Review: "Warcraft"

The record for movie adaptations of video games is just atrocious… and it’s not getting any better with the release of “Warcraft.” Fantasy movies don’t fare so well either, so it’s got the double whammy effect.

“Warcraft” has been in development for literally 10 years, when the World of Warcraft online game was just reaching its peak, with millions of people playing characters from a broad range of fantastical races and abilities. There are also some precursor strategy games, novels, collectible figures, replica weapons, and other offshoots of a multi-billion-dollar empire.

(And I know of which I speak. In the years B.K. – before kids – I was an 80 paladin/80 warlock/80 death knight/68 priest/59 rogue on the Kul Tiras realm of WoW.)

It’s not an overstatement to say that Warcraft is the first video game to become a cultural phenomenon. The movie, a $160 million extravaganza heavy on top-drawer CGI animation, became almost inevitable.

I wish it weren’t.

The movie has a slapdash, chaotic feel, as if the filmmakers were trying to stitch together footage shot during two or three different productions. There are continuity errors all over the place – one warrior is broken out of prison, given his armor back, and in the very next scene his armor is gone and he’s barefoot for some reason. Another major figure is revealed to be corrupted by dark magic… but when and how was he corrupted?

There’s missing backstory and motivations all over the place. We watch characters do things without understanding why.

Director Duncan Jones, a promising filmmaker who made the excellent “Moon” a few years ago, co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Leavitt, and I can only guess they were shackled by restrictions from Blizzard, the company behind Warcraft. I would posit they were given a checklist of story elements and characters and ordered to fit it all together somehow.

The story is set in the early days of the Warcraft mythology, when the bestial orcs first crossed over from their dying world into that of the humans, setting off battle. There are also quick nods to a few other races on the “Alliance” side of the game, notably elves and dwarves, but the Horde is just orcs. (Thankfully no pandas, at least!)

The orcs are a wonder to behold, painted with wondrous detail by the animators. They’re huge, seven feet tall and thick as oaks, with green skin and protruding tusks, and a vaguely American Indian style of adornment. A few of the nastier ones even have… other protrusions.

Toby Kebbell plays (through voice and motion-capture performance) the orc hero Durotan, a noble savage who fears for the plight of his people, including a newly born son. Their leader, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), is a mighty wizard wielding a terrible green magic called Fel, which he uses to open a portal to the human world of Azeroth. But it requires a sacrifice of lives, not to mention poisoning the very land.

On the human side is Lothar (Travis Fimmel), commander of the forces of King Llane (Dominic Cooper), who’s called upon to resist the orcish invaders. He’s an odd hero; he seems more peckish than resolute.

Ben Foster plays Medivh, the stern magical guardian of the realm, who mostly broods in his lonesome soaring tower, occasionally dipping into a pool of blue goo to revive his powers. Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) is the classic exposition character, a wayward wizard who turns up whenever the plot needs explaining or moving along.

Somewhere in the middle is Garona (Paula Patton, in heavy green body paint), a half-breed orc who’s captured by Lothar and recruited to their cause. The two start exchanging jungle fever-type stares, though Garona helpfully warns him that he would be injured if he tried to lie with her.

Question: if this is the first time the orcs have crossed over into this world, how did a human breed with one of them years ago to create Garona? If you’re asking these sorts of questions, you’re thinking too hard to enjoy this movie.

“Warcraft” is a great-looking flick that should have been a lot more fun, and a lot less silly, than it is.

Review: "The Conjuring 2"

In the real life 1970s, Lorraine and Ed Warren were a dowdy, middle-aged couple with double chins and dreams of being immortalized on film for their paranormal investigations, which they claim ran over 10,000 cases. They finally got their wish in 2013 with “The Conjuring,” a huge horror hit … which could mean there are at least 9,999 sequels to come.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson return as the Warrens, and they’re a nice break from the kooky sorts who usually inhabit possession movies. They’re pretty normal people of Christian faith who happen to work – often on behalf of the Catholic Church – to sniff out if reports of unusual activities are hoaxes or not.

Wilson plays Ed as a pure-hearted square, the sort of guy who fixes faucets at the houses he’s exorcising and imitates Elvis on the guitar just to calm some very scared kids. He’s kind of stiff and diffident, but there’s no mistaking his good intentions.

