film

War and piece

Oh … the Legos. My mom asked me for Legos this past Christmas, and I thought, sure, why not? That’s kind of cute—buying Legos for your Mommy on Christmas. It’s a rad little stocking stuffer, a nice starter present.

So, I grabbed a Star Wars X-Wing Fighter Lego set in a well-known department store. (OK, since we are already advertising Legos here, I’ll name the store: JC Penney’s.) I figured Christmas shopping was off to a good start. No, I did not look at the price.

After the lady at the cash register announced my total, I stood aghast and realized Mom had her big gift already. Damn … they are expensive! (Incidentally, Mom, earlier today, sent me a photo of the fully operational X-Wing built and ready for play. OK, it’s pretty glorious. Might be worth the money.)

Why did I tell you this story? Two reasons: to let you know that I am commercially out-of-touch when it comes to gift giving, and as a sort of preamble to a very relevant film considering the above story. I am, of course, about to give you my thoughts on The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.

Taking some cues from Mad Max, the Book of Revelations and, yes, Radiohead, The Second Part is another healthy dose of family-friendly fun where both sides of the age spectrum should laugh heartily.

One of my favorite moviegoing things is to hear an adult blast out laughing, and then their kid following suit. Either the kid is, indeed, in on the joke, or he/she just wants to be like the parent. Either way, it’s just a lot of fun and really cute when a movie produces these kinds of reactions for its entire running time.

Cut to five years after the end of the first movie, and our hero Emmet (Chris Pratt) is happily buying coffee in Apocalypseburg, a devastated Lego land of sullen tones and broken dreams. Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) has taken to dramatic narrating at all times, things are getting knocked down as soon as they are built up, and invading aliens called Duplos are mostly to blame—invading forces that are at once undeniably adorable and unabashedly destructive.

It’s a crazed world where Batman (Will Arnett) winds up engaged to Queen Waterva Wa-Nabi (Tiffany Haddish), leader of the Duplo, and Emmet winds up running with a Kurt Russell-type antihero who is suspiciously like him. The reasons for all of the craziness will not be revealed here. Take the kids, and find out for yourself.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller do not return as directors, but they do contribute to the screenplay. Directorial chores go to Mike Mitchell, whose illustrious career has included Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. While this is easily Mitchell’s best directorial effort, some of the charm and zest of the original is lost in the transfer. The movie feels a bit repetitive at times, and some of the action is too fast to be taken in properly.

Flaws aside, the movie is still a lot of fun, especially when Arnett’s cranky Batman is at the forefront. There’s also a slightly dark underbelly at play here, and it’s fun to see a kids’ flick that doesn’t totally play it safe. As I mentioned before, there’s plenty here for adults to appreciate. There are some great gags involving raptors—funny considering Pratt’s Jurassic World participation—and a terrific small role for an iconic action hero who spends a lot of time in air ducts.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part has a feeling of finality to it, as if these characters are being closed out. But, let’s face it, money talks, and with Toy Story 4 on the way—chapter 3 was supposed to be the last—it’s clear that animated movies can keep on trucking as long as adults and kids line up. I’d be surprised if they didn’t find a way to keep the Lego Movie ball rolling. Ω

“What are you looking at?”

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1Aquaman The latest DC effort, Aquaman, is middling fun for about 20 minutes before it becomes one of the worst films of 2018. It’s the typical DC garbage can of a film and proof that Warner Brothers has learned next to nothing when it comes to making a good comic book movie since Christian Bale took off the cowl (Yes, Wonder Woman was good—the lone exception.) Jason Momoa returns as big, tattooed, beefy Arthur, the dreamy son of a Lost City of Atlantis queen (Nicole Kidman) and Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison), a lowly lighthouse keeper. Fett finds the queen washed up on the rocks and takes her home, where she promptly eats his goldfish. (What a laugh riot! She ate his pet fish!) She gives birth to Arthur, and the origin story part of the movie is well on its way. We see a few more moments in the fish man’s young life. Momoa eventually shows up in full party mode, and it looks like we could be on our way to some goofy fun. Alas, like Zack Snyder before him, director James Wan doesn’t know how to keep a leash on his epic, and this things goes bonkers in a bad way. The undeniable charms—and admittedly glorious hair—of Momoa can only go so far in this unholy mess.

