"Passengers" Review

Early previews for Passengers made it look like an intriguing successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey. With "America's sweethearts" Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt leading the cast, and The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum behind the camera, Sony had all the makings of a crowd-pleasing Oscar contender not unlike last year's The Martian.

The finished product is about as far removed from all of that as possible. Sure, Pratt and Lawrence have chemistry, but the script goes completely off the rails with a third act so contrived that it all but sinks the entire production. In this case, "S.O.S." might as well stand for "Save Our Story."

Pratt stars as Jim Preston, a mechanical engineer who awakes 90 years prematurely on a mission to colonize a distant, earth-like planet called Homestead II. He spends a year playing basketball, setting high scores on a space-age version of the "Just Dance" video game, and confiding in Arthur (Martin Sheen), an android bartender and the only friendly face Jim has to interact with. After all that time in solitude, and a brush with death, Jim decides that he needs human company.

Lawrence stars as Aurora Lane, a writer from New York City. Together, she and Jim must find and fix a malfunction that threatens to destroy their spaceship and take the lives of 5,000 colonists.

For about ninety minutes of its barely-two-hour run time, Passengers is a perfectly passable movie. It's neither flashy enough to measure up with a blockbuster like Rogue One, nor is it intimate enough to pass for an indie in the vein of Duncan Jones's Moon. Pratt proves that he has the charisma to carry a film on his own; the first 30 to 45 minutes or so are arguably the film's best. From this point, Passengers continues to skate by based on the chemistry that he and Lawrence share. Then something happens to remind you that there's actually a plot at work. The solution to the central conflict is literally placed in the protagonists' hands, and the rest of the film plays out as safely and predictably as one could imagine. By the end, you'll feel as though you've just sat through the ultimate male fantasy, and then you'll ask yourself how in God's name a certain actor received billing for his role in this film.

I think the overall message of the film is something along the lines of "love the one you're with." That may be clear, but there has got to be a better story to tell with this concept. To be totally honest, Michael Bay's The Island comes to mind as something of a favorable example of the his & hers "fish-out-of-water" tale. Pratt and Lawrence remain as likable as ever, but they need a vehicle that doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator.

D+

My Day with Film (Tuesday, 11/29/2016)

I decided today to start a daily diary with my interactions with film. I'm not sure exactly what it will be aside from a little insight into how my warped mind works when it comes to movies on a daily basis. I don't have time to cover stories like these all the time on my podcast, so I thought I'd just write everything down. I hope you'll stick with me and continue to listen to The Reel Movies Podcast and continue to read this blog. So here goes:


Tuesday, 11/29/16

Dear Diary,

Today is Tuesday, which means it's another week with more new releases on home video. I've been doing well recently with saving some money. Christmas gifts for the family are all pretty much set; now I'm saving for my best friend's bachelor party next year. Overall I've been trying to reduce the number of Blu-rays I buy, particularly at release day prices. I have a collecting problem that I'm slowly getting under control. I didn't go nuts with Barnes & Noble's 50% off Criterion November sale like I usually do, and I also didn't buy any movies on Black Friday this year, which is extremely uncharacteristic of me.

No, I had to wait until literally the day after all the damn sales ended so that I could get DON'T BREATHE and PETE'S DRAGON - two of my favorite films of 2016. FML!

I'm ecstatic to have them in my collection, but the whole time I was in Target today, I was thinking "These are probably going to be on Netflix or Hulu or Crackle someday, and if they aren't these Blu-rays will come down in price another day. You don't need them today." Then my inner Kermit the Frog took over.

"Disney Blu-rays very rarely, if ever, go on sale after release day. You might as well jump on it now. And you loved DON'T BREATHE! To sweeten the deal, both movies have a director's commentary! You can't beat that!" 

I hate you, Kermit.

I loved both of these films when I saw them in theaters this year. I reviewed both on the blog a couple of months ago. They're for completely different audiences, but I'd recommend them to anyone in those target audiences. I'm excited to check out the bonus features on each disc. 

Mark these famous last words - PETE'S DRAGON and DON'T BREATHE will be the last two Blu-rays to go on my shelf between now and Christmas Day. 

It's the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday, and I'm not sure what the rest of the day in cinema will hold. I just reviewed THE LOVE WITCH, and I laughed to myself that I reviewed a '60s inspired pulp melodrama before DOCTOR STRANGE, MOANA or FANTASTIC BEASTS. All great movies, by the way. I wanted to watch my Criterion disc of Terence Malick's THE NEW WORLD over Thanksgiving because when else would you watch Terence Malick's THE NEW WORLD? I didn't get to do that over the holiday, so I'll try to knock that out tonight. Ah, but I haven't watched this week's episodes of WESTWORLD or THE WALKING DEAD yet. And I still have several discs at home I haven't popped in yet, including Criterion's THE APU TRILOGY which I got for Christmas last year. Not to mention everything in my Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO and Crackle queues. There simply aren't enough hours in the day. I feel slightly overwhelmed by the amount of content I have to get through and eventually revisit, but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Until tomorrow.

BC

"Sausage Party" Review

Okay, listen. I'm going to try and tell you just enough about this movie Sausage Party for you to decide whether or not you should see it. Honestly, I may not even have to say much at all. This not-so-subtle phallic poster should pretty much spell out precisely what you're in for. Look at the names in the cast there. Would you expect anything less from pretty much all of those people? I'm going to attempt to review this thing for you as best I can without giving anything away, so here goes...

