Tag: Kurt Russell

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”

LOUISA: 3 STARS

LOUISA SAYS:

If your Playstation isn’t enough to keep you entertained this weekend, you can go to the theater to see “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” a 2 hour and 16 minute video game of real people shooting at CGI garbage. It’s another superhero movie that strives to be funny and loved simply by being different when in reality, it’s just the same as every other raucous, overstuffed Marvel exercise.

In this unbalanced sequel, Peter “Star-Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt) is searching for his lost father (Kurt Russell). All the Guardians gang is back, including love interest Gamora (Zoe Saldana), superstrong Drax (Dave Bautista), the loyal friend-yet-jerk Rocket raccoon (Bradley Cooper), and the baby version of Groot (Vin Diesel).

Audiences are treated to yet another annoying performance from abrasive jackass Pratt (remind me why this guy is a movie star again?), and the movie milks the cuteness of baby Groot to the max (the character is visibly meant to appeal to the smallest of children; take note as the doe-eyed Groot shimmies and shakes his way through the opening credits). Jokes are repeated from the first film, including referring to Rocket as a rat. It feels old and stale.

Director James Gunn is relentless in his insistence on using obscure 70s ballads to score the film that the music choices sticks out like a sore thumb, being used so much that the movie at times feels like an overly long music video. Half of the scenes don’t mesh with the (supposedly) tongue-in-cheek accompanying songs, and the soundtrack is as irritating as it is distracting. I lost count of the number of times a character is seen walking in slow-motion to a crappy retro tune.

The movie also tries to steal the core message of the meaning of family from the popular “Fast and Furious” franchise, taking their earnest, heartfelt sincerity and pushing it to the point where it comes off as awkward, phony, and forced. The irreverent humor flops as often as it succeeds, and the film at times resorts to lazy reference jokes (yeah, yeah, we get it, but just name dropping 80s-era icons like Pac-Man and David Hasselhoff doesn’t a genuine laugh make).

Thankfully it’s not all bad. The action-packed storyline kept me engaged with characters that I find hugely unlikable, the special effects (read: cartoon drawings) are colorful and cool, and the ending is absolutely fantastic — but none of these things can completely excuse what comes before.

This movie is really nothing more than a flashy and boisterous Saturday morning cartoon on steroids, something by design that’s made to appeal to adults and kids alike. You can take your whole family and everyone will probably agree that it’s the best movie they’ve ever seen because it’s the last movie they’ve seen. There’s not much craft nor artistry to “Guardians Vol. 2”, but it’s as good as the first movie and it’s still fun enough to not become a total disaster.

“The Fate of the Furious”

LOUISA: 4 STARS

LOUISA SAYS:

As a car lover and a huge fan girl of the entire franchise, I set the bar almost unfairly high for “The Fate of the Furious.” As started with “Furious 7,” the films have been slowly evolving towards more of an action-packed cyber thriller than a classic parade of drool-worthy dream cars and engine-revving stunt driving.

So what does that mean for you? Well, it means newbies should have no trouble following along with the story or figuring out who’s who, but longtime fans aren’t ignored either. While there aren’t quite as many car-centric scenes as I’d like, the film remains true to its characters in the familial fashion for which the series is known. There are also plenty of fun throwback references to the old films and surprise cameos for die-hards too (you’ll know when they turn up based on the audience cheers and applause).

Initially I was very disappointed in the direction this film takes, fantasizing about how I wanted to grab director F. Gary Gray by the shoulders and shake him while hollering “less tech plot, more cars!” But as the story progressed, I realized something: if you just let go and embrace this movie as more of an action blockbuster than a gearhead race picture, all will be right with the world. If you are expecting heart-stopping stunt driving and racing throughout, you’ll find this installment to be a bit of a letdown. There are nearly as many bullets flying as there is rubber burning.

