Way Too Late Movie Review: “The Wolfman”

This is one of those rare occasions where I actually watched a Netflix movie the same day I got it and sent it back promptly the next day. Only because my wife wanted to see it too, otherwise I’m sure it would have sat half forgotten on a shelf for at least a month until I got around to it.

“The Wolfman” is the story of Lawrence Talbot, played by Benicio Del Toro, an American actor returning to his ancestral home in England when he learns that his brother is missing. When he arrives he finds his brother dead and tensions between him and his estranged father, played by Anthony Hopkins, to be high. His brother’s widow Gwen, played by Emily Blunt, is distraught and vulnerable and he begins to fall in love with her. But while investigating his brother’s death, he’s attacked by a creature, which he soon comes to realize was a werewolf. The authorities and townspeople are suspicious, and Talbot begins to suspect that his father knows more about what his happening then he is letting on.

I’ll start with the positives. Visually the movie is beautiful. The settings are dark and gothic, striking the perfect mood. And the special effects are quite good, particularly the transformation sequences, which is inevitably the heart of a good werewolf movie. And Hugo Weaving’s portrayal of the investigator trying to solve the case is excellent, sort of a ye olde Agent Smith. But the biggest drawback in the movie in my opinion is Del Toro, who just seems miscast in the lead role. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a great actor, but this part just doesn’t seem to fit him. Maybe there’s a parallel in showing him portraying Hamlet early in the movie, because he seems to carry a melancholy with him throughout the film. But his fury seems more sullen then angry. Maybe that’s intentional, but to me it just doesn’t feel like a lead performance. Anthony Hopkins is excellent in the role of the father, but the character is too subtle to say that he stole the movie. All in all, the pacing (especially in the first half) is slow, and the ending is unfulfilling.

My wife said that it was just ‘meh’, and that she’s glad that we didn’t pay to see it in the theater when it came out. However I think that this is a movie that benefits from the theater experience. The gothic settings and action sequences would probably work better on the big screen. But on one point we agree, and that’s on the ‘meh’ factor.

Three out of Five Stars

Way Too Late Movie Review: “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

This is one of those movies that seem like such a big deal when it first comes out, but then a few months later no one even remembers it. In fact, I think that if I hadn’t put it on my Netflix queue back when it was still in theaters, I would have forgotten all about it as well. I remember being interested in it back then. The special effects looked good and it was a remake of a classic science fiction movie, which can be good or bad. But I have never seen the original so I didn’t carry any baggage with me into this experience, I kept an open mind. However, now that I’ve seen it, I’m beginning to understand why it disappeared from the public consciousness so quickly.

Keanu Reeves plays Klaatu, and alien who arrives on Earth in a giant glowing sphere that lands in the middle of Central Park. Jennifer Connelly plays Dr. Helen Benson, a scientist who is called in as part of a team, at first to deal with the aftermath of what they believe to be the inevitable impact by an object that will obliterate Manhattan, and then later to examine the alien. They determine that the alien has to be born into human form on Earth in order to survive on our planet. On the surface, Keanu Reeves seems perfect for this part. His stiff and stilted acting style seems tailor made for an alien in an unfamiliar human form. And I have to say that Reeves does a passable job. But where the movie starts to fall apart is in the decisions that the characters make. Dr. Benson decides to help Klaatu escape, but why? It seems like a nice thing to do but there’s no logic behind it, at the time she knows nothing about why he’s on Earth or what his intentions are. When Klaatu needs help, he calls Dr. Benson, but why? The two seem to instantly trust each other for no apparent reason.

Meanwhile in Central Park, a large creature stands guard over the sphere that Klaatu arrived in. Not quite organic and not quite fully mechanical, they call him GORT, which is an acronym for something that I couldn’t be bothered to remember. They shoot him with missiles, which do nothing. And then eventually they capture him by sealing him in a giant triangular container that they just happened to have on hand and that just happens to fit him perfectly.

