Review: Kung Fu Panda 3

Kung Fu Panda 3 was my first time partaking in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, and as such, I feel like I was more susceptible to its charms. Even as a newcomer the story felt rote: Po (Jack Black) gets a new challenge, freaks  out about it, and eventually believes in himself enough to ace it. However, since it was the first time I saw this play out, I was more willing to go along with it than I would be if it was the third time I was going through it.

And it’s not as if everything about Kung Fu Panda 3 is rote. While the main plot is tired, there’s a delightful subplot involving Po reconnecting with his biological father (Bryan Cranston) and the struggles his adoptive dad (James Hong) has coming to terms with it. This part of the movie seemed to be saying something sweet and genuinely wonderful about parenting and the different forms families can take.

On top of that, one gets the feeling from watching the movie that the storytelling isn’t the heart of the Kung Fu Panda movies. Instead, the visuals take center stage as the film blends multiple animation styles effectively. The two-dimensional animations depicting Po’s childhood in particular stand out for being gorgeous and visually captivating. For most Dreamworks movies, the animation quality seems to be an afterthought, so its nice to see it take centerstage in this franchise.

Most importantly, compared to Norm of the North, Kung Fu Panda 3 is a masterpiece. If anything, we should be thankful that now children have an option at the multiplex that actually respects their intelligence.

Final Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Alessandro Carloni
Starring: Jack Black, Bryan Cranston, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman

Review: Jane Got a Gun

The miracle of Jane Got a Gun is that it got made it all. After a stormy production history marked by a last minute departure of its original director, a cycling of male leads, and years of pushed back release dates, this movie has made it into theaters against all odds. You almost want to give it a participation medal just for existing. Clap Natalie Portman on the back, and tell her how gritty she is for sticking with this movie until it landed in multiplexes.

It would be nice though if all that grit and determination was for a movie that was in any way interesting.

For a movie with such an active title, the majority of Jane Got a Gun feels passive. Mired in soap opera flashbacks and waiting games, an audience member soon gets impatient waiting for the moment where Jane finally takes action against the hoodlum gang sent out to kill her. You wouldn’t expect a movie with a such a take-no-prisoners title to be so boring, but Jane Got a Gun is that dull.

The plot goes like this: Jane’s husband Bill (Noah Emmerich) has been riddled with bullets and Jane learns that the Bishop Boys Gang (led by Ewan McGregor) are coming to kill them all. In order to help defend her homestead Jane enlists her ex, Dan (Joel Edgerton) as extra firepower or whatever. This action means that everyone has to mope a lot about the past because personal drama or whatever. It’s a plot that could be action-packed, if it wasn’t so concerned with making sure we know all about Jane’s tortured personal history.

Eventually, after what feels like decades of sitting around, the film gets to the action. However, while there are moments within the sequence that feel genuinely thrilling, too much of it revolves around watching Jane and Dan shoot people out a window. It’s just another example of how a movie that should be exciting, instead manages to make the most boring choice every time.

But then again, maybe quality stopped becoming a concern at a certain point after the umpteenth production. It’s like the last runner at a race. The performance may not have been good, but it’s admirable that they crossed the finish line at all.

Final Rating: ★ ★ (★) ☆ ☆

Director: Gavin O’Connor
Starring: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich

Review: The Finest Hours

There’s two movies at the heart of The Finest Hours.

The better one is about how the crew members of the SS Pendleton, led by surly anti-social engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) figure out a way to survive for a couple of more hours after their boat splits in half during a major storm. This plot features conflict between crew members who fight and bicker about how best to keep themselves alive long enough for a miracle to save them. There’s human drama and personality, as you watch Sybert win over his crew to save the day. It’s genuinely interesting to watch.

Sadly, the movie spends more time on the second film. This movie’s about Chris Pine’s shy Coast Guard member, Bernie Webber, being timid and then riding his boat over a lot of waves. About half the screentime in this plotline involves everyone sitting around at headquarters talking about possibly going out to rescue them, and the other half is just watching Webber and his crew dodge wave after wave. Sadly, neither of these halves are interesting and the whole segment of the film is a colossal bore. Even sadder, this aspect of the film takes up more screentime than the SS Pendleton scenes.

Maybe the second plot would have come together more if I felt like I could have gotten more of a sense for Bernie and his character arc, but Chris Pine leaves him a blank sketch of a human. The film tries to detail him more by showing his fiancee, Miriam (Holliday Grainger) and their brief courtship, but he still doesn’t pop. He’s basically just a shy dude with a Boston accent. In contrast, Casey Affleck’s Ray is given less screentime and background, yet still feels like a fully-realized character.

The Finest Hours is fine. Nothing spectacular, but nothing terrible. One just gets the feeling that it would have been even better if it just focused on the one good story, instead of splitting its focus.

