Fish and Cherries Productions

Boyhood perfectly encapsulates the slice of life genre, as this is a look at Ethan’s dysfunctional boyhood and adolescent life (with excellent use of events and media of the years to provide the time markers). None of the character are one hundred percent perfect and at the end, you wonder how much, if any, they’ve truly changed. But that’s life. On another note, a lot of the comedy (perhaps all of it) is cringe comedy or awkward comedy, like you laugh, but feel uncomfortable for doing so. It’s just as well, as very little in Ethan’s life is comfortable. From abusive stepfathers to uncomfortable friend situations, Ethan goes through a lot and throughout the film, you notice that he doesn’t assert himself a lot. People tend to pressure him into decisions or make them for him. You think this is going to pay off at the end in some big speech or confrontation, but it doesn’t. In fact, not many of the things brought up in the movie have a payoff later. But again, that’s life and in a weird, horrible way, it’s beautiful. And that’s what keeps you going through the movie, the bits of beauty throughout this young man’s life. Fair warning, though, there may be a few trigger images and scenarios in there, so some people should approach with caution. On another note, I would just like to address what a miracle it was that they started filming this boy at a young age and he happened to grow up to have enough similarities to Ethan Hawke that he could conceivably be his son. The only flaw some people might see is that the film is very long, clocking it somewhere over three and a half hours, but I didn’t mind in the slightest. Boyhood may turn out to be the best movie of 2014 by years end. Some people may find some of the lines pretentious, but of all the things said in this movie, someone will find some philosophy or life lesson that resonates with them. And that’s life.

Pacific Rim is a rare type of summer blockbuster that not only delivers on visuals and action, but on story and characters as well. Admittedly, the story is very simple and straightforward, but the world they build around the story makes it feel a lot meatier. It could have been very easy for the movie not to take itself seriously and go into self-parody, but doing so would have robbed it of a lot of the heart that I think makes it work. That is not to say the movie does not have fun with itself sometimes; there’s an amusing bit involving the mecha’s fist and an office decoration, Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia fame is part of a great comic relief duo that works really well off of each other, and Ron Perlman’s outfit is absolutely impossible to take seriously. The only problems I had with it were that I wished they had done more with some of the other Jaeger (the giant mecha the humans used to fight back) pilots and there was a bit at the end that could have either been a plot hole or an oversight on my part. That said, it is still a very strong action movie that had me invested all of the way through with one great thing going for it: the lead guy and girl do not become a romantic item! Doing so could have broken the movie and I am glad they avoided that. Mr. del Toro, take a bow.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that most of you have become aware of the new remake of Annie coming out this year, the spin being that the cast is almost entirely African-American. Naturally, as with every time a character’s race is changed in a remake or adaptation, this has caused a bit of an uproar with some uncomfortable words attached. To give my personal thoughts briefly, I’m not thrilled about the film, but it’s less about changing the race of the characters than wondering if we really need another adaptation of Annie. Also, as a person from a musical theater background, I have a problem when classic showtunes are “updated” by adding a hip-hop back beat or a pop remix. However, seeing as two of the movie’s producers are Jay-Z and Will Smith, it’s entirely possible that was part of the contract.

But that situation brings my attention to a controversy of the same nature that cropped up a month or two ago. This may have slipped under the radar, but 20th Century Fox is rebooting the Fantastic Four film franchise with a completely new cast and crew. The big twist? Johnny Storm, also known as the Human Torch, is now black. Sure enough, copious amounts of people got their undies in a bundle over this, since Johnny has always been white in the comics. The question then becomes if this whole thing is worth all the fuss. Personally, I would say it’s worth some concern, but not for the reasons you’d think.

There’s nothing wrong with changing a character’s race in an adaptation to give representation to the POC section of the population. After all, it worked for Heimdall in the Thor movies, seeing as he was one of the best parts of it. However, changing the Human Torch’s race comes with a little more baggage than that. You see, the Fantastic Four are known as the quintessential Marvel family in every meaning of the word, since Johnny and Sue Storm are siblings and Sue eventually marries Reed Richards (Ben Grimm is… um… the best friend that’s like family and crashes on their couch, I guess?). But here’s the thing: they made Johnny black, but kept Sue white and this just raises a lot of questions. Is Johnny a foster child? Are they step-siblings now? Have they been changed to cousins in this version? Now, if the movie addresses this, I’ll be completely fine with it. It could even be a great statement about what family truly means in the 21st Century and how blood relation isn’t the only definition.

