FilM

Robots in disgust

While the original Pacific Rim had some definite problems, its sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising is a big, stupid, worthless, son-of-a-bitching waste of time.

Uprising takes an original idea—big Kaiju monsters fighting man-made robots—from director/ creator Guillermo del Toro. That Del Toro idea resulted in an OK first movie in Pacific Rim, with great elements but troublesome issues (robots/ monsters, good … people, bad). Uprising takes that original idea and turns it into something akin to, or perhaps even worse than, the average Transformers movie. It’s a watered-down, cheap joke of a film that obliterates anything good del Toro started.

Without del Toro directing—he dumped out a few years back to assume a producer’s role—the film loses all sense of style and artistic direction. Steven S. DeKnight, who has directed such TV shows as Smallville and Daredevil, makes his feature-filmdirecting debut with something that screams “Maybe I should’ve stuck with the TV gigs!”

Replacing Charlie Hunnam as the original franchise star, John Boyega jumps headlong into this mess as Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba in the first movie. Jake is a former Jaeger (Giant Robot) pilot who, after the death of his dad and a bad Jaeger experience, has taken to partying and trading black market hot sauce in a post-Kaiju world.

While Elba’s character supposedly closed off the monsters from our world, they find a way back (of course). I won’t give away how they come back, but I will tell you that it does involve a shit performance from Charlie Day returning as Newt, one of the few characters from the original who remains. Others include Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), and they all would’ve been better off doing Dancing with the Stars.

During a deal gone wrong, Jake comes across Amara (Cailee Spaeny), a scrappy kid who has managed to refurbish a mini-Jaeger (Almost Giant Robot) all by herself, so you know it will eventually be her “drifting” with Jake as they pilot a big robot against new monsters and other bad giant robots (traitorous dickhead Jaegers).

Like the original, the movie is bad when people stand around talking. Unlike the original, the action gets even lousier when the slick CGI monsters show up. Del Toro lent a strain of realism to his monster battles. That is, they were as real as a fantasy movie can be, with robots that lumbered along and monster haymakers that had some real weight behind them.

Now the monster battles have a cheap, halfbaked, way-too-fluid look to them. They glide around in quick-cut, super-fast battles that look more like Saturday morning cartoons than big-budget, big-screen fare. Del Toro’s Kaiju battles were actually kind of scary, as a monster movie should be. DeKnight’s smackdowns play as if Mark Wahlberg should be nearby, waiting for his glistening, slowmotion close up. Actually, Spaeny does get the slowmotion, 360 treatment at one point; it’s as if Michael Bay chloroformed DeKnight and directed the scene.

So, if crappy special effects aren’t enough to keep you away, let it be known that this movie contains what will surely stand as one of the year’s worst performances from Scott Eastwood, son of Clint, as Nate Lambert, Jake’s former military mate and sometime Jaeger co-pilot. Whenever Eastwood spoke, I thought I was watching a derivative Starship Troopers sequel. Oh, wait, we have some of those already. Maybe he was in one of them. Let me check. [Bob goes to internet.] No, he was not.

Honestly, after the subpar performance of the first movie at the box office, I’m surprised Pacific Rim: Uprising even exists. If the saga continues, I have to think it will be via Netflix or something like that.

Whatever they do, I hope I never have to watch John Boyega eat ice cream again. Seriously, he makes really gross sounds when he eats ice cream. Ω

“if a robot does the robot, is it still considered the robot? or is it just dancing?”

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4Black Panther Scoring director Ryan Coogler to helm Marvel’s latest proves to be a major triumph. His entry into the Marvel universe is a majestic, full-bodied, exhilarating treatment of the African king title character with the crazy cool suit (Chadwick Boseman). This is Coogler’s third collaboration with actor Michael B. Jordan, who brings a fully fleshed, complicated villain to the screen in Erik Killmonger. Man, you just have to be bad with that last name. The pre-opening credit scene involves Black Panther’s predecessor father having a confrontation in 1992 Oakland, California. A major event takes place as some kids playing basketball look on. It turns out to be one of the more brilliant and heart-wrenching setups for a Marvel movie character yet. The action cuts to present day, where Black Panther/T’Challa is dealing with the passing of his father due to an event that took place in Captain America: Civil War (massive credit to the producers and screenwriters who interlink these films together so well). He’s to become king but must pass through a ritual with some risk involved. He overcomes the obstacles, gets his throne and prepares for his rule. His kingdom doesn’t get a moment to breathe before trouble ensues. In London, Killmonger comes across an ancient weapon forged in Wakanda, Black Panther’s homeland. It’s made from Vibranium, a precious resource that fuels much of Wakanda’s advanced technology, including the Black Panther suits. With the help of Wakanda enemy Klaue (Andy Serkis acting with his real face as opposed to a motion-capture suit), Killmonger obtains the weapon, threatening world stability. The story is told with a stunning level of social relevance for a superhero film, especially when it comes to Killmonger’s motives. He’s got some big reasons for having gone bad, and they make him a far more sympathetic character than, say, Loki from Thor.

