Film Friday: Ghostbusters: Answer The Call (2016)

I'm always leery of watching a parody of a classic film because there is always the danger that the parody will expose that one problem you always overlooked and suddenly you can't see the original without seeing the parody. There's no danger of that here, however. This film steals every single idea from Ghostbusters and a few from Men in Black, but handles them so poorly you'll never connect it with the originals. What? This wasn't a parody? Huh. Ok. What was it then?

It was a cash grab.

Plot

The story starts with a chick professor not getting tenure at her college because she wrote a book about ghosts a decade ago. This is not even close to believable. To fix this, she goes to the fat chick to make her stop selling the book at Amazon. Fat jokes ensue as Fat Girl argues with the Chinese delivery man. A minute or so into this, we have our first fart joke, which Judd Apatow's ghost turns into a female-front-side "fart" joke. And we're off on our magical journey.

From this point, we meet the lesbian chick and the black chick and we go through every single plot point from the original Ghostbusters film only done far less interestingly and far less competently. In a series of scenes, the girls get fired from their college, move into a new building, get a car, round up a ghost, do a much-used crowd surfing joke, hire a stupid secretary, meet the mayor, and fight the villain. As they do this, we are bored with treated to an origin story of every piece of hardware, every bit of music, every character, and every original image from the original Ghostbusters. We are also abused with treated to cameos from each of the original characters in the first film. In fact, there are so many it starts to feel like that is why they made the film.

Eventually, they beat the villain while blowing up a building in New York City and then the film ends with them as ambiguous heroes while Eyecandy Boy eats a sandwich and you wonder how to get the time you lost back.

Shameless

So where do we start to discuss this turd? Well, let's start with this. If you thought Bridesmaids was great, then this is probably the film for you. It's vapid, childish, tired and completely stolen. No new ground will be trod. The scenes bump together reasonable well, and they do so without asking you to use your brain. They just lurch from fat jokes to black jokes to fart jokes to sexism jokes to "I's so stupid" jokes. Good times. There is no dramatic tension to ruin any of it for you, and no demanding plot you need to keep track of. This is a film for retards.

For the rest of you, here's the deal. The film is watchable in the sense that most mindless ripoffs are. The scenes make sense in the order in which they are shot. The characters act like they are in the movie. The story moves from start to finish and wraps up without any huge mistakes. The effects are a step above what you see in the made-for-Sci-Fi-Channel films. And to keep you entertained the director steals every singe idea or image from Ghostbusters and a couple from Men in Black and dangles them in front of you to keep you from walking out. Oh look, shiny.

That said, the film is desperately not funny. Like most of the other films these losers have done, it is ad-libbed for the most part and none of them really have the skill to pull that off. I truly don't remember a single laugh. The jokes are awful and have no relation to the story: the fat girl is fat! the gay girl is gay! the black girl speaks ethnic gibberish! he's wearing glasses without glass... OMG?! He does logos, but they stink... they stink! The Chinese food arrives fast because they work above the restaurant! OMG that's funny! A minute long moronic argument about whether you can put a cat back in a bag after it is out of the bag. Ouch my sides! Please stop!

The villain is so forgettable you keep forgetting who he is until he appears on screen again... and even then you don't care. The characters are non-existent. The plot is for nought. You start to feel dirty about how much they steal, and ironically they are being nasty to most of it. They have real anger for the original film.

So what about the politics? This film is pretty despicable in that regard. It shits all over the original with tremendous anger and it does so in the name of a sort of vague "gurl power" theme. The girl power thing is a fraud though. These women are not competent. They don't prove that they can do anything. They don't start a business. They have no camaraderie. They don't invent anything. They don't prove anyone wrong. They don't even catch a ghost. There is not a single clever moment that makes a legitimate social commentary point. Instead, there are female genitalia "queef" jokes, males being hit in the dick, and a group of neurotic women claiming they can do "it", whatever "it" actually is. If this were the model of how women want young girls to act, how they want males to act, or what they think women can do, then women are in much worse shape than anyone knew. It's a bit like defining masculinity through Paul Blart Mall Cop.

The marketing of this thing was deeply deceptive as well, but we don't need to go into that. Suffice it to say that Paul Feig is a lying sack of shit who thought that agitating feminists, gays and blacks with an invented assault by haters was the best way to market his hack film. Hey black people, Gillette wants to restart slavery... buy Schick.

To put a fine point on this, this film is everything they said it was and worse. It is offensively political, but stupidly so. It is stolen. It is awful, almost beyond description. It is the raping of an existing property purely for profit with no care whatsoever about the people who will be suckered into seeing this film.

Skip this one.

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Film Friday: Sausage Party (2016)

This is going to be short. That is all this movie deserves. I was looking forward to this one. The commercials were brilliant at making this look like a clever and funny film. It’s not.

The idea behind this film is quite promising. All the things you buy in the grocer store are conscious. They think people are gods and that Heaven is where you go when people buy you. They are about to find out, however, that life with humans is a hellish horror movie as they will find themselves cut up, baked alive, used to wipe butts, etc. A great idea.

It’s too bad nobody competent worked on the film.

Do you want to know what this film is like? Imagine six of the douchebag-iest teenagers you’ve ever met. These are the kind of retards for whom low-hanging fruit is unobtainable Shakespearian brilliance. Now imagine said douchebags deciding to take this idea and work it into the raunchiest thing they can come up with. Yep. Every sentence is flooded with hate-filled cusswords. Every “idea” – I hesitate even to use the word here – is about sex... but not sex in the sense that normal people know it. Imagine a gang of uneducated Mexicans standing on the street corner shouting obscenities at hookers.

