Guardians of the Galaxy Review

A thief, two thugs, an assassin, and a maniac team together to fight evil in the galaxy. Sounds like a great premise for a movie. Now, what if I told you one is a tree that can only say three words and another is a talking raccoon that loves guns? Crazy, right? Well, that tree and raccoon steal the show in Guardians of the Galaxy, the newest installment in the Marvel cinematic universe. Not only is Guardians the funniest Marvel movie to date, it’s also one of my favorites of the year.

Chris Pratt headlines as Peter Quill, or as he would like to be called, Star Lord, a human from Earth that was picked up by Yondu (Michael Rooker) and brought to space as a junker. Junkers are sent around the galaxy gathering valuables to sell to the highest bidder. At the beginning of the movie, he steals an orb of unknown value and origin and finds that it’s of greater significance than first thought.

Peter Quill, along with the supporting cast of Gamora(Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), are all given enough back-story to understand their motivations yet the exposition doesn’t hold the film down. Instead, it soars though humor and one of the best soundtracks in years. Some of the songs used will forever be linked to moments in the film. They are almost the sixth member of the group and show how music is the universal language.

Pratt was perfectly cast as Peter Quill. He brings a loose, cool vibe to the team, not unlike Hans Solo did for Star Wars. But he is not the star of the film. As ridiculous as it sounds to non comic book readers, Rocket and Groot are the best part of the movie. Every time they are on screen, they are funny, doing something hilarious, or being badass. Groot also creates some of the most beautiful scenes in the movie. Every kid that sees Guardians will want all the Rocket and Groot merchandise their parents will buy them.

The antagonist, Ronan (Lee Pace), gives a good performance. He is menacing and looks great on screen. However, I did feel he was a bit underdeveloped and didn’t explain his motivations well. He did too much talking through exposition and not enough showing the audience his role in the galaxy. I also felt that Nebula (Karen Gillan), the daughter of Thanos and Gamora’ssister, was not used enough in the movie.

These are minor issues for a spectacular film. It has giant scope and even though most of the characters are aliens, they all have humanity to them. While Guardians probably won’t win many awards, I have not had a better time at the theatre this year. And sometimes that is what is most valuable. Guardians will make you smile, laugh, and feel. Take the family and get ‘Hooked on a Feeling’. You won’t regret it.

Transformers: Age of Extinction Review

The Transformers movies have become a summer staple, grossing just over $1 Billion dollars worldwide. Now in its 4th installment, Transformers: Age of Extinction, the entire cast has been overhauled. Even with this change, Michael Bay doesn’t stray from the same tired formula that raked in the money on the previous films. There is lots of dude/bro action, a damsel in distress, horrible dialog, and most of the cast playing extreme caricatures. While fun at times, it is hard to overlook the glaring problems.

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is an inventor/tech expert from middle of nowhere Texas who happens upon the broken down version of Optimus Prime. Cade is able to revive him, because of course, Optimus is found by someone with the exact skill set needed to fix him. The plot revolves around humans becoming the enemy to the Autobots and Optimus has to get the band back to together to stop the humans from murdering the Autobots one by one. It is actually a pretty cool premise and directly relates to the destruction of Chicago in the previous film. Unfortunately, this premise is poorly executed. The only praise I can give this movie is that it is the longest movie I’ve seen this year at 2 hours and 45 minutes of unedited footage. There was so much in this movie but what it needed most was an editor. Maybe the editor could have cut out all of the obvious product placement throughout the movie such as Cade stopping to drink a Bud Light while the city is being attacked or a Beats Pill speaker being shoved in your face.

The movie was funny at times but for all the wrong reasons. The dialog got a number of laughs, all of which were not intentional. We meet four characters from Texas: Cade with a Boston accent, his friend/business partner who is a surfer (because who wouldn’t want to surf those renowned waves in the middle of Texas), Cade’s daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) who has no accent, and her boyfriend who has an Irish accent for some reason. Cade is not only a struggling inventor but also a horrible parent. Why he decides to bring his daughter along for this extremely dangerous adventure is beyond me.

The group travels to Chicago to find the company that is helping the US government destroy the Autobots and build new transformers for them to control. The government has aligned with a tech company run by the worst on screen version of Steve Jobs, which is conveniently located in Chicago, to help them build the new transformers out of a new material called…wait for it…transformium. The government official, played by Kelsey Grammer, also has an agreement with another alien transformer, Lockdown, who wants to capture Optimus. How that meeting happened was of course never explained. I’m guessing he just rang him on his alien cell phone and they hashed out the details.

Tessa plays the same role all the women do in Michael Bay movies, a hot damsel that can do little but be pretty and run away. Even running away is a problem for her as in one sequence she falls down four times after taking a few steps because running is hard sometimes. She is a 17 year old character dating a 20 year old guy that carries a laminated copy of the “Romeo and Juliet Law” in his wallet to justify the statutory rape in their relationship. So, he’s a real winner and a guy that a dad would meet and want to take on this adventure with his daughter. Again, Cade is just waiting to receive that father of the year award.