UPDATE: I am told that Sue is the foster child in the Storm family in the upcoming reboot. However, given this next bit, I don’t think that helps matters.

But really, my issue isn’t that they’re making Johnny black. No, my issue is that they’re keeping Sue white.

If the filmmakers wanted to go all the way with this concept, they would have made both of the Storm siblings African-American. But for some reason, Sue, who I remind you is the one who gets married, kept her ethnicity. I’m not normally one to deconstruct things too excessively to look for discrimination, which should disappoint the faculty of UC Santa Cruz. But the more I think about it, the more this rubs me the wrong way.

Maybe it’s the possibility that a much grander statement was denied by not changing the marriage of Reed and Sue into an interracial marriage, or the idea that her race was kept the same because there was some weird societal standard that Caucasian women are somehow prettier or more desirable than African-American ones, or that the womanizer character got a race lift rather than the one in the stable relationship. (Wow, UC Santa Cruz really did get inside my head.) Really, though, what bugs me the most is that on the surface, it seemed like a character’s race was changed for a publicity stunt and no one at any point seems to have asked, “So why don’t we change his sister’s race too?”

At the end of the day, changing race should involve a lot of passion from the people doing it. We may not have asked for a racially different update to Annie, but the people behind it probably felt that this was a big step for the community. I detect no such passion behind the Fantastic Four change. To me, that strikes as a lazy attempt to try and seem like they’re progressive and with the times in order to trick more money out of the hands of moviegoers, as well as Fox’s attempt at being edgy and trying to keep up with the mainstream Marvel films. So when all is said and done, I do not believe the sun’ll come out tomorrow on this reboot.

The Hundred-Foot Journey took a while to win me over, but once it did, I recognized it for being a truly heartwarming tale. The experience was like a dish with very subtle flavors that took a while to really kick in. Inevitably, this movie will draw comparisons to Chef, since they both came out this year and tackle similar topics. But while Chef is mainly about self-discovery and coming into one’s own, The Hundred-Foot Journey is about the Indian and French cultures coming together through food. For me, one of the movie’s big boons is the characters, who turn out to be quite three-dimensional by the end of the film and experience some legitimate growth. I also really appreciate the film’s ability to convey things without using words, since “show, don’t tell” seems to be turning into a lost art nowadays. If The Hundred-Foot Journey suffers from anything, it’s that the plot can feel overcrowded with a lot of plot lines between all the different characters. Some characters don’t even get much development because the movie doesn’t have time to even give them a fraction of the spotlight. Me personally, I found it to be great and am seriously disappointed with everyone who saw the Ninja Turtles movie instead of this when it opened. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to lie down. I kind of gorged myself on Indian food after I left the theater.

Title: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain
Author: Richard Roberts
Type: Novel
Genre: Superhero

Summary: Remember how I said that being the kid of a former superhero was tough? Well, now imagine that both of your parents were former superheroes that were well-respected in the thriving community. Now imagine that that you’re also going through the troubles of high school while your powers are slowly emerging. And to top it all off, imagine that amid various happenstances, your new alter-ego is recognized by the community… as a supervillain.

That’s the life of the young Penelope Akk, the daughter of Brian and Beatrice Akk, and her best friends Claire and Ray. After their fight with a superhero’s sidekick is caught on camera, the three of them are labeled as a supervillain team call The Inscrutable Machine. Luckily, their identities remained secret, so they must lead double lives so that (most of) their parents don’t find out until they can publically and believably turn hero. In the meantime, they fight cosmic entities, intermingle with the supervillain community, and discover that being a villain can be… fun.

And that’s the greatest strength of the book: that it’s fun. A lot of superhero fiction tries to be taken seriously by being overly grim and severe (including mine, which I’m slightly ashamed of after reading this). Penelope’s adventures relish in the inherent absurdity of a world with superpowers and they don’t rely on outrageously high stakes about the world being in mortal danger. She just has to worry about the normal stakes of her abnormal teenage life.

