MatM '15-'16: #40-39

Since I am still seeing things and I have the opportunity to think and look back a little bit as I write, I've decided to have a MatM Power Rankings at the beginning of the week. Rankings in real time, if you will.

Yes, I know it is not "technically" the beginning of the week, but fear not--Aloha is still the shittiest movie of the year.

February 8th Week Power Rankings

#50 Aloha (even)
#49 Entourage (-1)
#48 Terminator Genisys (-2)
#47 Pitch Perfect 2 (even)
#46 The Kingsman: Secret Service(-1)
#45 Dope (-2)
#44 Ricki & The Flash (-2)
#43 Woman in Gold (+1)
#42 Jurassic World (+7)
#41 Minions (even)

Onto more!

#40 Vevé

When I was 13, maybe 14, my friends and I used to talk about a drug called "qat". We had to literally no idea what it was. Some people claimed it was made of battery acid. Typically, this was used in a derogatory fashion: "Damn dude, have you been smoking that qat again?"

As it would happen, 20 years later I watched a film in which qat (more commonly spelled khat), was the forefront of the conflict. Khat is sort of like chewing tobacco, or maybe a little bit more like chewing a couple cups of coffee, a weaker version of cocaine . In East Africa, and the other countries in which it's grown, it's an important drug for the working class and farmers. In Yemen, 40% of the country's irrigation is devoted to khat.

In East Africa, the slang for khat is "vevé". Throughout that region of the world, including the film's locale of Kenya, vevé is a major trade. And in a continent rife with political corruption and dirtiness, you can bet your ass vevé has made its way into the government game.

So posits this movie and its two leads: Amos, a parliament member looking to become governor by any means necessary; and Kenzo, an ex-con whose father was murdered by Amos' people. Amos and his right hand man, Sammy (reeling from his wife's recent death and his son's addiction to sniffing glue...I'm serious) make their move for a bigger stake in the game amidst election season, while a fuming Kenzo attempts to assassinate Amos during a town parade. Shortly after he fails, he catches wind of Amos' foray into the world of khat and, along with his right hand man Julius, they launch an attack on his business interests. Meanwhile, Amos is married to Esther (Kenyan superstar Lizz Njagah) but has been anything but interested, driving her, in a convoluted and random fashion, into the arms of would-be-assassin Kenzo. Huh?

Vevé, like Traffic and the early Iñarritú films before it, rides the it's-all-connected wave until its conclusion. In this case, the dots don't link up quite like they should (including an unnecessary, annoying 'documentary filmmaker from the Western world' character) and the clunky, partially farfetched ending left me wanting much more. I've been pretty obsessed with East Africa since my time in Tanzania four-plus years ago (old blog tie-in!) and so I really enjoyed seeing a whole lot of that landscape. The performances were solid and there were good uses of both action and tension. The narrative, though, fell victim to trying too hard to be other movies.

#39 Far From the Madding Crowd 

A certain someone I know and I have never quite agreed on period pieces. I am well aware that programs like Downton Abbey and Outlander are prestigious and award-winning for a reason. But I just can't, try as I might, get into the plot lines. I had heard good things about this one, though, and I actually thought it was pretty decent.

...For a period piece.

Carey "Mumford" Mulligan has become the go-to romantic interest for a number of thought-provoking films. She first broke onto the scene with An Education, a movie where she is wooed by an older man in a time where such a thing was unacceptable. She would go on to be the lead in the gut-wrenching Never Let Me Go, the sex-addict's attractive sister in Shame, Daisy in Gatsby and the quiet, mousy love interest of my favorite film of 2011, Drive. In other words, she tends not to pick B.S. for a paycheck.

This is now the fourth cinematic iteration of FFTMC, based on a popular Thomas Hardy novel of the same name. It has been made in 1915, 1967 (starring Julie Christie), 1998 (TV movie) and again this year, a hundred years after the first try.

What made the story controversial for its time is the bullishness and independence of its protagonist, Bathsheba Everdene (And yes, Suzanne Collins has stated on record that this was the basis of her Katniss's last name) in an era where women were expected to put up and shut up. She is courted over the course of the movie by three gentleman callers: Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenarts), a sheep farmer; Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), an army sergeant; and William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a wealthy bachelor. The outspoken Bathsheba rejects Gabriel Oak's proposal, but hires him on as a farmhand anyway. Later, she meets Boldwood and gets proposed to again, and again says no thanks. Eventually she goes for sergeant Troy (after rejecting him a number of times as well), who thinks he has just been left at the altar by Fanny (Juno Temple). In actuality, he went to the wrong church, like an idiot. It will come to light, after a series of strange and tragic events, that he still has feelings for Fanny, and Bathsheba is left to ponder, and consider acting upon, the what-ifs.

Madding Crowd was interesting enough to not be a complete snooze fest, and it was less predictable than most of the same ilk, with a couple of curveballs thrown in to stir the stew. If you like this style of film, it's definitely worth seeing, and it's nice to see a heroine who doesn't settle.

