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: The Meg

Honestly, what did you even expect? Am I supposed to talk about The Meg like it's a real movie, and not just an absurd pile of schlock made to milk millions and millions of dollars out of the ever-growing Chinese movie market? We've all watched the trailer, we all know what this movie is about. There's a giant prehistoric shark and Jason Statham is gonna go deck it in the schnoz. I knew what I was getting into when I bought my ticket, and I got exactly what I expected. It's a curious kind of situation, since this is a blatant cash-grab without an ounce of creative intent behind it; one could very easily make the case that movies like this are causing the death of cinema the world over. But then again, I didn't exactly have a bad time with The Meg, so that raises the question of whether or not there's a place for big-budget trash, so long as it at least manages to be enjoyably entertaining.

The plot is, as one might expect, basically just an excuse to get Jason Statham to duke it out with a giant shark. I actually wasn't expecting it to take so long to really get going; this is a movie that, surprisingly enough, sticks by the genre convention of not showing the monster until after the first act is finished. An exploratory expedition is sent to the bottom of the Marianas Trench on the off-chance that the bottom of the ocean isn't actually the bottom; it turns out that the researcher's hypothesis was correct, and that the "bottom" of the trench was really just a cloud of super-cold hydrogen-sulfide or whatever. It's B-movie science, so I don't really feel the need to pick it apart that much, the important thing is that there's megalodons in them hills, and wouldn't you know it the submarine they've sent down to investigate just so happens to be piloted by Jason Statham's ex-wife (Jessica MaNamee). After rescuing the submarine, the megalodon follows the team up through the resulting gap in the thermocline, entering into an all-you-can-eat buffet of whales, boats, and tasty tasty humans. The Meg's got a hankering for some Chinese food, and it's up to Jason Statham to make it extinct all over again.

Let's talk about Jason Statham for a bit, because he's honestly the lynchpin that makes this movie work at all. I'm not sure if he legitimately thought this was a good script or if he's just a true professional, but while literally everyone else is yukking it up and not even trying (except for Li Bingbing, who I'm sure isn't as terrible when she doesn't have to speak English), Jason Statham is taking his role as a submarine-driving shark fighter 110% seriously. See, my problem with movies like Sharknado and the like is how they're so obviously made to be comedies. You can't intentionally make a movie that's so bad it's good. That's just not how it works. A person slipping on a banana peel is funny. A person throwing themselves to the ground intentionally with the intended goal of making people laugh is just embarrassing.

With Statham putting in a totally stone-faced performance, he ends up acting as the straight-man to literally everything else in the movie, and the end result provided more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. Sure, it's not exactly low-concept humor, but I defy anyone to watch Jason Statham throw on a wetsuit and dive into the ocean to go confront a shark the size of a Greyhound bus and not at least crack a smile at how absurd a visual it is. Tonally, it very much reminded me of something like Deep Blue Sea or TriStar's 1998 Godzilla reboot. I grew up loving these schlocky monster movies, as mediocre as they may be, and I could very much see someone getting the same kind of enjoyment out of seeing Jason Statham take on the Meg in the same way I got a kick out of watching Saffron Burrows and LL Cool J take on a gang of super-smart makos. The only problem is that, for as big and bombastic as The Meg tries to make itself appear, the action we get comes off as totally toothless, especially for a B-movie about a giant shark.

It's safe to say that, after serving as the villains in so many monster movies, sharks have gotten something of a bad rap. As I'm sure we've heard time and time again from various Snapple facts, you're actually about 23 times more likely to die from being struck my lightening than you are to die from a shark attack. Ever since Jaws came out, they've been portrayed mostly as mindless eating machines, despite even species as fearsome as the great white coming close to becoming endangered. Shark finning is a serious problem (as The Meg takes the time to tell us about in an odd, tonally-dissonant moment) and it's important to remember that sharks aren't monsters; they're simply animals doing what animals do. With all that said, The Meg is a monster movie about a giant dino-shark terrorizing the Pacific. As far as sharks go, it's not a stretch to say that they're just swimming mouths; biting, gnashing, and eating are about the only means of attack they have. So, to quote the film's lead, "Where’s the f---ing blood? It’s like, 'There’s a shark.'"