There you have it. This was Sausage Party.

Oh look, he’s a hotdog. Did you know that means he’s shaped like a penis? Ha ha ha! Fuck dude, that’s fan-fucking-awesome-tastic. Fuck. Hey, she’s a bun. “Get it? And she’s sooooo fucking tight.” Fuck that's brilliant, you c*nt bitches! That’s fucking hilarious, motherfucker. Fuck, dude. That’s fucking comedy gold, fuckers.

We turned it off after five minutes.

You know, I can’t help but compare this to South Park. South Park the movie was genius. They were known for pushing the envelop on television. And when they got to do the movie (Bigger Longer and Uncut... a circumcision joke in the title that most people miss), everyone expected they would swear a lot. So they did. But they didn’t just swear. No, they turned the idea of swearing into a social statement. Their characters swore with purpose and with panache. It was clever. It was funny. You couldn’t help but laugh when they swore. Heck, you went home singing the “Uncle Fucker” song. Every swear word in South Park was chosen for a particular purpose.

Sausage Party is just a bunch of retard douchebags trying to say something their little minds think is cool. It is Mexican day labor swearing at you on the street. Pathetic.

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Film Friday: Superman v. Batman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

I finally got the chance to see Superman v. Batman. Yee haw. What a ride... to nowhere.

“Plot”

Ok. This has some twists and turns, so take notes if you need to. The guy who founded Facebook wants to kill Superman because somethingsomething God. Wonder Woman is in the movie. Facebook tricks Ben Affleck into fighting Superman but he loses, so Facebook sends a generic blobby muscle creature to do it. Superman, Affleck and Wonder Woman kill it, and Superman fakes his death.

Got it? Don’t worry if you don’t, you’ll have about an hour long pointless fight scene you can use as time to think about it. You might want to bring a book.

Who's A Bad Boy?

So what can I say? DC sure knows how not to put together a movie. To sum up this stink-burger, it is fake liberal “drama” randomly sprinkled between tremendous sound and fury signifying nothing.

Here’s the thing. The back half of the movie is designed for idiots who like shiny lights. The front half of the movie needs to offer some explanation for the back half, or people complain. So the front half needed to figure out why Batman and Superman would fight. The answer, originally offered, comes from modern liberalism. Modern liberals are conflicted cowards (except when attacking people “who deserve it”), ergo they think that all heroes must be conflicted types who see the faces of the people “they killed” when they sleep. And naturally, "they killed" anyone they didn't save.

Indeed, the story starts with the public turning against Superman because people died whenever he tried to save the planet. Ergo, Superman is the menace... not the thing that would have killed everyone. That makes no sense except to snowflakes, but Hollywood is packed with snowflakes and “strong” women... the greatest snowflakes of them all.

So Superman is bad.

Now we need to hate Batman, so he brands a couple child molesters and rapists and that shows that vigilantes are just sadistic criminals who target other criminals, making them worse than the people they stop... the standard Hollywood view. “No one is above the law, unless it’s for the right reasons, and stopping criminals is not the right reason!”

So Batman is bad.

Now we just... huh. Crap. This explanation didn’t get us to where we need to be. //scratches head Wait! I know! Lex Facebook send nastygrams to Batman and Superman making them think... You know what? Let’s just cut to the fighting.

There were only two things that interested me in this film. The first was that the bad Senator who tries to make Superman a villain is a Democrat from Kentucky. Why a Democrat? Democrats are never bad. Hmm. Then it hit me. This was Affleck’s dig at his estranged wife, Jennifer Garner, a Democrat from Kentucky. LOL! Niiiiiice!

The other thing is this. The initial discussion of how the public could come to hate Superman offered a promising social commentary on modern cynicism. The problem was, it never fleshed it out. To do this, the film should have been smaller with Superman and Batman in closer contact and coming to dislike the other. The story should be told through assistants who represent the two positions. The cynicism needs to grow: cynical logic being used... increasingly self-aggrandizing armchair quarterbacking... the rise of conspiracy theories believed through confirmation bias and growing paranoia... a growing acceptance of extreme solutions and positions, leading to violence... and then the arrival of opportunism – journalists first, then academics, comedians and finally politicians. Team Batman falls for this, as does the vocal public. Team Superman understands genuine goodness, real logic, actual facts, and the importance of good faith. The fight starts until they remind Batman that the majority of the public isn't this stupid and doesn't deserve to be lumped with the sh*tbirds.

Unfortunately, that would make for a strong, emotional film... not a shiny stupid one. Hollywood also doesn't understand what Superman needs to understand; good faith, logic and lack of cynicism are like a foreign language to them. So Facebook’s plan it is!

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Rogue One (2016)

Rogue One is a flawed, shallow movie with indifferent characters and barely the semblance of a plot. This movie is the See Spot Run of science-fiction. It makes The Force Awakens look like Moby Dick. But it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it a lot while watching it, though I don’t really want to see it again. Ultimately, it doesn’t bode well for future Star Wars movies, however.

The Plot

The story opens with Imperial Weapon Designer Orson Krennic arriving in Scotland with a squad of troops to force genius scientist Galen Erso to come design the Death Star. Erso is played by Le Chiff from Casino Royale. Le Chiff buys time for his daughter Gin, er Jyn, to escape into the hands of Rebel “extremist” Forest Whitaker. Let’s call her GirlPower.

