King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

If there there was a film that was built around its soundtrack, King Arthur would be it. And what a soundtrack it is. Guy Richie's use of the music to advance the story is absolutely magical. While many feel that montages have become a lazy filmmakers best friend, in the hands of a truly masterful filmmaker they can be beautiful. The opening montage of King Arthur which advances the film from the young 6 year old life of Arthur to his more mature 21 year old self is truly amazing. It is the best musical montage that I have ever seen. Daniel Pemberton, the musical director earned his paycheck in spades. The film itself is also a wonderfully new take on the King Arthur legend. Gone is the Arthur of old who always knew the right thing to do and is almost holier than thou. Gone is the simple symbolism of Excalibur as the sign of the king. In comes actual usage of magic and Excalibur actually aiding Arthur in battle. At first glance in the film it appears that the story will be simply an origins story where we learn the backstory of Arthur only leading to his ultimate ascension at the end of the film. Richie turns this on its head when Arthur withdraws the sword and his journey truly begins. With witty banter and sometimes over use of the cutting room, Richie keeps us involved with likes of a truly villainous Jude Law as King Vortigern, who is willing to do anything, and the movie emphasizes anything, to gain and then retain power. Eric Bana gives us an as usual excellent performance, calling back to Troy, as Urther Pendragon, Arthur's father who constantly is coming back to haunt him. Unfortunately Djimon Hounsou's magnificent acting chops are delegated third string minor character Sir Bedivere. While his is excellent in the film, it is just disappointing he can not get better, more prominent roles. The faults of the film are evident and they are more quirks of the filmmaker than problems with the film. Guy Richie is a very interesting director who loves to have current naration as the character explains what his happening in the future. The audience is then subjected to many cuts between current and future time as what is being described is also transpiring. This occurs in every Richie film so you know its going to happen here when you buy the ticket. He is also a filmaker that loves to spend time in the cutting room especially during action scenes. Richie attempts to overcome the possible flaws in his actors to make look superhuman when all the cutting can lead to confusion as to what is actually happening. Other than the issues one must accept by going to a Guy Richie Film, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a refreshing and welcome new take on the King Arthur legend that unfortunatly will be viewed as a failure and not be rewarded for its ingenuity. Easily 4 stars out of 5, well worth the watch for the Soundtrack alone.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The reputation of Marvel is living up to it's name. While Guardians 2 by no means is a bad film, it is definitely not the masterpiece it is being heralded as. The fun is still there bit some of the novelty has definitely worn off. The continued relationship beneath the surface between Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is a bright spot, as is Baby Groot (Vin Diesel). The main problem with the film and is Rocket Raccoon or more specifically Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon. In the first film he played only a supporting character at best, a bit of comic relief. Now he is thrust into the for front, being the catalyst for most of issues between the team. Gone is his funny quips, instead replaced with a greatest hits from the previous film. Yondu (Michael Rooker) is the surprising MVP of the film as Yondu, showing us the hard back story of Peter and himself, bringing some welcome dramatic chops. Nebula (Karen Gillan) comes in a close second, again bringing the drama solidifying herself as hard character and emphasizing the change that has occurred in Gamora. It does get difficult to stomach however when the they she tries to drag dramatic emotions out of Zoe Saldana who has gone most of her career either avoiding them or doing them terribly.  Kurt Russell plays the planet personified Ego, and the name is definitely indicative of his personality. While the film tries to again remain it's own entity within the MCU, it is evident there are overt pushes to connect it so that the Guardians can be brought into the fold for Infinity War. And there in lies the problem with new Marvel films, they can no longer just be food films, they have to constantly connect to each other. Guardians manages it well but at times annoys with it's attempts to be subtle in it's connections. All in all the film is well done, not as good as the first but what sequel is? 3 stars out of 5

The Circle

The future is coming and the future is transparency. Whether we like it or not, technology is connecting our lives more and more with few people caring as it improves convenience. The audience can look at The Circle in one of two ways, the first being that the lesson taught is the technology is good but is being used and twisted in the wrong hands. Given a noble Shepard, the technology will send us into a new age. The second view, which is the one I prescribe to, is that our society is moving too fast towards convenience and ignoring the big issues that are being trounced in our haste. The scariest thing about the circle is that we are on Pace to have everything that happens be possible in our lifetime. People are more interested in the technology than what they may be giving up to get it. The Circle follows Emma Watson as she gets her dream job at the big progressive social media company called The Circle.

The circle takes a lot of its cues from Google from college like campus, to the open idea of how and when to work. If you substitute the name Google in for The Circle you would barely even notice. Switch out Tom Hanks as the lovable boss who cares with Mark Zuckerberg and you wouldn't miss a beat. The one aspect that was delightfully unexpected was seeing Bill Paxton play Watson's disabled father. It reminds me of how much he was an amazing supporting character. The one downside to his character and the film in general is I do not know if Paxton and Glen Hadley, Watson's mother, are designed to be the old fuddy duddies who are against progress or if they are supposed to be the characters the audience can get behind with the over sharing. Watson walks a tight rope and often sways from side to side when it comes to which side of the debate she is on. At times she is all in at the circle and wants push its agenda even further and then there are times when she acts as though those who are fully enmeshed with the product are some sort of cult.

