Pixels (2015)

Pixels (2015)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Dan Aykroyd

Currently, it feels as if people are programmed to hate any Adam Sandler film released, even without having seen it. They’re prerogative is that Adam Sandler no longer makes “good movies”. Nowadays, you can’t read a review for an Adam Sandler film without it centering around how much Sandler sucks now and how he hasn’t made a good movie in eons and blah, blah, blah. I’m not into hating for hates sake, which is what is apparently happening with Sandler, it’s this hive like mentality of hatred towards Sandler. Where does the hatred stem from? Probably from the string of bad movies he’s been making. The last torturous one I saw was Jack and Jill (2011) and that one turned me off from seeing Sandler movies. How did I end up seeing that one in theaters you might ask? Well, I like to give movies the benefit of the doubt, sometimes I come out a winner and discover a film I would have not seen otherwise, but other times, like with Jack and Jill it’s just like“WHYYYYY?!” The way I see it and in Sandler’s defense I will say that we can’t really blame Sandler for making bland family movies, because that’s who he is, he’s the all encompassing actor who makes films that are supposed to appeal to everyone. He’s movies are made to be consumed in mass quantities and in order to do that, the film has to be a certain way. They can’t be too intense, or bloody, or offensive or violent, they gotta have that ‘feel good, nothing bad is going to happen’ vibe to them. Like, don’t take nothing to seriously, you’re here just to have some fun. Let’s just accept that he’s the guy who makes that type of film, that’s who he’s become. He’s gone the way of Eddie Murphy, but in a successful way? My advice is, if you don’t like the crappy pappy movies that Sandler makes, don’t go and see them! Just wait until he works with a good director, gets critical acclaim again and makes something like Punch Drunk Love (2002), his only truly good film if you ask me.

So just how squeaky clean is Pixels? Well, just by way of an example, in one scene when Sandler sees Pac-Man eat the hand of his creator, and Sandler he says “that was some weird….stuff” instead of “That was some weird…shit!” He even pauses before saying ‘stuff’ as if mentally correcting himself saying “nope, gotta keep it PG-13!” But whatever man, you can say “shit” in a PG-13 movie, it’s just that you’re so self censored that you can’t even bring yourself to say shit. The most basic of cusses. It feels as if Sandler is in a censored state of mind even as he films, in other words, no real space to cut loose and go crazy. Feels like there’s no improv and if you have a good comedian on your film, usually that’s where comedy gold is at, the improv. But no, dialog here is clean as a whistle, god forbid word of mouth spreads and a mother ends up saying something like “my kid is not going to see that nasty Adam Sandler movie, he’s always cussing”. So following Sandler’s squeaky clean movie rules, the film will have kids and families, often times dysfunctional families facing problems and overcoming them (like a divorce for example) and Sandler will be sympathetic and kind to the kid in the movie because that’s the target audience. So this is the kind of movie you can expect my friends. A film following a formula every step of the way. Nothing is to be taken too seriously; you can’t invest yourself emotionally because you know nobody will die. Not in a squeaky clean Adam Sandler family movie like this one, so just sit back and watch the fireworks, which is really the only thing that this movie is good for.

Some folks seem to think that this film was based on an episode of Futurama that has a similar premise, but in reality, this film is based on a French short film that lasts only about 2 ½ minutes, it is also called Pixels (which you can see here) and it sets the ground rules for the look and the mechanics of the’ video games come to life’ part of the film. The short makes no sense or meaning, it just shows us a guy putting an old television in the garbage and suddenly from said television all these old video games emerge. Suddenly Donkey Kong is on top of the Empire State building throwing barrels, Pac Man is eating street cars and Centipedes fly through the skies. In the short, the video game characters destroy the city by turning everything they touch into square little pixels, but that’s about as far as the thing goes. It has no story, no villains, no heroes, just a concept which Chris Columbus and Adam Sandler ran with and stretched into a film. And I say stretched because that’s what they did, the films premise is so simple, the story so non-existent, the characters so one note that they had to stretch things out. Pixels feels  repetitive and one note; we fight one video game, beat it, then fight the next one, and they go on and on like this till the end. There’s nothing unexpected here, this is as formulaic as it gets. Worst part? This is the kind of movie in which the trailer has shown you everything. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know, step by step how this movie is going to go.