Fifteen years later, Rebel spy Cassian Andor, frees the now grown up GirlPower from prison on the desert moon Jedha when he’s searching for an escaped Imperial pilot who knows something about Le Chiff. Andor has a sarcastic Imperial droid he’s reprogrammed to help him. This is K-2SO, who says whatever he’s thinking and is quite fun, but doesn’t matter to the plot.

As Andor and GirlPower argue with Whitaker, the Empire test fires the Death Star at Jedha and blows up the planet in slow motion. Andor and GirlPower escape with the pilot along with this blind Chinese monk who is a total rip-off of Seraph from The Matrix II. Rebel command gives them the assignment to go “rescue” Le Chiff, which really means Andor is supposed to kill him. Le Chiff gets killed, but not by Andor, but he tells GirlPower where to find the plans to the Death Star first... Jamaica. They decide to attack the beach, against orders. There’s a battle. The story ends and they heavily sell the idea that this is seconds before the opening scene of Star Wars.

Gee, I hope you could follow all those twists and turns.

The Two Sides of This Film

Let’s start with the good. The film is fun the first time through. It is also visually stunning. It is a little dark and smudged at times, but overall it is very pretty when it gets going. The scenes on Scarif, on Jedha and anything Imperial are beautiful. The Rebel base on Yavin was exactly what it should have been. The CGI world of Eadu was kind of crappy Clone Wars-y, but it was forgivable because it was short.

The acting was passable. Though the fact I couldn’t remember anybody’s name was a bad sign. GirlPower was indifferent, but Andor was quite good. Krennic was good and had the only depth. Le Chiff was good, but was underused. It was nice in theory to see some of the Star Wars actors appear again in the combat scenes, but having a brain I knew exactly where they had taken these lines from the Star Wars attack on the Death Star and that felt cheap to me – they claim the lines are unused, but they are only unused in the Lucas butchered versions. The Vader scene lacked punch. The Leah scene was nicely done. The Grand Moff Tarkin stuff got his character wrong.

SarcBot was pretty awesome. He was probably my favorite character. Once again, Alan Tudyk did a phenomenal job of giving the perfect voice to a character; he’s perhaps the greatest voice actor of all time. The character itself was fun too. They did a great job of mixing machine and comic relief and little bits of awesome with him. It’s too bad his role was so small.

I really liked Seraph too, though he was in the wrong film. In fact, Seraph was a problem. Not only was Seraph stolen from The Matrix II, but he didn’t fit in this film’s world. Seraph had powers unseen before in Star Wars which nearly matched those of the Force. The felt wrong in this universe, which has always been presented as a realistic world except for the Force. This felt like a violation of the rules. Still, he was one of the most likeable characters and I liked watching him. Though, when the guy who shouldn’t be in your movie is the highlight, then you’ve done something wrong.

The plot existed. It was enough to make the film work given the special circumstances here, which is that we know the Star Wars world already and we know where this one would end, so it just needed to achieve a couple plot points. It could have used more plot, but it didn't technically need it. Still, it boggles the mind that a movie claimed to be “written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, from a story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta” could be so underpowered. How do four people write a story and yet manage to come up with less plot than an initial impression? There is no character drama in this film. No character development. There are no twists, no turns, no clever or unexpected moments. The plot is literally a straight line: learn about plans and go get them. There are no subplots, no twists, no growth, no ebb and flow, and no hurdles.

This is what worries me most. Disney is planning to spin Star Wars into a million new films and this is a very bad start. This film has no plot, no depth and no characters you give a crap about. It makes the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise seem like high drama. There was nothing original or innovative or even clever in this film. It was pretty pabulum.

Even the attempts to give it meaning were crap. You had the father-daughter relationship that generated about three lines of pretend motivation and otherwise generated nothing in the way of emotion or interest. If you weren’t paying attention in the first five minutes, I doubt you would even have known that Le Chiff was GirlPower’s father. You had this fake new cliché moment where everyone suddenly whines at Andor for whatever bad things he’s done on behalf of the resistance, only to have him give a passionless speech about how he lives with that everyday. Wahhh. For a guy whose character shows no emotions whatsoever, this was really an out-of-place speech. What’s more, why the other people he’s just saved and who have volunteered to go on this mission would lament the “bad things” he’s done is utter nonsense. This is New Liberalism not being able to grasp that heroes aren’t tortured souls.

If this becomes the formula then we are looking at some crap films ahead. We are looking at straight-line plots with indifferent heroes meant to echo the original Star Wars cast and who feel the need to give character-development speeches right before they blow something up for some reason you don’t care about. Not good.

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Film Friday: Concussion (2015)

For some time now, a cadre of hard-left journalists looking for a modern Civil Rights cause to claim as their own have been waging a war against the NFL. Joining this cause is the film Concussion. It tanked in theaters, earning only $48 million on its production budget of $57 million, and it did so for a reason: the film sucks, in addition to being pure propaganda.

Rather than outlining the plot, let me start by telling you why this film sucked. Putting aside the issue of it being pure propaganda, this is just not a good film. The film is morose at best – the direct thinks it’s ironically tense. There are no good moments. There are no moments of inspiration and no moments of genuine outrage. There are no exciting moments either; everything was dull. There are no peaks or valleys. The colors are dull. The acting of Will Smith was dull (his wife was full of bullship to claim he didn’t get an award because of racism). The story is dull. Every scene involves people standing or sitting in a room talking until they reach the conclusion you knew was coming all along. The film even deals with a couple suicides and yet presents those in about as dull a manner possible.

