That Which Is Indistinguishable From Garbage

Year: 2015

Director: Josh Trank

Cast: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan 

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

There are drawbacks to Marvel Studios owning the world. Aside from the obvious (cookie cutter superheroes flooding the market to the point of extinction), there are far more nefarious issues lurking in the shadows. The few properties that aren’t held in the iron first of Disney-Marvel are being desperately clawed away from that IP tractor beam by the companies that own them. In the attempt to avoid their lease running out and hold onto those rights, studios like Fox and Sony must continue making movies to renew their grip and defy the seven year copyright expiration date. That’s why we’re getting crap like the third Spider-Man reboot. Sinister, isn’t it?

If you combine that spirit of making movies for the sake of being able to make that same movie at a later date with the supremely dubious attitude of Chronicle director Josh Trank, you get a real spectacle of garbage. It’s called Fantastic Four, and I screened it for your reading pleasure. Here we go.

Heaven help me.

In the not-too-distant present, Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is a wunderkind prodigy who accidentally cracks interdimensional travel for a science fair project. He is taken to the Baxter Institute, where he develops a full scale transporter with manic pixie dream scientist Sue Storm (Kate Mara), her hot rod-racing brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), and their totally friendly ignore the name compatriot Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell). On their first trip to the alternate dimension, Reed invites childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), his ever-present sidekick.

Obviously, the mission goes wrong, Von Doom falls off a cliff, and the remaining four return safely, but not before being mutated into inhuman monsters. And by that I mean embarrassingly cheap CGI. They are taken to a base where they can learn to use their powers, Von Doom shows up, they have a brief preliminary battle, and… oh, was that it? The movie doesn’t so much end as shut off at the 100 minute mark.

Not that I’m complaining it wasn’t longer.

Where oh where do I begin? Fantastic Four is such a heaving mass of missteps that one major problem doesn’t immediately leap out, so maybe I’ll start with some good things about the movie. In brief (as if it could be otherwise), the beginning wasn’t downright terrible. I mean it was poorly written, ham-fisted, awkwardly paced, and implied that The Thing got his beloved catch phrase by imitating his violent older brother and is thus locked in a dangerous cycle of abuse, but it was decently entertaining, y’know. In fact, my initial enjoyment had my esteem for the film stubbornly plateauing at a solid 4/10 until the film exploded like an all-dynamite chemistry set. And the kid actor casting is pretty remarkable, showcasing two young boys who look more or less exactly like Miles Teller and Jamie Bell. So there’s that.

And that’s all, folks. There is literally nothing else in the film that is refreshing, entertaining, interesting, or even fundamentally functional in any way, shape, or form. Fantastic Four is a dour, grim exercise in seeing just how much expoisition a  single film can withstand without actually sustaining a plot. There are a lot of comic book movies with flaccid, overlong origin stories but Fantastic Four ups the ante by 1) repeating essentially the same beats of the 2005 Fantastic 4, and 2) sucking every last bit of light or comic booky joy out of the proceedings. It reeks of gritty flop sweat, straining for gravitas while displaying a deadly allergy to fun. It’s the absolute nadir of the Nolanization of superhero cinema, and if any film manages to steal that title from it, we’ll just have to call it quits on the whole Hollywood thing.

Here’s looking at you, Batman v. Superman.

It’s a story sad tell, but I’ll briefly run by you through my FF experience so you can understand the gravity of the situation. (Incidentally, the film’s initials are exactly the sound that will come out of my mouth if I ever find out that this is getting a sequel.)

I survived the abysmal script. As a veteran bad movie fan, I’m inoculated even against such atrocities as “I’m adopted.” “I know how that feels. Because I wish I was adopted.” Or Mr. Fantastic (who, never, by the way, actually receives that moniker over the course of this, his origin story) marveling that the university library has chemistry books from the 1950’s. You know, way back when they knew way less about chemistry. Hooray? I could ignore the fact that Sue Storm is an expert in all fields of science or that Von Doom apparently thinks they’ll be taking a trip to the fourth dimension, which any idiot who has even brushed by a stack of sci-fi novels know is time, not the ineptly-titled Earth Zero (fewer calories, same polluted taste).