Half the fun of these kinds of monster movies is watching a cast of paper-thin characters eat it when the titular terror decides to eat them. While we do get a few good deaths here and there, they're all completely bloodless; the film avoids showing any humans getting chomped or ripped apart, opting instead for everyone to just be cartoonishly swallowed whole. It really puts a damper on an otherwise perfectly enjoyable B-movie, since well-done gore can add a ton to the enjoyment factor of an otherwise unremarkable movie. The only problem with turning a movie like The Meg into a blood-soaked gore-fest is that such violence would inevitably result in an R rating, greatly cutting into the film's potential profit margins. Seeing as how The Meg has already managed to out-perform the latest Star Wars movie, I suppose this gambit paid off. I can honestly say I'd have had more fun with it if I also got to see some blood and gore (and let's be honest, some tongue-in-cheek nudity never hurt anyone either), but those box office numbers don't lie. I saw a 9:45 showing with some friends at our local cinema, and just one row in front of us was a pair of parents with two kids who couldn't have been older than 6 or 7. They even brought blankets and stuffed animals, presumably for if the kids got bored (or fell asleep, considering we left the theater just after midnight); truly, The Meg is a movie with universal appeal. The only problem is that the movie's attempt to please every single paying demographic leaves it without a real sense of identity, and its hesitation to commit to a singular tone or audience leaves the whole thing feeling somewhat middling overall.

All in all, The Meg is a fun enough time, I suppose. It's surprisingly competently made (there's a fake-out just after one of the larger action sequences that actually got me) and the effects look pretty solid for something that was mostly shot in massive water tanks surrounded by green screens. At the end of the day, I paid for my ticket to see Jason Statham fight a giant shark and got to watch Jason Statham fight a giant shark. All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening; I know "I don't regret spending my money" isn't exactly the highest praise a film can receive, not every movie I've paid to see this summer can make the same boast. There are definitely better B-movies out there (and certainly better shark movies), but The Meg is an altogether inoffensive excuse to get together with some friends and share some laughs. Just don't expect anything even remotely memorable, original, or intelligent.

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: Strawinsky and the Mysterious House

As I've said before, I like to avoid punching-down on this blog, especially when it comes to children's entertainment. It's not exactly fair to critique something made on a shoestring budget and marketed to toddlers the way I would look at something like Logan or The Lobster; there definitely has to be some sort of sliding grade scale, otherwise this whole operation of mine looks totally pathetic (even moreso than it already does). I'm not here to make fun of a film because it lacks a blockbuster budget, the same way I won't go out of my way to poopoo the efforts of criminally mistreated animators. No, what I hone in on for these end-of-month Reviews is the ill-intent of the filmmaker. I'm a firm believer that, despite abundant amounts of evidence to the contrary, film is still very much an art form. In turn, laziness and greed are two motivators I simply cannot abide. Though I must say, in all my years of seeking out awful, low-budget heaps of trash to watch and the end of each month, I have never once come across something so outwardly malicious and underhanded as today's subject. Ladies and gentlemen, I present for your consideration; Strawinsky and the Mysterious House.

There's a good chance you're already aware of this trainwreck, thanks to the power of the internet meme machine. But to fully grasp what makes this 30-minute children's special such an abhorrent piece of work, I need to provide the necessary context. Fret not, The Globglogabgalab will get his in due time. Strawinsky is directed, produced, animated, edited, recorded, and distributed by a man named David Hutter; much like Tommy Wiseau (who infamously wrote, directed, produced, and starred in The Room), Hutter displays an impressive degree of confidence for someone who has absolutely no idea what the hell he's doing. He describes his brainchild as "a magical adventure inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia, Walt Disney animated musicals and the parables by Jesus Christ". At first I was totally baffled. Clearly this would end up being some sort of dime-store religious thing, but I was altogether unprepared for what Mr. Hutter had in store for me. I pondered what in God's good name the movie that gave us The Globglogabgalab could have to do with the word of the Bible, but I soon learned that my questions would be answered in increasingly uncomfortable ways as the film progressed.

