REVIEW: The Predator

There are a few notable trends that I keep noticing in modern movies that I'd like to talk about for just a bit. The first (and most irritating) is Hollywood's obnoxious over-reliance on 80's nostalgia. G.I. Joe, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Robocop, Terminator, Thundercats, Ghostbusters; if it existed in the 1980's, you're probably gonna see its fetid corpse unearthed and propped up by a hack studio to make a quick buck. We've also witnessed the rise of the soft-reboot; a film that is, for all intents and purposes, a remake/reboot of a classic film franchise, except it's stated to take place in the main series continuity, making it a sequel, and thus okay. I feel like the most notable of these is The Force Awakens, but it's hardly a rarity nowadays, especially for big-budget franchises with a lot of brand recognition. We've also been seeing a lot of movies get utterly destroyed through reshoots. Normally, reshoots are a relatively innocuous practice, but it feels like as of late, more and more big-budget projects are suffering the slings of studio interference, producing an end result that turns out worse than anyone could have possibly predicted. The reason I choose to mention all of these phenomena is that Shane Black's The Predator manages to be a sterling example of all three with shockingly little effort.

The film opens as one would expect a Predator film to, with a spaceship hurtling towards Earth. After crash-landing in the South American jungle, everyone's favorite human-hunting space monster has a run-in with an Army Ranger by the name of Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook). Battered from the crash, the Predator (Brian A. Prince) is actually incapacitated by the hard-boiled sniper, who makes off with the creature's mask and wrist gauntlet. Sensing that he's seen something he wasn't meant to have seen, Quinn mails the alien tech back home before he's taken into custody by government agents. Naturally, the government has captured the Predator as well, who inevitably escapes and sets out in search of his stolen gear (which has since ended up in the hands of McKenna's autistic son, Rory, played by Jacob Tremblay). With the help of a renegade biologist (Olivia Munn) and a ragtag gang of disabled veterans, it's up to Quinn to keep his son out of the way of an interplanetary blood war, all while avoiding the shadowy government agents who want him disappeared. Despite how exciting that may sound, I assure you large chunks of this movie are dull as all get-out.

When this movie was first announced, I was understandably optimistic. Shane Black is a solid director (who also starred in/wrote parts of the original Predator), and a natural choice to helm the next entry in the franchise (redundant title notwithstanding). Predator is one of those rare films like Robocop that works both ironically and unironically well; it's the movie that made Arnold Schwarzenegger an action superstar, and it's chock-full of all the hilariously dated tropes and clichés one would expect from such a film. At the same time, it executes its deceptively simple premise startlingly well, balancing both action and suspense until things reach a head at the surprisingly small-scale climax. It's got all the excess that 80's action movies are lauded for to this day, but it also understands and appreciates the effect some quieter, more intimate moments can have when establishing atmosphere and tone. If they wanted to have a soft reboot of Predator that took itself seriously for the most part, they could certainly do so and have it work out nicely; 2010's Predators is living proof of this.

Alternatively, if Shane Black wanted to turn the whole thing into an utter farce, lampooning the various action tropes that the original Predator helped establish, I could see that working out as well; plenty of relatively serious films have successfully made the transition to more comedic fare as time's gone on (the most notable example that comes to mind being the Evil Dead trilogy). Black has a penchant for snappy dialog, and his role as Hawkins in the original film provided much of the early comedic relief. This appears to be the approach that The Predator is going for, but unfortunately the whole thing runs into a critical error; it's not particularly funny. There's a few one-liners that got a sensible chuckle out of me, and the gore has the tendency to reach Monty Python and the Holy Grail levels of cheap, slapstick-y excess, but I doubt anyone would describe The Predator as a rollicking good time (unless a character saying "get to da choppa" before escaping on a bunch of stolen motorcycles is your idea of clever writing). Really, the script here is so bad that it gives Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom a run for its money, with such winners as "Motherf-cker hacked our vehicles" and "F-ck me in the face with an aardvark".

In the film's defense, the first act is more or less exactly what I wanted it to be; it's by no means groundbreaking, but it's a reasonably fun monster movie with some solid action (in particular, the sequence in which the Predator escapes from a government lab). But everything goes downhill quickly soon after that scene, up until the point that our bigger, badder, entirely CGI rival Predator shows up. After this new monster is introduced, the entire film breaks and goes down the drain, devoid of any intellect or charm it may have possessed beforehand. Before that point, the lackluster performances, groan-worthy one-liners, and bland, forgettable characters were just sort of there, but it was around this time that it all compounded and started actively making the movie worse, dragging it down into the realm of pure trash. From what we've learned, apparently the entire third-act of the movie was rebuilt from the ground up at the behest of 20th Century Fox, so it seems as though this is another film that may have had the potential to actually be something not terrible before a bunch of studio suits decided to stick their slimy paws all over it. Honestly, I'd have happily accepted a Predator movie that was "just okay", but instead got something that appears to put active effort into being terrible. And that's not even touching the way The Predator attempts to tackle such weighty topics as mental illness and climate change.

There was a clear attempt at having some subtext, pitting a team of mentally-disturbed veterans and a young child with Asperger's up against an alien menace who has modified his own DNA to become a genetically-perfect being. Truth be told, giving the main group of heroes in an action/slasher flick a host of neuroses and disorders to deal with in addition to the impending extraterrestrial threat is a pretty fascinating idea that could really result in something spectacular if handled properly by a talented filmmaker (like, say, Shane Black). Instead what we get is a series of jokes where the punchline is "the guy with Tourette's said something profane" and a kid who can use the power of autism to operate alien technology as if he were R2-D2. The disorders in this movie are treated as either a punchline or a plot convenience; I'm not even going to harangue The Predator for how potentially offensive such a portrayal is, that's just lazy writing. I'm still struggling to wrap my head around how this even turned out so bad; this is a movie written by Shane Black and Fred Dekker. These are the guys who gave us The Monster Squad for crying out loud, what the hell happened? Was this a Producers-esque scam? Or did the studio seriously interfere that much? No amount of explanation is really going to save this trainwreck, but I'll admit that I'm the least bit curious.

