Reviews

REVIEW: Justice League

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment

Image: Warner Bros.

Chris Luckett

Reviewing a superhero movie basically just comes down to comparisons. “Captain America: Civil War is brilliant, but not quite as brilliant as The Winter Soldier.” “Spider-Man: Homecoming was good, but it was no Spider-Man 2.” “How awesome is it that Logan was even better than X-Men: Days of Future Past?”

It’s quite helpful in Justice League‘s case, as there are so many comparisons to be made. And perplexingly, DC’s supergroup movie doesn’t just invite them but encourages them as the movie goes along, blatantly and immodestly stealing from any successful superhero movie it can think of in a vain effort to win the critical and fan love that has seemed to come so naturally to the Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man series but been unattainable for DC since the Dark Knight era.

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REVIEW: Thor: Ragnarok

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Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Time after time, I’ve said that Marvel Studios is the new Pixar. It’s not for nothing that right around the time Pixar’s winning streak began faltering, the Marvel Cinematic Universe came into existence. For 16 movies now, Marvel has consistently delivered great movies. How great? Eight of those sixteen got 4-star ratings from yours truly, with another four getting 4½ stars.

Just four movies have been less than great. Captain America: The First Avenger is the Moonraker of the MCU and thus best not mentioned further. And Iron Man 3 was a little too scattershot to really deliver on every front. That just leaves Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming — the two most recent Marvel movies and the first case of back-to-back 3½-star entries in the MCU.

It all comes down to Thor: Ragnarok. Was this recent slip in quality just a blip, a sloppy Ratatouille before the invigorating WALL-E? Or would Marvel go full Pixar, with each continuing entry now feeling like the desperate exhumation of better days?

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REVIEW: Blade Runner 2049

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Image: Warner Bros.

Chris Luckett

I don’t tend to get excited for movies. (You see enough Transformers or Madea vehicles and it’s easier to just let yourself be pleasantly surprised by the gems.) And, sacrilegious as it is to say, I’ve always felt Blade Runner was an overrated movie. Incredibly innovative and paradigm-shifting to sci-fi, don’t get me wrong; but not a perfect film from a narrative point of view.

Yet Blade Runner 2049 has been my most anticipated movie in the back half of 2017. Part of it was the brilliance of the first trailer, part of it was seeing the world Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott envisioned with modern CGI, but the crux of it was director Denis Villeneuve.

Villeneuve has made three movies. He debuted in 2013 with the fantastic Prisoners, followed it up with the even more intense Sicario, and topped it all off with last year’s Best Picture-nominated Arrival. All three masterpieces, and each better than the one prior. It set the expectations for his fourth, Blade Runner 2049, so high for me the movie couldn’t meet them. But it comes close.

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REVIEW: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

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Image: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Chris Luckett

Before we tackle the sequel, let’s look back to the original. Was Kingsman: The Secret Service really that good? Sometimes movies that are absurdly over-the-top are beloved simply for how much they commit to the meta winking, overtly or not. I submit to you that the first Kingsman, as fun as it was, wasn’t very good at all. It was an interesting idea taken to an incredible extreme and powered by testosterone-pumping explosions and CGI camerawork. It was Transformers in a tailored suit.

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REVIEW: The Mummy

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Image: Universal Pictures

Chris Luckett

It seems at least once a year, a new movie reminds me of a line from Michael Keaton’s Multiplicity: “You know how when you make a copy of a copy, it’s not quite as sharp as, well, the original?”

When the Boris Karloff-starring The Mummy was remade in 1999, it succeeded by being a riff not just on the 1932 Mummy but also on Indiana Jones and his ilk, which gave it just enough of a distinct flavour, even if none of the ingredients were anything new.

The new Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, is built on the 1932 original, plus Raiders of the Lost Ark, plus the 1999 version, plus Generic Tom Cruise Action Movies. It’s just all too much, preventing the new version from truly coming to life.

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REVIEW: Wonder Woman

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Image: Warner Bros.

Chris Luckett

Comic book origin movies almost invariably get outdone by their first sequels, because the first movie has to spend most of its time as setup while the second gets to hit the ground running.

What’s more, the extensive exposition and mythology when it comes to superheroes make it difficult for even the best superhero origin stories to be truly great movies.

Of course, none of them have been Wonder Woman.

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REVIEW: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

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Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

Like Shrek and Ice Age before it, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl has been followed by so many unnecessary sequels, most have forgotten how truly brilliant and original the first movie was.

The real trouble has been that despite not being the protagonist of the first movie, Johnny Depp‘s inspired, looney performance as Capt. Jack Sparrow clicked too much with audiences. Before long, every unfunny boss and drunk uncle was doing their own bad impression and Disney themselves shaped the Pirates sequels (and, in so doing, the whole series) into “The Voodoo Tales of Pirate Jack.”

Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth (and final, if you believe the marketing) Pirates of the Caribbean movie, admirably wants to give Jack a proper sendoff, including a flashback or two, but can’t muster the energy needed to land it. Were it not for three gifted thespians fighting to chew the most scenery, it’d barely even be sea-worthy.

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REVIEW: Alien: Covenant

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Image: Twentieth Century Fox

Chris Luckett

Not counting the non-canonical Alien vs. Predator spinoffs, there have now been six movies in the Alien series — four in the story of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and the first two of a prequel trilogy directed by Ridley Scott.

There have been highs and middles, but even the misunderstood-at-best Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection had the benefits brought by two young, hungry directors eager to make their mark, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

As a result, even the less impressive Alien movies have had something fresh to offer. Alien: Covenant, as great as it is at what it does, is the first in the series that doesn’t really have a new thing to say or a new way to say it.

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REVIEW: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

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Image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Chris Luckett

“There’s figures on this. Seventy percent of what people react to is how you look, twenty percent is about how you sound, and only ten percent is actually what you say. So, if you look good and sound good [but talk nonsense], everyone’ll go wild!” –Eddie Izzard

Even those who were left unimpressed by 2014’s crowd-pleaser Guardians of the Galaxy were in unanimous agreement about how fantastic its soundtrack was. Employing a vintage Sony Walkman and a cassette mixtape to accompany the humourous action of the movie, its soundtrack topped the Billboard chart for 11 weeks, was the best-selling soundtrack of the year after Frozen‘s, and introduced a new generation to the hits of the Raspberries, Norman Greenbaum, 10cc, The Jackson 5, and Blue Swede.

The fact it was such a fun movie and a solid sci-fi actioner/superhero flick was better, but even if it had been just okay, the music (and the dazzling CGI) would have been enough to mostly make up it. The traction-less Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is proof of that.

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REVIEW: The Fate of the Furious

/ Chris Luckett / Leave a comment

Image: Universal Pictures

Chris Luckett

I’m the guy who hated Furious 7.

You knew there was someone in the world, right? After all, the seventh movie in the action racing franchise earned $1.5 billion, making it the sixth-highest grossing film in global history, so clearly a vast number of people loved what the series did with its new evolution. It felt like a huge fall backward to me, though.

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