Fantastic Four (2015)

With its over-long look inside 5^th grade life to the tacked-on CGI-heavy finale, the latest big-screen version of Marvel stalwart “Fantastic Four” is a joyless, suspense-free dud from frame one. Oh, there have been worse superhero film appearances on the big screen.

But never one so lazy. Never one so dedicated to being mediocre. This is a superhero film with exactly one action scene. A crammed, confusing limp punch that fails to ignite the pure joy of cracking open a comic book spine and digging those panel jumps.

Not a single vibe of geekery hit my veins. 

Nothing hit me. Except fatigue of superheroes on film and battles to save Earth and huge craters, and I say that as a massive comic book nerd of old. Indifference is the word. 

I pitied the actors. I pitied the production crew who must have busted ass, to no avail. I didn’t pity director Josh Trank, who publicly disowned the film opening night. The faults start quick, not at the end where he says the film went all wrong, out of his hands. 

Plot: Our four heroes -– high school students, in a change up from the original comic -- gain incredible powers when a scientific experiment involving inter-dimensional travel goes wrong. Miles Teller’s Reed Richard stretches, Kate Mara’s Sue Storm turns invisible, Michael B. Jordan’s Johnny Storm bursts into flame, and Jamie Bell’s Ben Grimm turns into a rock monster. Each power seems tied to personality trait. Reed’s smarter-than-everyone else nerd is stretched, see? Ben is a tough guy, all rock and closed off feeling. Johnny is a hot head. Traits. These aren’t fleshed-out characters. 

Only vague ideas.

I collected the book for a while and loved it. This reboot, following two other attempts within the past 10 years, reminded me why some printed material cannot go to the live screen. Here, Reed is a boring smug character. Sue? Boring. And not just here, but in the earlier films as well. Boring. (Storm as Human Torch and Grimm as The Thing do hold some interest. But they get short-shifted on screen. To the point of awkward hilarity.)

The whole smart outsider thing is too cliché now to even make a dent. Not when nerds can push a film toward $1 billion, hello “Avengers,” or stay home and kill a studio’s entire fiscal year, oh, hey, this movie. The “Avengers” movies saddle its heroes with woes, their heroic acts landed. This lot sulks by. Or maybe the books would read dull to me now.

The actors can’t fill the void. Not the paper-thin parts, the dull action, nor the forced relationships. Sue and Johnny are adopted brother and sister, Reed and Ben are best pals since childhood; they all whiff of people who don’t even keep in touch on Facebook. 

(Sue isn’t even allowed to make the big leap to that extra-dimensional Earth. It’s a boy’s only party. That’s less progressive than even 1961, when the comic book started. Think about that. She gets her powers when the guys return and ... how the hell?!?!?!) 

The setting is too constrained. In the books, New York City was the heroes’ playground. I loved that, being a city kid. Near every moment here takes pace in an underground bunker that makes Sam’s Club seem like heaven; or an alternate, unformed Earth –- green screen set -– that I can find on any low-ball episode of “Doctor Who.” Trank strangles his characters in every scene with shit lighting and low ceilings, and all CGI everything else. 

Post powers, half the film focuses on a Big Brother O'Brien U.S. military type (Tim Blake Nelson) sending Thing -- that's Ben -- out to attack enemies. We see on monitors this Hulk-like beast of rocks tearing tanks apart and throwing enemy combatants around, who are they? Does Ben get a thrill from this action? Does he hate it? No idea. We never get a close up. This is the product of studio managers who gave up on the film midway through.

Woe Toby Kebbell -– dig him in last year’s “Apes” movie, he is excellent -- as Victor Von Doom, one of Marvel’s best villains, reduced here to an angry geek who’s just discovered Rage Against the Machine lyrics. And maybe retweets Anonymous. On a bad day. 

