Review: "Spirit Untamed"

 

“Spirit Untamed” is an adventurous movie about girls and horses -- though if you don’t tell boys that, they will probably enjoy it just fine.

This DreamWorks Animation movie is a sorta-spinoff of the 2002 movie “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and the Netflix series “Spirit Riding Free.” The protagonist here is Lucky Prescott, a 10-year-old Latina girl whose mother died in a tragic horse stunt riding accident when she was a baby. She’s a typical plucky youngster with a sense of adventure and a taste for stubbornness.

Voiced by Isabela Merced, she’s been raised in the city by her loving but strict aunt Cora (Julianne Moore) and is now going to spend the summer with the father she barely knows. This brings her to Miradero, a frontier town somewhere near the Mexican border filled with apple orchards, beatific canyons and galloping pastures.

Horse country, in other words.

It’s a little unclear to me if Spirit, the horse, is the same one from the other movie and TV show, though he appears similar as a honey-colored Mustang stallion with a dark brown mane and big, penetrating (and very anthropomorphized) eyes. Maybe, as the name implies, he’s more a representation of the freedom and independence that animates horses like Spirit and girls like Lucky.

Directed by Elaine Bogan (with Ennio Torresan Jr. as co-director) from a script from Aury Wallington, Katherine Nolfi and Kristin Hahn, “Spirit Untamed” employs deceptively simplistic-looking animation in which humans and horses aren’t drawn with a lot of detail, but the background vistas are lush and vibrant. It’s a style Japanese anime first pioneered.

In Meradero Lucky meets a variety of figures who will factor into her story. Her dad (Jake Gyllenhaal), broken after the loss of his wife and unsure how to connect with the daughter he sent away. Pru (Marsai Martin), a fearless 13-year-old trick rider and daughter of the local stable owner, Al (Andre Braugher). Abigail (Mckenna Grace), a guitar-pickin’ girl who’s supportive but can be annoying, and whose brother (Lucian Perez) is a little operator hunting pennies; and Walton Goggins gives voice to Hendricks, leader of a gang of horse wranglers.

You can probably guess where this is all going to go, and it does: Lucky rebels against her father and aunt, running off with Spirit every chance she gets; she’ll bond with Pru and Abigail, who share in her adventures; the wranglers will capture Spirit and his herd and try to break them; Lucky et al will rescue the horses and much daredevil hi jinks will ensue.

The best part is where Lucky works to win Spirit’s trust, rolling out apples until he’ll take one by hand, wanting to jump onto his back right away but willing herself to patience until he’s ready. It’s a simple yet effective metaphor for life, especially her relationship with her father.

It’s not a bad movie, but not terribly ambitious. The action scenes are well-staged and lively, the talkie parts drag on longer than they need to. There isn’t a lot of nuance or complexity to the characters, each representing a type whose duty is to perform the aspects that define them.

Animated features have been on a downturn the last few years in my opinion, and “Spirit Untamed” is a competent if uninspiring example that does nothing to change that view.

Video review: "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

Some think the introduction of wholesale comedy into the superhero genre was a poor match with the generally dark tone of these films. But I welcome movies like “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” which aims for funny first, exciting second and perilous a far distant third.

After the shock-and-awe of “Avengers: Infinity War” and other flicks, we needed a dose of funny as antidote.

You may recall that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was a charming but loveable loser of a thief who suddenly found himself a super-hero after stumbling across the suit built by scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). It allows him to shrink down to insect size, though gaining strength in the process, as well as command the bugs that bear his name.

His brief stint with the Avengers landed him on the wrong side of the law, and as the sequel opens he’s spent two years under house arrest. He’s determined to go the straight and narrow path for the sake of his daughter. But that all comes tumbling down when Hank and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), come calling to recruit his help.

Hank and Hope are searching for their long-lost wife and mother, respectively, who was cast into the quantum zone 30 years ago while committing some derring-do. Essentially, she got shrunk down so small that she’s stuck in another dimension -- and they want Scott to go after her.

Hope has her own suit, which also boasts wings and several other add-ons, and goes by the moniker of the Wasp. Soon they’re a duo.

Spoiling the mix is the Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a young woman with the ability to phase in and out of solidity. Her aims clash with Hank’s crew, and she’s also being helped by an old science rival of his, Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne).

Walter Goggins shows up as a villainous technology dealer whose role is to turn up whenever the plot slows down to kick off some more thrown-downs.

Rudd is his usual twinkly self. There’s something about the innate amiableness of the actor that just makes you want to smile. God help us he never wants to go down the “I’m a serious artist” path and start cranking out doom-and-gloom Oscar bait movies.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is just what it looks like: a purely entertaining film that won’t ever bring you down.