1Death Wish Bruce Willis sleepwalks through this listless remake of the Charles Bronson vigilante movie that made a bunch of dollars back in 1974, the year before Jawswas released. (I measure most things in the ’70s by the year Jawswas released. It’s a thing.) Remaking the film with Eli Roth at the helm and Willis in the Bronson role actually seemed like potential nasty fun. Sadly, Willis is phoning it in here, and too many horribly acted scenes reveal that Willis and Roth probably weren’t gelling as an actor/director combo. Willis often seems tone deaf in some of the movie’s more dramatic scenes, and just plain bored for the remainder. When Willis gives a shit about the movie he’s making, it shows. When he doesn’t care, and that seems quite often in many of his recent projects, he’s zombie-like. The original Death Wish (1974) is a hard watch these days. Apart from its racist depictions of criminals and extremely dated Herbie Hancock soundtrack, it’s also poorly acted by Bronson. It is, however, worth seeing for cameos by Christopher Guest as a police officer and, most horrifically, Jeff Goldblum as Freak No. 1. This time out, Paul Kersey (Willis) is a doctor set on revenge after his wife is killed and daughter winds up in a coma. Unlike the original, Kersey doesn’t just go after random criminals, but conducts a vendetta on the people who attacked his family. It all adds up to nothing.

3Love, Simon Nick Robinson delivers a breakthrough performance as the title character in Love, Simon, a sweet throwback high school comedy about a gay teen who, thanks to email and social networking, might have to come out in a way that doesn’t jibe with his personal schedule. The film feels a bit generic at times, but, by the time the movie plays out, some of the formulaic plot mechanics are mostly forgivable because, well, this movie is pretty damned adorable in the end. Based on the Becky Albertalli novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—which, in my opinion, would’ve been a much better movie title—the screenplay by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker scores enough original and sincere notes to earn smiles and tears. Simon finds out that somebody at his high school is closeted gay thanks to a social media post. Because he’s in the same predicament, Simon creates a Gmail account, contacts the student, and begins a virtual pen pal relationship. Over the course of the emails, Simon falls in love—or, you know, the high school version of love—with the other anonymous student, constantly scanning his classmates for clues to his identity. Those classmates include best friend Leah (Katherine Langford), who may or may not have a crush on him, new girl in school Abby (Alexandra Shipp), who is the crush of other buddy Nick (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), and Martin (Logan Miller), the resident class clown/annoying guy. All of these characters are enjoyable with the exception of Miller’s, who plays the “annoying guy” role so well that he becomes genuinely, unappealingly annoying. Director Greg Berlanti balances Simon’s school life with a heartwarming, beautifully depicted family life. Jennifer Garner, an underrated actress, is awesome as The Best Mom … Ever, while Josh Duhamel is equally terrific as Simon’s goofy, trying-to-becool dad. Talitha Bateman rounds out the family as the little sister who wants to be a cook.

1Mute Duncan Jones, director of the classic Moon and so-good Source Code, continues his slump that started with Warcraft: The Beginning. Actually, this mess qualifies as a total disaster, a film so bad Jones might find himself looking for sitcom TV gigs in the near future. Alexander Skarsgard plays Leo, an Amish bartender in future Germany (you read that right) who lost his ability to speak in a boat propeller accident as a kid. His girlfriend (Seyneb Saleh) disappears, sending him on a wild search that involves him hitting bad guys with big wooden sticks like Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall. In what seems to be another movie, Paul Rudd plays Cactus Bill, a crooked doctor trying to get back to the U.S. with his daughter. Cactus Bill hangs around with a pedophile doctor (Justin Theroux, saddled with a goofy wig) and, again, this part of the movie feels like a complete other film. Let me again point out that none of the parts of this film occupied by Skarsgard, Rudd or Theroux are any good. Skarsgard just runs around a lot looking all helpless, while the usually reliable Rudd resorts to a big, meaty mustache and lots of gum-chewing to look tough. (God dammit, I hate that!) Theroux relies far too heavily on the word “Babe!” to distinguish his character in what amounts to his worst role to date. You have to really be screwing up to make the likes of Rudd and Theroux look bad, and Jones makes them look awful. (Streaming on Netflix.)

1A Wrinkle in Time A beloved novel gets absolutely slaughtered with A Wrinkle in Time, a sure contender for one of 2018’s worst movies, and an embarrassment for the great talents involved. Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel was adapted by Disney once before with an also lousy TV movie back in 2003. The book has been bouncing around Hollywood for decades, with many attempts to bring it to the big screen being aborted. It’s a sad, sad thing that Disney finally took the plunge, dropped over $100 million and came up with this mess. Compounding the sadness is that it’s directed by Ava DuVernay, who made the excellent Martin Luther King, Jr., biopic Selma. While that film had a cohesive vision, excellent technical credits and powerhouse acting all around, her new film has none of these things. It’s total chaos on screen. Crackpot-yet-dreamy scientist Mr. Murry (Chris Pine) is obsessed with interstellar travel, and believes that wrinkles in time could be used to travel light years through space. It’s never really established what he wants to achieve through such travel, but his obsession eventually leads to his disappearance for four years. He apparently travels through the universe with no real way to get home, and no real sense of purpose. His kids, led by Storm Reid, try to find him with a trio of strange folks played by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling who look totally clueless.