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Movie Review: Wonder Woman 1984

Dave Taylor — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 03:04:57 +0000

I really wanted to love the new Wonder Woman movie. After all, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) is a fun and engaging character, particularly in her super-powered Wonder Woman guise. She’s a superhero with heart and compassion, quick to stop the bad guys but just as likely to help a child regain their lost soccer ball or favorite toy. The first film, 2017’s Wonder Woman, was mostly great fun with General Ludendorff (Danny Houston) a suitably epic antagonist that made for a dramatic showdown and goofy but lovable Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) as her love interest. It’s no longer World War I, however, it’s 1984 and the tail end of the Cold War. In Wonder Woman 1984 Diana is an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute when she’s not donning her trademark outfit and zipping about DC rescuing women from being hit by speeding cars or tossed off bridges. Her new colleague Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig) is envious of Diana’s presence, self-confidence and beauty; she’s a bit of a clumsy goof that people tend to ignore. A shipment of antiques arrives from the FBI with the request that the Smithsonian help identify the individual pieces. Chief among them is a crystal […]

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Movie Review: Don’t Look Back

Dave Taylor — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:33:01 +0000

You can be excused if you’re confused about the title of this film; there are over 100 movies on IMDb with the name Don’t Look Back! Apparently it’s a very popular name for a movie. Who knew? This 2020 film is a very contemporary horror tapped into the “Karen”-in-the-park bystander zeitgeist. It revolves around a group of people who witness an assault in New York City’s Central Park but don’t do anything about it, just look away, walk away, stand and watch or even record it with their smartphones. Not a good samaritan in the bunch. When some of these witnesses start to die, young mom Caitlin Kramer (Kourtney Bell) tries to discover the truth behind the dangerous situation before she too ends up a casualty of her ostensibly poor life decision. If you’re thinking this sounds like a variation on the sly and witty Final Destination horror film series, there’s a reason for that: those films were all written by Jeffrey Reddick, who also wrote and directed Don’t Look Back. Based on a 2014 short film called Good Samaritan the film has a solid premise: What if you stood by while someone was beaten or murdered instead of intervening […]

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Movie Review: Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula

Dave Taylor — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:47:22 +0000

I really enjoyed the surprise 2016 Korean horror hit Train to Busan. It’s a simple, straightforward and somewhat violent South Korean horror thriller that involves a group of zombie apocalypse survivors trying to board a train heading from Seoul to the sanctuary city of Busan. Like World War Z, the zombies in Train to Busan don’t shamble along, they sprint and climb over each other in their mindless lust for living flesh, and it’s pretty intense. The long chase narrative is reinforced by how quickly characters turn into another of the zombie hoard after they’ve been killed. Train to Busan did very well at the box office, so it’s no surprise that a sequel has been released. Known as Peninsula, the sequel is tied to the first film by its longer name of Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula. Awkward, particularly when the only real tie-in is the actual zombie outbreak: Most of Peninsula takes place four years after Train to Busan and, spoiler alert, the entire peninsula of South Korea has been abandoned to the zombie hoards. Refugees are living in the underbelly of Hong Kong, inhabiting warehouses and neon-lit alleyways reminiscent of Blade Runner. Peninsula opens with handsome young […]

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Blu-Ray Review: James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction

Dave Taylor — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 16:50:39 +0000

The science fiction genre has always fueled our imagination, from the earliest fictional writings of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to its important role in the history of cinema. One of the very first films in history was a sci-fi adventure movie: 1902’s ‘Le Voyage Dans La Lune’ (A Trip To The Moon), directed by illusionist Georges Méliès. Liberally borrowing from both Verne and Wells, it features a group of explorers who are shot out of a canon to the moon, where they meet some very peculiar creatures. Cinema is also all about illusion and few knows that better than successful film director James Cameron. From his blockbuster romance ‘Titanic’ to the astonishing sci-fi epic ‘Avatar’, he’s well established as a luminary in the world of science fiction. He’s also the host of ‘James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction’, a six-part AMC TV series from 2018 that’s just showing up on Blu-Ray and DVD. There’s lots to really enjoy about ‘The Story of Sci-Fi’ but one of the most entertaining aspects of this 4 1/2 hour series is what I call “name that clip”. Cameron and his team got permission to use film segments from hundreds of movies, from ‘Jurassic Park’ to […]

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Throwback Thursday: ‘Gojira’ (1954) – the Original Godzilla Film Still Rocks!

