Reviews

The first Monsters was a sci-fi themed metaphor for surviving together in a world of randomness and misunderstanding. How could two people connect and make sense of their world in a place that was dangerous and uncertain? At the same time, are the "monsters" the real enemies here, or are they simply other creatures trying to survive, connect, and make sense of a world that is dangerous and uncertain to them?

This sequel attempts to pick up on this theme, with a military twist, but winds up being too long, too predictable, and buries the message too far under the main story.

The cinematography is great, the effects are solid, the script isn't bad and the acting is okay. That said, overall this film could have been about 30 minutes shorter, and a more concise focus on what it was trying to say.

What is the message? The few times the monsters appear, they're mainly minding their own business, reacting to stimuli (flashing lights), or just having fun. The more heartbreaking scenes are two monsters running playfully alongside a truck, until one veers too close and gets hit, it's partner mournfully hovering by it's side while soldiers cheer about roadkill. A boy is cultivating a baby creature as a pet, which a soldier sets free, depriving the boy of a harmless friend. Men set a dog-fight up against a junior creature, which reacts by killing the dog, then being shot in frustration by the horrified men.

Dark Continent is a story of toxic masculinity, and the need to control or destroy the things we don't understand. With disregard for the lives of those unlike them, these military recruits from run-down Detroit are looking for purpose and meaning, hoping to find it in the thrill of service. What they completely miss is that service means actually serving others, not merely the macho competition they engage in with each other. They're blind to the implications of their killing on the local populace of whatever country they're invading, and they're oblivious to the fact that they're murdering mostly innocuous creatures that, due to their massive spawning spore distribution, cannot be stopped. The film is an overlong examination of the dangers of a narrow minded focus on being violent for the sake of ego.

Watch it if you're bored, but don't expect a masterpiece.

David Fincher gives us another beautiful, stylized look at some of the darkest sides of humanity. Plenty of other reviewers have covered the plot, the twists, and the characterization (with excellent acting by Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, and Carrie Coon), so I wanted to focus on the feel and the theme.

Fincher brings his cinematic eye to present scenes that are downright dreamy and otherworldly, with a soundtrack by Trent Rezor and Atticus Ross that subtly reinforces the message that something is not-quite-right with what we are seeing. Then, he quickly snaps back to a dreary reality, with a man out of his element, dealing with pressures and situations he cannot comprehend. Even the opening title sequence, with cuts far too quick, are unsettling, setting the viewers up to expect plot twists to be thrown at us fast and unexpectedly. Visually and from a sonic perspective, the movie is glorious to behold.

The plot, of course, is a clever twist on the husband-kills-wife story that we've seen plenty of, but upon close scrutiny, it doesn't hold to examination. No one saw a big-screen TV being loaded into a shed? The FBI didn't deeply investigate all the inconsistencies? There's really no way out for Affleck's dopey, played husband?

Upon reflection, it's not meant to be examined closely. Gillian Flynn is presenting a parable of expectations, communication, and media manipulation. Largely, we see what we want to see, and we glorify what we are told to glorify. The beautiful, pregnant wife is an untouchable icon. The perfect marriage is a young couple in NYC, with plenty of clandestine sex in public spaces, this is the ideal aspiration. Men have issues with control and fidelity, and while they can be forgiven, this should not be forgotten. These "truths" are not really truths at all, but they are what we buy into as a society because we want to. When facts get in the way, we willingly brush them aside to embrace the easy mythology, because the lie is more appealing than the truth, and the truth hurts if we do not wish to embrace it.

At the end of the film, wronged husband Nick Dunne asks how they got to this point. "All we did was resent each other, try to control each other. We caused each other pain." The response? "That's what marriage is." More like life, but then it doesn't have to be, unless we let ourselves be seduced by the myth instead of embracing the reality and communicating openly about it.

Watching this movie was like sitting in a meeting with VCs, Investors, and C-Level executives. I've been through a few of those meetings, and I easily recognize the personalities. They're not exactly likable, animated, nor warm, but they are singularly focused on one thing: making money.

And so goes the tale of an unnamed financial brokerage that, thanks to the analysis of a young trader played by "Star Trek" and "Heroes" star Zachary Quinto, realizes that the Mortgage Backed Securities that it is holding has placed it in a precarious position that is close to, if not already, underwater. The storm unravels in a single 24 hour-plus period, and the outcome, well, we can just look at the real world markets to see the outcome.

What's really fascinating to watch here is the interests and motivations of the individuals, because as much as this is a character piece, it's also an essay on the pitfalls of short term motivation. People who know too much are paid a million dollars to sit quietly in a room for a day and not talk. Traders are offered a bonus of $1.4M to meet a personal quota to sell assets they know are junk, with an additional $1.3M per person if the whole floor hits quota. An executive loses 60% of his team, and cries because his dog is dying, yet never thinks to call his son (also implied to be in finance) to share the news of the pending crash. Execs view what they're doing as the inevitable ebb and flow of the tide, waxing about the constant distribution of wealthy and poor, how the numbers will never change, and how the fallout is ultimately yet another opportunity to buy low soon and sell high later.

And that's just it. Separated from the world (barely a single character unrelated to the firm has any screen time or speaking role), focused on their personal short term gains (one broker obsesses over the annual salaries of his superiors), and trapped in a situation where everyone is convinced that they "need the money", selfish people act in their own self interest.

Margin Call plays like a documentary. The world is ruined, but the folks behind it take care of each other, even when they're offering up a sacrificial lamb. It's never personal, it's just business, and despite the turmoil you can imagine that the same people will be in the same room making the same calls a decade from now, leading us down the same path and shrugging it off as just the way things are.