I'm off like Carey Mulligan on this here horse! Yah, Rusty! Yah! (kicks spurs, pulls on reins, etc.)

MatM '15-'16: #42 & #41

So as we near the end of week one, I will take a look back at everything I've ranked so far and try out a "Power Rankings" on Monday because I think there needs to be a little bit of shifting. Unlike in sports, where teams move up and down the power rankings based upon wins, losses and impressive performances, these power rankings will be 100% subjective.

We end the 40s with:

#42 Ricki and the Flash

For years, we of the Twin Cities ilk couldn't help but mentioning, if she came up in conversation, that stripper-turned-screenwriter-turned-author-turned-director Diablo Cody hailed from Minneapolis. Her snarky, feminist, pop-culture musings were enough to earn her an Oscar and officially canonize her as one of the most sought after writers of the oughts. From Juno to the Megan Fox horrocomedy Jennifer's Body, to creating the critically-lauded Toni Collette quadruple-persona'd United States of Tara and to the criminally underrated Charlize Theron showcase Young Adult, the girl, nay-woman-was on fire.

Then, an uncharacteristic speedbump. Her directorial debut, 2013's Paradise (I honestly don't even remember it coming out) is the story of a young conservative played by Julianne Hough who survives a plane crash, denounces God and heads to Vegas to sin.

Apparently, it's really, really bad.

So while Ricki is certainly not Paradise bad, it's not Cody's strongest. Her usual wittiness didn't come through in quite the same way that it did in her earlier work, and there were moments, especially in a scene involving Ricki (Meryl Streep) and her lover and bandmate Greg (Rick Springfield) that felt like a daytime soap. Ms. Streep is solid as usual as the titular Ricki (actual name Linda) who, one night after playing a gig in her cover band the Flash, gets a call from ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) letting her know that her daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, real-life daughter) has been left by her husband and is in the middle of a pretty legit breakdown, i.e., get your ass on the next plane back to sunny Indianapolis.

Easier said than done. Her day job is bagging groceries, and most of her now adult kids haven't seen her since she left to pursue rock stardom years and years before. A couple of Julie letting-her-have-it scenes and an excruciating family restaurant dinner later and we are all caught up; the big reveal being that the one of her sons who isn't gay is getting married, and wasn't initially planning to invite her. So will she keep her shit together long enough to win everyone back over?

Streep is always worth seeing in just about anything, and she really does capture the nuances of someone stuck somewhere between old regrets and current routine. As a mother, she tries tirelessly to convince her kids that she cares, despite the years of relative radio silence. The cast does what they can with the sometimes cheesy material. When it connects (usually because of Streep), it's a hit, but often it just doesn't. I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of el Diablo, and I hope that Ricki's character isn't representative of Cody's future work--an aging rockstar trying to catch the comeback wave.

#41 Minions

The fact that a Despicable Me spinoff featuring Gru's little yellow goggle-eyed overall boys with the incoherent speech got made didn't surprise me in the least. What did surprise me is that it took them this long. Try to think of a funny part in either of the Descpicables that didn't involve a minion and it'll probably take you a while; when I heard kids talking at work over the years, it was always the minions lines and actions, not Gru's, that were being discussed and dissected (if I have to hear a kid say "bah-na-na" one more time...) . Could they, or at least three of them, carry a whole movie?

They're awfully cute, though a whole hour and a half of them got to be a tad much. Minions tells the origin story of how they got from the beginning of time (!) to their current master. In a pretty great montage, it shows them obeying and subsequently screwing up life following orders from a dinosaur, a caveman, Dracula, and multiple abominable snowmen. Kevin the minion has had enough, and he grabs up both Bob and Stuart and heads to New York to find a master. This is late, Vietnam-era, 1960s. They catch wind of Villain-Con in Orlando and end up hitchhiking down there with the "Nelsons" and family (Michael Keaton and Allison Janney). At Villain-Con, they fall head over heels for Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock) and end up accidentally winning the competition to become her henchmen after she's kicked basically every ass in the building. Scarlet, the trio and her husband Herb (Jon Hamm) head her lair and begin to hatch a plan to steal Queen Elizabeth's royal crown.

Little, yellow, not that different. A cute movie that is plenty of fun but plenty repetitive by the end. Like nuprin, maybe they're better in small doses.

MatM '15-'16: #44 & #43

Happy friends day, whatever the hell that means!

Onto the movies.

#44 Woman in Gold

There are a handful of movies, none more popular than Raiders of the Lost Ark, that paint the Nazi regime as a group looking to not only squash entire cultures under their boots, but also claim their most important artifacts as their own. In last year's Monuments Men, an entire group of US Army was dedicated to the cause of retrieving these stolen relics. Woman in Gold, also based on a true story, follows the successful recovery of Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bauer-Block" from the country of Austria.

When the Dame Helen Mirren is involved in a film, it often gets pitched as some sort a "prestige piece". It goes without saying that she has earned her respect--I mean, she's a Dame! But with great respect comes great filmic responsibility, and often times she is asked to carry a little too much of the load. Such is the case for the latest Dame vehicle.

She plays Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee in her 80s living in Los Angeles. When her sister dies, she recovers letters from the 1940s that discuss the family's attempts to recover art taken from their home during the occupation, chief among them the Klimt painting. As it would happen, Klimt has gotten awfully revered between then and now. Altmann hires Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her get it back and they make their way to Austria (cue childhood flashblacks apelenty). Turns out Austria is not so willing to give it up; the portrait, now housed in the national gallery, has become a major part of Austrian culture as a whole. Plus she can't lay claim to it, as the painting was not technically owned by her aunt. Womp womp. Reynolds' character, who initially can't stand being around Altmann for more than a few minutes at a time, becomes invested in fighting this damn thing once they lose.

Mirren is great as usual and Reynolds feels miscast. He is one of those actors who only works when he's allowed to act in a certain style, and in his case, it's when gets to drop one-liner bombs, a lá Van Wilder, Blade III, the upcoming Deadpool. I'm not saying he can't do serious, but this one felt like a struggle, a doberman on a leash. The movie suffered from overdoing it on the sentimentality front, finding ways to inject unnecessary flashbacks and cello swells when it could have gotten away with more present-time Mirren. It's an uplifting story (spolier alert) all in all and anything with Mirren is always worth a college try. I just wish that her struggle, her battle, the injustice of it all--wasn't beaten over our heads.

#43 Dope

Coming of age movies that take place in the inner city are tricky business. How do you tow the line between stereotype and reality? How do you prevent having a protagonist who young African-Americans can identify with that you don't necessarily want them to emulate? These can run the gamut from good kid pushed to the breaking point (Tré in Boyz in the Hood, Craig in Friday, Omar Epps' Malik in Higher Learning) and those that profit from the mayhem (O-Dog in Menace II Society, Tupac's characters in Juice and Above the Rim). The loose cannons often serve as a cautionary tale to a degree, ending up arrested or going out in a rapid-fire blaze of glory. But they are also the characters that end up idolized--rich, powerful and fearless, surrounded by women. Who wouldn't want that?

This year's indie darling struggled to find its identity throughout the course of the film. Maybe that's appropriate, considering that the protagonist, Malcolm (Shameik Moore) dealt throughout with issues of identity. I definitely appreciated that about Dope; Malcolm's persona was pretty different (The movie's tagline was "It's hard out here for a geek") and ultimately I think director Rick Famiyuwa (The Wood, Brown Sugar) wanted people watching it to come away feeling like being different was okay.

That being said, is a Dope coming of age movie in the ghetto? Is it social commentary on the freedoms of kids in a certain socioeconomic status? (I know it was senior year, but there was about a minute and a half of mother and son time) Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Why did seemingly everyone in the whole movie have a gun?

Malcolm plays in a band called Ahhreeoo with his best friends Diggy (Kiersey Clemons, hands down the best part of the movie) and Jib (Tony Revelori, the lobby boy/lead of Grand Budapest Hotel). Somehow, they have their instruments set up at all times in a room off the auditorium. Whatever...senior year, right? They ride colorful bikes, wear colorful clothes, get straight A's (Malcolm is working on his entrance essay for Harvard throughout the film) and try to evade getting beat up for their Jordans. One afternoon, they reroute their way home as part of a pummeling avoidance scenario and end up in Inglewood, where Malcolm bumps into Dom (A$AP Rocky, surprisingly good in his first turn as an actor), a drug-dealing acquaintance, leaning up against his car. He has him go talk to Nakia (Zoë Karavitz) for him to invite her to his birthday party. Malcolm is immediately smitten. Nakia accepts, and Dom invites Malcolm and his crew to tag along. After some hijinks, the three under-agers end up in the club shooting liquor, dancing, vomiting, repeating. Shortly after Dom steals Nakia away from dancing with Malcolm, the club is shot to hell by what looks to be first rival gangs and then eventually the DEA(?) In the ensuing madness, Malcolm grabs his backpack and Nakia and hightails it out. On the ride home, he asks her to prom she says she'll consider. Not until the morning does Malcolm realize that Dom has put pounds and pounds of party drug molly--and a handgun--in the backpack for safekeeping.

That's where I'll leave it, both because a) I don't want to give away much more of the plot and b) shortly after this is where the movie started going off the rails for me. It turns from interesting narrative to a slapstick caper with far too many absurd interactions and coincidences that drive the now mostly unrealistic story to a conclusion. One of these coincidences - tying together the drugs and the Harvard application- is borderline offensive. Blake from Workaholics stops by as a seasoned drug dealer and hacker (because yes, now they suddenly need one of those) and spends most of his onscreen time trying to posit to the trio that it's totally okay for him to use the n-word, which it isn't.

There were things about Dope that were great. Sections of dialogue worked really well, the 90s hip-hop soundtrack was appreciated, and I liked many of the performances - especially the show stealing Kiersey Clemons as Diggy, the street - smart lesbian tomboy making the most of a man's world. It was all over the place, though, and the plot veered in a way that it shouldn't have. A couple of silly montages, lowbrow moments that didn't need to be there and unfeasible situations detracted for what could have been a much stronger movie. 