Elsewhere, Dr. Benson is chauffeuring Klaatu around along with her young stepson, played by the next Karate Kid, Jaden Smith. We learn that she’s a widow, and that the boy’s father was in the Army. He’s angry, and he thinks that the Army should just kill the aliens, even if they don’t mean any harm, just in case. But off course, Klaatu does mean us harm. He’s come to save the Earth, not for humans, but from them. Smaller spheres begin appearing all over the planet, collecting animal specimens. And Dr. Benson decides that the only way to save humanity is to convince Klaatu to stop it all. She brings him to John Cleese, a professor who tries to convince Klaatu that humanity is worth saving, that we can change or ways, but only at the precipice of destruction. Klaatu seems to consider it, but then the Army shows up, thanks to the kid who called them. And again, more bad decisions. Klaatu, Benson and the kid take off into the woods. Why does she keep putting this kid in danger? Why did she bring him in the first place when she went to pick up Klaatu? Why not leave him at the professor’s house here, where he’ll be safe instead of running out into the open where Army helicopters are trying to capture them? Benson gets captured but Klaatu and the kid escape. Klaatu saves the kid from falling of a bridge, and instantly the kid starts helping him. The same kid who tried to turn him in not a minute earlier.

Meanwhile GORT is getting tired of being poked and prodded and starts wrecking shit. He turns into a swarm of tiny machines that start moving through the Eastern seaboard like a cloud, eating up everything along the way. Benson convinces the Secretary of Defense to let her try and talk to Klaatu to convince him to stop. The kid takes Klaatu to his father’s grave and asks him to resurrect him. When Klaatu says he can’t, the kid gets pissy again. Benson shows up and has a heart to heart with the kid and everyone has a good cry. In the end, Klaatu sacrifices himself to save the Earth.

The special effects were good and the acting wasn’t bad, but the plot is full of so many holes that I found it hard to really get into the movie. So while I wouldn’t say it was a total waste of time, I wouldn’t recommend it either.

My Netflix Rating: Three out of Five Stars

Way Too Late Movie Review – "District 9"

If there’s one thing that being snowed in for two days is good for, it’s catching up on my movie watching. So in between bouts of shoveling out my car (because my landlord is an asshole who didn’t get our parking lot plowed until 9:00 Sunday night), I managed to finally sit down and watch District 9. As with most of the movies that I watch way too late, D9’s reputation preceded it. Most of what I had read on the Internet said that the first half of the movie, with its faux-documentary style was great, but that the second half devolved into just another action movie. What I was expecting was a hard line, a moment where the documentary ended and the action movie started, but it wasn’t quite as cut and dry as that.

Throughout the movie the style seems to shift back and forth. Even during action sequences the movie will cut to security camera footage of the action, or news footage, or talking heads talking about the events that are taking place. In the beginning of the movie the documentary style serves the story well. We get our back story without any clunky dialogue, we’re introduced to characters in a way that makes them seem very real and natural, but by the end of the movie that all seems to fall apart. The interview segments and security camera shots no longer serve a purpose other than as a distraction, save maybe for the very end of the movie where they provide a nice capper to the climax. Ultimately, I thought the first half of the movie seemed to drag in parts, and a lot of the more comical aspects of the main character didn’t seem to fit with the tone of the film.

The premise is probably the strongest aspect of the movie. It’s Alien Nation, only much darker. Instead of the aliens assimilating into human society, they’re segregated and exploited. The Prawns, as the aliens are called, occupy a slum called District 9, where they’ve been relegated to trading their advanced alien weaponry (which is useless to humans, who are unable to operate it) to the Nigerian mob for cat food.

Our protagonist is Wikus Van De Merwe, a pencil pusher with the MNU who happens to have the unlucky distinction of being the boss’s son-in-law. Wikus is put in charge of the project to evict that aliens from District 9 and move them to the new District 10, far outside of Johannesburg. It’s clear from almost the beginning that he is in over his head, and as he blunders from one eviction to the next in District 9, he becomes exposed to an alien liquid that begins to change him into a Prawn. It’s then that he discovers two things. The MNU are conducting some pretty shady experiments on the Prawns, and his life isn’t worth spit to anyone but himself.

