Fish and Cherries Productions

Starting out our new schedule is a weekend of sequels. Here are my Reel Snippets of Jurassic World and Ted 2. Which did I like? Which couldn’t I stand? Take a look and find out.

Jurassic World
Ted 2

Whoa, what’s this? Three updates at once?! Yep, in order to get things balanced for my new schedule, I’m coming out with three different things on the same day. Let’s start out with two Reel Snippets, one classic and one new release.

Love Actually
Inside Out

Now let’s follow that up with my newest Ronin Reads on an obscure comic. One day, I’ll do an actual prose story…

Letter 44

The schedule will be posted this Friday. But in case you crave more content between then and now… how about our E3 podcast? Guess this isn’t a triple feature anymore! Accolades all around!

Kung Fury is one of the most over the top and enjoyable experiences I’ve had in a while. This may technically be cheating, given the nature of the film and its inception. However, just because the movie is crowd funded and about thirty minutes long, doesn’t make it any less of a movie. The whole thing is like one delicious caramel apple, only the apple is cinema and the caramel dipping is the cheesiness of the 80s. As such, the plot is nonsensical and extremely tongue-in-cheek, which I think adds to its charm. Describing any more would ruin some of the surprise, so go check it out. After all, it’s absolutely free on YouTube! No need to overspend on popcorn or 3-D glasses. Just sit back in your own home and enjoy this glorious Swedish masterpiece. Hey, it’s a foreign film too! You’ll get art house credibility!

Jupiter Ascending was a movie so bad, it nearly broke me. Unlike Fifty Shades of Grey, I didn’t have a healthy cushion of alcohol to fall back on and as such I got the full force of a movie terrible enough to make me laugh and cry in the fetal position at the same time. The best you could say about the film is that it’s visually creative, but that’s about where the praise ends. We know next to nothing about the characters, save for a few where they have exposition dumps devoted to them, who all seem to struggle with one another for relevance in the story. Even the main villain switches in the middle of the story, apropos of nothing. The whole thing is incredibly bland storywise and has the distinct dishonor of being one of those rare movies that is both over-explained and yet criminally underdeveloped. Concepts are introduced, but are by no means established, leaving a lot of hanging scenes where you just have to wonder what the point was. Even if they’re leading up to a punchline, you can’t help but feel that the whole thing could have been left on the cutting room floor.

But the biggest crime of this movie is how it takes Eddie Redmayne and puts him in an absolutely thankless role. He won an Academy Award for playing Stephen Hawking, but here his performance alternates between a poor man’s Marlon Brando and a screeching rooster. It would be bad enough to leave it at that, but then there’s the gender politics that go belly-up in this supposedly women empowerment film. I said back in another Snippet that I don’t consider the Bechtel Test a show of real feminism and this film is living proof. Despite it passing the test, Jupiter constantly gets kidnapped and needs saving to move the plot forward. That really sums up the experience, as I feel like I was getting abducted from reality against my will and forced to watch this dross. If anyone likes this movie, I won’t hold it against them, but I personally want to bundle up all my memories of this film and fire them into a black hole.

Mad Max: Fury Road is simply phenomenal. Never let it be said that I have a hate on for the grim and gritty because this movie was chock full of it. But while most gritty films tend to shoot everything in a gray or brown filter, this film has a whole pastiche of warm colors. Your eyes are bombarded with browns, silvers, reds, yellows, occasional blues, and more that lend themselves to the visual wonder that is this film. Even more than the color scheme, the designs are really what sell the visuals, which have a heavy metal aesthetic. This is a world that you can really believe is after the collapse of civilization with machinery cobbled together into ingenious designs and nothing is superfluous or without function.

The main characters themselves are completely believable, if not always making the smartest decisions. Given that they live in a harsh, unforgiving wasteland where only the fittest survive, though, it makes sense that they would make more pragmatic decisions and less compassionate ones. The portrayal of Max in particular is rather intriguing, playing off as a rather disturbed individual complete with visually interesting flashbacks of people that he “let die.” I’ll admit that I haven’t seen the previous Mad Max films so I don’t know how close it is to the original, but it worked for me. Charlize Theron plays a truly awesome character with a cool mechanical arm to boot, though her American accent makes her stand out when surrounded by Brits and Australians. The huge standouts for me were the villains from the minions and vagabonds to the overlords who all have deformities that lend themselves to a distinct and memorable design. They’re like classic James Bond villains on steroids.

