Summer Fest 7 Recap (Day Two Part One): Without Warning, Tremors, Deadly Eyes, and Blood Car

 We kicked off Day Two of Summer Fest 7 by watching Without Warning, which is Predator before Predator came out. I guess that's a SPOILER if you somehow found yourself watching Without Warning (or It Came Without Warning) and didn't see the cover art or read the back of the case. Or look slightly to the right of this paragraph. But since I'm SPOILING it anyway, it's a tall alien, also played by Kevin Peter Hall (Harry and the Hendersons) who hunts humans for sport, or food, or... something. He keeps them in the "Department of Water" shack out by the dam outside of, uh, *mumblemumbletown* and uses starfish-like projectiles to kill his prey. They attach to you and pump you full of yellow liquid that kill you, or something. Hard to say, because you can survive it if you cut one off quickly enough, as we learn not once but twice. As for how they operate, thing of a cross between a Nerf Disc Shooter, a Facehugger, and that yellow embalming fluid the Tall Man uses.

 Without Warning is mostly notable for the fact that it features "paycheck" performances from Martin Landau and Jack Palance, who are a long way from Mission: Impossible and Shane here, and would be another decade or so before they were picking up "you're still alive" Oscars for City Slickers and Ed Wood. Fortunately, both are playing different variations of gonzo in the film: Landau is a veteran of, uh, the Korean War, I guess. He says at some point he'd been in the military for 27 years, and this is 1982 we're talking about, so he'd be a little old to have gone crazy in Vietnam. But he's crazy, and he's already seen the alien, so nobody believes him. Also he later kills the Sherriff for no apparent reason and steals his car to prove the alien is real. Hey, I told you all SPOILER warnings were done with, here. He eventually blows up the alien in the shack.

 By comparison, Palance is just playing creepy as the hunter who owns the only gas station in town that our presumed protagonists are visiting (two of them are killed, leaving the "backup" couple to be our heroes, I guess, but they're so vanilla that you're happy to have Palance and Landau chewing the scenery). He's not afraid of the starfish weapons because he cuts them off with a knife (both times) and also keeps one in an empty jar he has on his desk. I'm not sure if it's creepier to imagine he just has an open jar of formaldehyde or that he puts the starfish in his moonshine. Either way, it gets loose and that is in no way brought up again. It's okay, because Palance is menacing and growly and Landau is near hysterical for most of Without Warning, which is pretty much what you'll need to get by.

 Without Warning adheres to what I'd call "The Boogens" rule of not showing the monster until the very end, not because it successfully builds tension, but because you'd never be able to watch the movie seriously if you saw it earlier. If we're simply ignoring the fact that the primary antagonist of Without Warning looks like every "alien" costume you've ever seen in Party City, you're still going to laugh at the fact that it appears to be wearing a combination of mesh and a fishing net. I guess most of the budget went to the starfish, because the alien has a very limited range of facial expressions (at times it looks like a leftover from a cheaper episode of The Outer Limits), and for most of its onscreen time, it stands next to the shed, doing nothing. However, the explosive finale made it clear to me that I had seen this movie a long time ago on television, probably without much context, because the image of the stationary alien next to the exploding shed is a familiar one. I really didn't recall Cameron Mitchell (Raw Force, Deadly Prey) being in the movie for, oh, five minutes, nor did I remember the dumb Boy Scout subplot that was vaguely reminiscent of Beware! The Blob, however...

 In the planning stages of Summer Fest 7, somebody asked me if Tremors had ever made it into the lineup before, and for some reason the answer was "no". I don't really know why, because it is a great fit for a Saturday afternoon - a leisurely, funny movie about giant worms in the desert that wreak havoc on a small town. The kind of movie they don't really make anymore - unless, I guess, you count the three (soon to be four) Tremors sequels - one where the protagonists are a couple of knucklehead handymen (played by Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon). It's an amiable sort of film, the kind that plays for years and years on TNT or TBS, and at least two people at the Fest knew it so well they were quoting lines before they happened. To be honest, I don't think I had seen Tremors in years, but I remembered most of the beats of the story (such as they are), and was able to enjoy small surprises, like forgetting that Victor Wong (Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China) was the opportunistic owner of the only store in Perfection (Population: 14).

 Tremors is the kind of movie that's so much fun that you don't really notice how quickly everything happens. I mean, there are giant, blind, albino worms that somehow have "worm vision" - or at least, a camera angle devoted to showing us its ability to move through dirt - and we just take it an go with it. There's a seismologist, so good enough. Valentine (Bacon) and Earl (Ward) aren't especially good at doing anything (as is evidenced by the fact that Bacon is having a hell of a time hammering wire into a fence at the beginning of the film, but they're so fun to follow around that you don't much care. Almost all of the "killing people we don't know" is dispensed in the first thirty minutes. Other than Walter Chang (Wong) - SPOILER - that is. But it doesn't even matter, because then we get to spend some time with the Gummers - Heather (Reba McEntire) and Burt (Michael Gross, who has been in every sequel to date). They're gun loving nuts who manage to kill one of the Graboids (actually name) with the comically massive arsenal of weapons in their basement. But they listen to Val and Earl and leave their fortified home to hide on rocks in the middle of the desert, where they can go dynamite fishing. And then stampeding. It all works out in the end, practicality be damned. It doesn't really matter, as I said, because Tremors is so damn fun to watch.

 After Tremors, it only made sense to continue the "nature gone wild" trend with Deadly Eyes, which is one of the strangest movies you're likely to see. Not because you haven't seen dogs playing "giant" versions of rodents before (thanks, Killer Shrews), but because so much of the movie is obsessed with being a romantic comedy about a high school gym coach and an EPA inspector. In between seeing Dachshunds bounding around, pretending to be giant rats that eat Scatman Crothers (SPOILER), there's uncomfortable flirting between the coach and one of his students, the "meet cute" in the hospital where her son (a star basketball player) ends up after a rat bites his hand, and the "misunderstanding" about whether he's porking the cheerleader who wants to jump his bones. Oh, and he's divorced and has a young son who is in the living room while all of this is happening. It doesn't matter in the end because they're all eaten by rats, in one of the bleakest final shots this side of Frank Darabont's The Mist.

 Hey, I said "SPOILER"! But seriously, the focus in Deadly Eyes is all over the place, as the film tries to develop every character at the expense of the fact that there are giant rats in the New York City Subway (or is it Toronto?). Yes, they look suspiciously like happy Dachshunds with "rat" costumes, but why do I care about the scene where the cheerleader comes into the locker room and finds the coach just coming out of the shower and he nakedly discusses why they can't do anything? If I followed the film correctly, there's not really a reason the rats are growing to enormous size, because the rice they've been eating at the dock wasn't irradiated or anything - it was just not up to safety codes. I clearly missed the part about Scatman Crothers working for the EPA as a narc who takes jobs working for serial polluters, but again, it doesn't matter because the rats eat him. Like they eat everybody else. And they cut the power on the subway. How did they cut the power? Game over, man.

 And then there was Blood Car. I'm not sure what to say about Blood Car that hasn't already been said here and here, other than maybe to mention that there's a Last Tango in Paris reference that I'd somehow forgotten about. It's been a while since I watched Blood Car, which isn't okay, now that I think about it, but sometimes you get caught up with other movies, you know? Luckily for the Cap'n, less people in the room had seen it than I thought, which absolutely made up for that. I particularly liked the question "is he always this crazy or did something happen before I got here?" directed at the protagonist. It's also much funnier watching Blood Car since Veep has been on the air, because in a lot of odd ways, Anna Chlumsky's character lays the groundwork for her part in the show. Or maybe I'm projecting... yeah, that must be it.

 Okay, so it's time for The Trappening... and only I know what it is! Stay tuned, masochists!

Summer Fest 7 Recap (Day One): Terminator Genisys, Kung Fury, and Revenge of the Ninja

 After seven long years, it was time to have another Summer Fest Field Trip Movie, and while they can't all be The Happening, you have to give an "A" for effort to this year's outing. I have a pain in my brain, and its name is Genisys. I could maybe live with the fact that this mediocre (at best) fifth Terminator film undoes all of the other movies in order to create a dumber multi-verse if it made any sense. Or even just adhered to its own internal logic, such as it is. But no. It doesn't do that. I could tell early that Genisys was already losing the brave souls who joined me when Skynet had a voice announcing that the time machine was activated and to send the T-800 back to 1984. Let's stop right there. Since when does an automated system like Skynet need to tell itself what it's going to do? Oh, it's for the audience members too stupid to keep up with what is obviously going on? Because this is the first Terminator movie they've ever seen? Okay, fine. Believe me, if that bothers you - and it did for at least two people sitting with me - that's nothing compared with what's coming.

 Guess what? I'm guessing you're not going to see Genisys until it's on the Syfy Channel one Saturday afternoon and you're waiting for Sharknado 5 or something like that. I mean, it's pretty obvious nobody is going to see it on the big screen; there were maybe 11 people at a 7:35 showing on a Friday night, and the multiplex had already dumped Terminator Genisys into one of its "crappy" auditoriums. How do I know? Well, you don't usually go to a theater to see widescreen bars at the top and bottom of the screen. But there they were, because Crossroads 20 couldn't be bothered to put it on anything better than a screen matted for 1.85:1. That's how much they cared about Terminator Genisys.

