Tag Archives: Will Arnett

The TIFF Report, Vol 5

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North Star

Director: Kristin Scott Thomas
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Freida Pinto, Sienna Miller, Emily Beecham, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sindhu Vee, Joshua McGuire
Synopsis: Three sisters return to their home for the third wedding of their twice-widowed mother. But the mother and daughters are forced to revisit the past and confront the future, with help from a colorful group of unexpected wedding guests.
Thoughts: Making her feature directorial debut, Kristin Scott Thomas has gone personal with North Star, also handling co-writing duties and playing the mother of three daughters (Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, & Emily Beecham) that come home for their mum’s third marriage lugging significant baggage. Based in part on her own life (Thomas’s navy pilot father was killed in action when she was six, and then her first stepfather was killed six years later), the movie wants to have all the flair of a quirky dramedy. Still, it can’t drum up much energy to convince us it cares much about anything. Not that it makes a lot of difference, but it’s regrettable for the film to be playing alongside His Three Daughters, a far more skilled look at the political dynamics between siblings. Thomas is barely in the movie (in one major goof, she’s missing from multiple group shots during a critical scene, only to magically appear out of thin air when she has a pivotal line), but when she is sharing time with Beecham, Miller, and Johansson, there is a distinct spark that is missing from the rest of the picture. Why more of these moments weren’t added to the film is anyone’s guess, but without that crackle, the film flatlines before the rehearsal dinner can get underway, let alone the wedding itself. Unpolished and, worse, uninteresting, there’s an aimlessness to it all (especially Johansson’s accent) that will have your eyelids swiftly drooping south. 

The Movie Emperor

Director: Ning Hao
Cast: Andy Lau, Pal Sinn, Rima Zeidan, Ning Hao, Eliz Lao, Chao Wai, Daniel Yu, Kelly Lin
Synopsis: Andy Lau is perfectly, cheekily cast as a movie star seeking relevance via a film festival–baiting art-house role in director Ning Hao’s sharp satire of movie industry pretension.
Thoughts:  Hong Kong actor Andy Lau is a verified superstar, a juggernaut at the box office in his home country, and the star of titles that have crossed over internationally. That fame created quite the buzz at TIFF23 for the world premiere of The Movie Emperor, a playful poke at the HK film industry, not to mention the fickleness of fandom and the overstuffed star ego. Lau plays an actor who takes a more serious role, hoping it will bring him the accolades (read: awards and respect) his peers have received. The joke of watching a movie featuring Lau’s character wanting to make art that finds success at a film festival not unlike a TIFF wasn’t lost on the packed crowd, which positively ate it up. Directed by Ning Hao (who also plays the director of the movie Lau is working on), this is an often hilariously deadpan takedown of an industry that both loves to be made fun of and reviles falling under the microscope. Hao has a way of introducing wild moments that catch you off guard, surprising bursts of frenetic energy that keep Lau and the viewer on guard and alert throughout. Unfortunately, it veers a bit off course during its last stretch when cancel culture and a porcine subplot come to the forefront to diminishing returns; however, Lau’s increasingly volatile run-ins with a motorist keep the movie mysterious and unpredictable until the end. One of the few films I almost didn’t get into because the demand for tickets was so great (Lau and Hao were both there, creating a major stir of fans clamoring to see them); I was glad I scored a ticket, and was granted a seat right as the house lights were dimming. 

The Movie Teller

Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Bérénice Bejo, Antonio de la Torre, Daniel Brühl, Sara Becker, Alondra Valenzuela
Synopsis: A young woman uses her storytelling gifts to share the magic of the pictures she has seen in the cinema with the poor inhabitants of a desert mining community.
Thoughts: I’m a true sucker for movies about movies, so I was likely pre-disposed to take a shine to Danish director Lone Scherfig’s Spanish-language adaptation of Hernán Rivera Letelier’s novel. Set in a small town in Chile’s Atacama Desert and tracking one family through the eyes of a young daughter and her coming of age, with The Movie Teller, Scherfig once again demonstrates her talent of creating an all-encompassing vision of time and place. Scherfig has insisted that period details are delicate but finely tuned as she did with An Education. If the threads of the story go a little awry and fall slack as the film nears its second hour, the performances from Sara Becker and Alondra Valenzuela as the older and younger versions of the protagonist keep the emotional beats in rhythm. In the third act of the picture, Becker is involved with the less exciting developments when her character begins an illicit affair with a much older man (Daniel Brühl) who was rumored to have had eyes for her mother.   Her mother is played by Bérénice Bejo (Final Cut), an actress I’m still waiting to get back on the Hollywood radar. She’s so good here (as usual) as a woman with unfulfilled expectations and desires who feels stuck in a dead-end town that you’re reminded why she snagged an Oscar nomination 11 years ago for The Artist. The character makes some questionable decisions, but Bejo consciously tries not to judge the woman she’s playing; instead, she interprets the role compassionately. The same can be said for Scherfig’s reflective approach to the Isabel Coixet and Walter Salles adaptation of the novel, which comes through as embracing the community’s people instead of simply rejecting the paths they choose toward happiness.