What I really want to talk about though is how biased this film was. This film turns you off quickly unless you are a true believer.

The film follows Dr. Bennet Omala (Will Smith), a forensic pathologist with the Allegheny County coroner’s office in Pittsburgh. Omala is a Nigerian American and he was the first to discover chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). This is a medical condition which results in destructive proteins attacking the brain’s tissue after repeated traumatic blows to the head, i.e. concussions.

The film opens showing Omala testifying in court to save a wrongly convicted man from the death sentence. He begins by modestly listing his credentials. This goes on several minutes and is meant to get the audience to believe that (1) Omala is ultra-qualified in and beyond his field and (2) he is humble and should be liked. He then tells us why the convicted man could not have been the killer. His analysis is simple to grasp and demonstrates that Omala thinks about things others ignored and has a gift for seeing obvious things that people with a political interest, e.g. prosecutors, either intentionally or recklessly overlook. We also learn that his primary motivating trait in life is to save people.

In other words, he’s a saint.

Not convinced yet? Ok. In the next scene, a priest asks Omala to take in and look after a young woman who has just come from Africa and needs a home. He agrees, of course. And when he brings her to his home, he even takes her luggage from her so she need not carry it. He is a saint after all.

Still not sure? Ok. His boss at the hospital warns him that he needs to be more willing to go with the crowd and to stop being so gosh darn pure.

By this point, the film has cast Omala as the ultimate unimpeachable source. We’ve seen his noble, humble bearing. Everyone else in the film will slouch. We’ve heard his credentials which are absolutely nothing special, but which are presented as amazing. Of course, we will hear no one else’s credentials, as the film wants you to see him as the only expert. We’ve learned he acts only with the most selfless of motives. With every other character, we are constantly reminded of their economic interest. Even a man in the streets we are told doesn’t want his city’s investment in a football stadium wasted.

Next the film sets up the conflict, and it does so in the most strawman of manners. When Omala discovers CTE, his medical bosses immediately threaten to suspend him and deny him any chance to move forward to confirm his diagnosis. Why? They're scared. Everyone is on the NFL’s payroll and doctors are too terrified to go against the NFL – characters even whisper when discussing things the NFL won’t like. Indeed, we are assured that the NFL is so powerful that it “owns a day of the week.” Its stadiums are the heart of cities like Pittsburgh. To destroy football would bring the wrath of millions of fans. Of course, the fact that CTE wouldn’t destroy football at all is never mentioned. Nor is the fact that the players union is intensely contentious against the NFL and would happily use this against the NFL. In the story, they are beholden to the NFL.

Moreover, the world is dangerously pro-NFL. Everywhere Omala goes, he causally makes some mention of the Steelers only to have average citizens verbally attack him.

Fortunately, Omala is allowed to continue his research by his brave boss who warns him that they better win or the NFL will destroy them. Suddenly, Omala is being followed by cars. He’s being mocked in the press, getting hateful phone calls, and being told to leave America because he’s clearly not one of us. And then the FBI shows up to arrest his brave boss on trumped up charges that Omala lets us know wouldn’t even fly in corrupt Nigeria – never mind that his boss was really arrested on fraud charged three months before Omala goes public with the CTE issue.

They threaten Omala and basically demand that he testify falsely against his boss or he will be charged as well. He refuses and instead agrees to resign and go away. They then threaten to deport him.

At this point, we also learn from an insider that the NFL knows about the CTE issue! Sacre bleu! In fact, they studied it, but their methods get mocked, even though their methods seem more thorough that Omala’s. The evil NFL wants people to die! And once again, the other doctors Omala tries to get to help him tell us how much the NFL provides to communities, so no one will go against it. They’re all complicit!

Here’s the thing. CTE could be real. It makes sense to me and I personally suspect it’s true. But this movie was so obnoxious that it had me wanting to see Omala fail. The film canonizes Omala at every turn. He has no flaws. It feels the need to make him unimpeachable as a professional, beyond biased, noble of heart, and nice to the point of meekness... a longtime indicator of propaganda is when the hero is meek.

At the same time, it not only demonizes those who oppose Omala, but it creates this bizarre world where average people act like they are going to hunt him in the streets if he reveals the dirty secret everyone knows but pretends isn’t real.

Now, again, I don’t doubt that the NFL was resistant to this idea. But the film goes further than that and essentially suggests that the NFL knows about CTE and is covering up by blackmailing every doctor, hospital, expert and politician in the country. This is bullship. It’s the kind of paranoid garbage leftists buy into when they are shocked to discover that people don’t accept their issues.

The film also presents a purely biased point of view. Obvious counter points get excluded. The credentials of competing experts are ignored and their supposed bias gets announced. In a rather dirty moment, they present David Duerson as an NFL hack who mocks the players with CTE until one kills himself, until Duerson kills himself when he too gets it. His family denies that Duerson ever did this.

They also never present contrary evidence. This film draws a connection between CTE and suicide, and dwells on several suicides... which it telescopes as if they all happen at once even though they are years apart. However, the CDC itself examined the health of NFL players. It found that NFL players are 42% less likely to die from cancer, 86% less likely to die from tuberculosis, and 59% less likely to die from suicide. And despite the film showing at least three and maybe more suicides as if they happened within weeks of each other, the CDC found that between 1959 and 1988, only nine former players killed themselves.

