Lucy

If nine out of ten times in an action movie we had a female protagonist, we would be lucky.  As it stands right now, one could probably count all of the main stream actioners with female leads in the past five years on one hand.  It is just not something that studios do, because perhaps it is something that the general audiences do not get behind as easily.  Exceptions are there, as Salt starring Angelina Jolie was able to make $36 million its opening weekend.  Compare that to the numbers that heroes of old (such as Schwarzenegger and Stallone) are able to pull in, and it looks like there could be a case to be made for the ladies.

Myself, I like it.  I enjoy my heroes to be of all kinds of personalities and backgrounds, each different in their own unique way but with a singular ability to grow to meet the challenge.  Two of my favourite protagonists have been females in Sarah Conner and Ellen Ripley, who are both distinct but manage to prove adaptable and strong.  To me, they are iconic.

Writer and Director Luc Besson is the man who gave us The Professional, which is as personal and caring as you can get in a movie with explosions and crazy Gary Oldmens.  Besson works to create Lucy as an atypical action film about a woman (coincidentally enough named Lucy) who, through very unfortunate circumstances, begins having more and more of her brain’s capacity functioning.  The normal human brain, we are told, uses only 10% of its capacity, and Morgan Freeman plays a professor who claims wonderful, god like powers await as more of the brain is unlocked.  We may consider him to be the audience’s wikipedia in this film.

Lucy is kicked off by an emotionally intense scene where Scarlett Johansson’s character (she who is Lucy) is unintentionally absorbed into the realm of high level narcotics dealing and is in fear for her life.  As enrapturing as this sequence was, it was numbed by Besson’s insertion of stock footage to symbolize the mood of the situation in relation to evolution.  Does that sound a little bit weird?  It fit from a logical standpoint, but served as a distraction that kept derailing the frantic and emotional scene that was unravelling.  It also became an undertone of spastic nature that would continue throughout the entire film.

The character of Lucy was an interesting one.  She was a typical party girl who was studying abroad before ingesting some drugs that opened her mind, but not in a psychedelic 60s way.  Once she begins utilizing her brain, she is able to kick ass, which is good.  However, she also turns into a murderer which begins to start a disconnect between her and the audience.  On top of that, her character begins losing the element of human emotions, which is an interesting development for the protagonist to undertake, but also highlights the disconnect.  There is a very good reason why in The Terminator movies the cyborg is not the main character, and that is because the movie goers need a surrogate in the film to connect to emotionally.  They need some sort of investment in the lead to care for the outcome, and that disappears further and further into the void as the story progresses.

Lucy essentially becomes omnipotent and omnipresent because of the evolution of her brain, which pushes the limits of suspension of disbelief.  Superman, as powerful as he is, has his kryptonite to prove as a foil.  Lucy had nothing to get in her way, which brought all action sequences to the point of function over purpose.  By the time the end is reached, I had no idea why there was a gun fight even happening if all she had to do was use her mind to disable the weapons.  None of it really mattered… she could do anything she wanted in her emotionless way.

I could not say that I was bored during the film, just that I lost care for everything that was taking place and had no lingering energy for investment by the rolling out of the finale.  I was treated to some disastrous special effects in two instances.  One where men floated in the air by the powers of a 1990s blue screen technology, and another where I got to see a dinosaur that reminded me of the computer animated ones I saw on the History Channel years ago as I skimmed through the channels in search of something to keep my mind occupied.

Rating - 2 out of 4 stars

Transcendence

Yep, I have been away for a while.  There was a personal flu that I had the last few weeks as well as a family member in the hospital that captured my focus.  This is no excuse, however, as the point of the blog was to try and write daily to keep my mind busy as well as forcing me to think creatively and analytically.  So, from some time away I now return to a star studded science fiction movie that popped out in theatres just this past weekend.

After establishing himself as one of the industry’s best cinematographer, Wally Pfister took to the director’s chair to quarterback the sci-fi film Transcendence.  Pfister, an Oscar winning cinematographer, has shown an uncanny ability to magnify the ethos of a movie through spectacular framing and lighting.  The main question that I had prior to the film was, ‘does someone who has the ability to show a story naturally have the ability to properly tell a story?’  The answer to my question was a very definitive, ‘no.’

The movie revolves around the concept of the creation of artificial intelligence, as Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) finds himself dying and through asinine development and lack of character development he agrees to have his brain structure integrated into a computer.  While this happened, I was treated to an unemotional wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and flaccid best friend Max (Paul Bettany) wasting their last few moments with the dying Caster.  The whole while Pfister made sure to insert shots of the sunlight hitting inanimate objects as well as loads of water drops in an over use of symbolism.  By the time the film came to an end, there was a mild payoff for the water drop imagery, but it never fully connect to create any emotion.  As well, whenever it was placed throughout the film it was done so in a distracting way that never bolstered the development of scenes but simply stood out in an abrupt nature.

