I've Got A Rumbly In My Tombly

Year: 2018

Director: Roar Uthaug 

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Daniel Wu, Walton Goggins

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

So, video games are here to stay, huh? As the format progresses and games like The Last of Us or Far Cry 4 get more and more cinematic with their gameplay-integrated storytelling, it's no surprise that Hollywood is taking another crack at converting them into movies. Of course, the game they chose is the one where the chick with pointy boobs jumps a whole bunch, but you can't expect them to ever entirely get with the times.

We ran out of Hunger Games movies, so why not?

So, in Tomb Raider, we are introduced once more to Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander, the second Oscar-Winning actress to think it was a great idea to immediately sign onto a Tomb Raider project), the daughter of the prominent businessman Richard Croft (Dominic West). He's in the same business as Bruce Wayne, which is... business. You know, companies and stuff. Look, he's rich, OK? And seven years ago, he disappeared.

While Lara refuses to sign his death notice and thus can't receive her inheritance, she spends her time training in MMA (to what end I don't know, other than that it's fun - she doesn't seem to care about any competitions or anything) and delivering food on her bike. Eventually her dad's executor gives her a frustratingly simple riddle that could be solved by anyone who's read at least one Encyclopedia Brown book, which he hilariously fails to understand. This allows her access to her dad's inner sanctum, where she discovers that in addition to being Bruce Wayne, he's secretly also been Indiana Jones this whole time.

She follows his trail to the island of Yamatai, enlisting Chinese boatsman Lu Res (Daniel Wu) to help her. There, she finds the villainous slave-driver Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), whose employers want him to open the tomb on the island, where a mythical Japanese death queen is supposedly buried, hidden behind protective layers of traps and puzzles. Unfortunately, she has brought her father's research directly into his hands, so it quickly becomes a race against time to prevent him from opening the tomb, oh no!

Spoilers: In Tomb Raider, a tomb gets raided.

Literally the only thing that was exciting to me going into Tomb Raider was that it was the big Hollywood crossover of Norwegian genre director Roar Uthaug. A prominent member of the school of Norway filmmakers who consumed ample amounts of American B-movies, then regurgitated those tropes in a much better way than U.S. filmmakers have been able to do for ages, Uthaug has proved his worth beyond a doubt with the delightful 2006 slasher Cold Prey. He also helmed the 2015 disaster movie The Wave, which I have unfortunately yet to see but have heard good things about.

Unfortunately, the last time this happened, it was with Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola, and he gave us Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. I personally haven't seen it, so I can't share any opinions (honestly, I feel like I'd love it), but that movie didn't exactly set the world on fire. At least that, as a manic horror-comedy, had a chance to show off the guy's personality. Tomb Raider is the exact sort of carefully shepherded intellectual property that will bury any director worth his salt in an immobilizing mound of script notes. And guess what happened? 

Exactly that. That's what happened.

One thing I can say with respect to my beloved Uthaug is that his action scenes do have a certain zippy energy, especially an early sequence involving an urban bike chase. The second best action sequence involves a rusted-out plane pulling a Lost World by dangling off a cliff, and that scene extends the tension for much longer than should be satisfying without feeling drawn-out or boring, even if it's a bit derivative. The combat scenes suffer a lot from the pulled punches of that toothless, bloodless PG-13 rating, but the adventures sequences are mostly satisfying, even if they have all the emotional resonance of tapping X to double jump.

But yeah, pretty much everything else is as dispiritingly average as it's possible to be. The puzzles are alternately overexplained within an inch of their lives or leave us entirely absent from the solving process (also, maybe if people learned to watch their feet and not step on obvious triggering floor panels, the whole thing could have wrapped up much quicker), the villains' motivations are malnourished, and SPOILERS [the plot introduces a rage zombie plot thread out of nowhere that makes me actively root against Lara Croft, because I would love the sequel to this to be a 28 Days Later movie].

The acting isn't even remarkable, not that it really could be. Vikander does her best, at least anchoring the movie onto what feels like an actual human being and not a pile of 0's and 1's in a tank top. I especially love the way she doesn't play Lara as particularly butch. Her mid-fight screams and grunts are girlish and feminine. She's still tough, but she doesn't have to be so in a traditionally masculine milieu. 

As for the rest of the ensemble... I love Walton Goggins, but he gets nothing to do here except glare directly at the camera. Plus, I could never really get a bead on what Daniel Wu was doing. And just when I was starting to get familiar with his sort of peculiar characterization, he starts to vanish from the film for twenty minutes at a time so more white people can step on floor panels like f**king idiots. Honestly, the entire film is stolen by a not-especially-hilarious cameo from Nick Frost that is still far and away the best thing in the movie.

That's not where you really want to be with your Hollywood blockbuster, but at least it's not soul-suckingly terrible, because we all know the way most video game adaptations swing. Unfortunately, there's absolutely no reason to see this movie. Though, if you do get dragged to it, you won't suffer. It's just utterly milquetoast, and slides right through the back of your head the millisecond it enters your eyes.

TL;DR: Tomb Raider is a thoroughly generic bit of popcorn cinema fare, and my affection for the director doesn't change how unimpressive it is.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1065

Barmageddon

Year: 2013

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

We as a culture are rather obsessed with the end of the world, aren't we?

