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Movie Review: ‘Civil War’

Tony Schaab - Senior Editor — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:40:28 +0000

What if. It’s a question that has intrigued storytellers and audiences alike for generations. The desire to take something known and twist it ever so slightly, to the point where elements and pieces are not immediately recognizable – or worse, things are chillingly recognizable and seemingly appropriate in their darker state. The thought of “yes, I could see something like this happening” is perhaps one of the scariest story premises out there – especially when what we’re being presented with is dark and dangerous. Such is the case with ‘Civil War,’ the new film from director Alex Garland and production studio A24. Taking place in the indeterminately-near future, the political and socio-economical divide in the United States of America has grown to the point where the country has fractured, with several states deciding to try their own hand at self-governance. A few maps shown early in the film indicate that close to 20 states may be trying to secede in various ways. Factions such as the “Florida Alliance” and the “New People’s Army” have arisen, but the two largest proponents have joined forces to create the “Western Forces,” and in a large-yet-subtle twist, it’s California and Texas, of all the […]

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Movie Review: ‘Bill And Ted Face The Music’

Jordan DesJardins — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 22:39:41 +0000

It’s been nearly three decades since we last experienced a new exploit with one of the most excellent duos in cinematic history, Bill and Ted! After all these years, Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan are back for a most resplendent new adventure through time to prevent reality from collapsing in on itself! But with all the time that has passed in between films, are the great ones still great? Would Bill & Ted have been better left in the past? Is this a most triumphant return to form, or a totally egregious misstep? ‘Bill & Ted: Face The Music’ picks up our story in almost real time, with our titular heroes dealing with the fact that they have yet to live up to the future they were promised. The band ‘Wyld Stallyns’ failed to take off in any meaningful way and is all but a memory, with the guys relegated to playing Ted’s brother’s wedding. The Princesses are fed up with waiting for things to get better and the only thing that our most righteous dudes have going well for them is that their now adult daughters adore them and are following in their footsteps (and you […]

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Movie Review: Scooby Doo or Scooby Doon’t Check Out ‘Scoob!’?

Jordan DesJardins — Sat, 16 May 2020 00:53:54 +0000

This weekend Warner Brothers has released their latest reboot of the beloved ‘Scooby Doo’ franchise with ‘Scoob!’. Originally set for a full blown theatrical release, due to the global pandemic and theaters being closed worldwide, Warner Brothers saw an opportunity to entertain the masses right in the comfort of our own homes while we try to ride out the proverbial storm by releasing ‘Scoob!’ for both purchase and rental digitally through online services including Vudu and Movies Anywhere. Let me preface this by saying that I am unabashedly a massive fan of the ‘Scooby Doo’ franchise and have been since I was old enough to pay attention to the television. When I first heard that Warner Brothers was rebooting the brand with an all new CG animated film that would retell the origins of the team, I was immediately interested. I was also very hesitant about getting my hopes up. As months went on leading up to the film’s release, we found out more and more about what was going to be included in the film; with characters from Hanna-Barbera’s back catalog including Captain Caveman, Dick Dastardly, and superhero duo Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt all set to make appearances. Jinkies! […]

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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: ‘Ad Astra’ Leaves You Wanting More

Dave Taylor — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 15:45:40 +0000

Before we go any further, let’s clear up the confusion around the name of this film: Ad Astra is Latin for “To The Stars.” Why they thought that was a good name is another discussion, but suffice to say, for a film set at least 100 years in the future where we travel into space, onto the moon, to Mars and then to the outer reaches of our solar system, “To The Stars” is entirely appropriate as a name. But is it a good movie? Certainly, from a visual perspective, it’s glorious. ‘Ad Astra’ has state-of-the-art visual effects, from the breathtaking opening scene on the space antenna to the various nationalist lunar colonies and thence to Mars and beyond, this is a film that begs to be seen and fully enjoyed on an IMAX screen. U.S. Army engineer and astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is a hero of the space age, a man fabled for being so cool that even in moments of extreme danger his pulse never rises about 80 BPM. He’s also completely emotionally closed down. He could be a replicant or ‘bot from ‘Westworld’ and none of his colleagues would notice the difference. He’s also the son […]

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Movie Review: ‘Hobbs & Shaw’

Dave Taylor — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:46:34 +0000

Let’s get this out of the way at the beginning: The new action comedy ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ doesn’t have much science fiction, but there is JUST a little bit for us sci-fi geeks. Turns out that there’s a secretive and nefarious organization that has turned disgraced secret agent Brixton (Idris Elba) into a cyber-enhanced super bad guy. Oh, and there’s a “programmable DNA” bio-agent virus that kills everyone that comes into contact with it. Except, well, it’s actually aimed at “weak people” not cool, strong, and good looking folk. Or something like that. Actually, who the heck knows. Turns out that the story behind ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ – more formally known as ‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw’ – can be easily summarized on a cocktail napkin, and it’s quite likely that’s exactly how the writers came up with draft 1 of the script. It’s that bad, incoherent, and rough. But it’s also really fun and there are some terrific action set pieces that will leave you gasping and cheering for the good guys. I mean, who doesn’t like Dwayne Johnson (America Diplomatic Service agent Luke Hobbs) and Jason Statham (British paramilitary expert Deckard Shaw) anyway? To balance things […]

