I barely remembered the original "Zootopia" film from 2016. That is nine years ago, a long time for a sequel, and for a group of kids, forever. Imagine you saw this when you were eight, and loved it. Now imagine you are seventeen and a new edition is coming out. Do you think kids in their late teens are going to relate to the movie the same way they did nearly a decade earlier? I doubt it. So how is this going to work? It's simple, Make the film completely independent of what happened in the first movie, and that's what Disney has done.
The original film had pretentions of social relevance, using animals as allegories for human prejudice. If there were a Disney film that you could point to with a social justice agenda, "Zootopia" would be it. In "Zootopia 2" however, almost all of that intersectional thought has been put into one minor basket, and the film is now replete with animal puns, takeoffs on memes and references to other movies, almost all of which provoke a chuckle without an inkling of Social Justice. This is a buddy cop movie with fur.
The original characters of Judy the rabbit and Nick the fox, are back, and now they are partners in the police department of Zootopia. They are treated as rookies and the accomplishments they made in the first film are memory holed by the other cops so that the new partners can be belittled, and shunted to the side on important police actions. Judy of course is never going to be side lined and Nick is never going to be perturbed by anything. They are the usual mis match of Type A and Gen Z. A new plot crops up and of course, the duo are destined to get involved. It feels surprisingly like a Lethal Weapon film, only without the bloody violence. A ton of secondary characters weave in and out of the story, providing comic relief and plot points along the way. The fact that the new Mayor is the opposite of a mare, is a joke that will probably be missed, but with Patrick Warburton supplying the voice of the equine executive, who cares? he almost steals every scene he is in with his mane.
The convoluted plot is really just an excuse to run our heroes through a series of fun chases through the different parts of Zootopia, so that we can get in jokes about as many species as possible. The aversion to reptiles is as close as the movie comes to making any social comment, and the snake images are fun when we get to the climate control McGuffin that powers the plot. Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman are holding onto the original character voices and doing as much as a voice actor can to bring life to the animated critters.
The movie is good looking, and the music is fun, but if does feel long for a film directed at kids. There is actually more stuff that the adults will appreciate. My very young grand niece and nephew were a little antsy halfway through the film, but their Mom and Dad seemed to be engaged. It is a solid film, but I don't expect to remember it any better tahn the first film, regardless of how much money it makes.
The sense of relief I will have when this review gets posted is hard to explain. I have been as many as seven films behind in my goal to post on all my theatrical experiences. In addition to the number of films, there is the time delay from when I saw the movie to when a post finally went up, three weeks has been the longest I have ever fallen behind but now I am past that. This movie I saw two nights ago, and it will complete my most recent backlog of posts.
"The Running Man" was originally adapted for Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the 1980s. It was a pretty cheesy film, even for the times, but on a recent revisit, I thought it was much better than I remembered. The costumed killers that pursue Ben Richards were laughable, but they were fun. The themes of media manipulation and totalitarian control were however very nicely presented, and at least in the former, very prescient. This new version trods the same path, but with less wit and more complications than the original version had. It is however, still a lot of fun.
I have been a fan of Edgar Wright as a director for a while, the "Cornetto Trilogy" is a go to whenever I want to be entertained. I was disappointed when he walked away from "Ant-Man", but I can still see the influence that he had on that film. I am a little surprised to say that the new version of the "Running Man" while certainly quite good, does not feel particularly like a Wright film. There are some particularly good stunt sequences in the film, but I did not find them as manically amusing as the chases in "Baby Driver" or the combat in "Scott Pilgrim". They felt for the most part as if they could have been created by any of the talented action directors that churn out so many other films. My sense of heightened enjoyment was muted as a result.
Of the advantages that Wright's film has over it's predecessor, I would say the acting and the effects are the things that make this movie something you should see. I think Glen Powell is a solid actor, but his part here is too straight for the humor I was hoping for. Colman Domingo however leans into his role as the Network Host who can hype up an audience, bend the truth to stir emotions, and take what he is given and turn it into ratings. It was clear he was enjoying the part. The same can also be said for the most part for Josh Brolin, who as the network head with all the power, is venal, manipulative and gleeful while being so. Powell is not a weak link, his role is just not as strong during the chase sequences as it was in the first act of the film.