 I could give you a laundry list of things that would make you simultaneously want to watch Genisys and also to run away in horror, but maybe you'll split the difference and pay two dollars for it in a couple weeks. Or watch it for whatever you spend on cable television next year. Honestly, I'd go for the two dollars, because you can be baffled along with the other four or five people who pay to see it. We can start with recreating scenes from The Terminator (specifically the Griffith Park Observatory and Kyle Reese arrivals), but making them way dumber by throwing in an extra Terminator (old Arnold digitally young-ified) who fights an all digital 1984 version (Bodybuilder Brett Azar replaced completely with pixels), or having a T-1000 chase digital actor Jai Courtney (I think he's playing Kyle Reese, but nobody bothered finishing the "acting" job in the computer) until Sarah Connor (also digital actor Emilia Clarke, similarly unfinished) bursts through the department store and shoots guns. So many guns.

 Anyway, The Terminator never happened. T2 never happened. Terminator 3 never happened, and mercifully, Terminator: Salvation probably won't happen. I'm not even clear how Genisys happens, because after old Arnold Terminator who came back in time to 1974 to protect younger Sarah Connor uses a homemade time machine to send Kyle and Sarah to 2017, there's no way they can still have John Connor and he'd be the right age to send Kyle back.... agh. My brain hurts. Hey, remember "Bad Boys," also known as the theme song from COPS? That's in this movie, for a "being arrested montage" which includes the second of three "Arnold tries to smile" jokes from the deleted scenes in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Also Matt Smith (Lost River) has replaced Helena Bonham Carter as the embodiment of Skynet and he turns John Connor (Jason Clarke) into a machine/man/something and then sends it back to 2014 to ensure Skynet will be created with the help of Miles and Danny Dyson, except now it's called Genisys and is an operating system that controls all of our devices. Kyle tells his younger self this because the timeline has been changed and now he has memories of both lives because Nexus point blah blah blah Quantum Magnetics.

 Quantum Magnetics.

 Terminator Genisys is such a stupid movie that I insist you all see it. There are multiple plot holes (like who sent back Pops, er, Guardian... er, forget it, Old Arnold?) that are designed to be addressed by sequels that probably won't be made because that's what happens when you come in 9th on your opening weekend. America has spoken, and it wants Minions. And, uh, they're probably right, but Terminator Genisys was the movie that Summer Fest 7 deserved. I gave it to 'em, and I don't regret it one bit. And look at it this way: if you're Phil Collins, from now on when someone talks about how much they hate Genisys, you can at least be uncertain for a few more seconds...

 Since I'm such a nice guy, when we got back to the Blogorium, I put on Kung Fury. In case you somehow avoided the internet a few weekends ago, it was all the rage on social media and everybody was reposting the link on Twitter and Facebook and, what the hell, let's pretend someone still uses MySpace. Fortunately for me, the masochists who followed me back from Terminator Genisys had somehow missed all of that, and had no idea what Kung Fury was. In truth, explaining what the short film is actually makes it sound worse than the finished product, but I'll do my best.

 Try as I might, there have been very few movies in the "neo-Grindhouse" movement that the Cap'n has actually enjoyed. Planet Terror had a fun John Carpenter vibe, but Hobo with a Shotgun was to relentlessly dour to really enjoy its grimy, 80's inspired aesthetics. Wolfcop pretty much went nowhere, and I've tried to avoid the glut of other, VHS-era inspired independent films because they promise a lot and rarely deliver. All of this is a means of explaining that Kung Fury is one of the rare "inspired by the 80's" concept films that actually does what it sets out to do. It's compact, wildly entertaining, and continually finds ways to surprise you and up the ante. Fest-er's laughed out loud repeatedly by its audacity, even though they'd groaned audibly when I told them about Triceracop before watching it.

 And that's the catch, because yes, there's a Triceratops wearing a police uniform, and of course he has a British accent. He's Kung Fuy (David Sandberg)'s partner, although Kung Fury doesn't want a partner. He works alone, after his original partner was brutally murdered by a kung fu master and then he was struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra at the same time. That's how he became Kung Fury, a cop in Miami, circa 1985. And by that, I mean a few actual sets mixed with liberal usage of green screens, playing in what looks like a grimy ambience of an oft-used VHS tape. Tracking errors are used to mask budget limitations early in the short, when Kung Fury is fighting an out of control arcade box, but everything is so over the top that it's really hard to find fault in the way that Sandberg (who also wrote and directed) presents it.

 Leave it to the Swedes to give us a short film where the hero hacks his way back in time to fight Hitler (The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone) - pardon me, Kung Fuhrer - but goes too far and ends up in "Viking Times," which means Laser Raptors, Direwolves, and Gatling Guns. I'm not even going to tell you what happens after that, because telling you too much about Kung Fury ruins the fun of discovering just how far down the rabbit hole Sandberg is willing to go. I will take a moment to note my appreciation for Triceracops preferred method of killing Nazis - it only makes sense, in that it doesn't make any more sense than anything else that happens. And, of course, the song that plays over the end credits is performed by David Hasselhoff. It's kind of great, and quite appropriate for Kung Fury. One of our Fest-ers described it as "the best thing to come out of Kickstarter," which is true. As I understand it, the short is Sandberg's "proof of concept" to secure funding for a feature length film, and if he can sustain this level of manic energy for 90 minutes, count me in.

Now, it's a high mountain to climb to top the level of 80's cheese-tastic-ness that was Kung Fury, but I had no doubts that Golan-Globus could deliver the goods with Revenge of the Ninja. Remember, after all, that the 1983 not-exactly-a-sequel to Enter the Ninja is, in many ways, a template for the kind of "that can't happen" action movie Kung Fury is drawing from. We're talking about a film that begins with a ninja attack in progress, one that wipes out Cho (Shô Kosugi)'s entire family - save for his infant son - while he's hanging out with art dealer Braden (Arthur Roberts). They return to his home to find his entire family dead, and Cho - who I swear everyone pronounces his name as "Joe" - takes out the evil ninja clan single-handedly. Okay, I guess Braden shoots one of them. And then, without missing a beat, Braden offers Cho a job in America working at his art galleries.

 (SPOILERS ABOUND) Braden is, of course, evil, and is using Cho to traffic heroin in the dolls he delivers to the galleries. While Revenge of the Ninja never directly addresses this, I think we can all safely assume that Braden arranged for Cho's family to be killed. Again - if at any point any character says this out loud, I missed it. Instead, I just kind of guessed it when someone asked why Cho was a character in this movie at all. That's because, despite the fact that we spend inordinate amounts of time with Shô Kosugi, his son Kane Kosugi, and "Grandmother" (Grace Oshita), they're actually completely superfluous to the plot of the movie. Revenge of the Ninja is, for the most part, about Braden's drug dealing and dispute with the Mafia. Braden is actually also a ninja (with a ridiculous silver mask), and he decides to take out the mob without Cho having anything to do with the story. I mean, at all. For all intents and purposes, the title could refer to Braden taking "revenge" on the Mob for screwing him out of a drug deal.

  Cho eventually finds out about the drugs, which leads to Braden hypnotizing Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) into kidnapping Kane, and thugs try to kill Cho (and fail). Since "only a ninja can kill a ninja" or something ridiculous like that, Cho also has to dress up as a ninja and infiltrate the mob compound after Braden has so they can have the most drawn out fight possible.  Also, I guess he's going to save Kane, but since Kane saves himself (and Cathy, who is inexplicably placed in the worst "death trap" possible - it involves a Jacuzzi) and Cho never even looks for him, let's stick with the fight scene. I mean, you don't hit 80 minutes with the story they've got.

 I mentioned that Revenge of the Ninja isn't really a sequel of Enter the Ninja, and by that I mean it isn't in any way a sequel to Enter the Ninja. It's also not a prequel to Ninja III: The Domination - a previous Fest favorite - but since all three feature Shô Kosugi in some capacity, they form the loosest definition of a "trilogy" you're likely to see. This is the only one to outright star Kosugi (and his son), but Cho is so incidental to the actual story that you'd be forgiven for thinking he's just another supporting character. That said, Revenge of the Ninja has all of your favorite elements of 80s action cinema, including ethnic stereotypes: not even just the odd interpretation of "ninja," but also the Mafia goons and their one hired assassin who is dressed like a Native American and of course uses a Tomahawk. Revenge of the Ninja also features what may be the most uncomfortable fight scene in the history of Summer Fest, when Cathy is sent to kidnap Kane, and we're forced to watch a grown woman fight a six year old boy. It's much more of a back and forth battle than you'd think, but I'm not really sure that benefits anyone.

 After that, we realized we were old and tired and boring, so everybody went home without watching Traxx or Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Fortunately, there's always tomorrow...

"Where have you been, Cap'n?"

 Ah, yes. Apologies for the lack of reviews. It's not for lack of having seen anything, but mostly because Cap'n Howdy has been busy putting the final touches on Summer Fest 7. Around this time of year my schedule goes haywire, because the logistics of a fest, even eight years in, is time consuming. And this isn't even a large scale one: just our normal get-together weekend of B-Movies. That said, bringing back the "Field Trip" movie has turned out to be slightly more complicated than usual, in part because the film we're going to see performed so poorly last week that most theatres aren't interested in showing it this week. But it's worth it, my Fest-ers and vicarious Fest-readers.

