Review: "Rampage"

Just a short review today; Manuel Fernandez is handling the main review at The Film Yap, so  head over there to check it out.

"Rampage" is the best based-on-a-video-game movie I've ever seen. Granted, that's not saying much.

The roll call of these flicks ranges from the merely boring to the tragically awful. These movies tend to be big, loud and dumb. "Rampage" is too, but there's enough genuine fun in between the silliness to recommend it.

Dwayne "Not The Rock; OK, You Can Call Me The Rock" Johnson has his shtick down pretty well these days. I describe it as Flex and Smirk, Smirk and Flex, Flex and SCOWL... and Flex.

His characters (Davis Okoye) may have some other job description -- he's a primatologist here -- but he's always the biggest, baddest dude around. Woefully inadequate T-shirts fail to contain all his muscley muscleness. He is accomplished at hand-to-hand combat, firing big guns and piloting helicopters, because isn't that a skillset everyone at the San Diego zoo has?

If you don't remember the 1986 arcade game, it allowed players to control one of three giant monsters -- an ape, George; a wolf, Ralph; or a lizard, Lizzie -- destroying the city. You got to smash buildings, punch fire engines to smithereens and eat distressed damsels. It was great fun.

"Rampage" gets us to this scenario by way of some convoluted mix of corporate greed and scientific mumbo-jump. A nasty company named EnerGyne was conducting illegal experiments in space, one got loose and exploded the place, but not before three samples of the genetic editing MacGuffin landed on Earth, turning normal creatures into gigantic, aggressive smash machines.

One of them was George, an albino gorilla at Davis' zoo with whom he has a special relationship. They communicate with each other via sign language, and even joke around and flip each other the bird. The CGI for George and the other critters is quite good, especially the expressions on George's face. Ralph has spikes and a few other tricks, while Lizzie seems to be part alligator, part boar.

Naomie Harris plays Kate Caldwell, the do-gooder scientist who's helping Davis save the day; Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy are the sneering sibling villains; Jeffrey Dean Morgan does his Negan thing in the guise of a Southern-fried FBI agent who apparently has the wherewithal to go anywhere, summon any resources, give lip to anybody he wants.

Once George gets infected and starts growing at a geometric rate, Davis tries to keep the authorities from going all bang-bang on him. But it doesn't work, and soon he's tracking the path of destruction Chicago, which is about to get a big bag of hurt.

"Rampage" isn't a great movie by any stretch, but it's a decent popcorn flick to kick off the summer movie season.

Review: "Spectre"

Just a few thoughts today on the new James Bond film. Evan Dossey is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head there to read his more complete thoughts.

The Daniel Craig Bond flicks have been defined by their dourness, and while that was a welcome change from the breeziness of the Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton movies -- not to mention the nearly pure comedy of the Roger Moore era -- it's starting to wear down the franchise, like a repetitive stress injury.

Director Sam Mendes is back at the helm again, a rarity in the Bond tradition, but "Skyfall" was the highest-grossing 007 film ever, so if he was game there really wasn't anyone to tell him different. Craig is loudly and publicly musing over whether he wants to play the British agent again, and there's a lot of chatter about Idris Elba or Tom Hiddleston or (insert latest rumor here) sliding into the role.

Without giving anything away, I will say that the ending of "Spectre" is such that it could either neatly wrap up Craig's tenure in the black tuxedo, or set up one final go-round.

It's very much a story of beginnings and endings, with most of the familiar Bond solar system -- M, Q, Moneypenny -- now replaced with fresher faces. James Bond is widely viewed as an anachronism by the British intelligence services, who are more keen on data and satellite imagery and drones than guys wandering around with a license to kill.

The movie for me is more of a Greatest Hits version of James Bond than anything else I've seen. Names and faces of villains and allies from the recent past are recalled and, forcibly, linked to one another. We're told that a sinister organization named Spectre has been behind nearly all the troubles Bond has encountered in recent years, with one shadowy figure at the head of the table.

