Predators.

Review #1722: Predators.

Cast: 

Adrien Brody (Royce), Alice Braga (Isabelle), Topher Grace (Edwin), Walton Goggins (Stans), Oleg Taktarov (Nikolai), Louis Ozawa Changchien (Hanzo), Mahershala Ali (Mombasa), Danny Trejo (Cuchillo), Laurence Fishburne (Ronald Noland), with Derek Mears, Carey Jones & Brian Steele (the Predators) Directed by Nimród Antal.

Review: 

Well, I suppose the Predator series needed to do something again to maintain relevancy. Robert Rodriguez had a script in mind for a film in the franchise since 1994, right around the time he was developing Desperado (1995), which he described as just a writing assignment (i.e. one that was designed to try to entice Arnold Schwarzenegger, albeit with no budgetary limitations); 20th Century Fox didn't have interest for fifteen years, and while the treatment wasn't actually used, Rodriguez did serve as producer (using his company Troublemaker Studios). Alex Litvak and Michael Finch served as writers for the film, while Hungarian-American director Nimrod Antal found his way through to serve as director; he was best known for his feature debut Kontroll (2003), which received international notice. Honestly, the movie sure has a thing for killing off the most interesting seeming people. On one side, you have a wacko Fishburne and his imaginary friend in a glorified 15-minute cameo, then on another side you have a guy with three fingers that can still use a sword that doesn't talk much, and another side you have Danny Trejo playing Danny Trejo. But sure, go ahead with Topher Grace as the totally innocent one among these weirdos. I think you can take three guesses who ends up persisting through to at least the climax, and the only curiosity is to see exactly how predictable it can get. That isn't to say that Brody is the wrong choice for what is needed, because the filmmakers wanted to home in reference points in from the first film without having a burly lead, which I can get behind. Technically speaking, the only memorable film involving the title creature is the first one, so that is a slight point. Of course, by trying to hone so many nods and references to the film from 23 years prior, the actual movie one finds is just incredibly average in comparison. 

To be fair, the movie has interest to generate, mostly with the fact that there are a few predators to look for that don't look like CGI abominations. Besides, I find they are more interesting than the ensemble cast turns out in the overall endgame, mostly because one wonders how much of a movie could be done with just the feuds between the predators as a whole. Ah, but one needs things to seem just a bit familiar to make sure you aren't watching something that dares to not sequel-bait itself. I don't even think Alien vs. Predator managed to bait itself as much as this one did, but then again it is amusing to think of one movie trying to ignore the other that really are more alike than they think (in terms of overall energy, not so much in plot). The actors are okay, but the script gives them the bare minimum to work with when it comes to anything besides cursory moments (and swearing, but that is probably expected and/or easy to see coming). As such, Brody is okay with the strong silent type that comes from a lead role intending to be a stark difference from the usual leads in the series, but really it just means that one is begging for someone with a bit more charisma than just wry disposition (i.e. dry), where grunts and gravel voices go about as far as a heavy weight put into a kiddie pool. Braga plays the peacemaker to these cardboard figures, and that is basically more of a shrug than a compliment from me. Grace is the odd duck for a movie that thinks it is going to really be clever with using him for the climax. This works about as well as you think: not very well. He isn't a bad actor, but it is such an obvious role. Goggins is kind of interesting, in that one could probably make more out of the fact that a guy playing a killer/rapist is the most interesting presence in a film like this. Taktarov and Ozawa are there to say a few words, but the latter at least gets to have an interesting sword fight. This was actually an early role for Ali in a decade that soon saw him turn into a star; naturally, this means he plays someone with the bare minimum personality slated to vanish (ditto for Trejo). Honestly,  Fishburne and his one note weirdo role is more interesting in the span of nearly 10 minutes than anything else in the film- and it isn't even that drawn out! The movie runs at 107 minutes, which is a fair pace despite my middling feelings on the matter. By the time the movie tries to bait a further adventure into the middling lives of gravel voiced elite killers, I was pretty checked out. I didn't hate what I saw, but honestly, there just isn't anything here that really stuck with me. It may be better than previous features with the Predator, but that isn't saying much. To me, this is barely better than if someone had just remade the original movie, but at that point one might just stay home. Green blood may look gooey, but that isn't enough to make a proper gore film. Well, the film was fairly successful upon release (making three times its budget, which was $40 million), and yet the next film in the series (The Predator, I am not joking) followed along different lines in its story, and it probably doesn't help that only two actors have ever been in more than one Predator film. Honestly, the only thing this will inspire is the argument that one could just stick with the original feature and not lose a beat. Having an admiration of the original film is a nice ambition, but it does not ultimately make for a nice effort.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Moonlight.

Review #1578: Moonlight. 

Cast:

Trevante Rhodes (Adult Chiron Harris / "Black"), André Holland (Adult Kevin), Janelle Monáe (Teresa), Ashton Sanders (Teen Chiron), Jharrel Jerome (Teen Kevin), Naomie Harris (Paula), Mahershala Ali (Juan), Alex Hibbert (Child Chiron Harris / "Little"), Jaden Piner (Child Kevin), and Patrick Decile (Terrel) Directed by Barry Jenkins.

