically alive and consistently engrossing, this Django doesn't disappoint.  It's not his best, but it's another impressive addition to his filmography.

When we first meet Django (Foxx), he is a slave being moved with a chain-gang across various terrains.  That gang is stopped by Dr. King Schultz (Waltz), a dentist turned bounty hunter who needs Django to help him identify some men he's hunting down.  Waltz gets to demonstrate all the charisma he had for Hans Landa, but for a slightly more moral man.  The Schultz-Django dynamic is like a fun buddy-cop period piece.

Schultz trains Django in the art of gunfire, and as they collect bounties and make money, Schultz makes a deal with Django. He hates slavery and feels bad he's benefiting from its trappings by owning Django, so after they've made some money, he agrees to set Django free and help him find his wife Broomhilda (Washington).  They learn she was sold to Calvin Candie (DiCaprio), owner of one of the largest plantations in Mississippi.

The second half of the movie takes on a more heart-of-darkness feel.  Our heroes enter deep into the property of Candieland, and we hope they're going to somehow pull off their con and get out alive.

Candie's side business is "mandingo fighting", having slaves fight no-holds-barred to the death, and placing bets.  Schultz poses as an interested investor, and Django is his expert on black stock.  They intend to buy one of Candie's best fighters, then casually buy Broomhilda on the side.

One wrench in the plans comes from Stephen (Jackson), Candie's right-hand house slave whose subservient dicrepitude hides a steel mind and loyal soul to Candie.  Stephen plays his Uncle Tom role well, but behind closed doors, there's clearly more respect and trust than outsiders can see.  Stephen is unlike anything Samuel L. Jackson's played before, and while Waltz and DiCaprio were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the Golden Globes, I hope come Oscar time one of those slots goes to Jackson.  The Django-Schultz relationship paralleled with the Stephen-Candie one is just another sign there's a method to QT's madness.

There's been controversy due to the movie's frequent use of the n-word. QT's dialogue is always so quotable, but this is one where white people won't be able to casually quote some of his best lines because that word's in there.  Well, historically it seems to fit right in. It's as though QT's rubbing our face in the history of race relations, that unpleasant bit of business our great-great-great grandparents went through.

The violence, especially the last half-hour, explodes like a comic opera.  Each bullet explodes its target like a Ziploc baggie full of Karo syrup.  People who've found previous Tarantino flicks distasteful should not hope he's calmed down for this one.

Cinematically Speaking - 8/21/12

- An autopsy has been ordered for director Tony Scott, 68, who killed himself Sunday by jumping off a 200-foot bridge. There have been conflicting reports about his health.

My take: It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why someone who was still on top of their game, directing hit movies and producing hit TV shows, someone with a family, why he would just suddenly end it.  Tony was never going to get an Oscar, but his movies (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, True Romance, Enemy of the State, Man on Fire, Unstoppable) were successful and usually well-liked.

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- Samuel L. Jackson has joined the cast of Spike Lee's remake of Old Boy, about a man who's kidnapped and held hostage for 15 years with no outside communication, and then one day is set free with no explanation.  Josh Brolin and Sharlto Copley co-star.

My take: Nice to see Jackson reunite with Lee. Jackson was a Lee staple for many films (Mo Better Blues, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever) and Lee's had success whenever he tries the mainstream thing (Inside Man).

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- Kevin Costner is going to star in two movies based on Tom Clancy properties.  He'll star as Jack Kelly in Without Remorse (directed by Christopher McQuarrie), and he'll play a different character in the new Jack Ryan movie (directed by Kenneth Branagh) starring Chris Pine and Keira Knightley.

My take: Nice to see Costner get some projects lined up after the success of The Hatfields & McCoys miniseries.  I don't know what was behind his dropping out of Django Unchained, but he'll appear as Pa Kent in next year's Superman movie.

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- Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover movies, will direct a remake of 1974's The Gambler, which starred James Caan as a man who keeps losing in betting and winds up $40,000 in debt with the mob.

My take: It'll be good to see how Phillips can do with more dramatic fare, though I must admit I don't know if he can pull it off. William Monahan (The Departed) is writing the script, and I imagine they'll be able to get an A-lister to star.

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- Abby Elliott is joining Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg as a departing Saturday Night Live cast member.  She's been there for four years and was known for her impressions of Angelina Jolie, Rachel Maddow, Anna Faris and Zooey Deschanel.  Jason Sudeikis's contract is up and he's still undecided as to whether or not he'll return.

My take: She was poised to be SNL's Alpha Female with Wiig leaving.  Sad to see Abby go, but maybe she and Fred Armisen broke up and she needs space, who knows. She's sure to get some sitcom deals.  I'd be surprised if Sudeikis sticks around. He's having a successful movie career (Hall Pass, Horrible Bosses, The Campaign) and he has We're the Millers with Jennifer Aniston and Ed Helms, and This Is Where I Leave You with Jason Bateman and Goldie Hawn coming up.  SNL needs some new blood because Sudeikis, Armisen, Kenan Thompson, Seth Meyers and Bill Hader all will likely be gone in a year or two.

Samuel L. Jackson joins Robocop remake

Samuel L. Jackson will play a powerful media mogul in Jose Padilha's remake of RoboCop.  He joins the previously cast Gary Oldman as RoboCop's creator-developer, and then The Killing's Joel Kinnaman plays Alex Murphy, the policeman left for dead and turned into the title character.

Jackson can currently be seen as Nick Fury in The Avengers, and will appear in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained this December.  RoboCop has a tentative release date of August 9, 2013.

Speaking of Django Unchained, here's its trailer: