Review: THE GREAT WALL

     Another year ends, and with its close comes the critic's time to ruminate on the good, bad, and ugly of the previous year while hopefully looking forward to the new films on the horizon that will, unfortunately, probably underwhelm us. I, obviously, haven't seen everything that came out in 2016, nor ever will, but I remember fondly my favorites. As it stands, Shane Black's super-entertaining The Nice Guys, is still my favorite film of the year. The other ones I loved were Hunt for the Wilderpeople, White Girl, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Everybody Wants Some!, The Wailing, Finding Dory, and Sing Street. Two so-called masterpieces, Moonlight and La La Land, were good but not great, and a ton of mega popcorn features like Star Trek: Beyond, Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange, and Captain America: Civil War, were average to awful.
     2017 looks to be a huge year for us fan addicts mostly because a new Star Wars is coming out (although, thanks to Disney, a new Star Wars film will come out every year for the foreseeable future). There's also a new King Kong, a new Blade Runner, and a new Joon-ho Bong film (my current favorite director). When the dust settles at the end of 2017, though, there's already one surefire worst film of the year candidate. If you haven't heard of it yet, well, it's basically Matt Damon fighting monsters on the Great Wall of China...and what could possibly go wrong with that movie?
     When the first trailers for The Great Wall hit, the internet trolls went wild. What the fuck was Matt Damon doing in a Chinese movie? Are there no Asian actors out there? They have to get an American face? What the hell is wrong with the world?
     At the end of the day, every Asian actor on Earth should be thanking God they weren't cast in this mess. The Great Wall is so awful, so ridiculously bad, that it would fit perfectly on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Which means it does have some merit...if you consider it a good thing to be the kind of film you watch and make fun of and laugh at and wonder who the hell actually let this piece of crap into the world? It seriously should be banned in most countries. Who ever has copies of the film right now should burn it on the spot and save the world, and Matt Damon, the embarrassment.
     The biggest disappointment in all of this is that Yimou Zhang is an awesome, prolific, and pretty famous director. He's known for making poetic, lush, beautiful psuedo-kung-fu films like Hero, The House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower. With The Great Wall, though, the studio system seems to have chewed him up and spit him out because it certainly doesn't have any poetry, any semblance of artistry, nor any world class art direction. So what happened? Why is this just atrocious?
     The Great Wall kicks off with three white, English speaking dudes in the desert in China in ancient times. Matt Damon is one of them, silly long hair, beard and all. They end up at the Great Wall of China while looking for gun powder. Why is there a Great Wall of China? Oh, yeah, because a comet hit a mountain and unleashed lizard-like monsters that attack every sixty years. Huh? Bring on the battle scenes of cartoon special f/x monsters fighting an army of Chinese men and women! Bring on scenes of these soldiers beating drums for no good reason! Bring on scenes featuring Willem Dafoe cowering in the shadows (yes, he's in this movie, too, although I'm sure he wishes he wasn't)! Bring on Matt Damon being a better fighter than every single Chinese warrior!
     This short, ninety minute film, is pretty much all battle scenes. It definitely reminds me of the battle scenes in the second and third Lord of the Rings films. The sequences where orcs and trolls and dragons are attempting to scale castle walls and fortified fortresses? The Great Wall is pretty much that, albeit with worse special f/x, which is odd, since doesn't technology get better over time? 
     This all means that somebody somewhere saw The Lord of the Rings and wanted to re-do it but their own, fresh way. And I suppose getting a big time star and big time director to do it makes sense, but there's problems with who they picked. Damon does not fit in here. Neither does Yimou Zhang. This is a big budget, silly, preposterous, popcorn summer film. It's not an art film, not a sweeping epic. Zhang is a master at making kung-fu fighting look like a colorful, sumptuous display. It's rather difficult to showcase any sort of kung-fu with frigging monsters. Not to mention that they're about as scary looking as something out of a bad Anime TV show. Hell, Matt Damon's fake beard is scarier than the monsters. And you know what's even more frightening? Matt Damon is gonna have to go on talk shows to promote this piece of shit!
     Welcome to 2017!
     1/2* (out of ****) 
   
     
    

Review: DOCTOR STRANGE

 
   After the awfulness of Suicide Squad, I think we're all a bit wary of dipping our toes back into the super hero movie world. But, alas, there's no escaping the realm of caped/masked avengers and their ilk these days. Did you know that movie studios are already working on a two-part Avengers film, a Ben Affleck directed Batman flick, and a Justice League movie (Johnny Depp's battered ex-wife is now Aquaman's wife!). And I'm sure you already caught the teaser trailer for next summer's Guardians of the Galaxy sequel (which, apparently, steals all of it's music from Reservoir Dogs). So, if you go to the movies, just give in already. And now the newest super-hero movie is here. It's time to accept your movie-going fate.
     Doctor Strange is, to put it mildly, kind of scraping the barrel (I think, when watching all of these B-super-hero films, in the back of our mind we're always wishing we were just watching a Spider-Man or Batman movie instead). Last year, when Marvel started a new Doctor Strange comic book with the super star team of writer Jason Aaron and artist Chris Bachalo, I admitted that I've been reading comic books since the late 80's and have never read a Doctor Strange comic. So...who is he? What's his deal? Why's he been around since the 60's and has never been in a film before? All good questions. And after seeing this movie and reading the comic book I can tell you: he's not very interesting.
     The movie does what anyone would do when writing a new super-hero movie. A) introduce the back story, B) introduce a villain, and C) have said villain and super-hero fight at the end. Duh. I guess if you wanted to make any of that by-the-numbers stuff work in a new, fresh, super-exciting way you could either totally screw with the blueprint and forge something bold and original or just make one hell of an awesome movie that follows the blueprint. Doctor Strange is, sadly, neither. It's entertaining, forgettable, forgotten. But it does achieve something that most popcorn movies should, at the very least, be: watchable. There's your tagline! "Well, I watched it." Which is to say, what more than most people did while viewing Suicide Squad...which was probably more a combination of, "I suffered through it," and, "I survived the barrage."
     Benedict Cumberbatch, psuedo-weird American accent and all, stars as Doctor Strange. He's a brilliant, amusing, full-of-himself surgeon who has a cute female doctor friend played by Rachel McAdams. His character is so much like Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark that I was constantly wishing that, somehow, a world could exist where they had actually cast Downey here. And while Cumberbatch does not have the gravitas of Downey, he's fine here and quite amusing in parts. After a car accident, the doctor is battered so he looks to ancient magic to restore him. Cue the silly Rocky-esque training sequences. Instead of, you know, hitting the gym there's...magic! Magic with the magician The Ancient One played by Tilda Swinton. Yes, Doctor Strange is a magician. That's the catch. A magician super-hero! After he learns all about magic he ends up battling the evil magician, Kaecilius, played by the always awesome Mads Mikkelsen (who would have thought that Mikkelsen was once playing a drug dealer with a tattoo on his head failing to get it up with a hooker in Denmark in Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher and now he's, like, a big American movie star? Crazy!). Strange also has his zany sidekick, Wong (who, surprisingly, steals the show...I want a TV show with just Wong and Doctor Strange hanging out), and his magician friend, Mordo, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who's really slumming it here (remember his starring performance in 12 Years a Slave? Well, Hollywood doesn't).
     And that's pretty much what this movie is; a bunch of magicians fighting to save the human race. Which, honestly, sounds a lot more exciting than it is. The one thing that is cool about this movie are the special f/x. For no real good reason, the villain likes to control time, space, and gravity. So we get a lot of pointless action scenes of upside-down buildings and rooms folding inside and out. Basically, someone watched Christopher Nolan's Inception and thought it was cool enough to steal from. But it literally makes no sense (not that magician super-hero's make sense of course). Why does the villain try to stop Doctor Strange by moving around buildings and freezing time and all of this visually cool crap? Is there not, like, a death spell? Where's the cruciatus curse when you need it?
     One of the better action sequences in the film occurs when Doctor Strange is on a hospital gurney while McAdams is attempting to revive him but, of course, Doctor Strange's mental/ghost mind is secretly battling a villain to the death on another, unseen plateau. But the best part is the joke that runs through the film about Wong only having one name like Adele or Beyonce. It's a throwaway thing, an amusing side anecdote that has a great climax. And this playful comradery only made me pine for the much more engrossing Sherlock Holmes TV show, which it was announced this week is returning on January 1st. Cumberbatch looks like he's truly having the time of his life on that show while in Doctor Strange he's just another part of the machine, a well-oiled, big budget Marvel super-hero movie created simply to print cash. It's an entertaining popcorn film but it's light as air, there and gone, a blip on the radar. And is this all we deserve? Us minions? **1/2 (out of ****)
     
     
     

Review: BLAIR WITCH

     It's been sixteen years since the second Blair Witch film hit theaters...so one has to wonder, why is the third film coming out now? Obviously, this film isn't really for me, the grizzled veteran that saw and loved the original back in college. This film is one of those new, fresh, hip re-makes for "the kids." The studio covertly named the film The Woods until Comic-Con in July when they revealed that it's in fact a new Blair Witch film. I guess this coverage worked, as even The New York Times published an article in the front page news section about this bait-and-switch. The free, three-week early screening I attended was filled with mostly younger college kids and I was already emailed the chance to see it again at another free screening. On the 7 train in Queens on my way out to the U.S. Open I spotted a big poster at one of the stations for it. This means they're probably spending a lot of money to market this and create buzz. Will any of this matter? If you remember, the original went on to be the highest grossing independent film at the time with no stars and little marketing (I remember having to drive out of my way to see it because it wasn't playing at the local theater). It also spawned the hand held camera point of view horror film. But the sequel, Book of Shadows, was a bomb with critics and at the box office and it took sixteen years for this new third film to come out. I suspect that director Adam Wingard, who made the fun/scary You're Next, was such a fan that he jumped at making this. It's kind of sad to disappoint that, realistically, this new film, simply titled Blair Witch, is basically a re-make that seems fairly pointless in the end.
     Back in June when I heard that Wingard had a new film coming out I watched the trailer. It featured kids running and screaming in the woods and it was called The Woods and it looked intriguing. I'm a fan of Wingard, as You're Next was one of the better slasher pictures to come out in the last few years and The Guest was entertaining. When I learned that this new film was actually a Blair Witch sequel I was even more interested. After all, if anyone could make a good Blair Witch film it'd be Wingard. And I also have a soft spot for The Blair Witch Project. Besides making a spoof film with my brother titled The Darien Witch Project (Darien is the brat daughter from The Last Boy Scout, as if you didn't know), I also gave the original film four stars and named it the best film of 1999. And it was genuinely the last film that scared me.
But what was this sequel going to be like? The original had three people and a camera and it showed nothing. You didn't see the witch. The scariest thing was one of the characters standing up facing a basement wall. The sequel went a little bit further in the gratuitous nudity/blood vein...but it still never showed the witch. Would this new one have an actress in creepy, old-woman make-up running around? Would limbs and heads be flying through the air?
     The new film is basically a re-make in that's it a group of twenty year-old's filming themselves as they go camping in the haunted Maryland woods. The one caveat to make it part three and a continuation is that the one character is the brother of the girl, Heather, that went missing in the first film. This new crew has state-of-the-art tech, too. Ear-piece cameras, night vision cameras, and a useless drone. What they also have are two local hicks that go with them to help them find Heather. If I haven't mentioned the new character's names, well, there's a reason. The set-up characterization is atrocious. Do I care about any of these people? No, but I should if it wanted to be a compelling film. The two local hicks are so over-the-top ridiculous and silly they belong more in an SNL skit than a scary movie. And the biggest problem is that everything set-up never gets paid off. The one girl cuts her foot and it becomes infected. Okay, so there's going to be a great scene of them having to cut her leg off? Or, no, her whole body gets infected and she becomes possessed? No, the pay off could have been a lot better. And the hikers have a drone. That's cool. When it lifts up in the air maybe it catches sight of a house or a person in the woods or chimney smoke or...should I be the bearer of bad news that the drone is fucking pointless? The other problem is the actual witch. The woods are haunted but you can't show the witch, that's been established in the first two films. So what do you do? They have mysterious sounds in the woods in this new film. Trees falling. Loud footsteps. But why do the footsteps sound like a giant or Bigfoot? Alas, it's never revealed. There's also flashing lights which are, what? UFO's? They do go with the less-is-more approach, but they do show some glimpses of strange things in the corner of the screen and behind a tree in the dark. The only good part of the film is the climax, which, when it finally occurs, is welcomed with open arms. I will say that the filmmakers did a good job at ratcheting up the tension at the end. The final flurry is fairly scary, albeit a little bit too little too late. And by this point, three films in, shouldn't we be sick of seeing characters suddenly knocked down while filming and yet never learning what knocked them over or grabbed them? I guess what I'm saying is that the original film did the don't-show-anything so well that there's no point in trying to recapture that magic. It's time for a gore-fest with a scary witch actually on screen. That wouldn't be The Blair Witch Project of course, but it'd be something wild and new. Maybe get Rob Zombie to direct it and we'll all be happy. ** (out of ****)

Review: X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

    Most mega-budget Hollywood popcorn summer special f/x super-hero extravaganzas don't really give you a lot to think about when you leave the theater. They're two hours of mindless entertainment, right? Utterly forgettable gloss. So while it's still fresh in my mind I should let you know about the very few highlights of X-Men: Apocalypse, the third film featuring the new/young X-Men and sixth in the X-Men film franchise. #1: Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner (Jane Grey here) is a bona-fide movie star. #2 "Sweet Dreams" is always a good song for a montage. #3 Psylocke's outfit is better (and cooler) than most of this movie.
     Saying that X-Men: Apocalypse is one of the lesser X-Men films isn't really saying a hell of a lot. I wasn't the biggest fan of the first two or Matthew Vaughan's First Class entry. The last one, the time travel thriller featuring Peter Dinklage, Days of Future Past, was good, but my favorite will probably always be Brett Ratner's Last Stand, the third one, and the one everyone hated (perhaps I'm just a Ratner fan, because I think I gave Rush Hour 3 four stars), mostly just based on entertainment. After all, we're not seeing these types of movies to reflect on Auschwitz (Magneto's past) or to think of mutants and humans as a civil rights metaphor (groan). We're here to see a fucking spectacle!
     If you haven't seen any of the previous X films, then good luck understanding literally any of this. I actually read X-Men comic books and even I'm confused at the timeline used here. So Mystique is Jennifer Lawrence in 1983 but is Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in 2000? Why did Michael Fassbender as Magneto age so fast in twenty years to become old man Ian Mckellan? Are they just two different timelines or did they just forget the first three films? Or did the producers just hope we forgot? 
      Either way, this new film is still about mutants at a school for mutants battling evil. The evil this time around is the blue villain from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie. No? It isn't? Oh, it's Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse (who also looks like DC comic's uber-villain Darkseid for some reason). Apocalypse is an old God woken up and goes about destroying the world for no good reason (I guess he wants to live in rubble?). A few mutants join him without question for no good reason, then the X-Men band together to fight him. Simple, right? Sure. And for the most part, it is a stupid, entertaining film. Because there's so much backstory you're just supposed to remember and various characters showing up that are never really fleshed out, the film feels like a hodge podge of various ideas mashed together. What I want out of an X-Men film is a cohesive, established group in costumes (Olivia Munn's Psylocke is one of the few wearing a costume...and it's a fan boy's wet dream) fighting bad guys. This is the sixth movie, why are we still doing introductions and beginnings like the origin of Cyclops? And you can kind of tell that this franchise is a bit of a mess because Jennifer Lawrence is a main character in this film and strangely a hero, even though her character has always been a villain in the comics (more screen time for the stars!).
     I suppose in the inevitable 7th film there will be even more intro's, more world building, and perhaps a new re-cast/re-build when the big stars price themselves out. Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender both give relatively tame performances here, especially compared to films they seem to actually care about. The one shining spot in this film is Quicksilver, a B-hero played by Evan Peters, who was just awesome in American Horror Story: Hotel last year. He's amusing, fun to watch, and has the best scene in the film: a slo-mo rescue of kids in an exploding building while "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by the Eurythmics is playing. That scene is entertaining as hell. I wish this movie was, too. **1/2 (out of ****)

THE TOP 10 MOST ANTICIPATED FILMS OF 2016

1- ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY: This one will be, at the very least, interesting. It's the first of many standalone Star Wars films. It won't feature the old or new regular characters...so will it even look and feel like a Star Wars film? Or will it end up like those weird Ewok movies nobody remembers? They do have the Godzilla director, Gareth Evans, at the helm. And Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, and Forest Whitaker star. The plot has something to do with a group of good guys attempting to steal the plans to the Death Star before it was built. It definitely has all the right pieces for an awesome film.

2- BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE: Yes, Zack Snyder hasn't made a good film since that Dawn of the Dead remake, and even that was unnecessary. But even if this is a train wreck, it sure as hell should be entertaining as hell with Benn Affleck as Batman and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Not to mention that Wonder Woman is in this and Michael Shannon is back, this time as Doomsday. They'll probably never make a really good Superman movie, but this at least looks like the big, dumb kind of movie you go and see in a packed theater and have a blast with.

3- MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIARS: The book, by Ransom Riggs, was published by Philly's own Quirk Books and has become a pretty big hit. I suppose I should read it...someday. The story is about a mysterious island that once housed a school for peculiar children. I think time travel is involved. But either way, it sounds right up director Tim Burton's alley. And while he hasn't made a masterpiece in over twenty years, he at least still entertains (Dark Shadows was a lot of fun and Sweeney Todd was a good one). This one stars Eva Green, Samuel L. Jackson, and Judi Dench.

4- FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM: J.K. Rowling wrote the script...so that's something. It takes place in America in the 1920's. Apparently a few beasts get loose and Eddie Redmayne, a wizard, has to stop them. What we're all hoping is that this is as good as a Harry Potter film. Will it be? Will there be a good villain, good characters, humor, action, drama? Even if it's half as good as any of the Potter films it'll be awesome.

5- THE NICE GUYS: Shane Black is back as writer/director on this action/comedy starring Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling. The trailer makes it look like a Pulp Fiction/In Bruges type of romp. Black, obviously, knows how to write. He wrote Lethal Weapon, The Monster Squad, and The Last Boy Scout. His last job was directing Iron Man 3, so he at least knows his way around directing big action spectacles. This movie looks so funny and so crazy. I really can't wait to see this.

6- HAIL, CAESAR!: The Coen brothers are back with this 50's Hollywood-set comedy starring George Clooney, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johannson, and Channing Tatum. They've been trying to make this film for years, so maybe this means they wrote it when they were still writing great films (let's face it, their films haven't been that good since 2000's O, Brother, Where Art Thou?...and that wasn't as good as 98's The Big Lebowski...and that wasn't as good as 96's Fargo). Still, even their failures are inventive and amusing, and they do always bring something stylish and different to the multiplex. And this one does look like a hell of a lot of fun.

7- X-MEN: APOCALYPSE: I'm probably the only person on Earth who thinks Brett Ratner directed the best X-Men film (the third one, X-Men: The Last Stand, which was what a superhero movie is supposed to be: fun). But Bryan Singer has made four of them now and his last one, the time-traveling X-Men: Days of Future Past, was his best. So he at least knows what he's doing and we know what to expect from this one. Apocalypse, played by Oscar Isaac, is the villain in this new film. It also has the 70's X-Men in it instead of the current crew for no good reason (I guess Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellan were busy?). That means Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender are back...which is okay by me. Should be a good, entertaining, sci-fi/action spectacle.

8- CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR: The second Captain America film, where he battled the Winter Soldier, was one of Marvel's better films, thanks mostly to some awesome action sequences. And this one is more of the same but with Iron Man and Ant-Man added to the mix. This means we'll get action plus the amusing hilarity of Paul Rudd and Robert Downey, Jr. Win win.

9- STAR TREK BEYOND: J.J. Abrams quit to do Star Wars, so this third Star Trek film with the new cast has Justin Lin directing. He directed four Fast & Furious films, so he at least probably knows how to put a good action sequence on screen. The big reason that this film might be more funny and entertaining than the first two Star Trek films is that Simon Pegg helped write the script. The trailer makes it look great, too. The crew of the Enterprise is trapped on an alien planet while Idris Elba is wreaking havoc as the alien villain, Krall.

10- SUICIDE SQUAD: Jared Leto is The Joker and Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn. And, honestly, that's probably all you need to know. The comic book the film is based on is about a group of villains hired by the government to help them on suicide missions no one else would bother doing. The trailer makes it look wild and action packed. David Ayer, who last made the terrible Fury, is directing. It might be a mess, but it sure looks intriguing.

THE TOP 10 MOST ANTICIPATED FILMS OF 2015 REVISITED

1- STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: *** (reviewed)

2- THE HATEFUL EIGHT: *** (reviewed)

3- SPECTRE: Didn't see it yet. It got mediocre reviews.

4- MAD MAX: FURY ROAD: One of the greatest action films ever made. Nothing new really, but awesome nonetheless. ***1/2

5- CRIMSON PEAK: Didn't see it yet. It got bad reviews.

6- THE NIGHT BEFORE: Didn't see it yet. It got mediocre reviews.

7- BLACKHAT: Michael Mann's worst film in years. It isn't bad, just average stuff. **

8- JURASSIC WORLD: Super entertaining. A fun popcorn film. ***

9- THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 2: Didn't see it yet. It got mediocre reviews.

10- THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON: Entertaining but fairly pedestrian. **1/2

THE BEST FILMS OF 2015

 1- THE TRIBE

2- EX MACHINA

3- MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

4- MISTRESS AMERICA

5- THE BIG SHORT

6- THE REVENANT

7- WILD TALES

8- SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE

9- SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE

10- SLOW WEST