Review:

"I want to create productive images, not necessarily positive images. Overt positivity can sometimes deflect attention away from the problem, or create myths that aren’t helpful. The way I described it to the actors was, ‘Everything in this movie is a gray area. The characters are gray, the situations are gray.’ There’s some very dark shit in this movie, but you have to acknowledge the ugliness. You just have to.”

As the saying goes, sometimes the past makes the difference for what matters in the present for a worthwhile effort into film. Barry Jenkins made a film set in Miami, Florida for his breakthrough feature, and it fits right into his background as a Miami native. He studied film at Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts, and he subsequently took up production assistant work to help him on a journey towards filmmaking as a career. His first short was My Josephine (2003), but his first feature film came with Medicine for Melancholy (2008). In the eight years that followed, he did work on scripts that led to dead ends alongside work as a carpenter and with a commercial studio of his own before being encouraged by associates to work again. The basis for the film is an unpublished play by Tarell Alvin McCraney called In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, with Jenkins writing the screenplay adaptation. Both shared similar backgrounds, since each both were born in Miami and raised in the same neighborhood and each had been raised by a mother that struggled with her vices - they only met for the first time just a few years prior to the development of what became this film (since a friend gave Jenkins the play to read). The key change between the original work and film was the fact that the former depicted a day in the life of Chiron through the three stages of his life at the same time (because one only realized it was the same life of the same person halfway through reading). If you can do a film right near where you grew up, particularly one filmed in Miami in the Liberty City neighborhood, you have already accomplished part of the goal already, particularly with a budget of just $1.5 million.

What we have here is a film making a journey on those moments of silence to ponder through three points in one person's life, whether that involves childhood, teenage life, and adulthood. It doesn't aspire to have all the answers to what it means, particularly when it comes to masculinity that moves in a hauntingly tender manner that will reflect well upon those who find it something to resonate with or draw upon their own experiences. In other words, it is a usefully-crafted drama that does quite well within its quietly layered narrative that doesn't need to play to cliché or expectation but instead on the engagement one finds with these characters and who they represent to those living in the margins of life in some way. There have been plenty of coming-of-age movies that have come and gone over the past few decades, but one can always find a way to make it useful when it comes to depicting the struggle for one's identity. Regardless of how one is with their family, orientation, or with their life as a whole, the struggle to find a way out and be who they are is one we can all find important to dig for ourselves for 111 minutes. One starts with the opening storyline in "Little", featuring a quiet but effective performance from Hibbert, who resonates well with those moments we see him interact with the surroundings that will undoubtedly shape him that keeps the level of dialogue with others such as Ali, Monae, Harris, and Piner to worthy poignance. Ali (previously known for his work on shows such as The 4400 and House of Cards) is undeniably excellent here, doing so much in shaping the tone of the film with the look upon making one's path with nuance for such a small span of time on screen. The same applies in care with Monae, while Harris does quite well in unifying the film with anguish that comes to us without needing to play for pretense. The middle story in "Chiron" keeps pace going in quiet energy that bubbles to the surface on its own time, which Sanders and Jerome handle fine, making the exchange on the beach compared to on the schoolyard that more poignant. The closing story in "Black" opens as many doors as it seems to close, in that time passes on without needing to spell things out for that time spent with Rhodes & Holland. Is it a flawless experience? Not entirely, but it is the fluidity of its drama that keeps things grounded in tension that succeeds more often than not in what is needed. It is the film for people who need a story of spoken and unspoken light between the darkness as a film fitting for its era.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars

Alita: Battle Angel.

Review #1193: Alita: Battle Angel.

Cast: 
Rosa Salazar (Alita), Christoph Waltz (Dr. Dyson Ido), Keean Johnson (Hugo), Mahershala Ali (Vector), Jennifer Connelly (Dr. Chiren), Ed Skrein (Zapan), Jackie Earle Haley (Grewishka), Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (Tanji), Lana Condor (Koyomi), Eiza González (Nyssiana), Idara Victor (Nurse Gerhad), Jeff Fahey (McTeague), and Rick Yune (Master Clive Lee) Directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Review: 
It is astonishing to see the amount of time that it took for a film to progress from concept to product. James Cameron was attracted to the idea and wanted to write and direct a film adaptation (with a domain name for the film being registered as early as 2000), although he held off doing the film for other projects such as Dark Angel and Avatar (2009) before deciding to focus his energy on making sequels to the latter. Cameron wrote a screenplay that was accompanied by hundreds of pages of notes, and he shared the script (which he co-wrote with Laeta Kalogridis) with Robert Rodriguez (director of films such as Desperado and Sin City) in order to see if he could help condense it into a working shooting script. Satisfied with his result, Cameron hired Rodriguez to direct the film, while serving as producer (along with Jon Landau). The film is based off the cyberpunk manga series Gunnm (also known as Battle Angel Alita) that was created by Yukito Kishiro that was run in Business Jump magazine from 1990 to 1995. I suppose the enjoyment level is much like when watching a comic book movie, complete with story beats that will occasionally feel familiar but still manages to generate excitement and entertainment. Sometimes you just need a movie with cyborgs beating each other to shreds (including one fighting with a legendary martial arts style), bounty hunters named Hunter-Warriors, and a gladiator sport in Motorball that feels like a hyper version of Rollerball (1975). It's a fun piece of spectacle that never really stumbles in its aspirations, even when its attempts at setting up further adventures can seem a bit clumsy. It feels just fine at 122 minutes, having a fine pace and balance.