Lorraine is the talent, having the power to sense evil forces and communicate with wayward spirits. Despite her supernatural abilities, she’s the more grounded of the two.

After having a particularly rough outing in the 1976 Amityville case, the Warrens are taking a break from active investigations. It seems the spook followed them home, taking the form of Marilyn Manson in a nun’s habit. Well, not actually Manson, but a dead ringer. Then the Enfield case breaks near London, and they’re back on the hunt.

It seems the spirit of a nasty old man named Bill Wilkins (Bob Adrian) is reluctant to leave the shabby row house he once occupied. Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) and her four kids live there now, and soon start hearing the old thump-thump in the night – which soon turns into more terrifying incidents.

After initially going after young Billy (Benjamin Haigh), a shy lad with a stutter, the spirit focuses its intentions on Janet (Madison Wolfe), age 11. Even though we’ve seen it a hundred times, it’s still creepy as all get out when a little girl speaks with a ghost’s croaking moan. Then comes flying furniture, apparitions, possessed toys, etc.

Some local experts – Franka Potente plays Anita Gregory – have already dismissed the case as ventriloquism and clever tricks, though Maurice Grosse (Simon McBurney) is a kindly scientist with a receptive ear. The Warrens come in late in the game, just as the Wilkins spirit kicks things into high gear.

The movie takes a while to get going – it could easily stand to be 20 minutes shorter – but director James Wan, who co-wrote the script with four others, is adept at stirring the pot of anxiety. He’ll build the tension for a long moment, then have something jump out at the audience from somewhere we didn’t expect.

As horror sequels go, “The Conjuring” scares up enough to entertain us.

Review: "Maggie's Plan"

About 25 years ago Vice President Dan Quayle caused a stink when he criticized Murphy Brown’s decision to have a baby without getting married, or even locking down a permanent male partner (beyond providing the requisite genetic material). The controversy seems almost quaint today, given society’s rapidly changing mores on what constitutes a proper family (not to mention that Murphy was a fictional TV character).

I thought of this while watching “Maggie’s Plan” because the film serves as the unwitting antithesis of Quayle’s argument. Greta Gerwig plays the titular young woman whose plan to go the single mother route is derailed when she falls in love with a married man, and suddenly finds herself thrust into stewardship of an entire family.

With all the heartbreak and pain she suffers -- and causes -- it becomes pretty clear by the end that staying single would’ve been the best route to happiness for everyone involved.

The film is written and directed by Rebecca Miller, her fifth feature film over the past two decades. It’s a smart and wry exploration of yet another fully fleshed Gerwig character, and also provides some interesting thoughts on the ever-brewing Mommy Wars.

Maggie is in her early 30s, settled and accomplished as an administrator in the arts program of a New York City college that remains unnamed. (It’s obviously NYU, my alma mater, as evidenced by the locations, especially Washington Square Park; I assume there was a legal reason for remaining coy.)

She’s awesome at most everything, except romance, which is why as the story opens she’s decided to get pregnant using a donor. The male half of her best friend couple, Tony (Bill Hader) and Felicia (Maya Rudolph), offers his sperm, but she’s decided to obtain it from some guy from college -- whose name is Guy (Travis Fimmel) -- who used to be a promising mathematician but is now a crunchy type selling organic pickles.

Meanwhile, Maggie falls hard for John (Ethan Hawke), a slightly older adjunct professor who’s married with two kids. He’s a rock star in his field, fictocritical anthropology, which basically means he can write about whatever wants and receive an academic stipend for it. Currently he’s trying to write a novel, and escape the clutches of his controlling wife, Georgette.

Just as Maggie is about to culminate the, uh, transaction with Guy, John shows up on her doorstep and professes his love. Flash to 18 months later, and now she is ensconced as the mother of an adorable little girl, as well as playing den mother to John, still working on that novel, as well as his kids. Mina Sundwall plays the knowing, critical teenager.

Georgette turns up, played by Julianne Moore, after having written a book about the dissolution of her marriage, Maggie seeks her out, and the two spark up an unlikely friendship. She’s a strange, cold woman of vague Nordic background, also an academic, who tries to dominate every interaction she has. Moore plays her rather broadly, which is how Georgette is written, but the performance could’ve benefited from more shading.