I’m not saying that advocacy films need to be unbiased, but there is a point where things go from being advocacy to being glaringly one-sided to being total smears. This film was a smear, and that hurt it tremendously. Having seen it, I am left wondering why this was even a film rather than a documentary. I am left wondering why the film was so shady too about a theory that seems to make sense and appears to be supported by lots of evidence. Are they hiding something?

That’s the problem. This is a propaganda piece for true believers and no one else. No wonder it failed. Thoughts?

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Film Friday: The BFG (2016)

When Steven Spielberg announced he was turning Roald Dahl’s book The BFG into a movie, I suspect a lot of people had the same reaction I did: “huh… I never heard of it.” But kids movies are big business and Spielberg is a talented director and a lot of the people who do know this book currently have kids, so I assumed it would be huge. But it wasn’t. And I know why it wasn't.

The Plot

The BFG is a kids story from the 1980’s. It involves a giant who roams Britain at night blowing dreams into the rooms of little kids. Why he does this isn’t very clear except that he captures dreams and then seems to like dispensing them to some kids because that gives him charm.

One night, this giant is spotted by a little girl who lives in an orphanage. Her name is Sophie, and she’s an insomniac. In a panic, the giant grabs the girl and takes her with him back to giant country. He does this because he’s afraid that humans would hunt the giants if they knew that the giants existed. As an aside, the other giants are all cruel, “cannibals” (they eat humans). The BFG eats rotten vegetables.

After the kidnapping, we learn that the giant is a moron. He makes up words and gets confused – some of the words will be familiar from Willy Wonka. He also no think good, but that’s ok because he’s a comfortable cliché. He’s the simple working man/janitor who dispenses wisdom... earthy wisdom... magic negro wisdom. He also can’t get enough of telling us just how stupid his is.

Anyways, the moron and little girl go through the motions of fearing each other and then become fast friends. We also learn he calls himself The Big Friendly Giant, and likes the way some kid he previously kidnapped shortened that to the BFG. So the girl calls him that and all is well.

But there is a problem. See, even though this giant is nice and cuddly, it turns out that there are other giants who are much bigger and much nastier and they kidnap and eat children. What’s more, the other giants have come to suspect that the moron has a human stashed somewhere.

The BFG realizes that he can’t protect the girl and he decides to return her to the human world. But that won’t work so the girl comes up with a plan to solve their problem. They visit the queen of England and get her to authorize a military strike against the evil giants. She does and the day is saved.

Meh

I’m actually a little torn about this film. On the hand, this film is beautifully shot. The effects are fantastic and believable. The acting is good. The story moves along at a good pace. There is little I can fault throughout the film. It’s even quite earnest and without cynicism... something I really do appreciate. So overall, I see where this film should have been a huge success and part of me wants to tell you to go see it.

Sigh.

But story matters and this story just never got interesting.

At no point does this story ever reach any sort of climax, and that makes the film dull. Take the meeting with the giant. Sophie gets taken by the giant. She gets dragged to his cave. In the cave, she hides from him, but he always knows where she is... so there’s no drama. The giant says he will keep her forever. She resists at first, but she’s an orphan with nowhere to go... no drama. Then she decides she wants to stay, though the BFG has done nothing to earn it... no drama. Now the BFG wants to return her, except we already know the bad guys know about her, so he can’t leave her... no drama.

Then Sophie comes up with a plan to go to the queen and convince her to attack the other giants. Before she goes, we meet the queen and see that she’s the nicest, most caring woman on the planet and it would be impossible for her not to help anyone in need. So there is no drama when Sophie makes her sales pitch. Then the queen calls out the military. She gives a command that is so simple that the film's writing is telegraphing that the plan can’t fail. Sure enough, right before the soldiers attack, all but the worst giant get knocked out of the fight with bad dreams. That makes the fight a walkover. And almost the moment the soldiers attack, it's over. No drama.

The key to any good story is to keep the audience unsure of what will happen next. Be it the outcome of a fight or battle, the need for reconciliation between two characters, the roll of a dice or the execution of a plan, the more uncertain the audience is of the success of the character they want to win, the greater the tension and the more the audience will be interested. Yet, at every single turn, The BFG telegraphs how a particular conflict will be resolved basically at the point it is mentioned.

Ernest Hemingway was brilliant in many ways. His two most important skills were his ability to make the complex seem incredibly simple (something imitators don’t understand) and the way he could take a simple point of conflict in a story and torture you by stretching it out. For Whom The Bell Tolls, for example, starts with a man who is about to explode a bridge. It seems like the bridge is going to explode in the next sentence. But it doesn’t. Instead, Hemingway spirals away to tell his story, always using the about-to-be-exploded bridge as a way to tell his story and ratcheting up the tension the whole time. Spielberg in BFG completely misses that. There is nothing that isn't resolved the moment it first gets mentioned and Spielberg spends the film defusing such tension before he even tells you there is tension.

This is why the film comes across as so utterly dull. Imagine being shown a football game, but first being handed a list containing the details of every score. How exciting would that game be? It’s the same thing here.

It’s sad. This was a film with tremendous potential. All the pieces were there, and Spielberg knows how to tell a story. This time, however, he failed... and the blame really does lie with him.

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Film Friday: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

With the Brexit, I thought it would be a good time to review Captain America: Civil War. Oy vey. Where to being? How’s this: I really disliked this film.

Let me start by saying that I’m not the biggest fan of most comic book movies. Many lack depth and interesting characters, and they try to hide this by substituting tired recycled plot points, pathetic teenage-level family “issues,” and a CGI frosting that lasts so long you want to claw your way out of the theater exit to escape.