We start out to find our bunch of animal friends awkwardly t-posing through the woods before stumbling upon a mysterious house, at which point the leader, Strawinsky, suggests breaking inside and having a look around. They find themselves in a basement full of books, who all implore the little critters to take a load off and read them; so far, it all seems innocuous enough, right? Anthropomorphic British animals in a magic house full of magic books, clearly they're building to some stock moral about how "reading is the most magical adventure of them all" or whatever, yeah? Well... stay with me here, because things are gonna go downhill very fast. 

It's at this point that the friends run into the house's caretaker(?), a troll who looks and sounds like a stereotypical caricature of a Scotsman. The troll mentions how the Scarlet Queen (more on her later) had commanded him to multiply a bag of gold she'd given him; his failure to increase the number of zeroes at the end of the Scarlet Queen's account balance has left him a little on-edge, as he fears what horrible retribution she would have in store for him, should he continue to fail in his quest to produce yet more money for someone who is apparently already royalty. So right off the bat, you'd assume we have our villain in the form of the Scarlet Queen, correct? A vengeful monarch obsessed with gold and negligent to the needs and concerns of her underlings; again, I ask you to just stick with me here. There's a turn coming, and it'd be a damn shame if you were to miss it.

As the troll meanders off to contemplate what hellish torment surely awaits him at the hands of the Scarlet Queen, Strawinsky decides to leave his friends to their books and explore the remainder of the house. He comes across an anthropomorphic cello who explains how she used to belong to the Scarlet Queen; the cello feels understandably forgotten (dare I say, foresaken?) at having been left to rot in a dusty old house by its previous owner. Strawinsky, ever the empathetic paragon of virtue, decides to leave the cello to its wallowing and return to the basement. It's here that he meets the true star of the show, The Globglogabgalab. Essentially, he's a massive, obese, shape-shifting slug man who feeds on the knowledge of books for sustenance. As he explains in his transcendentally bad pan-flute rap song, he is "the yeast of thoughts and minds".

This is arguably the most important moment in the entire movie, since this is where David Hutter lays all his cards on the table and reveals what this film is really about. It's like sitting in a time-share presentation; you know the sale is coming, but you're not sure when until it's too late. Up to this point, it had just been another incompetently made kids' movie with your standard sweatshop CGI, but it's after Strawinsky meets The Globglogabgalab (I refuse to type that out anymore, so hence forth he shall be referred to as G-Man) that things take a hard, sinister turn into Orwellian propaganda. After his disquieting rap number, Strawinsky floats the idea over to G-Man that maybe, just maybe, he should be careful about the books he consumes; maybe it's not a good idea to read books at all, because they can fill your head with dangerous ideas.

As if this message railing against the perils of free-thought wasn't clear enough, we then find out that all of Strawinsky's friends have turned into zombies because they read too many books. Distraught that his loyal sheep friends have grown self-aware and disappeared from the flock, Strawinsky begins desperately praying to Jesus Christ The Scarlet Queen. She arrives in a great pillar of light, leaving the troll and G-Man looking like they were just caught with their hands on the golden calf. After stroking Strawinsky's comatose buddies back to peak woke-ness (yes, the narrator uses the word "stroking"), the Scarlet Queen explains the origin of G-Man; once a beautiful forest elf, G-Man soon found himself seduced by those nasty, wicked books. He just fell in love with the written word, to the point that he grew fat and ugly. This was apparently a punishment bestowed on G-Man by God the great Elohim, an unseen deity who exerts his almighty whim on the poor pathetic pawns who populate the Earth.

