Thor: Ragnarok (2017)****

I’ve never really been a fan of Thor. I know this may make me a blasphemer, but I’ve never been much into the whole god’s thing or gladiators for that matter. You can probably add dragons to that list with the exceptions being Harry Potter and Bruce Lee. So it wasn’t really a shock that I wasn’t into the either of the first two Thor films. The only word that comes to mind when talking about those films is forgettable because I don’t really remember them. Maybe it’s just me, but they are the weak links in the MCU.

I have a feeling that the producers and creators of the third outing from the Son of Odin felt the same way because Thor Ragnarok really swerves into something that the previous films did not have. It’s an adventure that’s tongue in cheek, not taking itself too seriously, which is quite refreshing in the film landscape we have today.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns from high adventure to find his father being mimicked by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and forces him to find and return their dad to his rightful place. After a bit of cameo by Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) that could have been awkward, but actually works in the tone of this film, they find Odin (Anthony Hopkins) preparing for his death and the eventual return of Hela(Cate Blanchett), the hell beast daughter who wants total control of Asgard, meaning she needs to get rid of her siblings. 

They’re sidetracked on a world that is dotted with junk and ran by The Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum in full Goldblum mode) who uses Thor as a plaything to compete against his champion, The Hulk. Along with the fallen hero Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) they embark on stopping Hela and regaining control of Asgard.

What’s great about Thor Ragnarok is that it veers off into territory that is rarely charted with success being even more fleeting. Instead of the typical comic adventure story, this time the camp button is pushed a little bit more than usual delivering a feel reminiscent of Flash Gordon or Big Trouble In Little China. The film is comedic without making the heroes and villains bumbling idiots, which is a tightrope act when making a movie such as this. Even though this is his third solo outing, Thor as a character feels as though he grows the most in this third chapter. He goes from being quite full of himself in the beginning to modesty as a leader during a tragic time for his people. Director Taika Waititi almost reboots the character into something more entertaining for the audience. 

The film doesn’t take itself too seriously and even keeps running during the Dr. Strange cameo by making the scene fun instead of the typical advertisement. “Hey, we have other superhero movies!” Sure, the scene wasn’t really needed, but it still works. It could have bogged down, but didn’t.  I had reservations seeing this film since I didn’t care for the first two, but this one surpassed my expectations. Thor Ragnarok has really set up a track for future films that makes them a bit more interesting and more importantly, a bit more fun. I dare say that at this point this is one of the best films from the MCU.

Logan (2017) *****

If there was a standard in films it's the unwritten rule (that was dropped in last years X-Men: Apocalypse) that the third film of a franchise is always the worst. No franchise has ever been able to break away from this tradition. I never thought I would see anything like that and that's why I'm a little bit shell shocked right now at how great a film Logan happens to be. This film is a revelation, an oasis in a desert of the tried and true comic book movie formula. Like last years Deadpool, Logan breaks the conventions and succeeds at several levels.

The year is 2029 and Logan (Hugh Jackman) is a chauffeur, saving up his dollars to buy a boat and live out his days on the high seas. Mutants are all but extinct with Logan having a safe house across the border in Mexico with a senile Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and albino tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant) caring for the professor while Logan is away driving prom dates and bachelorettes around in the wee hours of the morning. When a woman mysteriously tracks Logan down and asks for help in taking a young girl named Laura (Dafnee Keen) to "Eden", a sanctuary for mutants that gets them into Canada and safety. They need Logan's help because they are being pursued by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and the corporation that has managed young Laura since her birth.

Director James Mangold almost had it with The Wolverine, but that film derailed in its last 20 minutes. With Logan he makes it to the finish line with a film that isn't all about explosions and flashy costumes. The film takes a swipe at the comics that furnished the characters and how ridiculous the stories contained within them. Logan is a character piece expanding between generations and the passing of the torch that occurs in our lives. Both Logan and Xavier are old and beginning to feel the pains associated with aging, like we all do. Jackman is Wolverine and always will be, but he goes beyond the typical Bub and one liners by bringing a raw emotion to the tole that hasn't been there before. The breakdown of everything he once had has worn him down along with time. The rest of the cast holds up to the subject matter that is well written and doesn't play the audience like idiots. As a story the film does take pieces from the graphic novel Old Man Logan, but has managed to break it down into something else, partly out of storytelling (where it succeeds) and partly out of not having access to all of the pertinent characters.