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Movie Review: ‘Toy Story 4’

Dave Taylor — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 22:14:12 +0000

By any measure ‘Toy Story 4’ is a splendid movie, full of heart, humor and with a strong and engaging story. In a summer of mostly blah, predictable sequels, it’s rare that a film improves on its predecessors, delivering one of the best and most touching cinematic experiences of the year. But ‘Toy Story 4’ is a lot more because it serves as a reminder to filmmakers – especially in the visual F/X heavy world of science fiction – that a great film is all about characters that the audience identifies with and cares about being put into a variety of situations that let them (and us by extension) grow as we overcome these obstacles. It’s the hero’s journey pumped out of animation rendering program. The main characters, Woody (voice of Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen), Jessie (Joan Cusack) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts), are sweet and familiar, like an old friend you still really like but haven’t seen for a few years. ‘Toy Story 3’ ended with the toys all being given by college-bound Andy (John Morris) to the highly imaginative young Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw), and while ‘Toy Story 4’ opens with a flashback to Andy as a tween, […]

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Movie Review: ‘Godzilla: King Of The Monsters’

Dave Taylor — Wed, 29 May 2019 23:12:26 +0000

Even though he’s a 350-foot radioactive fire-breathing throwback to the Jurassic era, Godzilla has always had an ambiguous role in human society; is he the savior of humanity when other monsters menace, when aliens come from outer space or when huge robots run amok, or is he just as dangerous when he yet again rampages through Tokyo? The newest chapter in Godzilla’s colorful history, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, has a clear vision: He’s a good monster who helps us humans when the going gets tough. And in this installment, the going is definitely getting tough when King Ghidorah – a massive three-headed flying monster – rises to destroy Earth and all of us puny humans along the way. Turns out that Godzilla is one of a group of Titans, beasts who have been hidden for centuries but are nonetheless carefully being monitored by the shadowy Monarch organization. Should they be destroyed? Should we wake them up? Should we exploit their monstrous DNA? The monsters form quite the gang, spread throughout the world, and leadership doesn’t just automatically go to our pal Godzilla, though. Turns out that it’s King Ghidorah who ends up in control of their actions as he […]

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Movie Review: ‘Apollo 11’

Dave Taylor — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 01:50:56 +0000

It was the height of the Cold War and every time the United States tried to pull ahead in space, the Russians got there first. Americans were afraid, and Sputnik was to blame. Sputnik, the first orbiting satellite, meant that the Russians could spy on America and there wasn’t a darn thing the USA could do about it. We raced to get an American in orbit but the USSR beat us there too when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth. It’s no wonder that in May 1961 President John F. Kennedy threw down the gauntlet. His challenge: for an American to be the first man to step foot on the moon. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do some other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” With this one electrifying speech, JFK pushed us into a race to the moon, and it would take almost […]

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Movie Review: ‘Captain Marvel’

Dave Taylor — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 23:05:36 +0000

Even casual Marvel Cinematic Universe fans remember how the latest Avengers movie ended. Thanos snapped his fingers, something not so good happened and all looked quite dire. Until a 90s era pager from Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) connected with a mysterious hero called Captain Marvel who, we hope, can save the day. Zoom forward and we finally get to meet the mysterious Captain in the new film Captain Marvel. Opening with a bang, we meet “Vers” (Brie Larson) on an alien world. She’s a Kree fighter, still in training with her mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). She has speed and power, but no memories of her childhood and is constantly challenged by the need to rein in her emotions during battle. The Kree are controlled by a central AI known as the Supreme Intelligence, who, like the Boggarts in Harry Potter, takes on the appearance of the most feared person in someone’s life. With Vers, however, that person is personified by Annette Bening, a character Vers doesn’t remember at all. The hated Skrull, galactic enemies of the Kree, are spotted heading to Earth, so Vers is dispatched along with Yon-Rogg and some other Kree warriors to find and kill them. […]

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Movie Review: ‘Alita: Battle Angel’

Dave Taylor — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:00:32 +0000

It’s hundreds of years in the future and society has collapsed. The new world is populated by a mix of humans, robots and half-robot cyborgs. Not everyone’s a good member of society, however, and in Iron City, the center of the film, dangerous cyborg bounty hunters roam with official approval, they’re “Hunter-Warriors”. Floating high above the impoverished city is Zalem, a mysterious place where everyone is rumored to be healthy and happy. Needless to say, that’s not what it’s like in Iron City. Think ‘Blade Runner‘ meets ‘Elysium‘ and you’ll have the setting. The film opens with Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) scrounging through mountains of garbage from Zalem for discarded robotic parts or other technology he can use: he repairs and rebuilds damaged cyborgs. He finds the head and torso of a discarded female cyborg and to his surprise, realizes that it’s not dead, just powered down. Taking the parts back to his laboratory, Ido rebuilds and revives the cyborg he names Alita (Rosa Salazar). She has no memory of who she is or how she ended up in the scrap heap. Soon Alita is up and mobile, exploring the city. When she meets street smart teen Hugo (Keean […]

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