Sleep

Director: Jason Yu
Cast: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun, Kim Gook-hee
Synopsis: Expectant parents navigate a nightmare scenario when a spouse develops a sleep disorder that may belie a disturbing split personality.
Thoughts: Arriving from South Korea, Sleep preys on our fear of when we are the most vulnerable…as we get our slumber. Filmmakers have been picking at this scratchy blister for decades (hello, Wes Craven!), but writer/director Jason Yu injects a refreshing dose of dread with this finely crafted creep-fest. It was rather appropriate to be screening Sleep at a midnight showing when I should have been in bed, and you better believe that after it was over, I had a hard time closing my eyes long enough to convince my mind there was nothing to be afraid of. Far from your traditional K-horror in that it eschews creating a central figure of terror to thwart, Yu instead builds upon a simple set-up involving historical lore that stretches across borders. When her actor-husband starts to display strange behavior while asleep, a pregnant wife fears for both her safety and the well-being of her unborn child. Enlisting any help she can after her spouse begins to harm himself physically and develops a taste for a midnight snack of raw meat, the wife even resorts to calling in her mom and an eccentric mystic to clear the apartment of any evil presence. Is the affliction something physical or truly supernatural? Does it have anything to do with the loud noises that have annoyed the couple and the downstairs neighbors? Or has something else snuck into their lives, something which arrived undetected and has hidden itself within the husband, waiting for the perfect time to strike? Presented in three chapters, Yu wastes no time raising the hairs on your neck and keeps audiences on red alert until the finale. Where Sleep goes is surprising and scary and indicates the arrival of another auteur with a vision conveyed with decisive precision.

Next Goal Wins

Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, Oscar Kightley, Uli Latukefu, Rachel House, Kaimana, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Chris Alosio, Taika Waititi, Will Arnett, Rhys Darby
Synopsis:  A comedy about the American Samoa soccer team’s attempt to make a World Cup — 12 years after their infamous 31-0 loss in a 2002 World Cup qualifying match.
Thoughts: There’s nothing that a packed theater loves more than getting behind a good underdog. An electric zing rushes over the crowd when our vested interest gets that much closer to success. So, I can understand why the early audiences for Next Goal Wins at the Toronto International Film Festival came out of their screenings buzzing. Much like 1993’s Cool Runnings (which is frequently similar in story and structure), the inspiring tale of American Samoa’s bid to pull itself up from last place in the World Cup rankings deserves its say on film, there’s no doubt about it. Unfortunately, Next Goal Wins is not the movie to do it. I’m pretty sure co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s latest is actively bad for much of its 105 minutes, this despite a last-ditch rally cry that only amounts to a modicum of audience rousing, likely to prepare them with enough energy to gather their belongings and go home. For a movie about community, it’s an isolating experience to sit through. That’s mainly because Waititi doesn’t know how to handle interpersonal drama as well as he does absurd humor. By the time I got around to seeing it on one of the festival’s final days, it was hard to drum up much enthusiasm for such mechanical entertainment.

Sly

Director: Thom Zimny
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Stallone, Henry Winkler, Talia Shire, John Herzfeld, Wesley Morris, Quentin Tarantino
Synopsis: The nearly fifty-year prolific career of Sylvester Stallone, who has entertained millions, is seen in retrospective in an intimate look of the actor, writer, and director-producer, paralleling with his inspirational life story.
Thoughts: Ultimately, I find that the point of watching any documentary is to learn something about the subject, and too often, with a look behind the curtain of Hollywood life, it never feels like you’re finding out something authentic. That’s not the case in the new Netflix documentary Sly, which premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. Director Thom Zimny uses a brief 95-minute run time to cover the expected titles of Sylvester Stallone’s career (yes, even Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!) but expends more of its energy in allowing the audience to listen to the man himself tell us about the life he has led until this point. Though I think this could have been longer (hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, interviewed here waxing poetic about Stallone’s talent, just got a 3-part doc on Netflix!) and explored more of Stallone’s family life, the concise nature of Sly aligns with the man himself.