I'll admit, for all of its problems, The Predator would actually make for a pretty good bad movie. I can easily see this working well in a room full of intoxicated friends, or with a rowdy audience at the local theater; but at the same time, it's important that everyone understand that statements such as these aren't exactly points in the film's favor. If the kindest thing you can say about a movie is "it's not offensively bad, it's just stupid and forgettable", there's clearly a problem, especially when talented people are involved. It could be fun with the right audience, but then again so is the first Predator. Predator didn't need to be "ironically good", it was just "good". Every idea we see here (Predator hounds, genetic modification, a crazed government alien-hunter, a ragtag gang of ex-military guys throwing out vulgar banter, etc.) was already done far better in other Predator movies (yes, even Predator 2). Is it the worst thing ever? No. But is there a solid reason to run out and watch it? Also no.

If you're at all curious about just how stupid the plot to The Predator can get, make sure to check out my fresh-out-of-the-theater plot rundown on YouTube!

REVIEW: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Let's talk about the current state of Hollywood, shall we? Not in the "surprise, everyone is a sex monster" kind of way, more in the "your profits are eventually going to reflect your lack of effort" kind of way. It's a situation, ironically enough, not dissimilar from the one presented in Jurassic Park; a big corporation bankrolls something stupid and indulgent, "spares no expense", tries to cash in on an entity they don't even begin to understand, and eventually has to suffer the consequences when the whole thing comes tumbling down. Ever since The Avengers proved that audiences were capable of following a shared-universe, multi-film narrative, every big studio under the sun has been trying to replicate that success without stopping for one moment to actually consider what made that success possible in the first place, forgetting that it took ten whole years and nearly 20 movies for the MCU to become what it is today. Modern studios seem to think that building a successful franchise is as simple as slapping a recognizable brand on literally whatever and calling it a day, when it's really far more complex than that. I'll tell you the problem with the cinematic power that they're using here; it didn't require any discipline to attain it. They saw what others had done, and they took the next step. They didn't earn the knowledge for themselves, so they don't take any responsibility for it. They stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as they could, and before they even knew what they had, they patented it and packaged it and shipped it off to theaters, and now they're selling it. They wanna sell it. 

Well... Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Set 3 years after Jurassic World, the film follows the increasingly convoluted adventures of Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). After the dormant volcano that Jurassic Park was apparently built on top of begins to erupt, Claire is approached by a mysterious businessman (Rafe Spall), who represents John Hammond's old friend and business partner, Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell, as a character we've never heard of up until just now). He proposes that Claire and Owen join a slightly less-than-legal expedition back to Isla Nublar in order to save what dinosaurs they can before the entire thing goes up in smoke (literally this time). Although reluctant to go at first, Owen decides to tag along in order to rescue Blue the velociraptor from certain doom; their reunion is short-lived, however, as it's revealed that the supposed rescue mission was actually a front for far seedier activities. With the island destroyed, it's up to Owen, Claire, and a group of side-characters (who are somehow more bland than our already impressively-bland protagonists) to save the dinosaurs from Rafe Spall's immoral business dealings, all while avoiding the jaws of Henry Wu's (B.D. Wong) latest genetically-altered murdersaur, the Indoraptor.

The first and most strikingly bad thing about this movie, I think, is the script. Jurassic World was nothing revolutionary, but it did its job; it was cool finally seeing the park open and we got one of the most blissfully absurd climaxes I'd ever seen in a big-budget action movie. I left the theater more or less happy, if not exactly impressed. This, however, is just painfully bad. You get the impression that everything's been dumbed down even moreso, as though this movie has no pretense that it's just something meant to sell toys to children. The characters are one-note, the leaps in logic are downright olympian, and the story truly spares no expense in outright disregarding the recurrent themes and lessons presented in literally every previous Jurassic film. I'm not going to pretend that any of these movies were exactly head-scratchers, but they at least posed an interesting question about the potential ramifications of tampering with genetic power. One of the best scenes in the original film involves everyone simply eating dinner while debating whether or not a dinosaur theme park is an ethical idea in the first place. It's a multifaceted issue; for all of Ian Malcolm's moralizing, even he is stricken with a sense of childlike awe and excitement upon seeing a live dinosaur for the first time. And despite John Hammond's fatal shortsightedness, he's never portrayed as a "bad" guy; we completely understand why he would want to open Jurassic Park, even while understanding why it's a bad idea to do so. In Fallen Kingdom, the entire point of the movie basically boils down to "yeah yeah tampering in God's domain is immoral and junk, but wouldn't it be sad if da dinosauws died? :,(".

This is essentially Bryce Dallas Howard's entire arc in this movie; I guess the controversy her character stirred up last time around scared the studio execs bad enough that they'd rather she do basically nothing at all from this point on. In Jurassic World, her character progressed from a cold, profit-oriented businesswoman to someone who was prepared to take responsibility for the abomination she was complicit in creating. In Fallen Kingdom, she's essentially just an affluent white lady who wants to save the animals because it's sad when animals die; well-done, moral guardians, another victory for the rights of fictional women. We also have Chris Pratt at possibly his most boring. Owen, as a character (though I hesitate to even call it that), doesn't really have much of a personality, something Chris Pratt possesses a "deplorable excess" of. I know this is basically a carry-over from a few years ago, when Guardians of the Galaxy made more money than anyone could have possibly predicted and Chris Pratt was forcibly inserted into everything and anything, but taking a man who's been described as the human equivalent of a golden retriever and casting him as a straight-laced, rough and tumble, military manly man just doesn't work (and I can't imagine why anyone might think it would). His performance comes off like an audition tape for a store-brand version of Indiana Jones and it's honestly impressive how this movie manages to capture exactly none of Chris Pratt's natural charm or charisma. The only actor who's properly utilized throughout the whole thing is Jeff Goldblum, returning for a few minutes as Dr. Ian Malcolm to explain why the entire plot to the movie is a generally bad idea. Out of all the characters we're shown, his is the only one that makes a lick of sense. He's the true hero of this movie (which makes sense, seeing as how this is essentially a soft-reboot of The Lost World), even though he shows up, reads his lines, and leaves in less time than it takes for me to eat a Wawa sandwich.