Dave Taylor — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 19:31:15 +0000

He’s the original monster king, Godzilla, the beast that constantly destroys Tokyo. Indeed, it’s possible that there have been more movies made that feature Godzilla than any other monster in cinematic history, ranging from the increasingly cheesy Toho Studio offerings throughout the late 50’s thru the 70’s to the heavy, dramatic, big-budget recent additions from directors Gareth Edwards (2014’s Godzilla) and Michael Dougherty (2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters). But it all started with a surprisingly tense and engaging 1954 film called Gojira, directed by Ishiro Honda. It’s in Japanese and oh, it’s very 50’s Japan in its culture and outlook. Confusingly, there was a second cut of the movie called Godzilla: King of the Monsters with the addition of Raymond Burr that was released in the United States in 1956. Watching both is darn interesting, but if you have the choice, the original Gojira is far better. You think you know the story of Godzilla from all the sequels, but in the original, he’s a beast from the ocean depths who terrorizes various Japanese islands after having been disturbed by hydrogen bomb test explosions in the ocean. He’s not happy at all and we learn from the humble fishermen […]

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Movie Review: Same Boat

Dave Taylor — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 18:41:54 +0000

It’s that old story: Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy turns out to be from the future and assigned to assassinate girl for the betterment of mankind. Now what? As it turns out, “Same Boat” does a surprisingly good job of finding the balance between a kitsch self-aware low budget comedy and an actually engaging and watchable movie. Yes, that reveals some of my bias towards modern indie comedies! Much of what works on screen comes from the performances of the leads who bring romantic comedy energy to a film that could have easily been painfully daft and amateur. James (Chris Roberti, who also directs) and Mot (Julia Schonberg) are part of a squad from the 25th century who travels back in time and kills people to improve the future. The film doesn’t really spend much time on the well-known conundrums of traveling back in time to alter things, but that’s an acceptable omission in the pursuit of an engaging story. Same Boat is a rom-com masquerading as a sci-fi, not vice-versa. Their assignment is Lilly (Tonya Glanz, who also appeared in the time-traveling TV series Timeless), an attorney who is going to cause trouble later […]

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Review: ‘The Invisible Man’ Is A Hauntingly Good Jump-Scare Horror Film Despite Its Obvious Tropes

Dave Taylor — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:33:22 +0000

In the 1933 classic horror film The Invisible Man, Dr. Jack Griffin (memorably played by Claude Rains) embodies the mad scientist. He figures out a way to become completely invisible, but, as luck would have it, goes insane along the way. The film is ostensibly about this murderous wack-job of a scientist but it’s just as much a warning on the dangers of science and unfettered research. The latter is, of course, a theme that runs throughout all speculative cinema: Are we humans able to manage progress and make good decisions about the technologies we invent? Eighty seven years later we have a new horror movie with the same title, and, surprisingly, there’s an element of commonality: The invisible man is again a mad scientist, with an emphasis on “mad”. The scientist is Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), and he’s kinda possessive towards his live-in girlfriend Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) – as in completely, overwhelmingly, and dangerously controlling. Late one night she escapes over the wall of his high-tech compound (curiously reminiscent of Tony Stark’s mansion in the Marvel movies) and just barely gets away, with the help of her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer). Psycho, obsessive, über-rich ex-boyfriend? If you guessed “woman in […]

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Review: ‘Color Out Of Space’ Embodies The True Spirit Of A Lovecraft Horror Story

Dave Taylor — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 15:12:16 +0000

