Film

streaming wurledwide at

thefine89.com Vote Now

Hint: Look under CULTURE for best radio station KJIV 89.1fm

7 Days a Week!

Disaster movie

Independence Day: Resurgence

I enjoyed the goofy, funny, balls-out alien invasion movie that was Independence Day (1996). The film was dumber than a stoned golden retriever in a Harvard calculus class, but Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and, yes, Randy Quaid made the grandiose stupidity somewhat of a blast. Two decades after the original, Independence Day: Resurgence finally arrives, without Smith, who probably didn’t think the check was big enough, and Quaid, who has gone more bonkers than his deeply disturbed Independence Day character. Quaid’s character actually died in the original after flying a plane up an alien ship’s bunghole. While the original was a stupid blast, the sequel is the equivalent of a nasty two-hour alien fart. Goldblum, Bill Pullman and Brent Spiner return for alien nonsense that is fast paced yet dull, and utterly void of laughs. It’s evident in the first 10 minutes that the movie will somehow manage to be lethargic even though the editing is frantic, and lots of things are exploding. Returning director Roland Emmerich is clearly not on his disaster-epic game. In the wake of that late 1990s invasion, Earth has stolen some alien technology and built a weapons defense system on the moon. The Queen Alien, an entity basically stolen from James Cameron’s Aliens, sees Pullman’s President Whitmore rallying the troops during the original invasion on her Universe DirecTV, and gets pissed off. She sets her controls for Earth, where its residents and now President Langford (Sela Ward) are going to pay dearly for the time Will Smith sucker punched an alien in the face. Pullman’s Whitmore, now adorned with a David Letterman retirement beard, is having visions of the next invasion in his sleep. Goldblum’s David Levinson is traveling the Earth as some sort of watchdog for peace. Actually, I didn’t really know what Goldblum’s character was doing, other than acting all Jeff Goldblum-y when the alien shit hit the fan.

Smith’s character has been killed off, replaced in the franchise by his character’s son, Dylan (Jessie T. Usher), from the original. Liam Hemsworth, a.k.a. King Dullard, shows up as a reckless pilot designated to moon duty, while Maika Monroe of It Follows fame plays his Earthbound fighter pilot fiancée, who is also the daughter of former President by Bob Grimm Whitmore. So, you see, everybody ties together, in a lame, unoriginal, inexpensive bgrimm@ sort of way. Good thing they saved all that newsreview.com Will Smith money. They got themselves three real powerhouses for that rescinded paycheck. 1 Turns out Spiner’s Dr. Brakish Okun didn’t die after all in the first flick. He just wound up in a coma, which he wakes from 20 years later. He’s supposed to provide the film’s comic relief, but he just runs around yelling and smiling a lot. He provides not a chuckle in this affair and probably would’ve done the movie a favor by staying asleep. Judd Hirsch tries to pick up the comedic slack by reprising his role as Goldblum’s dad, this time saddled with a bunch of ragtag kids who seem like a subplot from another movie. Or perhaps a failed pilot on the Syfy Channel? Judd and the Apocalypse Kids: A kooky grandpa takes a bunch of orphaned kids on a school bus trip, where they learn about life, love and evading aliens. Taking over as president, Sela Ward’s sole purpose in this movie is to order useless military strikes with dramatically overacted conviction. (Her last line is a howler.) Pullman’s Whitmore eventually snaps out of his mad stupor to get a shave, throw aside his cane—apparently, that beard was really slowing him down—and fly a plane into an alien ship’s butthole, like everybody does in Independence Day movies. Let it be said that Randy Quaid managed to fly a fighter plane into an alien ship’s butthole with far more aplomb than Pullman. If anybody can make flying into an alien ship’s butthole a lackluster, rote affair, it’s Bill Pullman. The film delivers a big “We’re gonna have a sequel!” type line at the end, but let’s all join hands and go to the movie with the bikini girl and shark instead, and slaughter that particular prophecy. No more fighter jet excursions up alien ship rectums required. Over and done with! Ω

This time, the aliens have Norton AntiVirus Deluxe.

1

Poor

2

Fair

3

Good

4

Very Good 5

excellent

3Central Intelligence While it doesn’t boast much along the lines of originality, this winds up being an above average action/comedy buddy movie thanks to its stars, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. The guys belong together. The plot feels like a bunch of parts from other movies cobbled together to make a whole. It has elements of Lethal Weapon, Grosse Pointe Blank, Just Friends and even a little Sixteen Candles, all stitched together, albeit capably, by director Rawson Marshall Thurber (We’re the Millers). It’s a well-oiled movie Frankenstein. Johnson and Hart are a strong screen duo, with Johnson actually scoring most of the laughs. Hart, who certainly chips in on the laughs front, actually delivers one of the more well rounded, warm performances of his career. He plays Calvin, the most popular guy in high school who grows up to be humdrum. Johnson plays Bob, a former obese guy who Calvin took pity on. Bob grows up to be a rogue CIA agent who looks like the Rock. The two wind up on an adventure that, of course, eventually leads to their high school reunion. I actually watched it at a drivein, and the movie perfectly suited the drive-in experience.

3The Conjuring 2 As he did with TheConjuring, writerdirector James Wan uses the story of a supposedly real poltergeist in TheConjuring 2. The first film involved a haunting here in the U.S., while the sequel draws upon the infamous Enfield Poltergeist that allegedly occurred in England in the late ’70s. Wan has tapped into something interesting with this franchise. Two films in, it shows some decent durability and originality. It’s also pretty scary. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson return as the Warrens, paranormal investigators who’ve visited many legendary haunted spaces, including Amityville and Enfield. Wan, of course, blows up their involvement in each of these cases to deliver a platform for fictional circumstances and scares. While not quite as good as The Conjuring, this is a sequel that mostly does its predecessor proud.