This is essentially what was wrong with the film, and it was on every single level.  Attention was paid to the visual presentation, but there was a lack of humanity and understanding as to how the story should unfold.  As the story progressed and characters were lead to make key decisions, no effort was spent on showing why or how they came to their choices of action, leaving a vague and impersonal feel to the entire proceedings.

This was quite baffling for me, because the casting of the film was incredible.  Outside of the talent that I already mentioned there were actors such as Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, and Cillian Murphy, all of whom have the ability to no just deliver lines but to capture and present deeps levels of emotion and complexity.  In Transcendence I continually was left with the idea that no perfection was chased by Pfister to harness the skills of the people who he had access to.  Lines that were supposed to be building a sense of the characters and personalities were delivered flat and without meaning, as though they were never perceived to be of importance to the tale.

The only interesting thing about the movie was the concept itself.  Many science fiction films have tackled the idea of artificial intelligence and the dangers of computers becoming too powerful and self-aware, and portions of this film brought the concept home in a fresh light.  If told in an extremely different way this movie could have built upon the creepiness of its plot and created a true sense of uneasiness about human exploration into technological development.  But it didn’t.  It took the idea and presented it in phone book fashion, just putting the information up on the screen in a way that is about as uninteresting as it gets, leaving no desire to revisit it ever again in the future.

You know a film is bad when the audience floods out the exits the moment the film is done, with no lingering whatsoever and no desire to talk, sit, and digest what they just saw.  Within a minute of being told it had reached a finale, there was nothing left but empty seats, mine included.  I almost always sit through the credits and chat with a friend about the highs and lows of the ride that we had just been on, but by the point the final credit was rolling my car was already warming up.  This is just another one of those films that comes and goes, wasting its opportunity and not surviving in public consciousness when all is said and done.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars

The LEGO Movie

As a toy, Lego has always been one that rests on imagination.  You are given interlocking pieces of different sizes and shapes, and you can build until either your ideas reach an end or the blocks do.  As a child, I would sit on my bedroom floor with pieces strewn about me, ready to be assembled into whatever shape would fit the elaborate story my mind was concocting.  This has always been the power of the toy, and it is easy to say that The Lego Movie not only told a great and fun story, but also perfectly nailed the spirit behind the toy.

It is a world that consists of only Lego, which may just seem like an interesting concept to others, people of artistic or construction based minds can spend much of the film marveling over how the toy was incorporated and inserted into every structure, vehicle, or object.  Where animated films generally just create environments, The Lego Movie created them based in the realm of the toy, which meant every single thing in the movie (right down to smoke and water), needed to be able to be created from actual pieces.  While the story was unfolding, it was hard to not continually marvel at how it was all design, how pieces were used, and the layered concept behind the creation of the environment.

Visually, it was stunning, and I would quickly watch the film again just to pay more attention to how the background was constructed.  A portion of the film used stop motion, which I felt really kept a trueness to what a world made of Lego would be.  Apparently there were almost four million pieces used in this movie, and I read that if you were to reconstruct everything you would need over 15 million pieces.  I find myself just blown away by the creative minds that were able to envision the physical landscape in the kind of way needed to pull it off.

Mixed in with all of the beauty of the movie was the story of an extremely normal Lego construction worker named Emmett (Chris Pratt) who stumbles onto something special and finds out that he is the one who was prophesied to save the Lego universe from the plans of the evil President Business (Will Ferrell).  He gets help from Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), one of the remains ‘master builders’ (someone who is able to create amazing and unique objects from the Lego pieces around them), who takes Emmett to meet the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) and gains help from the ever so awesome and helpful Batman (Will Arnett).  The base may follow the overly used ‘chosen one’ story line, but it does it in a fresh and innocent way, and when the entire concept of the story is revealed, the whole tale becomes very touching and endearing.

Director’s Christopher Miller and Phil Lord really set the bar for what an all-ages film can be.  The sentiment of the story can hit the hearts of both children and adults, as well as delivering a very entertaining film.  As well as being a viscerally stimulating experience, there are multiple levels of humour that engage both children and adults.  While the kids get to laugh at the fun comedy that lays on the surface (something the adults also get to laugh at) the keen eyes get to gain joy in some of the subtle nuances of the film as well as some of the pop culture references that make their way into the movie.

Of course, all of this would be for not if the actors were delivering monotone performances, and believe me, they sure were not.  This is one of the best voiced animations I have seen since Toy Story, as all of the actors seemed to just be completely throwing themselves into their roles fully.  While I was watching the movie, I was imagining the people sitting in front of a microphone, reading their lines with their faces contorting and arms flailing wildly as they completely got sucked into their roles.  This was not just the case with the main cast, but with side characters and cameos as well.  I could write and write about how amazing Liam Neeson was as Good Cop/Bad Cop, and how adorable yet dementedly crazy Alison Brie was as Unikitty.  There are too many names to bring up in this conversation, as it was incredible from top to bottom.