Michael Bay still hasn’t learned from his previous Transformer films as the group of Autobots consists of more racial stereotypes and they are just as offensive. There is a Samurai Autobot that has broken English and he even brings back Brains, the mini robot who sounds like he is straight out of Compton and was the source of many complaints in the last Transformers movie.

The Dinobots do make an appearance for the first time in the Transformers series but not until very late in the film. Seeing them was some of the only enjoyment I had in the last hour of the film. Unfortunately, it is far too little too late. If you love the previous Transformers, camera upshots and American flags in almost every shot then maybe you will enjoy Age of Extinction. I found that the only thing that went extinct was my time and a few brain cells.

Godzilla Review

Godzilla has a long history in cinema including, most recently, in 1998 with the release of the Roland Emmerich movie by the same name. It grossed $136 million domestically; however, it was looked upon as mostly a failure due to its $130 million budget. With this new re-launch of the iconic character, Gareth Edwards was hired as director to bring his grounded take on the iconic monster. Hiring Edwards was a risky move as he has never helmed a large budget film before. His previous movie, Monsters (2010), cost $1 million to make and was praised for the special effects work. That is where the current film succeeds; unfortunately, the script is not as impressive.

The first act of this film succeeds by building on character moments with Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his son, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The moments between these two characters ground the film and give you a reason to care about the Brody family. The problems begin when the second act focuses solely on Ford Brody. I never felt a connection to his character individually and subsequently did not care about what he was going through. I have loved the work of Ken Watanabe (who played Dr. Ishiro Serizawa) and Elizabeth Olsen (who played Elle Brody) in previous films; however, they don’t do anything here except look on in fear and shock. It’s such a wasted opportunity to use good actors in this film and give them 10 minutes of screen time with nothing to do.

With how little I cared about the human characters in this film, it’s a good thing the special effects and sound design were outstanding. The direction and cinematography were also very well done. There are some scenes in the third act that were truly awe-inspiring. There is a moment where soldiers jump out of a plane that is one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever watched on screen. The film makes us wait for the action by giving us glimpses of Godzilla but never a full view, much like Spielberg did with the shark in Jaws. By limiting these shots, it built the suspense well and made the scenes in the third act with Godzilla more impactful.

I did like the overall theme of the film that nature is uncontrollable and people aren’t as powerful as they think. Godzilla was nature’s way of corrective action and we, as humans, are just one piece of that puzzle.

With how much I enjoyed the action and the experience of watching this movie, it’s a shame I never cared about the human characters in the film. The lack of investment in the characters was most evident when there was a scene with a dog and I cared more about the dog making it through the scene alive than Ford. There is clearly a problem when the audience doesn’t care about the main characters. I would recommend seeing the movie but don’t expect to have a story you care about. Just go and enjoy a decent popcorn flick.

Spoiler problems below:

1) Whatever happened to Ford and the kid dangling from the tram car? They just cut to them being OK.

2) What purpose did Ford have besides starting the bomb countdown, which became a huge problem?

3) How come no one freaked out when Godzilla woke up in their city?

4) During the train sequence, why did the MUTO purposely walk underneath the bridge instead of just walking through it like it did with everything else? How did the soldiers get down that giant ravine and back up so quickly? Why did they need to go down there anyways?

5) How come Godzilla caused a huge tsunami coming out of the water the first time but every subsequent time there was no problem?

6) How come not only was no one was evacuated from San Francisco but people were still working in the office buildings?

7) Wasn’t it awfully convenient that a tanker full of fuel would have landed in the ravine with all the MUTO eggs?

Contrast Review

With the launch of the new consoles, there are a few downloadable games that are available to play outside of the big, tent poll games that are beautiful in their own right. One of these is a game that is available for free on PlayStation Plus called Contrast. It takes place in Paris in the 1920s, where jazz is playing in clubs and magicians are doing shows on the streets. You play as a friend to a little girl trying to help her mother and father through problems, both financially and emotionally. They live in the shadow world and show up throughout the game only in the shadows of light.

Your unique skill is you can transfer between the real world and the 2D shadow world. You have to solve puzzles by passing between the worlds, jumping on shadows to move through the environment. You’ll have to move spotlights around to change the shadows on the wall to solve puzzles. This could have been more flushed out but the second half of the game, it falls back onto moving boxes around to set on switches to open doors. I wish they would have developed the shadow mechanic more and didn’t fall back on moving boxes around. The puzzles feel similar to Portal but aren’t as difficult.

The real downfall I found was the traversal and jumping felt really floaty and imprecise. There were many times were I knew where I wanted to go but had a very hard time getting there due to the way the jumping functioned. I also incurred a few times where I would get stuck on geometry and couldn’t get out without restarting from the last checkpoint. I feel like the developers rushed this out to make the console launches and if they could have had an extra month or two, the game would have the polish it needed.

Over the four hours or so of the story, I did find myself really enjoying the story and the shadow mechanic. I did wish they did more with it and had the extra month to work out the bugs but overall, you can’t beat the experience for the price.

Grade: B-