One of the first horror writers, H.P. Lovecraft created an entire world of dark, twisted tales that featured terrifying beasts and unrelenting nightmare situations. There’s no redemption, no neat endings, just a perverse, cynical view of humanity and the greater world around us. His greatest creation was the beast Cthulhu but through his many novels and short stories, he created an entire Lovecraftian world. Miskatonic University, Dunwich, Arkham, Innsmouth, and Kingsport are all familiar to horror fans and show up in a wide variety of pop culture contexts. In Gotham City, the fictional setting for the Batman stories, criminals are sent to the Arkham Asylum, for example. Not a coincidence. There are also lots of Lovecraft-inspired movies, with varying levels of cinematic success. The best of them are dark, really dark. One of Lovecraft’s favorite stories was a short piece called “The Colour Out of Space” that he wrote for the September, 1927 edition of the fiction magazine “Amazing Stories”. Tired of benign aliens portrayed in contemporary works, he offered up a weird and cautionary tale of a meteorite crashing into the woods outside Arkham, Massachusetts and subsequently causing strange things to occur. The new Richard Stanley film “Color Out […]

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Throwback Thursday: ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ (1951)

Dave Taylor — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 15:05:29 +0000

1951. WWII is finally over, but the Cold War is just beginning. NATO has been established to balance the Soviet Union threat to Europe and, on the other side of the planet, the Korean War has everyone worrying about communist threats to the West. In the midst of this escalating tension, science fiction writer Harry Bates publishes ‘Farewell to the Master,’ a hopeful story about an alien who comes to Earth to share a message of peace for all mankind. Robert Wise, later to direct ‘West Side Story,’ ‘The Sound of Music,’ ‘The Andromeda Strain,’ ‘Run Silent,’ ‘Run Deep’ and many other great films, decides to retool the story and create one of the great science fiction films: ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still.’ It’s a peaceful day on planet Earth when radars detect an object zooming overhead at 4,000 mph. Nothing made on Earth can travel that fast, so what is it? Alarmed newscasters share sighting information as it orbits the Earth. In Washington DC people are enjoying the nation’s capital when the object comes in and lands at the Washington Memorial: It’s a gleaming alien spaceship. The army promptly surrounds it with soldiers, tanks, and artillery, but when […]

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‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Review: A Dull Ending To A Sweeping Saga

Dave Taylor — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 16:49:01 +0000

Let’s just start with the TLDR: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a good sci-fi film, but it’s not great. Yes, they manage to wrap up a lot of the storylines left unfinished in the sprawling series that started way back in 1977 with Star Wars: A New Hope, but between trying to offer a neat ending and weaving in endless fan-favorite characters, lines, and scenes, the overall film ends up a bit dull. Like so many science fiction fans, I grew up with Star Wars and can still remember the opening scene of the first film at our local Southern California cineplex. I was so blown away and loved it so much that I immediately went and saw it again at the great Cinerama Dome theater in downtown Los Angeles. A sprawling space Western, the Star Wars universe gave us so many great characters, from the impulsive young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and his sister Leia (Carrie Fisher) to the loveable rogue Han Solo (Harrison Ford), mysterious Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness), incomprehensible Chewbacca, C3PO, and R2D2. Then so many other characters joined the narrative as the sequence confusingly went from Episodes 4, 5 and 6 to Episodes 1, 2, […]

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Movie Review: ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’

Dave Taylor — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 01:31:43 +0000

Zathura: A Space Adventure, the 2005 sequel to the original 1995 Jumanji, proved to be a rather weird story, erring on the side of intense and frightening rather than funny and ingenious. The original Jumanji featured the mad antics of Robin Williams, making it tough to remake, but 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a surprise hit for Columbia Pictures, earning a solid 87% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Always charismatic Dwayne Johnson headed a splendid cast in a story where the gamers were pulled into an immersive alternate reality with a video game sensibility but dangers all its own. For Jumanji: The Next Level, everyone’s back, starting with the four kids who have all now graduated high school and proceeded with their individual lives. They are the dorky Spencer (Alex Wolff), now a freshman at NYU, now-popular Martha (Morgan Turner), charity worker Bethany (Madison Iseman) and Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), a budding college football star. Bethany and Martha have remained close friends and suggest to the other two that they meet up for brunch during their mutual Christmas breaks. Fridge is in, but Spencer remains quiet; he’s having a tough time in New York City and has even suggested that […]

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Movie Review: ‘Little Joe’ Drags In This Horticulture Horror Film

Dave Taylor — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 23:39:44 +0000