1Glass Following one bomb after another during a 15-year stretch, in 2017, M. Night Shyamalan showed us he was still capable of good cinematic things with Split—a showcase for James McAvoy’s multi-persona performance and a creepy little thriller thanks to Shyamalan’s surprisingly deft direction. An after-credits scene showed us Bruce Willis as David Dunn, his superhumanly strong Unbreakable character, and the possibilities became very intriguing. The director announced his intention to make Glass and that Split was, in fact, the second part of what would be a trilogy. Glass would bring back the brittle-boned character of that name played by Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable, along with Willis and the newly introduced McAvoy character(s). OK, sounds good. Let’s go! Well … shit. 2019 has its first legitimate clunker. Shyamalan is up to his old tricks again—the kind of loopy, half-assed filmmaking that made the world scratch its collective head with The Happening, The Village, The Last Airbender, After Earth and Lady in the Water—all wretched stink bombs. He has a remarkable ability to employ both lazy and overambitious writing simultaneously. He puts a lot in play with Glass but doesn’t seem to have a distinct idea of where to take it. Plot holes abound like wolf spider offspring jumping from their momma’s back when you slam a shoe down on her. There are so many, it’s hard to keep track of them.

5Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse While Tom Holland’s live action Spider-Man remains in limbo due to that infamous Thanos finger snap, Sony Pictures ups the ante on the Spidey franchise with the eye-popping, all around ingenious Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse, one of 2018’s greatest cinematic surprises. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is trying to adjust to a new, upscale school after winning a scholarship. He’s away from his big city friends and getting some guff from his well-meaning police officer dad (Brian Tyree Henry), who wants him to appreciate the chance he’s been given. Miles’s uncle (the ever busy Mahershala Ali) keeps him grounded, encouraging him to continue as a graffiti artist. On one of their painting excursions, Miles is bitten by a strange spider and then—well, you know. He eventually crosses paths with the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker (Chris Pine). And, as the plot would have it, parallel universe portals open and allow in a whole fleet of different SpiderMen, Spider-Women, Spider-Pigs and Spider-Robots. That group is comprised of Peter B. Parker (the invaluable Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Ham (a mishmash of Spidey and Porky Pig voiced by John Mulaney), Peni Parker and her robot (Kimiko Glenn) and, best of all, Nicolas Cage as the blackand-white Spider-Man Noir. So Miles is one of many Spider entities on hand to go up against Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), whose corporation is responsible for the time hole rip allowing all of his adversaries into his corner of the universe. Like any good comic book, the movie is stacked with action, plot threads and many twists and turns.

2The Kid Who Would Be King A modern-day bullied kid pulls a sword out of a stone and is tasked with saving the world in The Kid Who Would Be King, writer-director Joe Cornish’s attempt to capture the youthful, magical wonder of Harry Potter and mix it with the legend of King Arthur. While he doesn’t completely fail, an overall drab directorial style, messy action and many moments that are far less clever than they think they are keep this action-adventure from being a true crowd-pleaser. This one will probably work better on a smaller screen, so wait until it’s streaming. Do that, and you’ll catch a pretty good performance from Louis Ashbourne Serkis (son of Andy) as British school kid Alex, the fed-up boy who sticks his neck on the line to protect best bud Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) from bully Lance (Tom Taylor). Serkis is a little overwrought in some of the film’s more emotionally demanding parts, but he hits the right notes when it comes to Alex’s heroic proclamations after he procures Excalibur from a big rock in the middle of a construction site. Alex happens to notice that Bedders sounds a lot like Bedivere, and Lance is short for Lancelot, so he figures destiny requires him to knight the two, along with Kaye (Rhianna Dorris), Lance’s partner in crime. They form an unlikely alliance against Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson), banished half-sister of King Arthur who will return in flying dragon lady form and make England the hub for the apocalypse.

2Velvet Buzzsaw The reliable combo of writer-director Dan Gilroy and Jake Gyllenhaal (they partnered up on Nightcrawler) takes a creative step backward with this art world satire/horror effort. Gyllenhaal plays Morf Vandewalt, an art critic losing his lust for the profession. His love affair with Josephina (Zawe Ashton), an art house employee, gets confusing in many ways when she comes across paintings by a dead man in her apartment building. The paintings, which the artist had literally put his blood into, have deadly consequences for those who gaze upon them. Gyllenhaal is his usual sharp self in the role, creating something funny without obviously going for laughs. Rene Russo is equally good as a ruthless art dealer, willing to cut down anybody who gets in her way. The supporting cast includes Toni Collette, John Malkovich and Billy Magnusson, which lends to the feeling that the film should be more than what it is. It’s sharp satire for its first half, then a sloppy horror film for its second. It’s not scary by any means, and it tries a little too hard to be. Gilroy takes his eye off the ball, loses focus and wastes a promising premise and solid performances. (Streaming on Netflix during a limited theatrical release.)