Creed

***1/2 out of ****

In the seventh entry in the Rocky series – and the first to take a spinoff turn -Creed introduces us to a new lead character and naturally turns Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) into the mentor. Our hero is Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordon), a man who chooses boxing as an outlet for his drive to fight. He’s traveled from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to find Rocky Balboa with a buried secret to tell him: He’s the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s once-competitor-then-friend who was killed in the ring in a very silly sequel.

Adonis is torn on how to feel about the father he never knew, but determined to make it as a Boxer. The motivation is vague, but Stallone sells Rocky's gradual choice to train Adonis. What follows is a predictable movie with a slightly compelling love interest (Tessa Thompson) and the typical all-is-lost bummer section of Act II. If 007 can get away with it, Rocky can too... but with a montage... or two... or three.

While Stallone, who has always been artistically involved in the franchise, came to this project as a producer, it is impressively the auteur effort of director Ryan Coogler, whose 2013 film Fruitvale Station was a major critical hit of that year. Michael B. Jordon, who starred in that film as well, does a big transformation to justify going up against the tough bodies of some real fighters.

I can only imagine that Coogler wrote and captured this energetic film as a passion project inspired by Stallone’s passion to keep this simple character and his world alive. This is formulaic-yet-fun movie of the strongest kind.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -Part 2

**1/2 out of ****

In Mockingjay – Part 2, the cinematic version of Suzanne Collins’ young adult sci-fi trilogy comes to a close with movie number four. Katniss Everdeen, with the push of some questionable revolutionaries, leads a raid into the capitol of the dictatorship that has oppressed its working class through terror for generations. I enjoyed the film for Jennifer Lawrence’s stunning screen presence and epic production that brings Collins’ final story to life.

Sadly, I wasn’t spared the familiar drawn-out passages, which fail to build toward a satisfying emotional climax. In Part 1, I was critical of the producers’ choice to follow the trend of treating movies like segmented television drama. The second part of this final story suffers more because it stops and pauses often enough to draw attention to all the underdeveloped characteristics I’ve noticed about its futuristic dystopian setting and its people.

Francis Lawrence has a lot of confidence in his astounding filmmaking aesthetics and great actors at his disposal, but his direction lacks an emotional charge in certain scenes, which deserve much more weight. He also wasted some time in this one with a creature attack scene reminiscent of his disappointing film, I Am Legend. You would think it would be better for his career to avoid doing any scene involving CGI ogres again. 

I still maintain my belief that Gary Ross’ first film in the series is the best - mostly due to superior editing. I’m also a little disappointed in the over-used score by composer James Newton Howard, who hasn’t come up with any memorably new material since his excellent score to the original movie.

I certainly found the last entry in this series to be worth my time, but it could have been so much better. Maybe I’m just nitpicking.

Spectre

*** out of ****

James Bond has returned with Spectre and all the financial support it could ask for after 2012’s Skyfall took the Daniel Craig run of the franchise to new box office heights. Through the continuing efforts of director Sam Mendes, this film is just as gorgeous looking as the last. The action is fun, Thomas Newman’s score is dramatic, the locations are breathtakingly captured -thanks to Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, and once again everything onscreen - no matter how effects-heavy - looks real.

However, I am compelled to agree with Bond fans critical of the misguided efforts to make new 007 films more interesting for a modern audience. So far, Quantum of Solace was the most off-point by trying to make the world around Bond more real. Now the series has found another wrong direction: trying to make Bond more real.

As a moderate fan of this series, I believe that each entry is, at best, a superficial guilty-pleasure that attempts to capture the collective heterosexual male fantasy world of the year in which it was made. Making it too real is a confusing buzzkill. Making it too outlandish destroys our suspension of disbelief. I could recount the story of Spectre to explain how it walks this tightrope until it stumbles embarrassingly, but I’d be telling yet another story about MI6 getting horribly compromised by another world domination scheme leading up to a couple of majorly dumb spoiler-filled plot twists.

All I know, is that something about this movie felt off despite how pleasant it was to watch. Actors like Dave Bautista, Léa Seydoux, and Christoph Waltz in key supporting roles feel like such uninventive cases of typecasting, that this project seems like a step backwards for them. Bond movies tend to be great at introducing relatively new talent for their beauty, physical intimidation, sinister personas or other superficial qualities so they can develop a profession with "007" on their resumes. Some valuable jobs were stolen here by two people who already have it made and one who is definitely on his way to bigger things than mute heavies after proving to be funny with dialogue in Guardians of the Galaxy. 

I mentioned that the only spoilers I could cover are dumb. Trust me, they are -even for this franchise. Spectre is beautiful yet ridiculous -and it would be better if the movie itself could own up to this fact. This is Bond. He has a license to be ridiculous. 

The Peanuts Movie

**1/2 out of ****

It has been a very long time since any incarnation of Charlie Brown and his friends have been seen doing anything.

I was naturally drawn to see The Peanuts Movie because its computer animation technique achieves something unique in the way that The Lego Movie did. It takes on the challenge to incorporate characteristics only inherent in pre-digital animation processes. Just as The Lego Movie borrowed from the stop-motion choppiness seen in homemade internet Lego movies, this film sets strong limitations to its well-rendered 3D models to only stand and move in formations reminiscent of their classic two-dimensional incarnations.

I’m sure that no small child is thinking about this, but it was a relief to me, that someone at Blue Sky Studios saw beauty in the simplicity of Charles Schulz’s drawings and found a clever way of maintaining their essence. Now, did they get everything else right?