Dicks: The Musical

Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Megan Thee Stallion, D’Arcy Carden, Nick Offerman, Tom Kenny, Bowen Yang
Synopsis: A pair of business rivals discover that they’re identical twins and decide to swap places in an attempt to trick their divorced parents into getting back together.
Thoughts: Throughout TIFF, all I’d heard about was the epic first screening of Dicks: The Musical. While the reviews of the movie itself were very mixed from the crowd, A24 had sent a live choir into the audience, throwing beach balls and other organ-shaped inflatables into the crowd. No screening could match that burst of energy, but being at the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award screening, the last screening at TIFF23, was a blast. And you know what?   The movie from Borat director Larry Charles (The Dictator) is a rip-roaring riot. Yes, it’s offensive, explicit, raunchy, wrong, cheap-looking, and tacky. It’s also bright, sharp, self-aware, and committed, with songs that have no right to be as tuneful and comedically well-rounded as they are. There’s something to offend everyone in Dicks: The Musical, and if you don’t leave thinking about at least one joke stars/writers Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson should have cut, I’m not sure if the movie has done its job. Like The Book of Mormon (which, like Dicks: The Musical, has surprisingly excellent music) or South Park, the point in offending everyone and not just one group is to illustrate that everyone can be a target, and there is equal opportunity to laugh at obvious jokes that are not meant to be taken seriously.

Previous Volumes
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

Movie Review ~ Next Goal Wins

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The Facts:

Synopsis: The story of the infamously terrible American Samoa soccer team, known for a brutal 2001 FIFA match they lost 31-0.
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, Oscar Kightley, Uli Latukefu, Rachel House, Kaimana, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Chris Alosio, Taika Waititi, Will Arnett, Rhys Darby
Director: Taika Waititi
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 103 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: There’s nothing that a packed theater loves more than getting behind a good underdog.  An electric zing rushes over the crowd when our vested interest gets that much closer to success.  So, I can understand why the early audiences for Next Goal Wins at the Toronto International Film Festival came out of their screenings buzzing.  Much like 1993’s Cool Runnings (which is frequently similar in story and structure), the inspiring story of American Samoa’s bid to pull itself up from last place in the World Cup rankings deserves its say on film, there’s no doubt about it. 

Unfortunately, Next Goal Wins is not the movie to do it.  I’m pretty sure co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s latest is actively bad for much of its 105 minutes, this despite a last-ditch rally cry that only amounts to a modicum of audience rousing, likely to prepare them with enough energy to gather their belongings and go home.  For a movie about community, it’s an isolating experience to sit through.  That’s mainly because Waititi doesn’t know how to handle interpersonal drama as well as he does absurd humor. By the time I got around to seeing it, on one of the final days of the festival, it was hard to drum up much enthusiasm for such mechanical entertainment.

Opening with Waititi (Thor: Love and Thunder) himself in a ridiculous cameo as a mystic priest that introduces the characters and acts as an irritating semi-narrator, we meet Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender, The Killer), a Dutch soccer coach who has seen better days.  About to lose his footing in the world of Association football, he’s given a final reprieve: become the coach of the American Samoa team and stop their losing streak.  If they don’t turn things around, he’ll be out of a job, and the South Pacific territory will lose their right to have an officially recognized team.

Rongen accepts the job out of desperation and arrives on the island with a gigantic chip on his shoulder, made worse by the rural locale and the sorry state of his team.  Rongen doesn’t want to be there, and the players don’t believe in themselves enough because no one has lit a flame of inspiration for them.  As with all sports movies, it only takes time for the coach and players to learn from one another, but it’s an uphill climb.  With the season moving forward and different issues with players changing his outlook, Rongen will make professional gains with the team…but will it be enough to score a more significant victory for them all?

Fassbender looks bored and is badly miscast (and knows it) in Next Goal Wins, and you wish the far more appealing American Samoan cast were truly the stars.  This should be a story about the team first and foremost.  Instead, it’s a laboriously formulaic slog through an obnoxious knob’s redemptive arc that has nothing new to add to the sports/underdog genre.  Worst of all, and more people praising the movie need to note this, the way Waititi’s script handles a non-binary trans woman (played with grace by the mononymous Kaimana) is so backward-facing from a 2023 viewpoint that you’ll be looking for a DeLorean to help you find your way home.