Final Rating: ★ ★ (★) ☆ ☆

Director: Craig Gillepsie
Starring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Eric Bana, Ben Foster

Review: Fifty Shades of Black

If you were to ask me to come up with something positive to say about Fifty Shades of Black, I would tell you this: the costume department did a bang up job of recreating every look Dakota Jones wore in Fifty Shades of Grey for Kali Hawk in this movie. Some of the outfits are damn near identical! It’s fascinating.

And thank god for that, because everything else about Fifty Shades of Black is a bore. It’s a parody film where every joke is telegraphed from miles away. In fact you probably knew most of the jokes before you walked into the theater. The Christian Grey character (named Christian Black here, because laziness is the key) is a stalker who has a tiny penis and comes too fast. The Anastasia Steele knock-off, Hannah, meanwhile is a gross virgin woman who apparently doesn’t know proper hygiene because a man has never touched her sexually before. At one point, Christian’s BDSM torture is actually reading Fifty Shades of Grey to Hannah because Fifty Shades of Grey was bad literature. These jokes are all supposed to be gut-busters, but they come across as the kind of first draft stuff anyone would think of when writing a Fifty Shades of Grey parody.

In between all these obvious gags are frankly bizarre movie parodies. Did I expect to see a 12 Years a Slave parody in Fifty Shades of black? No. Did I want the gag to end as immediately as it started? Absolutely. And the less said about the extended Magic Mike riff the better. Then again, at least that was better than the ridiculous “Black Lives Matter!” joke they shoved in their courtesy of Jane Seymour’s racist mother character.

Usually when I see a comedy in theaters, people laugh! Even terrible comedies like A Haunted House 2 and Dirty Grandpa were able to elicit guffaws from its target audience, but my screening was dead silent for the entire time the movie was playing. Because seeing Fifty Shades of Black is the greatest torture of all.
 (Was that an obvious gag? Sorry, but I figured it was appropriate when reviewing this movie.)

Final Rating: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Director: Michael Tiddes
Starring: Marlon Wayons, Kali Hawk, Jane Seymour, Mike Epps

Review: The Boy

If The Boy isn’t one of the weirder film premises of the year, we can chalk it up to 2016 being one of the strangest in film history, because the logline is bonkers.

A young American named Greta (Lauren Cohan) on the run from a shady past agrees to take on a job as a nanny in England. Except this isn’t an ordinary nanny job! Instead two seemingly delusional parents (Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton) want her to take care of a doll as if her were a real living boy. Get him dressed, play him classical music, make sure he is feed and so on and so forth. When Greta doesn’t play by the rules, the doll seems to come to life to cause chaos and off the movie goes into chaos!

Except not really. For what seems like a fantastical bonkers movie, quickly becomes a staid and boring one. Every question seems to be solved by the most boring answer and what originally seems like a more gothic take on Annabelle, quickly becomes just another run-of-the-mill horror joint.

There’s still benefits to The Boy. Lauren Cohan does a credible job of selling even the more nonsensical beats her character takes while in the thrall of the doll and Rupert Evans is solid as her love-interest grocery delivery person. The atmosphere is appropriately gloomy and the technical work is adequate enough. However, none of these benefits make up for the distinct lack of verve in the story. There’s a lot of life to be found at the heart of The Boy’s premise, which makes the resulting dullness of the movie to be a bit of a shame.

Final Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Director: William Brent Bell
Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Diana Hardcastle, Jim Norton

Review: Dirty Grandpa

I can’t say that everybody in the universe will hate Dirty Grandpa. I was faced with a theater of evidence of that being unequivocally not the case, as young people laughed and laughed at Robert DeNiro’s constant dick jokes.

I can say however that I wish everybody in the universe would hate Dirty Grandpa, because it’s a movie that certainly hates everybody in the universe. Dirty Grandpa is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist affair that always seems content to go for the laziest, crudest version of a joke.

I would not be shocked to see an original script for Dirty Grandpa that was just one page that said, “Robert DeNiro improvises a hundred million different ways of saying cockblock for a hundred minutes while Zac Efron is shirtless. Adam Pally may or may not have a monologue about having sex with a dog.” Frankly, learning that any more thought went into the movie would be discouraging. I’d lose a lot of faith in people who thought that Dirty Grandpa was a film that needed or should be made for 2016 audiences.

Then again, I saw a ton of people laughing their asses off as Robert DeNiro waxed philosophical to his grandson, Zac Efron, about wanting to bang the shit out of Aubrey Plaza. Maybe humanity doesn’t deserve my faith in it. Maybe it just deserves dreck like Dirty Grandpa.