Aside from the miserable script (which includes such gems as "It needs a mother!" and "What a nasty woman...") and the flat, incompetent characters, the film's pacing is also all over the place. It definitely falls into your traditional three-act structure, but still finds a way to divide its story directly down the middle. It's essentially two hour-long movies mashed together, making the entire thing feel even more like a pilot for a children's cartoon series. The situation isn't helped by the over-complicated mess of a plot; I excused some of the sillier bits in Jurassic World because I was just happy to see this franchise return from extinction, but the levels of outright stupidity Fallen Kingdom achieves feel like attempts to take advantage of my good nature. Jurassic Park is a premise that, like most metaphor-driven narratives, works best when there's as little fat to trim as possible. There's a theme park full of dinosaurs; the power gets shut off due to industrial espionage, nature runs amok, don't play God, life finds a way. Simple and clean. Then you have Fallen Kingdom, in which an evil businessman needs a team of mercenaries to save a velociraptor from an exploding island so that it can teach his weaponized super-dinosaur how to feel empathy, only for said super-dinosaur to run amok inside a Scooby-Doo mystery mansion, and also conservation is important or whatever. I get the impression that the people behind these movies have no idea why Jurassic Park is as good as it is beyond "WOAH COOL DINOSAURS".

To be perfectly fair, however, none of this is the fault of the director, J.A. Bayona. In fact, I'd say that the direction is one of the few things in this movie that I unironically liked; hell, I loved it. Bayona is, first and foremost, a horror director (having directed films like The Orphanage), so he's able to bring his own, unique style to the table (rather than just attempting to ape Spielberg like so many before him). The opening sequence in particular is unironically excellent, one of the best scenes in any Jurassic movie (if you can ignore them moving the mosasaur lagoon from the center of the island to the shoreline for plot reasons). There's a great amount of emphasis placed on the use of color and lighting, helping this corporate-designed product feel a little bit more like an actual film, rather than something meant to sell baby raptor toys to all the kids in the audience. For as schlocky as it is, the climax (in which the film essentially becomes a gothic monster movie) is actually a pretty fun time, thanks entirely to Bayona's fresh perspective. The action, while not exactly deep or emotionally engaging, is well-shot and exciting, which definitely kept me from outright hating this movie. I'm all but convinced by this point that Colin Trevorrow is responsible for everything wrong with Jurassic World, as he's relegated to script duty for this one and, as I've covered, that's where all of the film's problems occur. If there's one thing the executives at Universal should take away from this experience, it's the benefit that having a fresh face in the director's chair can bring to a project. With how well Fallen Kingdom is doing financially, a sequel is inevitable, and I truly hope that Bayona gets another shot at bat (hopefully to make something less inane than what we have here).

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is an easy lock for the stupidest thing I'm going to see in theaters in 2018. Normally, I'll be the first to champion the use of suspension of disbelief (especially in a summer blockbuster about genetically-altered dinosaurs), but even I have my limits. Much like with Disney's handling of Star Wars, the pendulum has swung way too far and now things are getting out of hand; the studios were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should. When it comes to these modern mega-blockbusters, the goal is no longer to make an enjoyable, accessible film, so much as it is to replicate the financial success of the first Jurassic World and break $1 billion at the box office.  In order to make a sustainable franchise, it's important that the product itself is more or less something of quality; this is why, after an entire decade of Marvel movies, everyone who saw Infinity War is excited and eager for what comes next. Meanwhile, you have Star Wars, which has had exclusively mediocre to outright bad movies since The Force Awakens and, surprise, now has to be completely reevaluated only three short years after they got the ball rolling. It'll happen to Jurassic World as well; they'll make their money now, but they're only postponing the inevitably embarrassing crash-and-burn that awaits all franchises tackled in this manner. Jurassic World made a ton of money, and Fallen Kingdom appears to be on the same track. But at the end of the day (and after adjusting for inflation), the original Jurassic Park is still the top dog of the franchise, both critically and financially. That kind of success is well within Universal's reach, they simply need expend the effort needed to seize it. And as we've learned time and time again, sloppy work in the name of maximizing profit only leads to catastrophic failure.

If you don't mind spoilers, be sure to check out my full plot-rundown on YouTube!

REVIEW: Fullmetal Alchemist

There's a trick to getting live-action anime adaptations right; you see, the trick is to not even try. There are a scant few exceptions to the rule (though right now, the only one that comes to mind is 2008's Speed Racer, and even then that's definitely an acquired taste), but anime as a medium is just something that seldom ever translates well to live-action. It's a genre packed full of characters with over-exaggerated features and displays of emotion, with manic, physics-defying action sequences; something like Gurren Lagann would never work in live-action, just considering the scope and scale alone. The only way anime can work in live-action is if the filmmakers are prepared to get silly and inventive with their presentation (such as with Speed Racer); as Pan Pizza once suggested, it wouldn't be impossible for someone to pull off a proper live-action take on something like Dragon Ball Z or Fist of the North Star in the style of something like Kung-Fu Hustle. But such an undertaking would require equal amounts of talent and flair, a balance that Fullmetal Alchemist (the latest anime adaptation to get dumped on Netflix) sorely lacks.