What if you woke up and your friends, family, and neighbors had been replaced by replicas that looked the same but exhibited behavioral oddities? This question has fueled countless sci-fi stories, from classics like the brilliant and paranoid Invasion of the Body Snatchers (watch the 1956 original, the 1978 remake misses the point of the story) to Blade Runner, where the replicants are “more human than human” (is Deckard a replicant or not?) to the terrific HBO series Westworld. In The Stepford Wives (1974) the replacement wives are intended to make the men’s lives better (creepy AF but that’s why the premise is so strong). In John Carpenter’s 1982 remake The Thing the alien can shape-shift and replace anyone stuck in the Antarctic research base. Underlying it all is the basic question Are you who I think you are? The latest movie to wrestle with this is a moody Euro sci-fi thriller called Little Joe and it’s surprisingly effective, albeit paced so slowly that you might have to resist the urge to fast forward now and then. Or just succumb to the siren song of the plant’s happiness pollen… Driven single mother Alice Woodard (Emily Beecham) is a plant breeder at […]

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Movie Review: ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Is A Solid Addition To The ‘Terminator’ Franchise

Dave Taylor — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 20:45:45 +0000

There’s something primal about our fear of a relentless hunter. You can shoot them, you can throw them off a cliff, you can run them over, but they’re going to keep coming. There is no way to stop them and if their goal is to kill you, well, you’re dead. That was the underlying premise of the hugely successful 1984 film The Terminator and its even better sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, released 7 years later. The first film featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 humanoid robot hell bent on finding and killing Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Schwarzenegger is big and scary, so it was a neat switch when in the second movie the newer shapeshifting T-1000 (Robert Patrick) continued the hunt even more relentlessly and Schwarzenegger returned (upgraded as a T-800) to defend Sarah’s son John Connor (Edward Furlong). Great movies, both. Then there were some increasingly daft sequels that got lost in the rather confusing storyline about how Skynet would eventually take over the planet with help from its robots and the human resistance to the robot takeover, led by John Connor. Most recently, the highly forgettable 2015 Terminator Genisys. Fortunately, original writer and director James […]

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Movie Review: ‘Zombieland: Double Tap’ Is A Fun Romp In A Zombie Apocalypse

Dave Taylor — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 07:51:40 +0000

There’s something about zombies that has captured our collective attention in this era of stark contrasts. Perhaps it’s that the zombies serve as a metaphor for the other, those people who don’t agree with you, who have starkly different and often abhorrent beliefs, values and lifestyles. Surely they can’t be thinking adults and believe what they’re espousing! Whatever the case, even 133 episodes of The Walking Dead hasn’t slowed down our undead shuffle to the theater with each new movie. Ten years ago Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock brought a zany new energy to the genre by reminding us that while a zombie apocalypse is pretty grim – people are eating other people! – that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good laugh while trying to survive. That was the original and surprisingly witty and amusing Zombieland and for many people, it rocketed to the top of their Zombie Top Ten lists. My own children watched it over and over again, laughing every time. The following year Shaun of the Dead came out from director Edgar Wright, starring the comic duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Also funny, very British. Along with a whole lot of other zombie […]

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Movie Review: ‘Gemini Man’ Is An Homage To Bad 80s Films

Dave Taylor — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 19:27:41 +0000

Just to dispel any confusion up front, lead character Henry Brogan (Will Smith) is not a superhero in this film, drunk or otherwise. Though you wouldn’t know it given that director Ang Lee has offered up what can only be considered an homage to bad 80s action films with a laughably indestructible protagonist. Brogan’s so tough, so single minded and so astonishingly good a sniper that a mysterious group affiliated with the Defense Intelligence Agency has secretly cloned him to make a super soldier. The younger version of Broan is about 23 while the “real” Brogan is 51, as we are reminded again and again in the movie. Fascinating premise, but this is a film that should have just been direct to Netflix and saved what will likely be an embarrassing performance at the movie theater. ‘Gemini Man’ opens with Brogan setting up to assassinate a scientist zipping by on a bullet train. Brogan is approximately 2km from the train tracks and the train’s going about 230km/hr. That shot is so incredibly hard to calculate that it’s really impossible, except for super-assassin Brogan. Afterward, he’s wracked by his conscience because he didn’t hit exactly where he was aiming and could […]

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