What this movie is though is a nostalgia bomb. If you were born in the 80’s and played video games in arcades the way I did, you will feel a shot of nostalgia in your system. I have to admit it was cool seeing a giant Pac-Man eating up taxi cabs and city streets, especially since I’m such a Pac-Man nut! It was awesome seeing a giant King Kong throwing barrels at Adam Sandler, and then there’s this scene where they simply throw as many old video game characters on the screen as they can, so you’ll see Frogger, Q-bert, Paperboy, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders…and that’s without counting all the other characters from 80’s pop culture that show up in the film like Max Headroom, Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Hall & Oates. The soundtrack is made up of hits from the 80’s all the way. So in this sense, the movie proves entertaining to an extent, you will be like “Oh there’s Q-Bert!” Still, I think they could have used even more classic video game characters on the film, apparently they could only afford to use a limited amount of characters. Where was the knight from Ghosts and Goblins? Sadly, the novelty of seeing old video game characters on screen is the only thing this film has to offer, the movie itself is just a bunch of empty calories starting by the fact that the villains in this movie are faceless, we never really know who they are because they talk through videogame characters. So suddenly, our favorite old school video games are evil. I mean, I never saw Pac-Man as a bad guy? But there he is eating people up! So yeah, this is yet another film with a weak villain whom we never even get to meet. Pixels is extremely simple and banal that’s all I can say.

Chris Columbus directs this film and it's sad to see him directing such a simplistic film, considering he's actually done decent family films like Home Alone and Home Alone 2, hell this is the guy who wrote Gremlins (1984) and freaking The Goonies (1985)! I would have liked something from Columbus with a little more story put into it, instead the whole film runs on a gag, not really even trying to get us invested. Pixel does have its moments, again, mostly its moments are associated with the appearance of the giant video game characters, but where’s the comedy? It’s not here; Pixels feels like they are not even really trying. I mean, you got all these good actors and comedians in your movie, why not have them throw in some of their own personality, let them improvise, let them put a little of their soul into the proceedings. This is the reason why Ghostbusters (1984) worked so well, it had a lot of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in it, it’s their personalities that bring those characters to life. In contrast, on Pixels Sandler seems to have no personality, he’s got this spaced out, bored look on his face all the time? Like he doesn’t even want to speak? He’s so laid back that he comes of as lifeless. So yeah, I get why people hate on Sandler so much, he’s just not doing anything relevant lately, I hope he gets his mojo back at some point. Still, Pixels isn’t terrible, it’s completely watchable, just not very engaging or hilarious. It’s simply put a very average film. But hey, there’s Frogger jumping and smashing a car into pieces! Cool!

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Directors: Lana and Andy Wachowski

Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne

It’s an interesting thing keeping the pulse of the film industry, you see directors rise to become almost rock stars and then you see them fall, to never be heard from again. They make that one good movie that takes over the world and then a god awful second and third film. For some reason, they can’t recapture whatever it is that audiences loved about their first film; the muse fades away and vanishes completely. I can now say that I have witnessed the downfall of the Wachowski’s, the duo of film directors who became box office sensations when they released the Matrix Trilogy onto the world. Their downward spiral started with Speed Racer (2008), a visually interesting film that tanked at the boxed office, because audiences considered it too cartoony and silly. They continued with Cloud Atlas (2012) a star studded sci-fi film that failed to connect with audiences, probably because it was too complex or convoluted. I’ve yet to watch it in its entirety. That one tanked as well, yet another film by the Wachowski’s that didn’t make its money back. And now, they’ve probably put the last nail on their coffin with Jupiter Ascending (2015), a gigantic mess of a film that didn’t make its money back either. I ask myself, how do these guys keep working when their films keep losing money? I’m thinking Hollywood’s patience with the Wachowski’s is running out, they ‘re probably thinking “third one you’re out dudes”. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a film from these guys in quite some time. Hollywood producers can be very unforgiving when it comes to losing their millions. 