Wikus is a character that one would expect to find on “The Office”, not in an action movie. And it’s that juxtaposition that drives the movie, as this less than average guy finds himself in one untenable situation after another and is forced to make compromises that he never would have previously thought himself capable of. At first, to get his life back, and then finally, to do what’s right, knowing that he will probably never have his life back. Wikus isn’t a smart man, he isn’t even a very good man, but in the end he finds himself an unlikely hero, in a world that considers him a traitor, in a body that is not his own.

Even though I think the movie dragged and lost its tone at times, I think it succeeds in telling an unusual story in an interesting way.

My Netflix Rating: Three out of Five Stars

Way Too Late Movie Review: "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

This one has to be a new record for me. According to Netflix, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” was shipped to me on October 15. I just watched it this past weekend. What can I say, never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. I have to say that I liked it, it delivered what it promised, at least in my mind. Some kickass action sequences, Wolverine’s backstory, good character moments, lots of appearances by other mutants that we haven’t seen before.

Liev Schreiber has to be one of my all time favorite actors, and he does a great job in this as Victor Creed (aka Sabertooth). In the comics Wolverine and Sabertooth’s pasts were always mysteriously linked, and in some continuities Sabertooth is actually Wolverine’s father. But making them brothers I thought was a nice touch. It added pathos to the relationship and made their turn to enemies that much more tragic. In Victor we see what Logan could be if he truly did let the animal in him take full control. But despite his brother’s savagery, Logan defends him, even killing to protect him. In the war montage at the beginning of the film, we see that these two violent and savage men never have a shortage of military conflicts to keep their skills busy, proving that no matter how vicious they are, the world is always more so. And the only thing that these two brothers have is each other. But when they join Stryker’s Team X, Logan finally finds the limit to the brutality that he will endure, and he leaves the team and his brother behind. Victor sees this as a betrayal, and Stryker manipulates him and his anger to bring Wolverine back to him, so that he can experiment on him to create his ultimate mutant weapon. Wolverine escapes, and unleashes his animal on Victor and Stryker both.

In Wolverine’s scenes with Silverfox, we see the kind of man that he wants to be, and we see the life that he could have had. That’s what makes her “murder” so devastating. Silverfox, the couple that take him in after he escapes from Weapon X, every glimpse at normalcy that he gets is violently ripped away. Silverfox’s betrayal at the end literally brings him to his knees. He finds out that not only was his chance at a normal life taken from him, he never had it in the first place. His reality is crumbling around him. But in the end, his love for her wins out, and he goes back to save her, to save all of the mutants. This is the conflict that has always been central to the character, what he is versus who he is. The violent animal versus the hero. I think the movie did a good job in portraying this.

The Rest:

Ryan Reynolds did a great job as Deadpool. He struck just the right balance of humor and action that the character demands. My only complaint would be that he wasn’t in the movie long enough. But of course, Deadpool will be getting his own movie soon enough. It just makes me wish that we could have gotten that Flash movie with Ryan Reynolds that we were promised, it would have been killer. The Weapon XI fight at the end was cool, and I loved the way that his eyes darkened to resemble Deadpool’s mask from the comics when he used Cyclops’ power, and the way his severed head kept firing optic blasts all the way down the tower as it fell. One logistical question though: Those retractable swords would make it impossible for him to bend his elbows when they’re retracted, seems kind of inconvenient. How does he wipe his ass? But then, with no mouth, he can’t eat, which means he wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom. So if he doesn’t need to eat, how does he get nutrients? I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, I’m not saying that these questions ruined the movie for me. I’m just curious.

The Blob even got a fair shake, I thought. Sure, he might have been played for laughs during his fight with Wolverine, but they still showed him as a powerful mutant and not a complete moron. And the fat suit didn’t look nearly as ridiculous as I thought it would. In fact, I’d say they did a better job with Blob than X3 did with Juggernaut.