I could suffer through the pacing, which uses time like a hopscotch board, leaping through days, months, and even years for no discernible reason. And I sustained myself through the special effects, which across the board looked like a World of Warcraft beta test save for one instance. Mr. Fantastic’s stretching is rendered in such a photorealistic way that you’ll wish you had bought popcorn so you could have a barf bag readily available. The one time the effects actually rise to the challenge is the moment the film needed to be most cartoonish.

Are they doing this to us on purpose?

I received this movie with enough patience to earn immediate canonization, but the third act broke me. I snapped like a West Side Story ensemble member. In the climax of the film (if you could call it that), the dialogue whips into a frenzied maelstrom in which Miles Teller narrates the wicked doings of the returned Doctor Doom and the script makes a belated, misguided effort to spice up the action with some quips that fall flatter than an Iowa cornfield.  The pacing makes an effort to make up for its previous doldrums by zipping through the battle at lightning speed. I guarantee that there are hardly fifteen minutes between Dr. Doom’s reintroduction and ultimate demise, which the Fantastic Four effect through some hitherto unknown variant of “teamwork” that involves pretty much everyone standing around and watching while the villain more or less defeats himself before quietly expiring.

The wailing Marco Beltrami score bleats and bellows as if there were an actual triumph buried somewhere under the confused dross, reminding everyone that it’s been there the whole time, echoing the movie’s terribleness in sonic form. Then the movie just sort of… ends, brutally chopping its crude character arcs to the quick while resolutely failing to actually resolve anything.

Did I even mention that the cinematography lovingly details every scar and blemish on the actors’ faces? Unless it was intentional, in any other movie, this rough handling would be an element so egregious that it would be the main crux of my review. But here it’s just one more instrument in a shrieking symphony of incompetence. Fantastic Four is a brutalized, beastly little movie, neither delivering thrills nor interesting characters, brainlessly repeating a story we’ve already seen.

If it were a thought exercise to see how a movie could be even worse without Jessica Alba, I would commend it. But these actors don’t deserve this treatment, this material doesn’t deserve this treatment, and you especially don’t deserve any of this. Stay very far away from Fantastic Four if you know what’s good for you.

TL;DR: Fantastic Four is a steaming pile of garbage, and it really doesn't matter whose fault it is.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1298

What Have I Done?

You might remember my spring cleaning period, where I unloaded a barrage of mini-reviews (well, if seven paragraphs still counts as "mini") to slough off the weight of just how many films I had seen that I still needed to review. You may remember this because it was literally a week ago. Well, guess what? Even though I still need to finish off my Chucky and Wes Craven marathons and tackle the current movies I've seen this month before the Halloween season comes crashing down in earnest, I went ahead and watched three more movies this week. I've made a huge mistake.

Whiplash

Year: 2014

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Miles Teller, J. K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist

Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A young drummer takes a class with an angry, abusive teacher in an attempt to push himself to be the best.

It’s not often that my interests intersect with the year’s Oscar noms (The House on Sorority Row was snubbed!), but just last year a miracle happened. The scrappy horror production company Blumhouse took a break from making piles of money to assist in the creation of Whiplash, which went on to sweep all the Academy Awards categories that nobody particularly cares about. Despite its minted status as an Oscar flick, it still has the stylistic trademarks of a Blumhouse production, and that’s what makes it a fascinating watch.

The limited sets, small cast, and stylistic experiments typical to low budget horror filmmaking are all reinterpreted to this new genre, which is admittedly a horror story in its own right. Centering primarily on Miles Teller’s ingénue Andrew and J. K. Simmons’ domineering professor Fletcher, these two become locked in an emotionally brutal and occasionally violent enterprise: turning Andrew into one of the greats. This brutishly simple story requires a lot of its audience, asking if the pursuit of fame and talent is truly worth the price one must pay.

The plot is straightforward as all hell, which allows director Damien Chazelle free range in visually portraying it. He doesn’t go institutionally crazy with that freedom, but he taps directly into the film’s adrenal gland, sending shock waves of pure electricity through the audience. I suppose it goes without saying that the cinematography and editing adhere to the beat of the music played in the film, but there’s so much more than that to chew on.