I didn’t want to believe Jupiter Ascending was a huge mess of a film because usually, I’m the guy defending those films that everybody hates for seemingly no reason, like for example Waterworld (1995). Sadly, on this occasion I could clearly see why people didn’t connect with Jupiter Ascending.  It was clear as daylight. First off, it had a female protagonist and that usually spells certain doom for science fiction films. I would love to see more female laden science fiction films, sadly, the track record shows that female laden science fiction films equals death at the box office. It could be one of two things. My theory is not that these films fail because they have women as protagonists; they fail because when they decide to cast a female in a sci-fi film and market it as such, it’s usually a shitty film like Barb Wire (1996), Aeon Flux (2005), Catwoman (2004) or Elektra (2005). I cheer every time they put a female lead in a great science fiction film, say something like Charlize Theron in Mad Max:Fury Road (2015) or Noomi Rapace in Prometheus (2012). But both of these films are rare exceptions and both films were not marketed as having females as leads. Are sci-fi fans mostly chauvinist pigs that won’t go see a movie if they know a woman is the lead? Or are female leads cast in shitty films? Whatever the case may be, Jupiter Ascending was one of the times when they cast a female lead in crappy film. What matters to me with movies is not what gender is leading the film, but if the film is a good one, if it entertains, if it says something. Sadly, Jupiter Ascending failed on all these accounts.  

Where did Jupiter Ascending go wrong? Why was it a huge fail? One of the reasons is that this was The Wachowski’s trying to do their own version of Frank Herbert’s Dune, unfortunately, it feels like the Wachowski’s bit off more than they could chew, because Dune is not a gee-whiz, magical, feel good, happy ending type of novel. It’s deep, complex, political, religious and all encompassing; Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic is the anti-Star Wars and by that I mean, not exactly commercial. It’s dense, it’s epic, yet it has heart, it’s passionate. What the Wachowski’s did was make a soulless commercial version of Dune. They’ve stolen so many elements from Frank Herbert’s Dune novels that it’s not even funny. The element of royal families feuding over planets, the idea that aristocrats use a drug that makes them more powerful, the idea of young people with wisdom beyond their years, these are all elements taken from the Dune novels, yet Herbert’s novels deliver all these ideas with gravitas, dignity and solemnity. Jupiter Ascending brings it down to b-movie territory, accompanied by cheesy dialog and terrible performances. While Dune keeps a solemn tone, Jupiter Ascending turns into an overdose of messy computer generated effects involving flying boots and incomprehensible laser battles. I guess the Wachowski’s thought they could pull off a story like Dune, but with an emphasis on action and a dose of ‘cool’ which doesn’t sound so bad. If only Jupiter Ascending didn’t have so many negative elements going for it, I might have enjoyed it.  

"Flash Gordon approaching" 

When I say the film is messy, I’m speaking of the special effects heavy action sequences, which have cool concepts and ideas (like the flying boots) but things move so fast on the screen that all we see is this huge blurry  mess, we can’t really appreciate what the hell is happening on screen. Sometimes the action happens from so far away, we can’t even appreciate who or what we are seeing. This is something that happened to me once before in a film called The MutantChronicles (2008), a film I totally despised. Well, Jupiter Ascending suffers from this same malady; the camera distances itself from the action so much that we can’t see what the hell is happening; mix that with lightning fast action and the end result is you won’t understand a thing happening on screen. The visuals are too fast and too cramped, at times I felt like I was watching a Jackson Pollock painting, look at all those pretty colors, but what the hell is happening? The effects work goes from good to terrible, for example, I loved the look of the spaceships, but I hated these terribly animated lizard men that kept reminding me of the Koopas from Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (1993). These lizard creatures where so obviously computer generated, there was no effort put into making these creatures look remotely realistic or alive. Also, for some reason the film looks very dark, it made it even harder to see anything. 

