Review: Fantastic 4 (2015)

by Trent Crump
★★

 Okay, I think we've all seen the completely miserable other reviews for this movie by now.  It's currently got an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the critic aggregate.  (A 6% if you just include top critics.)  So it's completely terrible, right?  Pretty much everyone agrees.  Well, yes, it's a ridiculously made film.  It breaks the three act structure, it's actionless until the last 20 minutes, it's drab and arguably dull.  However, I do have a problem with people going by the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate on this.  Basically the site gives the movie an up or down vote based on each individual review.  However, not all bad reviews mean the movie is completely without merit.  And that seems to be the case here.  Sure, the film is a mess, but does it really deserve a score lower than the 2004 Catwoman film (9%)?  1997's incredibly maligned Batman & Robin (11%)?   1986's Howard the Duck (14%)?  In my opinion, no.

    This movie has been marked for at least half a year.  Reports had come in of massive reshoots, the director showing up drunk on set (or not at all some days), the studio getting cold feet and backing out of the agreed story after the director had been hired...  It was a mess.  The comic book purists didn't make things any easier by going after Michael B. Jordon, who plays Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) in the film because he and Sue Storm (Invisible Girl) played by Kate Mara, are supposed to be close brother and sister.  Kate Mara, is of course, white.  Now, the father is black, so I don't know why they didn't have a problem with Kate Mara instead (whose character was adopted as a child).   They insist it isn't a racial thing, so maybe it's just because the family was white in the comics and it's a (non-racial) purity thing.  I don't know.  I do think that over the past five years or so, it's become fashionable for people to pile on a movie based on studio/set turmoil and declare it a bad movie.  They did it for John Carter back in 2012 as well.  Was it horrible?  No.  Was it great?  No.  It was pretty mediocre.  They did it to The Lone Ranger, Green Lantern, and X-Men Origins as well.  Ok, those may have been pretty bad, but I still don't see the point of the practice.  It's a mob mentality that makes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  The people in love with the source material get restless and form a mob.  The studio gets scared.  They take it out on the director.  The director is over-ruled by the studio.  The studio basically takes over the picture, and we get something even worse.  

   That's exactly what happened here.  Now, obviously the director Josh Trank had issues.  He wasn't dependable.  His behavior here is why he has been pulled off the Star Wars movie he was set to direct.  The studio changed the script they had agreed to shoot, apparently, and this had made Trank despondent.  No excuse, but there it is.  They took out most of the action and we have this mess now.

    The story is pretty straightforward.  Reed Richards starts working on a transporter as a kid.  Ben Grimm, whose family owns the town junk yard eventually helps him with it after he doesn't turn Reed in for trying to steal a power converter.  Fast forward seven years and at the school science fair, the two are disqualified after their teacher sees no science in their experiment (which had worked).  However, Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue are there at the time and hire on Reed at the Baxter Foundation to complete his work.  See, what Reed had been working on had already been started on by the foundation under the guidance of Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell).  (Yeah, that name'll get you hired...)  Doom had left the project, thinking the world didn't deserve it, being the misanthrope he is.  However, Dr. Storm gets him to come back and help Reed.  Also joining the science team is Dr. Storm's biological son, Johnny, who has daddy issues and just wants to be a daredevil, but his daddy took his car away.  Long story short, they build the transporter and things go downhill for our characters from there.

    The big issue with the movie is that it's all build up.  They spend literally 3/4 of the film without a villain.  Without a fight.  Basically cooped up in a big laboratory.  It's not a fun movie.  There is one big fight in the film.  It lasts maybe 10 minutes, and it (and the movie) is over.  The first act?  Pretty interesting.  You have some character development.  You get to actually like Reed (which is better than the comics do, in my opinion).  You can see how fragile his friend Ben (who becomes the rock-monster The Thing) really is.  He's got a lot of anger boiling up inside.  I don't think I ever saw the character smile in this film. Even before he became The Thing.  Sue is shown to be sort of stand-offish.  She takes a while to warm up to Reed.  She and her brother clearly care for each other a lot but have a strained relationship due to Johnny's issues with his father.  The first half of the film is dedicated to the transporter being built and is all used for character development.  It's pretty great, if a bit boring at times.  The second half is where it all falls apart.  It's when they decided to make it a superhero movie, surprisingly enough.  When the characters get their powers, it's pretty depressing.  They are in pain, locked in cells, not told what's happened to them, and experimented on by the military.  Josh Trank, the director, wanted the powers not to be seen as a blessing at first, but as "disabilities".  And I liked that idea.  However, X-Men explored that better.  Here it just took up another fourth of a film that was running out of time to actually do something.  Well, something happens at the end of act 3.  The birth of Dr. Doom.  (This isn't a spoiler.  Dr. Doom was shown in the trailer.)  Now, Dr. Doom here is without mercy.  He kills people by making their heads explode as he walks by.  It's pretty cool, actually.  The problem is that he starts doing this 20 minutes before the end of the film.  It's like the third act is from a different movie.  How did this dark superhero movie get into my dark character study?  And it's not a good one.  Dr. Doom's plot is cliched to anyone who has seen Moonraker or Watchmen.  And it's not explained well either.  It just sort of happens and our heroes have to fight together.  At least with the Avengers it takes 1 1/2 hours for them to actually tolerate each other to agree to team up.  Here they dislike each other and all of a sudden are using teamwork pretty flawlessly.  

