It has been a while since I have phoned it in and just posted a trailer, so I am going to fix that today with a movie about fish! Finding Dory to be specific. It looks pretty good. Not mind blowing, but pretty good. I guess we will find out if it can live up to the original in a few short months, and maybe its sugary sweetness will take your mind off of the terrible presidential election.
San Andreas Will Have You Shaking For All The Wrong Reasons!
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.
Who Can Catch James Bond?!
Something very interesting is happening to James Bond, and it is not who will play the character next, but who will get to distribute the next set of films. Sony distributed the last four films which have all raked in over $500 Million a piece with the last two each taking in well over $800 Million, so lets just say every major studio wants a crack at the franchise. I don’t think there has been an opportunity for a studio bidding war for distribution rights as big as this one in the history of film.
Disney has been smart snapping up all the low hanging franchise fruit, but this time I don’t think the other studios will stand by and let them have 007 as well. Universal has been on a tare recently with three films crossing the $1 Billion worldwide mark last year so they will have some extra cash to throw at lucrative franchises. Meanwhile Sony doesn’t have a lot going for it right now in the way of mega-IP, so I am not sure they can afford to loose James. Lionsgate and Legendary both recently received major Chinese financial backing, and Bond does very well in Asian markets, so they both could make a play. Not to mention I am sure Warner Brothers will put in some kind of offer, even if just to make the other studios write bigger checks.
I can’t wait to hear how this turns out, and how many Millions ($$$) it took to get the famous spy back on screen. My guess is that Sony bends over backwards to keep the British double-agent in their corner, but that Universal, Lionsgate, and Legendary really make them pay for it. Disney and Warner have a lot going on right now, so I am not sure they could guarantee the commitment to the franchise that MGM no doubt wants. Whatever happens 007 will have plenty of gadget and tuxedo money.
Deadpool Is On Its Way To Being The Biggest X-Men Movie Of All Time And That Scares Me!
Deadpool’s amazing success has been a surprise to just about everyone. As of right now it has made almost $500 worldwide in just its second weekend. It only needs about $250 million more to pass X-Men: Days of Future Past to become the largest grossing X-Men movie ever. Since the movie only cost $58 million to make it has already generated about $150 million in profit just two weeks in. That is almost unheard of for a movie. This is a scary situation.
I think studio executives are going to try and create more ‘Deadpool’ movies, and I don’t just mean sequels (though we are sure to get tons of them). I mean cheaply made ‘R’-rated ‘funny’ superhero flicks. I bet they are going to pull out all the weird dudes out of the closet. I am sure Lobo has been greenlit without a script. What they should be taking from Deadpool’s success isn’t that people want raunchy superheroes, but that they want original superheroes.
People love comic book heroes right now, but they don’t want to see the same movie over and over again, and Deadpool was a great relief to the never-ending Avengers storyline. With Deadpool we got to see a ‘hero’ unlike any other, so superhero movie houses should be looking for more original heroes, or at least be looking for ways to change up their storylines, not just to recreate Deadpool. I am worried because I am enjoying the superhero movie golden age, and I would hate for greedy executives to bring it to end with a glut of bad ‘R’-rated flicks.
Tour The War On Drugs With Sicario!
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.