This all culminates in the dramatic event of the first that the audience is made to believe will finally push her over the edge against the circle and then suddenly she does a 180 and is back on board with simply the message that those at the top are to blame. Given that the film doesn't seem to know what kind of message is trying to send to its audience, whether we need to disconnect or connect completely, the film gets 1 out of 4 stars. It is still an interesting mirror held to society and where we are probably headed.

Free Fire

I'm picking a side, and that side is justice. While Free Fire has accumulated mixed reviews to say the least, those who are against it have called it a bore. To those reviewers, I ask them what movie where they watching? For Free Fire is anything but boring and it is an affront to justice to think so. I can only guess that they were surprised by the different take on the Mexican stand off from today's big movie hits. Ben Wheatley does not have a constant barrage of bullets being fired with high action explosions or the big hail fire finally. It is much subtler and character based. Now these characters don't get much development as people but they are funny, crazy people to begin with. One of the great character actors of our time, Sharlto Copley leads the group with a quasi-Austrian accent that you can't really pin down where he is from. He is a shift gun dealer always looking out for himself and trying to push what he can get away with. Arnie Hammer play a refreshing comical intermediary/bodyguard who thinks everyone should relax more because he's high. Cillian Murphy plays an IRA gun procurer with a no nonsense attitude but manages to bring a bunch with him. Brie Larson rounds out the top four with an interesting performance as an intermediary who brought the two groups together. There are sarcastic quips galore and that might be where many of the other critics got bored but as sarcasm is a part of life for me I adored it. Whenever you begin to get bored with petty bickering a fresh fire fight breaks out or a new monkey wrench is thrown into the mix. The whole ordeal is the right amount of high tension and breaks in the action to give the audience the ability to fully comprehend what is happening. And it is no small feat for the director to make the audience actually care about the wellbeing of any of these characters as they are all despicable criminals only trying to get what's best for them. As the tension rises and the audience becomes more invested in the characters each one gets their just deserts. And that is true justice. 2 1/2 stars out of 4.

Fate of the Furious

Good bye Rock, hello Dwayne Johnson. The man has finally arrived. No longer can it be said that the days of true movie stardom are behind us because Johnson has somehow tapped into the reservoirs of old and burst on the scene as the next big thing. While you might be asking, but he already is a movie star and he already was the highest paid actor in Hollywood for 2016, you would be right. My answer to you is less, he did all those things, but not until Fate of the Furious has he shown his true potential of elevating every scene he is in to good, borderline great movie making. And that is an increasingly more difficult task to do with the ridiculous excess of the Fast and the Furious franchise. The single sequence that is cringeworthy that has been discussed ad nauseam is the interaction between Johnson and Jason Statham discussing their pasts, threatening each other and then laughing and accepting one another. This is the dilemma that the Fast series keeps running into of terrible dialogue and over the top action sequences. If you remove Johnson from the film it is an absolute dumpster fire of trash but with him he elevates it to the third best in the series. The sheer ridiculousness of the film is getting more and more difficult to accept and based on the US box office take, it appears that people may finally be wising up to it. Since Furious 4 they simply have been trying to one up the last movie and they finally may have one upped to far for even the most diehard fans. Don't get me wrong, the film will make over a billion dollars and there will be a ninth, but maybe now the critics and fans are wising up to what they are actually watching. Cars and explosions. By the standard of movie definition, the critics should hate this franchise just like they hate everything that Michael Bay comes up, with which they should. Somehow Vin Diesel has been bullet proof when it comes to his precious car universe. Hopefully we are finally seeing some chinks in the armor.

Fate of the Furious has the Gang fighting against themselves when Cipher (Charlize Theron) randomly shows up at the beginning of the film and shows Dom (Vin Diesel) some information that will motivate him to completely betray his entire 'family' that they have spent the last 6 films (Tokyo Drift excluded) building towards you never turn your back on family. The main question I have at this point is what the heck kind of skills does this team of car racers have that no one else in the world have? They keep getting pulled into these amazing, world ending scenarios and all they can do is drive cars really fast. When did Tej Parker (Ludicrous) become this ultimate hacker able to defeat the world’s most dangerous hacker? The only member of the team that actually has their talents introduced and explained is Ramesy (Nathalie Emmanuel) and that’s only because she created the 'God's Eye' program and was introduced in the last film. Everyone else just picks up these amazing talents whenever the plot needs them to. And the plot needs them to pull things out of thin air a lot. Since when could thousands of cars be hacked and then driven and inserted with autopilots, creating a drone car army? Or be able to do anything with a nuclear football without all the codes from the different people that MOVIES THEMSELVES have taught us they need? Or anyone be able to hack into a NUCLEAR SUBMARINE and drive it remotely? Or completely remove the nuclear fallout from detonated nuclear missiles by simply removing an electronic chip? That uranium doesn't just go away. And all of this is made actually entertaining by the charm and charisma or Dwayne Johnson. Whenever he is not on screen or in the background, the film is laughable and boring. The main lesson here is that Johnson was right to beef with Diesel over screen time because he absolutely save this film from being a clunker. 2 ½ pipes out of 4.