Adapted from the manga and anime series of the same name, Fullmetal Alchemist follows the adventures of Edward (Ryôsuke Yamada) and Alphonse Elric (Atom Mizuishi), two brothers who attempt to resurrect their dead mother through the power of alchemy. You see, the story takes place in a fictional European country around the start of the 20th century (despite the fact that the entire cast is Japanese, but whatever) where alchemy has been refined into an advanced science. However, the ritual goes awry; due to the Law of Equivalent Exchange, the attempt at human transmutation costs Ed an arm and a leg (literally) while his brother, Al, loses his entire body. With Alphonse's soul trapped in a massive suit of armor, the two search far and wide for the legendary Philosopher's Stone, a mysterious maguffin that may hold the key to restoring their bodies. This is about all we get in terms of plot as our characters meander about from location to location for upwards of two hours, never truly advancing the narrative until the last 30 or so minutes when the film suddenly remembers that it's telling a story.

For transparency's sake, I suppose it's only fair that I admit I've never watched the anime this film is based off of. And here we come to our first major problem; this isn't an adaptation for anyone but the fans. The vast majority of dialog here is exposition used to set up a messy, confusing plot that attempts to condense however many volumes of a manga series into a single feature-length film. As a newcomer to the franchise, I was just barely able to keep up, but even then I was left feeling like this was made to be nothing more than supplementary material for those already in the know. It's less of a standalone film and more an excuse to see the events of the source material play out in live-action, so one really has to wonder why this film was even made. Considering how well the film did at the Japanese box office, it's hard to see this as anything more than a cash-in meant to make a solid chunk of change off of the curiosity of fans.

I can't imagine this was made with the intention of introducing the world of Fullmetal Alchemist to a new audience; I've heard nothing but wonderful things about the anime and manga (specifically Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood), but this movie takes a world with such a novel concept behind it and conveys it all in the most mind-numbingly boring way imaginable. Roughly the first 40 minutes is nothing but exposition and world-building, there's far too much telling and not nearly enough showing for this to really be worth anyone's time. Longtime fans will already know how everything works, so they likely won't get anything out of the plodding, clinical dialog exchanges about the rules and principles of alchemy. At the same time, it does a really poor job of selling the concept to newcomers like myself; it's an imaginative concept, but it's never really used in an interesting or entertaining way.

These are all symptoms of a greater problem, namely that the film can't decide what it wants to be. It presents this imaginative fantasy world, yet gives us exactly one entertaining action scene before the climax. There's moments of more reserved character drama, but all of it feels forced and manufactured, since our characters don't really have anything to do in terms of development. One of the best scenes in the movie is a haunting look at the darker side of what alchemy can create (fans of the series will immediately know what I'm talking about), but it comes completely out of nowhere. We start out with a boring but overall upbeat fantasy story, then take a hard turn into outright body-horror for a few minutes, and then it's never mentioned again. I'm not saying that every movie has to have the universally safe appeal of a Marvel blockbuster, but some tonal consistency would be nice. 

It's only exasperated by the fact that our protagonists don't really have much in the way of personality. I suppose Alphonse is nice, whereas Edward... well, Edward is really just kind of there. He wants to fix his brother's body, I get that, but he really doesn't have anything resembling a personality. He's just a bland excuse for a protagonist; despite all the dramatic yelling he does, he felt entirely devoid of any and all passion. Maybe something was lost in translation, but I honestly felt like the true star of the show was Colonel Roy Mustang (played by Dean Fujioka). A no-nonsense military official with the power to manipulate flame, Mustang is briefly introduced in the first act before being all but forgotten until he reappears in time for the climax; the climax, I should specify, is the one part of this movie that actually works. The action isn't especially spectacular, but the film had all but completely deprived me of characters with personality and stakes and emotions up until this point. I understood Mustang's motivation, I sympathized with his position, and above all, he actually does stuff, unlike Ed and Al. I wouldn't be surprised if Mustang got more screentime during the last 30 minutes than the titular character does, he just completely steals the movie. This should have been called Flame Alchemist, I'd gladly watch an entire movie about him. Unfortunately, it's all just too little, too late.

To give credit where credit is due, the special effects are quite solid for a film out of Japan; Japanese CGI has never been anything spectacular, but one could be forgiven for assuming Alphonse's suit of armor is a practical effect. The idea of using alchemy like a superpower is pretty inventive; characters make walls and pillars burst out of the ground, using the environment itself as a weapon. While the special effects somewhat limit things, you still get the feeling that the filmmakers were very excited about pulling off this kind of action with a cast of physical actors. However, the half-decent CGI doesn't change the fact that every member of the cast looks like they're wearing the cheapest pre-made cosplay the studio could afford. Edward in particular looks especially ridiculous, Yamada's natural hair poking out underneath one of the worst wigs to hit the big screen since Fant4stic's Invisible Woman. I can only assume this was a big-budget blockbuster, so one really has to wonder why the costumes look worse than the majority of what you'll find at your local anime convention. I know it might sound cheap to knock a film for something as seemingly inconsequential as the quality of the costumes, but it was something that never ceased to pull me out of the movie. 

Like Death Note, this is a project that apparently meant a lot to the people making it; director Fumihiko Sori has been quoted as saying "It is my dearest wish to turn this wonderful story into a film, and it is not an exaggeration to say that I am living for this reason", and that he "wants to create a wonderful film that uses techniques that challenge Hollywood". While this kind of attitude is nothing but admirable, it doesn't change the fact that Fullmetal Alchemist just doesn't have much to offer anyone other than hardcore fans of the original series. The tone and pacing are all over the place, our protagonists have next to nothing interesting to do, and worst of all, the entire thing was just so boring. This isn't even a spectacularly bad movie; it's semi-competent, and that almost makes it worse. I actually had a better time watching Death Note, since that was at least so bad it was hilarious. Meanwhile, Fulllmetal Alchemist ends up feeling like nothing more than a chore to get through. The last thirty minutes is pretty solid, but that's about the highest praise I can offer it. Judging from the movie's box office returns in its native Japan (and the supremely confusing post-credits stinger), I can only assume there's going to be a sequel, so maybe they'll get it right next time. In the meanwhile, if you're a Fullmetal Alchemist novice like myself, save yourself the trouble and just watch Brotherhood.