Gambit I was a little disappointed with. Maybe it’s because he’s always been one of my favorite characters, but I just felt like they could have done it so much better. First of all, they didn’t get his eyes right. Gambit is supposed to have black eyes with red pupils. I know it’s a small detail, but I think it would have gone a long way toward making us feel like this was really gambit if they would have done that, especially since they didn’t keep anything from his costume, or even his personality really (apart from him and Wolverine not getting along too well). And I didn’t like they way they casually threw in that origin for his name, the guards on the island called him Gambit because he used to beat them at cards. Really? Does that sound like something a bunch of prison guards would come up with? If that’s really where his name came from, wouldn’t it be ‘That Fucker Who Keeps Beating us at Cards’? His powers were done well, and the fight scene with him and Wolverine was done well, but that then leads to another major problem I have. At the end of that scene, Wolverine has Sabertooth dead to rights, and Gambit stops him from killing him. Why? It was well established that Gambit had no love for Sabertooth, if he really thought that they were there to take him back to the island why wouldn’t he have just escaped when he had the chance? It doesn’t make sense.

In the end, Weapon XI is dead but Stryker manages to erase Wolverine’s memories with an adamantium bullet to the brain, leaving him in the state we find him in the first X-Men movie. The mutants on Stryker’s island are rescued by Professor Xavier, and Wolverine sets out on his own. All in all, it was a good movie. And it leaves me excited for the Deadpool and Magneto movies that have been promised to come.

My Netflix Rating: Four out of Five Stars

Way Too Late Movie Review: Star Trek (Includes Spoilers)

As anyone who knows me longer than 30 seconds can attest, I am a huge Star Trek fan. So I’m afraid that I am cheating a bit here with the format that I’ve established for my ‘Way Too Late’ movie reviews in that I saw this one in the theater when it first came out. But I didn’t have a blog back then, so cut me some slack. With the movie’s release on DVD however, I did recently get to experience the next best thing to seeing it for the first time. Showing it to my father, and fellow Star Trek fan, and my brother-in-law last weekend. You see, my father loved the original series and he always hated William Shatner, so this movie was a win/win for him. Competing with the movie for attention was my two-month-old nephew Jackson. His cuteness made for a close battle, but I’m proud to say that the movie held it’s own. Also in attendance for this viewing: My sister, who hates Star Trek and took the opportunity to tease me about my obsession as well as my nerdly observations (Look, Kirk’s motorcycle doesn’t have an axle!) and my five-year-old daughter, who sat with rapt attention throughout most of the movie. Never have I been more proud of her. Seriously, it almost brought a tear to my eye. *sniff*

Anyway, on with the show. The movie largely centers on Kirk and Spock, on their lives, on their extremely contentious relationship and their burgeoning friendship. Spock is born into conflict, the child of the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth and his human wife. He doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere, certainly not on Vulcan where his mixed heritage is treated like a handicap. But his mother encourages him and supports him. One of the best things about Zachary Quinto’s performance as a young Spock is the vulnerability he shows, the subtle just-under-the-surface conflict between his Vulcan and human halves. Speaking of, Kirk is born into conflict as well, literally. Aboard his father’s ship as it’s being attacked by the crazed Romulan commander Nero. George Kirk sacrifices his life for his wife and his child, for his crew. We’re shown little of Kirk’s childhood, but enough to tell us that it wasn’t an easy one. He’s gifted, but rebellious. Talented, but reckless. And when we see him as a young man it’s clear that growing up without his father has made him very different from the Kirk that we’re all used to, but at the same time we can still see confident swagger that Shatner originally brought to the role so many years ago. He carries with him a lot of pain and anger, but he’s still our Kirk.

Once aboard ship the movie really gets moving. The look of the Enterprise is just modernized enough so as not to look silly, but enough of the original style is kept to remind us where we are. Our heroes finally come face to face (or ship to ship) with our antagonist Nero and Pike is taken prisoner. We get a great action scene on the drill, complete with a redshirt death. It’s around this time that the average viewer may be thinking ‘This is fun and all, but there’s no real sense of danger. We know how it all turns out, everybody lives, etc.’ And then Vulcan is destroyed. Spock spells it out for the slow kids in the class. Whatever happened in the original history, it doesn’t apply now. Nero changed all that, it’s a whole new ballgame. This is a brilliant move on the part of the filmmakers I think. Every huge movie like this, whether it’s a remake or an adaptation, always has to face the challenge of making changes to the source to suit the movie or to appeal to non-fans, and yet somehow still try to please the hardcores. Very few are able to accomplish it. But by starting the story over again, and by giving the big fans a legitimate reason for doing so (with references to the original timeline to tie it all together), everybody wins.