 This year's Fest is broken up into three, loosely theme-based days:

 Friday: Unnecessary Sequels

 Saturday: A Taste for Flesh and Blood

 Sunday: Super Hero Origin Stories

 I believe that I've put together a good balance of schlock to entertain the Fest faithful. This year will include past favorites from the earliest Summer Fests, in large part because the audience has changed enough that some of them never made it to the first three years. There are also some other, heretofore, unseen films joining the lineup that I'm excited to show them. And, of course, there's the Trappening.

 This year's Trappening is something that I watched many times years and years ago, but has inexplicably never played at a Fest. Why? I'm not sure, because it absolutely fits in. Like the people coming to see it in person, it's going to remain a mystery until the moment it plays. Could it be Night of the Lepus? Death Bed: The Bed That Eats? Big Money Rustlas? Titanic: The Legend Goes On..? Only I know for sure...

 Here's the schedule as planned - feel free to watch along at home if you like:

Friday
  
Terminator Genisys (Summer Fest Field Trip Movie)
 Kung Fury
 Revenge of the Ninja
 Traxx
 Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

 Saturday

 Without Warning
 Tremors
 Deadly Eyes
 Blood Car
 Zombeavers
 TRAPPENING
 A Vampire on Bikini Beach (USA Up All Night Experience)

 Sunday

 She Devil
 Teeth
 Super
 Lucy







Recap to come in the following week. In the meantime, the madness begins soon...

Blogorium Review: Jurassic World

 Jurassic World is a pretty good movie and a great example of corporate filmmaking at its best. That is to say that it reflects the kind of movie that fulfills all quadrants, offends nobody, and coasts along on enough charm that it does not bore or annoy audiences. Just don't think to hard about it, and you'll be just fine. It's weird, because I feel strange saying that I thought it was enjoyable. I've watched the Screen Junkies debate and I watched Red Letter Media's Half in the Bag review, and to be perfectly honest, I can't mount a defense of any of the problems raised about Jurassic World. The characters are barely one note, the contrivances and narrative conveniences are at time embarrassing, and yeah, there are plot holes you could drive a truck through. I'm not even going to try to defend the movie from the type of criticisms I'd normally hold it accountable for. I can't. By the same token, I've tried to talk myself out of the fact that I did enjoy it, and it's not sticking.

 Let's get the elephant out of the room right away: I don't view Jurassic Park with rose colored glasses. I feel like that's important to point out, because I didn't watch Jurassic World through the lens of nostalgia. I think Jurassic Park has some fun moments, mostly the suspenseful ones, but have always felt like most of the characters are broadly drawn cartoons who dress in such a way that you can easily tell their toys apart. I'm the weird person who still kinda likes the mostly terrible The Lost World, even though I just watched it again, and yeah, it's still pretty bad. The "Spielberg does Godzilla" part still makes me laugh, because it's such a stupid, audacious way to close out that movie. But I didn't really care about seeing Jurassic World. I wasn't interested at all, and when I did see it, my thought process was "what the hell, I just watched The Lost World yesterday, and it can't be worse than Jurassic Park III." And it's not. Unlike just about every review, I'm not going to say that Jurassic World is better than the sequels but not as good as Jurassic Park, because I don't hold the first one in the same standard as most people. Bear that in mind as we move forward, because your mileage may vary.

 For starters, I guess I do like the premise: Ingen finally got its shit together and John Hammond found somebody to reopen the park. His name is Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan), and he's immediately not like the usual sleazy businessmen you've seen in the other Jurassic movies. He's one of those carefree billionaires who is managing the money and taking care of Hammond's vision, but mostly just wants to show off that he's almost finished his helicopter lessons. He leaves the actual running of the redubbed "Jurassic World" to Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is a numbers, spreadsheet type that thinks of the dinosaurs as "assets" and is concerned about the bottom line and appeasing investors. In other words, the character we're probably not going to like but since she's a main character, she'll eventually see the error of her ways, right? Eh... maybe not so much. Back to that later. Claire is supposed to be hanging out with her sister (Judy Greer)'s kids, but she doesn't have time and foists precocious Gray (Ty Simpkins) and moody teen Zach (Nick Robinson) on her assistant Zara (Katie McGrath). They have VIP passes, so they can go anywhere which is a good way for us to see the park. It beats seeing the control room, which is where comic relief audience nostalgia surrogate Lowery (Jake Johnson) works. (He bought a Jurassic Park t-shirt on Ebay and has dinosaur toys on his work station).

 Anyway, nobody cares about the characters, because there's a new dinosaur. Like, a new, genetically modified dinosaur that never existed, and as dumb as Indominus Rex ends up being a lot of the time, but reason for her existence is actually a pretty sound one. In the universe of Jurassic World, the park reopened two years after Jurassic Park (well, actually they completely rebuilt it, as we find out) and it's been a tourist attraction with a cruise ship that takes people to Isla Nublar every day since then. Claire is explaining to investors from Verizon (no, really) that after twenty years, the allure of dinosaurs has started fading, and they want something new. Audiences want something they've never seen, something scary, so Dr. Wu (JP alum BD Wong) cooked up the I-Rex, a mystery hybrid that has super powers. We'll also come back to the convenient super powers later. The reasoning behind creating the new dinosaur plays like a commentary on moviegoers today. I mean, the novelty of seeing dinosaurs in a movie has pretty much worn off, so lets make them bigger stronger faster scarier. More CGI. More mayhem. Jurassic World the movie is the proof that Claire the character isn't wrong: people went in droves to see it.

 Indominus has been raised in her paddock, alone ever since she ate her sibling, and Masrani wants Claire to have ex-military consultant Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to check it for security before the consider opening it to the public. Claire doesn't like that because of course they went on a date when he started working there and of course it didn't work out because she's into designing itineraries and he's into the Matt Foley school of living life. But he's Chris Pratt so we mostly like him and he's capable and manly and cracks jokes, etc. He cares about the dinosaurs and has raised a pack of Velociraptors from birth and is their alpha. Just in case we don't get that, their names are Echo, Delta, Charlie, and, uh, Blue. I guess maybe they thought audiences might not understand why a raptor was named "Bravo" or maybe the network said they couldn't use it, so it has blue markings instead.

 The raptor subplot is actually a lot less stupid than the trailer made it look, because Owen just barely keeps them in check for most of the movie. It's established early on that they accept him as the alpha, but only to a degree. They listen to him, but he still has to roll under the closing gate to get out of their pen when he saves some idiot who falls in. They know he's not like them, but he's their alpha, so it's a tenuous balance. You've seen the part in the trailer with the motorcycle, but that happens because he's following them as they follow the scent of the I-Rex, and that happens as a matter of last resort. Mostly thanks to subplot we didn't need in this movie character Hoskins (Adventures in Babysitting's Vincent D'Onofrio). His "lets militarize dinosaurs" contractor guy feels like a leftover plot thread from the abandoned John Sayles draft of Jurassic Park 4 with the human / dinosaur hybrid Dirty Dozen*.

 But anyway all of these characters have to converge so of course the kids are out in a gyrosphere rolling around when the I-Rex gets loose and Claire has to evacuate most of the park while the Asset Containment Unit gets slaughtered. See, the I-Rex can mask her thermal signature if she wants to, so she tricks them into thinking she's not in her cage and Owen can see how dangerous she is when she eats a fat slob red shirt (seriously, this dude has a tie that's not on straight, a barely tucked in shirt, and a safety hat that's tiled at an angle: he's clearly getting eaten from the moment we see him). I-Rex goes on a murder spree, killing everything, in a once again reasonably explained way. Owen correctly points out that having been raised in captivity with no contact at all, Indominus Rex has never encountered other dinosaurs (or anything) before, and doesn't know its place in the food chain. And they really don't want her to find out.

 Anyway, dumb kids somehow go "off road" and Claire and Owen have to find them. Hoskins takes over the control room, and everything goes straight to hell. This leads to the disaster part of the movie, where people die horrible, horrible deaths. Like, I was surprised how horrible in some instances. There's one character whose death is wildly disproportionate to their behavior in the movie, unless being inattentive means you should be pecked apart by Pterodactyls and then swallowed alive by the Mosasaurus, the Sea World-like attraction. I mean, the dude who grabs his margaritas while running doesn't even get it that bad. He might not die at all, and there's no way he ordered both of those drinks for himself, if he ordered them in the first place. There are people who totally deserve to have their arms bitten off or to be dino-stomped or Pterodactyl impaled**, but there's dome disproportionate brutality going on. Maybe director Colin Trevorrow had a bad vendetta with somebody or just hates Mary Poppins or something.

 Well, now's as good a time as any to transition into the "why people think this movie sucks and I can't even argue with them" part of the review. I'm going to start with two pieces of dialogue from the dumb kids who are only in Jurassic World because the movies are ostensibly aimed at kids (and not their 30-something parents who saw Jurassic Park twenty years ago). I'm going to slightly modify what they say to point out what incredible plot conveniences they introduce, but if you're SPOILER averse, you might as well skip ahead to the last paragraph.

 "Hey, do you still have those matches neither of us ever mentioned at any point before now even though we just got away from the I-Rex by jumping into water?"

 "Do you remember that time we fixed up Grampa's car which would totally mean we can repair this Jeep we found in the old Visitor's Center from Jurassic Park and then drive back?"