The scale of the chase is vastly broader in this version of the story, and that helps quite a bit in making the film feel fresh. The special effects and video surveillance elements of the story are even stronger. While it does go over the top in the plane sequence in the third act, it was easy to believe a lot of the process of the chase in the main part of the film. The vehicles, weapons and media all project a near future that is believable. The A.I. part of the story is to me, the most frightening element of the themes. Someone else can manipulate your persona with some technological wizardry. Unfortunately, that sort of technology is mostly available now and it is easily accessible. I see posts on Facebook that look like they could be Network Promos from this film. Reality is the victim in both the fiction of this story and in the contemporary world.
Because it lacks the outlandish characters of the 1980s film, this movie does not stand out from a bunch of other sci fi action films that have proliferated in the past couple of years. They are fine, but lack enough uniqueness to make them essential. This film is solid but you will find lots of films in the same milieu without even looking hard.
I have been behind on my posts for a variety of reasons, and the major one is that I have often been wrapped up in the LAMBcast Podcast that I host. I record and edit the podcast but I also try to produce an illustrated version for YouTube. It takes a lot of time to do that, so in an effort to catch up on my promise to cover everything I see in a theater, I am simply going to share the Illustrated Podcast for "Predator Badlands" here. The short version for those unwilling to listen or watch is that I liked the film quite well.
This was a film I had almost no expectations for, after hearing nearly nothing about it. There was a paid trailer in a pre show movie presentation at another film, and that was the first time I was aware of it's existence. The world has changed in massive ways when the presence of two Academy Award winning actors, in the same film, working with one another in most of the critical scenes, is not something the media is writing about, publicity is not building up, and the stars are not being showcased in countless venues. I am happy to say however, that I made the trek to the theater to see this, and I was very impressed with the screenplay and performances.
To begin with, the trials at Nuremberg are put into a different context than one might assume. Justice Robert Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court is a key figure in creating a framework for holding these trials in the first place. International rules of conduct did not exist, leaving a void when it came to justifying the punishments that the Nazi regime so clearly deserved. Michael Shannon gives us an intellectual legal scholar who is quiet, moral, and in some ways just over his head. Shannon gives Jackson dignity but also shows his willingness to manipulate the circumstances to fit his frame of reference. He is portrayed as a character who strives for justice, but gets stranded by the limitations his side created. The best moments of Shannon's performance are in his cross examination of Hermann Goring. His confident expression and attitude evaporate as he is flummoxed by Goring on the stand. While he is largely successful in confronting the number two Nazi, there is just enough ambiguity in the evidence to allow Goring to weasel his way out of accepting responsibility, and the look of defeat that Shannon puts on Jacksons face, is just at the right level. Richard Grant gets to save the day and the face of Jackson by following up with relevant questions that show Goring's duplicity. The relief on Shannon's face is discernable.
Rami Malek plays the psychologist Douglas Kelly, who is assigned to evaluate the prisoners and try to ensure their participation in the process by keeping them from killing themselves. He is able to convey earnestness and subterfuge very effectively on his angular face. The doctor is creating a friendly relationship with the most loathsome man on the planet, in order to protect the allies' integrity in the process. While he never seems to fall into the trap of sympathizing with the monster, he does avoid becoming the monster himself by treating his patient as a human being, a tough accomplishment. Dr. Kelly has some mixed motives because this opportunity might give him a chance to write a book which could secure a legacy in the field of psychology. Malek's role is the volatile part in the screenplay. He rants at the mistakes he sees the command making, he jousts with his patient both seriously and playfully, and he succumbs to emotions when dealing with Goring's family.
When I say the elephant in the room is Russel Crowe's performance as Hermann Goring, I could understand why someone would think I was fat shaming him. I have joked on my podcast a few times, that Crowe as a movie star makes my own visage much easier to accept. He looks like me not like Maximus or Jim Braddock. The fact that Goring was corpulent is a part of the story, as his health is a plot point. Crowe manages to suggest some vigor still in spite of playing the obese Reichsmarschall. Goring was described by Kelly as a narcissist, which was certainly true, and Crowe portrays him as an extremely confident and self assured antagonist. He is not leaning into a preening cock of the walk display of superiority, but rather an intellectual skilled at gamesmanship, who is potentially going to sew doubt in the validity of the premise of the trials in the first place. There is never any doubt he would be executed, but what it would mean, depends on him being revealed as the indifferent monster he was. Crowe gives his best performance in a decade, showing us a man who has convinced himself that he has done no wrong, in spite of being responsible for the murder of millions.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the solid work of Leo Woodall who plays the Sargent who is translator and ultimately confidant to Dr. Kelly. Justice Jackson's words give us the legal grounds for what transpired, but Sgt. Triest, as a Jewish German refugee, in the U.S. Army, provides the moral foundation that the audience will relate to. His quiet fury and desire for vengeance on one of the accused in particular, certainly seems justified, and his temperate decision at the end of the story, speaks volumes about the quality of the American's engaged in this precedent setting trial.