It's also here that we learn about Satan the Ratking, who shows up for exactly one scene to tempt our heroes(?) through song. Faced with Strawinsky's incessant evangelizing, G-Man relents and decides to give up his precious, stupid books in favor of devoting himself to the teachings of Christianity whatever religion followers of Elohim keep up with. Despite G-Man making the correct(?) choice and bending the knee to her Scarlet-ness, the narrator makes it painfully clear that, although he has earned his seat at the table in the afterlife, he will never regain his old, beautiful body. G-Man will remain fat and misshapen for all eternity, as punishment for his heinous transgression of reading. As we all know, if there's one thing Jesus is super big on, it's petty retribution. Traits like forgiveness and "turning the other cheek" are for the other, weaker messiahs. The troll, meanwhile, decides not to follow the way of the Scarlet Queen, only because he is so terrified of the prospect of her retribution. As the Scarlet Queen ascends into the great hereafter with her cello, we're left to assume that the fires of Hell await the troll whenever he kicks the bucket (likely whenever the Scarlet Queen finds out he didn't make all that gold for her). Everyone goes home, Strawinsky vows to dedicate his life to the great Elohim, and I'm left feeling horrendously filthy for what I've just witnessed.

Is there even anything left to say at this point? I want to make myself clear, there is nothing wrong with being religious. So long as you're not harming anyone, feel free to believe in whatever you please. But I draw the line at outright propaganda, especially when it's propaganda that's shamelessly targeted at children. Taking a child to Church on Sunday is one thing, but sitting them down in front of a cartoon that outright says that God won't ever truly forgive you if you decide to read books is something entirely different. Never before have I seen such a self-destructive endorsement of organized religion; it practically comes off like satire made by a militant atheist. The positive side of religion is literally portrayed as blissful ignorance and blind allegiance while any attempt to gain knowledge is shown to be the work of the Devil. Normally, I can brush off media that's simply incompetent, but that's hardly what we're dealing with here. And yes, I recognize the irony of saying "don't watch this media that presents dangerous ideas, it pushes a narrative that we should avoid media with dangerous ideas". I'm not saying not to watch this; just don't subject your kids to this dreck. Consider Strawinsky and the Mysterious House a "must-see" in my book, just make sure you've got some manner of mind-altering substance on hand before you hit play.

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: The Cloverfield Paradox

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Netflix really will greenlight just about anything. True as that is, they can almost be forgiven for pulling the trigger on The Cloverfield Paradox, the latest entry in J.J. Abrams' Cloververse. After 10 Cloverfield Lane (my personal favorite film of 2016), a sci-fi horror anthology series seemed like a sure thing. With J.J. Abrams' considerable funds and studio clout being used to thrust smaller directors with new and original ideas into the spotlight, I found myself incredibly excited to see what would come out of this fresh take on the rapidly-aging "cinematic universe" gimmick. I remember being so excited during the Superbowl last Sunday; the next Cloverfield movie is already finished, and I can watch it right after the game. Even if you're not particularly a fan of these movies, it's impossible to deny how well J.J. Abrams and company understand the ins and outs of stunt marketing. Unfortunately, I'd later discover that stunt marketing is about all that The Cloverfield Paradox gets right as I took in what might be the first major disappointment of 2018.

The setting of The Cloverfield Paradox is something of a paradox in and of itself. It takes place in the year 2028; the world is caught in the grip of an energy crisis and war looms over the horizon. Orbiting around Earth is the aptly-named Cloverfield Space Station, manned by a team of scientists tasked with successfully activating a particle accelerator that could provide free, unlimited energy for the entire planet. And herein lies the first problem; we aren't certain if this is the same universe as the original Cloverfield or if it's a totally separate timeline (as was the case with 10 Cloverfield Lane). If this is the same timeline as the original Cloverfield, then the canon narrative is left with more retcons, plot holes, and timeline disparities than the Star Wars prequels and OT Special Editions combined. However, if this is it's own original universe, then the film is exposed for being a shallow cash-grab, incorporating existing elements from the first Cloverfield movie for marketability's sake and nothing more. As I said, it's a paradox (where neither outcome particularly works in the film's favor). I don't want to say much more regarding the plot, as the story is easily the most interesting and engaging aspect of this entire mess. 