REVIEW: Otto is a Rhino

Look, I said I was gonna do it, and by God I'm a man of my word. This is the end; the final entry from Crone Film that I'm subjecting myself to. I thought it would be good for a laugh at first, watching Freddy Frogface and Ivan the Incredible, but I think it's safe to say that I've simply said all I can say about these films. This is the final nail in the coffin; my obsession with Crone Film ends with Otto is a Rhino (yes, I know what the poster says, but the title card at the beginning of the movie says Otto is a Rhino, so there). Like the other films in this cracked-out trilogy, this is based on a Danish children's book, only it's been stretched out to fill just over an hour runtime. Again, I'm not sure if it's just a poor adaptation or if the books these films are based off of are equally as intolerable, but I'm also not sure it matters. Otto is a Rhino is an outright chore to get through, and I wouldn't expect anything but at this point.

The plot involves the same gross, ugly kid that appears in every one of these movies. Only this time, he finds a magic pencil that he uses to make a giant, yellow rhino. That's about the entire plot in a nutshell; a rhino appears in an apartment building and the entire rest of the movie is simply characters reacting to this oddball occurrence. There's no adventure or fantasy or anything at all engaging, just a bunch of unlikeable characters attempting to benefit from a sentient being born from someone's wall. "Let's bring a rhino to life" is the farthest this story wishes to experiment with the idea of a magic pencil that can make anything real, and I'm not sure if we're better off or not for that lack of imagination.

Really, "lack of imagination" sums up the entire film. There's no amount of whimsy or wonder like one might expect from a plot like this. The titular rhino isn't anyone's friend; it's a big, gormless animal with all the situational awareness of a houseplant. You look at all the other children's films where our kid protagonist makes a fantastical friend, films like The Iron Giant and Pete's Dragon, and you can get a sense of all the hard work that went into making the Giant and Elliot into actual characters rather than just plot points. Here, Otto the Rhino is just a prop for our host of equally dim characters to react to. It's not even made clear that he understands who the children are or how they brought him to life. It's Frosty the Snowman if the titular character was brought to life with a sub-zero IQ; we can't feel any sympathy for something that displays all the sentience and personality of a bootleg Chia Pet. Otto doesn't even get into any comic hijinks. He's tremendously docile for a rhino, content to just stand in one place and eat the drapes. It's the cinematic equivalent of an imaginary friend who does nothing but teach children how to do their taxes.

The human characters aren't much better, each one displaying a dizzying single personality trait. The cowardly kid is scared. His father is a jerk. The firemen are all idiots. It's not like I was expecting Alan Moore's Watchmen or anything, it's a children's film adapted from a children's picture book. It's okay to have flat or static characters, as long as they have something interesting to do, and that's where this film really shoots itself in the foot. They present a world of literally endless possibilities, where anything you can draw can come to life, and decide to waste that potential trying to get a rhinoceros out of an apartment building. Even that barebones description sounds too imaginative and exciting for this movie, considering most of the conflict revolves around the success of an independently-run café.

Let's pretend this isn't a problem; say this is meant for actual toddlers with the attention spans of goldfish. Sometimes a children's book doesn't really need to have a point or message, so long as it gives young kids something novel and interesting to latch onto that will get them interested in reading. Curious George is a series built entirely around the concept of a monkey being a monkey in different places, we don't always need to inspire an epiphany in every four year old just before nap time. But if this is truly meant to be something mom and dad can throw on for an hour of peace while Junior sits in the playpen, why is it so all-around unpleasant? Why does every character have beady little eyes and bulging Gary Busey teeth? Why are there references to casual sex, binge-drinking, and polygamy? It's a children's film where the only people who are going to get anything out of it are those who imbibe copious amounts of mind-altering substances beforehand. Believe me, for as much as I'm bashing this abomination, I can't imagine it's anything but a rollicking good time if you and your friends find yourselves half in the bag (especially if there are any animation students present).

It's about now that I wonder if there's even any point in giving my final thoughts on Otto is a Rhino. Like I'm going to actually recommend this to anyone but drunk or stoned twenty-somethings who have nothing better to do. Look, I'll be blunt; if you're a parent, give your child something better than Otto the Rhino. When you find yourself in a position to decide what entertainment your child gets exposed to, take care enough to give them something better than this. Sure, sometimes you really just need them to sit in front of the TV and shut up for a few minutes so you can hyperventilate into a paper bag (and maybe scarf down some uneaten mac and cheese) without being hounded. Believe me, I get it. But it can't really be understated how much of an impact the media we consume has on the people we end up becoming, especially as children. I can't even compare Otto is a Rhino to something like McDonald's, that's how unsubstantial it is as a piece of children's content. If you make the decision to fill your child's head with garbage like this, you're potentially depriving them of extraordinary parts of our culture. Films can change our lives, and it's your responsibility as a parent to make sure that it's for the better. Rather than... whatever the hell this is.

If you liked this, be sure to check out The Jurassic Mark Podcast!

REVIEW: The Last Unicorn

I've always found it interesting how the benefit of hindsight can add or subtract to a film. Some movies have a habit of taking root in our minds, where subtext reveals itself to the viewer and creative decisions become that much clearer to understand; we're able to step back and see the full picture, sometimes as early as when the credits begin to roll. Oftentimes this kind of post-viewing rumination can lead to that magnificent kind of eureka moment, where the pure artistry at work is pulled into the limelight and given a time to shine. Other times, as the afterglow fades, plot holes begin to make themselves known and the film begins to disintegrate before our very eyes. The Last Unicorn, a 1982 cult classic from the iconic Rankin/Bass Productions, falls moreso alongside the former rather than the latter; while I found my viewing experience to be very hit or miss, it was after the credits had stopped rolling, when I had a chance to really consider the plot from a subtextual standpoint, that the film's true value made itself known to me.