The yellow, underlit music room casts a sickly pall on all who inhabit its space, red blood splashes vividly onto stark white drums, and the rapid cuts abruptly stand stock still to emphasize intense moments. There is no act of cinematic upheaval more profoundly affecting in Whiplash than its fearless finale, an audacious sprint to the finish line that combines rapid whip-pans, whirlwind cutting, and oppressively extreme close-ups in a mesmerizing effort that instills the feeling that the action is happening so fast, the film can’t even keep up with itself. When it finally lets up the sense of release is so drastic that you’re forced to sit there a minute, processing in stunned awe.

It’s a cool film, with two unforgettable actors behind wheel. Miles Teller finally breaks free from his Zac Efron/Skylar Astin twentysomething hell to deliver a well-rounded character that portrays raw, open-faced ambition in a frankly alarming but thoroughly committed manner. His fire is matched with panache by J. K. Simmons’ powerful hurricane of a performance, swinging from stone-faced impenetrability to spittle-flying rage beast. It’s stunning, nuanced stuff that simultaneously humanizes the characters yet exposes their darkest flaws.

The best thing about this crackling, angry film is its awareness of how insulated its world is. After all the fighting, screaming, bleeding, crying, and chair throwing (that music room has the world’s most resilient walls – definitely call their contractor next time you need remodeling done), it’s still only jazz. Time and again, the film reminds the characters just how little everybody else in the world cares about jazz. It leaves you with a bittersweet taste and compels you to consider the consequences of the sacrifices people make for their art. It’s a daring, kinetic picture and more horrifying than half the Blumhouse stock. Check it out!

Rating: 8/10

House of Wax

Year: 2005

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast: Chad Michael Murray, Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki

Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A group of college students on a road trip get stranded in a town with a house of wax run by two maniacal brothers who murder tourists and turn them into wax figures.

2005 was such a barren wasteland for horror that we ended up with House of Wax, a remake of a remake. But, although it’s hardy a cinematic triumph, House of Wax is intriguing for several reasons. First, it is a reinterpretation of a classic Vincent Price property in the immediate wake of the zeitgeist hit Saw. Second, it’s actually a pretty beautifully shot little movie despite its host of remake calling cards, like uselessly pretty actors, a nigh-on nonsensical plot, and drama that’s shallower than a dorm shower.

Let’s linger on that first one, shall we? Where the Vincent Price flick was of sanitized 1950’s vintage, the new House of Wax was born into a meaner epoch, smack dab in the middle of the rise of torture porn. As a result, there are obviously much more prolonged and miserable scenes of people being chained to giant metal contraptions and whatnot. Really, it comes with the territory. But the striking thing about House of Wax’s new grim perspective is the artistry put into rendering the gore as realistically as possible.

From close-up grue like superglued lips and peeling wax skin to the realistically bloody aftermath of punches and blows, House of Wax makes an art form of turning the stomach. And the biggest showstopper of the film transcends even the gooey carnage, abuilding made entirely of wax melting to the ground. It’s visually arresting stuff, and if I rated films solely on effects, House of Wax would be an unequivocal 10/10.

Unfortunately I rate films on a variety of criteria, and in nearly every other respect, House of Wax fails spectacularly. One of the film’s most notable deficits is the acting. Featuring a notorious performance by the self-indulgent heiress Paris Hilton, the stakes become ludicrously low as she fails to entirely convince that she isn’t already made of wax. Any performer in the world would look like Brando when compared to Little Miss Trust Fund, but by golly do her co-stars push to give her a run for her money.

To be fair, providing motivation for the mountain of dumb-ass white horror character decisions that comprise the plot (“Let’s wander into a closed house of wax! And take a ride from a stranger whose car is decorated with rodent carcasses And then go home and floss with a rusty chain saw!” At one point, a hapless teen literally runs into a wall.) would be a challenge for Stella Adler herself. But wet-behind-the-ears stars Elisha Cuthbert and Jared Padalecki flail to find any sort of purchase on the impenetrable blocks of dialogue and Chad Michael Murray’s strained attempts to portray an “edgy” and “hard” criminal type just one year after A Cinderella Story are flecked with flop sweat and patchy stubble.

