Film

Total disaster

San Andreas

If you love Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and you think California sucks balls from top to bottom, you’re going to love San Andreas. In this movie, you not only get two hours of The Rock’s admittedly winning smile, you get to see Los Angeles and San Francisco smacked down with a fury matched only by The Rock in the ring during his fake wrestling heyday. Seriously, if you hate the San Francisco Giants, the Hollywood sign and that white triangle skyscraper thingy in San Francisco, this movie is total porn for you. The movie contains plenty of glorious visual mayhem involving earthquakes, tsunamis and Johnson’s totally out-of-control upper body art. Sadly, it also contains something even more devastating than an earthquake on the San Andreas Fault, that being dialogue so vapid and shitty it crushes you and the film like The Rock’s enormous meaty hand squishing a beer can. Johnson plays rescue pilot Ray, a gutsy and virtuous man on the job who, nevertheless, can’t keep things together on the home front. He gets divorce papers from wife Emma (Carla Gugino) on the day he’s supposed to take his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) on a trip. Before he can pout and dwell on things too long, the earth starts shaking. The first quake hits Hoover Dam, and director Brad Peyton has no sentimentality for treasured landmarks. The dam is history, and just happens to have world-renowned scientist Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) standing next to it when it goes. Lawrence heads back to his lab, where he sets out to warn the world of impending, bigger quakes via the worst dialogue of Giamatti’s career, and this guy was in Lady in the Water.

Turns out, these are the big ones, with catastrophic quakes starting in Los Angeles and leading up to San Francisco. Johnson commandeers a helicopter and sets out to rescue the wife in L.A. and then his daughter in the Bay Area because, you know, millions of people are dying, but he just has this little inkling that he can still work things out with by Bob Grimm the wife and kid. Now, let me get something straight. bgrimm@ I don’t go to a movie like this expecting newsreview.com dialogue comparable to the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie. I know films like 2 this are meant to kill a few brain cells, and I’m willing to sacrifice a few to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson race a boat straight up a tsunami’s ass. It’s when the dialogue becomes so bad that it makes a Michael Bay film sound like dialogue from the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie that I cry uncle. Or, I just cry in general. Lost film opportunities hurt me so. The special effects in San Andreas are good enough to keep you fighting through the movie, even when it devolves into the worst of soap operas. Personally, I was on the fence until the final scene, where Ray and his family are surveying a completely annihilated San Francisco. They are rather happy and smiley for people who have just witnessed the death of millions, but I suppose we can forgive that because, I have to admit, it had moments of sheer awesomeness. Then, a huge flag unfurls on the wreckage of the Golden Gate Bridge. Let me make this clear, given that the worst earthquake in recorded history had just ended mere minutes ago, procuring a flag of this magnitude, securing it on a very unstable structure, and getting it to unfurl just so would be virtually impossible. The Rock’s final line of dialogue did me in. It was just one too many lame lines of dialogue on the Jenga tower. As disaster movies go, San Andreas certainly provides plenty of visual carnage. Trouble is, one usually has to listen to a movie while watching it, and when the words sneak past your ears and up to the brain, bad faces and disgruntled throat sounds ensue. Ω

You can tell there's an earthquake happening because The Rock is running sideways.

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3Furious 7 The latest Furious movie says goodbye to series mainstay Paul Walker while taking car chases to seriously outlandish and fantastical extremes. In some ways, the film has become more of a science fiction offering rather than a car chase movie, and that’s fine by me. I have to admit that part of me got uncomfortable watching Paul Walker racing around in cars a little over a year after he died in a fiery car crash. You can say Walker died doing something he loved, but I’m thinking irresponsible and reckless speeding dropped way down on his favorite things list during the final moments of his life. Like, to the way, way bottom of that list. That said, Furious 7 does spark some life into a very tired franchise by going totally bananas, and it’s pretty remarkable how Walker, who had allegedly only filmed half of his scenes before he died, is inserted into the movie posthumously. Director James Wan, primarily known for horror movies like Saw and The Conjuring, has delivered the franchise’s best offering since the first one. This movie gets my blessing for the sequence involving Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and Walker’s Brian O’Conner jumping a car through not one but two skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi. Will there be an eighth film, even though Walker is no longer with us? Um, given that the movie made nearly $144 million in its opening weekend, I think it’s a foregone conclusion that Universal will find a way to keep the engines running on this sucker.

3Good Kill Ethan Hawke plays an alcoholic drone pilot in this intriguing drama from director Andrew Niccol. Major Thomas Egan (Hawke), a former pilot, now spends his days and nights remotely killing the enemy overseas. He commands drones with a joystick, taking orders from his commander (Bruce Greenwood) and never putting himself at actual risk. The situation leaves Egan bored, stressed out, and reliant on alcohol, creating problems at the workplace and home with his wife Molly (a strong January Jones). When the CIA step in and take over Egan’s operations, things get a little shady, and Egan is pushed over the edge. What makes this movie work is the performance of Hawke, who just gets better and better with every movie. His Egan is a believable combination of maximum guilt, and a newer form of battle fatigue. Jones matches Hawke with her performance, and Greenwood fortifies the cast. Niccol, who worked with Hawke before on Gattaca, makes up for his prior misfire with The Host (the Saoirse Ronan disaster, not the cool monster movie). It’s a different kind of war movie for a different kind of war. (Available for rent on iTunes, Amazon.com and On Demand during a limited theatrical release.)