Jupiter Ascending is infested with ancient clichés that any knowledgeable filmmaker would try and avoid. For example, they decided to dedicate a whole portion of the film to the age old cliché of having the good guy stop the naïve girl from marrying the wrong guy, ugh. That was cool when I saw it in Flash Gordon (1980), with Flash trying to stop Emperor Ming from marrying Gale. But here it feels old hat because it’s been done to death in a million movies before, most recently in John Carter (2012). By the way, this whole thing with the wedding, it plays out exactly like Flash Gordon (1980), so much so that the whole scene felt like a copy paste. I could probably do a whole list of films that end with a wedding having to be stopped by the good guy, so whenever I see this particular cliché I just have to roll my eyes. Yet, here are the Wachowski’s, filmmakers who were once considered groundbreaking, doing a film that’s filled with every single cliché in the book. They even included the one where the bad guy falls to his death! Come on! Don’t believe this film is ridden with cliches? Okay, then count the times in which Channing Tatum rescues Mila Kunis at the last moment from certain doom.

Then we have the main character, Jupiter Jones played by Mila Kunis, in my opinion, a terrible miscast. She doesn’t come off as strong, or a possible leader, nothing like say Paul Muadib in Dune. My advice to The Wachowski’s is, if you’re going to have a female lead a film, at least make her a strong female. Isn’t she supposed to become the leader of a nation? Shouldn’t she at least have demonstrated some leadership skills or at the very least be a go getter? Instead, she comes off like some helpless damsel in distress, and that my friends is just so passé. Audiences want to see strong women who use their brains and smarts to escape their perils. Sadly, Mila Kunis’s character comes off as an airhead who hates her life, she hates honest work. She wants to stay home sleeping. And this is the person to whom incredible responsibilities will be bestowed upon? I guess they were going for a Cinderella type of deal, but with Cinderella, you felt like she deserved better, Mila Kunis’s character doesn’t come off that way. The filmmakers just didn’t demonstrate her changing or evolving, she doesn’t seem to learn to become responsible, her character doesn't go through a journey of growth, or what they call a "character arc". Things just happen. Boom, now she’s royalty, boom know she owns a planet. These magnanimous events don't seem to affect her much, she just takes for granted that she is now responsible for a whole planet. Bottom line, Mila Kunis was horribly miscast here, she falls in my opinion on the list of beautiful actresses who can’t act. She's taken her place right next to Megan Fox. The screenplay with its cheesy dialog, didn’t help much either. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie squander its cast in such badly written roles; did the directors not give a crap about solid performances? Was the script beyond repair? Whatever the case, the cast was wasted on this film. Not even recent Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) can escape from this scripts awfulness.

So that’s it my friends, this was in my opinion one of the worst of the year. It’s an overdose of unintelligible CGI. Some reviewers refer to this one as a visual feast, but I don’t, I like to be able to appreciate and look at my visual feasts. Bottom line is this was a real disappointment coming from once groundbreaking filmmakers; there was no intent here to be innovative or interesting. Is there anything good I can say about this movie? Well, I liked those flying boots that’s for sure, but a movie cannot ride on cool flying boots alone. Oh and they cast legendary director Terry Gilliam in a cameo in which he plays a bureaucrat, which was awesome because as most film buffs know, Terry Gilliam’s films are always against bureaucracy! And like I said, the design work on the spaceships and buildings was interesting, but that’s about as good a compliment as I can give this movie. Did I mention this huge mess of a movie is over two hours long? I don’t mind long movies, just as long as they are good. To me Jupiter Ascending was lazy filmmaking, mired by bad writing and lack of originality. Sure it’s trying to be as epic as Dune, but it falls short because it feels like a stupefied version of Dune, which isn’t a good thing.

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Cool boots, bad movie. 

Equilibrium (2002)

Title: Equilibrium (2002)

Writer/Director: Kurt Wimmer

Cast: Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Sean Bean, Taye Diggs, William Fichtner

Review:

Director/Writer Kurt Wimmer has had an interesting career, though you might not think so at first because he’s only directed three films, he continues working as a screenwriter in big budget Hollywood action/sci-fi films like the recent Total Recall (2012) which in spite of being a “softer” film than Verhoeven’s blood drenched original film starting Arnold Schwarzenegger, still managed to be an entertaining film in my book. He also wrote Salt (2010) which by the way I absolutely loved; it got me to respect Angelina Jolie as an action star. Wimmer’s first directing gig was a Brian Bosworth action film called One Man’s Justice (1996) a.k.a. One Tough Bastard; but he got fired half way through the shoot of that film, so most of the time, he speaks of Equilibrium as his first directorial effort.  