This is the movie Marvel wishes it could be. This is the movie DC once was (The Dark Knight). A gritty and realistic take on super heroes without the other worldly components. Logan is a film that borrows more from the western genre than the comic books where the characters were born. Shane is referenced heavily in this film as a man resists going back to what he once was only to be pulled back to it like the tides. Nature will always push you there. Logan and Shane are men cut from the same cloth. Add in the feel of The Searchers and you get a film that feels epic without blowing up a city. You just blow up someones life. If only other comic book films could be more like Logan and less like disaster porn. Where Stephen Spielberg compared comic book films to the westerns of old, Logan has embraced that identity fully. Films like this will keep the genre alive.

My son turned 16 a few months back. Thinking back tonight I realized that in all the franchises out there Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is the only consistent throughout his life. The actor and the character have become synonymous with each other and the idea that the next time you see that character on screen played by someone else is a heartbreaking proposition. I can only compare it to Christopher Reeve as Superman for me (By the time I was 20 we had had 3 Batmen) and the attempts to recast that role in the years since have always led me to the finally verdict that "they were OK, but they aren't close to Reeve's Superman". Call it nostalgia or whatever, but that's what we have to face now. Hugh Jackman has (supposedly) stepped down from a wonderful run, though it had some low spots, he played the role with a relish rarely seen in today's franchised film world. Logan is a wonderful (possible) swan song for the man that has given us the original anti-hero in comic book cinema. We will all miss his take on the character and the permanent mark he has made on super hero films. This generation of the genre ultimately started with him and Logan manages to be the best super hero film I've seen in close to a decade.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)***

John Wick: Chapter 2 does something that you usually don't see in sequels: it ties up loose ends from its predecessor. It's cool to see it, but is it really necessary? Nope. Not at all. I've never been more torn with an opening scene in retrospect. It's a great idea, but it adds to the bloat that this film already has.

Essentially that's what John Wick 2 represents . It's a film that continues the reluctant assassin story from the first film, but lumbers around much more than the sleek original film. Wick (Keanu Reeves) has just completed his out of retirement rampage and plans to withdraw back into the normal life he had created for himself. He barely gets a nights sleep when Santino (Ricardo Scamarcia) knocks on John's door demanding him to honor the marker he had used to get out of the business in the first place. Santino proves to be persuasive by blowing up John's home (the dog survives), forcing him to uphold his code and perform one final job.

John Wick is filled with action. Tons of it. Cargo ships loaded to capacity of it. What I'm saying is that 1. there's too much and 2. it gets repetitive. There are more double taps in this film than in most films from the last 20 years combined. The disposable henchmen tend to have hipster beards and man buns, making easily excusable fodder for Mr. Wick. The film continuously bombards you with these high octane action sequences to the point that they get kind of ridiculous. It makes the film dull and that is not what you want in an action film.

The only time the film finds itself is when the characters interact with more than fists and bullets. Ian McShane returns with another good performance, though some of his lines are drivel and you can almost see it on his face. Cassian, played by Common, was a great addition to the film. I was disappointed that he didn't have ,ore to do in this film. An underutilized asset. Of course there has been a ton of discussion about Laurence Fishburn and Reeves having a Matrix reunion of sorts. Hype it up to push the film it seems because the Fishburn role is quite disposable and bogs the last act of the film.Remove this and the opening sequence I discussed earlier and you go from a bloated 122 minutes to a tight and lean 105. Overboard isn't a good thing.

You can say that John Wick Chapter 2 is a disappointment and truthfully it really is. The performances are strong and carry the picture, but it's an overblown rehash of the first film. There's nothing new here; a shame after the first film was such a breathe of fresh air. There is a soft set up for a third film, which will probably show up in a few years, but how many more man bun double taps can an audience take?

Cannonball Run II (1984) *1/2

Cannonball Run II is the sequel to the 1981 coast to coast race film from Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds. Did you see that one? Then you've seen this one. It's a cartoonish romp with a collection of Las Vegas royalty and country stars. Yes, this is another on of those Burt Reynolds good ole' boy comedies.

Way over the top, Cannonball Run II is almost fun to watch. Almost. It's poorly written and the performances are strictly phoned in. Did Shirley Maclaine really follow up Terms of Endearment with this? Ugh. And Frank Sinatra's cameo? It's legendary in that the Chairman wasn't even there with the cast, yet appears in the blooper reel. Really? We can easily tell with the poor editing that they were not together. A poorly matched mess.

Far removed from Crosby and Hope, it's a road picture injected with steroids and over used '80's cliches. You can watch it, but the camp is turned up to eleven and all you get is a need to go on a real road trip. There isn't much left to say about it. It's just a bad movie.

Escape From Alcatraz (1979) *****

Representing the culmination of a decade long collaboration between director Don Seigel and perpetual 1970's Clint Eastwood Escape from Alcatraz is a very loose account fo the 1962 escape from the legendary prison located in San Francisco Bay.