And that’s where the majority of the criticism I have for this film lies: it NEEDS MORE CARS. If you’re going to make a Fast and Furious movie, you need to have it packed with flashy driving scenes that employ actual stunt drivers. For example: one of the most creative and exciting scenes involves zombie cars that are obviously animated with CGI, which is a far cry from “Furious 7” where the production crew dropped actual vehicles from the cargo bay of a plane — but I’ll let it slide this time because the idea behind it is So. Freaking. COOL!

The car scenes unfortunately feel more like bookends than a fundamental core of the movie. It starts out with a spectacularly boisterous nitrous-fueled drag race through the streets of Havana and ends with a not-long-enough car chase across a frozen lake involving a hijacked Russian nuclear submarine, a million dollar neon orange Lamborghini Murcielago, and heat seeking missiles. Both scenes had me sitting up in my seat and whooping with glee, making me forget all of the plot filler that is stuffed in the middle. There are several truly amusing sequences sprinkled throughout though, from an entertaining as hell (yet oddly bloodless) prison riot to a baby-juggling fistfight on an airplane. What is truly incredible is that while it’s undeniably over the top, none of this feels THAT ridiculous.

The acting is mildly hammy but fun (with Michelle Rodriguez once again delivering the standout performance as Letty). The majority of the dialogue consists of musclehead rivals Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) hurling insults at each other while Tej (Ludacris) and everyone’s favorite alpha-male Roman (Tyrese Gibson) exchange their trademark barbs for comic relief. Dom (Vin Diesel) doesn’t have all that much to do in this installment and for the first half it’s the Statham and Johnson show. Charlize Theron is a welcome addition as cyberterrorist Cipher, and both Kurt Russell and Nathalie Emmanuel reprise their roles as government agent Mr. Nobody and hacker Ramsey. One new casting choice that rubbed me the wrong way was the addition of Scott Eastwood as agent Little Nobody who (obviously) is also an expert driver. He is likable enough, but it really, really felt like he was brought in as an attempt to replace Brian (Paul Walker). I just wish the series would address that Brian is gone for good and retire his character in an honest and respectful way. I know it hurts (I was crying like a blubbering baby after Walker’s untimely death), but Brian needs to be killed off.

The plot has a few trademark surprise revelations (which I won’t spoil here), including a twist that creates an opening for a beloved character come back in future installments (fingers crossed)! But don’t stick around after the movie ends, as there’s no post-credit sequence.

What anchors this franchise is the exceptional chemistry from its cast, who have an overwhelming sincerity and loyalty to their onscreen personas as well as to each other in real life. The fact that these guys all truly love each other (with the exception of Johnson and Diesel, who famously had a big fight on set) leaps off the screen. The films are thrilling but they are also all about family, and you can’t help but smile, buckle in, and hang on for the next ride.

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“Deepwater Horizon”

LOUISA:  2 STARS  MATT: 2 STARS

LOUISA SAYS:

One of the world’s largest man-made disasters was the explosion of an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. This true incident is dramatized in the loud and garden-variety “Deepwater Horizon,” a movie that seems determined to simply show us the ‘how’ of the tragedy instead of exploring the ‘why.’ Shouldn’t we all be outraged that something like this happened in the first place?

Mark Wahlberg plays our roughneck hero Mike, a man portrayed as a hunky savior who literally throws coworkers off a flaming rig. Wahlberg is believable in roles like this because he has an everyman quality that most can relate to. The casting is absolutely perfect and the supporting actors are all quite effective. There’s Kurt Russell as gruff senior supervisor Mr. Jimmy, Gina Rodriguez as rig operator Andrea, John Malkovich as a clueless BP well site leader (with an over-the-top and mildly amusing Cajun accent), and Kate Hudson (who, sadly, is given little to do as Mike’s worried wife Felicia).

The filmmakers try to give a bit of background on these characters and show us their personalities, but they all still come across as paper thin. Even when the movie ended and after sharing two hours with them, I didn’t feel much emotional connection. Not to sound heartless to those who suffered due to this tragedy, but these folks deserved more onscreen detail.