Wimmer directs Bale

Equilibrium tells the tale of ‘Libria’; a world ruled under the tight regime of a dictator who is simply referred to as “Father”. What kind of a world is Libria? Well, because of the horrors brought on by war, this new society has decided that they want to stop feeling. In order to inhibit feelings everyone takes a drug called ‘Prozium’ at certain points during the day. To further hold a grip on society’s feelings, all forms of artistic expression have been prohibited. This means that poetry, novels, paintings, films and music have all been outlawed. Of course, not everyone agrees with this way of life and groups of rebels are spread out through out the land, hiding their music records, their books and paintings in little cache’s of cultural awesomeness. In order to find these cultural treasures and destroy them, the government has the ‘Grammaton Clerics’, police men who go around burning all forms of artistic expression. One of these Clerics is John Preston. Problem is that Preston has stopped taking Prozium and is starting to feel. Will he succumb to the wonders of sensation? Or will he remain a cold, robotic tool of the government?

Through his film, Wimmer comments on many things, one of them being emotional repression. Films make us feel, and Wimmer whose worked in the film industry for many, many years knows how repressed the filmmaking industry is. There’s no better example than Total Recall (2012); a film that Wimmer himself wrote. In my comparison between the old and new Total Recall, I felt this new one had been neutered, stripped of all that edgy violent coolness that the 1990 version had. On Equilibrium, we meet characters who are rebels and have stopped feeling. One of these characters is Mary. a character that has stopped taking the emotion repressing drug. When she is questioned as to why she wants to feel she says: “Feeling is as vital as breath, and without it. Without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock…ticking” Equilibrium speaks about how repressed society has become, and more specifically how repressed the American film industry is.

Certain cultural artifacts in Equilibrium are rated ‘EC-10’ by the government, a not so subtle way of commenting on the nefarious ‘NC-17’, a rating that can kill a films chances at the box office. During a point in the film we even see a foot soldier of the government burning a roll of film, so yes, Wimmer was commenting on the repressive nature of the rating systems in the film industry. I read an interview in which Wimmer accurately compares films to a drug. We see a sad film when we want to feel sad, an uplifting one when we want to feel uplifted and a funny one when we want to laugh. And it is true; films are like a drug that can manipulate our emotions. How many times have you found yourself deeply moved by a film; to the point where you even drop a tear or two? Ever found yourself screaming for Rocky to win? We have a rating system to control what the younger population is be exposed to, but is it also used to control the ideas we are presented with? Through the drug that the people of Libria take in Wimmer’s film, he was commenting on the Motion Picture Association of America and how they try to hold back what ideas we are exposed to and what we can feel through films. 

  

Of course, I am not against controlling the kind of images that our children are exposed to with a film. It would be stupid to allow a child to see a film like Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) for example. But why limit this films chances at appearing on the silver screen by rating it NC-17 and therefore limiting the amount of screens it can be seen in? Yes it is a violent and disturbing film, but it also comments about real life, in fact, the film is partially based on the exploits of real life murderer Henry Lee Lucas. It comments on real life horrors, and this, as seen by an educated adult shouldn’t be a problem. We all know that life is ugly, life is deadly, bloody, nasty, but it is also beautiful and uplifting and emotional. In life, things don’t always end with a happy ending; in fact the truth is that we rarely get a happy ending to anything! So why make believe that everything is pretty and clean and perfectly solved, when in real life this isn’t so? Aren’t films and art a mirror image of the world we live in? Doesn’t art imitate life? If this is so, then part of our world is in denial of who we really are. There’s a moment in Equilibrium when Cleric John Preston begins to feel, he looks at himself in the mirror and screams “look at yourself!” Maybe this is something that we as a society should start doing. Instead of trying to hide things as if they didn’t exist. There should be no problem in analyzing who we are through films; or maybe this is something that the powers that be don’t want the people to do? Think? Analyze? Learn? Again, as has happened before, film is seen as a threat, as a powerful tool that can change the way we see things as therefore, it is considered dangerous. This is also a theme I talked a bit about in my review for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003).