Salazar (utilizing a motion-capture suit alongside big CG eyes) delivers a capable performance, being an interesting hero to follow in her journey, and she pulls off a well-done job in showing the growth of her character throughout the film without testing the audience's patience or feeling too sudden. Waltz, essentially playing the wise old man type, does fine with dealing with tech-spewing and such. Johnson is fairly effective in keeping up with the quickness of the film while also having a bit of chemistry of Salazar alongside some offbeat moments that eventually prove itself for its climax. Ali and Connelly play their conniving parts with relish when needed; Skrein and Haley are quite entertaining in their menace when playing off against Salazar that makes for some well-done action sequences together. Undeniably, the film is a winner in the visual department, with Weta Digital doing a great job in engineering a product that manages to balance itself into not abusing CGI into a crutch or being too glossy. The Motorball sequence is a clear fun example of that, being dazzling without feeling like a distraction or an excuse to show off without reason. The punches that the film tries to pull within its climax (or more specifically where it is trying to go) work just fine, particularly if you are into what the movie is trying to sell you on (again, much like a superhero movie trying to do some world-building). The film certainly has enough action to go around, with plenty of (blue) blood being spilled in its cyborg showdowns that prove one can really do anything with cyberpunk action if the budget (roughly over $150 million dollars) is right. On the whole, I wasn't at all familiar with the material that the film is based on, but it didn't interfere with what I found to be a pretty entertaining experience, filled with action and spectacle to go along with a neat little story that will prove a winner for people looking for something packing with action and science fiction in one package. Whether there is further adventures about Alita coming or not, I can say that it is one that certainly will merit an audience that appreciates the effort to bring itself on screen.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Review #1172: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Cast: 
Shameik Moore (Miles Morales / Spider-Man), Jake Johnson (Peter B. Parker / Spider-Man), Hailee Steinfeld (Gwen Stacy / Spider-Gwen), Mahershala Ali (Aaron Davis / Prowler), Brian Tyree Henry (Jefferson Davis), Lily Tomlin (May Parker), Luna Lauren Velez (Rio Morales), Zoë Kravitz (Mary Jane Watson), John Mulaney (Peter Porker / Spider-Ham), Kimiko Glenn (Peni Parker), Nicolas Cage (Spider-Man Noir), Kathryn Hahn (Olivia Octavius / Doctor Octopus), Liev Schreiber (Wilson Fisk / Kingpin), and Chris Pine (Peter Parker / Spider-Man) Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey (#378 - Rise of the Guardians), and Rodney Rothman.

Review: 
February 25, 2019 update: Congratulations goes out to this film, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature last night, which is certainly well deserved. 

With the amount of superhero movies that have been released in this century (or more specifically, in the past decade), one would wonder how far these films can go before the feeling of burnout and over-saturation sits in, particularly with the structure and look of said films, particularly with this being the seventh theatrical film with Spider-Man in the main role. With that said, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a vibrant and entertaining movie that has plenty of style and exuberance to go around, being an amusing film with a story (done by Phil Lord while having a screenplay by him and Rothman) that holds itself together without tiring the eyes or senses throughout its 117 minute run-time. Moore proves charming and up to task for the role, sticking out well among the group of heroes, being relatable and easy to follow along with. Johnson takes his role and plays it with a good sense of humor and charm while being an interesting take on the hero while not having a too familiar feel for the mentor type that he plays. The rest of the heroes (Steinfeld, Mulaney, Glenn, and Cage) are also enjoyable, having just enough moments of charm and humor to go around that make the film feel fairly whole without feeling too closed in or distracted. The other members of the cast are also fine in giving the film some emotional depth, such as Ali or Henry, who help make sure the film doesn't get lost between juggling an origin story that resonates without an ounce of staleness. The villains in the film are fairly entertaining for their time on screen, with Hahn being amusing while Schreiber conveys some menace alongside recklessness. It cannot be understated how mesmerizing the animation is, as it has a look that tries to emulate a comic book that took at least a year to even get just a few seconds of good footage, with the amount of animators of over 140 being the most for a film by Sony Pictures Animation. It takes a bit of time for the eyes to get used to how active the film is, with plenty of color to go around, but it always seem to feel and look right. The music is also fairly interesting to listen to. The film is an entertaining adventure, balancing humor and action with enough sense to not indulge in one category too much while having some neat moments with its characters. The climax is executed fairly well, rewarding its audience while inviting the possibility for more films with its main hero that I would be just fine with, particularly with the possibilities that can happen with a superhero film such as this. On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie for its interesting animation, a finely built story alongside useful characters and plenty of entertainment value to go around that I recommend wholeheartedly. It definitely ranks as one of of my favorites film experiences for the year, and it sure is worth at least one watch.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.