That said, there have been definite instances where these films have been done right. These are films that involve clever new plot twists, genuine characters with real relationships, and typically a strong sense of humor. The Avengers, like the Iron Man movies and the X-Men films, have generally fallen into this category. DC films, the putrid Fantastic Four and the Hulk movies have generally fallen into the other category.

During Captain America: Civil War, there is a fight at an airport in Germany where the two competing camps of Avengers do battle. Iron Man and his team have come to capture Captain America and his team. The fight is fun to watch. It’s surprising. It’s really funny at times. It highlights the genuine relationships between the characters. And it lets the actors flex the character muscles we have come to love.

The rest of the movie is a dark, depressing pile of sh*t that made me want to walk out.

Plot

Turn down the lights and suck the color rods from your eyes, because this is one of those films done in a brown and dark blue pallet. I thought we were rid of that crap, but apparently not. The film begins with a fight you can’t watch because it’s all shaky cam. Apparently, some guy decides to blow up some disease center in Africa (as if) so he can steal a killer virus. But his real plan seems to be to get captured and blow up Captain America. At the time, this makes sense, but it won’t if you think about it later.

Indeed, let me give you the plot in a nutshell. Some guy’s father was killed off-screen in Age of Ultron. Guy decides to blow things up, in the hopes that the Avengers will kill innocent people in the process, which will lead the UN to decide to force the Avengers to accept evil bosses, which will result in the Avengers splitting into two camps who will then fight to the death after Captain America decides to save his frenemie Bucky the Winter Soldier while Iron Man decides to try to kill him. Why go this Rube Goldberg way? Because no one but an Avenger can kill an Avenger.

See any holes in that one? How about every single thought.

Anyways, the guy blows stuff up, the UN is given power over the Avengers, there’s some fake talk about what is right, and Captain America and Iron Man split. The rest of the movie is a chase scene as Iron Man hunts down Captain America’s team and makes them all look sad in prison while we are constantly lectured about all the people who died that the Avengers didn’t care about.

The whole thing ends up in a CGI ice cave as we learn that the whole plot was a red herring just to make the Avengers fight. Yeah, ok.

Why I Really Disliked This Film

This movie is visually and spiritually dark. It is a nine hour two-hour-thirty-minute finger wag in your face stupidly accusing the heroes you have come to like of being cold-blooded murders. Not one single character throughout this film ever points out the millions of lives they’ve saved. Not one character outside the Avengers ever supports them at any point in this film. Not one single character ever gives a speech telling you why it is important that the Avengers be allowed to save people’s lives without first having to clear every sh*t they take with the UN. Even after the UN bureaucrats start imposing Nazi-like surveillance, sanctioning torture, and locking up the Avengers for disobedience no one suggests that they are wrong.

Only Captain America stands against them (with a couple blind followers) and all he does is whine about how bad he feels for everyone he’s killed.

Other than that happiness, the film is a depressing CGI assault of buildings being blown up by terrorist bombs or Avenger mistakes. The UN guys are monsters. The themes we run into over and over are “you killed my family and you don’t even know who they were!”... saw that a dozen times. Or you have Avengers admitting that they can’t control themselves. Or you have Bucky and Captain America talking about how bad things have gotten. Or you have Iron Man dealing with the death of his mother and father, which it turns out is a secret Captain America kept from Stark. You have Iron Man losing Pepper. Cap dealing with the death of Peggy Carter. The Black Panther dealing with the death of his father. How about Don Cheadle being paralyzed? Not a moment of this film, other than the airport, is light-hearted. It is an unrelenting downer trafficking in death, destruction and regret.

What’s worse, it’s all stolen! The film style was taken from Jason Bourne, as were the locations... all of them. The public turning against superheroes for the deaths they cause without thinking about the lives they save is so worn it should be considered abuse to use it. So is the weapon’s lab in the ice cave. Seen the prison too. Seen the vet recovering from being crippled. Seen the dead mentor, the “you killed my parents!,” the “you didn’t even care” and all the other “conflicts” too. Nothing in this film felt original. Nor did it feel organic.

A lot of people compared this film to Batman v. Superman, but that’s actually not the right comparison. This film is not Batman v. Superman... it’s Watchmen. This is a film about a group of corrupted superheroes who do the corrupt government’s bidding and find themselves banned because they scare people and now live in a dark cynical world.

Between this, the angry Fantastic Four and the trend toward “adult” (read: 30 year old man-child) storylies, this all bodes poorly for Marvel, which has seems intent on ending a golden age premised on films built around the interactions of fun, likeable characters as they fight villains who are destined to lose.

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Film Friday: The Jungle Book (2016)

Disney has been "re-imagining" their classic animated films as live action films of late. Most have done really well at the box office, though frankly, undeservedly so. As a general rule, they've been poor copies of the originals with a few nods to modern cynicism and washed out storytelling. The Jungle Book is better than most, but not by much. It is an enjoyable film, but it underscores the problems with modern Hollywood.

Plot

By and large, the Disney re-imaginings have followed the storylines of the original animated films. There are changes around the edges and new themes and angles added, but generally, these have been re-tellings of the same story. Jungle Book falls into that same category and it mostly follows the original story. The story begins by introducing Mowgli as a member of the wolf pack. There is a drought. The animals all gather around a disappearing watering hole and call a water truce. At that point, Shere Kahn (Idris Elba) appears and says he will kill Mowgli because the script calls for it.

