FiLM

Dancing with the stars

The trippy Marvel fun continues with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, a big, nutty, spiraling sequel that brings the fun, along with a lot of daddy issues.

Star-Lord, a.k.a. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), had some major mommy issues in the first movie, and this time out his dad takes a turn at messing with his head. The dad comes in the form of Ego (Kurt Russell— yes!), who we see hanging out with Quill’s mom in the ’70s during the film’s prologue. (The CGI and practical makeup anti-aging effects on Kurt Russell ranks as one of the best examples of that particular trick to date.)

After a killer opening credits sequence that features a battle with a giant slug thing while Baby Groot dances to ELO, the Guardians—including Quill, Baby Groot (voice of Vin Diesel), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (David Bautista) and Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper)—find themselves on another quest. They are quickly diverted to Ego’s planet, where Quill finds out more about his celestial origins.

Russell proves to be perfectle cast as Quill’s bombastic father, with Pratt possessing many of the legendary action film star’s alluring traits. Seeing them on screen together, at one point playing catch with an energy ball Quill conjures with newfound powers, is one of the film’s great joys.

It also proves to be misleading, because writerdirector James Gunn isn’t going to settle for an easy story about a wayward son reuniting with a dream dad. As it turns out, Ego makes Darth Vader look like Mike Brady on a paternal level. Vol. 2 is as dark and nasty as it is silly and action-packed.

Quill’s daddy issues don’t end with Ego. Oh, no, that would be too easy. Gunn and his cast have come up with a story that is far more complicated than your average comic book movie. Of course, there’s also the whole sibling rivalry thing between Gamora and her twisted sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan). When these two fight, it goes way beyond kicking each other in the shins.

Another subplot—the film has quite a few— involves Michael Rooker’s disgraced Yondu looking for redemption. What comes of his storyline results in one of the greater surprises the franchise has offered so far. Rooker, such an underrated actor, makes Yondu’s journey compelling.

All of the story threads hold together well as the film ratchets up the action at a frantic pace that Gunn always manages to keep under control. The director has a way of going crazy with his visuals and pacing, yet making it all comprehensible and coherent.

Bautista, good in the first film, graduates to greatness with this one, providing most of the film’s big laughs. His newly minted relationship with Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Ego’s traveling companion, and his frankness about her physical appearance, is one of the film’s great running gags.

Sylvester Stallone, who is not required to wear heavy makeup, makes a brief appearance as a renegade thief, and while he doesn’t share screen time with Russell, we’ll just go ahead and call this a Tango & Cash reunion.

A couple of years back, Yes album cover illustrator Roger Dean took James Cameron to court over Avatar’s production designs looking a lot like his work. He might want to fire up the lawyer brigade again, because Ego’s planet looks like it was completely inspired by Dean’s paintings. Whenever there was a pan of the Ego planet’s landscape, I had Yes’s “Starship Trooper” playing in my head.

While Yes doesn’t make the classic rock soundtrack, songs like Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” and Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” do. As did its predecessor, Vol. 2 works as an ode to classic vinyl rock, as well as those album covers.

The Guardians will be back in a second sequel, along with an appearance in next year’s Avengers: Infinity War, so the fun is just beginning. As always, stick around for the credits. There are many scenes still to be had after the main movie is over. Ω

“i am Groot.”

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3Beauty and the Beast This live-action take on the classic Disney animated musical isn’t a shot-for-shot remake of the original like, say, Gus Van Sant’s time-wasting Psycho effort. However, it does follow a lot of the same plot points and incorporates enough of the musical numbers to give you that sense of déja vu while watching it. Thankfully, Emma Watson makes it worthwhile. Hermione makes for a strong Belle. Since director Bill Condon retains the music from the original animated movie, Watson is asked to sing, and it’s pretty evident that AutoTune is her friend. She has a Kanye West thing going. As the Beast, Dan Stevens gives a decent enough performance through motion-capture. The original intent was to have Stevens wearing prosthetics only, but he probably looked like Mr. Snuffleupagus in dailies, so they called upon the help of beloved computers. Like King Kong, the CGI creation blends in nicely with his totally human, organic cast member. The cast and crew labor to make musical numbers like “Gaston” and “Be Our Guest” pop with the creative energy of the animated version, but they don’t quite reach those heights. They are nicely rendered, for sure, but not on the masterpiece level that was the 1991 film.

1The Circle This is a clueless movie based on the novel by Dave Eggers, a lame attempt at satire in regard to social networking and the invasion of privacy during the digital age. After slaving away at a temp job, Mae Holland (Emma Watson) lands a gig at The Circle thanks to her friend Annie (Karen Gillan), a top player at the company. The Circle is all of your basic modern day computer entities—Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.—wrapped into one big digital corporate burrito. It’s run by a friendly-looking, coffee cup-toting, Steve Jobs-like entity named Bailey (Tom Hanks) and his sidekick Stenton (Patton Oswalt, a.k.a. TV’s Son of TV’s Frank on the new incarnation of Mystery Science Theater 3000). Mae progresses from a customer service rep to a big player in the company seemingly overnight, and let’s just say that ascension is a wee bit unconvincing. Watson’s portrayal of Holland’s supposed turmoil and opinion swings lacks any sort of dimension, wit or shock value. Yes, much of this can be blamed on the screenplay written in part by Eggers himself and director James Ponsoldt. It lacks the sort of insight and dark humor this sort of film craves. But, while often an enjoyable movie presence, Watson might lack the talent to pull a role like this, one that requires her to be unlikeable in many ways. The Circle is obnoxious, sloppy and full of aimless arguments. You know … like most of your Facebook and Twitter news feeds.