Bonus features are decent. There are gag reels and outtakes, deleted scenes with commentary by director Peyton Reed, who also offers an introduction. Plus there are four making-of featurettes: “Back in the Ant Suit: Scott Lang,” “A Suit of Her Own: The Wasp,” “Subatomic Super Heroes: Hank & Janet” and “Quantum Perspective: The VFX and Production Design of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp.’”

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Extras: B

Review: "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is, “When do you think the superhero genre is going to burn out?” And my answer is always the same, “When the movies get crappy.”

I’ve seen a subpar flick here and there (*cough* *cough* “Green Lantern”), but overall the state of the superhero movie remains strong. Marvel in particular seems to consistently have their ducks all in a row, with nary a stinker in over a decade. And, with “Avengers: Infinity War” earlier this summer, they still possess the ability to surprise and overwhelm us.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is the perfect counterprogramming -- or, if you will, antidote -- to all the downbeat energy that’s been dominating the genre lately.

Here is a fun, frivolous and amusing movie featuring a hero who’s several steps down from the world-beaters like Thor and Hulk. And the stakes are not the usual end-of-the-world scenarios, but simply a small group of people striving to meet personal (though largely benevolent) goals.

You may remember that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was a petty criminal who stumbled into the super-suit of scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), which has the ability to shrink him to the size of an ant, where he gains strength and the ability to command the insects. Long story short, he got in trouble and ended up losing it all.

As this movie opens, he is nearly finished with two years of house arrest, having to wear an ankle bracelet and being annoyed by the uppity FBI agent assigned to watch him (Randall Park). But he again falls back in with Pym and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who wears her own version of the suit that includes wings.

Their mission is to bring back Pym’s wife, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), who disappeared 30 years ago when she had to “go sub-atomic” to defuse a nuclear missile, and as a result was trapped in some quantum netherworld.

The villain is Hannah John-Kamen as Ava, aka the Ghost, who wears an alien-looking white suit and has the ability to phase in and out of solidity, so she can walk through walls and have bullets or fists pass right through her. Turns out her powers are more a curse than blessing, so she’s working on a cure along with Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), an old scientist rival of Pym’s.

The two groups soon butt heads, along with the X-factor of Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), a criminal technology dealer who wants to steal Pym’s machines and sell them to the highest bidder.

Pym and Hope are officially on the lam, but are able to move around with the help of a multistory laboratory they can shrink down to dollhouse size, pick up and go. They also have a fleet of vehicles they keep shrunk down in an old Hot Wheels carrying case.

Rudd is a twinkly, funny presence as the lovable cad. His greatest desire is to spend time with his daughter, though he’s holding out hope for Hope. Michael Peña supplies much of the comedic energy as Luis, Scott’s right-hand man at the security company startup they’re running. Apparently it’s a novel idea to put a bunch of ex-cons in charge of protecting you.

Directed by Peyton Reed from a script by an overlarge bunch of writers, who I’ll not mention other than to say Rudd is among them, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” boasts lots of energy and action. You kind of have to wade through a bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo -- quantum entanglements, diffusers, etc. -- to get to the good stuff, but fortunately the boring stuff doesn’t linger.

This is not the sort of movie you savor and think about long after. It’s more of a breezy popcorn flick that does its job, entertains you and then gets out of the way.

Review: "Tomb Raider"

 I hadn't even seen "Tomb Raider" yet and I was already sick of hearing about it.

How they translated the video game series into a rebooted film franchise for a new generation. About all the nifty stunts and set pieces. How tiny Swedish star Alicia Vikander worked out for months and subsisted on one of those fish-avocados-and-eggs diets in order to bulk up and get the prerequisite bumpy belly.

(I really don't know when in our popular culture bumpy bellies became a thing. It used to be you wanted to look trim and tight. Now we're supposed to want our stomachs to look rippled potato chips. Seems like a screwy contradiction, if you ask me.)

As a ciswhiteoldishmale, I've been reliably instructed that I'm not allowed to comment on women's bodies. Nuts to that. If you make a big-budget movie based on a game whose major appeal was a heroine who looked like a Victoria's Secret model, then her appearance is well within the bounds of discussion -- especially when it impacts how the film plays.

This is decidedly different take on Lara Croft than the Angelina Jolie movie from 2001. Say what you will about that movie, but Jolie seemed more than physically capable. Could take it, and dish it out, like any male action hero counterpart. In a word, she was tough.