Lost on that first inter-dimensional trip and thought dead, his absence from the screen is so I stopped caring. When he *finally* appears as a metalized maniac with every power Trank and his writers can throw on screen, screw continuity, Doom has nothing to offer. His look is ridiculous, a rigid metal/plastic face with bulging blank eyes, his voice dubbed in, all ringing a bad 80s film, maybe “Superman III.” That lady robot at the end? Crap.

Add in glaringly bad editing and on-screen errors (blonde wigs!) and this is a doomed film on every level, and no amount of studio/actor spin can save it. It is a dud. Watch that finale, listen to Teller's voice, struggling to sell lines such as “We have to stop him!”  and babble on about “we are stronger together.” He cannot sell it. Look at that panic. 

Several years back, Trank made the rousing low-budget “FF”-inspired “Chronicle.” It followed four different, desperate high school boys with new-found super powers. Not a best-of moment here equals any of that film’s worst-of moments. Is he a one shot wonder, did the studio kill him, or is the material just not workable in 2015? I have no idea. There is zero vision or voice or even clarity here, and that has to fall on his head.

Can we guess how soon the next reboot “FF” is coming?  D

Transcendence (2014)

A week after seeing Wally Pfister’s “Transcendence,” the flick barely registers in my brain. I vaguely recall the finale as insulting, and unfathomably boring, everything proceeding a slog lacking any remote urgency. That’s an unexpected turn for director Pfister, who served as DP on all of Chris Nolan’s films, including “Inception.” Johnny Depp is Will, an AI genius obsessed with loading a person’s consciousness to the Cloud because, I mean, that’s safe. When fate deals Will a blow, his scientist wife (Rebecca Hall) uploads hubs to a supercomputer lest she lose him forever. Will 2.0 takes his new environment too well, becoming a HAL high on Orwell: Watcher of all, raiser of dead, and controller of the Cloud, and clouds. The folks at Infowars might shake in fear. I yawned. See, Depp -– appearing like a ghostly sleep-deprived Max Headroom -- mumbles his lines and gets halfway creepy, but never dangerous. This film desperately needs danger. Skip HAL. Will becomes a lovesick Speak N’ Spell. I won’t spill the end, but know this: It defies logic in such a leap that it left me fuming. Artificial intelligence has never been slower. D+

Art of the Steal (2013)

“Art of the Steal.” That’s the title of a great 2010 documentary about a raw deal between an art museum in rural Pennsylvania and the City of (Big) Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It crackled with betrayal, and was all talking heads. Art geeks, even. Now, it’s the title of an “Oceans 11”-type caper with Kurt Russell playing ex-con Crunch Calhoun, out to steal a Gutenberg-printed book that could undo the story of Jesus. On Crash’s crew: His half-brother (Matt Dillon) who previously put our hero in prison for 5 years, and Jay Baruchel as a young crook who acts like Jay Baruchel and blurts out ad-libbed one-liners that scream ad-libbed one-liner. Kurt Russell is a great actor. So, I hate to say this, but “Art” is an ugly-dull bore. Director/writer Jonathan Sobol tosses in endless editing tricks to make his flick soar, but it’s dead at launch, topped by a woeful laughably predictable ending. One highlight: A brief, strange bit where we break from the regular plot to watch Russell play a man who steals the Mona Lisa 100 years ago. Russell’s eyes sparkle. He smiles. He scowls. Boom. Russell deserves a major comeback. C-

Apartment 3013 (2013)

“Apartment 3013” is a horror flick with one worthy scene. It comes in the middle with a sick thud, and it is a welcome jolt. I won’t spill details. It’s the only highlight of a remake of a Japanese horror with every genre cliché. We open as 24-year-old Janet (Julianne Michelle) bolts home to move into her own sweet flat at $700 per month. Uh-oh. By her first night the gal is so scared -– ghosts, noises, perv super -– she screams exposition such as “I’m so scared!” This comes before a cop grimly tells Janet’s sister (Mischa Barton), “Apartments don’t kill people, people kill people.” Not mentioned: “The only way to kill a bad apartment with a ghost is a good apartment with a ghost.” This film is that awful. The bad actors try. But “3013” looks ugly and is boring. Continuity/editing errors abound. Hammer to skull: Faded star Rebecca De Mornay plays the alcoholic mom, a washed-up rocker who dresses like a demented Stevie Nicks, swinging her martini glass around like a community theater actress trying too hard. Tone it down, sweetie. D

Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000, UK release)

In this second feature about the Irish gangster Martin Cahill, Kevin Spacey plays a thinly fictionalized Belfast crook who’s so impressed with his own thieving ways, the man’s smirk and ego overtake his abilities. Or maybe I mean Kevin Spacey the actor falls into this trap. It’s hard to tell as his Irish accent bounces and goes so much it could make a man puke his Lucky Charms. Spacey is coasting in a film made in 1998, but unseen in ’Merica until 2003. With reason. He plays “Michael Lynch” (that is, Cahill of “The General”) a gang leader with two wives (who are sisters), a bundle of children, and a talent for eluding prison as he robs banks, dole offices, and –- in a scene that shits on fact -– an art museum. Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s story is so vacant of any danger it makes a crime all its own. But Spacey –- filmed before “American Beauty” -- smirks self-satisfied. His worst gig. Colin Farrell appears, pre-stardom. Sorry, Colin. C-

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Hi-yo Silver whatever … Johnny Depp headlines a new version of “The Lone Ranger” so long and eyesore messy, unnecessarily complex, and drunk on flimsy CGI, I don’t have the energy to relive it. Depp is one awkward Tonto, while Armie Hammer is the Ranger, a would-be hero overlooked in his own saga. Done. D

Kick Ass 2 (2013)

“Kick Ass 2” is a shit sequel to a razor sharp comic book movie that fingered the caped avenger genre and reveled in and questioned its own grisly violence. Love it, hate it, “Kick Ass” did just that. No shock: It was directed by Matthew Vaughn of “Layer Cake” fame. This downer has some guy named Jeff Wadlow at the helm. Plot: Vigilante/hero-complex teens Kick Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) do battle with the -– wait for it -- Mother Fucker, the now super villain son (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) of the NYC mob boss (Mark Strong) killed in film one. MF dons his mom’s S&M gear and dishes out murder and rape. Too much. In one scene, policemen are chomped to death by a lawn mower. Rape gets a joke. Vaughn skated the line of taste, turning hero fantasy into grim shocker. Wadlow’s delivery is a tired echo and oddly boring with action scenes so haphazardly shot as to bring on indifference. The sick thrills thus become merely sick. Jim Carrey’s role as a psycho-for-Jesus G.I. Joe is over before it finds air, and Mintz-Plasse’s trip in a “Mean Girls” spin relies on diarrhea gags. Dumb ass. D+

A Dangerous Method (2011)

When David Cronenberg -- master of exploding head psychological atom bombs, and violence mixed with sex – said he was making “A Dangerous Method,” the ménage a trois between pioneer head-shrinks Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, I was stoked. I wanted envelopes torched, singed paper ashes blown in the faces of prudes. So count me wanting, put out, so to speak. Except for a few wha? spanking scenes, “Dangerous” is all talk, and I should not be surprised, as this was once called “Talking Cure.” Our focus is on Spielrein, German Jew, wealthy, and hysterically mad, put in the care of Jung (Michael Fassbender), the protégé of master head doc Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Sabina bends Jung’s tight-starched collar, and Freud feuds, and Word War I dawns, and Jung’s last scene has him going like Michael Corleone’s last scene in “Godfather, Part II,” lawn chair and all. No burning desire, no passion. Talk. Knightly’s accent grinds, and Mortensen’s Freud has all the zing of Ask Jeeves, so it’s Fassbender’s show, and he’s damn good, but a notch below “Shame,” the 2011 sex-obsessed flick that’s all dangerous method. B-