Category: Home Video

You know when a movie shows all its best clips in a trailer?  Spy managed to do the opposite.  Nothing about the advertising for Spy sold me on the movie, and I had completely forgotten about it until the Golden Globes where it was nominated for Best Comedy or Musical (it lost to The Martian).  After watching Spy I am shocked at how unfunny the trailers were considering I laughed non-stop through its complete running time.  Even the ending credits were funny.

Melissa McCarthy plays Susan Cooper who is over-watch, a person who provides intel from headquarters, for the CIA’s top spy played by Jude Law.  When her agent is killed and all the other identities of active CIA agents are compromised, Susan Cooper will have to become a spy to save the day!  It turns out she is pretty darn good at it.

There have been a lot of spy movie spoofs over the years, but Spy is one of the best.  The jokes are great and non-stop.  I should have guessed that would be the case since it was made by the people who created The Heat and Bridesmaids, but I think the terrible trailers and McCarthy’s Tammy scared me off a bit.  I will know better next time.

While McCarthy is the star of this film and delivers most of the laughs, the rest of the cast is top notch too.  Law plays the perfect 007 stand in, and Statham plays his overdramatic yet terrible spy with such zeal you can’t help but chuckle every time he is on screen.  Rose Byrne is an excellent evil yet funny villain.  What I am saying is that Spy is a group effort that really delivers.

Paul Feig is becoming one of the great comedic directors, and while I was worried about Ghost Busters being rebooted, after Spy I know the film is in more than capable hands.  It seems like every movie he directs is comedy gold.  Which is a trend that I hope continues.

Spy is an excellent flick.  Though a bit of warning since it comes from Feig and McCarthy the language can get a bit blue, so it is definitely not family fair, but if you are of age this movie is hilarious, and in retrospect it probably should have won the Golden Globe considering The Martian wasn’t really a comedy anyway.  Now I am really excited to see the new Ghost Busters!

Consider the stone dropped in the center of a still pond.

The air gently moves, rustling the leaves of the trees. Golden yellows, ripe greens, fiery red all dance in the breeze.

Ripples race across the smooth surface. The crane looks on.

The crane is staring at you. It’s black eyes fix your own. It is peering into your soul.

The ripples reach the edge of the pond. A snowflake lands on your cheek.

The first.

 

Conversely its sequel…

 

Consider the stone. Now look at me. Now back to the stone.

Oh, young love. Old love. Big drunken guy in love.

Now back to me. There’s a bald guy.

Foot balancing wushu.

Ninjas.

Dead. Undead. Credits.

Such is the unevenness of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in comparison to its sequel Netflix’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (CTHD:SD). The first is a contemplative film, shot amongst sweeping vistas, and eye popping wire-fu. The latter is a far more standard affair with a predictable plot and typical archetypes. CTHD:SD attempts at times to mimic the world and atmosphere of the first film, but more often than not comes off as a made for TV movie.

All the actors are fine, Michelle Yeoh can be in everything, but none are required to or give stellar performances. The fact that they all speak English is also disappointing, being the sequel to one of the most successful non-english films in the US.

Ultimately, Ang Lee infused Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with such contemplation and wonder that the sequel seems heavy handed and hollow. Had the first one been a more classic martial arts film the lower budget sequel wouldn’t have been so jarring.

Taken on its own CTHD:SD isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either. The fights aren’t super exciting or technical and they also seem to have an urgency to get to the talking parts. Really, if you are craving a good martial arts movie this will do to take the edge off, but it’s not a full meal. If your wanting something that stops to smell the flowers and contemplate leaves falling it doesn’t do that either. However if you want to watch a foreign film without British accents or subtitles… here you go.

I can see the appeal of a movie like San Andreas.  It has a likable lead and you are guaranteed a lot of action, I mean that is why I saw it, but you should stay far away from this flick.  Well, unless you are having a bad movie night, then it might be the right choice.  Its script is so bad it must have been written during the writer’s strike and they just forgot to update it.

If you came for Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson flying around in his helicopter while things fall apart, you will be happy for about half of this movie.  Watching LA and San Francisco get demolished is kind of cool looking.  So there is some enjoyment to be had as he flies all over California saving his family, but those moments are quickly squashed every time someone opens their mouth.

I mean the dialog in this movie is SyFy Original bad.  Except for the fact with movies like Sharknado at least the writers are in on the joke.  I am not sure what happened with San Andreas script.  I looked up the guy who wrote the screenplay on Wikipedia and I was shocked to see how much good stuff he has done.  Maybe he wrote an outline and Village Roadshow Pictures was like, “Great we film tomorrow”!

Usually I have something to say about the acting, but there is no point.  This script just leaves actors to fend for themselves, so while I could be hard on them for being wooden or stilted, I am just going to give them all a pass.  Especially Paul Giamatti whos job it is to hang around Caltech and say sciencey things.  It is a shame they couldn’t get Ben Affleck to come rework the dialog in his Batsuit.

All that being the case, the special effects are pretty cool, and for some reason it is always fun to LA and San Francisco tumble.  It is a shame people had to keep talking and that this movie was almost two hours long.  It would have been great as a forty-five minute Discovery Channel ‘what if’.

If you are in the mood to laugh-off Johnson, Giamatti and co saying stupid stuff while the world falls apart, San Andreas might be what you are looking for, but I don’t think the producers envisioned the audience shaking with laughter when they made this movie.  So if you aren’t in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of mood, watch something else.

Would you like to watch an action movie staring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin?  I would too, but Sicario is not that film.  That is not to say it is bad, as matter of fact it is very good.  It is just important to know what you are getting yourself in to with a movie, and Sicario is a slow burn tactical thriller about the War on Drugs during its height in the early 2010’s.

Emily Blunt plays Kate Macer an FBI SWAT team leader that has been assigned to a joint task force to take down a major Mexican drug cartel, but much like people watching Sicaio thinking it is an action film, the operation is not what she expected.  The longer she sticks with the mission, the crazier things get.

Sicario is a drug-land version of Alice in Wonderland.  Around every corner is something new and unexpectedly horrifying, but the viewer much like Kate needs to stick around to the end to see if any sense can be made of it all.  While the movie has a clear political stance it is smart enough not to give any convenient or easy answers to the complex problems the film represents.

With a cast as talented as the one in Sicario it is no wonder that acting is fabulous.  From Blunt’s wide eyed FBI agent to Brolin’s almost smarmy task force leader there is good work all around, but the clear best of show goes to del Toro as the mysterious and stoic ‘agent’.  While he is always in control you can see his violent and troubled past bubbling beneath the surface.

I love the way the director Denis Villeneuve depicts the ‘action’ in this film.  While it is no doubt violent it is shown in a matter of fact way.  These violent acts are being carried out by professionals taking care of business.  There are no Rambos here.  It is shocking almost how mundane it all seems.  These are their nine to five jobs.

Sicario was a crazy tour through Mexico’s drug war.  It was thrilling and alarming if not terribly exciting.  If you go in knowing you are going to watch, you are in for a very good film made a by a group of extremely talented filmmakers.  Though here is hoping we get that Blunt, del Toro, and Brolin action film one of these days.