Maggie realizes that, behind her veil of Valkyrie-like power, Georgette is vulnerable and still loves John. This also forces Maggie to admit that she is miserable with him. So she hatches a scheme to get her husband to leave her for his ex-wife.

Hawke is terrific as John, a generally decent guy whose worst instincts come out when he’s allowed to lean on someone else for everything, instead of being the lean-ee.

Ultimately it’s Gerwig’s show, though, and she continues to demonstrate why she’s one of the best actresses her generation. Maggie may be just as fictional as Murphy Brown was, but this movie gives us a funny, nuanced look at the choices and expectations Millennial women face.

Reeling Backward: "The Driver" (1978)

The late 1970s was an interesting time for American cars, and movies.

The 1974 oil embargo, plus new pollution standards, hit the automotive industry like a bag of bricks. Literally within a year or two, big-block engines had almost entirely disappeared from American show rooms, replaced by smaller, more efficient and often bag-over-head-ugly styles. But by 1978 or so, though, Pontiac Firebird and a few other models dared to become loud and large again.

The result was a rolling smorgasbord of modernism and throwback, muscle cars and horsepower pipsqueaks, flashy and forgettable, all occupying the same road.

Watching a movie like "The Driver," you see everything from early-1960s Cadillacs and other aging midcentury land yachts to pre-embargo beasts and newer econo-boxes.

The local movie theater was much the same. The blockbuster era was just launching, but you still had auteurs making small personal films and the burgeoning influence of foreign cinema on American movies.

"The Driver" was Walter Hill's second film as a director after the success of "Hard Times," a boxing movie with Charles Bronson. He adopted a similar spare style for this one starring Ryan O'Neal as a professional getaway driver. I admired it, but it goes too far in its taciturn tone, with its protagonist crossing over from cool reserve to seeming disinterest.

"Less is more" is mantra in Hollywood, but this film could've used a little less less.

One of Hill's conceits is that nobody in the movie even gets a name. O'Neal is simply "the Driver," while Bruce Dern as the rule-bending cop obsessed with busting him is simply "the Detective." This makes for some odd-sounding dialogue, with Dern referring to his quarry as "driver" or "cowboy."

Similarly, the card-playing quasi-hooker -- she lets a rich guy bankroll her lifestyle in exchange for occasional sex -- played by French star Isabelle Adjani in her American debut is simply "the Player." A secondary villain, a gun-happy robber (Joseph Walsh) wearing gaudy octagonal eye-wear is "Glasses"; the woman (Ronee Blakely) who sets up jobs for the driver is "the Connection"; a toothy antagonist (Rudy Ramos) is "Teeth;" and so on.

It's a microcosm of the film's major flaw of withholding too much. If you decline to name the main character, it makes him more mysterious. If nobody has a name, everybody talks like an idiot.

But the film has many admirable aspects, and you can see the stylistic flourishes that Hill would go on to display in "The Warriors," "The Long Riders," "48 Hours" and other movies. North of age 70, he's still active today as a producer and writer, and is attached to direct a thriller due next year.

This movie marked the beginning of the end of Ryan O'Neal's brief, hot career as a leading man. The same year would see the (wisely) forgotten sequel to "Love Story," followed by a romantic comedy with Barbra Streisand, a sci-fi disaster, and oblivion.

He was dismissed as being too pretty (and blond, a perpetual problem in Hollywood), arrogant and unreliable. I think it was more the classic case of writers and directors not knowing what to do with an actor of considerable skill but narrow range. As the passive, nearly wordless Driver, O'Neal just wanders around looking glum.

(I kept wondering: what if O'Neal and Dern had switched roles?)

Driver passes on jobs that involve a high risk of violence -- "I don't like shooters" is all he'll say -- and refuses to work with anyone who's even a minute late. Yet he's adept at guns and fists when called upon, and seems to operate by his own schedule and rules. The driver is a ronin, a masterless samurai who gives his ultimate fealty to his craft.

(The influences on the 2011 film "Drive" seem pretty obvious, right down to evoking the same era.)

At various times Driver pilots a Trans Am, a Ford big-block sedan, a first-generation Mustang pony car, a hot-rodded 1973 Chevy truck and a late model Mercedes-Benz -- the latter of which he completely trashes during a contemptuous "tryout" for Glasses' gang.