 Putting aside the fact that any theme park that offered a "gyrosphere" attraction without a guide should have a way to bring said gyrosphere back when the park is unexpectedly closed, those two lines are indicative us just how lazy the writing in Jurassic World is. They both happen within five minutes of each other, and I think they were hoping we'd be too caught up in fact that "hey, it's the old Visitors Center! I remember Jurassic Park! Omg!" to really think carefully about how contrived those plot points are. Almost as contrived as Indominus Rex, who is white (except when she's not), can mask her thermal signature (once), pulls out her own tracking device, and is part Raptor. How do we find out she's part Raptor? Someone in the movie has to say it. In fact, here's what Owen says:

 "No wonder they didn't tell us what's she's made of: she's part Raptor..."

 This happens at the end of the motorcycle scene, when the Raptors find I-Rex and, even though she's never seen a Velociraptor before, she begins communicating with them. Guess there's a new Alpha. Oh wait, that's also something Owen says. The Raptors of course turn on Owen and Hoskins men and kill them, and then go all the way back to their paddock to chase Claire and the stupid kids who are sitting in a truck that the boys for no apparent reason won't close the back doors of. It's one of the many, "wait, what?" moments that Jurassic World hopes you won't ask questions about, like "where did the other helicopter pilot go if Masrani and the helicopter are still on the island?" or "wait, wasn't the Mosasaurus attraction further away from the main park area?" or "would you really stop to comfort a dying dinosaur when there's nothing you can do to help at all and you're searching for two children that may or may not be in mortal danger?" Yes, the last question is the closest scene Claire has to a humanizing moment, and it may be the only dinosaur in the entire movie that isn't CGI, but if you give it a moment's scrutiny, why does it need to happen?

 And yet, I didn't really mind while watching it. Yes, in retrospect, the film compounds so many lazy, convenient, or "we hope you're not paying attention to this" moments that you probably won't even remember the loose plot thread they leave for the next Jurassic sequel (hint: BD Wong). Does it really matter what happened to Lowery? Eh, I didn't even think about him in the last scene. In truth, most people are only going to remember the final battle, and to Jurassic World's credit, it takes the humans out of the equation and goes for full on dino fight. And it's a pretty good fight with a great (if implausible) conclusion. You'll be excited, you won't care about product placement - I mean, have you been to a theme park? Is the Jimmy Fallon scene really that out of place? - and if you loved Jurassic Park, you might even cheer when T-Rex makes her grand return by crashing through a Spinosaur skeleton. Take that, Jurassic Park III. You never forget that everybody hates you. I'm sure there's tons of press material where producers and the director and four writers talk about making the fans happy, and that lip service is expected, but this movie was created by committee. And to be honest, for what it is, it's better than it has any right to be. I cannot pretend that it's a well constructed, well thought out film, but Jurassic World gives you what you came for. If you're the nostalgic type, there's a chance you might like it even more than I did. It's not really the best or the worst, which I know the internet hates, but that's how it is sometimes. Every now and then you get a mostly happy middle, and for reasons I can't quite fathom, Jurassic World was entertaining, in spite of itself.



 * I am not making that up.
 ** Although, if we're picking nits, one was done in The Lost World and the other was the original ending of the film before Spielberg took T-Rex to San Diego.

Retro Review: Jurassic Park III

 Jurassic Park III is the one that Steven Spielberg didn't direct, the one that has a dream sequence with a talking Velociraptor that says Alan Grant (Sam Neill)'s name on an airplane. I mean, that really ought to cover it, right? It's the one that's universally recognized as terrible and that director Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Rocketeer) somehow managed to bounce back from. William H. Macy and Tea Leoni are in it, somehow they talked Laura Dern into shooting a cameo but Jeff Goldblum said, "nah, there's a line and I'm not crossing it again." I guess that Cats and Dogs money was too good to pass up. But enough about Jeff Goldbum - people will debate until the end of time about whether The Lost World really sucks or just kind of sucks - Alan Grant is back you guys! I choose to believe that this is the work of Sutter Cane, but obviously I have no evidence to support that because Cane hasn't given me any.

 Anyway, so I saw Jurassic Park III in the theatre because that was back when I'd go see anything and maybe we didn't know it was going to suck. Or we hoped it wouldn't. Or maybe we did know and we went to see it anyway because, hell, we'd already seen Jeepers Creepers. It was a long time ago. We watched the terrible movie where the Raptors have quills because dinosaur research had continued to advance and now they're closer to birds than lizards to yeah, multi-colored quills. Some dumb kid with rich parents got lost on Isla The Other One from The Lost World (I would like to point out that in The Lost World you can also see this island chain includes Isla Muerte. I'd love to see the dinosaurs on that one) and Alan Grant has to find him. Even though he's never been to that Island. I guess Vince Vaughn isn't considered trustworthy enough to find a kid. Probably a good call.

 So we left the stupid movie and went to a friend of a friend's house, which is never my idea of a good time, especially when the friend who brought you there (and is driving) goes in one of the back rooms to get high and you're watching South Park with some dude who is half conscious and mostly paying attention to his turtle aquarium behind the couch. Good times. If that doesn't already sound sketchy enough to you guys, the people who lived in this apartment would later steal a bunch of stuff from some girl, get confronted about it, and decide to just leave it all on the runway of the airport for them to find. True story. But eventually my friend comes back out and he's going to drive me home which is what I wanted to do, and he grabs two beers "for the road." This is my only option of getting home and we're well before the days of cell phones here.

 Well, as luck would have it, while driving back there's a police checkpoint and he's already opened one of the beers to drink while on the road (in his defense, he's a very functional alcoholic) and can't turn around. So, uh, we're going to have to deal with this prickly situation. In his infinite (read: under 21) wisdom, he opens the other beer and proceeds to pour both of them onto the floorboard of the driver's side, hoping that they won't notice. Take a guess how that well that worked. We are both ordered to get out of the car and to submit to a breathalyzer, which is fine with me because I haven't been drinking and I'm not going to jail. On the other hand, they continue to ask him "Sir, have you been drinking?" and he answers "No."

 Taking the breathalyzer out: "Sir, are you sure you haven't been drinking?"

 Him: "I have not"

 Handing him the breathalyzer: "Are you certain that you were not drinking tonight?"

 Him: "No"

 He's blowing into the breathalyzer: "One last time, have you been drinking tonight?"

 BEEP!

 Him: "Well, maybe one beer."

 And they put him in handcuffs and take him off to jail. Me? I'm sober and without a ride home, so I get to walk with the officer back to his truck so she can take a look around and see if there's anything else they should know about. The entire cabin reeks of cheap beer and I'm getting a headache just standing there. She finds his back pack filled with issues of High Times and says "this is promising" and to this day I don't know how she didn't find his bowl or why she didn't check the ash tray, which is exactly where what he normally smoked was tucked away. I mean, you are a cop, right? Well, I'm not going to be too rude, because she very apologetically explained that I would have to take his truck home because they couldn't spare an officer to drive me to my parents house (that'll be important in a minute). She have me her badge number and name in case someone pulled me over and noticed the pungent odor of beer everywhere, and off I went.

 I was living with my parents, who were asleep, so I had to sneak into their room to get the cordless phone out. That way they wouldn't wake up when he called me from the drunk tank to come pick him up, as he did at about 2 in the morning. I took my car (much better idea) and navigated through downtown - which I didn't know very well - and found him outside of the jail, giving a homeless guy the last five dollars he had. Then he smoked a cigarette and I took him back to his truck, which he drove home without incident. He lost his license for a year and there was probation or something else and now he has a PhD and four masters and is an expert on bats. So I guess it worked out. One time we shared a motel room during a wedding and there was a bat outside. He brought it in, but because he was drunk, he dropped it and the bat went under the bed. He laughed and said "that's what you get when you party with me!" and then went to sleep.

 Where was I...?

Blogorium Review: Ex Machina

 There's really only one way that Ex Machina can end, and it does. It would hardly be fair to hold that against a film that poses so many intriguing questions about mankind and our relationship towards (if not, eventually, with) machines. For ninety or so minutes, we watch a Turing Test play out, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, with parameters that aren't well defined, and based on agendas we can't necessarily predict. And yet, despite the "all is not what it seems" atmosphere which is as pervasive throughout the film as it is in the trailer, writer / director Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later) manages to address concerns as the narrative unfolds without betraying the audience. After all, there's only one way it can end, but how it gets there is best part.

 Ex Machina is ostensibly the story of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson, Frank), a code writer for Blue Book, the largest search engine in the world. He wins a company raffle - of sorts - and is sent to spend a week at the estate of Blue Book's creator, Nathan (Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis), for purposes undefined. There are clues in the opening scene that something else is going on, some subtle, some less so - although we don't know why until later. Nathan, who lives in the midst of a fortified compound in the midst of mountainside land (as the helicopter pilot explains when Caleb asks when they'll be at Nathan's property, "we've been flying over it for the last two hours!"), is very strict about who he allows to visit. Custom made ID badges are required, and they don't always grant access to rooms. Nathan himself, a coding prodigy who built Blue Book as a teenager, lives in isolation, exercising and drinking in equal measure. To say the least, Caleb is intimidated. This man is his boss, trying to talk to him like a friend, but under specific parameters. Parameters he's not always willing to divulge.

 But Caleb isn't really there to hang out with his boss for a week. No, Nathan's invited him for a very specific purpose, one that explains the need for no windows and a self-sustaining generator. And no cell phone service (can't leave that one out). Nathan's been working on an advanced artificial intelligence, and he's chosen Caleb to be the man to administer a Turing test. Can Caleb determine whether Ava (Alicia Vikander) passes for human or not? Nathan's already decided to bypass some of the original rules Alan Turing designed for the test: he's confident that if Caleb couldn't see Ava, he'd be convinced, so instead Caleb has to interact, to see. Ava has a human face, human hands, and fee, but is otherwise clearly a machine. So the question becomes, can Caleb, knowing he's talking to a machine, discern the presence of intelligence and be convinced that Ava is more than artifice?