Sausage Party is an animated film featuring the voice talents of Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Kristen Wiig among several others. It's about food and what happens when we purchase food from the grocery store to prepare at home. Oh, did I also mention that this lively cartoon about food pushes the boundaries of an R-rating further than Deadpool? Seriously, I cannot express this in any more dire a fashion - DO NOT bring your children to see this film!!! They will never eat again.

In terms of a story, picture Toy Story 2 and 3 with 500 F-bombs and sex jokes. Honestly though, beneath that veneer of crassness, Sausage Party is an iteration of Homer's "Odyssey" unlike any to come before it.

Frank (Rogen) is a hot dog, and Brenda (Wiig) is a hot dog bun. They are boyfriend and girlfriend and cannot wait for the day that they are removed from their packages and Frank can finally slide all up into Brenda. Yeah. That's this movie. The food at Shopwell's supermarket imagines that, when they are removed from the shelves by shoppers/"the gods," they are being chosen for an eternal life of bliss in the "Great Beyond." When a jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is purchased and later returned to the shelf, he claims that the "Great Beyond" is actually a living hell full of death and destruction. After the store closes for the night, Frank, Brenda, Lavash (David Krumholtz), Teresa the Taco (Salma Hayek) and Sammy Bagel, Jr. (Edward Norton, doing a decent Woody Allen impression) embark on a quest to discover the truth about their "gods" and what really happens when food leaves the store.

A whole lot of other wild shit happens, and along the way, our heroes meet lots of interesting characters. At it's core, this film tells an odyssey story, but it also explores the folly of both man and religion. I'm not kidding. Sausage Party actually has very worthwhile subtext, all told with food. It pushes boundaries throughout its trim 90-minute run time before finally, irrevocably, overstepping the line with possibly the most gonzo finale to a movie you're likely to ever see. Literally nothing you've seen before can prepare you. You'll have to either take my word for it or see it for yourself. It's just that bonkers.

(I'm not sure what kind of a final grade this movie warrants. It has so many compelling pieces which come together in unique ways, but it's a Seth Rogen comedy about talking food. Let it be known, however, that I will be encouraging grown adults to see this movie. That's endorsement enough.)

"The Angry Birds Movie" Review

Your favorite smartphone app from 2011 finally has its own feature-length animated movie! And to be honest, it isn't nearly as godawful as expected. It's not great either, but Sony Pictures Animation's The Angry Birds Movie proves to be a colorful, consistently hilarious, early-Summer diversion.

If you're wondering how they ever made a story out of Angry Birds, here's the gist - Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) has problems controlling his temper. After blowing up at a child's birthday party, Judge Peckinpah (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) sentences Red to anger management classes where he meets Chuck (voiced by Josh Gad) and Bomb (voiced by Danny McBride). In the throes of their rehabilitation, the birds' idyllic island is visited by a band of boisterous pigs from across the sea. Led by their king, Leonard (voiced by Bill Hader), the pigs quickly assimilate with the birds. This seems fishy to Red, who stumbles on the pigs' plot to distract the birds and steal their eggs. When an inquiry with the bird hero Mighty Eagle (voiced by Peter Dinklage) proves fruitless, it's up to Red, Chuck, Bomb, and the rest of the birds to hatch a rescue mission to retrieve the eggs from Piggy Island.

I was surprised to find that the film lends more of itself to character development and story than trying to recreate gameplay. Although we get some of that during the gonzo third act, I found myself caring more about Red's redemption and how the filmmakers cleverly and humorously integrate "angry" into the solution. That isn't to say that anger and violence are always the answer, or that outsiders should never be trusted, but let's be honest. This is The Angry Birds Movie based on an iPhone game. On principle alone, one should have an easy time suspending disbelief.

I think the film's biggest issue is that it doesn't manage to contribute anything meaningful to the animated movie canon. It lacks the brains to afford it a place alongside Pixar's finest and features a couple of extremely crude jokes that don't need to be in a movie marketed to 6, 7 and 8 year olds. Granted, one of them made me laugh harder than I have in a while, but the film is packed with enough cheeky sight gags and puns that some inessential laughs could've probably afforded to fly the coop.

The voice acting is generally solid, with one very curious standout. During the opening titles, you'll notice the name "Sean Penn" at fifth or sixth billing. I said to myself "They got freaking Sean Penn for The Angry Birds Movie?" IMDb confirms this is THE Sean Penn. He plays a character called Terence, who is like Red on steroids. Fans of the game should place him as "the big brother bird" or, as I call him, the giant, heavy, wrecking-ball bird. Terence is also in the anger management program with Red, Chuck, and Bomb. Terence spends the entire movie sitting there grumbling. Talking about beginning-to-end hilarity, this joke didn't hit me until after I left the theater: Sony must've given THE Sean Penn $1 million to literally walk into a sound booth and growl. This may be the film's biggest joke of all.

So is The Angry Birds Movie essential? Not by a long shot, but it's here now and can never be erased from this world. It's not as clever a piece of commercial art as something like The Lego Movie, but it offers plenty of laughs and some dazzling animation. You could do worse.

B-