The driving stunts were reasonably impressive for a low-budget film in 1978, though they're a bit dated now. Turns, burnouts, controlled crashes, driving into oncoming traffic, etc. A whole lot of "extras" cars going 25 m.p.h. so the lead cars look fast doing 55. Compared to the jumps and flips in the previous year's "Smokey and the Bandit," it was fairly tame stuff.

The plot is spare as can be: Detective has been chasing Driver for some time now, but can't catch him in the act. He puts the pressure on Glasses to stage a bank robbery of $200,000 with Driver so they can pop him at the meetup. Of course, things don't go so smoothly.

It winds up as a game of chicken, with both the cop and the criminal aware of the setup, but still insisting on playing the game for its own sake.

Adjani is pretty well wasted in the movie, never showing any kind of expression even as she becomes romantically involved with Driver. (We assume; their coupling is only alluded to.) She was not happy with the resulting film, and complained that it stymied her chance to cross over into mainstream Hollywood.

Dern is obviously having a lot of fun, flashing that famous horsey smile and using his wiles to intimidate and needle everyone he encounters, including a by-the-book cop (Matt Clark) who objects to the risks he takes.

Detective's verbosity lies in obvious contrast to Driver's near silence: One's a talker, one's a doer.

The ending is funny and fitting for a heist flick, as the cop trying to con the con man finds himself out of his depth. After a long chase involving a bait-and-switch of the bank money, Detective corners Driver in a bus station with the bag of loot. He opens it to reveal the exchange man (dirty money for clean) robbed them both -- leaving Driver with an alibi and Detective with a career-ending mistake.

He offers Driver the empty satchel, but is refused, then tries to give it to the other cops, and finally just drops it on the floor on his walk of shame out of the station.

It's a wry, dry joke: You don't want to be the one left holding the bag.

Video review: "Zootopia"

“Zootopia” belongs in that midrange of Disney animated flicks, good enough to entertain youngsters but without enough originality or appeal to keep parents engaged 100 percent of the time. On video it’s less the sort of thing where the whole family curls up on the couch to watch it, and more something you pop into the player, hand the kids a bowl of popcorn and go do something else.

Similar to last year’s “The Good Dinosaur,” this is an alternate Earth where critters evolved into the dominant species (here, humans don’t even exist). Ginnifer Goodwin lends her voice to Judy Hopps, an ambitious rabbit from the country who dreams of making it in the big city as a police officer.

But when she arrives, Judy finds that Zootopia isn’t quite the colorful utopia it seems, despite its otherwise amazing qualities. The critters tend to divide themselves up, with the smaller ones like herself as followers and the big, powerful beasts – lions, bears, tigers, rhinos, elephants, etc. – holding all the positions of power. The grumpy police chief (Idris Elba) isn’t too crazy about handing a hare a badge.

She bumps into Nick, a shady fox on the make voiced by Jason Bateman. In exchange for not busting him on his illicit frozen popsicle caper, Judy enlists Nick in helping her run down the mystery of why some former predators seem to be reverting to their animalistic ways.

(Though the different species don’t hunt each other anymore, the exact nature of the food chain remains rather ambiguous.)

“Zootopia” is a message movie where the message sometimes smothers the film’s entertainment value. It’s all about striving to be more than you are, and not judging others by their superficial qualities. I just wish the movie could’ve summoned up a little more ambition itself.

Bonus features are pretty expansive. There are seven deleted scenes; the “Try Everything” music video by Shakira; “Scoretopia,” a featurette on Michael Giacchino’s music; an introduction of deleted characters; “Z.P.D. Forensic Files,” a compendium of all the movie’s hidden Easter Eggs; a travelogue with filmmakers researching animals in the wild and at Disney Animal Kingdom; a making-of documentary featurette; and roundtable interviews with the cast and crew hosted by Goodwin.

Movie: B



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Video review: "Gods of Egypt"

“Gods of Egypt” is kind of a junky movie, but not an unenjoyable one. It’s a sword-and-sandals fantasy epic that tries to follow on the financial success of the “Clash of the Titans” and “Thor” movies, but without the A-list stars or first-rate CGI. Despite its schlocky aspects, I couldn’t bring myself to hate the film and even enjoyed it on some puckish level.