Perhaps this is a reaction to the massively misplaced hated of the generation that has come to be known as the "millennials." According to web news outlets, BuzzFeed articles, and angry bloggers, we millennials are less intelligent, less informed, more selfish, and so detached from the world that we may as well exist on a planet called "Tumblr."

This is patently wrong, of course. This is the topic for a rather different essay, so I won't expound on my opinions quite as vehemently as I might in conversation. But nevertheless a greatly misinformed older generation is contemplating a future filled with idiots in power (I'm not gonna go there), an inevitable economic downturn, and various bits and bobs of outlandishly pessimistic terrors.

It's no surprise that the end of the world has transfixed our current tastemakers, especially with the appeal of the deliciously sensational Mayan Apocalypse theory of 2012.

Thus audiences were inundated with songs like Britney Spears' "Till the World Ends" and Jay Sean's "2012 (It Ain't the End)" and the less obvious "Give Me Everything," a song about getting' busy because "we might not get tomorrow."

And of course Roland Emmerich had to jump on the bandwagon (what with his predilection for exploding American skylines) with 2009's 2012. Evidently he struck a chord as his worldwide disaster film made $800 million globally.

Nihilism still runs rampant even after the imminent apocalypse has come and gone.

So that's how we can end up with two major wide-release summer comedies that center around the end of the world. This is the End set cinemas ablaze in June and summer was capped off by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's final entry into the unofficial Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and...), The World's End.

Oh yeah, I'm talking about a movie. Whoops.

The film follows the efforts of alcoholic Gary King (Simon Pegg) to reunite his childhood group of friends and complete a pub crawl they attempted just after graduation. Their hometown has twelve pubs (whose names subtly reflect the progression of the story in true Cornetto fashion) called the Golden Mile. Their plan to drink a pint at each of these pubs was derailed something fierce by a bad crop of... drug cigarettes,

Since then the friends have drifted apart. Andy (Nick Frost) is a bland teetotaler. Oliver (Martin Freeman) is a successful real estate agent (I mean "real estate crumpet," or whatever the hell they call it in England) with a bluetooth glued to his ear (a cliché that I'm not entirely sure still holds water). Steven (Paddy Considine) is a recently divorced man who spent his teenagehood in Gary's shadow, losing girls to him left and right - most painfully the beautiful Sam (Rosamund Pike), Oliver's little sister. Also there's Peter (Eddie Marsan), who... I don't even know. He's something. He's the least important.

As they go along their journey, they begin to realize that most, if not all of the inhabitants of their hometown have been replaced by murderous robots.

Either that or he accidentally broke open a glow stick. They warn you about that.

The trilogy's classic standard of rapid fire jokes and cuts is back in full force, but it is in support of a much more subdued narrative. There's a lot to unpack about The World's End, and while it's certainly the most intelligent and layered film of its brethren, this is at the expense of out and out hilarity. Where Shaun of the Dead is like being sprayed with a fire hose of comedy, The World's End is more like taking a warm bath.

There are some great and hilarious moments in here of course, that's to be expected for this team of artists. But Wright and Co. are a bit more grown up than in 2004 and commentary about growing up (and apart) and the "Starbucking" of society are more at the forefront. Global homogenization is a topic ripe to be skewered and it is done better here than anywhere else, but it's really just not as punchy.

Perhaps it's not fair to hold The World's End up to the light of the other two movies of what is only nominally a trilogy, but it's just human nature. Life is unfair.

In a righteous world, we'd all have British accents.

So what we have here is an admittedly funny screenplay that's content to be more sober than its brethren. Pun intended.

But when the action gets kicked up a notch (and it does, oh believe you me it does) and the protagonists fend for their lives, the film shines bright as the glowing eyes of imminent doom. The robot fight scenes are truly inspired, filled with wacky slapstick, wry dialogue, and some truly impressive choreography. It plays like the daydream of every youngster who grew up through the Stars, both Trek and Wars, fantasizing about conquering planets in a galaxy far far away.

With these scenes to buoy the narrative, the film never drags. And, I need to make this clear, the movie is really pretty freaking funny all the way through (save one unfortunately repeated joke that relies too heavily on the phrase "WTF" and rings with all the clarity of the Liberty Bell).

The ending is pretty weird, but what are you gonna do?

All in all, The World's End is a film that really isn't meant for my demographic. It's a tender and human depiction of men growing up and entering middle age, which isn't exactly something I can relate to, try as I might. One for the parents, perhaps, with enough sizzling bite and snarky British comedy to propel any younger viewers alongside them.

Unfortunately, most of the adults I've talked to have been put off by one element of the film or another, most commonly the high octane robot angle. So The World's End is a trapeze artist swinging madly over the net, reaching for but never quite grabbing either side. And that's a darn shame.

But still. Robots.

TL;DR: The World's End is content to be more sedate than its predecessors, but still packs a punch.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? It's all but out of theaters at this point, but I'd say run out to see it while you still can. I want to be proven wrong about the film missing its demographic goals.

Word Count: 1104