The Reel World

"Stop me if you've heard this one before." 

The first thing you need to know about The Secret Lives Of Pets is that it's not terribly original. Fans of the Pixar Toy Story Franchise will find pretty much every element of this script has been lifted from one of the three Toy Story films. Of course, if you're going to lift an idea, you might as well steal from the best. Of course, there are always formulaic ideas in films, particularly animated films geared mostly toward children. And while I really did enjoy almost everything about this film, I just can't escape the fact that I've seen it all before. Sometimes that feeling got a little uncomfortably obvious. And by sometimes, I mean the entire length of the movie. Look beyond the plagiarism, and you will find the film a delightful collection of characters and circumstances that just so happened to have been ripped off from Toy Story.

If a film is highly original, that is usually a good thing. If it completely defies logic, that might be good or bad, depending. If it defies common sense and intelligence, that would be a bad thing. Swiss Army Man does all of those things. It is tantalizing with possibilities that are explored, but frustrating in execution. It is rude and unpleasant, and not in a good way. Some people will respond to its ridiculous rudeness in a positive way, like the way that most children laugh when someone farts. That is not the real problem with this movie. The real problem is a lack of inherent logic to much of what occurs. One could say that it is a result of the obvious insanity of the main character of the movie, Hank (Paul Dano). I would suggest that the filmmakers might not have fully understood what they were trying to convey. I think they were caught up in the execution and got lost along the way. The main themes of the movie are alienation, loneliness, and insanity, but our framework for judging these characters is so skewed as to make it impossible to interpret what is actually happening. Some parts are clearly psychotic delusions, but other parts just seem silly tangents by the filmmakers that seem stylistically playful for no effect whatsoever. I can say I like some of the more bizarre moments from time to time, but the effect of the film as a whole is repulsive.

I don’t disagree with the point that films like these should be encouraged, because we are at a point in modern culture that we are being smothered under tons of pablum. Swiss Army Man stands out because it is reactionary to what is going on in the modern culture. It is gross, chaotic, and strange. I welcome things that are offbeat. But in this case, I was turned off. Some of it is genuinely funny in a real way as well as being bizarre, but much of the movie drifts off into confusion. I doubt I am going to ruin anything by revealing the plot, but if I did, it wouldn’t make any sense. It starts with Hank getting ready to hang himself in the mouth of a cave on a deserted beach. Just before he kicks the bucket, he sees another human being washed up on the beach. It is Manny the corpse (Daniel Radcliff of Harry Potter fame). Manny becomes someone with whom Hank develops a very complex relationship. Often Manny demonstrates numerous useful talents, mostly revolving around his flatulence. Slowly Manny starts to show signs of life and even intelligence. Then we are not sure what is happening. Hank is also obsessed with a woman he saw on a bus once, Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). And are we actually on a deserted island, or just down the hill from Sarah’s house?

I’ve always been a fan of Tarzan; I loved the old series and the films basically because I just dug how he was this fearless character who lived in the jungles that fought the bad guys and a few wild animals as well.  As I got older that was when I discovered the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I just had a blast with all these pulp tales about the civilized Wildman and the beautiful Jane.  I even remember how excited I was about seeing Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan as a kid; even though this screen adaption bored me to tears, it was still exciting to see the character up on the screen. Now it’s 2016, and the character is swinging into action on the big screen again, and with a large budget to back it up.  The trailers had me excited; everything seemed to look how I always hoped a Tarzan movie should be. Did the film manage to meet my expectations?  Well, it came close, and the result is a film that shows how the wrong director can ruin a great story.

The casting of Alexander Skarsgard is just about as good as you can hope for in casting the role of Tarzan/ John Clayton.  It’s absolutely vital how important it is to get the physical look of the character and make it believable that he can be stealthy, as well as a brute force that can fight giant apes and crocodiles but still look the part of a British lord. Sure, many audience-goers will enjoy the numerous shirtless scenes the film offers, but it makes it all the more believable when we see the character pull off some superhero-like scenes.  When it comes to the casting of Margot Robbie as Jane, she is a knockout here.  She plays this damsel (not so) in distress in such a charming loveable way that it’s clear that by the end of summer following the release of Suicide Squad she will be the A-list actress off Hollywood.  She brings so much life to Jane that you can understand why Tarzan will do just about anything for this woman, and when they are together it’s a chemistry that has me hoping so much that we’ll get more adventures of Tarzan and Jane.

You’d have to go all the way back to 1975 when Jaws was released that a film has come out that has given us a reason to be afraid to go into the water. There have been several attempts to capture the magic that we saw in Stephen Spielberg’s classic film about a large great white shark that preyed upon the swimmers in the town of Amity.  Now that summer is upon us and the heat has us flocking to our A/C units or to the beaches, it couldn’t be a better time to unleash another killer shark film upon the masses.  I have to admit when the trailers came out for this, all I expected from it was to be a campy film that just happened to be well shot.  Instead director Jaume Collet-Serra (Run All Night & Orphan) delivers an enjoyable thriller.

Nancy (Blake Lively) is a med-student who has just about finished all her schooling but is struggling with the death of her mother from cancer.  She leaves her home and school in Texas to take a trip to Mexico to find a secluded beach her mother used to speak so fondly of.  It doesn’t take much to make a connection with Nancy and respect her choice to come to terms with the loss of her mom.  Her father, played by Brett Cullen, wants her to come back home and finish school, but Nancy is conflicted with her faith in medicine, so who can blame her for wanting to grab her bikini and do some surfing to battle her grief?

“Are you food, or are you sex?”