Movie Review ~ Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Thirty years after their popular television show ended, chipmunks Chip and Dale live very different lives. When a cast member from the original series mysteriously disappears, the pair must reunite to save their friend.
Stars: John Mulaney, Andy Samberg, Will Arnett, Eric Bana, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, KiKi Layne, Flula Borg, Dennis Haysbert
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Rated: PG
Running Length: 97 minutes
TMMM Score: (8/10)
Review: It’s hard to believe it now, but the original run of Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers on The Disney Channel was just three “seasons” that ran a little over a year, starting in 1989. That was prime time for me, and I vividly recall that whole cartoon programming block on the popular premium channel. Once it entered syndication, it would often air with DuckTales (another favorite) and TaleSpin (take it or leave it), but with the two chipmunks long being a favorite of mine since tiny tyke-hood, I was hooked on everything Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers was serving up. As Disney+ enters its newest evolution in reexamining its content library, there’s been a trend in remaking or rebooting to varying degrees of success. 

This past Christmas, a low-down dirty shame of a movie came out called Home Sweet Home Alone. Daring to advertise itself with the tagline “Holiday Classics Were Meant to Be Broken” and break them, they sure did. A travesty of a reboot (or continuation, it was never clear), it was a dismal mess and didn’t bode well for any future project that might be coming down the pike. You’d imagine the blood draining out of my face when I saw the poster directly above this review for Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. “It’s not a reboot, it’s a comeback.” Here they go again with a clever tagline that kicked up some dirt at reboots while jockeying for a place on a higher bar. Disney was setting itself up for the same failure as before, right?

Initially, I was going to put on Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers for background noise in my hotel room during an out-of-town work trip. It wasn’t one I was totally duty-bound to review, so… what’s the harm in just having it playing on the side? Then something strange happened. The film began, and I started laughing at jokes that I would never have understood fully as a kid, but I completely LOL-ed at them because they were specifically targeted at adults that were kids at the time the original series was released. Writers Dan Gregor (Dolittle) and Doug Mand appear to have been given carte blanche to give a highly detailed take on an animated children’s show and turn it into an Easter Egg hunt for big kids that now have a mortgage to pay.

The world of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is similar to the Toon Town of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with animated and live-action characters interacting normally. Cartoons are filmed like regular movies, and if you have the right amount of money, hand-drawn animated figures can “upgrade” themselves to computer-generated versions in order to stay relevant in the looks-obsessed society of today. Before we get to the present, we look back at the past with Dale’s (Andy Samberg, Palm Springs) voiceover telling the origin story of how he met Chip (John Mulaney, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) in grade school when both were social outcasts. Teaming up to become a comedy duo, they took their act to Hollywood, where they eventually landed a plum gig on, what else, Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers. When Dale gets tired of playing the silly second banana to Chip, he makes a play for solo fame but loses both of their careers in doing so.

Thirty years later, someone has been stealing famous cartoon characters and selling them to the black market as digitally altered bootlegs. When old castmate Monterey Jack (Eric Bana, The Finest Hours) vanishes after reuniting the two former friends, the odd couple will need to put aside their past differences and use their fictitious crime-solving techniques in a real-world setting. Working with a disgraced detective (KiKi Layne, If Beale Street Could Talk) to elude an underbelly of criminal older toons (one that “won’t grow up” sure did) while trying to locate their friend, the duo meets up with familiar faces from their glory days as well as blink-and-you missed-them famous cartoons that will consistently surprise you.

This rollicking plot bursting with creativity at every turn is great news for long-time fans like me who leave the 97-minute film with a boost but might be problematic for parents trying to introduce their kids to their chipmunk chums from yesteryear. There are far too many “inside baseball” jokes that won’t resonate with children that don’t remember waiting a whole week for the next episode of a show that you couldn’t start over again immediately. Chock full of connections to many early ’90s cultural touchstones which brought me glee, I couldn’t help but wonder what an oddity this would feel like to someone with no frame of reference.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a fun ride, engineered for an audience mature enough to get the rapid-fire nostalgia-rich jokes but not too mature to avoid taking a chance on a reboot, sorry, a comeback of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers in the first place. The solid, sensible voice work from Mulaney and Samberg gives the furry stars the type of personalities you might have anticipated them having were they to have offscreen personas. Finally, director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) stays mindful of plot and pacing, never letting the comedic action linger too long in one place. Far better than you’d expect and one I’m more than open to revisiting, Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers isn’t one to let slip through the cracks.

