More Insidious?

James Wan is one of the most profitable filmmakers at work in Hollywood today.  Back in 2004, the then 28-year old Malaysian fresh out of film school in Australia made quite a splash with his horror cheapie ’Saw,’ and for better or worse introduced us to the horror subgenre known as "torture porn."  With a budget of only $1.2 million, ’Saw’ went on to gross $107 million worldwide.  Then, after a couple of less successful efforts, Wan did it again in 2011 with his slow-burning but eerie ‘Insidious.’  At a mere $1.5 million, ‘Insidious’ made $97 million globally, cementing Wan’s place as a gifted ‘Master of Horror.’  Eschewing the blood-and-gore of torture porn and relying instead on a heady mix of gothic atmosphere, spellbinding suspense and good old-fashioned storytelling about a family haunted by sinister supernatural forces, ‘Insidious’ was a welcome breath of fresh air in a genre that’s gone a bit stale and unimaginative of late.  Not surprisingly, the movie’s ending pointed to a sequel, with the father (spoiler ahead) bringing his son back from the netherworld but leaving us with the question: “Did dad come back a different person?”  Insidious minds want to know.

 

‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ answered this question and more, as the Lamberts find themselves still haunted by poltergeists.   At the beginning of 'Insidious: Chapter 2,' we discover that ’Insidious’ isn’t the first time ghosts and evil spirits visited some of its characters.  Allow me to go off topic briefly here to praise the casting director, because the young actresses picked to portray earlier versions of Barbara Hershey's Lorraine (Lambert) and Lin Shaye’s Elise (Rainier) are dead-on lookalikes, especially the young Elise.  Once again, there are comic moments from the nerdy 'ghostbuster' team of Specs (screenwriter Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson), such as when they had their own version of Rock-Paper-Scissors called ‘Hunter-Ninja-Bear.’  Ha, get it?

 

Alas, ’Insidious: Chapter 2’ suffered the same curse that plagued almost every sequel; that is, it has to be even better than the original to be considered a critical success.  If it’s just more of the same, why bother with a sequel at all?  But I must admit that I enjoyed ‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ more than the original because it is more briskly paced and the threads of its complex storyline, past and present, all tied together neatly in the end.  Perhaps most of all, what makes 'Insidious: Chapter 2' so gripping and suspenseful is that through two movies, we’ve grown to care about the Lamberts as well as the paranormal investigators who risk everything (including their lives) to help them, even if daddy goes a bit 'Jack Nicholson' from ’The Shining' near the end.  

Grade: A-

  

Get Riddick

Riddick is one of Hollywood’s archetypal anti-heroes.  The sole survivor of a warrior race called the Furyans, Riddick is the quintessential lone wolf, a soft-spoken yet barely contained force-of-nature whom you do not want to mess with if you care about your health.  The third installment in the cult-favorite sci-fi series, ‘Riddick’ follows in the wake of the well-executed ‘Pitch Black’ and the somewhat underwhelming ‘The Chronicles of Riddick.’

 

Self-proclaimed Dungeons & Dragons geek Vin Diesel, who reportedly leveraged his own house to finance this latest venture himself because the studios wouldn’t back it and it’s his passion project, infused the titular character with the quiet menace and brutal efficiency we’ve come to expect from this badass mofo.  In one scene, just when a chained Riddick was (Warning: Spoiler a-head!) about to have his head chopped off by a merc with a machete who's not named ‘Machete,’ he turned the table on the poor guy (because the merc never stood a chance) with a fluidity of motion that is simply beautiful to behold.  Kudos also goes to Katee Sackhoff (best known as ‘Starbuck’ on Syfy’s reboot of BSG) for not only playing the role perfectly type-cast for her as a tough female merc but also answering my prayers and showing a bit more skin than expected in a gratuitous shower scene. 

 

‘Riddick’ isn’t particularly profound or groundbreaking, but it is an entertaining sci-fi B-movie about a flawed man prevailing against the odds and surviving on an inhospitable death world while hunting (ahem, being hunted by) mercenaries.  It is a simple story well told, something that’s not too much to ask for but is all too rare in Hollywood nowadays.

 

Grade: B+

And he will hunt them..... (see poster for 'You're Next')

The lamb, the fox and the tiger

'You're Next,' the self-referential, tongue-in-cheek satire of home invasion slashers from the director/writer team of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, is a tightly plotted, suspenseful and well crafted piece of indie filmmaking.  Like Wes Craven's 'Scream,' Michael Haneke's 'Funny Games' and Joss Whedon's 'Cabin in the Woods,' the movie's a game-changer that's not afraid to bend or break genre conventions and, in so doing, give us something we haven't encountered before.