It cannot be denied that Equilibrium is obviously highly influenced by Orwelle’s 1984, Huxley’s A Brave New World and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 all books about societies living under fascist dictatorships. The burning of books, a totalitarian government ruled by a huge television screen, children who rat on their parents, art and sex being prohibited, rebels who want nothing more then to be themselves and be free, these are all elements that we’ve seen before on these books and films. What Equilibrium adds to the mix is the action and the style. It’s 1984 mixed with The Matrix. It’s no secret that Wimmer loves his kung fu style action; he always finds a way to work it into his films. This element was felt even stronger in Wimmer’s Ultraviolet (2006) a film that was taken by the studio and re-edited beyond recognition. Here’s the deal with Ultraviolet: you can see it has a lot of cool elements to it, the visuals are eye candy; the film is so colorful, always changing, visually, it’s never boring. It has a lot of that comic book style action Wimmer loves so much! Motorcycles that ride up buildings! Sadly, the film was re-edited by the studio who thought Wimmer’s cut of the film was “too emotional”. Again with the repression of emotions! The studio wanted to augment the more superficial elements of the film. As a result, we got a film that feels like a big old mess. But that wasn’t Wimmer’s fault; he wanted a film that would have as much action as emotion, yet it was the studio that wanted things the other way around. So if you find Ultraviolet to be a film that’s style over substance, now you know who to blame. I’d love to see Wimmer’s cut of the film!

Equilibrium benefits from having Christian Bale in the role of John Preston, a member of the government who suddenly finds he doubts what he does. He kills, nay, exterminates, the poor, the artistic and rebellious side of society. Their only crime is wanting to live in a world where they could be themselves; where they can be individuals. Not a world where we all think, dress, and look alike. Don’t know about you guys, but I fight for this everyday. For trying to be an individual, to say what I think and not be afraid to do so, to not wear a mask, to be the exception, not the norm, to be myself. This is what Equilibrium is all about. There’s this moment in which John Preston stops taking the drug and starts realizing that he is spilling the blood of innocents, he is no longer a cold robotic tool of the government, he feels and realizes he has someone’s blood on his hands. Wow, what a moment! Bale plays Preston in such a cold matter, with an emotionless face for a huge part of the film, but little by little emotion creeps its way into his life, then he is a tortured soul. That scene where he hears Beethoven’s 9^th for the first time, amazing stuff.

Of course the film is not perfect. Its budgetary limitations sometimes show their ugly face. For example, this is supposed to be a distant future, completely unrelated to the world we live in, yet the Clerics drive Cadillac Seville’s painted entirely in white? That takes me right out of this future world and takes me right back to the 90’s. Performance wise Taye Diggs is the only weak link in the film. While Emily Watson, Christian Bale and Sean Bean all turn in great performances, Digg’s fails to portray an emotionless being because he is always smiling or screaming in anger. What happened to the supposedly emotionless cleric? Worst part is that he says that he can detect someone who is feeling even before they know it themselves. Shouldn’t he know he himself is showing emotion all the time? He’s constant smirking gets a bit annoying. Also, the films comic book style action clashes with its heavy themes, but if you find comic book styled action entertaining (the way I do) then you just might find enjoyment in it. Especially the martial arts called 'Gun Kata' that Wimmer created specifically for this film. It's kind of like mixing Kung-Fu mixed with Guns, pretty cool stuff. Bottom line is this is a film with lots to say, heavy on themes, the way good sci-fi should be. It has a couple of weak moments that don’t allow it to be a perfect sci-fi, but it can certainly be qualified as  beyond average. This is a film that speaks about the importance of not loosing our humanity, and that matters a lot in my book.

Rating: 4 out of 5