Independence Day: Resurgence

Love it or hate it, Independence Day is one of the 90's greatest cinematic legacies. A massive alien invasion and an endearing cast of characters made for one enjoyable blockbuster. A possible sequel floated around Fox for years like a paper UFO on a string, but now it's an actual sequel. This is Independence Day: Resurgence.

The movie and its characters mark 20 years since a brave Apple Mac Laptop, some fighter jets and a few humans defeated the evil "Whatchmacallit" Aliens (real names not told). Earth rebuilt itself with technology pilfered from the downed Alien Ships. There's now a global defense force, Earth Space Defense, protecting the planet. Everything is better than ever. But former President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and former cableman Dave Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) believe the Aliens will one day try round two.

A ship much larger than the first film's Mothership shows up on the Fourth of July. On it is the "Whatchmacallit" Queen and she has vengeance on her mind. The Queen plots to mine Earth's core and suck it dry. A squadron of ESD fighter pilots, led by Dylan Hiller (Jessie Usher), stepson of the late Steve Hiller (Will Smith, from part one), face her head-on. Meanwhile, a giant Sphere, a survivor of the Aliens' previous conquests, comes into the picture. The humans must keep the Sphere from the Queen to save their planet and the universe.

The film also marks the reunion of director Roland Emmerich, and his co-writer/producer Dean Devlin, who went their separate ways after The Patriot. They're two of five writers credited on the screenplay. Like the first film, it juggles multiple storylines centered around the Alien Invasion. It's mostly fine, though there's a salvage crew that could've used more development. It was also nice that the film expanded the scope beyond not just America, but Earth, with the Sphere. The storyline does rush at times, but surprisingly, the pacing was pretty good. It felt like under two hours when it was two hours!

The characters, both old and new, were also good. The best new character was Floyd (Nicolas Wright), a pushy accountant who proves capable in a shootout. Dylan's fellow pilots, including Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth), were a nice bunch of characters. Brent Spiner's return as quirky Dr. Okun, who was seemingly killed by a captive Alien in the first film, surprised some people. But I was surprised that the late Robert Loggia cameoed as General Grey, for I didn't recognize him with his white hair. Judd Hirsch, as David's father Julius, looks about the same as last time. Hirsch's presence was welcome as he had the best quips and quotes.

The visual department certainly delivers the "boom." The new spaceships,Terran vehicles and rebuilt cities were awesome designs. The Aliens were perfectly rendered in CGI and composited well. The Aliens' touchdown provided as much destruction as the first film. I also find it funny that the White House, whose destruction was the first film's money-shot, was barely touched this time. It was made for $200 million versus the first film's $75 million and it shows.

Independence Day: Resurgence is a visual experience well-worth the big screen. Who knows if it'll be an endearing classic like its predecessor, but right now, it's a good summer blockbuster. The film ends with an obvious direction for part three and for that, it has my curiosity and attention.

Finding Dory

Hi, I'm Jethro! I write about movies. Several, in fact! Wanna know who had a movie once? Dory. That Pixar fish. She was just a side character in Finding Nemo, now she...

Hi, I'm Jethro! I had a movie once. Several, in fact! Wanna know...

Hi, I'm Jethro...

Wait, I didn't have a movie. Anyway, here's what I thought about Finding Dory.

Dory the Blue Tang lived with her parents, Charlie and Jenny (Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton), and "short term remember-y loss." One day, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) gets lost from her parents. She can't remember why and, eventually, forgets them. She eventually runs into clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks), helps him find son Nemo and...

Lives with them for a year.

She suddenly remembers her past, particularly something about "the Jewel of Morro Bay, California." She darts off to find her parents with Marlin and Nemo swimming close behind. Said "Jewel" is Morro Bay's Marine Life Institute. There, Dory gets lost, gets tagged and sent to quarantine and finds herself about to get shipped off to a Cleveland aquarium.

A chamelonic "septopus" named Hank (Ed O'Neil), wants to go to Cleveland, and he needs Dory's tag for it. He agrees to help her for his own means. Naturally, Dory's memory loss drives him nuts. Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo navigate the Institute to find Dory.

Dory's memory loss, a source of humor in Finding Nemo, is played more seriously here. It opens with Dory playing with Mom and Dad, and suddenly, she's lost. Nothing funny about that. She inadvertently irritates sea-life around her and gets into trouble. But the whole point of the movie is her finding that her problem doesn't make her bad. And that's a good thing.

There's a good mix of new and old characters swimming around. Marlin and Nemo are, of course, the most active old characters. Marlin is still over-cautious, while Nemo is his voice of reason. Their trek through the institute was a fun one made great by their finding Dory. A blind whale shark, Destiny (Elizabeth Olsen), and migraine-addled beluga, Bailey (Ty Burrell), make for a fun pair of supporting characters. A pair of Sea Lions, Fluke and Rudder (Idris Elba and Dominic West), were also fun, but I don't get why they don't like a third sea lion, Gerald (He's odd-looking, but not actively annoying).