Frankly, this is the sort of flick that would’ve made a prime pick for “Mystery Science Theater 3000” ridicule back in the day.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”) plays Horus, the god of air, who’s about to be crowned king of all Egypt after his father Ra decides to step down. In this postulation, the gods are 8-foot-tall super-powered beings who dwell among the humans and rule them, but are still flawed and mortal.

Then his uncle, the power-mad Set (Gerard Butler), usurps the throne and kills Ra and a bunch of others. Horus has his eyes plucked out, robbing him of his unerring aim, and is banished. Then a young human thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) steals an eye from Set, kicking off a series of events that includes full-scale war between the gods.

This is essentially another superhero movie, with many of the same dynamics at play. Horus is a good but vain god, and must learn to lead humans instead of lording it over them.

Director Alex Proyas (“Dark City”) and screenwriters liberally borrow elements from other movies and insert them here, including sand snakes straight from “Dune” and gods who transform into metallic form for battle a la Iron Man. If you’re looking for originality, look elsewhere.

But if you’re willing to watch something ironically, I think you’ll find “Gods of Egypt” has a bounty of riches waiting to be tapped.

Bonus features are decent, though you’ll have to get the Blu-ray edition to possess most of them. The DVD comes with only two making-of featurettes, “The Battle for Eternity: Stunts” and “A Window into Another World: Visual Effects.”

With the Blu-ray you add four more featurettes on costumes and makeup, shooting on location in Australia, the cast and the overall vision, plus storyboards.

Movie:
 


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Review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I quite loathed 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but here’s a pretty penny.

This sequel with only a tertiary connection to Lewis Carroll’s second Alice novel manages the rare feat of significantly outshining its predecessor. If the first film was “an exercise in cynical regurgitation,” to quote some meanie critic (*ahem*), then this movie gleefully tosses the books aside for its own freewheeling cogitation on the characters and dizzying world Carroll created.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is, dare I say, an exercise in audacious originality.

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton is back while director Tim Burton is not, and it pains me to say that his shifting to a producer role is undoubtedly for the best. Burton has worked with star Johnny Depp so much that he seems to have lost the ability to reign in the actor’s kookiest impulses, ceding the storytelling process to his latest costume-and-accent fetish.

In the last movie, Depp’s Mad Hatter character was a discombobulated mashup of emotions and loony behavior, a coy nincompoop one moment and a sword-wielding war machine the next. Even nonsense needs a consistent sensibility.

James Bobin, an accomplished television writer/director with only one other feature film to his credit (“Muppets Most Wanted”), gets the call and wisely keeps the Hatter in check.

Set three years after the last movie, “Glass” finds Alice (Mia Wasikowska) the captain of her late father’s shop “Wonder,” just returned from a long excursion to the Far East. Alas, upon sailing home to London she finds the family fortune raided by the local lord, whose marital advances she rejected before her deep dive down the rabbit hole into Underland.

Alice rejects the insistence of her mother (Lindsay Duncan) that she must sell the ship and give up her adventures. “I want to believe I can do as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she stamps.

After stepping through a looking-glass portal, she finds herself returned to Underland just as Hatter has taken ill. He believes that his family, whom he long believed killed by the Jaberwocky serpent at the behest of the evil Red Queen, is waiting to be found. Alice must travel through time to save them.

The only way to do this is by stealing the Chronosphere from Time himself, here represented by Sacha Baron Cohen as a stern-yet-comical figure who oversees the great clock controlling the universe – both Underland and our world. “You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it,” he warns.

Thus sets off a jaunty trip through multiple time frames of Underland, so we get to visit with Hatter, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and their critter friends when they were younger, and then as pups. I should mention that the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), with her outsized head and matching rage, returns as well, wooing Time to get her own hands on the Chronosphere.

As before, this is a CGI-heavy romp of bright colors and wondrous backgrounds, somewhere between medieval and Dickensian in setting, pure whimsy in tone. We learn a little more about Hatter – including his real name, Tarrant Hightopp – though not the exact origin of his… specialness.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is an unexpected surprise: a movie you thought you were going to hate that turns out to be quite a gem.