Adapted from Peter S. Beagle's novel of the same name, the story follows the titular unicorn (Mia Farrow) as she attempts to cope with the revelation that she is, indeed, the last of her kind (hence the title; already the film begins to reveal itself to us). After hearing tell of a mysterious Red Bull that supposedly chased all of her unicorn brethren to the ends of the earth, the unicorn sets out on a grand adventure to find and return all the world's unicorns. Along the way, she meets an insecure magician by the name of Schmendrick (Alan Arkin) and a beleaguered maid named Molly Grue (Tammy Grimes), who accompany her on her journey. After a harrowing run-in with the Red Bull, Schmendrick uses his magic to turn the unicorn into a mortal woman (since the bull only pursues unicorns). As the unicorn (now under the assumed human name of Amalthea) adjusts with her new body and place in the world, the group arrive at the seaside castle of King Haggard (Christopher Lee), in hopes of solving the mystery of where the unicorns disappeared to once and for all.

While the plot is very much your standard fairy tale fare (characters go from point A to B to C, encountering different story beats along the way), it's truly the subtext behind it all that keeps everything moving. I must confess that, upon watching this for the first time, I found myself growing quite bored on more than one occasion. The film carries itself slowly to begin with, lingering on individual scenes and focusing moreso on character interactions and dialog than outright action and adventure, but once our trio reaches King Haggard's castle, things grind to a complete stop until the climax. This isn't helped by our protagonists; the only one with any kind of drive or grit is Molly, and she isn't given nearly as much attention as Schmendrick and the unicorn (who are completely passive by comparison). Yes, everyone has an arc and yes, everyone contributes something by the time the story is ended, but there's still not really anyone for the audience to latch onto until Molly is introduced. Schmendrick is endearing thanks to Alan Arkin's humble performance, but that doesn't change the fact that he barely does anything aside from feel sorry for himself for the majority of the film. Meanwhile the titular unicorn comes off as detached and mopey until she's turned human, at which point she basically goes catatonic from having to deal with her newfound mortality. Despite all my griping, I actually really like the kind of offbeat, melancholy tone this gives the entire film; I just wish there was a protagonist I could forge a greater connection with.

With a classically simplistic plot and characters to match, the film is 100% carried by its subtext. Despite essentially being a film targeted towards children, the story is heavy with themes of life, death, and notions of mortality and immortality. One of my favorite scenes involves the unicorn immediately after she is turned human; terrified of her newfound mortality, she describes how she can feel her new body slowly dying around her. It's surprisingly hefty stuff for an animated children's film about a pretty unicorn who turns into a pretty princess. In turning human, the unicorn experiences a sort of loss of innocence, transforming from a pure and immortal creature of the woods to yet another doomed-to-die dime-a-dozen person. However, there's a clear look at the give and take associated with mortality and immortality; the unicorn is shaken by her sudden transition, yet, in the end, values her experiences. Though she'll forever be different from the other unicorns (tainted, in a way), she is the only of her kind to have possessed the proper perspective that allows her to feel emotions such as love and regret. 

By the same token, we have characters like Mommy Fortuna (a witch who runs a traveling sideshow, voiced by Angela Lansbury) and The Skull (a talking skeleton, voiced by Rene Auberjonois); both clearly favor immortality and both possess unending life in their own, personal ways. Mommy Fortuna, despite using illusions and trickery to disguise mundane creatures as fantastical beasts, seeks to establish her own dominance over the legendary animals she imprisons. She covets the immortal life that the unicorn (as well as the harpy she imprisons) both possess, and thus seeks to make her mark as best as she can. Despite meeting her end at the hands of said harpy as her captives escape, she still achieves her own kind of immortality; as she explains, the harpy will spend the rest of its unending life knowing that Mommy Fortuna was the one who held it in captivity. She achieves immortality within the memories of the beast she captured, but at the cost of her own life. Meanwhile, the Skull has been around for an unquestionably long time, laying about in the depths of King Haggard's castle. Despite his eternal life, he still longs for something as simple as the taste of wine. They even establish that, as a skeleton, he's unable to even taste wine, let alone drink it; he explains that it's the feeling, the memory of the wine, that truly matters. Both have achieved eternal life, yet at a cost so terrible, it may as well make the entire point moot. Immortality is life without end, but life without end is no life at all.

Aside from that, the art design is quite gorgeous, even if the animation is nothing to write home about. There's several songs performed by America (the band behind A Horse With No Name) and all of these are quite good; it's when anyone else tries singing that things get really embarrassing really quickly (Jeff Bridge's forelorn love ballad and Mia Farrow's infamous "NOW THAT I'M A WOMUUUUUN" songs are the unintentionally hilarious highlights). All in all, while I've certainly seen better, I can at least understand why The Last Unicorn  is considered a cult classic by so many. I found myself slipping into boredom and frustration here and there while watching it, but in hindsight, I can really appreciate it from an artistic and subtextual standpoint. It's not necessarily for everyone; I found myself in a similar position when watching Wizards, where the film really only revealed itself to me after I was done watching it. Looking back, however, at least Wizards had me thoroughly engaged throughout. There are definitely good things here, but I don't know if I'd call it essential viewing, at least more than once. That said, I'm fairly confident that it would improve upon future viewings. Either way, it's certainly a film I plan on showing my children down the line, so take that as you will.

REVIEW: Would You Rather

I'd like to make one thing abundantly clear about this blog; I don't like punching down. Yes, I go out of my way to find a bad movie (or at least something that looks bad) at the end of each month. Yes, this often includes cheap, weird kids' movies that were made with exactly zero artistic intent whatsoever. And yes, it's not exactly fair of me to discuss Ivan the Incredible or Freddy Frogface in the same context as something like The Big Lebowski or Susperia. I don't go out of my way to find something trashy to tear apart each month out of a desire to really stick it to smaller, less talented filmmakers. I take no perverse joy in taking direct-to-video children's films down a peg or two. Really, I just feel it mixes things up; like Peter O'Toole's Anton Ego says in Ratatouille, "we thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read". We watch movies to feel something, whether it be genuine elation or passionate, cathartic frustration. Which is why, when a film toes the line between legitimate and ironic quality, we're left with a middling kind of malaise; such is the case with this week's subject, Would You Rather.