5Colossal Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis gloriously upstage two kaiju monsters in Colossal, a science fiction monster mash that features many twists and a psychological/emotional river that runs mighty deep. Hathaway outdoes herself as Gloria, a New York writer who gets herself kicked out of her boyfriend’s (Dan Stevens) apartment for constant partying and being somewhat “unmanageable.” She winds up in her hometown sleeping on an inflatable mattress. She soon bumps into Oscar (Sudeikis), a friend from childhood. Oscar, an overly sweet and generous guy at first glance, immediately seeks to help Gloria, giving her a job at his bar and giving her furniture for her sparse home. This seems to be the setup for a strange romantic comedy between Gloria and Oscar with science fiction/horror as the background. Writer-director Nacho Vigalondo has something much different in mind. Gloria awakens one morning after much drinking to discover that a giant, lizard-like creature is attacking Seoul, Korea. After examining some YouTube and news programs, she realizes that the monster seems to be mimicking her mostly drunk body movements half a world away. Yes, the monster is the manifestation of her selfloathing, out-of-control, alcoholic ways, and it’s taking lives in Korea. She feels more than a little bit guilty about this. Things get weirder when an equally large monster robot shows up next to Gloria’s monster and appears to be the manifestation of Oscar’s anxieties.

2The Fate of the Furious With The Fate of the Furious, easily the most stupidly titled installment in the Furious franchise—yes, even more stupid than the name Tokyo Drift—you get to see the single most disgusting, stomach-churning, horrifying moment in cinema so far this year. That would be when Charlize Theron plants a big, sloppy kiss on Vin Diesel, the image of which is some kind of “Woman from Monster Meets the Pillsbury Dough Boy On Steroids” nightmare. Some five years ago, I made up a list of five things I never wanted to see, and that came in at number three, right under “Donald Trump as President” and “Spiders in My Scrambled Eggs Being Served to Me By a Man with Weeping Hand Sores.” Somewhere along the way, the Furious franchise went completely bonkers and became less about cars racing around and more about dudes who think hair on the top of their heads is total bullshit and also think upper arms should be the size of a bull’s torso. It also went off on some sort of international spy team tangent, something that worked to a hilarious degree in Furious 7. In The Fate of the Furious, the franchise trajectory becomes ridiculous without being much fun. It’s just dumb and plodding.

1Going in Style This is a lousy remake of the “old guys rob a bank wearing rubber noses” bleak comedy from back in 1979 that starred George Burns and Art Carney. The original was directed by Martin Brest, the guy who would go on to direct Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run and, uh oh, Gigli. This take loses all of the charm of that fun and slightly dark Burns vehicle. It’s super heavy on schmaltz, and it asks a strong cast to embarrass themselves for more than 90 minutes. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin replace Burns, Carney and Lee Strasberg in the updated story, and that setup probably looked pretty good on paper. Unfortunately, they handed the film to Zach Braff, the guy from Scrubs, to direct. Braff does so with all the subtlety and nuance of an M80 going off in a candlelight yoga class. The heist itself insists that it is clever while being rather rote and mundane. Caine replaces Burns as Joe, the brains of the group. Joe, during a visit to a bank to complain about his upcoming foreclosure, witnesses a bank robbery. So, naturally, when he and his pals’ pensions go away, he decides to rob a bank. Then, after some gentle persuading with Willie (Freeman) and Albert (Arkin), they rob a bank. The big twist here is that they rob a bank wearing Rat Pack masks instead of the rubber nose glasses they wore in the original.

3Life This sci-fi/horror film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds is an inconsistent but overall sturdy genre pic that looks great and ultimately delivers the goods despite a few slow patches and a couple of remarkably dumb moments. Credit director Daniel Espinosa for setting a grim tone and sticking with it through the very end. Gyllenhaal and Reynolds play astronauts pulling a long haul on an international space station. Gyllenhaal’s David Jordan is actually about to break the record for consecutive days in space, and generally prefers life in the stars to life back on our miserable planet. The crew is awaiting a space capsule containing samples from Mars, and these samples will put forth an amazing discovery: life beyond our planet. Ship scientist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) discovers a cell, wakes it up, and marvels at its ability to grow at a rapid pace. He eventually finds himself marveling at the little guy’s ability to grab on to his glove and basically mulch the hand within it. So, as the viewer quickly discovers, life on Mars was probably a total shit show, because this globular nasty—a distant cousin of Steve McQueen’s The Blob—digs on killing everything in its path. The expedition goes from a triumphant discovery to ultra protective mode in a matter of seconds.