3Finding Dory This sequel to Finding Nemo goes a little darker than its predecessor. Ellen DeGeneres returns as Dory, the lovable fish with short-term memory loss. An event triggers a memory of family in her little brain, and she sets off on a journey to find her mom and dad (voiced by Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy). Pals Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) join Dory on her quest, which culminates in an aquarium amusement park graced with voice announcements by the actual Sigourney Weaver. Dory winds up in a touch pond, in a bucket of dead fish, and swimming around in a lot of dark pipe work. In some ways, this is to Finding Nemo what The Empire Strikes Back was to StarWars. It’s a darker, slightly scarier chapter, that still delivers on the heartwarming elements and laughs. DeGeneres still rules as the voice of Dory.

4The Lobster This is as brutal a satire you will ever see. Writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos gives us a world where being single is so frowned upon, you will be transformed into the animal of your choice if you don’t find a partner in an allotted time. Colin Farrell stars as David, a recently dumped man who must stay at a hotel with his brother, who is also his dog, and find a new mate, or become a lobster. He eventually finds himself living in the woods with the leftover single people, who must dodge daily hunting expeditions by people looking to extend their time before animal transformation (they earn extra days for every single person they bag). David eventually meets Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz) among the singles, and he finds himself needing to make some big decisions on how to start a relationship with her. The film is intentionally drab in its look, with all of the actors delivering their lines with nearly no emotion. The effect is just plain nasty, a scathing indictment on a society that puts too much pressure on individuals to become couples. It’s often extremely funny, with an equal amount of necessary unpleasantness.

4The Neon Demon After the misstep that was Only God Forgives, director Nicolas Winding Refn gets things back on track with this, perhaps the most toxic and nasty film ever made about the modeling industry. Jesse (Elle Fanning) moves to L.A. to become a model. She’s underage, naïve and lost, but finds a helping hand in Ruby (Jena Malone), a makeup artist who knows what it’s like to be the new girl in town. As her career begins to take off, Jesse begins to gain confidence to a fault, and a couple of other models (Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee) develop sinister intentions to go with their envy of Jesse’s spectacular looks. Refn mesmerizes yet again—his Drive remains one of the best films of the past decade—combining stunning visuals and an excellent soundtrack to go with the outstanding performances from Fanning, Malone, Heathcote and Lee. Keanu Reeves has a small but memorable role as a sleazy hotel manager, while Alessandro Nivola is most memorable as a fashion designer who must have Jesse for his show. Refn is working in very dark, cynical satire here, with elements of horror mixed in for good measure. This establishes Fanning as one of her generation’s best actresses.

3Raiders: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark, 12 year-old Eric Zala got the idea to remake the movie, shot for shot, as an experiment with his buddies. Over the next six years, they did just that, doing a remarkable job of recreating the legendary Spielberg film note for note. This film captures the creative team as they set out to film the one shot they never got: the massive airplane explosion after the fight with the big, bald Nazi. There’s a lot of fun stuff about the making of the movie, including the time the boys almost burned a house down. They also almost burned one of the actors, suffocated another with a plaster mold on his face, and used a little puppy instead of a monkey for the infamous Nazi salute monkey scene. The film includes interviews with director Eli Roth and Ain’t it Cool News founder Harry Knowles, major champions of the project.

3The Shallows Blake Lively, whose best role until now was the secretary in that SNL “Potato Chip” sketch, is terrific as Nancy, a medical school dropout who goes to a secret beach in Mexico in the wake of her mother’s death. She sets out for a day of surfing and reflection in what she thinks is a completely solitary setting (with the exception of a couple of other friendly surfers). Turns out, there’s a big-assed Great White shark, and this is its territory, and no trespassers are allowed, even if they are as pretty as Blake Lively. As shark movies go, this is a good one, with decent CGI effects, a couple of tense shark attacks, and a constant level of terror that never lets up. The only thing really keeping this from being “very good” rather than “nice and good” is the ending, which made me laugh a laugh I shouldn’t have laughed. Even with the big flaw, this is one of the summer movie season’s more fun offerings, certainly a lot more fun than that one with aliens and Jeff Goldblum in it. Note to producers: Please don’t make a sequel where the shark’s offspring follows Blake Lively to a vacation resort, Jaws: The Revenge style. You’ve made an all time top 10 shark movie; quit while you are ahead.

2X-Men: Apocalypse After scoring a huge critical and box office success with X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer’s triumphant return to the franchise, 20th Century Fox wisely brought the director back for this one. However, in a move that induces head scratching, Fox cut the budget for the current installment, while padding the cast and upping the action quotient. Actually, this is the studio that screwed up Fantastic Four, so maybe the shortchanging of a reliable franchise isn’t all that surprising. There are portions of the movie that are sloppier than the usual Singer offerings, and quite a few moments have cut-rate CGI. The flaws eventually pile up, and while there are some nice, enjoyable stretches, it’s a bit of a mess in the end—despite powerful work from Michael Fassbender as Magneto and new-to-thefranchise Oscar Isaac as the menacing villain Apocalypse. Before the opening credits, which look like shit, we get a quick back story for Apocalypse. En Sabah Nur (Isaac), an ancient Egyptian, merges with some sort of ancient mystical being, thus becoming the world’s first mutant, or something like that. He’s then buried under a crushed pyramid for centuries. What follows are too many characters demanding subplots and, ultimately, the worst chapter in the X-Men franchise.

This guy saves you money.

Rn R sweetdeals.news R eview.com