ANCC: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This week, The Gorehound and Nick discuss a little-known independent release called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Join them as the discuss this movie that nobody has ever heard of.  Even though no one will probably see The Force Awakens, there will be major spoilers.

Click here or on the image to listen to the episode.

Paranoia!

It has been far too long since we’ve had a movie where computers can do anything with a few keyboard taps.  The late ‘80s and most of the ‘90s were riddled with this.  But, as society has become more accustomed to and aware of how your standard home computer works, films largely dialed back that trope.

Then comes 2013’s techo-thriller Paranoia, and the “computers can do anything” trope comes roaring back with a vengeance.  And it is glorious.

Make no mistake, this film is absolutely abysmal.  The story is completely convoluted, over-plotted, clichéd, and lacks any sort of internal logic.  But, besides all those terrible things, the film completely embraces the fantasy aspect that you can use any sort of internet/computer technology and make it do whatever you want in just a few simple steps.

Paranoia commits to this.  Commits.

Considering that, this pushes the movie into “so bad, it’s good” territory.  But, it’s not good.  Unlike Batman & Robin, I will never watch this movie ever again.  It is entertaining enough while you are watching it.  In an Abduction kind of way (which, eerily enough, I reviewed a year ago today).

Even after watching the movie, I am still not sure what the story actually was beyond the basics.  Gary Oldman blackmails Liam Hemsworth to spy on the company of his rival, Harrison Ford, so he can get something from him and do something with it.  But, oh no!  Harrison Ford knows what is going on and tries to blackmail Hemsworth in a scheme to get Gary Oldman.

Yeah…it is a total mess.  But, on the plus side, like the writers were committed to “computers doing anything”, Ford and Oldman were committed to their roles.  Obviously, they were there for the paycheck, but they seemed to throw themselves into their respective part, particularly Oldman.  To be honest, it was fun seeing the two of them play off of one another.

As Zack noted so long ago, this film was a total disaster critically and at the box office.  Surprising lows for both Oldman and Ford.  And, to some extent, for Liam Hemsworth.  Actually, most of the cast has a pretty strong pedigree.  How did they all end up in this?

This is just an insanely bad movie, but I enjoyed how stupid it was.  If you like incredibly bad, but watchable movies, look no further than Paranoia (a title which also doesn’t make any sense).

~N

Nick saw “The Expendables 3”

The Expendables franchise is one of diminishing returns. The first had the novelty of having (mostly) a bunch of aging action stars from the ’80s and ’90s in one movie together. The result was really not the sum of its parts. The second installment improved the quality with much more humor, a stronger narrative, and a campy amount of meta references to the respective stars’ past. The newest entry tries very hard, but comes incredibly short in everything it attempts.

The script tones down the meta references dramatically from the second installment (which, let’s face it, is probably a good thing – Expendables 2 really pushed that as far as it could go), but doesn’t really replace it with anything of substance. The story is really all over the place with the tone, the themes, and the basic narrative, that the film doesn’t really know what it wants to be (other than the currently over-played “I’m old, but I’m still top dog” routine).

Hindering matters even further is that I didn’t feel at any time that any of the characters were in any danger at all. While the action is slick, when our heroes are gunning down hordes of henchmen without them really being in any noticeable peril, the film loses any sort of tension.  The PG-13 rating was disappointing too.  Incredibly bloodless and a bit too obvious when they cut away from seeing a bad guy get taken down.  I realize that was a creative decision that Stallone wanted to enforce, but it is still disappointing that he felt he needed to do that to reach a broader audience.

We have a couple of new additions to the Expendables. Beyond younger recruits (who are completely generic and interchangeable), Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and Antonio Banderas join Stallone and crew. Ford is an incredible upgrade from Bruce Willis as the team’s handler. While he does the standard “Harrison Ford Gruff”, he looks like he’s having a blast in the role. Sadly, Gibson (an inspired choice for a villain) is completely wasted in what could have been a really great, fun role. This is probably the biggest sin Expendables 3 could have had (especially since the bar was set surprisingly high with Jean-Claude Van-Damme in the second movie).

Oddly enough, after a lot of attention to Snipes joining the film, his character, while given a lot of attention during the first act (including establishing connections between him, Stallone, and Gibson), largely falls into the background as the movie progresses. He is mostly replaced in emphasis with Banderas. Even though this is a big script problem, I’m not too bothered by it mostly because Banderas is the best part of this movie. He completely steals every scene he is in. He’s absolutely hilarious. If they make an Expendables 4, they need to bring him back.