    In the end, it's not the worst movie in the world.  It's not even the worst of the year or the summer.  It is a fascinating train wreck that I hope we get a documentary of one day.  The behind-the-scenes drama sounds fascinating.  I doubt we get the sequel that had been greenlit for 2017.  They'll probably just reboot again.  I personally thought this was more interesting than the 2005 Fantastic Four film, which I hated.  Or maybe this is just one comic that doesn't translate well to screen.  I didn't hate this movie.  Heck, I even sort of liked the chances it took.  The special effects are, indeed, fantastic.  I have no love for the source material, so I wasn't wedded to it as many are.  However, just because one personally likes a film doesn't mean it's good.  This movie is not good.  It's not trash either.  There are way worse movies than this.  If anything it's mediocre.  Don't believe the teeth-gnashers.

Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★★

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” takes place about 10 years after the events of the first film. You’ll remember from the first film that James Franco’s lab assistant inhaled some of the drug they were using on the apes – the drug that ultimately gave the apes super-intelligence – and started coughing up blood. This is the beginning of the end for the human race. When the film opens, we learn that this virus has killed off a large chunk of the human population. The small pockets of survivors are scattered about and most blame the outbreak on apes, even naming the sickness after them.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) lives with his family and all the rest of the apes in the redwood forest north of San Francisco. They’ve created a peaceful habitat for themselves and don’t miss any human interaction. But one day, they run into a group of humans lead by Malcolm (Jason Clarke). Malcolm – along with his lady friend Ellie (Kerri Russell) and son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) – is looking to reroute the power from a dam in the forest to get the lights back on in San Francisco. They’re part of small group of survivors lead by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) who just want to reconnect with the outside world and see how many other survivors there are.

Most of the apes, especially Caesar’s right hand Koba (Toby Kebbell), don’t trust the humans. Koba believes that the humans will try to attack them now that they know they’re living in the woods. Based on the scaring covering most of Koba’s body, he has a reason not to trust them. But Caesar has seen the good side of the humans and believes that if they get their dam working, they’ll leave the apes in peace.

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is everything you’d want in a summer movie mixed with everything you’d want in the prestige award-contending films that open at year’s end. Director Matt Reeves (“Cloverfied”) has taken an exceptionally written screenplay (by Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver) and turned it into one of the year's finest films by focusing on what makes movies great: story and characters.

This easily could have been as flat and two dimensional as just about every other summer film we typically come across. But a focus on character and story turns what would have been a mildly entertaining popcorn flick into something much greater. I’m reminded of the films many people consider to be the greatest sequels ever made (“Aliens,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Dark Knight”). A new place will need to be made for “Dawn.”

The script is about as polished as anything you’ll see this year. And I’m not just talking about the summer movies either. The script is void of contrived plot devices, clichéd moments and stale character developments. The setting is a post-apocalyptic world, which we’ve seen numerous times before, but seems so original here. Reeves has been given so much to work with that he’s able to focus on all the different human/ape emotions and empathy with such ease. One of the best parts is the duality of human and ape built into the story. Each camp has its own protagonist and antagonist. And each camp is so similar in terms of empathy and rooting interest that it makes the outcome of the film difficult to anticipate.

How anyone can say what Andy Serkis does isn’t acting isn’t paying close enough attention. He is one of the most talented performers in film and very few probably know what he looks like in real life. From his work in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to “King Kong,” the man is a master of conveying emotions in every facet of his performance. Reprising his role as Caesar might be the best we’ve ever seen him. He channels Brando’s Don Corleone with shades of Eastwood’s Man With No Name in his performance. Every emotion in Caesar’s face – and especially in his eyes – is all Serkis. A computer animator can only bring so much emotion to the character being created. The genuine emotion in someone’s eyes cannot be artificially duplicated. That’s what Serkis does so well. He breathes life into his characters by completely embodying them. The level of detail to the apes in the post-production animation is virtually flawless that you forget you’re watching something completely fabricated. Combine that with the masterful motion capture performance by Serkis and you forget what you’re watching isn’t real.