The wolves decide that the only safe place for Mowgli is the human village. Bahgeera (Ben Kingsley) agrees to take him there. As he goes, Shere Kahn attacks and they get separated. This lets Mowgli run into Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) and Baloo (Bill Murray). Baloo tricks Mowgli into helping him get some honey he cannot reach and them promises to let him live a life of leisure in the jungle. Meanwhile, Shere Khan has killed the leader of the wolf pack and basically promises to keep killing hostages until Mowgli is handed over to him.

Bahgeera finds Mowgli again. He and Baloo argue. In the meantime, Mowgli saves a baby elephant with his gadgets. Oh, did I mention that Mowgli is every Asian kid ever put on screen by Steven Spielberg? Yep, he makes gadgets as needed to serve the script. (Good thing he's not fat or he wouldn't be able to stop eating.) Anyhoo, Mowgli runs away when Baloo agrees that he will only be safe in the village. This leads to King Louie (Christopher Walken), a bizarrely oversized ape inappropriately played like a mobster. Eventually, there's a final fight with Shere Khan.

Why This Film Wasn't Better

Generally speaking, Jungle Book was a good film. It held my attention and I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time or money. I do wonder though if I would have enjoyed it as much if I didn't have the original to pre-excite me about the film? I wonder this because throughout the movie I found myself most excited as I waited in anticipation to see how they would handle the introduction of the next iconic character. Watching the scenes themselves wasn't as interesting. So I wonder if I did not have a pre-love of the film coming in, would I have been as interested in this film? I'm not sure. One thing I do know, however, is that this film handicapped itself with a number of typical modern Hollywood mistakes.

The first mistake was the desire to fill every role with a famous actor: Elba, Walken, Murray, Johansson, Kingsley, etc. This has become par for the course in Hollywood because they think this will bring fans of the actors into the film. Unfortunately, few named actors are any good at voice work. And when you hire them to play themselves, as they did with Walken, you get some awful moments.

The problem here, at a fundamental level, was that many of the voices never fit. Elba and Kingsley were fine. Murray lacked the bass to play a giant bear and came across more as Garfield (a character his voice suited much more appropriately). Even without knowing the original Baloo as a comparison, Murray's Baloo voice was too small and too weak. Johansson was a mistake too. Now, I don't care that they made Kaa a woman, but they definitely picked the wrong woman. First of all, let's be honest: women in Hollywood are so interchangeable that there was no point in attaching a famous name to the voice. Her voice, like a bevy of other blonde T&A models, simply lacks interest, character or gravitas. It was entirely too bland to represent a giant, hypnotic python. For that, the voice needed to be more unsettlingly sweet. It needed a layer of menace. It needed an actress who could add those qualities to her voice, i.e. a genuine voice actress.

The real crime though was King Louie. The original King Louie is an amazing character. He's an insane-ish ape who has surrounded himself with fools so he can play the king who would be man. Voiced by the incomparable Louie Prima, he stand unique in the world of cartoon villains as a complex character who wants something so simple, yet so impossible, and wrongly thinks Mowgli can give it to him. Walken loses all of that subtlety, as well as Louie's charm. He plays Louie as if he were the Godfather, only with Walken's semi-retarded speaking style. This doesn't fit the jungle, or the movie, or the character.

None of these mistakes kill the movie, though Louie comes close, but they detract. Louie sucks. Baloo isn't all he should be. Kaa becomes forgettable.

The film does an amazing job with CGI, by the way. All of the landscapes are CGI and you'll never be able to tell. The sets are gorgeous and pull you into the jungle in a fantastic way. The only real flaw is again King Louis. His was made too large to make sense in this world.

The other problem is character. Character remains a problem for modern Hollywood, as again seen in this film. In the animated film, Shere Khan is pure menace with class, always acting with reason. Baloo is a true, loyal friend who just happens to be irresponsible when it comes to life. Bahgeera is a loyal friend, but a worrier. Louie we've already discussed. Kaa is a menacing villain, but a coward. And Mowgli... Mowgli really is the main character. The story is about him meeting these characters as he tries to run away from his fear so he can remain in childhood forever. He is eventually forced to face his fears, to grow up, and to become a man. This is symbolized in the end when Mowgli goes to the man village of his own accord to be with the girl.

The remake lost most of that. In this film, Shere Khan is menace for the sake of menace. His motivation in hating Mowgli is messy and confused. It's implied that it's part sport, part fear of Mowgli getting fire, and part revenge for an injury Shere Khan suffered while killing Mowgli's father. Baloo is Garfield... a snarky reluctant hero. Kaa is a plot point. And Mowgli... well, Mowgli's just passing through the film as we watch the other characters do their thing. He's not looking to grow up. He's not running from any fear. In fact, he's not afraid of Shere Khan at all. He's not looking to grow up or become a man either, and he doesn't leave for the village at the end -- he remains perpetually a child in the jungle. What drives his character eventually is revenge as he learns that Shere Khan killed his father... because every event in a film must be tightly connected to the main character these days. Heaven help you if the final fight of the film doesn't sprout from the seeds of cosmic destiny.

Hollywood has lost the ability to tell a story that can be universally understood. A boy running from his fears is universally understood. A boy becoming a man is universally understood. The struggle between the worrier and the irresponsible is universally understood. Villains who act out of self-preservation (Kaa), fear (Khan), and jealousy (Louie) are understood. These are all things each of us experiences in our lives and things we instantly recognize and understand. But this film has none of those. This film replaces all of that with a standard revenge film and a series of set pieces.