Vikander, in a word, is frail. Even with the aforementioned buffing-up, her look is still more ballerina than badass. Her Lara gets her ass kicked a lot in the movie, almost entirely by male combatants (with the exception of a female sparring partner near the beginning, who also wipes the floor with her). And she emits a lot of girlish squeaks and dainty yelps in the process.

So it's a much more vulnerable version of the character. I guess the idea for director Roar Uthaug and screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons was to have Lara more relatable. But the overall effect is to make her come across as weak.

Arriving in the footsteps of the physically and thematically muscular "Wonder Woman," this feels like something of a retreat.

Lara isn't even a real adventurer as the story opens, just an orphaned young woman working as a bicycle courier and doing a little kickboxing on the side. She's a sadgirl because her beloved daddy (Dominic West) disappeared mysteriously seven years ago, leaving her with regrets -- along with a massive fortune and estate, if only she'll sign the papers declaring him legally dead.

This she has refused to do, because... well, there is no good reason. Only movie people would toil, unable to even pay their gym fees, when there's billions at your beckoning.

Anyway, she discovers that father was secretly an Indiana Jones-type archeologist. When he went missing, he was working on the mystery of an ancient Japanese queen named Himiko, a sorceress who could kill with just a touch. Her tomb is shrouded in secrecy on a mystery island, and the elder Croft was trying to prevent an evil group called the Order of Trinity from finding it and exploiting her wretched powers.

In his death decree, daddy Croft instructs Lara to destroy all his research so as not to endanger the fate of the entire world. Instead, she carefully gathers it all up and books a ship so she can sail to the island and deliver it right to the bad guys.

This Lara Croft may be tight in the abs, but she's soft in the head.

Walton Goggins plays Vogel, the heavy leading a force of mercenaries and slave labor on the island. Unable to escape himself until he's completed his mission, Vogel stumbles about in a fog, occasionally shooting someone to make a point. Daniel Wu plays Lu Ren, the helpful ship captain who becomes Lara's henchman.

"Tomb Raider" is a decently entertaining movie, especially in the second half as they make their way into the tomb and encounter all sorts of nasty traps, tricks and puzzles. I never played any of the video games, but those who have tell me the film's plot follows the recent reboot of the game fairly faithfully.

I especially liked one river-born sequence, where Lara is in danger of being swept over a massive waterfall, and uses the carcass of a rotted B-17 bomber as her (rapidly deteriorating) lifeline.

I'm not sure we needed a wimpier version of Lara Croft, or indeed if we needed another film version of the video game at all. Energetic but unnecessary, it sits there like a giant meatball, simply existing.

Video review: "The Hateful Eight"

“The Hateful Eight” struck many observers as a sharp departure for writer/director Quentin Tarantino, who tends to love freewheeling stories with lots of locations, walk-on bit characters and sudden twists of the plot. “Eight” was essentially a bunch of strangers stuck in a single room for three hours, the tension slowly ratcheting up.

(The blood, however, pools much more quickly.)

But in a lot of ways it’s a return to the form of “Reservoir Dogs,” Tarantino’s first feature film, which relied heavily on enclosed spaces in which violent characters try to make sense of shifting loyalties.

It’s not quite in the top tier of Tarantino films, like “Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.” But it firmly belongs in that second rank, along with “Django Unchained,” boasting plenty of entertaining face-offs and spouted soliloquies. For a three-hours picture, it goes by pretty quick.

The set-up is simple. Eight (for now) people are trapped by a terrible blizzard in a remote Wyoming cabin sometime in the years after the Civil War. They struggle to figure out who is not who they say, who’s loyal to who, and who deserves to be gunned down.

Answer to that last question: all of them, for one reason or another.

They include an infamous bounty hunter who always brings his quarry in alive (Kurt Russell); his current “client,” a foul-mouthed lady gangster (Jennifer Jason Leigh); a proud and decrepit ex-Confederate general (Bruce Dern) searching for his lost son; a black Union officer who’s also turned to the bounty hunting game (Samuel L. Jackson); a former rebel raider who claims to be the new sheriff at the closest town (Walton Goggins); a prissy British hangman (Tim Roth); a near-silent cow puncher (Michael Madsen); and Bob (Demián Bichir), a mysterious Mexican almost completely hidden by his coat, hat and beard.

Various alliances form, natural and otherwise, then break apart. The bounty hunters have an easy affinity for each other, and those on the side of the Confederacy soon square off against the Union loyalists.

Each character gets at least one moment where they step to the fore of the rhetorical stage, but there’s no single protagonist. Perhaps closest is Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren, who gives a long speech that’s notable for both its righteous anger at the injustice of slavery and the absolutely filthy way he goes about gaining some small measure of revenge for it.