 In writing the last paragraph, I caught myself trying to write the word "she" when referring to Ava, which is a nagging pet peeve I have, even for myself. The concept of trying to anthropomorphize, to gender identify, something which is explicitly identified as non-human is still difficult to shake. Pay attention to how many people refer to Apple's SIRI as a "her": because a woman recorded the audible responses that SIRI provides, we give it a gender. But SIRI is not a human being, and neither is Ava, which became the first philosophical point of contention I thought I would have with Ex Machina. Why sexualize Ava if all Nathan wants to do is prove its intelligence is genuine? Ava has a woman's face and hands, contoured plastic breasts and buttocks, so even if the arms and torso are transparent, even if the top of the head is, too, Caleb's eyes are going to be drawn to some degree to the fact that Nathan made a specific decision to gender-ize Ava.

 As it turns out, just as I was beginning to really think about the conscious decision to give Ava a gender, Garland chose to address it by having Caleb come right out and ask Nathan about it. The film is broken up into "sessions" between Caleb and Ava, punctuated by conversations with Nathan or sequences where Caleb learns more about the house. It's not far into the movie - maybe the second or third session - before the conversation comes up, and like many things which appear to be adhering to "audience expectation" tropes, there's a method to the madness. In fact, as Garland slowly reveals, there are several: Nathan has a specific reason for making Ava look like a young woman, one tied to the nature of the testing. But there are other reasons as well, although I'm not going to SPOIL much about Ex Machina. Suffice to say that many of the plot points I thought were or would be problematic turned out to be better thought out than your average screenplay.

 Ava is, indeed, quite impressive, and Caleb finds himself conflicted. On the one hand, he understands his role as the skeptic - he has to evaluate Ava from all possible angles, including whether Nathan's programming is responsible for its "flirtatious" behavior. By the same token, maybe Nathan is right that Caleb is "the first man Ava has seen" other than him. Nathan's a little looser when it comes to talking about Ava, and sometimes says "her," but I'm trying to refrain from that. They don't just talk about Ava, and it's very clear that Nathan has a secret agenda. He's also condescending and dismissive, except when he's not. There's something Caleb just can't trust about the parameters of this "test," which is confirmed when the power cuts out during a session with Ava. Ava warns Caleb that he shouldn't trust anything that Nathan says or does, which sets off the second half of Ex Machina. But which one of them is more trustworthy: the creation or the creator?

 Unfortunately, Caleb's only other point of communication is with Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) - Nathan's housekeeper / cook / assistant, who can't speak, read, or understand English. Nathan prefers it that way, as it allows him to "talk about trade secrets" without fear of any leaks. Astute readers are already working out her role in the story, but since Kyoko appears so early in the film and there are so few characters, it would be unfair to leave her out. While attempting to negotiate his living space, or the fact that the television in his room only shows CCTV footage of Ava, Caleb continues his sessions, becoming more smitten with Ava's apparently genuine expressions of intelligence. Ava draws, turns lines of questions around on Caleb, and begins to blur the line between machine and human. In the last instance, literally: Ava puts on a dress, stockings, and a wig (left in a closet, one might assume, purposefully), which obscures much of the artificiality. The results on Caleb are somewhat predictable, although by that point he's far more concerned with Ava's status as "captive" in Nathan's home.

 Although I said there was only one way that Ex Machina could end, I'm not going to address it in this review. In fact, what has been covered leaves out a number of plot points, because there's a great benefit to not knowing much more than what you see in the trailer. That might even give away a bit too much, although the "what" of what happens is more interesting when the pieces of "why" it happens come together. It goes without saying that Caleb is also being tested, Nathan is being far less than straightforward, and that Ava is taking advantage of that. Or are all three of them manipulating the others, and themselves? There are a number of interesting Biblical allusions in the film, as well as nods to Frankenstein, The Allegory of the Cave, Star Trek, Blade Runner, and Oppenheimer's famous "now I am become Death" quote. There are also some smaller references to Wittgenstein, Close Encounters or the Third Kind, and Hoffmann's The Sandman.

 With such a small cast, it's hard to really say any one of the three leads stands out, although much of the credit goes to Alicia Vikander, who has to appear to be human without being human. Considering that most of her on-screen performance is a visual effect, Vikander manages to sell her role in /as the effect. The reasoning behind how Ava is capable of reproducing human expressions has its own interesting plot device, but Vikander's slow evolution on camera as Ava is most impressive. It's hard to tell who is the cat and who the mouse, as Gleeson slowly moves from star-struck rube to man in crisis to his own sense of (possibly misguided) agency. Isaac appears to have the more one-note role, playing Nathan mostly through intimidation - physically, mentally, and emotionally - but there are a few moments in the last act that shed light on him. Some for the better, some for the worse, but I feel like his last conversation with Caleb is a better glimpse into who Nathan really is than the diabolical puppeteer we've been taking him for. It all depends on whose side you take during Ex Machina - and don't worry, the title is quite appropriate - to how you react to the inevitability of its conclusion. Like I said, there's only one way it can end once the pieces are in place. Discovering how it gets to that point, however, is what makes the film worth your while.

Blogorium Review: Mad Max - Fury Road

 (editor's note: please forgive the relative lateness of this review - the Cap'n insisted on seeing the film a second time before turning this in.)

 Eh. It was okay, I guess. You know, nothing special.

 Nah, I'm just pulling your chain. This is the internet, where everything either rules or sucks, and there's no level of hyperbole big enough to attach to something, but even I can't argue with the fact that Fury Road is the goods. For a little while there, at the beginning, I thought I maybe had, though: it's not for very long, but right after Max (Tom Hardy) crashes his Interceptor and gets captured, your fearless Cap'n was worried he might have overhyped himself for this movie. Something about the persistent flashback, um, flashes (that might not actually be what we think they are, but more on that later) and the strangely under-cranked action as Max tries to escape the Citadel just felt... off. Like, something wasn't working. Also, it felt less like under-cranked camerawork and more like someone set the video to play at 1.5 speed but kept the audio the same. Since we're in a digital projection world, I did worry that maybe that could actually have happened.

 But then that went away and George Miller settled down and suddenly it was a Mad Max movie, and it just got better and better. And by that I also mean more bugnuts crazy until you thought it couldn't anymore and then there's the guy strapped to the wall of amplifiers on a truck who plays an electric guitar that also shoots fire while six dudes play massive drums behind him. All so you know that doom is coming. Also, his name is The Doof Warrior. That's not even the craziest character name in the film, which includes the likes of Immortan Joe, Imperator Furiosa, Rictus Erectus, The Splendid Angharad, The People Eater, and Cheedo the Fragile. All of a sudden, Max Rockatansky, The Humungus, and Aunty Entity don't seem so outlandish.

 In the Retro Review for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, I singled out how much I liked the "world building" aspect of the film, specifically Barter Town. Miller ups the ante a bit in Fury Road by giving us three hubs of post-apocalyptic civilization (even if we only see one): Gas Town, The Bullet Farm, and The Citadel. We only spend any time in The Citadel, run by warmonger Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), but we meet The People Eater (John Howard) and The Bullet Farmer (Richard Carter), who run things. No Master or Blaster here. They don't seem particularly happy to be dragged into a "domestic squabble" when Joe's lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron) smuggles his wives out of The Citadel inside of her "War Rig" - a fully loaded tanker truck designed for offense and defense. Joe doesn't take kindly to Furiosa stealing his "property," and takes great exception to The Splendid Angharad (Rose Huntington-Whiteley) writing "We are not Things" inside the vault he keeps them in. His "brides" are for breeding, just like his Warboys are for fighting, and the milk maidens are for, uh, milk.

 Joe is a diseased ridden old man covered in cancerous tumors, but underneath his painted muscle shell and hidden behind his post-apocalyptic Darth Vader breathing apparatus, he's managed to brainwash the huddled masses of The Citadel into thinking he's a god. He gives them water when he feels like it, has a shrine of removable steering wheels, makes grandiose speeches and promises the equally "half life" diseased Warboys that their sacrifices will lead them to the gates of Valhalla. And they believe it. The Warboys and War Pups worship this guy, and in his defense it's not like Joe just sends out his minions to get Furiosa and the brides back. He packs into his "cars stacked on top of each other" monstrosity and leads the pack, aforementioned Doof Warrior along for the ride. Also in the convoy is a rebuilt V-8 Interceptor, freshly pilfered from The Citadel's newly acquired "blood bag": Max Rockatansky.

 I'm sure you've noticed that we got a ways into the synopsis before Max figures into the story, but that's because, like in Thunderdome, he's dragged into another power struggle that he had no part in to begin with. We just spend a little more time with the players in this particular story than we did in Thunderdome or The Road Warrior. It's not Max's fight, and this time he really doesn't want to be involved, but since he's literally strapped to the front of Warboy Nux (Nicolas Hoult)'s car, feeding him "high octane road warrior universal donor" blood, Max has no choice. He's chained to Nux, and Nux is a hard core fanatic of Immortan Joe willing to die at least three times to stop Furiosa. And Max is stuck to this idiot, to the point that he literally has to carry him around after they miraculously survive an electrical storm Furiosa drives through to lose the convoy.

 When Max finally catches up to the actual protagonists, there's a funny moment where Miller plays with the concept of the "male gaze" in introducing the "brides": Immortan Joe keeps women who look like supermodels and has them all in similarly scantily clad white... well, I guess cloth would be the right description. It's not really clothes. Max sees Splendid drinking, to the point where she's soaking wet, but it becomes clear very quickly that his (and the camera's) gaze is directed at the water, not the post-apocalyptic wet-shirt contest on display. And then there's a fight, because Max decides to hold them at gunpoint. The ladies have been using a bolt cutter to remove chastity belts that give the term "vagina dentate" a new meaning, and after a drink, he wants to lose some Nux dead weight. Furiosa, robot arm detached, doesn't take kindly to this, and a smarter than usual struggle involving Max, Furiosa, the brides, Nux, and the chain ensues. But Max isn't interested in killing anybody. He just wants out - this isn't his fight, but he'll take your War Rig, thanks.

 Some folks have complained that Max is more of a supporting character in Fury Road, and that it's unfair to have his name in the title since Furiosa is more or less the protagonist of the film. However, the story isn't that much different than the way The Road Warrior or Beyond Thunderdome are structured: Max travels the wasteland, runs into trouble, and reluctantly helps a group of survivors before taking off again on his own (SPOILER for The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome). The difference between those films and Fury Road is that we spend most of the expository period with Max, whereas in this one there's a lengthy period of time where he has little or no agency. Max is a prisoner all the way up until he wrestles the pistol away from Furiosa, and when her "kill switch" shuts down the War Rig, he's essentially at her mercy. Max doesn't so much agree to help them as he does go along for the ride, eventually deciding to do the right thing when they pass through the canyons.

 (MILD SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT: There's an interesting, if underdeveloped parallel between Joe's obsession with his "property" and Max's continued protestation about the Warboys stealing what's belongs to him. He repeatedly shouts to the driver of his Interceptor that it's "mine," and the first thing he does after he's freed from Nux is take his jacket back. There's not really any kind of thematic resolution to being fixated on "things" for Max - the Interceptor is destroyed, but he keeps his jacket, and he's mostly replaced his stuff by the time he kills the Bullet Farmer)

 What follows is a mostly non-stop chase in one direction, and then a chase back, after the "Green Place" Furiosa promised the brides no longer exists. It's actually impressive to consider that a film with this much uninterrupted action has enough of a plot that I'm leaving out everything that happens after the "wetlands"

 I'm going to address and sidestep the "is this a reboot / is this a prequel" argument by saying that if Furiosa hasn't seen the Vuvalini in "7,000 days" - roughly twenty years and that Max was still a cop before the world collapsed, then maybe Fury Road is both. And by that I mean that since Miller (Happy Feet) has been working on this Mad Max film since 2003 (when it almost happened) that Furiosa could have been kidnapped post-apocalypse and taken to The Citadel while, let's say, The Road Warrior was happening. You could argue that a Mel Gibson-aged Max would have made sense in that timeline, while a Tom Hardy Max seems, um, a little young. And not just because he's three years younger than Theron. But since we have the math we have in Fury Road and it at the very least directly acknowledges Mad Max, let's just agree that none of them have to be sequels and are all stories set in the Wasteland. Chronology dodge activated.

 That said, it was nice to have tiny, unobtrusive nods to the other Mad Max movies (and Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris), ones that you might not have noticed. The music box one of the "wives" is playing with. The shot of Toecutter's eyes when Max is dreaming in the rig. My favorite is the Thunderdome reference, when Max is collecting weapons from Furiosa and completely misses the knife hidden in something else. They don't draw attention to themselves, but they're there. Miller's idea of "fan service" is to remind you of what world you're in without saying "hey, everybody, remember The Road Warrior, that movie was really cool!" Like everything else, it's about the economy of storytelling: showing, not telling. We learn a lot about the Citadel and the various factions in Fury Road without exposition dumps.

 Take, for example, the moment that actually launches Fury Road: Furiosa's sudden turn left on the road to Gas Town. In most movies where someone working for a big bad guy decides to betray them, the people accompanying the "traitor" try to stop them, much to their detriment. What happens instead in Fury Road is an insight into the mentality of the War Boys. Without being told that they obey their power structure without question, we understand that they wouldn't dare question Furiosa when she says they're taking a "detour," even though she provides them with no explanation whatsoever. They fight for her and protect her, and end up dying to defend her mission without even knowing what she's trying to do.

 It's the same unquestioning loyalty Nux has for Immortan Joe for the first half of the film, and even though we don't know much about Furiosa or Joe, we know that no matter what they decide, the War Boys support them. Nux is functionally our gateway into the mindset of Warboys, who are so naïve and sheltered that he doesn't even know what a tree is. The brides, in contrast, seem to have a better understanding of Immortan Joe's propaganda, but some of them (Cheedo in particular) believe he's capable of forgiveness in the same way they are. They stop Furiosa from killing Nux and convince her (and Max) to let him help, and their mercy contributes to the success of their plan. They also contrast well with the Vuvalini, the tribe of warriors Furiosa comes from. There's a conversation between The Dag (Abbey Lee) and the Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer) where the former expresses surprise at the latter's boast she's killed everyone she met in the wasteland. "I thought you'd be above all that," she muses.

 While I remain partial to The Humungus and admire the ambiguous threat that is Aunty, Immortan Joe is quickly rising on the list of "Mad Max villains." He's arguably just a combination of Humungus and Wez into one character, with a much better power structure, but Keays-Byrne conveys a sense of entitled insanity using only his eyes most of the film. He doesn't ever actually do anything other than drive, but the aggregate effect of his influence over the brides and the Warboys is palpable throughout the film. It raises the question of how someone so charismatic and control oriented would allow Furiosa to meet with the Rock Riders in the first place. He trusts her, and it's clear she's been in the Citadel since a very young age, but it seems unlikely that he authorizes trips anywhere other than Gas Town or the Bullet Farm. I'd also like to mention former WWE Smackdown Superstar Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus, Immortan Joes' healthiest son (when you see Corpus Colossus, that will make more sense), who has a fantastic moment of pride when he announces that he had a baby brother, who was "perfect in every way!" He's surprisingly touching as the "heavy" of this film.

 I'll get to Tom Hardy in a moment, but there's no point in discussing the actors in Fury Road without taking some time to appreciate what Charlize Theron does as Furiosa. She emerges early in the film as fully formed, even though she has arguably less back story than even Max. We know Max - we've seen him before - but Furiosa effortlessly takes the stage and keeps the stakes high. Theron balances a steely determination with eyes that reflect doubt at every turn. She's not making a mistake in what she's doing, but is how she's doing it going to work? Can she really trust Max or Nux, or are they just going to hinder her? We know very little about her relationship with Immortan Joe - he obviously trusts his Imperator, to a fault, but if she's been in the Citadel since a very young age, in what capacity? Was Furiosa a bride before she lost her arm? How did she lose it? What about the skeleton stencil on the War Rig? Is that some kind of reference? There's a lot to wonder about them, all of which comes to a head when she growls "remember me" near the end of the film. What she's seeking "redemption" for isn't always clear, but we want her to find it, and so does Max.

 Oddly enough, Tom Hardy left less of an impression on me the first time I saw Fury Road. It wasn't until the second viewing that I really paid attention to Max, knowing where Furiosa's story was heading. Hardy has a strange balancing act, not quite sounding like Mel Gibson (or even Australian, at times), but still playing a character we know. I'm not going to lie that sometimes his pronunciation choices sounds just a little like Bane, but it was less distracting the second time. He's more chatty when tied to the front of Nux's car than I would have expected, but it's drowned out by the noise surrounding him. He's less chatty in the rest of the film, speaking more frequently through action (although the best moment in the movie happens off-screen). Hardy seems a little hampered by a character development I'll mention in a bit, but overall he assumes the role of Max well. It would have been interesting to see Gibson playing this part, but I think it might have radically changed the way audiences react to Max's fight with Furiosa.

Even after seeing the film for a second time, the feeling I came out with was still one of admiration. It's rare to see an action film that's so carefully constructed, so clearly thought out. These days I'll be happy for one that unobtrusively relies on quick edits or CG heavy sequences (Furious 7, I'm looking at you), but to see a film with action that's easy to follow and is still dynamic is really impressive. Georg Miller conveys his information visually, more so in Fury Road than in any of the other Mad Max films. He expands on the concept of post-apocalyptic "world building," but never lets it detract from the story. Everything you learn about the world surrounding the Citadel comes from seeing it and how the characters react. Something as simple as the people in stilts wandering through a radioactive swamp is evocative of a world we may never explore again. All of the tribes in the film are fully realized, even if we only get brief glimpses of them. It really is something to behold.

The one exception to this is an out of place reliance on Max's hallucinations / dreams about the people he couldn't save. I don't necessarily mind explaining to an audience thirty years later why the character is "mad," but the haunted quality is sometimes distracting from the immediacy of Fury Road. If I'm going to pick nits here, this is a recurrent them in Fury Road almost exclusively - Max never addresses things like this in The Road Warrior or Beyond Thunderdome. He doesn't say much of anything about his life "before" in either film, but I suppose if we're operating on the premise that there's no real chronology here, I can live with it. It keeps him alive at least once and is (mostly) resolved before he gets back to the Citadel, but even after the second viewing it sticks out to me. If the series continues - and announcements aside, there's no guarantee of that - I wouldn't miss dropping this version of "Mad" Max.

 Of course, it's nice that Mad Max: Fury Road is technically a reboot that's content to be self contained. In an age where every movie needs to have an opening for a trilogy or a spin-off, I find it refreshing that as much as I like Furiosa, we've probably seen as much of her as we'll ever seen. Knowing Miller's penchant for Mad Max continuity, it's very unlikely that a major character - even one as memorable as hers - will appear again. There's plenty of Wasteland to explore, more towns and world building, and while it doesn't feel like audiences I saw the film with really embraced Fury Road (half empty auditoriums will give you that impression), maybe there's a chance for one more down the line. If not, there are now three great Mad Max movies, and Thunderdome, which I think is still mostly pretty good. I can't complain about that. Hell, I might go see it on the big screen one more time - if you're going to see it (and you should), you owe it to yourself to see it as large as possible.

Retro Review: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

 So there's some kind of Mad Max movie coming out this weekend, but I heard it sucks so there's no point in talking about that, right? Why waste time talking about some dumb reboot when we can discuss the true highlight of George Miller's post-apocalyptic saga, the only one to have earned its own dedicated Mystery Science Theater 3000 joke? Of course, I'm talking about Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and all joking aside, I do actually like it. I know that Thunderdome is the "black sheep" of the Mad Max movies, if only because most people have only seen Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) and / or forget that Mad Max 1 (Mad Max) is nothing like its sequels, vehicular mayhem aside. That's okay, because they're kind of right to think that Thunderdome is not as good as The Road Warrior, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its charms. As long as those charms don't involve the term "Captain Walker".

 There's significantly less vehicular mayhem on display for most of Beyond Thunderdome, starting with the fact that Max (Mel Gibson) is riding on a camel-drawn truck, which he quickly loses to Jedediah (Bruce Spence), who is not the gyro-copter pilot from The Road Warrior* but is another pilot who has a son (Adam Cockburn). We don't even know it's Max right away, but I mean, who else is the movie going to start with? Max has scraggly, long hair, and one of his eyes is a different color after the crash Wez (Vernon Miller) caused in the last movie, but it's still him. He's understandably not pleased that someone knocked him off of his vehicle and took it, so he follows the trail of detritus to Barter Town. If you meet somebody who will admit to liking Thunderdome (as I do), this section of the film is probably their favorite part. It is for me, but that's because I'm a sucker for world-building in post-apocalyptic cinema, and Barter Town is a great example of how humanity reforms itself after collapse.

 Max has to enter with the rabble, because who is he? Nobody. No one in Barter Town cares that he used to be a cop or that he saved a whole community and smuggled out their gasoline from Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson) that one time. Those stories don't get passed around until the Feral Kid (Emil Minty) grows up, anyway. To Barter Town, he's just some dude who walked in, just like everybody else. He doesn't have anything worth trading with The Collector (Frank Thring) at the gate, so he has to be a little more, shall we say, persuasive, but you still have to turn in your weapons or get lost. You can keep the flyswatter, I guess. The pilot has to be here somewhere, so Max has one hour to find him. Instead, he meets Aunty (Tina Turner)**, and her goons.

 Aunty likes Max's moxie, and when he dispatches some goons with the knife hidden inside his flyswatter, she's even more impressed. Like Max, Aunty was someone else before, and she senses that he's resilient, and adaptable. Mostly that he's dangerous, which is good, because Aunty has a problem. She likes to think she runs Barter Town, but there's a bit of a power struggle. See, in order to keep the power running, she needs the generator to keep running, and only Master (Angelo Rositto) knows how to keep the pig shit / methane production going underground. Master's a diminutive fellow, but that's why he has Blaster (Paul Larsson) as his muscle. As long as Master Blaster is a unit, Aunty doesn't really run Barter Town. Master runs Barter Town, and if he feels he's being slighted, he cuts the power off to prove it.

 The way that Master and Blaster are introduced leans heavily on presenting them as antagonists, even though there's clearly something about Aunty that's not to be trusted. Max goes down to Underworld, where Master runs everything, in order to learn more about Blaster. If he can defeat him in combat, everything the pilot stole will be returned to him, plus methane. Of course, once he's down there, it becomes clear who has his truck: Master. Max rigged it to explode, so any attempts to repair it have been thwarted. Master draws a hard line with Max, but in the process reveals Blaster has a weakness: high pitched sounds, including a penny whistle that Max has been carrying around. Max takes Aunty's offer and we're off to Thunderdome. Two men enter. One man leaves.

 It goes without saying that the Thunderdome portion is the best part of the movie, not only because it's an inventive, exciting action sequence, but also because it has some of the best examples of world-building in the film. Aunty keeps the citizens and criminals of Barter Town in line by giving them gladiatorial-like combat, provided in a dome they can hang onto. She also gives them easy to remember catchphrases to keep them invested: "Two men enter. One man leaves." "You break the deal, you spin the wheel." Nobody watching Max fighting Blaster seems to know or care about the stakes, and it's not necessarily clear that anyone cares who really runs Barter Town. There's a fight in Thunderdome, and Blaster is the reigning champ. There is, of course, another twist, one that we find out at the same time Max does, that almost immediately reverses our sympathies towards the otherwise loathsome Master. Aunty gets what she wants, even when Max "breaks the deal," and he has to "spin the wheel". Luckily for Max, he lands on "Gulag". It may not be so lucky for us.

 So Aunty ships off Max, on the back of a horse with a paper mache mask, into the desert, thus exiting the "Barter Town" section of the film. Unfortunately, it ushers in the "Never, Neverland" portion of Beyond Thunderdome, which feels like it belongs in a different movie. Mostly because it does: the original concept, prior to being appropriated into a Mad Max film, was about a group of children left alone in the post-apocalypse, who form their own Peter Pan-esque society. It turns out that when you drop Max into the equation, that doesn't harmonize as well as one might think. I'm not opposed to juxtaposing the hardened Max Rockatansky with innocent children, many of whom seem to have completely forgotten about the plane crash they survived (and almost everything else), but the mid-section of Beyond Thunderdome grinds whatever narrative progress there was to a halt. Okay, the children think he's "Captain Walker," the pilot of the plane they crashed in who left to get help. Only he's not, and they figure that out, but decide they can still find the "Tomorrow-Morrow Land" Captain Walker promised them, so he reluctantly follows them back into the desert. I wonder where they'll end up?

 In the defense of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, things do pick up when they decide to rescue Master and escape using the locomotive he lives in, with the help of Jebediah and son. The chase scene is largely what Miller directed (George Ogilvie handled the rest of the movie), and it's reminiscent of some of the better moments in Mad Max and The Road Warrior, even if the comically un-killable Ironbar (Angry Anderson) eats up much of the screen time. The ending is surprisingly reminiscent of The Road Warrior, substituting Savannah (Helen Buday) for the Feral Child, as Max once again becomes a story of a budding society. Epilogue aside, I do appreciate the last scene between Max and Aunty, when she and her gang have him dead to rights, having once again separated from the others in an act of sacrifice. There's no reason she shouldn't kill him, having functionally ruined Barter Town and costing her Master, but she just laughs and lets Max go. There's the grudging respect between two survivors we saw early in the film, and after everything goes to hell, what's the point in killing him? We don't need another hero. He's alone in the desert, and she's going back to Barter Town. Let the chips fall where they may.

  To be honest with you, despite being a studio mandated "American" presence for this Mad Max sequel, I really like Tina Turner as Aunty. There's a lot about this movie that seems kind of like a watered down version of Mad Max, but Turner seems really invested in playing this ridiculous character with her ridiculous haircut. She's an equal onscreen with the not quite Lethal Weapon-level famous Gibson (one could argue that Tina Turner was a bigger star than Mel Gibson in 1985), and even though he destroys everything she built, something tells me that Aunty will be all right. She'll set up shop again, re-open Thunderdome, and Barter Town will be back. Meanwhile, Max will roam the wasteland, hopefully not running into more kids. I guess maybe the brides of  Immortan Joe or Toecutter or whatever he's calling himself. Max will get his Interceptor back and somehow be younger or something. You know, reboot crap.

 I mean, if we're being honest here, there's no way that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome isn't a better movie than Mad Max: Fury Road. Even with the stupid kids. No chance I could eat crow or something like that. Happy 30th, Thunderdome. You might not be everybody's favorite Mad Max movie - or anybody's - but you're good enough for me.




* Or maybe it is. It depends on what story you hear or what person is citing George Miller at what point. A similar problem exists when you try to figure out whether Mad Max: Fury Road is a reboot or whether it fits somewhere between The Road Warrior and Thunderdome, or after Thunderdome, because over the last five years, Miller has vacillated a bit about that. Although the current position is that it's a reboot. A terrible, no good, nobody likes it, reboot.

** I know the credits say "Aunty Entity," but I challenge you to find me any point in the movie where someone says the word "Entity" in relation to her. Hell, Max only says his name one, and that's to Master.

Blogorium Review: Lost River

 Now it might just be the Cap'n against the critical community here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Lost River is getting pummeled less because of what's in the movie than because of who made it. That's not to say that Lost River isn't a mess - and at times a hot mess at that - but it's a far cry from the disaster you'd think it would be reading the Rotten Tomatoes reviews*. It's somewhere between the two: a stylistic, albeit sloppy exercise in mood over narrative, with a very good cast that keep things from falling apart. Most of the time, anyway. If you choose to buy into the "urban fairytale" perspective, some of the logical ellipses are less problematic. As a directorial debut, Lost River isn't a disaster for internet meme Ryan Gosling, but there are some areas he could work on before (or if?) he makes another film.