As with Nemo, Dory provides some amazing imagery. The ocean looks great, the Institute's exhbits look great and the sea-life is unique and colorful. Hank's chameleonic powers are a great effect. The climactic chase was silly, but it was fun. Thomas Newman once again sets these images to his music. The end result makes Dory a more memorable experience.

Is it better than Finding Nemo? I don't know, since it's been a long time since I saw it.  But I do know that it's a worthy Pixar follow-up. It's a compelling story which simply doesn't rehash Nemo's plot. If it does recycle anything from Nemo, it's its ability to make you care about fish. It certainly makes up for John Carter, which was Director Andrew Stanton's previous work, that's for sure.

As usual, Pixar has another appealing short opening the feature. This is Piper, the story of a sandpiper chick's adventures on the beach finding oysters. It's just as memorable as the movie that follows.

Love and Frienship

Lady Susan was both Jane Austen's first big novel and her last; she wrote it in her teens, but it wasn't published until over 50 years after her death. To make things weirder, director/writer Whit Stillman's film version, Love and Friendship, takes its title from an earlier Austen work (though it was spelled Love and Freindship).

The Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), recently widowed, is "the most accomplished flirt in all of England." She stays with her sister-in-law, Catherine (Emma Greenwell), until her latest scandal blows over. There, she hopes to arrange a match for her daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), and one for herself. Her match for Frederica, Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett), is a babbling doofus. Frederica's eyes are on Catherine's brother, Sir Reginald DeCourcey (Xavier Samuel), and so are her mother's. Like any Austen piece, a comedy of manners ensues.

The film emphasizes the comedy, instead of the romantic, in romantic comedy. The opening scene, set to Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, has Lady Susan and Frederica depart their prior, blubbering hosts, for the in-laws. The characters get a title card introducing themselves. A few cast members over-act unlike any Austen adaptation before. There's Lady Manwaring (Jenn Murray), wife of Lady Susan's prior fling, who acts like a spoiled child. Sir James, meanwhile, is such a doofus that you love him and hate him.

If only Bennett got to play Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice...

The Lady Susan gets her own paragraph. Beckinsale plays her as a desperate Mrs. Robinson. She wants anyone rich enough for her and Frederica. But she repulses people due to her elitism. And yet, she charms the audience with her sharp wit and romantic desperation. She's the kind of character whose actions you condemn, but her social situation you cannot. The credits plug its novelization, "in which [she] is vindicated."

Love and Friendship, like any Austen adaptation, is well-dressed, well-designed and well-photographed. But this isn't a conventional Austen adaptation. It's more Tom Jones than Gone with the Wind. It makes for a decent 92 minutes of silly period comedy.

Warcraft

I have not played any incarnation of Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft video games, but I played a lot of Army Men. So that was strike one against me going into the former's cinematic rendition, Warcraft. But, no. That says more about the film than me. I think.

Draenor, the home dimension of the brutish Orcs, is doomed. Their evil warlock chieftan Gul'dan (Daniel Wu) discovers another world where they can live in. This realm is Azeroth, home to humans, dwarves, elves, mages, etc. Gul'dan is adept at The Fel, a brand of dark magic which feeds on life force, with which he opens a portal to Azeroth. He and a small band go through and they plan to bring the rest.

Naturally, the Orcs' resettlement plans involve killing and looting. So good King Llane (Dominic Cooper) and his brother-in-law, Sir Lothar (Travis Fimmel), set out to stop them. One Orc, Durotan (Toby Kebbell), doesn't want to make war, so he might help. Another Orc, Garona (Paula Patton), joins the humans' side. The good mage-in-training Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) also helps. And the Guardian Medivh (Ben Foster) is supposed to be on their side, but really?

Anyone with a working knowledge of Warcraft lore will understand this unquestionably. Everyone else is sure to have a lot of questions. A lot of core concepts aren't given proper exposition. A lot of characters give too much exposition. It's like David Lynch's Dune, but I didn't have a theater-issued pamphlet to give me a rundown on the lore.

The characters themselves are incredibly stiff. Sir Lothar, the sarcastic one, is the only human with a semblance of personality. Durotan, his Orc equivalent, doesn't have much screen-time with him. Garona is the one with the best character arc. She works to gain the respect of the humans, but is convinced by King Llane to throw it away. That stinks. But the writing is so muddled that it's hard to feel sympathy for the named and nameless characters who bite it. The best laugh of the movie was seeing an actor billed as "One Take Charlie." That actor, by the way, is a sheep. It makes sense in context.

I've seen a few reviews compare this to Battlefield Earth, the famously inept sci-fi film. But Warcraft has one thing that Battlefield Earth doesn't: competent production values. The Orcs, except for Garona, are rendered through motion-capture; the end result is some of the most impressively rendered CGI ever. You'll think that the Orcs are real actors. The spells and kingdoms were also dazzling. The production, costume and makeup design do a great job of rendering the games' Tolkein-esque world. I'd say these values were Oscar-worthy if not for the movie they were used for. And that's a shame.