The basic story structure starts off interesting, splitting up the core cast between widely disparate locations, but it devolves into an aimless piece that reliably and impressively fails to follow through on the tortured seedlings of themes it attempts to plant, like the idea of two sets of twins facing off (Cuthbert and Murray are ostensibly siblings, although her brunette weave – probably mandated to accentuate Hilton’s golden tresses – isn’t doing her any favors) or small town vs. city living.

Luckily, as I mentioned before, the film is kind of disproportionately gorgeous, with dizzying, roving camera shots that highlight the moody gothic lighting scheme. It’s unfair, really, because the quality cinematography (as well as the terrific gore) prevents me from unequivocally panning the film like I urgently desire to. The acting might be dramatic backwash, the killer might look suspiciously like Tommy Wiseau, and the plot might be risibly coherent – bordering on absurdism – but there’s just enough to make it a remotely pleasing remake. Yay!

Rating: 5/10

Obvious Child

Year: 2014

Director: Gillian Robespierre

Cast: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A heartbroken comedian sleeps with a cute stranger and discovers that she’s pregnant.

Whatever else it may be, Obvious Child is a charming film. It is also a romantic comedy, no matter how much its glowing reviews attempt to push and prod it into a  more agreeable shape. Along with that genre comes a bricklike tome of rules and conventions that the film does a great deal to subvert, but it can only do so much.

For a lot of the time, Obvious Child is astoundingly typical: a drunken montage of leaving voicemails on the ex’s phone, the sassy gay friend who can hardly keep from gagging on the arch dialogue jammed with ultrahip slang words that haven’t even been invented yet, a protagonist that spins world-shattering problems out of a situation that could easily be cleared up with a thirty-second conversation… It’s sweet, but you’ve had this dessert before. If it’s not Jenny Slate, it’s Julia Roberts, Katherine Heigl, Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz, Meg Ryan, Marilyn Monroe.

But the thing is, it is Jenny Slate. And it is Gillian Robesspierre, directing and adapting a feature version of her 2009 short film. And where the film breaks from romantic comedy convention, it breaks hard and fast like an unleashed puppy. [MID-FILM SPOILERS ABOUND IN THE REMAINDER OF THIS REVIEW] Where Obvious Child could easily have been a female-centric Knocked Up riff, it bites down and takes the risk to discuss what that film was too terrified to contemplate: what if abortion really is the right decision in some cases?

Telling even a dopey, generic story with that backdrop is a bracingly fresh approach, and Obvious Child’s social impact is practically limitless. It juggles all the trials of that decision (weighing your options, deciding to tell the father, examining one’s own moral principles) in a raw, straightforward manner without dropping the cheery torches of humor and new love. 

I just wish it were a tad funnier, you know? It’s never unfunny, but a lot of the humor is far from groundbreaking. Thinking back, there’s only one line that legitimately stuck with me and a couple of the more vulgar scenarios tickled, but the bulk of the film is deliberately low key and indie chic. It’s as if they didn’t have the budget to cover the medical expenses of keeping people in stitches.

Luckily, Jenny Slate manages to keep it all together. Her performance is unequivocal proof that, in order to be a good comedian, you must be a deft storyteller. So much of the film requires her to wring humor from moments of genuine emotion and she fearlessly bares her soul for the good of the story, always keeping herself comfortably far from flying over the top and turning into an SNL sketch.

Her character takes “flawed protagonist” to an almost surreal level (and her best friend/foil Gaby Hoffman – who gladly drops everything and does Jenny’s job while she mopes in a box – is clearly a figure from high medieval fantasy), but she manages to cobble a likeable, effervescent presence from the wreckage. And when all is said and done, the films speeds by like a hamster on crack.

It’s a lopsided flick, but as a first directorial effort it’s spectacular. There are certainly kinks to work out, but Robespierre is a woman to watch out for. She has delivered a tight, silly, emotionally honest flick that goes for the jugular of typical social norms. It might not have you rolling on the floor, but it’s important, well crafted, and – most of all – just darn pleasant.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 2010

Hanging By A Moment

Year: 2014

Director: Tom Gormican

Cast: Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Have you ever heard of the term in medias res? It's Latin for "in the middle of things" and it is a rhetorical device used to draw people into a story by revealing details from a later point in time at the beginning, then telling most of the story in flashback. This idea has been used far and wide in movies like The Hangover, which opens with a desperate trio wondering how they will make it to the wedding before going back to the beginning to explain "how we got here." There's a whole thing about it on TV Tropes. Check it out.

