Movie Reviews

San Andreas

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: San Andreas
  • IMDb: link

San AndreasIt’s hard to make either a great or truly awful disaster movie. Even setting out to craft memorable disaster porn (unless it’s centered around a completely ridiculous premise like sending oil riggers into space) is a challenge. Bucking the trend of world-ending disaster films where characters are fighting asteroids, a new Ice Age, or the core of the Earth disrupting all life on the planet, San Andreas is a bit of a throwback focusing just on California, and, for the most part, San Fransisco. A more localized disaster doesn’t have the doomsday cache of something like 2012 but San Andreas turns out to be a far better film.

Our main characters are fire and rescue expert Ray (Dwayne “It’s Okay to Call Me The Rock Again” Johnson), his estranged wife Emma (Carla Gugino), and their college-age daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) who are separated when California begins experiencing a series of increasingly harsh earthquakes and spend the film working back to each other as, once again, a huge disaster seems to magically fix all relationship issues over two hours. Disaster couples counseling has been used so often in movies it has become its own cliche.

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Tomorrowland

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  • Title: Tomorrowland
  • IMDb: link

TomorrowlandIn tone, message, and design Tomorrowland feels very much like an old school Disney live-action film albeit with far better special effects. With a hopeful message, and heart penned to its sleeve, the screenplay by Damon Lindelof and director Brad Bird offers a look at the wonders and dangerous of technology which will bring two strangers together to a place where imagination is the only limitation of what is possible.

Presented with dueling narration by Frank Walker (George Clooney, played as a child by Thomas Robinson) and Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), Tomorrowland informs the audience of how each first learned of a scientific wonderland just outside our dimension before throwing the pair together to save the city and all of Earth from a mistake that continues to haunt the older scientist.

Clooney’s charm helps soften Frank’ rougher edges and Robertson plays well off of him. The real star, however, is Raffey Cassidy as the android who brings the pair together in an effort to put right what went wrong more than two decades before which got Frank expelled from Tomorrowland forever.

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Mad Max: Fury Road

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  • Title: Mad Max: Fury Road
  • IMDb: link

Mad Max: Fury RoadReturning to his creation for the first time since 1985, director George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road is highly-stylized insanity that is easily one of the most visually-stunning movies of 2015 so far. More engaging than fun, Miller delivers something akin to an action art film rather than summer popcorn movie. And, despite Tom Hardy getting top billing, it’s one hell of a star vehicle for Charlize Theron who proves to any doubters out there that a woman can indeed be the lead character in a big-budget action adventure.

Taking place an indeterminate amount of time following the events of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Max (Hardy) is captured by a cult known as the War Boys, led by the bizarre Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who decide to put the wanderer to use as a universal blood donor. A series of events involving Imperator Furiosa (Theron) stealing Joe’s most precious cargo loaded up in one of the warlord’s war rigs provide the opportunity for Max’s escape and an uneasy partnership with Furiosa and Joes concubines (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton) as the small group attempts to stay alive in harsh desert with enemies in every direction and a mad man’s army chomping at their heels.

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Still Slightly Out of Tune

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  • Title: Pitch Perfect 2
  • IMDb: link

Pitch Perfect 2Based on the book by Mickey Rapkin 2012’s Pitch Perfect was an occasionally fun, if wildly inconsistent, story glorifying a bizarre college subculture where a capella groups were the biggest celebrities on a college campus. Picking up three years later, loner Freshman Becca (Anna Kendrick) has grown into the Senior leader of the three-time defending a capella champions who face new adversity when a complicated stunt goes wrong at a public event.

Barred from competing, touring, or defending their national championship by the announcers (John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks) who cover the sport (and also run it now?), the Barden Bellas’ only chance for redemption is to become the first American group to win at the World A capella Tournament.

If you thought it was bizarre seeing colleges go wild over a capella singing in the first film you haven’t seen anything yet as, in typical sequel fashion, Pitch Perfect 2 goes bigger this time around. The results are much the same as the first film with awkward romantic subplots and an odd storyline designed to make Becca the outsider of the group once more as she is the only member of the Bellas planning for life after college.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

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  • Title: Avengers: Age of Ultron
  • IMDb: link

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Despite the build-up to an Infinity War Avengers film, Marvel Studio threw everyone for a loop when they announced fascist robot Ultron (James Spader) would be the villain of The Avengers sequel. Unlike 2012’s The Avengers which was the culmination and payoff for the entirety of Marvel’s Phase One films (everything from Iron Man to Captain America: The First Avenger), Avengers: Age of Ultron suffers from some of the same problems that weighed down Iron Man 2.

Not only does the film have to introduce a brand-new villain (something The Avengers didn’t have to spend time on) and three new supporting characters (with vastly different origins than their comic counterparts), and weave in ongoing events from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. while providing separate in-depth character moments for every single Avenger, Age of Ultron also has to lay the groundwork for the next two Avengers films, Captain America: Civil War, and Thor: Ragnarok. While also throwing in supporting characters from pretty much every Marvel film so far it’s something of a marvel, if you’ll forgive the pun, that Avengers: Age of Ultron doesn’t buckle under its own considerable weight.

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