The film both explains too much yet doesn’t explain enough of the engineering background of how an oil rig works and why drilling is so dangerous. Early on, there are multiple attempts to clearly illustrate the engineering (even using props like a Coke can). Eventually that devolves into a poor man’s ‘let’s blame the Big Oil suits‘ mantra and does nothing but simplify the blame. It feels like director Peter Berg and screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand simply threw up their hands halfway through their science lesson.

The realistic action sequences aren’t very effective because it’s unclear what is happening in relation to the rig’s floorplan, and the special effects are nothing more than acceptable. The overuse of shaky cam, which quickly made me regret sitting on the third row in the theater, was obnoxious in every way imaginable. There are plenty of eye-rolling moments like the Michael Bay-esque shots of tattered American flags flying high while huge, fiery explosions set the backdrop (groan). Oh, and since these are just blue collar good ol’ boys, there’s also the annoying obligatory group prayer scene that is always front and center in movies like this (see “The Finest Hours“).

This movie had a huge $150 million plus budget, but it looks like a commonplace rip-off of other disaster movies like “The Towering Inferno.” I wanted to know more about the environmental impact of the incident, the implications of offshore drilling, the dangers of the lack of safety regulations, and the human costs of corporate greed. Unfortunately, the film misses many opportunities to address these topics, probably due to studio fears of “let’s not make this too smart.” It’s more of a straight up action movie, showing us dramatic explosions, furiously spewing oil geysers, gruesome broken bones, feet and heads bloodied with massive shards of glass, and plenty of gigantic fireballs.

MATT SAYS:

“Deepwater Horizon” is an excellent example of how a film with a decent script and good actors can be completely ruined by terrible direction.

Director Peter Berg (“Battleship,” “The Kingdom”) apparently LOVES shaky cam (that affectation where the camera shakes incessantly throughout action-packed sequences to convey a sense of urgency and disorientation). Once the well backs up and explodes on the rig, the camera never stops moving violently back and forth. It’s as though the camera was placed on top of a giant spring, which is itself on rollers, mounted on top of a seesaw that is riding out an earthquake in the middle of a hurricane. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but not very much. Berg’s direction is so frenetic that he makes Paul Greengrass (he of the “Bourne” travesties, who practically wrote the book on shaky-cam work) look like Martin Scorsese.

In the disaster film like this one, it’s important for the audience to understand to have a good sense of spatial relationships so that they can appreciate what is actually happening to the characters. In “The Poseidon Adventure”, for example, you are always able to tell where the actors are on the overturned cruise ship and where they must go next to escape to safety. In “San Andreas”, I knew where the giant fault lines and waves were, and could tell where Dwayne Johnson needed to go to get his family to safety. This sense of space is completely lost in “Deepwater Horizon” once disaster strikes; once the action starts it becomes almost impossible to tell what is happening where.

To illustrate this point: there is one scene that occurs about 10 or 15 minutes after the well backs up that there is apparently a crane somewhere that is threatening to topple over. When it does, it could kill a number of crew members directly in its path. We know this not because we can see it on the screen; we know this because the dialogue tells us that’s what’s happening. Some guy has to go and try to prevent the crane from falling, and when he does so, you have no idea where it is he’s going and what it is he’s doing to try to stop the crash. This sort of thing happens over and over, to where it becomes completely frustrating to even try to watch.

To me that’s the greatest measure of what constitutes terrible direction: if it becomes so difficult for the audience to follow the action that they give up even trying to do so, you have utterly failed as a director.

What is so surprising and disappointing about this disaster of a disaster film is that the story is pretty darned good. Things moved along quickly, and the cast (Mark Wahlberg, Kate Hudson, Kurt Russell, and John Malkovich among others) did good work creating sympathetic characters that put a human face on the tragedy. In the hands of a more capable director, this movie could have been good.

If there’s any justice in the world, “Deepwater Horizon” should sound the death knell of shaky cam and convince Hollywood filmmakers once and for all that the technique should be used (if at all) only sparingly. It’s not exciting. It’s not compelling. And it’s not good craft.