As you may have gathered, That Awkward Moment begins with an in medias res moment. Jason (Zac Efron) is sitting on a park bench in the freezing cold as his voiceover narration asks "I bet you're wondering how I got here." 

No, Zac Efron. We are not wondering why you're sitting on a freaking bench. It's a park bench, not the Iron Throne. The rest of the movie is no less stupid than this opening scene, although it is somewhat less exciting to mock, alternating from being bland and tasteless to relying on the worst kind of odious gender essentialism.

And a heaping helping of white nonsense.

Jason is one of a trio made up of him and his friends Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Miles B. Jordan), two other up and coming actors. Teller attempted to make a name for himself in the quickly forgotten YA adaptation Divergent and Michael B. Jordan recently lit up the indie scene in Fruitvale Station. It is clear that they agreed to do a movie together in order to hopefully lift each other's careers up and over the high wall of success. 

It is unclear why they chose to do this particular movie with its characters that are far too old for the actors portraying them (Mikey is a married surgeon; Daniel and Jason are successful book cover designers), a director fresh off of producing the steaming pile of rat dung that was Movie 43, and non-starter dialogue and scenarios that could only be an aborted script for a sitcom pilot.

And not a particularly good sitcom. Not the kind that pushing the envelope of storytelling like or creates a zeitgeist hit based on a solid ensemble of relatable characters. But rather the uninspired style filled with (two and a) half-baked zingers and lazy gender psychology. Did you know that the one thing every woman in the entire world wants more than anything is a pair of shoes? Zac Efron knows. And all the women in the film agree.

Sure, shoes are cool. But it makes you wonder if the screenwriters have ever met an actual woman who wasn't a 3mmx3mm jpeg at the corner of a chat bar. And the inclusion of the line "So, you're gonna go full girl with it?" spoken to an emotional man was enough to cement the movie entirely into my lack of esteem. The shock displayed when a girl expressed interest in video games sent me into a supernova of anger, from which my houseplants are only now starting to recover.

True story: Sometimes they were so aware of the direness of their dialogue, they tried to mask it with a jaunty pop tune.

The film is just as blasé and careless about every other aspect of its creation. The editor cuts abruptly away from scenes before they end, any of the human emotions that are more challenging to write (i. e. anything that isn't "horny" or "bland") are smoothed over by turning them into musical montages, taking all the contrivances out of the plot would render the movie twelve seconds long, and - perhaps most egregiously - there is a date scene in the coffee shop where the scone they are sharing lies on a plate untouched for a matter of hours.

So, the plot. I guess. Let's just get that out of the way real quick. Mikey and his wife (Jessica Lucas) are getting a divorce, so Daniel and Jason make a pact with him to stay single in solidarity with their fallen brother. They of course all immediately fall into intense, loving relationships. Jason meets a Word Vomit Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Ellie (Imogen Poots), Daniel falls in love with his sarcastic best friend (Mackenzie Davis), and Mikey gets back together with his wife after little deliberation. The pact doesn't seem to matter until the very end of the movie when it suddenly does, where it is used to create a frail snotrag of conflict.

For the first hour or so, though, we are stuck watching absurdly well-off white people date each other in New York while an absurdly well-off ethnic couple does their business in private on the other side of town. There is no sense of urgency, no plot direction to speak of, just endless minutes unspooling of Zac Efron romancing his nonsense maiden.

You rang?

The humor is like a low sodium cracker - it exists, but it doesn't make you smile. The title is irrelevant to the plot and immensely pandering. The ending is bonkers if you're a sane human being. And although the production values are nice enough and the people are pretty enough to not hate spending an hour and a half together with them, they certainly tried their hardest to make you feel otherwise.

TL;DR: That Awkward Moment is entertaining enough to make me not want to drive a knife through my eye, but is too terribly put together to be much more than that.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 955