And of course, let me address the big selling point of this movie: the women. Despite the fact that the plot revolves around getting a warlord’s concubines to safety, they are far from damsels in distress. Not only do they have their own agency, but they all have enough sense to fight back and come up with clever ideas when it’s smart for them to do so. Admittedly, they aren’t the best actors, but it didn’t bother me next to everything else. While we don’t see any female minions in the enemy convoys, I give that a pass as the warlords are shown to treat their women like dirt, so it makes sense in the context of the film. Plus, there are other capable women gangs in the movie that are no slouches in combat. This, to me, is what true progressivism looks like in an action movie.

Everything about the plot is tightly woven and creates a huge emotional rollercoaster. The first ten to twenty minutes had my blood pumping as hard as the heavy drums in the score — so much so that when the movie finally got to a quiet moment, I realized how out of breath I was and could appreciate the calm before the next storm. I honestly feel like Mad Max: Fury Road could be this generation’s Die Hard. Gone are the boring invincible hero and helpless damsels that plague many of today’s action movies, to be replaced by capable and very mortal protagonists trying to outrun true monsters. Also, I would be remise if I didn’t mention the vehicle with minions banging war drums on its back and a man dressed in a red gimp’s outfit playing an electric guitar that shoots fire. That part alone alone is enough to immortalize this movie in the halls of Valhal-ywood. Also, I have to give this movie a lot of props for working said gimp’s diegetic shredding (meaning the music he played was actually in the movie’s reality) into the score itself. That type of ingenuity sums up the film entirely: a compelling story with a lot of creativity and ambition. Yes, it’s violent. Yes, it’s graphic. But yes, it deserves to be seen.

Ex Machina is a movie that just can’t be summed up into one word or genre. It’s science fiction. It’s a thriller. It’s a romance. It’s suspense. It’s a mystery. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s uplifting. It’s horrifying. Mostly, though, it’s amazing.

In a way, I’ve always wanted to make a movie like this: a science fiction or fantasy that wasn’t bound by the hero’s journey. It’s somewhat the Blade Runner of our time, exploring the different themes of life and the rights of artificial intelligence. This movie takes place in our own time, though, growing off the technological advancements that we have already made and as such, the story seems much more imminent and possible. It’s also not afraid to ask the hard questions and show some rather graphic and necessary imagery. It wants the audience to think and ask questions and I don’t think any two people will come away from it with the same thoughts. The ending in particular will leave people confused as to whether it could be considered happy or not or even if anyone chose the correct path.

This is to movies what Bayonetta is to video games, combining elements from all across the board to make something beautiful. I haven’t seen a movie this smart since Inception and I’m honestly surprised that it was allowed a big screen release, given all it contained. I’m happy it did, though, and even happier that it’s doing so well at the box office. I can safely say that I don’t want to live in a universe where Ex Machina doesn’t succeed.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a remarkably fun film. It’s not as good as the first, but that’s hardly surprising; the first Avengers broke new ground by proving that a shared cinematic universe could work and now that we know it does work, the same thing doesn’t feel as fresh. But same isn’t always bad and this movie definitely had a lot to offer.

The movie’s biggest strength is the titular villain through and through. I don’t know if he’s as good as Loki. I mean, he doesn’t have anything nearly as quotable as, “I am Loki of Asgard and I am burdened with glorious purpose.” Still, he balances pure terror with a comedic edge that I found refreshing and certainly gives him his own identity. James Spader of Blacklist fame provides a great menacing voice that gives Ultron the right amount of gravitas that we love to see from any good super villain. I love everything about this guy right down to his animation where I was absolutely enthralled by the fact that he was allowed some form of facial expression.

The returning cast is in top form and there are some unexpected cameos from other movies that make the world feel fuller. However, it’s the newcomers, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (a.k.a. The Twins), who are held under a lot of scrutiny because of the rather unique dual ownership rights case concerning their characters. Quicksilver in particular has a tough act to follow after his namesake stole the show in X-Men: Days of Future Past and while he isn’t as awesome here, he feels a lot more real than his twin at Fox and I can certainly appreciate that. Scarlet Witch is certainly good too, though her powers may confuse a lot of people when they’re explained. There was a scene in the beginning when she was sneaking up on Iron Man and she moved in a disjointed, disturbing way like something out of The Ring or The Grudge; I thought that was really creative and I was disappointed that they didn’t go anywhere with it. I also like the fact that they were given accents, as they were raised in Europe in the comics and I always find it odd when adaptations make them speak like Americans.