That's why even though this wasn't a bad film, it wasn't a great film either and it certainly wasn't anywhere near the level of the original.

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Film Friday: CHAPPiE (2015)

Though I doubt Director Neill Blomkamp would admit this, but his latest film CHAPPiE is Robocop 2. Robocop 2 was a fun, though flawed movie. CHAPPiE, on the other hand, sucked. In fact, they should have called it CRAPPiE. Skip this one.

The Plot

Robocop 2 is the story of a man who has been turned into a robot and now works as a police officer in Detroit. The evil corporation that built him decides they need to destabilize Detroit so they can sell their new combat robot the ED-209. They want to give the ED-209 a chance to show what it can do in terms of restoring order. To do this, they corrupt Robocop’s programming and make him useless, letting crime run rampant. Eventually, Robocop frees himself from the programming and he takes on the evil ED-209 robot built by the evil corporation and destroys it.

Now tell me if this sounds familiar.

CHAPPiE is the story of a robot who works as a police officer in Johannesburg, South Africa who gets turned into a man, or at least becomes sentient. A key employee (Hugh Jackman) at the evil corporation that built him decides he needs to destabilize Johannesburg so he can sell his new combat robot (let's call it, hmm, how about the ED-209a?). He wants to give the ED-209a a chance to show what it can do in terms of restoring order. To do this, he corrupts all the police robots and shuts them down, letting crime run rampant. Eventually, CHAPPiE’s friends teach him morality (or at least a sense of revenge) and then he takes on the evil ED-209a robot built by the evil employee and destroys it.

There is a twist at the very end which is meant to "elevate" the film, but honestly you won’t care. Basically, CHAPPiE is a police robot which gets destroyed by the evil gang from The Road Warrior. Rather than scrap him, the Indian scientist from Short Circuit realizes that in death, CHAPPiE has become alive. Don’t ask the film to explain it though, because it won't. Dr. Short Circuit tries to take CHAPPiE home to work on him, but he gets kidnapped by the Road Warrior gang who want their own police robot. Dr. Short Circuit gives them the robot and they name him and feed him and teaching him how to be white trash. Soon, he’s garbling his lines in ghetto South African, he’s wearing rapper gear, and he’s jacking cars. Isn’t that cute? Anyways, at the end, CHAPPiE figures out how to transfer his consciousness into another robot. He does the same for the dying Dr. Short Circuit and for the dead white trash chick who taught him nothing redeeming. Gee.

Oh, and he brutally beats Hugh Jackman to near death after Jackman kills the Road Warrior gang, including the white trash chick, and Dr. Short Circuit.

This Film Sucked

I’ve said for a long time that Neill Blomkamp is a leftist. Even as other conservatives bizarrely thought that District 9 was somehow conservative, I noted the standard leftist anti-white, anti-male, anti-police, anti-military, anti-corporate, and anti-capitalism themes and undertones. Then came Elysium with its nonsense anti-white, anti-police, anti-corporate, anti-capitalism, and pro-universal healthcare themes. Now we have this. This time, you have evil white capitalist ex-military types who want to destroy a sentient robot who is so gosh darn ghetto cute. The evil Road Warrior gang is entirely white, of course.

Still, I could overlook his politics if his films didn’t suck. District 9 was sloppy and uncreative without any appealing characters. It also felt a LOT like the miniseries V. Elysium was derivative nonsense that substituted propaganda for plot. None of its characters were appealing either. This one... this one is a poor rip-off of Robocop 2. This gives the film an uncomfortable “I’ve seen this story before” feeling. Add in all the not-credible moments that go unexplained – like how CHAPPiE comes alive, why he would have no programming when he did but would quickly get all the programming he needs, why Dr. Short Circuit randomly visits the robot but the Road Warrior gang don’t kill him, etc. – and what you get is a movie that feels like nonsense. And finally, add in the utter lack of appealing characters once again.

Seriously, these characters are impossible to like. Obviously, you’re not supposed to like Jackman or the Road Warrior gang or the corporate president (Sigourney Weaver). The people you are supposed to like are Dr. Short Circuit, the white trash couple, and CHAPPiE himself. But Dr. Short Circuit is a random character whose motives are unclear and who feels like a plot convenience. When he dies at the end it’s hard to remember that he was even in the film anymore. White trash chick ostensibly wants to raise CHAPPiE as if he were a child, but she’s white trash with an ugly accent and the values of a gang banger. Listening to her “mother” a robot with the Religion for Dummies take on a human soul is hard to take. Then her boyfriend trains CHAPPiE to use the same pigeon English they do, to carry himself like a drug dealer, to carjack people, and to hurt people (but it’s funny because they’re rich!!). That makes them and CHAPPiE super hard to like.

In fact, by the time Jackman shows up with his evil capitalist military ED-209a robot, it seems pretty clear that killing off all the characters would be best for society... and probably for them too. It’s hard to like a movie like that, especially when the director doesn’t seem to realize that the characters he offers as the good, likable heroes are all rotten sh*ts who need a delousing and a serious prison-yard beating.

Honestly, this movie felt like an insult. Blomkamp insulted my intelligence by trying to do a hidden remake of Robocop 2, and playing the robot as childlike. He insulted my political and moral beliefs with his themes. He insulted my cultural sensitivities by trying to shove this gang banger culture in my face. And he insulted my time by not doing anything interesting or original at any point during the movie.

I’m glad I didn’t pay to see this turd.

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