This was a thoroughly engaging film, with some intellectual heft and some fantastic performances. In earlier times, it would easily have been an awards contender and be named as one of the best films of the year. The standards by which movies are judged has shifted in the last few years, and it is likely that because the targets of this morality play are so easily already identified, the weight of it's value will be diminished. That is too bad. I however, am not compelled to adhere to a "correct" thinking standard, I I will just say, this is an excellent film, and your time spent with it will be worth twice that of some of the current awards contenders.
The vast majority of people who will be watching Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" on Netflix, which is the company that produced the film. They will certainly enjoy the film and there is a lot to admire about the movie. I had the pleasure of seeing the film in the environment that it should be experienced in, a movie theater. Netflix was wise enough to play the film for cinema goers for a couple of weeks before reverting back to being exclusively on their streaming service.
I have a great deal of respect for del Toro, and in fact I have seen all of his theatrical films. We did a directors lookback on the LAMBcast a few years ago and I made the effort to see everything so we could cover it completely on the show.[Episode #502 October 25, 2019] Unfortunately, it is an episode lost from when we changed over the podcast storage. (Jay mat have it somewhere).
Regardless, I can say as a result of that episode that I know del Toro's work pretty well, and I have opinions that are not always inline with others. "The Shape of Water" is not a film I feel fondly of, in spite of it being his Academy Award winner. It was sanctimonious without earning the righteousness, because the artificial construct of the society was so labored it did not feel real. "Frankenstein" on the other hand, regardless of the CGI environment that it inhabits, feels realistic the whole way thru. It starts with a terrific horror action sequence that sets up the bifurcated story that de Toro has in mind. Victor Frankenstein is examined from his childhood to adult mad scientist. We can see the seeds of his mania from the relationship he had with a doting mother and mercurial father. The arrival of a younger brother that is unlike him in most ways, does not set up a rivalry, but rather a sibling connection that sometimes feels tender and at other times exploitive.
The first part of the film gives us Victor's story, including the information about discovering his scientific breakthroughs. We also get a good bit of the professional world that rejects him, even though his knowledge far outstrips their own. The animated corpse that he uses in his demonstration is one of the many visual frights/delights that the film offers. Oscar Isaac is solid as the frustrated scientist. His initial disappointment with the creation is a little hard to understand, except it is clear he has very little patience. Christoph Waltz shows up as the uncle of his brother's fiancé, and he has the resources to help Victor, and a hidden agenda. As usual, he improves the movie with his presence.
Most people are going to remember the creature as embodied by Jacob Elordi. His range covers the pathetic innocence at first awareness, and then the disappointment that comes from knowing that he is different. Finally, and most compellingly, there is the rage that drives him to seek vengeance on the creator who abandoned him. The turn of the creature from mindless brute to thoughtful avenging angel is well developed and usually ignored in most of the monster movies that the creature has been featured in.
Mia Goth continues to be one of the great, underappreciated actresses of this era. She plays the fiancé of Victor's brother, and becomes an attractive nuisance to Victor. It is clear that the two of them could easily fall into a relationship that would be damning to both of them, and it is her moral center, as contrasted to Victor's nihilism, that forms the ethical spine of the story. She is both temptress and redeemer, but more for the creature than Victor.
The movie is gorgeous on every level, even the things in the world of the time, that are ugly, are spectacular to look at. This handsome production makes elaborate use of CGI sets and backgrounds, but it comes closer to reality than most of the out of focus backgrounds we get in most CGI heavy films. It looked particularly good on the big screen. The streaming service will be most peoples default viewing, and I can honestly say, you will regret that you didn't get to see this in a theater. This is one of my favorite films this year.