Like many other posters here, I'm a huge fan of the John Carpenter film of the same name. In fact, every Halloween I watch "The Fog" and "The Thing" back to back. Having seen the remake of "The Fog" (terrible, IMHO), I kept my expectations low for this film.

However, by the end of the film, I was super excited. Not only does the film segue perfectly into the JC version, but it answers every question about the Norwegian camp from the JC version. The attention to detail is astounding. How did the axe get in that door? There. How did the two faced creature get outside? Shown. What about the ice block, and the dog, and so on and so forth... It's like the writers and directors picked over the original frame by frame and made it fit without seeming hokey.

Now, it's clearly a different film. It's updated for the 2010's. The effects are CGI, and they're more crisp. However, they match the effects of the original closely enough (at least what Rob Bottin could pull off at the time, plus what he wished he could do) that it felt consistent. It's not quite as tense as the JC version, where the focus was more around paranoia, but I attribute that to the time and the audience. Still, there are scenes that are direct homages, and the score and sound effects beckon back to the JC version enough to appeal to the fan of the previous while building tension for the new viewer.

Was it enjoyable and scary? Plenty enough for me. Good acting? For a horror film, yes. Action aplenty? Sure, with some "typical" types of "rescued at the last minute" shots that we all can say we've seen before, but still enjoy.

Ultimately, I couldn't have done this better myself with a crack crew of writers and a $100M budget. The filmmakers exceeded my expectations, and demonstrated a real reverence to the JC version, while creating an entertaining film on it's own. For that, I applaud them.

With the general panning that the critics gave to this film, I went in with low expectations. Perhaps thats why I was pleasantly surprised, or at least, solidly entertained.

If you're a fan of the series, and you ever had a conversation with your friends after one of the previous three movies that went along the lines of "why don't they just make a movie about the future war? It'll be awesome!", then this is the movie you've been waiting for. Unfortunately, unless you have an extremely limited imagination, it doesn't look as cool as you pictured it in your mind. Yes, the future war is full of explodey stuff, and lots of it. And yes, there are robots hunting down humans all over the place. But somehow it's more... stark than I thought it would be.

This isn't a "thinky" movie, it's not like the recently canceled TV series, where it deeply explored the relationship between machine and man, the concept of the soul, the potential for friendship and hatred between sentient beings of all sorts. The reference to "what it means to be human" in this movie feels mildly tacked on, like a high school war fantasy essay that had to be rehashed because the English teacher said it lacked heart, and the student took the advice too literally.

Still, it's not a bad movie. It's well shot, well acted (if you call what Michael Ironside does "acting", that is. I kid, I've loved him since Spacehunter and V.), and man is it loud. The soundscape in this film is a character in itself. There are some in-jokes and good references, the effects are pretty good. Of course, there are some giant plot holes and questions you'll be asking after the movie if you think about it too much (what blood type are Terminators? Are they the Universal Donor?), so don't. Just sit back and enjoy.

What it comes down to is another film in a series that is probably played out, but delivers what everyone has wanted to see on screen for two hours. It's a roller-coaster of action, a summer movie to enjoy by the seat of your pants instead of with your intellect. It's good escapist fun, but if you're looking for a statement on the will to survive, or a serious metaphysical examination of humanity, then you should probably rewatch one of the previous films in the series.

I went to see a free preview of this movie tonight with my wife, thanks to the local indie newspaper. Based on the trailers alone, I made a five dollar bet about the "bad guy" in the film before the lights even went dark, and I got to claim victory halfway through the movie.

Besides being mildly predictable, it was tense. Very tense. There weren't any major twists and turns, although the motivation for why these two characters are chosen to carry out this plot is fairly clever. One wonders what the nemesis would have done had a certain character been an only child. The stunts, chases, explosions, and fights are all well done and visually interesting, although it's clear that Chiklis, Rosario, and Billy Bob are being just professional enough as actors to collect their paychecks while still having fun with their roles.

The last thirty seconds will also make you wonder what the dialog writers were thinking, and I assure you every hacker-wannabe teenager will have the checkerboard font from this movie on their webpages for the next three months. There's no real depth of thought to this movie, nor are there any revelations about our data-mining rich culture that isn't reported daily in any major newspaper nor fantasized about on Slashdot. It's aw-shucks McGuffins and security camera narrated chases the whole way, with a thankfully wider field of view than the second Bourne movie, but the cautionary tale has been around since Mary Shelley. Otherwise, if you're looking for an escapist but reasonably fresh look at the modern tension-filled technothriller, Eagle Eye fits the bill nicely.

Boredom and drudgery, mostly, but that's what's funny about The Man Between. The premise? Take a look at the moments between what you see on screen for a James Bond style superspy, and laugh at how mundane and average they are. There's lots of waiting. Several phone calls to some kind of spy tech support. ("I thought this shoe was supposed to have a phone in it. Yeah, I'll hold.") And banter between torture and beatings, mainly about what methods each spy has used to off various victims.

Arranged as a discontinuous series of moments with little relation to each other aside from the appearance of The Man himself, some scenes may have you scratching your head, as if you're only privy to thirty seconds of a two minute joke. Other scenes are clearly quite thinky, and the viewer is left to assume the context, or guess that, yes, that pen is probably going to explode. But most of the thirty minutes running time is filled with clever setups and situations, not to mention a genuinely impressive series of International On Location shots.

If you're a fan of the wry humor of James Earnest's CheapAss Games, this is a video worth checking out if only to see that most of the life of a superspy is absurdly familiar and ridiculous.