“The Hateful Eight” is a long, blood-soaked but engaging dance through Western tropes.

Oh, and don’t forget to keep an ear out for Ennio Morricone’s Oscar-winning musical score.

Bonus features are nothing to brag about. Tarantino is among a number of high-profile filmmakers who are disdainful of participating in promotional material. (Despite the mountains of press they do when their movie is coming out.)

There are exactly two featurettes: “Beyond the Eight: A Behind-the-Scenes Look” and “Sam Jackson’s Guide to Glorious 70mm.”

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Review: "American Ultra"

"American Ultra" is a quirky take on an old saw. This action comedy stars Jesse Eisenberg as a seemingly normal guy who discovers one day that he has amazing skills, including the ability to take down armed assailants with his bare hands. He wasn't even aware he could do this, until he does it.

We've seen this idea before with "The Bourne Identity," "The Matrix" and countless other flicks. The notion holds appeal because maybe anyone of us could be revealed as the badass chosen one, too.

The twist here is that Eisenberg is seemingly the last guy on Earth who could secretly be a trained super agent. It starts with the actor's small stature, unimpressive physique, soft features, trembly voice and disappearing chin. If you looked up "beta male" in the dictionary, it'd probably have his picture as an illustration.

Screenwriter Max Landis ("Chronicle") layers on the reinforcing characteristics. Mike Howell is an unassuming stoner who clerks at the Stop-n-Go, gets high with his girlfriend, Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), draws an amateur comic starring Apollo Ape and Chimp the Brick, and does little else. He's wracked with crippling phobias, including a violent aversion to leaving his town of Liman, West Virginia.

As the story opens, they are about to fly off on a Hawaii trip where Mike plans to pop the question. (Hawaii? Fancy ring? Must've been a lot of double-shifts at the Stop-n-Go.) But he's unable to get on the plane, and worries that he's just slowing Phoebe down. But then some big guys in black camo show up out of nowhere and try to kill him, and Mike easily takes them out armed with nothing more than a piping hot cup o' soup and a spoon.

Here we have the classic trope about the master spies deciding that a rogue agent who hasn't done anything to anybody in years needs to be eliminated -- even if it requires expending many more agents' lives and the entire operational budget to do it. Listen, spooks: if Jason Bourne decides he wants to retire on the beach, let him get fat on barbecue and piña coladas.

Topher Grace plays the maniacal young CIA chief who goes after Mike, and he's got a small army of his own twisted agents to do it. Of course, he always sends them against clerk-boy in twos and threes, instead of calling the whole gang in at once. On several occasions he's literally got a bunch of his "tough guy" spies sitting around doing nothing while he picks a pair to be the latest sacrificial lambs.

Lesson two, spooks: if you have 17 guys to dispatch against one, why in the world would you not just send all 17?

Connie Britton plays the good CIA gal who recruited Mike (unbeknownst to him) and is still looking out for him. Walton Goggins, so great on the "Justified" TV show, is the Laugher, one of the evil toadies. John Leguizamo turns up as your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, and Tony Hale plays a nebbishy desk agent caught between loyalties.

It's a fun ride, and director Nima Nourizadeh keeps things moving at a snappy pace. Eisenberg and Stewart have nice chemistry together in between all the chases and dismemberments. (Though I recommend the little-seen "Adventureland" if you really want to see some romantic sparks fly between them.)

"American Ultra" succeeds under the wallflower charms of Jesse Eisenberg and a clever script. Sometimes even pathetic losers can kill you with a spoon, so be nice.

Video review: "Django Unchained."

Quentin Tarantino has always been a filmmaker who believed in making his films as entertaining as possible, though in recent years it seemed like the person he was most trying to entertain was himself.

His latest, the quasi-Western “Django Unchained,” is his most accessible film since “Pulp Fiction,” a purely delightful frolic that’s equal parts gleeful revenge fantasy, anti-slavery jeremiad and comedy of manners.

Jamie Foxx plays the title character, a beaten-down slave who’s given a second chance at life when he’s rescued by King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a courtly little German who impersonates a traveling dentist but is actually a bounty killer.

(“Bounty hunter” is not really accurate, since Schultz only pursues men wanted dead or alive, and always opts for the former.)

Schultz enlists his help, in return for tutoring the slave as his protégé. They have lots of freewheeling adventures, mostly involving gunning down Neanderthal white villains while trading quips. One sequence has them going up against nascent KKK thugs, who debate the efficacy of riding a horse while wearing a sack with tiny eyeholes.