The film opens with Frank Morris (Eastwood) being delivered to his new island home. He meets the hard ass warden (Patrick McGoohan) and delivers the speech to Morris about no one ever escaping Alcatraz and no one ever will. The film then follows Morris and his compatriots (Jack Thibeau, Fred Ward, and Larry Hankin) use their wits and the materials they have on hand to make their daring escape.

Shot on the actual island, the film has a washed out and bleak look that obviously mimics its location in the foggy and cold bay area. The order in these broken down buildings shows how the island has rotted away with time, but the cogs of justice have continued to turn no matter what happens. Clint Eastwood's performance is one of his best, on par with Josey Wales or Unforgiven. You are not watching Dirty Harry in this film as Eastwood leaves that persona before the opening credits roll. The performances throughout the film are filled with hopelessness and even characters not involved in the escape seem to perk up when it's even hinted at. It's like sun light breaking through the clouds for one solitary moment.

As a whole, the theme of the film is hope. All of the convicts are hopeless until Frank shows up and starts filling their minds with the possibility, the hope, of escape. Could there be a way out of Alcatraz that doesn't end in death? This is another '70's film that flipped the good guys and the bad guys. Once again, after Vietnam and Watergate, the nation lost confidence in its authority figures. In Escape from Alcatraz you are rooting for the cons to overcome the authority that keeps pressing its thumb down on them from the opening moments. It is a great film that is really an underrated masterpiece of the 1970's.

Re-Animator (1985) ****1/2

Throughout the history of film one of the characters that continues to pop up is the mad scientist attempting to push his studies to the point of lunacy. This is a person who has become so obsessed with their primary objective that they throw any sense of moral code or obligation right out the window. The first and most famous example is Dr. Frankenstein in the numerous incarnations that have been brought to life over the decades, be it Colin Clive or Peter Cushing. Science is the only thing of importance to these men. With Re-Animator we get another take on the Frankenstein mentality, though it is more tongue in cheek and finds some humor in the situation.

Based on the H.P. Lovecraft story, the film opens with what will be our resident mad scientist Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) encountering the possible consequences of his experiments when his mentor dies at the European school he is attending. Having "learned all he can" there he arrives at an American university and rooms with golden boy med student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott). Dan is the typical over zealous student that's dating the dean's daughter Megan (Barbara Crampton) and being a general BMOC (big man on campus). Herbert uses the relationship between Dan and Megan as leverage in getting Dan to assist him in his experiments. His goal: to bring people back from brain death. Eventually the pair are discredited by the administration and they are forced to go about their work in secret. Of course these plans go awry as issues spring up with how Herbert's "agent" works.

Director Stuart Gordon delivers a film that, even though it could have dated itself, manages to break that 1980's mold and become something more than a late night cable TV film lost to obscurity. He manages to walk the thin line between a horror film and a comedy, balancing the two and delivering a film that is stronger for it. It is a gorefest, but there is enough humor to take the edge off, but it doesn't end up a parody of itself. For being a lower budget film the performances are well done with the stand outs being Combs and David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill, an under handed professor that becomes a failed experiment with consequences.

The film is visually striking with its effects and even though the budget was low, still managed to push the envelope and deliver something new. Gordon shoots the film not with the effects as star, but as a valued character actor. There are scenes that remain legendary in Re-Animator even if they are old school camera trickery.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Re-Animator is the Frankenstein of the 1980's. The film is built as a loving parody of the Mary Shelly classic. It comes from an era where films are perpetually stuck because of their reliance on cliches of the era, but Re-Animator stands out and survives beyond those neon bounds. It captures you with a well worn idea that is garnished with more modern sensibilities. It's horror that gives you a break instead of slamming you in the head with murder-death-kill every ten minutes just for the sake of it. Re-Animator is a great overlapping genre piece that has the ability to be enjoyed more than once. The film never gets old and always delivers a great experience for the audience.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) *1/2

Retro-sequel seems to have become all the rage lately. Star Wars is back with a vengeance, Indiana Jones is on his way, Alien, Blade Runner, Jurassic World and others have taken franchise stagnant for a decade or more and revived them not with a reboot, but a sequel that continues the long dead story. A film that could have delivered a sequel decades before now is Independence Day, a film that wasn't the greatest but it did deliver some summer popcorn entertainment. Why we didn't get a sequel until now is a mystery to me.

The plot isn't going to take much to describe.Honestly, if you've seen the first film then you have seen this one. I was thinking about doing a copy and paste from my view of the first film, but why go to the effort. Plus, there seems to be to much copy and paste going on with this one anyway. Aliens, angry that we beat them in the first film, show up. Throw in a McGuffin so that we have a way to set up another sequel and you're done. Like an assembly line.