I'm not giving anything away in saying that Christoph Waltz plays the chief villain, or surprising anyone by stating that he's the best thing about the movie. (You could say that about most films with Waltz.) He plays Franz Oberhauser, a supposedly dead guy with an intimate connection to Bond that I wouldn't divulge.

Suffice to say that rather than pursuing some overarching goal of world domination, Oberhauser -- who also has adopted another, familiar, moniker -- seems to delight in creating chaos and pain for its own sake. Particularly when that pain is Bond's own.

Waltz has surprisingly little screen time, but makes the most of it.

The main "Bond girl" is a bit of a disappointment, the sloe-eyed Léa Seydoux as the daughter of an infamous villain. (Why are so many female characters in spy movies the daughter of somebody important, instead of just being important themselves?) The script, a thinly written affair by a committee of four, doesn't give her much to do but react to Bond's carnivore magnetism. 

Better is Monica Bellucci in an all-too-brief appearance as a recently widowed Italian who gets intimate with the man who made her a widow. Bellucci, still a stunner at 50 -- rendering her the oldest Bond conquest of all -- shows more steel and fire in her few minutes of screen time than Seydoux does in the rest of the movie.

Craig is still a terrific Bond, the best I think aside from Sean Connery, a skilled enough actor to let slip the pain that lies just behind the eyes of the icy killer. And there are a few good action scenes and chases, particularly when Bond mixes it up with Dave Bautista, a Herculean tentacle of Spectre.

"Spectre" is entirely watchable, and parts of it are even thrilling. But there's something missing here, a vital essence that seems to have drained away. This iteration of the Bond legend feels tired, grumpy, chippy. It senses the anticipation for the next thing, even shares it, but isn't quite ready to let go of the Walther PPK and Aston Martin. 

Review: "Southpaw"

You go to see a movie like "Southpaw" for the gritty performances and slam-bang boxing scenes. From a story standpoint it's a pretty generic boxing plot, with our scrappy champion rising and falling, falling and rising, from the mat and metaphorically.

The screenplay by Kurt Sutter is original only on a technicality, liberally cribbing its plot from the "Rocky" movies and other boxing flicks. (He reputedly wrote the script with Eminem in mind, basing it loosely on the rapper/sometime actor's life story. Em doesn't appear, though he supplies a couple of punchy songs.)

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the protagonist with the not-at-all-subtle name of Billy Hope, who rose from the hard streets of New York City through dint of hard work and an unmatched ferocity in the ring, an unwanted orphan who became light heavyweight champion.

Then through a succession of senseless disaster and self-destructive behavior, Billy loses it all, including custody of his 10-year-old daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence). He's forced to reinvent himself as a fighter and as a man, starting from the bottom again and earning his way back to glory and redemption.

This is Boxing Movies 101 stuff. Check that; it's actually 201. Boxing 101 is "Rocky" and "Rocky II," where an unknown pug rises to the championship. "Southpaw" is "Rocky III" and "IV" -- they're virtually interchangeable, really -- where the reigning champ takes things for granted, gets knocked down a peg or seven, and has to scrap back to former heights.

There literally isn't a single surprise along the way, including the inevitable final match. You've got the familiar nemeses along the way, including a black-hearted young boxer (Miguel Gomez) who was responsible for Billy's fall, and the mercenary boxing promoter/manager (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), who tells Billy they're family but saves his deepest love for the hottest prospect.

It's an interesting role for Gyllenhaal, who jumped off the traditional Hollywood star train a few years back to pursue smaller, more personal projects like "Nightcrawler" and the excellent "End of Watch." He's fought against his blue-eyed prettiness during this time, and in "Southpaw" he really works the scarred, stumblebum angle, muttering his lines and cocking his one good eye.

After losing a bunch of weight for "Nightcrawler" he packs on the ripped muscles for this role, and director Antoine Fuqua obligingly sweeps his camera and lights across Gyllenhaal's torso to emphasize the craggy wall of his abdomen. (I'm not really sure when abs became a thing; you'd think a boxer would want a little padding there to better absorb blows.) The actor's body becomes this strange mix of revulsion and fetishized object; we linger over his spent blood and abused flesh like a latter-day Lazarus.