When I left the theatre, I was stuck thinking about the movie more and more.  I wanted to head to my parent’s house and try to uncover the old boxes of Lego, and start to become a master builder myself.  That movie worked on me.  While perhaps some may worry that it could be a feature length commercial for the toy, it was not.  The reality is that it was a feature length tribute to the spirit of imagination that the toy brings out in people… how it can turn children into sophisticated architects and turn adults into children, and it succeeded perfectly.

Rating – 4 out of 4 stars

Olympus Has Fallen

Well, I am finally back.  After having to take a bit of a break to allow my body the chance to work out the kinks of a prescription, I am ready to do the daily movie reviews.  I had attempted to keep it up when I started the prescription, but the side effects became rather unfortunate and life was reduced to simple things like sleeping (actually, it involved a heck of a lot of not sleeping – one of the fun side effects), yelling at cats, and watching movies.  Lucky for you, I have seen a few movies as of late that have left me with stuff to talk about.  Unlucky for you, most of those films were lacking any kind of depth and included a lot of films that focused on explosions and/or giant sharks.

Today’s movie is a film that I saw in theatre earlier this year when it first came out, and I managed to talk Rachel into viewing it when it popped up on Netflix.  The movie is Olympus Has Fallen, a film about terrorists who take over the White House and the one man who can stop them.  When attempting to convince Rachel that she should watch this movie with me I left out the fact that it was basically considered by everyone to be Die Hard but in the White House (Rachel fell asleep during Die Hard, so I made sure to never bring it up).

Tragically, not only is this film like Die Hard in its most base concept, but there are styles and moments taken right out of the beloved action film from the 80s.  One could see this film and interpret the thievery as laziness, and it would be hard to argue with that fact as laziness was what I was left thinking about in regards to a number of a of this movie.  For one thing, the CGI effects in this movie are lazy to the point of being on par with an Asylum production.  From planes to cars, the visual effects cook awful and like something out of a made for TV movie.  Also in the realm of laziness was the unfolding of the assault on the White House.  Apparently an unidentified military plane can fly into American airspace and get to within a stone’s throw of the nation’s capital before a mere two planes are scrambled to ‘intercept’ it.  After those measly planes got shot down, it seems it would take another five minutes to finish the job.

One thing that had me worried going into this film was gratuitous amounts of flag waving, since it is a movie about taking back the White House against evil foreigners (Koreans, to be exact).  Not being an American, movies with an overabundance of patriotism can cause some near fatal eye rolling and I was sure this film would be wandering into that territory.  While it did have its moments of flag waving patriotism, it was not too hard to digest and was kept to a minimum.  The hardest pill to swallow was the fact that they called the White House ‘Olympus,’ essentially referring it to the mythical place where the gods lived and ruled over the earth.  That seemed more than a tad ethnocentric, but if you can get past that you can get to meet…

Mike Banning… Secret Service badass with emotional baggage and a need to prove to himself that he can protect the president.  Really, that’s all you need to know about him, but I will tell you more.  Mike Banning does not doddle.  Mike Banning takes no prisoners.  Mike Banning believes in asking questions first, shooting second, and then shooting third.  Gerard Butler plays the role of Banning (a great name for a one man wrecking ball, if ever there was one) and is where the real heart of this movie is.  The dialogue is cheesy and uninspired, but Butler makes this film fun and it is easy to let all of the previous laziness fall to the side and just join in on the fun of a very angry Banning ripping his way through baddies on route to saving the world.

What would otherwise be a laughable movie actually ends up turning into a great revisit to the feel of the eighties action movie, you just have to make it through what I thought was a slog for the first thirty minutes.  If you can endure the predictable beginning and awful special effects during the siege on the White House, you just may end up having a blast with this action flick.  Because so much of the production of the movie felt lazy (I should mention that once the movie started taking place within the White House, it tightened up significantly), the burden lands on the shoulders of the great cast to give it some life and they do just that.  It is full of acting veterans such as Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, Melissa Leo, Ashley Judd, Robert Forster, and Morgan Freeman.  It is a heck of a deep cast, and they all slide right into their roles and are what really makes this movie work.

In a year that has seen some monumental flops from former action stars of the 80s attempting to recreate their charm, it is an 80s action movie knock-off that is able to hit the mark.  While there are so many aspects of Olympus Has Fallen that we can criticize and find fault in, it is the cast and the action scenes that happen from within the White House that allow the viewer to find enjoyment with a mindless action movie.  Where some films have convoluted plots to try and seem smart, this film has a convoluted plot that simply exists to be a vehicle for gun fights, fist fights, knife fights, cheesy lines from the hero, and attack helicopters.  That’s exactly the kind of plot that Mike Banning likes.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars