The Reel World

“Welcome to the 21st century!”

Sylvester Stallone has dedicated the better part of the last decade to giving moviegoers what they wanted 20 years ago. It started with 2006's Rocky Balboa, which closed out Stallone's signature franchise in the satisfying manner fans have been craving since 1990's Rocky V debacle. We’ve also gotten another Rambo sequel, as well as long-awaited team ups with icons both real (Schwarzenegger in Escape Plan) and cinematic (Grudge Match was “Rocky vs. Raging Bull”). But Stallone's biggest recent success is the veritable fantasy team of action stars he's assembled for the Expendables films.

“Are you telling me that the fate of thirty million inhabitants is in the hands of these criminals?”

Now that we are in the middle of phase two of Marvel’s movie universe, a new batch of characters have been given a movie of their own to help set the stage for what is to come in the ever-expanding Marvel cinematic universe.  The Guardians of the Galaxy announcement for many left fans scratching their heads; after all, just how would a talking raccoon, a lumbering tree and various other space aliens fit in with the established Avengers team comic and film fans have grown to love already?

Lucy is good science fiction. Good science fiction challenges scientists to think about the possibilities. Good scientists think they don't know and want to seek the answers and learn more. Bad scientists will tell you the answers because they know. But they don't know. Science is made by making mistakes and learning from those mistakes and then making new mistakes and learning from them. Through that process myths and half-truths are passed along. For a hundred years science said that we only use about 10% percent of our brain, but now we are told that that was a mistake. They say we can map the brain's electrical activity through advanced medical technology. The truth is we still don't know much. We probably only know 10% about how the brain works. There could be endless investigation into storage capacity, the speed of connections, the purpose of electrical activity, dreams and the subconscious, perceptions, personality and self-awareness. 90% of the brain is made of glial glands which we know nothing about as opposed to the neurons which are what we try to track. There is not even a glimmer of an understanding of how to duplicate how the billions of cells interact.

Lucy has revived controversy over science like no amount of superhero movies have done. It asserts the reality of science instead of the fantasy of Superman and Spiderman. Lucy is a superhero, except she doesn't care much about human concerns. It seems there are more important things than our petty concerns.

Zach Braff had a nice long run on the sitcom Scrubs, but he showed the world he was more than that by writing, directing and starring in the indie hit Garden State. Braff starred in some other movies but didn't get much traction. He's not really a leading-man type. He did have a nice supporting part in Oz the Great and Powerful, but Braff had already demonstrated he can do it all. Hollywood is not too friendly to original ideas, so Braff went to Kickstarter and had success. He asked for $2,000,000 and got $3,105,473 from 46,520 supporters.  From there he got Hollywood money, and he has a movie.

Wish I Was Here starts with a typical suburban family arguing over breakfast. The head of the family, Aidan Bloom (Braff) is generally dissatisfied with many things. Soon we learn he's not really head of the family. He's an out-of-work actor who has to worry about his kids’ Hebrew school payments. Sarah Bloom (Kate Hudson) holds down the steady job. 12-year-old Grace Bloom (Joey King) cherishes her heritage much more than her younger brother and is mortified she might have to go to public school. It turns out the school is part of a deal he made with his dad, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin). Gabe was paying for the school because it was important to him, but he won't be able to do it anymore, because something serious is happening that he needs to deal with.

What a difference a year makes. It was just last summer that The Purge came out of nowhere to become an unexpected smash. The film piqued my interest with a killer marketing campaign that smartly sold its outrageous concept: for one night out of the year, any and all crime is legal in the U.S. Unfortunately, the filmmakers squandered that novel idea by making the most cliched, claustrophobic thriller imaginable. A little more than a year later, this follow-up arrives under considerably different circumstances. Instead of canny summer counter-programming, The Purge: Anarchy is the latest sequel in a summer that seems particularly heavy on franchise films.

“What about you? What were you doing outside?”

"Apes together strong!"

When French author Pierre Boulle first wrote his novel Monkey Planet, I'm sure he never imagined a film like Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. While I was enjoying the five films that made up the original franchise run, I couldn't have imagined a movie like Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. When Tim Burton made his pitiful attempt to revive the franchise, it was downright impossible. In fact, the franchise appeared dead and gone by the time that film ran its destructive course. When I first heard of plans to resurrect the franchise with Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, I was quite skeptical and prepared to see my love of those first films once again exploited and tainted. But in 2011, we were all in for a rather pleasant surprise. The film proved to be a hit, and with good reason. It was a wonderful film that paid proper homage to the source material, all the while telling it's own unique tale, using cutting-edge technology in computer-generated images. The star turned out to be Andy Serkis, whom we never actually saw on the screen. Instead the pioneer in motion-capture performance captivated us by bringing real emotion and nuanced performance to what was essentially just a series of 1's and 0's. It was remarkable. It couldn't have gotten better.

"Missed it by that much." Never before was that Don Adams/Maxwell Smart catchphrase more appropriate to a movie. Sometimes there is a very thin line between instant classic and near miss. Earth To Echo is the best example in decades of a film that could have, should have, would have been so much more if not for just one bad decision. The film has all of those coming-of-age moments that exist in those 1980's classics like Goonies, Explorers and, of course, ET. The film sports a wonderful cast with plenty of nuance in characters. There's a cute alien and that mission that binds friends’ lives together forever even if they never see each other again. It's a story of catching a magical moment in the waning moments of childhood. And it would have worked, if only director Dave Green hadn't tried to hedge his bet just a little over the line, reverting to the "found-footage" style of filmmaking. It's one of those choices that allowed Green to snatch defeat from the hands of victory.

The story is near perfect. A group of friends have been neighbors all of their lives. But a highway is going through their block, and they all have to move now. It's the very last night they will spend together when something strange happens. Cell phones and other electronic screens begin to "barf" up an odd kind of static. One of the boys discovers that it's a map of the surrounding desert, and the friends decide that they will use this final night to follow the map and have one last adventure together.

In a summer that has been taken over by giant lizards and robots, it is a little odd to find a little sweet film like Begin Again playing on the screen and competing with the heavy hitters of summer. From the writer/director of indie smash Once we get a film that isn’t just about musicians trying to make their big break, but instead it’s about the heart and pain that goes into the creation we later hear and become fans of.  When we first meet Greta (Keira Knightly) she is nursing some heartbreak in a bar, and her friend drags her up on stage to perform her new song.  It just so happens that at that moment, struggling music executive Dan (Mark Ruffalo) is in the audience, and he believes that she could be the next big star.  The film backpedals from this moment and then proceeds to show us just how Dan and Greta managed to come together at this bar on this particular night.

Dan has recently been removed from his own record company and doesn’t have a penny to his name, but despite it all, Dan rolls with the punches with the nursing aid of a stiff drink.  Greta, on the other hand, was the girlfriend and partner to Dave (Adam Levine), a rising star on the music scene who believes he has fallen in love with another woman.  The scene where Greta discovers that there is another woman is a moment that starts innocently enough and then proceeds to just be a heartbreaking moment.  As breakups go on film, this is just one of those scenes where as a viewer you just instantly empathize with Greta and can’t help but see Dave for the scumbag he is.

“You sell 100 million records, and see how you handle it.”

If you’ve ever seen an episode of Behind the Music — or followed popular culture at all in the previous century — then you probably know artists tend to not handle that level of success very well. However, the rise and (inevitable) fall of the original Four Seasons lineup is unique for a number reasons. Unfortunately, very few of those reasons are captured in Jersey Boys, Clint Eastwood’s oddly lifeless, workmanlike adaptation of the joyous, wildly-popular Broadway musical.