Classic Peanuts plot elements are rehashed and stuffed into this episodic story about Charlie Brown trying to make a new impression and gain self-esteem. Sadly, the movie has a slightly obnoxious tone, lacking Schulz’s patient ability to build toward jokes and composer Christophe Beck’s epic movie score feels like the antithesis of Vince Guaraldi’s pathos-filled piano jazz music from those good ol’ Charlie Brown movies and specials (though it’s used occasionally for fan service).

I suppose that it’s enough that this movie features abstract looking kids doing things that no one in the 21st century does anymore. Imagine if parents had to explain to young audience members what jazz is too. At least Linus doesn’t quote any biblical scripture this time.

Bone Tomahawk

*** out of ****

Quite often, interesting movies fall by the wayside when distributors are unsure of what to do with them. The new film, Bone Tomahawk falls into this camp, as it is tough to categorize when standing between the extremes of two genres: The traditional American western and cannibal horror. It is currently playing on a limited theatrical release and available for digital download on providers like iTunes and Amazon.

Set in the late 1800s, it opens with a shot of a grotesque murder as if to prepare viewers for what’s coming later (though it hardly compares) and then moves to the slow introduction of the simple people in a small Western town. The establishment of the film’s characters has the steady patience and tranquil dialogue one might expect from a John Ford or Howard Hawks film from the fifties. The cast is excellent with Kurt Russell in the lead as the wise town Sherif and Richard Jenkins unrecognizably portrays his dim yet humbly loyal elderly deputy. Patrick Wilson plays a cowboy recovering from a leg injury, while aided by his medically experienced wife, played by Lili Simmons. Matthew Fox works against type as a dandy bachelor with a cold demeanor frequenting the town saloon filled with a few character actor cameos.

Following a disturbing murder at a horse stable, the cowboy’s wife is abducted and the townsfolk congregate determining that she was taken by an unknown tribe of natives. The four described men form a rescue party, with a destination informed by the town’s only Native American member who gravely warns that the arrowhead left behind belongs to a hidden cave dwelling tribe who commit unspeakable acts of savagery.

As the men travel into unfamiliar territory, their determination and morality are often tested. The real trouble begins when the cowboy struggles with a leg that is not getting the rest it needs in order to heal. Despite the movie’s slow paced character building, it takes a sharp traumatizing turn. When the horror hits, it hits relentlessly hard with the reminiscence of horror films I was sorry to have watched. It also borders on a concept as absurd as John Wayne encountering the nightmarish creatures from The Descent.

It’s hard to know what to make of a film that brings back the classic western genre’s demonization of hostile Indians for a contemporary form of filmmaking. It’s also difficult to find an audience for a movie that is too gory for western fans and too meditative for horror fans. This flick is an odd experience, but it feels like a nightmare about unmitigated savagery preying on the hidden savagery of westward expansionists. Through his first film, writer/director S. Craig Zahler has left an impression with something difficult to process but very unforgettable.

Steve Jobs

*** out of ****

Steve Jobs is a biopic that makes the tasteful decision to be honest about the fact that it is a dramatization. It revolves entirely around conversations we know could have taken place, but didn’t. The conversations are artfully utilized to illustrate history, as opposed to reenactments of that history.

Aaron Sorkin’s (The Social Network) screenplay is crafted as a three-act film that feels completely compatible with theater. It is only appropriate that each act takes place in the literal backstage area of a major product release that will steer Jobs’ legacy in a new direction. Like last year’s Best Picture winner, Birdman, the high-pressure setting of a large show venue with backrooms and corridors is a great cinematic setting for heated discussions and symbolic of a showman preparing to meet his audience.

The setting gives the dialogue free-reign to show Jobs at his most controlling, lacking emotional consideration for the people who surround him. These people challenge him with advice, which he brushes off as though they all represent doubts working against his ego.

Jobs is played by the great Michael Fassbender, who bears no resemblance to the man, but, like all talented actors, finds the character written on the page and works with it.

There are many archetypical players on this stage, but some get more of Steve’s ear than others. Seth Rogen plays Steve Wosniak (Co-Founder), the alienated friend; Kate Winslet plays Joanna Hoffman (Marketing Director), the influential servant; Jeff Daniels is John Sculley (CEO), the father figure; while Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine take turns playing Lisa Brennan (Daughter), the child in need of a parent.

Sorkin’s dialogue, which takes the highlights of Jobs’ life and career from Walter Isaacson’s book, is inventive and informative. The actors all do wonders with the material too. His collaboration with director Danny Boyle, however, is interesting but problematic. Boyle, a kinetic visionary whom I often admire, has a tendency to impose emotion over scenes that don’t require such heavy-handed manipulations. I imagine Sorkin would have preferred the dialogue to speak for itself. Though he’s written a ludicrous sentimental exchange near the end, which attempts to merge Jobs’ strive for innovation with his repressed fatherly love. It’s a sappy construct that I find hard to believe and, in the scheme of things, feels irrelevant.

I do like Boyle’s continuing fondness for changing mediums within a film and he does it here with the first part being shot on 16mm film, the second on 35mm film and the third with current digital cinematography. In between each act is a montage of TV clips that provide exposition for what will come next.

The movie wisely ends in 1998 with the launch of the iMac, dodging many more obvious products Jobs would unveil before his untimely death. The iMac was a new beginning for Jobs, Apple, and represented a massive shift in the world of personal computing toward Apple’s brilliantly designed, yet proprietary packaging.

Somehow, I still feel as though it’s too soon to make a film about such a big figure. Regardless, Steve Jobs does a good job.