Still, kudos for Malcolm for keeping it real.

MatM '15-'16: #45

This morning, I woke up earlier than usual to attempt the snowy commute up the highway to work. When the cheerful alarm sounded at 5:45 on my Samsung Galaxy S5, I noticed a missed call, a voicemail and a text message. Hopeful that it was the bosses calling to alert me of a snow day being announced, I frantically scrambled to check.

The missed call, text and voicemail were all from my friend Mike. They had all come in at 4:30 am. I kept in mind that on the east coast it was an hour later, but knowing him, I inferred that it was probably a "still awake" communication rather than a "just getting up" one.

The text message read:

"Ur Instagram got hacked. There's a lotta *expletive*s on it right now. You may wanna secure ur biz before you get to class"

Sure enough, there were indeed a lot of *expletive*s on my Instagram. About 88 pictures worth.

The expletive in question was in reference to the female anatomy.

The account appeared to be from Russia, which made it even more upsetting since I am something like 1/8th Russian.

How could you do this to me, Mother Russia?

I spent a good amount of time deleting every single of one of the pictures, turning my account into a private one, changing my password. It took quite a while and was one of the least pleasant mornings I have encountered in a long time.

In fact, I stomped out of the bedroom shouting "*Expletive* Russian *expletive*s!"

In my 34 years on planet earth, this was the first time I have uttered this at 6:05 in the morning. Will it be the last? Who's to say. I kind of hope not.

All that to say I am not exactly pumped about social media at the moment. The reviews may be a little more brief today.

As often is the case during the countdown, my thoughts tend to change on some movies after they are already ranked. Admittedly, I may have been a little harsh on Jurassic World, regardless of how disappointed I was in it overall. As I was writing yesterday, I felt like I was describing movies that were worse than JW, and that's because they were.

Maybe the rankings will be a little more fluid, almost like an ESPN power rankings. At the beginning of each week I can adjust accordingly...? I'm not expecting JW to all of the sudden crack the top 20, but it probably deserves (a little) better.

Anyway...

#45 Kingsman: The Secret Service

Matthew Vaughn first appeared on the scene as the homie, the consigliere, the right hand man of Guy Ritchie, producing Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels as well as Snatch. His directorial debut, Layer Cake, an action-packed drug caper more straightforward than then either of the first Ritchie films, did two things: 1) made the best use of Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" ever; and 2) introduced the world to Daniel Craig as a sleek, sexy leading man. Yes, Layer Cake (and to a lesser extent, Munich) was essentially Craig's audition for the role that would define his career as the 8th 007. From there, Vaughn as a producer and director has served up both strikeouts (Kick-Ass, X-Men: Days of Future Past) and walks (Swept Away, the latest Fantastic Four, X-Men: First Class).

Kingsman stars Colin Firth as Harry Hart (A.K.A. Galahad), a member of the mysterious group of secret agents whose code names correspond to the Knights of the Round Table (hence, "Kingsmen"). After one of the agents dies in action, Hart visits his widow and young son to give them a posthumous medal of valor; on the back is his contact info if they need anything at all. Fast forward 17 years, and the Kingsmen are looking to replace their recently vanquished Lancelot. The son is now grown up and goes by, of all things, Eggsy. After Eggsy gets himself in a legal scrape involving a joyride in a stolen car, he's bailed out by Hart, who, as it turns out, has had an eye on him for years. He invites him to join the other recruits vying for the open slot in Kingsmen, where they will take down villainous tech mogul R. Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), whose henchwoman, Gazelle, killed Lancelot--on his orders, with her prosthetic legs that double as swords.  Firth does well in a rare turn as an action hero, and Taryn Egerton shows promise as Eggsy.

A lot of people really liked Kingsman --and trust me, I get the appeal--but for the most part, I couldn't get into it. It was at least 25 minutes too long. The whole "speed-up to show the POV of the bullet/slow-down to show teeth flying out of jaw" thing that is so big in action movies these days was used way too often, almost more like a narrative device than a cinematic trick. And Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine was playing an over-the-top caricature of Samuel L. Jackson; more like Chappelle's impression of him than himself. There was a sequence in the middle (chock-effing-full of speed-up/slow-down) in which a whole church full of people (Firth included) hears a signal programmed into everyone's sim cards (uhhh) by Valentine that causes them to go berserk and more or less fight to the death. This was when--for me, anyway--Kingsman finally tipped the scale from silly and exaggerated to full-on jumping the shark.

Back with more hacker-free (hopefully) 2015-16 movie recaps tomorrow.

MatM '15-'16: #48-46

Más peliculas! Sí! Sí!

#48 Entourage

There are some television shows you watch simply because they're there on, and they're mindless, and they present a sense of escape. Entourage was one of those shows.  By the end of the run, the gang looked physically exhausted, well-aware that they were marching out the same tired plotlines and broisms for yet another year. It's less cute when you're this old.