This is a movie where the plot is driven moreso by the novel concept rather than the characters. The situation that the crew of the Cloverfield Station have been placed in is a frightening and fascinating one; imagine floating through the emptiness of space, only to look out the window to discover that planet Earth has disappeared. It reminds me a lot of Event Horizon in this regard, but done in a much more interesting, coherent way. The station  doesn't just turn into a haunted mansion, there's a steady rhythm of mystery and gradual payoff that keeps the viewer invested until the final act. However, the film also suffers from many of the same pitfalls that befell Event Horizon, namely paper-thin characters and tonal inconsistency.

The only actor really pulling their weight is Gugu Mbatha-Raw as our main character, Ava Hamilton. She gets all of the characterization and backstory, while everyone else gets basically nothing. There was one point in the story where I was certain her arc was going to take a sudden dark turn, only for things to play out in a much more conventional way. In fairness, I can't really hold that against the film; Gugu Mbatha-Raw gives a really solid performance whereas everyone else is passable at best, and while her character arc is nothing revolutionary, at least it's something. She's the only person we see with some kind of backstory and emotional stake in the events of the plot (aside from Elizabeth Debicki's character, but she hardly gets enough screentime to make it worthwhile).

The Cloverfield Paradox also commits the cardinal sin of utterly wasting Daniel Brühl. He's proven in films like Inglorious Basterds and Captain America: Civil War that he's capable of giving an intense, impactful performance (even when confined to a mere supporting role), but here he's given absolutely nothing to do. His character is the German guy, and that's it. There's a moment early on where the Russian crew member (played by Askel Hennie) accuses Brühl's character of sabotaging the particle accelerator; they've been trying to get it working for the past two years, and Germany is on the verge of taking military action against Russia. The implication here being that Brühl's character may be a German operative planted in the Cloverfield Station in order to ensure Germany has justification to invade Russia. It's a really fascinating idea with a lot of potential for engaging character drama, only to be dropped within minutes and never referenced again (except for a brief fake-out scene during the second act, which is similarly brushed aside without any fuss or muss).

That said, the hands-down weakest element in this entire cast is Chris O'Dowd as Mundy, the comic-relief Irish engineer. Look, I love The IT Crowd as much as the average person (considering the continent I'm on, likely more than the average person). And I totally get where they were coming from with this character; in films like this, it can help to introduce a little levity so the audience doesn't get burned out on tension. Even films like Alien (which Paradox takes obvious influence from in a number of areas) had moments of comedic banter to help endear the doomed crew to the audience. I get it. But O'Dowd just feels completely out-of-place in this movie, cracking jokes and one-liners at the most horrendously inappropriate of times. Again, I understand levity, but one doesn't typically pull out a wacky quip immediately after watching one of their friends and co-workers convulse to death, vomiting up blood and earthworms as they go. The rest of the characters weren't fleshed out in the slightest, but they at least generally acted like human beings might act when met a horrific or distressing circumstance. The material given to O'Dowd actively drags the rest of the movie down and completely kills what could have been a really solid sense of atmosphere.

The paper-thin characters are nothing, however, to this film's true fatal flaw. Like with 10 Cloverfield Lane, this was not originally a Cloverfield movie. Rather, it was to be a standalone film titled God Particle; it wasn't until part-way through production that J.J. Abrams decided it should be a sequel to the original Cloverfield, adding additional scenes during filming to tie the two stories closer together. Which brings us to our B-story, where we follow Hamilton's husband, Michael (Roger Davies) on Earth where (presumably, it's never 100% confirmed) the events of the first Cloverfield film are taking place. This side-plot is the death-knell for this movie; whenever it shows up, it distracts from the main plot, adding nothing substantial beyond a series of potential plot holes. The only purpose it serves is to justify billing this half-decent sci-fi film as a Cloverfield movie. 

