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

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

(EDITED 20 May 2015. A second viewing has me even more enthralled with this movie. But some a huge correction to the below: It is without doubt the same Max Rockatansky in this film as Mel Gibson played. That's clear up front, and elsewhere. Which makes the lead of Charlize Theron's road Warrior Trucker all the more amazing. And the first appearance of The Wives is one of the great rug pulls of modern cinema. The first shot seems contrived and sexist, wet ladies in the desert, wearing gauze, maybe. College guys next to me whistled. Within moments they cringed and winced at the rage these ladies held. That's powerful film-making. I never touched on the wild religious implications of the film, the sick promise of Immortan Joe to his followers that if they die for him, Valhalla (heaven) awaits. Massive part of the story. It hits current wars of this day. Just epic. I don't know George Miller, only a few months younger my father, pulled this off. He has just crushed every young filmmaker working today. Epic. That certain Jedi film coming out later this year has a huge mountain to climb. A sequel.reboot has just set a new standard for action films, and how woman are to be seen on screen. Forever. And the energy on screen -- the feeling that anything can happen -- i just have to applaud.)


Days on, I’m still pumped with awe. I don’t know where to begin or if I’ll ever get everything I feel right now. “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the most daring, subversive summer action film to hit cinemas in years. God love George Miller. 

This is THE film we need now. In its jaw-dropping spectacle. Its energy. Its anger.

From trailers and posters galore, we expect rising Hollywood star Tom Hardy (“The DarkKnight Rises”) to take on the iconic Australian role of ex-cop Max Rockatansky played frighteningly wild-eyed, fierece by Mel Gibson 40 odd years ago and run with it. 

Hero. Savior. Bad ass driver and gunslinger. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

During a frenzied pre-credits opening salvo, hero Max is taken hostage, bound and masked, and in drops the true lead of this film -- the new Road Warrior for our time -- Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. One-armed, armed, and driving a steam-punk tractor trailer straight out of hell and into freedom. Or hope. Or any place, but from where she came. 

This is an action film with women at the core. Not since “Alien” have we seen such a display. Theron makes Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley seem tame. Here, strong, blood, divisive, kick-ass women in a near-future world take back control of their lives and their world -- killed by men -- with ferocious force. Max has to keep up. This could have been called “Mad Women.” (Unlike “Alien,” Miller uses scant clothing to again burn genre.)

And the action -– the entire film is one chase with so little dialogue, you begin to forget to question if anyone can talk – has no peer. In an age where whole hours of something like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is wall-to-wall CGI and impersonal robots and immortal heroes, Miller drops in real vehicles and teams of stuntmen and women and smashes everything together decadent glee. He smashes trucks through cars. Drops bikes off mountains. Throws tanks into a tornado, and lets them fall. He kills characters we have instantly fallen in love with minutes ago. 

Every frame of “Fury” is madness, glorious madness that feels as alive and pulsing as the first “Mad Max” in 1979, a film that plays like it had to be made or its director –- Miller –- might lose his f’n mind. 

(This also recalls the gonzo mad independent Australian films of the 1970s, such as “The Cars that Ate Paris,” where narrative coherence is slain by glorious visual chaos. And, yes, John Seale’s digital, handheld cinematography is Oscar worthy, inches from bloodied cheeks and oil-spewing motors. Also Oscar worthy: Nicholas Holt, breaking out from boring X-Men and childish movie star roles to play a crazed man riddled with tumors and a desire to die horrifically, so he can be reborn whole.) 

Before I get ahead of myself: We are back in the post-nuclear apocalypse desert of the “Road Warrior” and “Thunderdome,” although I don’t think “Fury” is exactly a sequel or a reboot from the previous films. It’s never specifically said that this Max is the same Max of the previous trilogy. His flashbacks -– violent, haunted acid trips of a man long past sanity -– match nothing told before. Miller has us work for info. He drops us in the middle of the action and makes us chase down the back stories, the detailed horrors of this world. 

One viewing is not enough. Furiosa’s task at the start of the film is to steal gasoline for her master, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the villain in “Mad Max,” but a fully different character). Joe is an obese tumor-stricken old man wearing a plastic muscle suit that bulks him to Hulk-size, with a horrifying oxygen mask of plastic, rubber, and animal teeth for a face. He is the leader of a desert cult that worships him as a god, and as he controls all water, food, fuel, and the blood supply, he will not be questioned. 

He also keeps five young women as sex slaves to breed his children. It is they who are Furiosa’s cargo as the film opens, she defying the order to steal petro as she carries these women to the “green place” of her lost youth. Within Joe’s tower cave, his “wives” have scrawled defiant phrases: “We are not your property!” 

The chase is set when Joe decides otherwise and sets out to get his “women” back, no matter who he has to kill to do so. (Even his underlings question his sanity.) That the “wives” are introduced as one-note barely-dressed supermodels is a tantalizing FU from Miller and his writers. In the sands, away from men, finding more women warriors and mentors, these young “hotties” explode in murderous revolt. Max can barely keep up. 

Oscar winner Theron rules the film with quiet intensity. Our action star for 2015. Hardy is her acting equal as a man lost and in desperate need of saving by these women before he loses his last thread of humanity. Epic does not do “Fury” justice. It is vital viewing as action spectacle and comment on our sexist age. 