The film is pure paint by numbers and that philosophy can work when you add something interesting or at least make an effort. This film doesn't do that. The beats are the same as the first film and what is new happens to be well worn cliches from films such as Pearl Harbor. Bill Pullman returns as the ex-President, but actually takes up the crazed Randy Quaid character. Jeff Goldblum also returns, does his thing, and collects his check. Will Smith does not return, opting to appear in Suicide Squad. Not perfect. but better than going backward on the part of Mr. Smith. Throughout the film the cast does its thing, re-making Independence Day.

I guess we're going to get hit with more of these. Reboots are garbage, so let's revitalize. The problem is that a retro-sequel can end up being more pathetic than actually starting over from scratch. The movie blatantly sets up a sequel, but whether or not that will come to fruition is up in the air at this time. It sounds like something different, which this movie should have been if it wanted to recapture an audience. Nods to the original are encouraged, but give the viewer a reason to spends time watching your movie. Oh well. The grand daddy of modern disaster porn has fallen. Let's just pack this one away as a relic of the old days.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) ***

When X-Men movies first hit the silver screen the world was staggering from the comic book films of the late 1990's (I'm looking at you Batman and Robin and Spawn). The concept of adapting super heroes was just not as viable as it is today. The X-Men series is the odd franchise that has been rebooted, but is still tied to its former self more tightly with timeline swaps creating a convoluted mess that becomes more and more confusing with each additional movie.

X-Men: Apocalypse opens in Egypt where Apocalypse (Oscar Issacs) is being transferred into another body, merging his powers with the powers of his new host. A coup renders him buried hundreds of feet below the ground in perpetual hibernation, waiting for the day that he can be rejuvenated by the sun. Obviously he is released and begins the process of taking control of the world back from humans- he feels that he is their god. He recruits four mutants (the four horsemen), one of them being Magneto (Michael Fassbender) who, after experiencing another tragedy, now feels that humanity is evil and needs to be exterminated. This leads to a confrontation with Professor X (James McAvoy) and his team of X-Men.

Bryan Singer is the mastermind of the X-Men franchise, helming four of the installments. After continuous disaster porn offerings in comic book films it really isn't a surprise that a film with the sub title Apocalypse should also contain massive destruction. It doesn't seem quite as bad as other comic book films, but it's still there and is starting to wear thin on viewers. The film holds itself together, but it does have issues. There are pairings that don't really fire on all cylinders, leaving an awkward feeling in the film when it really wasn't intended. The problem is that these intermingle with moments in the film that really work so when you get going into the movie and become heavily invested the film hits the breaks with awkwardness and pulls the viewer right out of it. This is all secondary when you get to the tacked on scene that is just there so that we can have a gratuitous Hugh Jackman cameo. To sum up that part of the film, it was not needed at all and the film could have been fine with it cut from the final product. Discarding it would have made the film a tighter piece and better in the long run. But it gets you hyped for the next film, right?

X-Men: Apocalypse is probably the weakest of the current X-Men franchise. The film blatantly sets up Logan, but where does this series go from here? Is there a future with this franchise in this form or will another reboot be in order? Time will tell. All in all this is a respectable film if you can get past the issues it contains. A decent super hero film as long as you don't expect too much out of it.

Dog Eat Dog (2016) 1/2

Dog Eat Dog is about a trio of criminals (Nicholas cage, Willem DaFoe, and Christopher Matthew Cook) that are trying to get a big score. Their big score is kidnapping a baby. It goes down the toiler. Messy, so very messy.

This film is an incoherent piece of trash. The plot is all over the place and leaves so much hanging out to no resolution. It's like a building that is midway through its demolition. Hallways lead to oblivion and pieces of junk just sticking here and there with no real purpose anymore. Junior high schoolers could write a better script than this. The stories that children develop when playing with a menagerie of action figures are better than this. I can't really say that the ending is satisfying because there is nothing satisfying in this film. It goes for a cheap shock to introduce the film and really just sits there spinning its wheels for the remainder of the film.

The acting is hammy and over the top. Cage continues to bury his once great career in another garbage film with another garbage performance. He goes overboard ala The Wicker Man and does a terrible Bogart impression. Let this be a lesson to everyone out there to pay yout taxes or you'll have to be in crap like Dog eat Dog. Dafoe isn't as far down the shoot as Cage is career wise, but if he keeps appearing in films like this his legacy will be torched by the easy paychecks films like this must pay. He plays a parody of himself. It's a miserable experience because he doesn't really have anything to work with and an over the edge Dafoe isn't anything new. Been there and done that in much better films. The rest of the acting is pedestrian at best and does nothing to carry the film higher than mediocre.