The plot is simplistic and, at its core, could easily be written off as a ripoff of the Saw franchise; admittedly, it's a decently interesting idea that had me more engaged than I would have initially expected (no thanks to the paper-thin characters, but more on that later). Iris (Brittany Snow) is a young woman struggling to make ends meet while caring for her sickly brother, Raleigh (Logan Miller). With seemingly no other option to pay for Raleigh's increasingly-costly medical treatments (or the bone marrow transplant he needs to survive), Iris accepts an invitation to a dinner party hosted by the mysterious philanthropist, Shepard Lambrick (Jeffery Combs). Iris finds herself among a number of other struggling individuals, each tasked with competing in a parlor game; the prize being Shepard's assistance (be it through his own social influence or his vaguely-considerable wealth) in whatever issue they're currently struggling against. Little do the contestants know that the parlor game in question is in fact a morbid, twisted version of Would You Rather (hence the name), forcing them to choose between a series of increasingly unpleasant punishments to inflict upon themselves and/or each other. It's your standard "wealthy eccentric fruitcakes take horrifying advantage of seedy, lower-class people" exploitation flick, where any amount of subtext or social commentary is scarce at best and the real value lies in seeing comical acts of horrific violence committed against more or less innocent people.

As I said, it's honestly not a half-bad premise; although, "premise" might be slightly too proper for this film. A more accurate word would be "excuse", specifically an excuse to see a lot of low-rent violence and torture. The plot is 100% carried by, well, the plot, rather than the characters. We get a dull-as-dirt intro where we meet Iris and her pale, sickly brother (you can tell he has cancer because he's wearing a beanie indoors) and that's literally the height of the characterization at play here. Once we get to the party, it almost makes you think it's going to play out like Clue, where each colorful individual has a unique personality and gimmick; instead we get a single sentence to describe each contestant, not unlike the opening of Suicide Squad, before bodies start hitting the floor. We have the gambling addict, the Iraq vet, the crippled lady; I was honestly surprised we weren't introduced to Slipknot, the man who can climb anything.

In horror, it's extremely important for us to relate to (or at the very least, care about) the characters. I know I keep using Alien as the example of how characterization in horror should be done, but that's because Alien nails that aspect of its story so perfectly. We get ample opportunity during the first act to know and relate to our cast, so that way when they're being pursued by some snakelike monstrosity in the third act, we actually feel for them. It's all about immersion; things are scarier when you can plant yourself in the characters' shoes. And to the film's credit, I was thinking the entire time of what I'd be doing if I found myself in such a situation. But again, that's entirely thanks to the premise (sorry, excuse) rather than the characters. The situations are grim and gruesome and at times, cringe-inducing, yes. But the emotions on display here are tantamount to watching a series of cardboard cutouts get fed through a woodchipper.

Part of this is because of the lack of characterization, but also in part to the host of tremendously stale performances on display. Some members of the cast do a serviceable job (such as Johnny Coyne as Bevins, the butler, and Gotham's Robin Lord Taylor as Shepard's sadistic son), but the vast majority characters we're meant to care about (Iris in particular) are just completely bland in the worst kind of way. The only members of the cast who really seem to pull it off are, of course, Jeffery Combs (a veteran of cult movies) and Rob Wells (of Trailer Park Boys fame). Even with that said, Wells can't really help but give a comedic performance; his character, Peter, is meant to be a slick, high-rolling gambler from Las Vegas. Instead, he really just comes off like a marginally more well-spoken take on Ricky, his character from TPB (pay close attention to the hefty Canadian "oots" and "aboots" that slip out, despite his character supposedly hailing from the Southwest). 

Combs commands 100% of the charisma, coming off as a legitimately detached, detestable lunatic. He never really drops his air of gentlemanly pleasantness, even when presenting his house guests with horrid punishments and ultimatums; you can tell he's having a lot of fun, and that kind of attitude adds a lot to the endearing schlock-factor. If I had one criticism of this character, it would be that, spoiler alert, he gets absolutely no comeuppance of any kind by the end. I at least expected Iris to take some sort of revenge once the game was finished, maybe trick him into participating himself; a nice bit of table-turning irony to give our villain a fitting end, but no. The ending of this film is so abrupt, unsatisfying, and toothless that it ends up coming off like an insultingly hilarious middle finger to the audience.

Then of course we have famous adult film star, Sasha Grey as Amy; she's the crazy girl, you can tell because she wears a lot of black and immediately turns against everyone. There always seems to be that one character in these types of scenarios, the one who acclimates just a little too well to a Battle Royale style death-game. The kind of person who would spend a good amount of time decorating a mask to wear on the night of the Purge, if you catch my drift. These kinds of characters can be fun, but you typically have to give them some sort of nuance to work; maybe have them debate their ideas with the protagonist, or slowly fall to the wayside after starting off normal. Even Sam Raimi's first (and come to think of it, second) Spider-Man films understood this. Amy, meanwhile, immediately electrocutes an old, crippled woman and approaches the task of stabbing someone with an icepick with a sort of childlike glee. There's just nothing to her; they attempt to characterize her literally seconds before she's killed off, meaning that she's the second-most defined character in the movie, right behind our protagonist.