It'll be difficult for the major studios to produce a better film than “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” this year. Reeves has delivered an unforgettable adventure thanks to stunning visual effects and a solid screenplay. Combine it with some of the best acting from an ensemble we’ve seen this year, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” transcends the genre to become a masterwork of what all sequels should aspire to be in Hollywood.

Review: The East

by Trevor Kirkendall
★★★★

With so many politically based films opening up in recent years, its easy to be turned off by them because they tend to take a stance and press some sort of agenda on the audience. But when a political thriller comes along and doesn’t do this, it demands to be seen. Take note, Hollywood. Not ever film based around a political idea needs to be a soapbox. This is what makes Zal Batmanglij’s latest film “The East” enjoyable. And its not only enjoyable, its one of this year’s best films.

Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) works for an intelligence firm called Hiller Brood who has been asked to investigate a new anarchist group known as The East. This group has promised several attacks on members of prominent corporations who they believe have been poisoning the planet with reckless environmental policy. Sarah is recruited by one of the heads of Hiller Brood (Patricia Clarkson) to go undercover, find and infiltrate this new terrorist cell.

Sarah lives off the land with other drifters and anarchists before having a chance encounter with Luca (Shiloh Fernandez), who helps her escape from sticky situation involving the police. He takes her way off the grid to a house where a group of people are living. She believes this to be The East. She meets Doc (Toby Kebbell) who is welcoming of her and Izzy (Ellen Page) who is a little unsure. She also meets the leader of the group Benji (Alexander Skarsgård).

They welcome her in and eventually warm up enough to have her assist with one of their attacks. Sarah is reluctant to help, but wants to keep her cover. She then starts to form a bond with the members of the group. She even feels a little out of place when the group goes on breaks and she heads back home to give her report to Hillar Brood and see her boyfriend Tim (Jason Ritter).

“The East” is not a film about the environmentalist stances and politics of the perpetrators, but rather about the relationships between those involved and their own personal struggles that turned them toward their anarchist ways. Observing all of this is Sarah, who does not possess the same desires as the group she’s infiltrated. She’s just there to observe, report and eventually help bring them down.

What’s refreshing about this film is that, just like Sarah, we’re here to follow along, not to take sides and ultimately we’re asked to draw our own conclusions. There is not stance “The East” takes that’s imposed of the audience. Its refreshing to not have a movie about environmentalists preach to us for two hours about their opinions.

Director Zal Batmanglij co-wrote the screenplay with Marling, and the outcome is one of the best written espionage thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. Usually the thing that plagues these types of thrillers tends to be the amount of red herrings thrown in throughout in an attempt to confuse the audience. There’s no need to be kept in the dark in “The East”. We know as much as Sarah knows and that’s the way it needs to be.

It’s all brilliantly scripted. There are a few lulls here. When they occur, they’re filled with exposition, but they’re not pointless. Long running, maybe, but every scene and every line has meaning behind it. You could probably go back and watch it again and find subtle nuances you didn’t know where there before. There’s nothing in the way of plot points buried so deep that they’re difficult to spot in one viewing. Second viewings probably won’t give you a better understanding of the story, but it could give you some more insight on these near-flawlessly written characters.

The tension is real and not contrived. The relationships don’t feel forced upon the audience like so many other films. There are many textbook elements present, but everything is covered with great precision so that it all seems organic. The natural flow to the story is a refreshing break from other films we see in the recent summer months.

Brit Marling hasn’t appeared in much before this, outside of a couple other Sundance films like “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice” (another film she co-wrote with director Batmangilj) but her performance is here is sensational. The internal conflicts her character goes through in this film – and there are many – are delivered to the audience with such ease. You never question her intentions or her motivations. Her presence on screen is commanding and she demands your attention throughout the entire film.

“The East” is one of the best films of the year thus far. There are very few dull moments, but they are very forgivable due to the complex nature of the story. Again, its not complex because its hard to follow, its complex because there’s so much depth to every element of the film. This film is a hidden gem that will no doubt become lost in the mix of the summer blockbusters and the big studio prestige films of the fall, but there is so much to like about this movie. Going out of your way to find is completely acceptable.