Final Rating: ★ (★) ☆ ☆ ☆

Director: Dan Mazer
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Zac Efron, Aubrey Plaza, Zoey Deutch

Review: The Fifth Wave

The Fifth Wave is the teen apocalypse thriller that wants to have it all.

It wants to have a spunky teen girl making tough decisions in a crisis, so the film opens on Chloe Grace Moretz’s Cassie accidentally shooting an innocent man.

It wants to have a supernatural love story, so Cassie falls in love with some random dude halfway through the movie. This dude may or may not be an alien. I’m not sure, and I don’t think the movie is either. It doesn’t matter though because he’s everything and nothing all at once.

Being a supernatural apocalypse love story is not enough though because we also need to have some real political commentary! So half the movie is randomly spent following around Cassie’s high school crush, Ben (Nick Robinson) as he learns how to fight in a child militia and also that child militia’s are wrong.

It’s not wrong enough that we don’t get a few action sequences for our troubles though, because The Fifth Wave has to be everything to all people!

In the past couple of years, I have seen a lot of movies about teens staving off some kind of terrible futuristic threat. Most of the times the world-building in these movies can be confusing as the try to create an apocalypse that is familiar enough to draw teens in, while also being distinct enough to be compelling (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, I’ll never understand you…). The Fifth Wave though is the first time where I was more confused trying to figure out the goals of the movie than trying to figure out the world it was taking place within.

What does The Fifth Wave want to be about? Is it Cassie’s supernatural love story? Is it Ben’s child militia tale? Do these two have important thematic parallels that I’m just missing in my crusty mid-twenties old age?

I honestly don’t know! And since The Fifth Wave probably won’t get a sequel, I never will! It’s kind of disappointing.

Final Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Director: J. Blakeson
Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Maggie Siff, Ron Livingston

Review: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

I’m not going to talk about 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi in political terms. There’s loads of people better qualified than I am to tell you whether or not this movie was a distortion of the facts. (Was there a “stand down” order given? I do not know.)

I can talk about 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi in action film terms though, because it’s quite successful at being an action movie. Away from the robots and the half-naked ladies running in slow motion for no purposes other than providing jerk-off fantasies, director Michael Bay does a solid job of putting together set pieces that let the audience feel what it may have been like on that hellish day. If it were a 90 minute action film, I probably would have liked it well enough and called it a day.

It is not a 90 minute action film though. It is a two and a half hour slog that wastes a lot of time on men discussing their feelings in the clunkiest of terms. Near the climax of the film, there’s a ten minute scene on a roof where John Krasinki and James Badge Dale’s contractor characters talk to one another about their families and fears. It’s supposed to be a deeply moving scene that lets us feel for these two guys sacrificing everything for our country. Instead, it’s just an endless trading of cliches. 13 Hours feels that if it gives these soldiers the most basic of backstories, we’re going to care when it doesn’t really work like that.

If I’m meant to spend so much time invested in these men and their work (and two and a half hours is a lot of time in movie terms), then I would like to know more about the men and their work than just the broadest of cliches. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi doesn’t do that and as a result, I legit felt like I was in the theater for 13 hours.

Final Rating: ★ ★ (★) ☆ ☆

Director: Michael Bay
Starring: John Krasinksi, James Badge Dale, Pablo Schreiber, Max Martini

Review: Norm of the North

When I saw Norm of the North, I was sick with a 101 degree fever. As far as I know, I wasn’t hallucinating. And yet, the entire time I sat in that theater and watched this movie, I felt like I was trapped in a bad fever dream.

Norm of the North is a movie that for all intents and purposes should have been left to die a quick death in a WalMart DVD bargain bin. However, due to the unlikely (and undeserved) modest success of The Nut Job a couple of years back, studios have the bright idea that they can drop animated dreck in a January release date and make some kind of profit because there’s nothing else out there for parents to take their kids to see. As a result, Norm of the North was given a wide-release platform and we all had to suffer.

There is nothing about Norm of the North that is successful. It’s plotting is bizarre and convoluted; the rules of the world the movie takes place in were made and subsequently haphazardly broken countless times. It’s joke-telling isn’t much better, filled with lazy gags such as “watch these animals pee for five minutes!” or “watch these animals fart for five minutes!” (In a film with an 86 minute running time, about 10% of it is spent on body function gags.) The animation quality is poor, featuring bland, repetitive character design and needlessly repeating previously animated sequences.

In fact, the only positive thing that I can find in me to say about Norm of the North is that Rob Schneider isn’t as actively annoying as he normally is as the voice of the title character. Even saying that though feels like I’m giving Norm of the North too much credit, because in actuality it deserves none. The team behind it certainly didn’t give the viewers any credit when crafting it, so I want to return the favor when reviewing it.

Final Rating: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Director: Trevor Wall
Starring: Rob Schneider, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong, Loretta Devine