Really, my biggest issue with Would You Rather wasn't that it was poorly shot, poorly acted, or poorly written (and it most definitely is all of those things). It's an exploitation movie, I wasn't expecting The Exorcist (hell, I wasn't even expecting Sleepaway Camp). My problem with Would You Rather is that I couldn't figure out what it wanted to be, and I'm guessing the filmmakers couldn't either. The tone fluctuates so wildly from an attempt at a legitimately dark, serious horror film (the sequence where the PTSD-stricken Iraq vet is beaten with an African whipping stick) to tongue-in-cheek pseudo-comedic schlock (a scene where Rob Wells' character is challenged to let an M-80 go off in his hand) that it ends up averaging out dead in the middle. It's not infuriatingly bad, but it's also not charmingly quaint either. It just sort of is, and that's one of the worst things a movie (especially one like this) can be. That said, to once again quote Ratatouille, "the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." Would You Rather is no cult masterpiece, nor is it a paragon of all that horror should strive to be, but I suppose had my share of laughs. You could definitely do better, but you could also most assuredly do worse. If you're in the mood for something trashy, grab some friends and crack open a few beers; you might not be scared, invested, or surprised, but you'll get your money's worth.

REVIEW: Jurassic School

I often find that the lower a movie's budget, the tougher it can be to make fun of it. Cost doesn't necessarily equate to effort, and there are plenty of films (like Roger Corman's Fantastic Four) that make up for their clear lack in technical prowess with sheer gumption and effort. A lot of the time, lack of funding ends up being a very real roadblock for a lot of smaller films, causing problems and setbacks that obscure all but the faintest glimmer of potential. And then you have movies like Jurassic School, a boring amateurish slog from the fine folks at The Asylum. I've made it known how little patience I have for children's films that don't bother putting in any effort because "it's for kids", and this is no exception.

As with most films from The Asylum, the plot pays legally distinct homage to (ie: rips off) more iconic, financially successful films; in this case E.T. and Jurassic Park. I'm not exactly sure why the writer chose films that are a good couple of decades old to market this schlock to oblivious kids and well-meaning grandparents alike, but I've got a theory. I feel like they were trying to muscle in on some of that sweet, sweet Jurassic World money, but only had a community college campus and a single gross, misshapen dinosaur puppet to work with. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What could loosely be called the plot follows a boy named Tommy (Gabriel Bennett), a child prodigy and dinosaur fanatic. His hobbies include dabbing goo on ostrich eggs and mumbling out his lines like a pint-sized Tommy Wiseau. Seriously, there's so many botched line reads in this movie that I can only assume the words "take two" were never uttered on set. As he explains though his prolonged techno-babble monologue, Tommy has figured out a way to insert dinosaur DNA into an ostrich egg. Where this kid got dinosaur DNA (or an ostrich egg, for that matter) is left up to the imagination. We get to watch people wordlessly unload ferns from the back of a truck for about two uninterrupted minutes, but learning how a young boy acquired the blood of an extinct reptile just isn't interesting enough to warrant any screentime.

After placing the egg in his dino-making machine (represented by a laptop sat next to a plastic marble maze, because the filmmakers needed a fun visual, but not one that would break the bank), Tommy is shocked (as are we all) to discover that his experiment actually worked. A twelve year old boy has successfully tampered in God's domain and the result is... a dinosaur. It has a proper Latin name, but damned if I can be bothered to remember it. The newly-hatched abomination then laps up a beaker full of growth hormone and quadruples in size, changing from a CGI representation of what would happen if your budgerigar melted in the microwave to an offputting analog puppet. The puppet has no torso or legs, because that would be too expensive. It also isn't allowed to appear anywhere but "mostly offscreen", because properly framing your special effect is just too much work.

I need to take a minute to explain just how much I hated this creature (given the oh-so-original moniker of "Spike" by its master). It's clear that the filmmakers didn't have a whole lot to work with, but did they have to make the cutesy mascot of this film look so unsettling? Even on the box art (which is an entire discussion on its own), it looks like a sassy, irradiated chicken embryo. The cast does their best to emote and interact with this hideous little mistake, but its gaping, lopsided jaw and heavily-lidded, glassy eyes give off the impression that there's nothing going on inside its head. Nothing aside from some poor puppeteer's forearm, that is; the neck is so turgid and inarticulated, it's never not obvious that there's a grown man (or woman) just out of frame, crouched on their hands and knees operating this thing while the voice actor mewls and moans like a deaf cat. I haven't seen such an off-putting E.T. clone since Mac & Me, and at least that has the scene with the wheelchair kid and the cliff.

I also want to talk about the framing in this movie. Everything is shot like it's about to turn into weird, niche porn at any second (though I suppose that's not too surprising, given The Asylum's credentials). There's tons of awkward, empty wide shots and pointless, claustrophobic close-ups, not to mention those distracting half-cuts used to trim the runtime down. I could forgive a lack of budget and poor special effects. I can even overlook bad child actors. But the way this movie is shot inspires a distinct lack of technical ability to top it all off. That combined with the borderline plagiarized plot makes this nigh-indefensible. It's such an obvious cash-grab meant to sucker in people who don't know any better at the checkout line or the bargain bin. And do you know what the worst thing about this movie is? It's boring. It's not even "so bad it's good", it's just dull and uneventful. The kid makes a dinosaur for some kind of competition and doesn't tell anyone (despite this being the scientific find of the century). Then nothing happens until the dinosaur is captured by a scummy businessman. There's an extended chase sequence through a college library that's exactly as exciting as it sounds. The kid rescues the dinosaur, it dies, then it gets better. Roll credits. There's so little value here, I can't even recommend this one ironically. It's just bad.

Jurassic School is the worst kind of movie. In that it's soulless, and not even in a fun kind of way. There are bad movies, awful movies, that have more value as this, both as a piece of art and a piece of entertainment. Movies like The Room and Birdemic and Samurai Cop are worth intrinsically more than stuff like this; they've got more charm, more effort, and more entertainment value. "You're tearing me apart, Lisa" will echo in the halls of eternity; what of Jurassic School? What was the point, the inspiration, the goal? I guarantee not a single actor here (aside from maybe some of the kids) wanted to be involved in this, and it shows. I try to live my life by the idea that there are no truly bad experiences; you either have a good time, or a good story. Like the death of a loved one, Jurassic School is one of those tragic exceptions to that mindset. This is one of the things I'll regret when I'm on my deathbed, willing to pay any price for 80 more measly minutes on this mortal plain. I didn't like it.