Power Twins Comics

This isn’t going to be some nitpicking review of all the science they got wrong in Jurassic World. Say it with me: “Deinonychus,” not velocity wrap tore – Dino Nick Us. Tearing apart the science (or the running through mud in spike heels) would be too easy and wouldn’t do justice to an otherwise fun film.

It is too bad this film didn’t come out 22 years earlier. The grandiose reveal of the animals would have been more entertaining if they were new. Instead, we have a meta-joke. The plot centers on a park struggling to show attendees something new. Which is, somewhat precisely, what the film struggles to do. For the story, they have “Indominus Rex,” the first genetically engineered dinosaur—more on that in a moment. For the movie, we have “raptor” training.

I’ve done a little animal training, so I found myself very interested in how they would portray it with dinosaurs. Like most of the technical pieces of the film, I was disappointed. The training didn’t really show us anything. Sure, they stopped and looked at the trainer while he overused a clicker and blabbered away at them, but if we were to believe he had some sort of relationship with the animals or dominance over them, they should have shown us some actions on command. In a flurry of side stories, some quasi-government types want to weaponize the order-taking dinosaurs. Observing the demonstration, I would have concluded that the animals were not trainable in their current form. They were definitely not ready to be seized, packed up, and shipped off to Mosul to hunt insurgents. There has been some controversy about the whole concept of training Deinonychus (more on this in a moment), so it would be easy to think I’m commenting on the science. I’m not. The film failed to demonstrate training sufficient for the story.

This raises the biggest story point. The Indominus Rex is not the “first” genetic hybrid/splice/designed dinosaur in Jurassic Park. ALL of the animals are. Fragments of DNA were spliced, traits were removed (lysine contingency from the first film), engineered 100% female—everything about these animals is designed. Why wouldn’t they be smart as dogs? They could be engineered that way. They are not dinosaurs; they are engineered animals. This did get brought up in the film, eventually, but it bears noting because it is easy to confuse the Jurassic Park films with paleo-science. The story of Jurassic Park is not a presentation of current thinking in paleontology. It is a cautionary tale: “make something with science and you might be killed by it.”

For that, we look to the largely forgettable stereotypes: divorcing parents, resourceful children, self-important corporate types, incompetent gung-ho military guys, and the guy who lives in a shack on the beach. The humans’ only purpose is to be chased and eaten by dinosaurs, and this makes this movie fun. The inattentive get eaten first, bad guys die horribly, and Starlord lives to sign on for a sequel.

Bello. Bulaka? Ka paslay da scripto ba notpac idsa-a een Minionese, pelo pak, muka, foub ko a mupa gib tut. Dul e hana Minoni, Kevin, Stuart, Bob wak awak Orlando! Villain-Con, aya Scarlet is da bomba. Kevin ditit Boss! Stiel La Cucaracha crown, KING BOB! Uh-Oh, Scarlet. et buh-dees sab a’day!

Kumbaya!

If you’re still reading you may have gleaned two things about Minions. First, I like minions, and generally enjoyed the film. Second, Minionese gets irritating when it comprises the majority of the dialog. If you love the minions enough to watch all of their short films back to back for ninety minutes, you will enjoy this film and should probably see it in theatres. If you think they are cute and add extra flavor to a movie powered by characters with more depth, you will probably not enjoy this film as much.

Minions actually starts out kind of slow but funny with the prehistoric origin of the gibbering yellow pill-bodies. Then it grinds almost to a halt as the tribe of irrepressible assistants hides in an ice cave. It is like that first clanking chain, which lifts the rider’s car to the top of the first hill of a rollercoaster. We’re carried by the expectant glee of what we know comes next. Then we crest that hill, with the heroic trio of minions arriving in New York, and the movie doesn’t stop or even slow down for eighty five minutes.

The frantic pace of the film and nonsensical speaking doesn’t just glue the target audience to their seats, it laminates them, takes the air out of the room and dips them in epoxy. I have never seen children be so still en masse.

For a more sophisticated pallet, however, the lack of an English-speaking lead makes the film a bit too frantic. The minions make for great supporting characters and comedy filler. As lead roles, it is more like making a meal of cotton candy. Sure you enjoy it while you are eating it, but you didn’t really fill up, and if you continue your indulgence for too long you start to feel that this wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed.

There are a lot of great little gags.  Like Home earlier this year, there is one joke where I was the loudest laugh in the room. The story is coherent, told through the silly actions and aided by some convenient humans like Queen Elizabeth II, Herb and Scarlet Overkill, and a narrator. Set, principally, in the 1960’s the soundtrack includes the requisite period pieces performed by The Beatles, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Who, and The Doors (yes, a children’s movie has Jim Morrison’s voice in it).

For a children’s film, there is a significant amount of death—not the minions.  They are basically revealed as immortal. The same cannot be said for the bosses they serve.

It is okay, though, everyone comes out for the curtain call after the closing credits.

I occasionally watch a movie I would never have seen if not for stumbling on it in the middle. The Good Lie is one of those. It is probably the most amusing film about a tragic disgrace to humanity I’ve ever seen, and I highly recommend it on every scale.

The film is a fictional account of three Lost Boys of the Sudan (the name given to the thousands of refugees from the Second Sudanese Civil War). It covers their escape from their home village, the trek east (toward Ethiopia) then south (to Kenya), a snapshot of life in a refugee camp, and ultimately their relocation to the United States.

The first act of the film is soul crushing. As children, they endure the abject inhumanity of war, but they do it with a complete understanding of death. They survive in a wilderness that would challenge extreme sport adventurer types, and they lose members of their group all along the way. They demonstrate resolve, stealing kills from a lion, hiding from soldiers, and (at an especially low point) drinking their own urine with the mantra, “I don’t want to die. I want to live.”

The refugees spent thirteen years in a camp. The film moves through this quickly as a sort of intra-act, advancing the characters to their adult selves. The movie takes a turn for the humorous when the main three boys and their sister find their names on the list to be relocated.

It becomes a fish out of water story as the African survivors are thrust into the wasteful abundance of the United States. Written and performed to American audiences, the film makes some good points of demonstrating ignorance without stupidity on the part of the boys. Here there are some genuinely humorous and touching moments. Such as the declaration, “Since we don’t know your birthday, you will be assigned January first.” To which the refugee asks, “Why this date?”

“There will always be a party.”

There is plenty of stupidity on the part of “the system.” The characters and precise details are fictional, but the story and situations are all too true. It is also conveyed with an intellectual honesty. There is no particular villain. There are a few helpful people, but none of them is especially heroic. We learn in the closing titles that two of the actors playing the main trio are actually relocated Sudanese refugees and former child soldiers. (The film does not cover the atrocity that is child soldiers.)

The title is derived from the final moments of the main story and a reference to Huckleberry Finn. A main character lies to protect someone worthy of his risk. It is not an unexpected turn, but it is meaningful all the same.

If you are not familiar with the Lost Boys of Sudan, I recommend this film with the knowledge that the story is inspired by actual events. In fact, I generally recommend this film whatever your background.

Four or five moments…

There are four, maybe five, moments when Deadpool breaks from an hilarious parody of itself into a serious movie where you realize just how horrible people can be to each other. Otherwise, we are laughing and giggling all the way.

Normally, I would go on to comment about the cinematography (excellent) or the acting (well performed) and the script (perfect for this topic). Instead, I am going to compare this movie to other films that wanted to be Deadpool but weren’t.

A previous film tried to make Ryan Reynolds into a superhero; it was saddled with obvious CG, a poor script, and a complicated story. Deadpool shows that Ryan Reynolds was not at fault for the disaster that was Green Lantern.

Hancock tried to show what might happen with a superhero with real world physics. It jumped out of its own reality somewhere in the middle and lost its way. Deadpool opens with a high-speed chase that ends with a high-speed wreck. It ends with a fight in which dead bodies are posed to send a message. The knights of standards and practices have made moviemakers reticent about the violent things that happen in films. In Secret of the Ooze the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never draw their weapons. Why? Leonardo is armed with two swords! Do you know what happens when a superhero swordsman fights a normal guy?