Allied

Allied

The movie that is rumored to break up Branjalina does not live up to the hype. While it is an intriguing historical drama set in the middle of World War II, the famed love story is not developed enough for me to believe. Brad Pitt plays Max Vatan, a Canadian allied spy who is dropped in to Casablanca to meet up with Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), a French Resistance fighter. Their task is to assassinate the German Ambassador to Morocco in under 10 days. The odds of their survival are low and the stress pushes them together. There are three noticeable moments when the film makers put effort into selling that the couple might be falling in love. None of which warrant Pitt’s abrupt turnaround from his earlier feelings that emotions cause people to make mistakes and die. His sudden proposal of Marianne coming to England and marrying him had me thinking it was some sort of plot twist later on and all part of the allied spy network but (SPOILER ALERT) it’s not. The whole thing had me wanting to love the film but by the ending feeling disappointed. The biggest concern with the film is that the entire premise is that Max and Marianne are deeply madly in love. When you can’t set that up in the first half-hour of buildup, there is something wrong. Eliminate the first quarter outside of England and the film increases in likability by tenfold. Pitt and Cotillard both put in excellent performances especially when the tension rises. The tension is constant throughout the film, just when you get a small reprieve from the central narrative, a subplot tense moment is hurled at you keeping you in suspense until the tension cranks back up in the main story-line. The viewer is never given the typical levity throughout the film to ease the adrenaline and being that it is a drama thriller and not an action thriller, this can get in the way of the enjoyment of the film. It just seems to drag itself along quite a bit, continuously finding minor ways to keep the pressure level high. Other than those issues it is a fine period piece, paying incredible attention to detail and giving a small insight on the German Blitz. 1 pipes out of 4.

Edge of Seventeen

Edge of Seventeen

I will preface this review with that it is coming from someone who had rough teenage years so I have some bias. The idea for the film is well thought out and it is filmed very well. Also with it trying to aim at a wide audience it portrays some common difficulties and struggles of a teenager. That being said, I struggled mightily with the film with my background in high school. Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine, a 17-year-old struggling with her identity in the world with no one to help her, as her one good parent passes away in front of her eyes from a heart attack. While I know this is a difficult time for her and her family, the director portrays Nadine as a complete outsider at school with only one friend. Because of how attractive Steinfeld is, this simply would not be the case in real life. It also doesn't make sense when she acts like she is no one likes her, and then just blows off a classmate who is obviously interested in her because he simply is too much of an "good old man soul". It may sound harsh, but speaking from experience, beggars can't be choosers and yet that is exactly what she is. He is not cool enough for her to be interested in as she lusts after the punk bad boy. This brings us to her dynamic with the other characters in the movie. From the very beginning her brother is portrayed as a selfish sports jock and there is no indication of anything different until the end. Side note, for her brother and best friend to hook up, which is in the trailer so I am not spoiling anything, is a terrible thing for them to do, especially the best friend. She has firsthand experience of how much of a jerk Nadine’s brother is to her and yet she "falls in love with him" after a one night stand. The main bright spots of the film are woody Harrelson and Hayden Szeto. Harrelson plays the down to earth, real talk teacher that Nadine constantly is coming to for advice even though she often doesn't like what she hears. Szeto plays Nadine’s lone admirer at the school who she is often ignoring. I honestly got more of an experience out of what it's like to be a teenager from him than from any other character and he is defiantly a minor side character. Both of these characters bring the much-needed comedy in an otherwise deeply depressing film. Kira Sedgwick plays Nadine’s unstable mother which she does well by making you absolutely hate her and wish she wasn't allowed to have children. The problem is much of the tension between mother and daughter seems manufactured as the filmmakers don't seem to know what kind of relationship they want them to have. Most of the time the relationship seem strained and unfixable only for there to be a sudden mood change that is not explained. Sedgwick is a very flat character with no evident growth. That, I think is the biggest problem with the film. All the characters are flat, have little to know shown growth and then at the end we are just supposed to accept that they have somehow grown. Nadine is the closest character to round as there is in the film, and most of the time she just seems whiny, only changing when forced to see knew evidence that is pulled out of thin air. Putting my personal issues aside I would say the film is average, gives a nice attempt at showing the teenage experience but definitely is not the masterpiece it seems to be trumpeted as. 2 pipes out of 4