Warcraft would be a good video game movie if not for the Dune Syndrome. As it turns out, two hours and three minutes is not a good length for a cinematic crash course. You'll do fine if you read up on it before hand. Then again, a few re-writes would've sufficed. If the worst game movies are like watching someone else have fun, this is like you watching them have no fun.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

Everyone's favorite terrapin crime-fighters are back for another cinematic adventure. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the same giant, color-coded reptiles that producer Michael Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman re-introduced in 2014. Now with Dave Green in that director's chair, the guys are back for round 2.2 in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Raphael (Alan Ritchson) and Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), are still the Ninja Turtles. They defeated the Shredder (Brian Tee) but gave the credit to newsguy Vern (Will Arnett). Raph is bitter with the arrangement; Mikey wants to make a public debut and Leo tries to reel them in. Meanwhile, Don and April O'Neil (Megan Fox) suspect scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) of something devious. They're right; Stockman has a teleporter which he uses, along with some Foot Soldiers, to bust out Shredder from a prison convoy.

Shredder winds up on the Technodrome, where he meets the evil Krang (Brad Garrett). Krang wants to come to Earth and Shredder wants some Turtles dead. They team up. Shredder gets some Purple Ooze which he uses to make his personal mutants, Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) and Rocksteady (Sheamus). The Purple Ooze can also, probably, render the Turtles human. The Turtles almost break apart because of it. But the Turtles will have to settle their differences if they want to keep Earth intact.

About a month or so after the last one, I considered it a footnote in the franchise. "Oh yeah, that happened." I thought. But this entry is a step in the right direction.

Our heroes themselves are how you remember them. Leo's the stern leader, Raph is the tough loner, Don is the nerd and Mikey's the dude. Their unique personalities and familial bond is what makes the film work. The Turtles and their dynamic were the last film's best part and they didn't forget that here.

The film continues its predecessor's use of motion-capture mutants. The designs for the Turtles and their sensei Splinter were tweaked to keep them down the Uncanny Valley. But they still look like plausible real world mutants. The new characters, overall, look like their cartoon counterparts come to life, which should please some people.

What else? Shredder, like the last film, isn't much of a presence except on principle. Meanwhile, Bebop and Rocksteady were a fun pair of musclebound henchmutants. Newcomer Casey Jones (Stephen Arnell) makes for a good, quirky vigilante. The action scenes were fun and the humor isn't childish. In fact, its sense of humor was legitimately funny.

This entry is worth remembering, for better or worse, than its predecessor. There is some substance to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, and it isn't just "stuff fans like." It's substance that keeps you going for the 112 minutes it's on.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Oh, I remember when I had a movie. It was three months ago and it was awesome! It had guns, violence and X-Men! Now the X-Men are back on big screens with their ninth overall funfest, X-Men: Apocalypse! In 3-D!

Deadpool, how did you get back in here?

I let myself in. Now, if you excuse me I have a movie to summarize.

But...

Stop me if you heard this one. Big bad guy gets shut away dozens of hundreds of years ago. And he comes back to life in modern day. And by modern day, I mean 1983. And this guy wants to rule the world. Classy.

OK, the fill in gaps bad guy is (looks at notes) En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), the world's first mutant. He was the big blue cheese of Ancient Egypt until he got dethroned and entombed. Insert nameless cultists who bring him back to life in 1983. The first thing he does is hire four mutants to be his Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Those are Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Angel (Ben Hardy) and, back again, Magneto (Michael Fassbender)! They're gonna take over the world, of course!

Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who almost caused the bad future in Days of Future Past, but stopped Magneto from doing the same ('tis complicated), is in the movie too! And so is Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and ...

What're they all doing in the movie?!

Being awesome. But that's beside the point. 

En Sabah Nur wants to spread his word and he thinks Professor X (James McAvoy) is the guy to do it. The X-Men, Mystique included, want to keep the Earth intact, so they oppose him. Simple.

OK, outside! (Shoves Deadpool outside)

But I wanna review it! (Door slams on Deadpool) Ow.

It sounds convoluted, doesn't it? But what saves the film is its characters. The above mentioned characters each have time to impact the plot or make an impression. Quicksilver and Nightcrawler are welcome comic relief, Cyclops and Jean Grey find time to develop a good relationship, while Magneto's storyline is genuinely emotional. En Sabah Nur was a serviceable bad guy. And finally, Professor X and Mystique's stances on Mutant civil rights are understandable. It even finds time for humor. Jubilee (Lana Condor) gets promoted from background mutant to speaking role, but she was under-utilized.

Quicksilver, who was under-utilized in Days of Future Past, has a bigger part here. He has two scenes to showcase his powers, both of which were funny and awesome. The visual effects department once again visualizes a nifty array of mutant powers. The production designers' best work is En Sbah Nur's pyramids, each in Ancient and modern times. The makeup effects create some nifty hairdos and blue mutants. Still, some characters who should be almost 50 (i.e. Magneto and Professor X) don't look the part.

X-Men Apocalypse is nowhere near as cataclysmic as Fantastic Four, but it may inspire bad memories of X-Men: The Last Stand. The mutant characters and their action kept me interested for 144 minutes. We can hope some "pointless" bits in this one will pay off in later installments. Fox can have the franchise as long as it knows what it's doing.