Movie Review ~ The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

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The Facts:

Synopsis: It’s been five years since everything was awesome and the citizens are facing a huge new threat: LEGO DUPLO® invaders from outer space, wrecking everything faster than they can rebuild.

Stars: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Channing Tatum, Tiffany Haddish, Will Arnett

Director: Mike Mitchell

Rated: PG

Running Length: 107 minutes

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review: Admittedly, I wasn’t the biggest champion of 2014’s The LEGO® Movie and I fully recognize I was certainly in the minority. In fact, while many were gnashing their teeth when the film failed the land an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature I was silently in my own little corner doing a small victory dance. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the film for its creativity but it was largely an obnoxious exercise of meta self-referential humor that took a misguided turn in its last act by bringing in a live-action subplot that failed to connect. Re-watching the film before heading out for the sequel screening only confirmed my original feelings that the movie was a colorful lark struggling to be more than the sum of its one-joke parts.

With the overall success of the original film and two other LEGO follow-ups released in 2017, The LEGO® Batman Movie (which I quite enjoyed) and The LEGO® Ninjago Movie (the one I haven’t seen), it was only a matter of time before Warner Brothers reassembled the players for a second outing and they’ve largely delivered more of the same. So fans of the original should be pleased while those that didn’t necessarily fall out of their seats for the first helping won’t find anything here to convert them. Sadly, the weakest element of the first film (the live-action scenes) is the one thing the filmmakers decided to expand upon here, creating an even greater disconnect between the action and the audience.

Nicely connecting with the original by picking up in the last few moments of the first film, the sequel introduces our heroes to an alien race (Duplo blocks) that sets about destroying the world they had just saved from the evil President Business (Will Ferrell, Daddy’s Home). Five years later, Emmet (Chris Pratt, Jurassic World). Lucy (Elizabeth Banks, People Like Us) and their friends have built Apocalypseburg out of the ruins of what was once their thriving community of Bricksburg. Even in the face of a life considerably less awesome, Emmet is resolutely positive, much to the frustration of his more grounded life partner Lucy.  Wanting a life of peace and harmony, Emmet even builds a quaint suburban style house for Lucy in the midst of the ruins they now call home.

It’s only when General Sweet Mayhem from the Duplo army arrives and kidnaps Lucy, Batman, and their other friends and brings them to the Systar system to meet Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip) that Emmet is forced into action. The Queen wants to marry Batman and unite their worlds to gain ultimate power and it’s up to Emmet and his new friend Rex (also voiced by Pratt) to rescue his pals and stop the Queen before it’s too late. The adventure tests everyone as they are tempted by pop music distractions along the way, giving the movie ample opportunities to musicalize scenes and amp up the meta humor ten-fold.  (Reading this description back sounds like I’m telling a bedtime story to a toddler that’s only half-listening to me, doesn’t it?)

The first film saved the live-action reveal for the very end, showing the world we’d been watching was merely a playground for a young boy playing with his dad’s LEGO blocks. It didn’t make much sense then and it doesn’t make a lot more sense in the sequel that finds the boy and his sister having a turf war over their toys, forcing their mom (Maya Rudolph, Life of the Party) to step in and lay down the law. It never is clear just how the animated action is directly related to this live-action business and every time we switched to the actors badly going through their dialogue the movie ground to an interminable halt. Even the normally dependable Rudolph can’t turn the dial on this to make it funnier.

This is too bad because the film is once again beautifully animated and rendered with dazzling color and clarity. Far more musical than its predecessor (Haddish gets two songs of her own and the ear worm song, Everything is Awesome, comes back in several versions), the movie doesn’t break much new ground in terms of forwarding the story and it’s severely lacking the spark of invention that made the first film at least interesting. Now it’s just a good-looking movie with some fun nostalgia bits for seasoned movie-goers (you may need to see the movie twice to catch all of the references to other films) and a quaint message of self-acceptance Disney’s been making bank on for years.  With a run time stretching past 90 minutes and the longest end credits I’ve ever sat through, this is one you’ll need to think carefully on if you want to devote time to in theaters.  You’ll lose nothing by waiting to see this in the comfort of your own home.