Eventually they get down to the real business at hand: rescuing Django’s wife (Kerry Washington) from a bucolic plantation named Candieland.

The owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a symbol of genteel Southern rot, his elegantly coiffed exterior hiding an inner moral decay mirrored by his head house slave, Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), who views the uppity Django as upending the proper order of things.

Hysterically funny one moment and bursting with blood-soaked violence the next, “Django Unchained” is a giddy absurdist romp.

Alas, video extras are a mite on the sparse side. There are four featurettes focusing on the costumes, stunts, production design and soundtrack of the film, plus a promo for a Tarantino Blu-ray collection.

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Review: "Django Unchained"

"Django Unchained" may just be Quentin Tarantino's most purely entertaining film since ... ever.

This revisionist Western mixes elements of Tarantino's beloved grindhouse exploitative violence, slow-fuse dramatic scenes building up to major bloodlettings and de rigueur juxtapositions of funky modern songs against classic genre backdrops.

It's a daffy, loopy jaunt that doesn't really add up to anything more than a good time. But what a good time it is. I don't think I've enjoyed a Tarantino movie this much since "Pulp Fiction."

With this revenge story/anti-slavery rant, the quirky writer/director feels like he's finally settled into a rhythm where he's not just trying to recreate the tawdry D-list flicks adored in his youth, but actually crafting something original that connects with an audience. With the dense, sprawling "Inglourious Basterds" and other recent work, it often seemed like he was making movies only for his own self-satisfaction.

The result is lighter and groovier, one that more fully embraces Tarantino's dark, puckish sense of humor. The first half of this nearly three-hour film is more or less pure comedy. One standout is a bit where a group of precursor KKK thugs argue about the efficacy of riding around in hoods with eyeholes cut in them, a scene that would have felt right at home tucked in the middle of "Blazing Saddles."

The plot is straightforward. Django (Jamie Foxx, in full cooler-than-thou mode) is a former runaway slave who's rescued by an oddball bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz, who needs his help identifying three brothers on his hit list.

In exchange, Schultz agrees take on Django as his protégé and help him rescue his wife Hildy (Kerry Washington) from servitude. She was bought up and packed off to Candieland, a seemingly idyllic Mississippi plantation lorded over by the superficially genteel Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Schultz is played by Christoph Waltz, who had an Oscar-winning turn in "Basterds" and is equally good here. Tarantino wrote a great part for him, and Waltz runs away with a subtle, refined performance. Schultz is a German who used to be a dentist, and still rides around in a coach capped with a giant tooth on a spring. He likes to think of himself as cold-hearted and mercenary, but Schultz is repulsed by the way blacks are treated in the South of 1858.

Though at least he's honest enough to admit the similarities with his own trade, killing men for rewards. "Like slavery, it's a flesh for cash business," he purrs.

It's fun watching Django quickly evolve from timid slave to trash-talking killer who loves nothing more than putting white folks in their place ... preferably, in a hole in the ground. He acquires the skills of quick-draw shootist, seemingly overnight, and soon sets to putting them to good use.

The villains are a virtual parade of slovenly caricatures, festooned with facial hair and Neanderthal attitudes toward slaves. "Django" must set some sort of dubious record for the most uses of the n-word in a film. Tarantino, though, seems neither afraid nor enamored with the word, simply putting it in his characters' mouths as it would have been employed pre-Civil War.

Things really get rolling when Django and Schultz meet Calvin, and lure him in with a bogus story about buying one of his prize Mandingo gladiators for an outlandish sum. The matched fights to the death, which hold all the glamour of cockfighting with humans, give lie to Calvin's courtly manors.

DiCaprio is both a hoot and a horror, playing a man who not only embodies these contradictions, but fails to even recognize them.

Samuel L. Jackson also has a nice turn as Steven, the head of Calvin's slaves who's been a thrall to depravity so long it's seeped into his soul.

The long Candieland sequence -- basically the last half of the film -- is an exercise in patiently setting the pot to simmer. Schultz and Calvin engage in a match of manners, while the latter is intrigued by the surly Django's barely concealed insults and bad attitude. We know it's all mounting up to the gunfight to end all gunfights -- replete with geysers of blood -- but we don't mind because Tarantino's buildup is almost more fun than the blowout.

The movie occasionally lapses into self-indulgence, as with a late unnecessary scene involving an Australian mining company, with Tarantino himself playing one of the heavies (and employing quite possibly the worst Aussie accent in the history of cinema). It's an amusing bit, but it doesn't fit with the rest.

Still, "Django Unchained" is a witty, brash mix-up of Old West trappings and modern cool.

3.5 stars out of four