 Before I jump into the movie, let's juxtapose Lost River with another actor-turned-director debut from not long ago, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon. I mentioned the "internet meme" adjective(?) before Gosling's name because by and large, that's how people think of him. He's an actor who was making fairly bland romantic comedies or dramas and was considered harmless enough that there are hundreds of "hey girl" memes out there devoted to his inoffensiveness. Hell, I made a few of them, based on the juxtaposition between his "romantic" phase vs. the newer, indie-er fare. The transition from The Notebook to Only God Forgives seems to rankle some folks, and I guess that's how we ended up here. It's funny, because Gordon-Levitt is considered more "likable" - for whatever that's worth - or is more favorable, so when he made Don Jon, it received mostly positive marks. Kind of a "wow, good for him" vibe.

 And don't get me wrong, I like Don Jon, both as a movie and as a directorial debut. It gets a lot of mileage out of Gordon-Levitt's charisma, and that helps smooth over the fact that the flashy beginning fades away into a wholly conventional conclusion. Gosling isn't on camera in Lost River, but a few people he worked with before are, specifically from his "serious" phase: Christina Hendricks (Drive), and Ben Mendelsohn and Eva Mendes (The Place Beyond the Pines). Also along for the ride are Ian De Caestecker (Filth), Saoirse Ronan (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Matt Smith (Doctor Who), and Barbara Steele (Black Sunday), although her role amounts to little more than a glorified cameo, as she's mostly catatonic during the film.

 In the town of Lost River, everything is falling apart. Literally. Buildings that aren't being demolished are crumbling, abandoned, as residents pack up and move out. Billy (Hendricks) lives in her grandmother's old house with Bones (De Caestecker) and Franky (Landyn Stewart). Bones has been stealing copper from abandoned buildings in order to sell it to fix his car, but he won't leave without his mother and little brother. Billy won't leave, even though she's three months behind on the mortgage and the bank marks the house for demolition. Stealing copper has put Bones on the bad side of Bully (Smith), a vicious thug who claims to "own" any abandoned territory in Lost River. Bully's violent predilections threaten to affect both Bones and Rat (Ronan), a neighbor who lives with her Grandma (Steele), who only watches videos of her wedding from decades ago. Rat and Bones discuss the origins of the town's name after Bones discovers streetlights leading away from Bully's hideout into the water. The old town was flooded in the 1960s, and Rat believes that Lost River is cursed. In order to set things right, Bones takes a particularly unusual reading of "kill the dragon" literally and heads underwater, even as Bully closes in on him.

  I've seen quite a few reviews compare Lost River to David Lynch (often unfavorably), which is odd to me, because it seems like another example of "tie something to David Lynch because it's 'weird'". If you really want to throw lofty comparisons out there, the beginning of Lost River is reminiscent of The Tree of Life, both in Gosling's focus on the children, but also his choice of camera angles. In reality, I'm much more inclined to say that if Lost River resembles any other films, stylistically, it would be fair to say that Gosling picked up a lot from Nicolas Winding Refn and Derek Cianfrance, who he's been working with recently. There's a heavy does of Only God Forgives' fluorescent lighting clashing with the natural ambience of The Place Beyond the Pines, somewhat uncomfortably, to be honest. It's hard to tell what the geography of Lost River is, because Gosling filmed in Detroit (it's fairly evident when you watch the film, especially if you've seen Only Lovers Left Alive or It Follows), but where Billy's house is in relation to the city or how far Bully's hideout (an old zoo) is from Rat's house is really unclear. You have to take a car or a taxi to get from where they live to downtown, but Bones can walk unfettered between apartment complexes and the woods where the river is.

 The most "Lynch-ian" element would be, I suppose, the "club" that Dave (Mendelsohn) operates in Lost River. He's taken over as the manager on foreclosures at the bank, and whenever he moves into a town, Dave sets up a club catering to fans of Grand Guignol enthusiasts, where women entertain the audience before being brutally murdered. That's how Billy meets Cat (Mendes), the star attraction of Dave's show. She's friendly, blasé about the bloodletting (it's all for show, anyway), and at Dave's behest, offers Billy a job to help pay that mortgage off. She also shows Billy the "downstairs" section, which involve private rooms and some sort of device the girls can "lock" themselves into while clients... do something. It's the most abstract element of an already abstract narrative, and other than bringing Dave and Billy's relationship to its logical conclusion, serves little purpose other than to be menacing and slightly weird. Far more interesting are the girls routines, particularly Billy's. I'm not sure if the acts are meant to be some kind of magical realism or simply artifice, but I seriously doubt she could put together hers in three days. It's grotesque, but a highlight of the film.

 Matt Smith is easily the other high point of Lost River; as Bully, he's a true threat to anyone and everyone he comes into contact with. Long before we see what he likes to do with his scissors (and, believe me, if Billy's act doesn't scare away the squeamish, what he does to his sidekick Mouth certainly will), we know to fear him. Bones drops all of the copper he's found the moment he sees Bully waiting outside of the school he's been pillaging. If you only know Smith at the Eleventh Doctor, you're in for a real surprise. He's terrifying without having to say a word, using his lanky frame to impose, his face twisted, capable of snapping at a moment's notice. Even when he's being nice (as he seems to be while driving Rat home), there's a palpable tension. This man is Evil, and you should not upset him.

 Likewise, but to a lesser degree, people who only know Hendricks as Joan from Mad Men or De Caestecker as Fitz in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be pleasantly surprised to see them in different sorts of parts. Although, I'd hesitate to say there's much in the way of "characters" to speak of: the fact that many of them don't have names should be an indicator of just how closely Gosling hews to the "fairy tale" aspect of Lost River. Bones and Rat are more or less thinly sketched out collections of "traits," and Bully is, strictly speaking, just the monster. Dave has a bit more nuance, only because there's so much we don't know about him during the film. Unfortunately, while nobody really has a character arc to speak of, Dave gets the most build up for a quickly glossed over moment of dramatic irony (tied to the fact that he continually mentions being deaf in one ear).

  Only the legendary Barbara Steele feels wasted, spending most of the film sitting in a chair, a funeral veil covering her face. She only has a moment or two with Ronan onscreen, when the tape stops playing and Rat finds her cowering in the room, unsure of what to do with herself. Other than being a sort of jumping off point for exposition - how Rat would know what she knows about Lost River - Steele serves little purpose in the film, and it's debatable that just having her there at all is more important than not having that character. Billy is underdeveloped, which wouldn't matter as much if the middle of Lost River didn't shift so heavily in her direction. Gosling seems to be unclear whose story the film is: Billy's or Bones', so he alternates, haphazardly, between the two, without ever really bringing them together at the end.

 The issues with who (or what) Lost River is about are indicative of the overall sloppy nature of Gosling's writing and direction. As a mood piece, the film is certainly worth seeing. As a film, it falls short of the mark and is often too confused about where it was aiming for in the first place. But as I stressed at the outset of the review, it's nowhere near the disaster that critics claim it is. It's appeal is limited, yes, but there's enough to appreciate about what Gosling was trying to do that I can think of a few people I know who might enjoy it. I've heard the phrase "overindulgent" lobbied at Lost River, and while I don't necessarily agree with it, there is an at times deliberately obtuse way in which Gosling presents information.

 His visual metaphors are obvious, but their purpose is often times unclear, or at best poorly conveyed. There's a continued through line of juxtaposing fire and water, which seems to relate to his uncomfortable shoehorning of "slaying the dragon" into the narrative. It's introduction into the film is more problematic than how Bones finally "lifts" the curse on the town, and I give Gosling credit for finding an arresting image on which to close out the film. On the other hand, the resolution of Dave and Bully as alternate antagonists feels rushed, as though an afterthought. Bully, in particular, exits the film in such an anticlimactic manner that you might miss what's actually happening to him - the shot preceding his last moment is a perfect example of the "fire / water" theme, but it's barely onscreen long enough for it to resonate. There's also a questionable issue of geography (again).

 And yet, despite all of this, I kind of liked Lost River. I would certainly be interested in seeing what Gosling the director does next, although Gosling the writer could use some fine tuning. Many of the films problems are less on what's on screen than in the translation from what they were supposed to mean. If anything. To suggest the film might be "Lynchian" in the sense that what's on screen was never meant to refer to something specific, or to defy conventional explanation might be fair. But by the same token, Gosling is utilizing well worn themes and archetypes in ways that conform to traditional fairy tale structures. It's a combination that could work, but doesn't necessarily in this case. That said, there are many striking moments and visuals in Lost River, enough to keep adventurous viewers engaged between scenes of leaden exposition. If nothing else, it's a real showcase for Matt Smith, who makes the strongest impression with a character we barely know. His feral performance kept me invested for most of the film. Lost River, while not an unmitigated disaster, is a curio: a rough draft, a sketch of a mood piece, that maybe needed more refining. That's not what we got, and your mileage may vary about whether it's worth seeing, but don't (necessarily) believe the hype. A noble failure might still be a failure, but it's not a train wreck just because the director is easy to ridicule.






 * I realize that this shouldn't be used as the sole barometer of the quality of a film, but the site does give you a good idea of what a wide swath of critics think about a movie.