The fight scenes are well-choreographed and energetic, though in the commonplace failing of Hollywood boxing movies, the fighters absorb more solid blows in a single round than most pugilists encounter in a year. Billy's strategy, if you can call it that, is to let opponents wallop him until he gets furious enough to uncork his pent-up rage.

Forest Whitaker is terrific as Tick Wills, an old-school trainer who teaches kids at an inner-city gym. Billy comes to him at his bottom, after lost having his wife (Rachel McAdams) to tragedy, his daughter to social services and his fame and fortune to his own self-hating spiral. Tick is old and tough, has taken his own cuts, and retrains Billy as a defensive fighter. "Protect yourself" is his mantra, underlined by one cloudy eye.

Just as the two men begin to trust one another, the filmmakers shortcut the journey and we're back to the ring again for Billy's deliverance. A smarter, better movie would've had Billy turn down the offers of quick money and a shot at the title, realizing that when you've gone down the path of destruction you can't just back up to solve your problems.

But who wants to see a boxing movie about a boxer who doesn't want to box anymore? Me, but apparently few others.

Review: "Ninja Assassin"

With a title like "Ninja Assassin," what more really needs to be said?

Actually, I love that name. It seems purposefully designed to sound like badly-translated Japanese. The phrase is redundant and silly, like "Bandit Robbers!" or "Dr. Science."

The effect is to disguise the fact that this is not an authentic Far East martial arts flick, but an American/German production backed by the likes of schlockmeister Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers of "Matrix" fame.

At least credit the Hollywood suits for believing in truth in advertising. This movie is exactly what you'd expect from its title and promotional campaign: A slickly-made, viscerally stimulating action film with a grim hero battling faceless foes with enough resulting gore to make the computer-assisted bloodletting in "300" seem restrained.

Director James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta") and his screenwriters Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski positively revel in the spurting, splashing and splatter of blood.

The film opens with a scene where invisible ninja take out some Japanese yakuza criminals, with the first guy getting his skull sliced in half horizontally, so there's just a bleeding stump with a tongue sticking up, veritably waving at the audience.

Talk about a red flag.

Rain, a Korean singer, plays Raizo, the greatest student of the ultra-secret ninja clans. For 1,000 years they've been assassins serving anyone willing to pony up 100 pounds of gold. They can blur into shadows and kill without being seen. The stern old master (Shô Kosugi) can even heal wounds with a little grunting meditation that sounds suspiciously like he needs to visit the latrine.

But Raizo refuses to play by the hard-hearted rules. When a girl ninja he was sweet on (Anna Sawai) is killed for desertion, he rebels and becomes a rogue ninja. Or maybe the proper term is ronin ... but then, I think that only applies to samurai. Whatever.

Rain may be talented at singing and dancing, and he certainly looks impressive wielding a ninja sword, not to mention a neat weapon that's like a knife on a chain that he whirls about, slicing his foes to bits. Of course, it's hard to tell where his martial arts skills end and the computer-generated mayhem begins.

But Rain is charmless as a movie hero. Granted, as written Raizo is supposed to be the typical brooding man of action who lets his lethal skills do the talking. Still, he has little screen presence beyond some carved abs and steely gaze.

The plot is driven by a young European law enforcement bureaucrat (Naomie Harris) stumbling across the secret of the ninja, which invariably heralds the arrival of some of them to silence her. Raizo shows up to foil their plans, because ... well, it's really unclear exactly why he protects her, other than she reminds him of dead ninja girl.

(By the way, I'm trademarking Dead Ninja Girl for the name of a forthcoming punk/ska band.)

I suppose the action scenes are well-staged, in addition to being extremely wet. But really, all you need to know about this movie is encapsulated in the fact that two different characters have a "special heart" -- i.e., on the right side of the chest, so when they're stabbed through the left breast, they survive.

Even dumb, cynical action movies should know the heart is actually pretty much dead center. But if "Ninja Assassin" can't put its hearts in the right place, what can you expect of the brains?

1.5 stars