I don’t know. Maybe the magic is running out for this series. I sat there and was reasonably entertained, but much of the movie just felt flat for me. I know these are not meant to be very good cinema, but even for disposable entertainment, it doesn’t quite work. I guess you can tell there is a problem when the series continues to pile on new characters, but ones from the original entry are still completely undeveloped (seriously, what does Randy Couture bring to these movies?).

If a fourth entry is commissioned (which there is some doubt given the recent pirated leak), I really hope they look into what isn’t working. I really can’t pin my finger on it exactly, but the series is missing something. I want this series to be successful, and I want to like these movies more. But the novelty of seeing all these actors together is nearly extinguished. They need a new hook.

~N

Disney’s ‘Star Wars’: Musings and Other Things

I’m a Star Wars fan, but I wouldn’t call myself a “hard-core”.  I like the movies and have sporadically gotten into some of the “expanded universe” stuff.  Every now and then, I’ll get the Star Wars bug to delve into that franchise a bit more than usual.  With all the news about the upcoming sequel trilogy, I’ve gotten that bug again – but in a different way this time.  To be honest, I’m still processing what Disney’s purchase of LucasFilm and the furthering of the franchise actually means.  As a way to figure out what is what, let’s explore what’s happening with the Star Wars franchise and the potential results from it.

What Went Wrong?: Vol. 34 – Recently Released Edition

The second half of the summer has been filled with critical and commercial disappointments. Even the relative successes, like July’s Pacific Rim (critically) and The Wolverine (somewhat critically and commercially) have played to diminished audiences overall (before worldwide takes are counted, of course). Other films, like R.I.P.D., Turbo, The Smurfs 2, and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters have been outright bombs. This past weekend, four new films released into theaters, with three of them, Kick-Ass 2, Jobs, and Paranoia reaching incredibly mediocre heights. Only the critically acclaimed Lee Daniels’ The Butler reached a wide audience. Let’s look at last weekend’s three big failures to find out exactly where each went wrong.

Kick-Ass 2

Jeff Wadlow’s follow-up to the surprise Matthew Vaughn hit from 2010 disappointed in fifth place last weekend with a 13 million dollar take, significantly less than the near 20 million the first film took home in Spring 2010. Backed by a rather strong marketing push from Universal, Kick-Ass 2 was at least expected to match the first film, but faltered and will probably fade away from theaters in the next week or two, as these types of movies tend to be front-loaded anyway. So, what exactly went wrong?

Bad publicity for Kick-Ass 2 began a few months ago when Jim Carrey, ostensibly in the Nicolas Cage role from the first movie, began to speak out against the levels of violence in the film. Carrey refused to do any publicity, and though his words received a harsh backlash from fans, it seems he may have accomplished exactly what he set out to do. Of course, it didn’t help that Kick-Ass 2 scored an abominable 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, significantly lower than the “Fresh” status earned by the first film. Additionally, Kick-Ass 2 had the distinction being about the fifteenth action film of the summer season, debuting in a time more often reserved for the dumping grounds of summer. In retrospect, this film had basically zero shot at replicated the surprise success of the first installment.

 Jobs

Let’s just get to the point with this one. We know exactly what went wrong. This Steve Jobs biopic always seemed doomed to mediocrity, beginning with the casting of Ashton Kutcher as the recently deceased Apple co-founder and genius tech guru. I remember seeing some buzz about how much Kutcher looked like Jobs in the promotional materials, but I always thought he just looked like himself dressed up as a 1970s Steve Jobs. The promotional pictures looked absolutely generic to me, barely a step above Kutcher’s costuming on late 90s sitcom That 70s Show.

Additionally, Jobs is the kind of film designed solely to appeal to adults. Adults more often than not pay better attention to reviews than most people. Jobs scored a dismal 26% on Rotten Tomatoes, lower than even the aforementioned Kick-Ass 2. Debuting with less than 7 million in receipts, Jobs will likely limp to the box office at the ten spot or lower this weekend, all but disappearing from theaters after that. Due to its low cost (about 12 million dollars), however, it is likely that Jobs will at least break even for distributor Open Road Films. Any hope of this becoming the next The Social Network is all but dead.

 Paranoia

The star-studded Paranoia opened with an anemic 3.5 million dollars last weekend, making it one of the lowest-grossing opening weekends ever for co-star Harrison Ford. Even a low 35 million dollar budget won’t be able to keep this Relativity release from turning a profit, as it opened outside of the top ten (way back at #13) and will likely lose half of if its theater count this coming weekend (if not more, honestly). Featuring Liam Hemsworth and Gary Oldman in addition to Ford, Paranoia seemed like it could have had at least some potential. Films like this generally open with about 15 million or so in receipts anyway. So, what exactly went wrong?