Deadpool shows you and it isn’t pretty.

Sporting an “R” rating, the movie flaunts it. While there is some gratuitous foul language, violence, nudity, drug references, and close-ups of Ryan Reynolds’s butt, it all flows together organically. Nothing feels tacked on just because they could, but neither is anything off the table because of some misguided attempt to protect children from … I have no idea what actively hiding the extreme danger associated with weapons is supposed to protect against, but Deadpool is not a movie aimed at kids.

Deadpool is also not aimed at serious moviegoers. And by that, I mean: it isn’t trying to be some groundbreaking statement about films, comics, or storytelling. It’s not avant-garde, and it won’t win any (non-technical) Oscars. It breaks the fourth wall (constantly), speaking directly to the audience, about just how silly this spectacle is. In that way, it is a statement about the nature of films in general and superhero films in particular, and that was probably a happy accident, which the filmmakers would deny if asked.

It fills the screen nicely, so it is worth seeing in the theatre. It is funny with a good story that doesn’t rely on big to be good, so it will probably hold up on blu-ray and cable later. However you choose to see it, if you laugh at any of the trailers, you will enjoy this film.

“What am I doing on this page?”

By the way, in case you didn’t get the joke in the header, The Dead Pool was a Dirty Harry movie starring Clint Eastwood. It was slightly less violent than Deadpool.

Can there be a movie that is totally a Star Wars movie, but doesn’t look, sound, or feel like a Star Wars movie? Rogue One answers resoundingly “yes,” and it is really good. Star Wars fans know what this movie is about and how it ends, but it still managed some big surprises.

This is a Star Wars film. It is set in the Star Wars universe, during the time of the Galactic Rebellion (Classic Star Wars times). There are a few familiar people, aliens, and droids making cameos. And there is “The Force.” In Rogue One, the Jedi are the stuff of legend. Everyone has heard of them and vaguely acknowledges their religion. This is more in the vein of the original films than anything else that followed.

Rogue One manages to remain true without tropes. “I have a bad feeling about this” and the Wilhelm Scream are cut off before finishing. John Williams is not the principal composer. It’s not about the Skywalker family, and no Jedi appear in the film (Vader is a Sith Lord – not a Jedi, and Donnie Yen’s character is a “Force Sensitive”).

One glaring departure from the franchise allows Rogue One to demonstrate where Star Wars went off the rails. There is no opening scrawl. No text scrolls by to set up this story. Unlike the prequels, which required librarian level research to know who anyone was, Rogue One makes few demands of the audience. (They even have the planet names appear as captions whenever we go to a new one.)

Here’s what you should know going into Rogue One: there’s an oppressive galactic empire; they are bad guys; and they’re building the Death Star (and you could probably figure out those things in the first few minutes).

Wait, didn’t the Death Star get blown up in A New Hope (and again in Return of the Jedi)? Yes, this movie happens immediately before A New Hope. Remember the movie that revolutionized space opera and re-invented special effects? This movie tells the story of why Princess Hairbuns was on that ship in the opening scene.

There’s lots of little ‘member berries for the encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars super-fans: Khyber crystals are used to make lightsabers; the holy city and first [Jedi] temple on the planet Jedah have appeared in animated series and books; Jimmy Smits plays Leia’s adopted father; etc. But, they don’t detract from what is fundamentally a modern antihero adventure movie. A band of outcast scofflaws come together as a reluctant team and help the noble cause, desperately struggling against a vastly more powerful evil empire.

Rogue One makes good use of the screen and rewards your entertainment attention. It takes you back to the original Star Wars – not by retelling the story, but by showing you something new.

One last thing that totally bucks the Star Wars franchise for the better: Darth Vader isn’t portrayed as an arthritic asthmatic in a mobile life support pod, he is a total badass.