Movie Review ~ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

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teenage_mutant_ninja_turtles_out_of_the_shadows_ver10
The Facts:

Synopsis: As Shredder joins forces with mad scientist Baxter Stockman and henchmen Bebop and Rocksteady to take over the world, the Turtles must confront an even greater nemesis: the notorious Krang.

Stars: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, Stephen Amell, Tyler Perry, Laura Linney, Brian Tee, Stephen ‘Sheamus’ Farrelly, Gary Anthony Williams

Director: Dave Green

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 112 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (1/10)

Review: On the way out of the theater after my screening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, I had to sit down. Feeling like I just got off of a carousel I rode upside down going backwards, my brain was mush, my eyes unable to focus. It’s only then that I realized that, like a crazy ride I rode recently at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN, I had only myself to blame for feeling queasy.  I’m not saying I knew I’d hate this sequel to producer Michael Bay’s mindless remake/reboot from 2014, but I didn’t know I would hate it so very much.

Where to begin when discussing this second installment in a franchise requiring a wealth of suspension of disbelief for its talking turtles, a crusty old rat father figure, and Megan Fox (This is 40) as a serious television reporter?  It’s been several years since the events of the first film which saw the teenage reptiles and their human helpers (Fox and Will Arnett, The LEGO Movie, who gets smarmier with each passing hour he’s alive) send big bad nemesis Shredder to prison. Preferring to stay underground, the turtles let Arnett take the credit for stopping the crime wave and while becomes a NYC hero the real champions are stuck eating pizza and watching basketball from the rafters of Madison Square Garden.

Meanwhile, scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry, Gone Girl) breaks Shredder out of prison in an elaborately staged (and seemingly endless) action sequence for reasons never made totally clear to anyone, least of all audience members. There’s some mumbo jumbo about black holes and the time space continuum before Shredder comes face to face with another villain, Krang (voiced by Brad Garrett, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb).  Looking like a Jell-O-molded brain creation housed within a titanic robot, Krang wants Shredder to gather some alien remnants on earth in order to create a portal between Krang’s world and ours.  In return, Krang gives Shredder a vial of purple ooze that will help enact revenge on the teen turtles that did him wrong.

Back on Earth, Shredder uses the purple ooze on fellow prison escapees Bebop and Rocksteady, turning them into a warthog and rhinoceros in order to take down the turtles. TMNT fans have been waiting a long time for these two popular villains to appear onscreen and if the overall result is less than satisfying (imagine Beavis and Butthead but uglier and stupider) it at least takes some attention away from Brian Tee’s stilted Shredder.  Add in some paltry dissention in the turtle ranks and you’ve got a lengthy film that eventually rendered this viewer completely numb.  At one point I considered taking a walk on the nonsense but the neverending onslaught of quick cut 3D action scenes coupled with a blaring soundtrack left me paralyzed.

Director Dave Green helmed the respectable family sci-fi yarn Earth to Echo so I was interested to see if he’d add the same heart and curiosity he brought to that little seen film. Taking over the reins from the bombastic Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans), Green succumbs to the Michael Bay side of his directing psyche and delivers a movie that’s all noise. The CGI turtles feel less life-like than the previous entry and so much of the film is computer generated that action passages (nearly all at night in dark locales) turn into washes of greens and dark blues, indistinguishable from one moment to the next.

Fox manages to retain a pouty face even in the most dangerous of situations while Arnett chews so much scenery I’m shocked he wasn’t 500 lbs by the time the film wrapped. Perry continues to be an absolute disaster of an actor but he’s given a run for his money by Stephen Amell as fan favorite Casey Jones. Poor Amell has to recite the most terrible dialogue from Josh Applebaum (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) and Andre Nemec’s pathetic script, though I think if Amell was a better actor he could have made it less laughable. I mean, the awful lines can be given some dramatic weight and three-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney (Mr. Holmes) shows us how its done. Make no mistake, Linney’s performance is as terrible as the rest but at least she knows she’s slumming it and nabbing a neat paycheck for her trouble.

It’s a pity that this turtle turd of a film will make enough money to warrant another installment while smaller films deserving of a TMNT -sized audience will go unnoticed this summer. Representing everything that’s terrible about summer blockbusters (no heart, no brain, no point), these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles need to be grounded.

The Silver Bullet ~ The LEGO Batman Movie

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lego_batman_movie

Synopsis: A spin-off featuring LEGO Batman from the The LEGO Movie.