As noted earlier, adults pay attention to reviews. Paranoia received some of the absolute worst reviews of the year, scoring only 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. A score so low is almost unheard of for a Ford or Oldman film, making it a total embarrassment for the two all around. Additionally, a bland title like Paranoia made sure the film would not stand out in any way whatsoever, and a marketing level of almost zero indicated that Relativity had no faith in the product whatsoever. Why Paranoia didn’t just end up as a direct-to-market release is beyond me. It could have at least had potential as a video-on-demand title based solely on the principal cast. As it stands, Paranoia will end up being the lowest grossing wide-release of the summer.

-Z-

Three Mini-Reviews

I have managed to catch up on a couple of movies I’ve wanted to see for quite some time in the past couple of weeks. Through a combination of Netflix, Red Box, and good old fashioned movie-going, I’ve caught Chronicle, Winter’s Bone, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In order to get some fresh weekend content for the blog, I’m going to compile three mini-reviews into one post and offer my thoughts and observations on each of these films. Enjoy!

Chronicle (2012)

I’ve been wanting to check out Chronicle for quite some time. I nearly caught it in theaters, but saw Journey 2 instead. I am weary of the “found footage” sub-genre of film, but Chronicle does it in a few different ways, which leads to it just being fresh enough to work. The focus of the story are three teenagers, one a popular school presidential candidate, one a deep, introspective student interested in philosophy, and one an outcast with an alcoholic father, who come into contact with a mysterious, underground object (a subterranean crystal of some sort? a downed spacecraft?). After their exposure, the teens come to find they can manipulate objects with telekinetic abilities, eventually becoming strong enough to fly. The first half the movie, with the boys coming to terms with their powers and “training” themselves (mostly by pulling pranks or by failing over and over again to learn new uses for their abilities) is the better part. The second half somewhat devolves into a story of teen angst, with one of the teens refusing to follow the “rules” they have set for themselves (such as, never hurt another living being). An obvious homage to landmark animated feature Akira (and taking more than a few beats from traditional American comic book movies like Spider-Man), Chronicle is more good than bad and definitely worth a watch. Though areas of it scream “Green Screen: The Movie”, there is quite a bit to like. Chronicle is available in the Red Box.

Winter’s Bone (2010)

Jennifer Lawrence’s break-out role is a bleak look into a rural Missouri teen’s life. After her dad, out on bail (and using his family’s home for the bail collateral), disappears, resilient teenager Ree Dolly (Lawrence), must do whatever it takes to provide for her family (two younger siblings and a comatose mother), including, in rather graphic on-screen depiction, hunting and cleaning squirrels. Ree’s journey to find her father leaves her in danger in several places, from a drug-abusing (but ultimately redeeming) uncle to an out-and-out beating from a local drug kingpin. Lawrence’s performance is nothing short of riveting (as is that of her uncle, played by the great John Hawkes). Though the story is simple, the film is effective in portraying just how bleak and dire circumstances are for the strong-willed Ree. Every decision she faces in her young life she must make for the good of her family, even it it means potentially joining the army for the financial benefits (and thus potentially abandoning her young siblings). No, it isn’t a complicated movie as far as the plot goes, but the journey Lawrence takes the viewer on is well worth a watch. Winter’s Bone is available streaming on Netflix.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

I have not seen the first Indiana Jones movie in probably 20 years. Just in time for the release of the Blu Ray, Paramount re-released Raiders of the Lost Ark into theaters as a promotional push. I decided to venture out to my local IMAX theater and check it out. I came out quite surprised. Though the picture quality isn’t the greatest (I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to clean up that original print), the movie is still fantastic. Anchored by an iconic, charismatic Harrison Ford (I greatly miss charismatic Ford) performance as Indy, Raiders remains an absolute blast and one of the best summer blockbusters of all time. Rewatching Raiders as an adult was a highly rewarding experience. As a child, I never noticed just how great Paul Freeman is as Rene Belloq, the French counterpart to Indy’s American explorer. I never grasped just how awesome of a villain he was. Story beats remain interesting, and I was caught by surprise by the amount of excitement, intrigue, and tension in the film. This is, quite simply, some of the best work Spielberg, Lucas, Kasdan, etc have ever done. Raiders of the Lost Ark is only playing in select theaters for one week. I recommend getting out there and checking it out if you have the access. If not, buy the Blu Rays and re-experience this great film.

What films have you seen lately? Sound off in the comments!

-Z-

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Podcast

Zack and Nick are back for another adventure!  This week, they take a look at 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!  And, in a shocking twist, they liked it!  Find out why!

Click HERE or on the image to download the podcast episode, and as always click here to subscribe to us on iTunes!