There is plenty of "Evil Dead" content on this site if you look around. The original film was one of those movies that terrified me at the prospect of seeing originally. Once I crossed the threshold however, I have not been able to resist the "Deadites" and any time one of these films comes up at a theater, I make the effort to go.
As part of the "Panic at the Paramount" Halloween Programming, we got a chance to see the original film presented with a live performance of the accompanying score. This presentation is apparently touring because my friend Aaron Neuwirth saw it in Los Angeles a week before we got it here in Austin. The score is performed by an ensemble of musicians rather than a full orchestra, but they are all quite good and there were no spots where I thought the sound was empty.
The band members are enthusiastic and the leader of the group encouraged the audience to get into the swing of things with cheers, screams and hooting or hollering as called for. It seems like the audience can fire up the performance with an engaged response to what they are listening to. This was a lot of fun and if it comes to your neck of the woods, (see what I did there?) you should definitely make the trek out to see and hear it.
As hard as it is for me to believe, I do not have a post on the original John Carpenter Halloween from 1978. I have seen this movie almost every year for twenty years at least, and I guess I never had the chance to go back and see it on the big screen until now. It seems like there must have been a Fathom Event Screening, but I looked on the site here and found nothing. So thank you Paramount Theater for giving me this opportunity.
Although not the first "slasher" horror film, that title must belong to "Psycho", John Carpenter's Halloween defined the genre in the late 70s and for the last fifty years has been the template for all the subsequent slasher films around. Obviously, the title "Halloween" helps make this a perennial, something it most certainly not have achieved under the original title "The Babysitter Murders". So much care was taken to set up the characters who are being stalked, it is different that almost all the subsequent films which make the victims into nearly nameless notches on the knife, axe, chainsaw of the killers in later films. The three main girls are introduced and each gets some moments to be a real teenager, before they become the target. Laurie, Annie and Lynda are average girls, with love lives that vary from the raucous to the non-existent. In the end it is Laurie, the virginal Jamie Leigh Curtis who survives and is remembered, but Annie had a well developed suspense scene in the film that is just as effective as the climax moments, at drawing a scared response from the audience.
Donald Pleasance is a little crazed as Dr. Loomis, although from what he knows, it is perfectly understandable. His sense of urgency does carry the pacing of the film in some of the spots where the killer is not on screen or actively pursuing he girls. I was a little nonplussed at the reaction of some of the audience at the screening. They seemed unable to adjust their post modern sensibilities to the late seventies context. They have seen scream too many times to know that the reason that meta narrative exists at all is that the original films took place. I felt a little like Randy at the party, I know the rules and why they existed in 1978, but no one else seemed to care. They did still appreciate the film, but I could not understand why they laughed at some of the moments in the film that are frightening or serious.
Anyway, I found the movie to be continuously compelling, and well shot, utilizing locations in Southern California that I grew up in as Haddonfield, Illinois. Michael Myers becomes an iconic masked killer and there is a long line of slashers that followed in his wake.
Director Robert Rodriguez was presenting the film with a surprise second feature, which was only revealed at the screening. It turned out he was planning a Carpenter double feature, by including Carpenter's next Theatrical Feature "The Fog"
I saw "The Fog" in it's original release and I have always liked the movie. It is a ghost story, told as a ghost tory with malevolent forces returning to wreak vengeance on the descendants of those who wronged them.
I like the fact that not everyone who gets murdered by the ghosts, deserves their fate. After all, furious spirits from beyond the grave are not always reasonable. This film puts Jamie Leigh Curtis in the story, but she is not really the star. If there is a featured performer it is the then wife of the director, Adrienne Barbeau. She plays the evening DJ at the local radio station and her studio is at a high point in the seaside community, so she can see the dangerous fog coming off the ocean, and she directs people to flee when it is clear that the fog contains the ghosts that have returned for their justice.
Jamie Leigh's Mom, Janet Leigh, is also in the picture, a nice bit of stunt casting but not one that was essential. Carpenter made running from the weather much more thrilling than Shyamalan did in "The Happening". It is a lot scarier to have the fog manifest as dead sailors bent on killing, than leaves blowing in the wind.
I can's say it all makes sense, but I like the fact that Tom Atkins gets played as a sex symbol and John Houseman tells a scary story to kids on the beach. All in all it was a ton of fun.