Entourage was at its best when it took risks. When Billy Walsh showed up in maybe the 3rd season, the whole dynamic changed and they stepped out of their comfort zone, and it worked. The penultimate season, which showed Vincent Chase's fall as he gets addicted to drugs and hooks up with Sasha Grey was possibly its best, and a lot of that was because Adrian Grenier's whiny movie star finally showed a little bit of depth. By series end, though, the show reverted back to its usual dick jokes, objectifying and utter excess.

The last time we saw E, Vince, Drama, Turtle and Ari on screen, Eric had tried to get back Sloane through a convertible ride and a little light trickery, and Vince and the boys were aboard a flight to Paris so that Vince could marry Sophia the journalist (Alice Eve), who relents even though she "doesn't date actors". A million-dollar engagement ring will do that to a lady, I guess.

It wasn't met to be. The Entourage movie picks up not long after the series left off and they're still unmarried assh*les. Now that his nine-day marriage has come to an end, he is free to host a party on a yacht. Phew-we were so worried. Ari, now the studio mogul, has offered Vince Hyde, a techno-DJ reboot (!) of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. "On one condition," he tells the temperamental Mr. Gold, "I have to direct it."

PSHKKEW! (my mind blowing right there in that Roseville, Minnesota movie theater)

8 months later, the project is bloated and over-budget, Sloane is bloated and about to deliver a baby, ex-bloated Turtle begins trying to court Rhonda Rousey, and Drama's bloated ego has him as delusional as ever. Vince somehow requires more than the $100 million dollars already allotted to him to finish his--I'll say it again, techno DJ Jekyll and Hyde reboot--masterpiece, in which Drama believes he will earn a best supporting actor nod. Ari can't give him any more money, but he has a Texas financier who will (Billy Bob Thornton). He agrees to pay up, as long as his son can travel to Hollywood and oversee the spending.

Enter: Chubby Haley Joel Osment!

Yes the former child actor, he of "I see dead people" and "Walker: I have A.I.D.S." fame, is back and is somehow even creepier than when he crawled under flashlight tents and leered at Bruce Willis. His character is meant to be creepy; when he comes into the picture, both Vince's movie and the movie we're watching, get derailed. The rest of the movie involves them trying, like usual, to do a lot of convincing: Convincing Ari to have their back, Ari convincing the Alan Dale character not to fire him ,convincing people that Drama is somehow relevant, convincing Haley Joel Osment and Billy Bob not to pull their funding.

Despite myself, I had fun at this movie. Entourage will always be fun to watch. It doesn't mean that it was any good.

#47 Pitch Perfect 2

There's a moment toward the beginning of Pitch Perfect 2 that is almost, well, pitch-perfect. The Anna Kendrick-led Barden Bella female singing group is performing at the Kennedy Center. In the crowd are Barack and Michelle, enjoying themselves until Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), paying homage to Miley's finest hour, has a clothing mishap and is forced to slowly hang there, much to the chagrin of the Leader of the Free World. The close up on Obama's face and his reaction caused me to guffaw in the theater.

And it was all a 45-degree sleigh ride from there.

Yes, the enjoyable acapella movie Pitch Perfect is followed up this year by the much less enjoyable Pitch Perfect 2, in which the same tropes apply, except now they're being done for the second time.

Rebel Wilson is best when she is a bit player, which is why her new movie with 50 shades of Dakota Johnson will probably not be that great. Pitch Perfect 2  relied far too heavily-no pun intended-on Rebel Wilson to carry the comedic load. It felt like it was workshopped to some sort of focus group and they said "We want more Fat Amy!"...And then they overdid it to death. Some of her moments were funny and she had a few good lines here and there but it felt like they made it more her movie than Anna Kendrick's.

Two other major problems:

1) The Hailee Steinfeld plot. She plays freshman Emily, who's mom (Katey Sagal) was a Barden Bella and wants her to follow in her footsteps. So she'll go through all of the hazing and rigamarole required to be a part of the gang. She is even--get this--writing her own songs, which will come into play later in the film when they are in the international a capella competition Steinfeld is by no means a bad actress, but every time she opened her mouth in PP2, I wanted to cry a little bit.

2) Das Sound Machine. They are the main competition for the Bellas in the international competition, and they are every bit the serious, robotic stereotype that you'd expect. It reminded me of when the Mighty Ducks have to go up against the stoic Icelanders in D2, except that they actually felt like villains. They provide a smorgasbord of stupid, poorly-written one liners throughout the 90 minutes.

If there was one saving grace, it was the musical numbers, which looked and sounded just about as good as the first movie. For a movie that's all about hitting the right pitches, the majority of the characters (the slutty one, the lesbian one, the quiet Asian one) are one-note as hell.

#46 Terminator: Genisys

Hey Arnold, did you hear you are going to star in a movie with not one, but two versions of yourself??

This movie review, full disclosure, will probably be less of a movie review than it is an excuse to use two Arnold Schwarzenegger gifs in the same post.