When it comes to director Nicolas Winding Refn, he’s a director I’m never all too sure what to expect from.  For me, Drive is one of my favorite films in the past ten years, while Only God Forgives simply bored me; despite the stunning imagery, it had nothing else going for it. His films going even further back are just as much of a mixed bag, so coming into The Neon Demon I knew better than to get my hopes up, and that I should just go ahead and let the film stand on its own, as it should. Even reading about its debut at Cannes, it was met with a mix of boos as well as applause, which was all I really needed to get interested in this film after seeing the visually impressive trailer.  At a glance it appears to be nothing more than the story of Black Swan (2010), only instead of following dancers, this is a film that thrusts the viewer into the world of modeling. Just where do I stand on this film? Well, it’s stuck with me since our screening days ago, and I’m still processing everything.

“Be the hero of your own story.”

Not the funniest addition to Kevin Hart’s reign as the king of comedy, but still a welcome sight. This time around, Hart teams with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for Central Intelligence. I’ve been anticipating this movie since behind-the-scenes footage leaked earlier this year, and the official trailer did nothing but fuel the flames of my excitement. After watching it, I can say that despite a few predictable plot twists, I still found the overall product to be extremely funny and worthwhile. 

“What if I forget you?”

Ever since Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear rocketed onto the big screen in 1995's Toy Story, Pixar has assembled a wonderful stable of unforgettable characters. Ironically, one of the animation studio's most memorable creations is a blue tang fish who probably wouldn't remember you. Besides being a dazzling and heartwarming family classic, Finding Nemo was also one of Pixar's biggest hits. (Technically, it's actually the biggest.) So while it's a little surprising that it took 13(!) years for a sequel to swim into our lives, the fast and funny Finding Dory proves to be a completely worthy follow up.

When it comes to titles from Blizzard Entertainment, I was always more into the Starcraft and Diablo franchises. I played World of Warcraft (WoW) for a small period of time when it became a popular MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), but my interest in the game quickly died. The aesthetics were a little too cartoony for my liking, plus, you paid for a subscription. Regardless, I am just one fan of Blizzard: WoW caught on like wildfire. I still know people who are playing the game to this day. The question, however, is whether or not this franchise would make a great cinematic adaptation. I will admit that I am not an expert on the Warcraft lore, by any means, but I know enough about popular culture and its many fandoms to look at this film objectively.

Sitting in a theater, you are always treated to interesting pre-screening conversations. More often than not, they are being led by fans of the source material. Here are samples of some of the conversations I overheard:

Since The Conjuring was released back in 2013, I can’t help but love what James Wan brought to the film; it’s that perfect film to put on during a stormy night.  Whether you are a believer in the paranormal or not, the life story of Ed and Lorraine Warren is interesting I’d imagine for skeptics, and for us believers, well, their day-to-day life seems downright terrifying.  Hearing how The Conjuring was going to be James Wan’s last horror film (after all he went on to do Furious 7) this seemed criminal to me, because he seemed like the one working director who had seemed to master the craft of creating a horror film.  Now Wan has come back to tell the next terrifying tale from the Warren’s case files with The Conjuring 2, and in the process has I believe has left his mark on the horror genre with perhaps the best haunted house film to date.

For fans of the first film, you may remember that it ended with Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) getting a call to investigate the Amityville house. This is where the new film picks up as the Warrens with other investigators are investigating the home to see if there was something paranormal inside. (For those unfamiliar with the Amityville story, I highly recommend spending some time on YouTube and checking out some of the documentaries about not just the mass murder that took place but also about the Lutz family that moved in after.) During the investigation Lorraine has an encounter with an evil entity that delivers an ominous warning to her.  Following this investigation, the Warrens become worldwide celebrities as experts in the field of paranormal investigation. It’s with this attention that accusations are made against them for being frauds.

A Bigger Splash is a remake of a 1969 French film called La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, and Jane Birkin. It was popular in its time and was challenging and mysterious but will not register in the memory of modern moviegoers. A Bigger Splash retains the same sense of adventurous storytelling and compelling ambivalence. A Bigger Splash stars Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series and the new “M” in James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre), Tilda Swinton (a remarkable character actress who is different in every film), Dakota Johnson (Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades of Greys) and Matthias Schoenaerts (Far From The Madding Crowd, The Danish Girl). That cast is dynamic by itself, and they are used to maximum effect. Ralph Fiennes, especially, is absolutely outstanding. He has never played a part like this before. His character could be described in many ways, because his moods shift radically.

Harry Hawkes (Fiennes) is a manic and effervescent record producer (The Rolling Stones and Mick and Keith are named-dropped). Marianne Lane (Swinton) is vacationing with her lover, Paul De Smedt (Schoenaerts). She is a famous rock star and is recovering from throat surgery. Paul treats her with love and devotion as she rests at a beautiful Mediterranean beach villa. Her ex-husband and former producer, Harry, descends on a plane and calls her without notice. He brings a formerly neglected and precocious daughter, Penelope Lanier (Johnson). Marianne seems very happy to see Harry, but Paul expects their peace and quiet will be totally unsettled. Harry is overwhelmingly charming and fun-loving, almost excessively so. His energy is almost off the charts at times. A true highlight is when Harry takes some boring bossa nova off the record player and changes to The Rolling Stones Emotional Rescue which Harry says he produced. Harry then starts to do a full-scale extended and uninhibited imitation of Mick Jagger’s dancing in the living room. It is an insane and electric sequence, but it is one of many that contribute to a long and slow build of indefinable tension.