Release Date: February 10, 2017

Thoughts: I know I’m in the minority but I found 2014’s The LEGO Movie to be an absolute nightmare.  It was loud, obnoxious, and seen in 3D it came close to giving me a full on seizure.  Just not my cup of animation tea, thank you very much.  Popular enough to warrant not only a sequel in 2018, it also is getting a 2017 spin-off featuring Batman…because audiences are experiencing a serious Bat-drought, right?  Arriving on the eve of the release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, this first teaser is a puzzlement, filled with the kind of drawn-out jokes that lead me to believe I’m going to have serious issues with this one as well.  Am I too old for this?  Am I too snobby?  What am I not getting about these LEGO movies? (Don’t tell me, I don’t care.)

The Silver Bullet ~ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Out of the Shadows

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TMNT-2-Movie-20161

Synopsis: The Turtles return to save the city from a dangerous threat.

Release Date: June 3, 2016

Thoughts: The 2014 reboot (the second attempt at one, mind you) of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a loud, crass, critically reviled bit of summer dunderheadedness…but it made a hefty profit at the box office…which leads us to this sequel subtitled Out of the Shadows.  Where the first film seemed to at least attempt to find a bit of grit, this one looks like a pure  gonzo fest of oversized performances, special effects, and cleavage shots of star Megan Fox (What to Expect When You’re Expecting).  Fans of the TMNT franchise will likely warm at the sight of villains Bebop and Rocksteady but I see just another questionable use of CGI and likely a large waste of time.

 

 

Movie Review ~ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny.

Stars: Megan Fox, Alan Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Noel Fisher, Will Arnett, Danny Woodburn, William Fichtner, Johnny Knoxville, Tony Shalhoub

Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 101 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (3/10)

Review: I can still recall waiting in line at the Eden Prairie East movie theater back in 1990 on the day the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film was released. An unexpected hit at the box office, I remember the film being exactly what I anticipated, filled with the necessary laughs and stylized butt-kicking action by our reptilian heroes. Followed by two sequels and one strange quasi-reboot in the form of an animated endeavor that I seem to have totally blocked out, the Turtles were comic book creations of 1984 and have demonstrated staying power through the years in television series and video games. However, it seemed like another big screen take on the ninjas would languish in the planning stages forever.

Originally intended for release in 2012, Paramount’s Michael Bay (Transformers: Age of Extinction) produced, Jonatha Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans) directed live-action reboot is the stuff that nostalgia killing dreams are made out of. I’m sure the concept of talking teenage ninja turtles has always been as silly as it sounds but there’s something about this labored effort that drives that point home over and over again, leaving even the most engaged of TMNT fan audiences in a bit of a stupor.

Producer Michael Bay has made nice with his former Transformers star Megan Fox (What to Expect When You’re Expecting), putting to bed the rift that resulted in her being replaced in that franchise.   He casts her here as plucky news reporter April O’Neil but Fox comes across more as weather girl material than investigative journalist. Delivering each of her lines as if she’s ordering Chinese takeout, Fox’s misplaced emotions are truly the mystery that needs solving.

I’m convinced Will Arnett (The Nut Job) and William Fichtner (The Lone Ranger) signed up for this film to prove once and for all they aren’t the same person…why else would these two usually decent actors ham it up in roles that should have been filled by soap stars more on Fox’s level? The normally attentive Arnett can’t make lemonade with his lemon role and Fichtner simply gives up two lines in.

While the Turtles themselves are nicely rendered and given genial voice by three unknowns and Johnny Knoxville (Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa), they are now almost too life-like. At least when they were in the rubber suits during the 90s there was arguably more of the kind of required suspension of disbelief those early movies went the distance with. In 2014, they just come across as creepy.

Perhaps the problem lies in the overall scale of the film. Built as a mega-million dollar 3D would-be blockbuster, the campy, wise-cracking nature of the turtles is all but obliterated within a soggy script that mixes a slackly delivered origin story with tired plot points liberally lifted from numerous other comic book flicks. The whole dastardly scheme enacted by Shredder and his Foot Clan bears such a close resemblance to that of The Amazing Spider-Man that Marvel Studios should be calling their lawyers.

Still, a lawsuit from Marvel would be the most exciting thing that could happen for the film. Supposedly more in line with the recent comics, aside from an admittedly spectacular chase sequence down a snowy mountainside there’s precious little happening here that would be of interest to anyone outside of curious die-hard Turtle fans. Add to that unimpressive digital effects and a ho-hum re-imagined Shredder that reads more like Edward HuntingKnifeHands and you have a late summer dud.