A certain someone I know hadn't seen any of the Terminator films, save the one with Christian Bale in which he infamously had a complete meltdown on set. Not the best impression of the Terminator series. This injustice would not stand. Over the course of 12 hours, both The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day were taken in, to largely positive results. I was reminded that at the time of release, The Terminator was a hard "R".  Pretty wild...these days, there's more disturbing violence showcased in a single episode of Scandal than in the entirety of Terminator.

Those of us who are familiar with the Terminator lexicon can tell you that the main story unwraps like this: In the not-so-distant future, a resistance against the evil Skynet corporation is being led with good success by a revolutionary named John Connor. Skynet counterpunches by sending a killing machine back to the eighties (Schwarzenegger) to wipe out Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to John. In a counterpunch to that counterpunch, the resistance sends back Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to stop this from happening. In T2, John Connor is now an adolescent (Edward Furlong) and SkyNet tries again, this time with liquid metal shapeshifting badassery in the form of T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Meanwhile, future John Connor is ready, and sends back a reprogrammed model of the original Terminator (Schwarzenegger again) to protect his younger self. Cue excellent chase through L.A. "river" to  the sounds of Guns-n-Roses "You Could Be Mine". Cue also: iconic biker-gloved thumbs-up whilst being lowered into molten metal.

The plots of the following three installments have unfortunately left a bit to be desired. T3 is John Connor as an adult, trying to stay off the grid by posing as a drifter and outrunning a female cyborg with assistance again from the big Austrian; Salvation takes place in the future features Sam Worthington as a half-human, half-cyborg who comes to help Connor (Bale) fight the machines, and Genisys...well...

It's essentially the same plot as The Terminator. In that sense, it was kind of fun to see the day after seeing the first original again. Here, though, Reese (Jai Courtney) encounters a different version of the 1984 events when he's sent to save Sarah (GoT's Emilia Clarke). Schwarzenegger is now "The Guardian". In the somehow endless amount of time and resources at both future John Connor and SkyNet's disposal, they've actually already tried to kill Sarah back in 1973, when original Terminator is thwarted by "The Guardian", programmed of course by John from the future. So now when Reese comes back, she already knows about him and has been expecting his arrival, leaving Reese, "Guardian" and Connor herself to fight against a new T-1000 and try to fix the broken timeline.

Whaaaa...?

Action sequences: pretty solid. CGI: pretty solid. Dialogue: bad. Plot: confusing. Plot twists: Too many (everyone meets and talks to different versions of themselves throughout time). Reese watching Sarah Connor's sexy shadow as she changes in a locker room: Unnecessary. Schwarzeneggers together on screen: not enough.

I was on a 10 day healthy eating cleanse at the time, and I tried to eat a grapefruit in the dark movie theater, with mixed, mostly negative results. I said to the grapefruit:

...and finished it off with my bare hands.

Back tomorrow!

MatM '15-'16: #50 & 49

Welcome, dear readers, to the 2015-2016 edition of the annual Mulhern at the Movies countdown!

One benefit of not being a paid movie critic, and I’ve written this before, is that I’m not contractually required to see things like, say, the Fantastic Four reboot. Or Ted 2. Or Hot Pursuit. I can be a little more selective. It is more rare these days that I sit through egregious heaps of flaming garbage, but every now and then it happens. The majority of the movies are at the very least pretty good, or maybe they have a few redeeming qualities. Much of this has to do with the fact that I’m seeking out decent shit that I’m interested in seeing. Depending on the year, therefore, the difference between like, #46 and #31 is pretty minimal. 

Here, then, is the weakest of the decent (in theory) shit that I sought out.

#50 Aloha

Almost 30 years ago now, a relatively unknown filmmaker thrust a bumbling romantic in a tan trench coat onto the world. His name was Lloyd Dobler. He was in love with Diane Court, and he would do whatever it takes to land her, including standing outside her window with a boombox over his head, blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” in a moment that would be revered and replicated ever since, a moment that has become the visual equivalent of “finally getting the girl”.

That filmmaker was Cameron Crowe, and following Lloyd and Diane, he would go onto be responsible for even more iconic duos/trios: Jerry Maguire and Rod Tidwell, Penny Lane and Russell from the band Stillwater, Tom Cruise as David Aames and his Sophie’s choice of Penelope Cruz as Sofia and Cameron Diaz as Julie in Vanilla Sky. A few years later came his follow-up Elizabethtown, a schmaltzy, dragging war crime on cinema about finding love when returning home for a funeral. Even though I never saw We Bought a Zoo, I heard decent things, and so I went into Aloha hoping that Elizabethtown was just an anomaly.

It wasn’t.

Bradley Cooper is hotshot pilot Brian Gilcrest, who comes out of military retirement (following a major snafu in Kabul) to take a contract in Hawaii. Having been stationed there before, he bumps into his past in the form of his ex, Tracy (Rachel McAdams), who is married to Woody (John Krasinski, inexplicably taking a vow of silence). He is also introduced to his new military command, Colonel Lacy (Danny McBride, playing a turned-down version of his usual self) and Allison Ng (Emma Stone), who is tasked with keeping the “wild card” Gilcrest at bay. And guess what? She’s Asian. Because that makes sense. 