The film isn’t without its faults, though. I personally thought the scene during the credits was particularly weak, just telling us stuff that we already learned from the end of Avengers: Thanos exists and he plans to wreck your s***. The score is also weaker in this installment. Gone is Alan Silvestri in favor of Danny Elfman and wishing no offense to the man, he doesn’t capture the heroic and victorious qualities that the music needs. I also felt that the HYDRA villains in the beginning were a weak link, like some of them were trying to deliver funny quips and whether by awkward delivery or subpar acting, it kind of fell flat.

But a little bit of bad doesn’t erase all the good. For every one thing the movie gets wrong, it gets about fifteen to twenty things right. There’s a nice callback to the Agent Carter miniseries and a bit of groundwork laid for the upcoming Black Panther movie, but also some much needed development for Hawkeye, who seems to have gone from being a second stringer with a bow to a bit of a fan favorite. The debut of Iron Man’s Hulkbuster armor and the fight against the Hulk that ensues from it is one of the standout scenes, as it shows a lot more creativity than just two giants slugging each other. Also, I can’t help but impress on the fact that the movie actually allowed the heroes to balance a battle of epic destruction with them actually diverting their attention to saving people from the destruction they caused. It felt like the most subtle jab at Man of Steel ever and I loved it. While not the masterpiece that its predecessor or Winter Soldier was, it still was some quality storytelling with some great humor and acting and altogether an excellent piece of filmmaking.

The Age of Adaline left absolutely no impression on me once I left the theater. Even as I write this, I’m having trouble conjuring thoughts about what was an utterly bland and simpering experience. The film feels like it’s trying to be Forrest Gump mixed with a Nicholas Sparks novel and not doing very well at either of those. Another comparison to this film is the television series Forever, which has a shockingly similar premise. But while Ioan Grufford is charming and charismatic in that series, Blake Lively is bland and carries the same monotone in her voice whether she’s happy, upset, or fearing for her life.

I could go through a laundry list of the movie’s problems, but I’m going to focus on the fact that, through completely unnecessary narration, a pseudo-science explanation is offered for Adaline’s immortality and it just kills the whole thing for me. No explanation was needed; you could have let yourself run on fairy tale logic and I would have been far more forgiving. After all, Harrison Ford reads his lines like a wistful old grandfather reading to young’uns, so it wouldn’t have been too far of a mood stretch. Speaking of, Harrison’s scenes are positively magnetic, owing much to his acting talent and his years of experience. Those are where the movie was the most interesting and tolerable. The rest just left me cold. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had me far better sold on a romance with unusual age circumstances than this did and if it weren’t part of my job to watch the whole thing, I would have walked out of the movie before the halfway mark.

Das Boot: Director’s Cut is a movie well deserving of all its accolades. However, its greatest enemy is its running time, which clocks in at three and a half hours. The interactions between all the characters were great and I appreciated the sense of camaraderie during wartime, but it was about the halfway point where I realized that I didn’t remember any of their names and that was really distracting for me. They were likable, but after the fifth time I checked my watch, I really wasn’t that invested.

And that’s a shame because the tension aboard the u-boat is really great, especially near the end. I wrote a piece a few months ago about terror coming from people being trapped in environments that will kill them if they’re exposed and this definitely takes advantage of that near the end. People have also commended this film for its accuracy of depicting life and perils serving on a u-boat. I can’t really comment on this because I wasn’t alive when u-boats were in service, but if it’s true, that’s certainly great. Come to think of it, this movie really is a masterful work of art. The only problem here is me. I don’t always have the patience for long movies that move slowly, so who am I to dismiss something just because it doesn’t smash my own personal hurdles? Conclusion: it’s a great movie, just not for me. I’ll probably see it again if other people are watching it, but it’s not one I’ll seek out on my own.

21 Jump Street was a damn funny movie, even if it became tripped up by the tropes it was trying to parody. It’s odd because you wouldn’t think that a remake of such an old and obscure property would warrant such high praise. But with the writers of The LEGO Movie on board, we get a really clever and really funny send-up to buddy cop and high school coming-of-age movies. True, they unfortunately have to go through the clichés of the third-act break-up between multiple parties and the hero’s reward kiss, but the film plays with them enough to not make them too insufferable. I’m not sure what else to say other than it was a really funny movie worth a watch and I’d be happy to check out the sequel.

Wait, there is one other thing. A criminal is not released from custody just because they weren’t read their Miranda Rights! That is complete crap invented by Hollywood for tension just like the one phone call rule! The event that kicked off the entire plot is complete bullshit! There, I’m done now.