 

With its sinister masked-killers-terrorizing-a-family plot, 'You're Next' at first glance resembles other home invasion thrillers like 'Them,' 'The Strangers,' 'The Collector' and 'The Purge.'  However, as the story progresses and the twists are gradually revealed, culminating in the unexpected and delicious ending, we discover that 'You're Next' has about as much in common with those other films as 'Scream' has in common with 'Friday the 13th,' 'Halloween' or 'A Nightmare on Elm Street.'  Indeed, so good is 'You're Next' that I find it hard to believe this is only the second full-length outing from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, the first being the highly acclaimed 'A Horrible Way to Die' which I most definitely will have to check out now.

 

Violent, bloody, darkly humorous and with a charismatic and resourceful post-modern feminist heroine played by Australian newcomer Sharni Vinson who, like Macaulay Culkin in 'Home Alone,' chose fight over flight, 'You're Next' is an immensely entertaining and highly satisfying film that's a must-see for all horror buffs.

Grade: A

It's the End of the World as we know it....

Following 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz,' the third and final entry of Edgar Wright's so-called Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy is an epic "pub crawl" with Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan.  Owing to sci-fi classics like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'The Stepford Wives,' Wright described 'The World's End' as "social science fiction" because its theme deals with the human condition.

 

In what may be his best performance of the trilogy, Pegg plays Gary King, a middle-aged 'rebel without a cause' and slacker who sought to recapture the lost glory of his youth by completing the 'Golden Mile,' an epic pub crawl (what we Americans call bar-hopping) of 12 pubs with names like 'The Famous Cock,' 'The Two-Headed Dog,' 'The Mermaid' and, of course, 'The World's End.'  You can read more about these fine drinking establishments here: http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2013/07/special-features-what-do-pubs-in-world.html.  He recruits his old buddies, who are by now all middle-aged men with real jobs and families, to join him in finishing what they couldn't before when they were carefree teenagers with their airs of invincibility, which is recounted brilliantly in the movie's snappy opening montage.

 

'The World's End' combines slacker/stoner comedy with alien invasion sci-fi and social commentary.  When Gary defied 'The Network' by making his rousing speech that he'd rather be a flawed human than a soulless automaton and thereby bringing about the apocalypse, Wright is really commenting by proxy that our society as a whole has given in to conformity and that we have lost our individuality.

 

Witty, funny and filled with numerous references that you'll likely only catch with repeated viewings, 'The World's End' is trademark Edgar Wright and makes for a fine ending to the Cornetto Trilogy.  As the R.E.M. song goes, "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

 

Grade: A
 

Oh, take your tampon out Dave

Along with 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,' Matthew Vaughn's big screen adaptation of the Icon comic series 'Kick-Ass' by Mike Millar and John Romita Jr. was one of the pleasant surprises of 2010.  Irreverent, ultra-violent, exploitative and loaded with black humor, 'Kick-Ass' is beloved by fans and critics alike for its witty satire of the superhero genre and allowing Comic-Con geeks to fantasize that they, too, can be superheroes. 

 

'Kick-Ass 2' picks up where 'Kick-Ass' left off, and we see Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) go their separate ways.  While Dave still wants to fight bad guys and defend the weak and innocent, Mindy, who's now adopted by Detective Marcus, has to hang up her purple tights and wig in order to live a normal life.  It's Hit-Girl versus Mean Girls as she attempts to navigate the perilous waters of teen angst and catty high school clique bitchiness.  Meanwhile, without Hit-Girl by his side, Kick-Ass joins a new 'family' of masked vigilantes called 'Justice Forever' led by former mob goon Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey) while Chris D'Amico, formerly 'Red Mist' (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), seeks revenge for the bazooka-killing of his dad at the hands of Kick-Ass by transforming himself into a villain mastermind called 'The Motherfucker.'

 

Like its predecessor, KA2 brilliantly balances its R-rated, blood-soaked violence and sexual content with a good dose of zaniness and humor.  Once again, Chloë Grace Moretz steals the scene and shines bright as the irresistibly cute and potty-mouthed little bad-ass Hit-Girl, who told Kick-Ass to do what the title of this review says when he writhes on the ground after a brief bout with her on the training room floor.  And wow, her climactic battle with The Motherfucker's über-henchwoman 'Mother Russia' is quite literally one for the ages.  Therefore, I felt it's only appropriate to rename the movie accordingly in the poster below.

