Category: Home Video

The Scorch Trials opened in theaters this last weekend, but since I have a toddler and am cheep, I watched its predecessor The Maze Runner on HBO Go.  I went in with pretty low expectations, with some notable exceptions, the YA (young adult) novel genre has not generated a lot of good movies, but I have to say The Maze Runner was a solid effort.

The movie follows a young man (Dylan O’Brien) who wakes up in an elevator with no memory, and at the top of the elevator he finds himself in idyllic glade.  The problem is that the only way out of the glade is through a giant ever changing maze that is full of monsters.  He and the rest of the boys in the glade will have to figure out the maze’s secrets in order to get home.  Wherever or whatever that is.

Much like all, or almost all, YA novel adaptations this movie takes place in a not so distant dystopian future.  Though unlike most YA movies at least you have no idea what is going on.  Even after watching the movie, I am pretty sure they have not explained everything to me.  The little extra mystery helps separate this movie from the rest of the ever increasing pack.  So much so that Mrs. Shmee almost wanted to drop off Lil’ Shmee with a babysitter so we could continue the filmic adventure.

The cast all did a good job.  I am not sure that anyone is going to make this film the first item on their resume, but no one turned in a bad performance either.  Workmanlike jobs all around.  It was refreshing to see so much competence out of a young cast.  Plus it featured Will Poulter from Son of Rambow, and I am all for any of those kids getting more work.

The special effects could have used a little more cash, but since they were used sparingly they didn’t detract from the film, and the direction by Wes Ball was fine.  Nothing stunning, but much like the acting and the story it was done well.  If you are getting the feeling that this was just a well made movie all around, you would be correct.

I don’t believe that The Maze Runner is going to be anyone’s favorite movie, unless they have a crush on one of the leads, but it was still a quality movie made by people who knew what they were doing.  If only most movies were as well made.  I stated in the intro to this review that it was a “solid effort”, and I do believe that is the best way to describe The Maze Runner.  Solid, and there are worse things being an entertaining and competent movie.

The International Federation of Film Critics has named Mad Max: Fury Road the best film of the year (their year runs from July to July), so it beat out quite a few major films.  This is quite the honor for an action movie.  I am not sure how well it will do come major award season, but hey if you had asked me a year ago if the new Mad Max film was going to be a major hit and be a critical darling, I would have laughed at you!  Looks like the joke was on me.  It might be time to buy the Blu-ray and watch it again!

When I watched Divergent, I found it to be a fine film.  Not great, but not something that I regretted watching.  The Divergent Series: Insurgent (roles right off the tongue) follows in that mold: solid acting, okay action, cool destroyed Chicago, average dystopian world, but where Insurgent changes things up is that its plot is terrible.  So this movie is not an upgrade.

The Divergent Series: Insurgent picks up soon after the events of Divergent with Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her cohorts in hiding.  Jeanine (the evil tyrant played by Kate Winslet) has blamed her attack on Abnegation (doctors and leaders I think, who knows) on the divergents which give her an excuse to hunt them down.  You see Jeanine needs a person that is 100% divergent to open a box for her and Tris may be her only option.  Yes seriously Tris is the only person special enough to open it.

The problem with this story is that the hero, Tris, has no agency of her own.  She is just in hiding dealing with her post traumatic stress disorder, and she would have happily (moppily?) continued to do so if Jeanine didn’t keep looking for her.  Maybe if Tris would have known about this box too it would have given her something to quest for, but when some guy tries to tell her about the box she literally (I don’t me figuratively) shuts him up.  It goes something like this, “Hey guys there is this thing you need to know about!”, and Tris responds, “Shut it old man we hate you!”  That may not be word for word, but it is closer than you would think.  So with this plot setup the evil Jeanine is the protagonist, and everyone else is just along for the ride.  Which is less than optimal since we are forced to follow Tris.

The acting is all fine.  There are a lot of good actors just going through the motions here, but they are pretty good at those motions.  It is a shame they didn’t have anything better to chew on, but they all have crying and stopping each other from walking away from each other down pat (seriously they got a lot of practice at that).  Nothing to highlight on a resume, but nothing to be ashamed of either.

It is unfortunate that the writers couldn’t have found more to do with The Divergent Series: Insurgent’s plot otherwise they would have had another okay movie on their hands.  As it stands however this movie can’t quite make it over mediocre.  If you liked the first movie it is not unadvisable to see this film, but I can’t quite recommend it either.  I hope our “heroes” are given more to do the third and forth times around.

When scrolling through Netflix Mrs. Shmee saw Transformers: Age of Extinction, and said, “Hey let’s watch that!”, and I inexplicably agreed.  I shouldn’t have, but I did.  I will say this: Michael Bay knows how to make his type of movie.  His finger prints are all over it: The slow motion camera rotations, actors group posing in front of amazing backdrops, creepy floor height shots of every woman on set, and about a million American flags.  To his credit, his movies sell, but they sure aren’t good.

I was going to try and give you the plot, but I am not sure that I have figured it out yet.  I can at least give you the setup.  Transformers: Age of Extinction takes place after the destruction of Chicago in the last movie, so the Autobots are no longer working with the US Government, and worse for Transformer kind that means they now are being actively hunted and killed by the Government with the help of a new alien robot.  You know because the Government can’t trust alien robots…

Quite a switch I know, but the real reason for this is so we can get new Transformers, and you would think with the voice acting talents of John Goodman and Ken Watanabe that would be okay, it isn’t.  The new Transformers are all terrible.  Not that it is Goodman or Watanabe’s fault, they just look ridiculous, and are given just completely rubbish dialog.  They don’t have conversations, they just say things.  Odd things, mostly about wanting to kill humans.  Which I guess given that we are hunting them down it makes sense, but they are supposed to be the good guys.

The rest of the actors don’t fair much better, so they just do their best to chew through screen time.  I mean it is like Mark Wahlberg just decided to play the SNL talking to animals version of himself.  I half expected him to tell Optimus Prime, “Say hello to your mother for me!”  Stanly Tucci similarly seems to just throw his hands up and act as crazy as he can.  The rest of the cast just gets to stand around and react to things.  I would love to see a copy of the script for Age of Extinction just to see if there is dialog on it, or just vague direction like, “act surprised”, or “say something about murdering humans!”  It was all so bafflingly poor.

Now all of this would be somewhat forgivable if the robot action was at least good, but Transformers: Age of Extinction is the worst of the bunch.  Yes, I know what you are thinking.  Yes, there are robot dinosaurs, but they are at very end when the movie moves to China for some reason.  They can’t save it, the action just isn’t very good.  Plus there are long (very long) stretches of time were nothing with a robot happens.  We are just left watching confused humans attempting to try and make this movie watchable, but for a movie with a two hour and forty-five minute running time, they were never going to succeed.

Now all my ranting about Transformers: Age of Extinction is for nothing, Transformers 5 comes out next year, and it is probably going to be worse given the downward trajectory of this already low quality franchise, but it will still make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, so we will get Transformers 6.  Mind blowing.  Don’t watch this movie (unless it is the RiffTrax version).  It isn’t good, and it is just encouraging Michael Bay.  In the words of Mark Wahlberg, “Get me my alien gun!”