It's worth noting that a similar thing happened with 10 Cloverfield Lane (originally a spec-script known as Cellar), but it's also worth noting that 10 Cloverfield Lane wasn't a direct continuation of the Cloverfield story. It took place in a totally different universe, and while some were naturally disappointed not to get any further context on the mysteries established in the first movie, it managed to stand on its own as a well-made film. The Cloverfield name was slapped on for marquee value, but the overall plot and script were more or less unchanged. Compare this to The Cloverfield Paradox where (prepare for the most obvious spoiler of all time) the iconic Cloverfield monster does make an on-screen appearance. Now normally I might write this off as a creative choice; the filmmakers laying the groundwork for more films to come. But we know explicitly why this thing was put in the movie. We know that J.J. Abrams and director Julius Onah didn't plan for this to be a Cloverfield movie when they started filming. Which brings me to a major problem I've noticed with a lot of Abram's recent work.

Looking at Star Wars: The Force Awakens and now this, it's clear that J.J. Abrams doesn't think long-term when it comes to plotting out his stories. The Force Awakens seemed ripe with set-up for future films, but after The Last Jedi came out, we learned that that wasn't the case at all. Abrams simply wrote a bunch of unanswered questions and passed the buck to Rian Johnson, assuming it would all work out. It's a storytelling technique Abrams refers to as "the mystery box"; while I can appreciate the intentions behind wanting to preserve a sense of wonder and mystery to surprise the audience, there's a fine line between creating engaging mysteries and simply making things up as you go. And that's not to say that filmmakers can't create something great by accident; we only remember Jaws as a masterpiece of suspense because Steven Spielberg couldn't get the mechanical shark to work. He didn't intend to shoot the film the way he did, the end product is simply the result of a filmmaker having to creatively work around a technical problem on-set. 

With The Cloverfield Paradox, I'm reminded of the Halloween franchise; originally intended to be an anthology of horror films (each telling a different story set on Halloween), the series turned back to relying on the established characters and story of the first two films after Halloween 3 had people wondering where Michael Meyers was. It's the same exact situation here, but with the Cloverfield monster. As the film ended, I was left thinking less about the actual plot and characters and more about how this could possibly fit into the existing canon of the first film (if it even does at all). Shoehorning in all these elements from Cloverfield comes off as nothing more than a cheap and transparent marketing gimmick; I know I likely wouldn't have given this a chance, had it not been called The Cloverfield Paradox. I don't like to admit it, but it's true. They got me, hook, line, and sinker. The film pretends like it's going to explain the origins of the Cloverfield monster in order to distract from the weaker elements of the main plot, but in doing so only serves to introduce the most flagrant flaws of the entire film. They soundly shot themselves in the foot on this one and the end result is downright embarrassing.

The Cloverfield Paradox is not a good film. Granted, it's not terrible, but it's certainly not good. The only reason I'm not angrier about it is that I didn't pay money to see this in a theater; Abrams and company made the right decision in unloading this on Netflix. I feel like most people lower their expectations for anything labeled a "Netflix Original", and while the reviews for The Cloverfield Paradox are hardly glowing as is, I guarantee the response would have been downright brutal had it actually gone to cinemas. This works out great for J.J. and pals, covering up their lazy storytelling with a soundly lowered-bar, but the real victim here is Netflix. They've worked so hard in recent years to establish themselves as the next big entertainment outlet, only to constantly put their energy behind projects like this. Granted, there are gems on there if you're willing to look, but constantly giving top billing to its more mediocre fare like The Cloverfield Paradox is what keeps people from taking Netflix seriously as a legitimate media empire. It's why "Netflix original movie" has all the punch and legitimacy of "made-for-TV movie". There was a time when everyone assumed Netflix was ahead of the curve, taking risks with their content and thinking outside the box. But now, much like with J.J. Abrams, it's clear that they're just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Which is fine, until things just stop sticking. If you're a fan of the Cloverfield series thus far, there's a good chance you've already watched The Cloverfield Paradox. If you're just tuning in, this is without a doubt the weakest entry in the series. As far as horror/sci-fi films go, you could certainly do worse, but you could also objectively do better. My advice? Just watch 10 Cloverfield Lane. If you've already seen it, watch it again. You'll get more out of it than I did with this.