I can’t think of another Hollywood summer film that has so upended my expectations to glorious effect. Miller has just writ the end of our male-dominated Marvel and D.C. summer era. Those films are made by business. This was made by burning need. A+

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

This is a rebooted series miles above the original run of flicks that ruled cinemas 40 year back. A rare, dark, thinking person’s treat in the middle of summer, more interested in sparking hot debate and making audience squirm than serving up empty CGI fireworks. Seriously, put aside the Oscar-worthy 3-D motion capture effects –- all shot in forest and a city, not a sound stage –- and watch this story. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” picks up 10 years after 2011’s “Rise,” dumping its human cast (James Franco, bye) as we follow the primate survivors (Andy Serkis, you are a god) post bloody revolt and mass pandemic. This is the last encounter of ape and struggling humans –- led by an uncorked panicking Gary Oldman -- as the latter delve into the apes’ forest, to restart an electric dam. Any chance of interspecies peace is crushed under lingering wounds of the “old” world, and we enter a dark, new dystopian future the previous films merely hinted at. Director Matt Reeves has created a razor sharp sequel that, yes, may be inevitable, but it can still shock, too -- check an onscreen murder of a youth. Serkis is flat out amazing. A-

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

I loved Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan book series before I drifted left and he disappeared into techno-war-porn liberal hate. Ryan was a great read: Injured marine turned CIA desk geek with deadly smarts. Blow shit up? Tougher guys did that. Clancy’s writing electrified: He foresaw 9/11 in 1994. Now comes “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” a reboot with Chris Pine as Ryan. It fizzles. It chases 9/11. It casts Russians as villains in a move politely called nostalgic. It starts strong: Young Ryan is wounded in Afghanistan, but his rehab spirit captures him a gal (Keira Knightly) and a secret boss (Kevin Costner) who hires Ryan for his vibe on tracking bad money. But fizzles. I’ll skip plot, because when the climax hits, Ryan –- injured 10 years on  -– is popping motorcycles like Knievel and punches like Bourne. Baffling. Did a reel get lost? Kenneth Branagh is director and bad guy, going full Hollywood. A missed idea screams loud: Why not recast Ryan with Knightly -- oddly cast as distressed damsel -- as female Ryan? Clancy might have been a right-wing blowhard, but he knew cool women. Disappointing. (But better than that Affleck crap.) C+

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

Endlessly loud, obnoxiously edited, and sporting two (!) scenes of its anti-hero pissing flames, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” is a ridiculously bad reboot/sequel to the equally limp 2007 hit that starred Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle daredevil who is eternally cursed as a demonic stooge with a flaming skull. Film No. 1 neutered the cult-hit Marvel character into popping jellybeans with Cage all wiggy Cage-like. “Spirit” moves the action from America to Eastern Europe, packing along a “Terminator 2” plot: Blaze must save a mother and son who are being hunted by the relentless Mephistopheles (Cirian Hinds). The kid is no John Connor hero, but the Anti-Christ. Yikes! Numbskull directing duo Neveldine and Taylor (“Gamer”) ride “Rider” into the ground with smash and grab edits that ruin every action scene, and unleash a sweaty, over-the-top Cage. The story hints at the Rider being a danger to any sinner -– even the Devil’s poor baby-mama -– but never delivers. Both films’ curse: Ghost Rider’s charcoal stick figure with its impenetrable all-CGI fiery skull makes it impossible to give a rat’s ass about Blaze’s spirit one way or another. Hell with him. D+

Star Trek (2009)

The new "Star Trek" is historic cinema. Not only is it ingenuous reboot film-making from the mind of J.J. Abrams (TV's "Lost"), but it dares to pull the ultimate hat-trick. Through a time-traveling, history-changing event, this film doesn't just go back and tell us the origins of beloved Enterprise crew from the 1960s TV show and 1980s films. It spins off a whole new alternate reality with the same characters, but with different ticks, emotions and pasts plastered onto each soul.

It's a "reboot" that doesn't have the whiff of re-cooked ham. Thank the film gods.

The set-up: A time-screwing Romulan (Eric Bana in full bad-ass mode) travels back in time to kill James T. Kirk's father and decimate Spock's home plant of Vulcan. Boom. What we knew from dozens of shows and six or so films is still in place; it happened. This is new territory. Kirk (Chris Pine) is now an orphan rebel seemingly hell-bent on dying young, Spock (Zachary Quinto) is infused with new untapped emotion (yes, emotion) as he watches his mother plunge to her death and his home planet implode.

Yes, the buzzing art direction and fast editing of the film is different from any "Trek" before it. Again, thank the film gods. It's all for the better, because the old franchise had grown stale, stuffy and self-righteous, the cinematic equivalent of the Republican Party. And yet here, characters and the relationships still are at the forefront, the best assets of the "Trek" films.

I can't think of a better scene in a "Trek" film than here: Just after Vulcan is destroyed, and the young Uhura (Zoe Saldana) chases after Spock, and hugs and kisses him in an elevator, hoping to get any response from him, and to comfort him. On the surface, Spock doesn't respond. Pure Vulcan. The camera then hones in on his eyes, and Spock explodes (oh so quietly) on screen like never before. Quinto (TV's "Heroes") is a movie star. Runner-up: A heroic suicide that brings back memories of a great moment in "Lost" - the drowning of Charlie.

The question that must be asked: Would anyone still respect the now-crap "Star Wars" franchise if George Lucas had handed his tired ass franchise off to a wild card dealer such as Abrams? Hell, yes. "Star Trek" is back, and will life long and prosper. "Star Wars"? Umm. That was a long, long time ago. Having nearly slept through "Star Trek V: We Even Made God Boring" in the theater, I can't believe I just wrote that. A-