From there, cue convoluted military conspiracy subplot featuring sensitive information on a flash drive, an overwritten dialogue about the sacredness of the sky, old feelings coming to the surface for the two exes, new feelings coming to the surface about the younger and quirkier Emma Stone, and couple of big but totally predictable reveals.  Ugh. More frustrating, even, than being an active participant in Crowe’s decade-long freefall was watching Cooper, McAdams, Stone, Kransinksi, and McBride, alongside cameos from Alec Baldwin and Bill Murray, work their way through this sentimental hooey. 

Say aloha to this disappointment.

#49 Jurassic World

I have a close friend who has a one-year old son, and one of the things he finds himself doing less and less is going to the movies. He saw a total of three movies in the theater this year, two that will come much later on in the countdown, and this one. Thinking about this makes me depressed—not that he went to so few movies, but that 33.3% of his 2015 movie going was spent at Jurassic World. 

Despite some cool sequences, I was largely underwhelmed. Not nearly as much as a different friend, who said of JW, I kid you not: “I hate it passionately.”

Jurassic World takes place 22 years after the events of the original. Now there is a fully functional dinosaur theme park in Isla Nubar, Costa Rica with real dinosaurs. Bryce Dallas Howard, clad in a white tank. white skirt and high heels for the entirety of the movie, plays Claire, the manager of the park. Her nephews are there for a visit, but she is far too busy and important to care, so she puts them in the care of her dim assistant.

What could possibly go wrong?

Chris Pratt’s character, Owen Grady, is the park’s top dinosaur trainer. He has 4 velociraptors at his beck and call. Due to his expertise, he and two other park employees are tasked with evaluating the public readiness of the giant Indominus Rex, essentially a larger and more dangerous Tyrannosaurus cross-bred with a raptor.

What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, the head of the genetics company’s security team, Hoskins (Vincent D’Onfrio) decides he wants to attempt to train the raptors for military purposes.

What could possibly go wrong?

The simultaneous catastrophes (issues with the Indominus Rex, flying dinosaurs escaping the dinosaur aviary, the Mosasaurus splashing the hell out of hundreds of paying attendees) all, of course, build to a huge climax. Not everything about JW was bad; some of the action sequences looked pretty cool and the CGI was on point. However, the hackneyed dialogue, the beyond-formulaic antagonist, the kids-defying-authority-and-ending-up-in-peril storyline…it was too much to ignore.

Well, At least we still have the theme song.

MatM 2015/16: In this Corner...Aunt Viv?

As The Onion's storied columnist Jim Anchower might say:

"Hola, amigos. Been a long time since I rapped at ya."

Another year, another batch of superhero movies and dystopian teen flicks and swan songs of aging stars and unprecedented comebacks (lookin' at you, Ricki and the Flash's Rick Springfield!). Yes, the trends continue in Hollywood, California, and I'd be remiss not to mention the most hot-button one of all going into the Academy's 88th ceremony: #OscarsSoWhite

If you haven't been following the controversy, here is a quick download. This past MLK Day, Spike Lee (no real surprise there) and Jada Pinkett Smith took to social media to announce their boycott of the Oscars because for the second straight year, there were no actors of color nominated for any of the acting roles. Shortly thereafter, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite catches inferno within minutes. Then, in the attention-grab to end all attention-grabs, Janet Hubert, known almost exclusively for her role as Will's aunt Vivian on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and her subsequent feud with Will Smith over royalties, called out J.P.S., claiming that the whole thing is lack-of-Concussion-nominations-based rather than taking-a-stand-on-racial-disparity-based:

"First of all, Miss Thing, does your husband not have mouth with which to speak?"

"And here's the other thing...for you to ask other black actors and actresses to jeopardize their careers and their standing in a town that you know damn well you don't do that."

And then, her thesis statement, her "knockout punch":

"I find it ironic that somebody who has made their living, and made millions and millions of dollars from the very people you're talking about boycotting just because you didn't get a nomination, just because you didn't win."

...Damn, Aunt Viv! Who knew?

Whether or not Lee and Pinkett-Smith had questionable intentions (more on that in a minute), they're ultimately right. Last year, David Oyelowo turned in maybe the best performance in years with his role in Selma and somehow didn't even get a nomination.  It was mind-boggling. Ditto Ava DuVernay, who not only directed the hell out of it but also made some unpopular decisions in doing so, humbling Dr. King by including his skirt-chasing and self-doubt and making him a human being. It was nice to see it as a best picture nominee, and I was happy for Common and John Legend's win, but it felt more like an aw-shucks consolation for the two people that actually deserved to be recognized.

There's simply no argument against the fact that institutional racism exists in Tinseltowns's storied history. If that weren't true, we wouldn't have waited seventy-some years for Halle Berry to be the first black actress to take home the gold in 2001, or for Viola Davis to become the first woman of color to win an Emmy only a few months ago. It's been a huge problem. Forever.