It’s truly time to let these teenage reptiles graduate, just as so many of their fans have grown up in the 30 years since they made their debut.

The Silver Bullet ~ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

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Synopsis: The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Release Date: August 8, 2014

Thoughts: I had to resist the urge to just publish the words that accompany the theme song for the classic animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series as my review of the first teaser trailer for producer Michael Bay’s reboot. Though a big screen animated restage of the franchise was attempted in 2007, it didn’t catch on like everyone had hoped…until Bay swooped in and brought the turtles over to Paramount Pictures. Directed by Bay protégé Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans), I’m surprised how fondly I’m reacting to our first glimpse of the redesigned turtles who work with reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox, What to Expect When You’re Expecting) to combat The Shredder (William Fichtner, The Lone Ranger) and save the city. The humor looks to be on par with the original 80’s films while the action/effects/make-up is modern times all the way. Hope this is a nice retro ride for fans like myself weaned on the TMNT movies, animated series, and Nintendo video game.

Movie Review ~ The LEGO® Movie

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The Facts:

Synopsis: An ordinary LEGO minifigure, mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary MasterBuilder, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil LEGO tyrant from gluing the universe together.

Stars: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman

Director: Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Chris McKay

Rated: PG

Running Length: 100 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review: The first preview for The LEGO® Movie gave me one heck of a headache…so much of a headache, in fact, that I questioned if I’d be able to sit through the full length film upon its release.  The filming style, a mixture of stop-motion and computer animation made to look like stop-motion, was a little too overwhelmingly retro for my tastes and I found myself wishing instead for a Lincoln Log drama instead of LEGO adventure.

After a recent screening of the assembled finished product I found myself desperate for an aspirin (or four) because while the film is endlessly creative and as weird as the day is long, it’s also one of the most overwhelming mind melters you’re likely to see stone cold sober.  I can’t say I liked the film enough to see it again because so much of it was BIGGER BOLDER LOUDER than it had to be but I also can’t rightly tell you not to see it either.

At 100 minutes long, the first 50 minutes plays like a Nintendo game on fast forward, barely stopping for air as it zips through introductions to our main character, an ordinary construction worker named Emmet (Chris Pratt, Her) that’s part of a futuristic society conformed to following instructions to be happy.  It’s a thinly veiled condemnation of our own society and how we follow the popular trends and are content to NOT stand out from the crowd.

Individuality is the lesson of the day kiddos and it’s a message the script from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller makes abundantly clear as it points out all the ways that Emmet is a drone follower with nary a leadership bone in his plastic body. That all changes when he becomes attached to (literally) the  Piece of Resistance, a mystical object that has the potential to save the world from the evil President Business (Will Ferrell, The Internship, The Campaign) and his  plot to…well…do something that involves Krazy Glue.

Joining forces with a hip rebel (Elizabeth Banks, Walk of Shame, Man on a Ledge), her boyfriend Batman (Will Arnett, The Nut Job), a wise sage (Morgan Freeman, Now You See Me, Oblivion), and a host of wacky LEGO creations, Emmet travels through several cleverly designed LEGO worlds as he overcomes his normalcy to save the world.  Listen up for nicely rendered vocal work from Jonah Hill (This is the End), Channing Tatum (Magic Mike), Liam Neeson (The Grey), Will Forte (Nebraska), Nick Offerman (We’re the Millers), and Charlie Day (Pacific Rim).

Just when I was starting to be won over by the good natured humor and laudable creativity Lord and Miller throw a curveball into the final act that was a heinous mistake.  Not only does it introduce a deus ex machina twist that makes little sense, it can’t maintain consistency with the new rules it set for itself.  It’s a disappointing misstep that unnecessarily breaks up the action, betrays the theme, and isn’t well executed.

Overall, the film is a mish-mash of wild ideas that work well 65% of the time with the other 35% teetering between eye rolling frustration with its brain-stem shaking animation.  I’m not quite sure who the target audience is either.  It’s too sophisticated a concept for small children, even if it does go over their head there are some scary moments they may recoil from (several unhappy children beat a hasty retreat in our theater) so parents should proceed with caution.  While I’ve no doubt it will open big, I get the sneaking suspicion the film will play better at midnight screenings down the road where potheads and hipsters alike will bask in the Crayola box colors on display and acid-trippy stylings.