Consequentially, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain doesn’t go into extremely minute detail of how everything in the world works or even on the backstory. Oddly enough, the way this is written, you don’t really care that it doesn’t. You’re always given glimpses and small tastes of a larger world that leaves you wanting more, but your focus is so captivated on the rich elements that the lack of an exposition dump is just fine. Are Lucyfar and Gabriel actually incarnations of their Biblical namesakes? Who was the Conqueror and why did he/she/it/they invade Earth? What’s the story behind Apparition, Marvelous, and Generic Girl? All these questions and more will not be answered in this book because they’re not important to Penny’s immediate story and concerns, which is precisely the kind of thing the first person narrative exists for.

Even without a lot of exposition dumps, the story does throw a lot at the reader, but in fairness, pretty much all of it is memorable. I remember all the characters, like Mech, Ifrit, the Bull, Mourning Dove, Chimera, She Who Wots, The Librarian, and so on, as well as colorful places like Lost World Comics and the supervillain-run Chinatown. Everything sort of comes together to make the world feel so alive and rich. The author is writing a sequel entitled At Least I Didn’t Blow Up OUR Moon and if it’s anything like this wonderful piece, I’m really excited for it. Any chance to explore this world further is greatly appreciated. I don’t know that a lot of people know this book is out there, but they really should. It’s a fun read and a fantastic story, so if you’re reading this, you should definitely check it out. But please don’t tell my parents I’m promoting a supervillain.

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, contrary to popular expectation, did not have the characters powering up for 80% of the movie. However, that doesn’t prevent it from being more than a little flabby. The most particular grievance is in the middle where the movie dives into some self-indulgent fan service that really doesn’t add anything to the story and would have been cut were this not a 20th anniversary special. In fact, a lot of the comedic bits kind of dragged in the middle, which is a shame because I actually appreciated the comedic focus and how it wasn’t so obsessed with being serious like the Dragon Ball Z series was. While we’re on the subject of comedy, I absolutely loved Lord Beerus as the villain and how unlike any other series antagonist he is. He’s threatening and imposing, but also goofy and amicable, and while I think his motivations are a bit petty, I at least appreciate that he keeps his fights with the small-time heroes brief rather than drawing it out. I would honestly say that beginning and end of the movie were great, but the middle could have used some work. So while it was great to see my old heroes in all their beautifully animated glory (and the animation was beautiful, despite some awkward CGI during the final fight) and I did walk out of the theater feeling good, I think the movie is a pretty mixed bag. This is definitely a movie for DBZ fans and I think everyone else will just feel lost and bored. On the whole, I’d say this was just like a ninety minute episode of the TV series, but given how little happens in any given episode, I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It’s more like someone condensed an entire arc into one movie… and forgot to take out the filler episodes.

Guardians of the Galaxy was, as expected, a lot of fun and a great direction for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to go. It’s interesting because apart from being a new, untested property, Guardians also has the least continuity connection with the rest of the movies (apart from one significant plotline), which was refreshing, but at the same time I sorely missed some reference to the Asgardians or having the only human scene have a Stark Industries billboard in the background. It’s also a new direction because this is the first straight up comedy in the franchise; while Iron Man and Thor definitely straddled the line between action and comedy, Guardians of the Galaxy dives in head first and decides it doesn’t want to come up for air. Sadly, though, the comedy water didn’t penetrate all of its internal organs, as the villains are both lacking in humor and personality. They’re cool, but that’s about it. While we’re on the subject of weak characters, I felt that Gamora was underutilized and didn’t really live up to her reputation as the deadliest woman in the universe. The rest of the main cast is great fun, though I have to give the award to Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon. That man truly nailed the part. With all that said, I’m worried that there’s a bit of a quirkiness to the directing, writing, and editing that may put people off a bit, though I personally enjoyed it. All in all, though, if you can get past that, you’ve got a great experience that I will personally recommend (could’ve used more “I am Groot,” though). Now, Marvel, if you could now do a Captain/Ms. Marvel and Black Panther movie, that would be great. Don’t keep me waiting now.