So while it is great that they are bringing it to the spotlight for discussion, the the fact that it is Lee and Pinkett-Smith feels kind of inconsequential. I agree with the idea but not the execution; neither of them are exactly relevant at the moment (I will say that at the time of this writing I, like everyone else, have not seen Concussion or Chi-Raq, and if they're stunners, I will detract). And more to Viv's point about biting the hand that feeds you: In Lee's social media tirade, he led off by saying "I would like to thank Cheryl Boone Isaacs And the Board of Motion Pictures And Sciences For Awarding Me an Honorary Oscar this Past November." Good on you for acknowledging, Spike, but it's a dick move considering how you've been treated by the Academy in the past.

Maybe the issue is, as Viola Davis said in her acceptance speech, the lack of roles and opportunities. This year, you have the aforementioned Smith and Michael B. Jordan in Creed...and that's pretty much it. On the list of top-grossing films of the year, I had to go all the way down to #122 to find a movie that starred an African-American woman, and I used the term "woman" loosely because I am talking about Quvenzhané Wallis, the twelve-year-old star of Annie. With the exception of John Boyega's Finn in The Force Awakens, the only film with an African-American lead to crack the top 20 was Straight Outta Compton (#19), and, along with Creed at #29, was one of only two of the thirty movies to break the 100 million mark.

For everyone not named Will or Denzel or Kevin or Ice, this is an issue. If you sidled up to the average person on the street right now and asked them "What's the name of the actor who plays Adonis Creed, again?" most people would not be able answer Michael B. Jordan, despite his outstanding, completely overlooked performance in Fruitvale Station two years ago. If you asked them to name one cast member of Straight Outta Compton, they'd maybe say "isn't one of them related to Ice Cube?"

The Academy will have you know, thank you very much, that the same year that both Fruitvale and 42 were totally shut out, a movie with two black leads and a black director won best picture. Even though Steve McQueen didn't win the director prize, 12 Years A Slave became the first best picture winner with a black director at the helm.

What the Academy won't bring up, though is that it only took 86 years, or that T.J. Martin became the first African-American to direct the winning documentary the year before, and that only took 85 years. Or that in all 88 years a grand total of three (!) African-Americans have been nominated for best director.

People like statistics and charts and graphs and such these days, right? Let's look at the last 15 years of cinema. Each year, there are 5 nominees for best actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actor respectively. So, if we're looking at the year 2000 (meaning movies in 2000 and ceremony in early 2001) to now, that's 75 total nominations in each category.

Of the 75 possible slots for best actress over that time, 4 went to African-American women. Quevenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild, Viola Davis for The Help, Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and the only winner of the bunch, Halle Berry in Monster's Ball. That breaks down to 5.3% of total nominations in the last 15 years.

Black men have been a little better represented. 10 have been nominated in the last 15 years for best actor, making a clip of 13.3% total, and of those 10 came three winners (Denzel in Training Day, Jamie Foxx in Ray, Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland).

Six of the 75 supporting actor nominations (roughly 8%) were for African-Americans with one win (Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby), and nine of 75 supporting slots (12%) for women, with 4 wins (Jennifer Hudson, Mo'Nique, Octavia Spencer, Lupita Nyong'o).

Some people feel like the racial divide in America, despite an 8-year period with an African-American leader of the Free World, is the worst it's been in a long time. Right after Sandra Bland, I got into a discussion with my colleagues at the summer program where I've worked the past two years (I'm actually in the minority on this particular staff), and they contested me it's not any different than before. These days, the incidents are more heavily publicized. I live in a city that considers itself hip and liberal and diverse. In reality, it's awfully segregated, and our state boasts the second highest achievement gap in the country. Where is the highest? In the state I grew up in--Wisconsin.

And while you can argue that the racial divide is alive and well in the film industry, there is hope in other forms of entertainment. Black-ish and Empire are absolutely crushing it on all accounts. The live band on The Tonight Show is composed entirely of African-American artists. Kendrick Lamar's game-changing, black-as-f*** To Pimp A Butterfly is nominated for 11 grammies, second all-time only to the 12 bestowed on Michael Jackson's Thriller.

All things considered, I get where the detractors are coming from. With Bland and countless others making their way to the front of our collective social conscience over the last two years, the Academy should be looking at performances and contributions that move race relations forward. Getting some younger blood in the voting cadre certainly wouldn't hurt, either.

It starts with the studios. If they're not creating the opportunities or making fair casting choices (does Anthony Mackie really have to be the only black Avenger? What happened to Idris Elba as Bond? How many Ride Alongs and Barbershops will it take before there are halfway decent offers on the table?) or hiring directors outside of names-are-in-the-titles-of-all-of-their-movies Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels, the cycle will slowly plod along. Reports are coming out that The Birth of a Nation, a biggish-budget version of the W.E.B. Dubois classic about Nat Turner's uprising, is an early frontrunner for next year. That would change the current conversation, at the very least.

I don't know if a boycott by two spurned celebrities is the answer. But something's gotta give.

Can't wait to get Chris Rock's take on the whole thing in a month.

Back on Monday with the countdown!!