 

Sure, KA2 is a bit formulaic and predictable, but in a movie like this what's important is the journey and not the destination.  And what a gleefully fun ride it is!  The bittersweet ending of the movie also provided the perfect closure to the Kick-Ass/Hit-Girl saga.  What can I say?  It had me at 'hello.'

Grade: A+++

So this is how the 1 percent lives

It's been four years since South African director Neill Blomkamp's gave us the cerebral and original sci-fi actioner 'District 9,' so his follow-up, the eagerly awaited sci-fi epic 'Elysium' is long overdue.  Blomkamp's movies are above the norm because they are more than simple popcorn sci-fi action movies; they also have a social message and serve as a cautionary tale on where we might end up if we don't take responsibility and treat each other with humanity.

 

While 'District 9' was an allegory of the plight of Africa's poor and hungry with aliens filling in as second class citizens, 'Elysium' could be a forecast of how humanity may really look like in 2154 if the current gap in socio-economic inequality continues unabated.  Before you get all self-righteous and start calling this movie a socialist manifesto, I'll stop here and just say that 'Elysium' isn't heavy-handed or preachy at all.  Like 'District 9,' it gives us pause and makes us reflect on the current (and possible future) human condition, for better or worse.

 

Matt Damon plays Max DeCosta, a working class 'automaton' who tries to stay out of trouble despite having a sarcastic wit which earned him a broken arm from a droid.  After an industrial accident which gave him just 5 days to live, he became a man 'transformed' out of desperation and became the last ray of hope for the dispossessed on earth who could only look up at Elysium (a massive wheeled space station for the rich reminiscent of the one in '2001:A Space Odyssey') with yearning and dream.  Jodie Foster has never been more ruthless as Elysium's secretary of defense, especially when she barked out the order: "Activate Kruger!" with such cold authority.  And Sharlto Copley, who was the timid fugitive victim in 'District 9,' played the predator this time and was marvelously evil as Kruger, a loose cannon soldier-for-hire who became the personal attack dog for Jodie Foster's Delacourt.  Unfortunately, as it sometimes happens, the dog would turn on its master.

 

With a great storyline, beautiful cinematography contrasting the Elysium paradise and hell on earth, and the hyper-kinetic action that is Blomkamp's trademark, we have another winner here in 'Elysium.'  Gritty, sympathetic, visceral and realistic, this is the kind of sci-fi movie I enjoy the most.

Grade: A

Family Ties

I've always found Jason Sudeikis to be pretty funny on SNL.  He brings a smarmy, sardonic wit to his roles, whether he's plugging feminine products with a straight face on ESPN Classic as a sportscaster or expressing his disapproval as the professor of Japanese Studies on the Michigan college cable talk show 'J-Pop America Fun Time Now!'  'We're the Millers' is the SNL alum's third movie, following in the wakes of 'Horrible Bosses' and 'Hall Pass.'

 

In the tradition of National Lampoon's 'Vacation,' 'We're the Millers' is a family road-trip comedy, except the Millers are a fake family composed of a small time drug dealer (Sudeikis), a stripper (Aniston), a not-too-bright but well meaning virgin (Will Poulter) and a rebellious runaway (Emma Roberts) who aren't on vacation at all.  The whole scam was put together for the convenience of making a drug delivery from Mexico to the US, because what are the chances that such a nice All-American family can be mistaken for drug smugglers, right?

 

Never mind that we can't seriously buy into Sudeikis being a drug dealer, or Aniston being a stripper/pole-dancer for that matter, because this whole ridiculous premise is only the set-up for the hilarity that ensues as the faux family-in-their-Winnebago had to overcome one crisis after another.  There are some truly bawdy but funny gags, like what a tarantula did to poor Kenny's jewels, or when 'mom' and 'sis' gave him his first kiss.  But 'We're the Millers' also has heart.  The most memorable scene is when the Millers sang along with TLC's 'Waterfalls' on the radio.  And while the movie is ultimately predictable in that these four people who at first can't stand each other (except for Poulter's Kenny) later discovered that they really are a close-knit 'family' and looked out for each other, we can forgive the movie for its sins because it made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Be sure to stick around for the gag reel in the end credits, which tops off with a different version of the family sing-along song and took the 44-year old Jennifer Aniston on a pleasant trip down memory lane.  Can you say "Awwwwww!"?

Grade: B+