So Spock loses his mother and decides to tuck tail and run. Back to Starfleet to regroup what’s left of the fleet. Kirk thinks this is a horrible idea, he thinks that they should go after Nero. The disagreement ends with Spock putting Kirk in an escape pod and leaving him behind on some ice planet. An extreme reaction perhaps, he could have just put him in the brig, but Spock’s not having a good day, he just watched his entire planet get sucked into a black hole. Kirk wakes up, runs from some CGI monsters, and ends up in a cave where he runs into…Spock. Leonard Nimoy, that is. And that’s when he fills us in on the rest of the back story. Future Spock, on a mission to prevent a star from going nova, fails and Romulus is destroyed. Nero blames Spock and attacks him, both get sucked into a black hole and appear at different points in the past. Nero waits 25 years to get his revenge (Romulans age pretty well apparently). And now Vulcan is destroyed and he’s going after Earth next.

Kirk and Future Spock hike to the nearest Starfleet outpost where they meet Scotty, played by Simon Pegg. Kirk and Scotty transwarp-beam back to the Enterprise, Spock beats up Kirk, Kirk takes command, they track down Nero, Kirk and Spock beam over to his ship, Kirk gets beat up again, they rescue Captain Pike, Spock flies Future Spock’s ship into Nero’s ship, blowing up all the red matter and creating a black hole in the middle of the ship, and the Enterprise escapes. Back on Earth Kirk, and the rest of the cadets presumably, graduate and Kirk is promoted directly to Captain and given command of the Enterprise, where he chooses Spock as his First Officer. Pretty cool, huh?

In short, this movie is awesome. From the performances to the special effects, and the rebooting of a classic story and classic characters making them new and fresh to a whole new audience while still keeping their core audience on board. I can’t wait to see what the next movie brings.

My Netflix Rating: Five out of Five Stars


Random Observations:

-Kirk gets beat up a lot in this movie. I think he might have broken Captain Archer’s record for sheer number of ass-kickings in a two hour time period.

-Speaking of Archer, I loved the shout out Scotty gives. Poor Porthos.

-Karl Urban is awesome as Bones. From his first scene on the shuttle to his scene with Spock (Are you out of your Vulcan mind!), he hit it perfectly.

-Simon Pegg is awesome as Scotty. Everything he said made me laugh.

-Was that…Tyler Perry? …the hell?

Possible Sequel Ideas:

“Sulu and Chekov go to White Castle”
Along the way they run into Neil Patrick Harris who’s trying to get to Risa for some alien poon.

“Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Starfleet Academy”
A Tyler Perry Production, directed by and starring Tyler Perry.

“Shaun of the Enterprise”
Klingons invade, boarding the Enterprise where Scotty fights them off with a cricket bat.

Way Too Late Movie Review – "Wanted"

I have a really bad habit of letting my Netflix movies sit on top of my television for months before I finally get around to watching them. I think it has something to do with having to find a two hour block of time in which I can watch the movie with no distractions, which in this crazy modern workaday world can be hard enough as it is. But when the movie is something that I added to my Netflix queue months prior when the movie was out in theaters, and by the time I receive it I can barely remember why I was interested in it in the first place, it’s also hard to find the desire to set aside that two hours, even when I do have the time. The ironic thing is that when I finally watch the movie, I almost always enjoy it, so you’d think I’d learn from my experience that I’m pretty good at picking movies for myself, being that I am myself. The side effect of this process is that by the time I’ve seen a movie, it’s too late to be able to talk to anyone about it. So I’ve decided that this forum is the perfect place to share my thoughts about these movies, that you’ve either already seen eons ago, or had no desire to see and are thus not interested in the least. And with that rousing introduction, onto my first review.