Finally we get to director Paul Schrader, a darling of cinema thirty years ago gives us a film that can really be summed up as a cliche of 1990's cinema. Most of the hip artistic tricks that he employs in this film were being used by Oliver Stone 20 years ago. Sorry Paul, but movies have grown past that, for better or for worse and in a better film they may have lent to telling the story more, but with Dog Eat Dog it just makes you want to watch Natural Born Killers. Schrader is another casualty in this "film".

Dog Eat Dog really is a cliche. Acting, directing. Everyone does the typical stuff and delivers nothing beyond what they get paid for. To be truthful, the script is not a cliche. If it were this film may have been better. Average, but that would be better than what we have now. This film is written terribly at the expense of trying to be cool. It tries way too hard and falls right on its face. Not very cool. This film will be remembered for being horrible as it buries the three talents associated with it.

Ghostbusters (2016) *1/2

Once again the remake train derails into another franchise with Ghostbusters, the 2016 comedy that seems to be made by people who have never seen the original film. The funny thing is that I now am filled with regret after seeing this overtly controversial film of this summer.

Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones star as the title characters in this film about the paranormal invading New York City and the recently unemployed small business owners that are here to fight this new nuisance. A bell boy named Rowan (Neil Casey) is expanding ghost activity for some reason, coming to a climax with Times Square full of scares. (Times Scare? Slime Square?)

The script is immature at best and bottom feeding at worst. A nice  middle finger scene here, a crotch shot there, basic 13 year old humor like that which plays well to kids and the soft headed. The story is like falling from a tree with the plot hitting one branch, then another, then another, and never really landing anywhere to settle except the eventual land fill that this film feels destined for.

I can't really say that the acting is bad. You're only as good as your script and we've already established the mess that road map is. The real issue with the main core of the cast is that there is little chemistry between the quartet. This is probably the biggest fault with Ghostbusters '16 especially compared to the chemistry that is exuded in the original film. Even the sequel felt more on point than this film and it shows. This is reason this film didn't click with viewers, too.

I will admit that I was very pessimistic when it came to discussing this film and it wasn't because of the swapping of the sexes, though that felt like it was marketed as a gimmick. In all honesty, the film didn't look good from trailers and research that I did pre-release. Even if it didn't have the no ghost insignia stamped on its marketing this film would have been mediocre. This one had to stand up to one of the most beloved films of the last 30+ years. It feels rushed and thrown together into something for the mass quantities to consume instead of that special thing that was the original film. I'm not going to blame the cast because it feels like they actually believed in what they were doing- an honest retelling of a story that they grew up with, just like you and me. No, this is a failure on director Paul Feig's part. He delivers a soulless film that is just empty calories to be purged and forgotten in a day or two. An albatross on a decent career.

Carrie Fisher 1956-2016

2016 shall be remembered as the year of losing celebrities. I don't know if it's just the standard and we've gotten to the point where the fans are also social media addicts that spread the word as quickly as a prom night rendezvous.  It has felt like a non-stop memorial since January with the passing of David Bowie and while some have affected me in various ways, none really hit me like Carrie Fisher.  Sure, there were some tough losses this year for my pop culture mind to wrap my head around, but the thing is that the two constants that I have as far back as I can remember are the St. Louis Cardinals and Star Wars. Carrie Fisher was the first lady of that universe.

It didn't really dawn on me until this week that she was my first crush. She was the girl that I was introduced to on the big screen when I was almost four years old, rushing home to see what kind of adventures I could create with the plastic caricatures I had in my Darth Vader storage case. Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia was my first introduction to women in pop culture. I know we could argue this point until the sun expands and toasts us all, but she wasn't your typical damsel in distress. Sure, the boys are rolling in to rescue her, but she was a strong willed character, dare I say a leader, that wasn't the Olive Oil type screaming for Popeye to save her from Brutus. We can give some credit to the writing, but it was her performance that sold it to us almost 40 years ago.

Of course as I grew up I was able to see that there was more than Princess Leia to Carrie Fisher, mainly in her empowering and sarcastic wit. I kind of frown on the idea of a person being their character, especially when they're no longer with us, but I would have to say that Princess Leia was Carrie Fisher. Vulnerable at times, but a strong, opinionated woman that led with a charming personality that mesmerized us. A presence that was always welcome and gave us a view that was from a road less traveled, an angle that most people couldn't comprehend being the axis for. She was bigger than Leia and the world is going to be a little less sarcastic and witty without her.