4Mad Max: Fury Road George Miller is back in his post apocalyptic world of Mad Max, messing around with fast rigs on desert landscapes. He has a new Max, Tom Hardy replacing Mel Gibson, and Charlize Theron is along for the ride. The results are a blast, probably the best in the franchise when it comes to action. I’m going to have to give a few points to Gibson over Hardy for his Max portrayal. Hardy is good in the role, but Gibson is the original and best Max, even if Gibson is a total asshole. The film starts off with a shot reminiscent of The Road Warrior (a.k.a. Mad Max 2), and then it just goes berserk. Max gets himself captured by a really disgusting looking, villainous ruler named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and finds himself hanging upside down and providing blood for a pale, bald Joe minion, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). A shaven-headed Theron shows up as Imperator Furiosa, a one-time loyalist of Immortan Joe, who tricks him and kidnaps his wives, intent on taking them to some sort of green promised land. When Joe figures out she’s making a run for it, his soldiers (who look a little like the cave creatures from The Descent) take off after her. This includes Nux, with Max strapped to the front of his car wearing a facemask reminiscent of his Bane getup in The Dark Knight Rises. The folks who put the look of this movie together, from it’s terrific cinematography, to its costuming to its incredible stunt work, all deserve praise and extra beers. 1 Poltergeist In the original Poltergeist, a dude eating a drumstick tears his face off while looking in a mirror, throwing chunks of bloody flesh in a sink. Somehow, that movie managed to get a PG rating. In this remake, Sam Rockwell cries, and somehow they get the PG-13 rating. I love Sam Rockwell, but it’s hard to watch him work up tears for this dreck. Actually, this movie is hard to watch from start to finish, even if you haven’t seen the original. Original director Tobe Hooper (teaming with writer-producer Steven Spielberg) managed a good, horrific treat spiked with humor back in 1982. This paltry remake from director Gil Kenan loses all of the spark of the original, and gives us a routine haunting movie with cheap scares involving clown dolls that don’t actually scare and kid actors who fail to register. I won’t single them out because they are kids, but they do suck. Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt squirm through the roles originated by Craig T. Nelson and Jobeth Williams. There was no good reason for this undertaking. The movie shouldn’t have been remade. If somebody dares to try and remake Jaws, I will be truly pissed off. Leave the Spielberg properties alone!

4Slow West Michael Fassbender just keeps on rolling with this one, a gritty, appropriately downbeat Western from writer-director John Maclean. Fassbender plays Silas, a cynical, grouchy rider on the American frontier in the 19th century who comes across Jay, a Scottish boy (Kodi-Smit McPhee) traveling alone in search of Rose (Caren Pistorious), a girl he loves. She and her father had to flee to America after an accident, and now they have a bounty on their heads. Silas knows of the bounty, but he doesn’t tell Jay. After coming across a group of bandits led by Payne (the ever reliable Ben Mendelsohn), Silas must decide on whose side he’s going to back, the boy or the bandits. It’s a great ride, with a vivid depiction of the Old West unlike any I’ve seen before. By the time the action reaches Rose’s farm, a single house out in the middle of nowhere, you get a sense of just how few people were inhabiting that part of the world at this time. McPhee is heartbreaking as a young man who just doesn’t get it, and Fassbender continues to prove he’s a cinematic treasure. They make for a great screen duo. (Available for rent on iTunes, Amazon.com and On Demand during limited theatrical release.)

3Tomorrowland The future is a little confusing and convoluted, but kind of cool anyway, in director-writer Brad Bird’s (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) interesting enough ode to one of Disney’s most popular park attractions. Boy genius Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) and his jetpack attend the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, New York, during a wonderful sequence that recreates the legendary event. After sparring with the curator of an invention contest (Hugh Laurie), the despondent boy winds up on a bench sulking, only to be given a special pin by a mysterious young girl named Athena (the absolutely incredible Raffey Cassidy). The action cuts to years later, when that same girl gives a pin to teenager Casey (Britt Robertson). The pin, when touched, transports Casey to a seemingly future land where invention is encouraged. Casey eventually winds up with a grown Frank (George Clooney), and they travel back to Tomorrowland to save our world. The script was co-written by Lost and Prometheus scribe Damon Lindelof, so, naturally, all of the dots don’t seem to be connected. Lindelof can be a little ambiguous, even confusing at times, but he’s always interesting. If you like your movies tied up in a nice little bow, the works of Lindelof are not for you. As for me, I have a fun time trying to figure his stuff out, even if I don’t come up with all of the answers.

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