Wanted


I remember thinking when I added this to my queue that this looked like a fun shoot ‘em up, and Angelina Jolie looked pretty hot, and on those two fronts this movie certainly did not disappoint. What I didn’t expect, and was pleasantly surprised by, was the main character’s story arc. In the vain of movies like "The Matrix" or "Harry Potter", "Wanted" is a movie about an ordinary man who learns that he has extraordinary abilities, and that he is destined to lead another life, a more meaningful and exciting life. It’s the old adolescent fantasy that you’re destined for more than this one horse town, and someday your real parents, James Bond and Lara Croft, will swoop in and take you away from all of this. Sure, it’s a little immature, but it’s good to indulge your inner child once in a while. After all, isn’t indulging in fantasy what movies are really about.

Wesley Gibson is in ordinary man, so ordinary in fact that he can’t bring himself to care about anything in his life. His job is awful, his boss is an evil shrew who constantly berates and belittles him, his girlfriend is an emasculating bitch who is boning his best friend, and his best friend is a posturing macho asshole. So when he’s kidnapped by Angelina Jolie and led through an elaborate gun fight and car chase which ends in the revelation that his father was an assassin and that he shares the same preternatural gift for adrenaline fueled gun violence, he first can’t believe it. But when he tries to go back to his normal life, he finally snaps. He tells off his boss so perfectly, that the humiliation renders her nearly catatonic. He cracks his best friend in the face with his keyboard, knocking out a tooth and spelling ‘Fuck You’ in midair with the broken keys. This scene alone makes this movie worth it for me. Maybe I’m projecting my own dark, twisted, work-related stress fueled fantasy onto this, but I’m okay with that.

While Wesley trains he learns about the Fraternity, a group of assassins that have existed for a thousand years and who receive their orders from a loom. They are weapons of fate, killing to make the world a better place. They train Wesley because they believe that he is the only one who can kill his father’s killer, a former member of the Fraternity who has left and is now seeking to destroy the group. But once Wesley is finally ready and goes after the man, the movie takes a twist.

(Spoilers ahead. Honestly though, if you haven’t seen the movie by now you’re probably not going to.)

The man that Wesley has been sent to kill is actually his father. He left the Fraternity when he learned that the boss, Morgan Freeman, was no longer taking the targets from the magic loom, but picking them himself for profit. Yes, the shocking twist is that this group of professional killers are actually the bad guys. Whoda thunk, right? Wesley decides to go after the Fraternity, sending a horde of exploding rats into the building. The rats explode, but do surprising little damage. Wesley then spends the next ten minutes killing everyone in sight on his way up to get Morgan Freeman. He’s cornered in the end, so he tells all of the assassins the truth about their boss, that he’s been making up the target list. Morgan Freeman admits it, and tells the assassins that all of their names have come up on the loom, so if they want fate in charge then they should all kill themselves. Angelina Jolie, the good assassin, saves Wesley by curving a bullet all the way around the room, killing all of the assassins, including herself. It’s a good thing they were all standing in a perfect circle. Which is kind of dumb when you think about it, if they had opened fire on Wesley they all would have been killed in the crossfire. Wesley does win in the end when he manages to kill Morgan Freeman with a sniper shot from about ten miles away that actually travels through the hole in a doughnut at one point. But hey, I’m not going to start attacking a movie that bends bullets for realism. I might as well start attacking "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" on the grounds that Chinese people can’t fly (or can they?).

So what’s the lesson of this movie? If you life sucks, you need to take matters into your own hands to fix it. Take responsibility for figuring out who you really are instead of just trudging through existence on auto-pilot, waiting for something to happen. Maybe the lesson is that morality is in the eye of the beholder. Or that fate is just an excuse to absolve you of personal responsibility. We all make our own fate. Or maybe, just maybe, the lesson is that gun fights are cool and Angelina Jolie is hot and you get to see her ass. Honestly, what more do you want out of a movie?

My Netflix Rating: 4 out of 5 stars