Quick hits to play catch up!

Face Off- Terrific season. With an All Star cast the talent pool was really high right from the start and that left a killer final 3. Probably the best finale in terms of quality of work from each team. Tough choice to pick the winner, but I think the judges got it right.

Gotham- After a monstrous break, Gotham is back for the last leg of episodes. Nigma made some big moves the last we saw and we return to see him essentially turn into the Riddler. We got to see him actively use riddles (Fox got a lot of screen time this week), mark a clue with a green question mark and he has an awesome green suit. The Court of Owls has made its move to replace Bruce Wayne and Alfred’s first interaction with the clone seems to have given him a moment’s pause. We’ll see how fast Alfred sniffs out the fraud. The show is doing a lot of weird and fun things, I’m happy it’s back even if it’s only for a few more episodes.

Archer- The show has made a major setting change, similar to the cocaine season a few years ago. This time its 1950’s-ish Los Angeles. The main cast is split up into different jobs (Pam and Cyril are cop partners, Cheryl is on her own as the one who hires PI Archer to help her do something crazy stupid) so the group dynamic is different. The shows looks exceptionally gorgeous this year and the change to the formula has opened up a lot of options for the writers. I dig it.

The Detour- This season flew by but it was great. Pretty brilliant ideas to move it on from what happened last year. Got way more detail about the family’s past and it was consistently funny (these might be the best child actors on TV). My only complaint is the super weird and preachy reach into refugees coming into the US. It was so out of place and heavy handed it came off as bizarre more than anything.

The draw to go back to the world of Harry Potter is a strong one. I’ve always thought author JK Rowling would produce more Potter material for movies, I just never thought she’d open that door using a character that is more or less mentioned in passing.

Fantastic Beasts is about writer and magic zoologist Newt Scamander’s (Eddie Redmayne) trip to New York City in the 1920’s. Newt is an eccentric man with a love and respect for every kind of animal you can imagine. His life mission is to study and share his findings of the magical animal kingdom.

He enters New York during a trying time for the magical community. A magical creature is terrorizing the locals and threatens to expose the magic citizens in a largely No-Maj (the American term for Muggle) city. The magic government officials are up to their eyeballs trying to fix the problem and here comes a guy with a broken suitcase that lets out more trouble. While Newt scrambles to gather his escaped critters, he finds himself on the frontlines of identifying and stopping the creature that is running amok in the city.

Fantastic Beasts is classic JK Rowling. She goes back in time to let more creative and loveable characters loose to make friends and get into trouble with a twist or two at the end for good measure. A strong central character with morals, the comic relief sidekick, the strong-willed but often dismissed hero in training, the monster in the dark and the red herring are all here.

There’s a lot of Harry Potter canon at play. Rowling uses the rise of the wizard Grindelwald (Voldemort’s precursor of evil) as the immediate backdrop. This places the story in a time of great interest and possible expansion of the Potter universe.  The Halfblood Prince (and some of Deathly Hollows) gave fans the biggest insight into how Potter history started, how Albus Dumbledore got to where he was when Harry got to Hogwarts. Grindelwald was a major part of Dumbledore’s life and set the path for Tom Riddle to become Lord Voldemort and try to take over the Wizard world with his own dark agenda. Aside from the obvious ties to the franchise, there’s quite a few easter eggs for sharp-eyed fans to find.

One thing I appreciated on this new Potterverse tale is that everyone is an adult. There’s no learning to be done. The rules of magic are well established and they’re all accomplished wizards so its spells galore. The final act had a really impressive action sequence that only the later Potter movies made it to.

Overall, I think Fantastic Beasts is a successful movie. Really well cast, characters to care about, good special effects and direction, excellent soundtrack and a great heart that comes through at the end. Newt is very easy to dismiss as simply a weird guy at the start but as Kowalski (our gateway character to this world) spends time with him he opens up as a complex and endearing character. As the movie went on I felt like I was getting to know Newt well. He’s someone who I would honestly want to meet in real life. It’s these kinds of characters that Rowling is so adept at making.

With this new base established, I’m curious and excited to see where Rowling takes it. This could bring us to the point where we get to see Voldemort’s ascension to power, see the original Order of the Phoenix fight back, and get to the fateful night of Harry and his parents. Out of anything Rowling could write, I want this more than anything else.

Exciting stuff for those, like myself, that are inclined to the Potterverse.

The hype for Aquaman is real.

The men and women at Laika have been pushing the boundaries of stop motion animation for a decade. Kubo and the Two Strings is their latest triumph.

A boy living in a cave on the outskirts of town with his mother learns about his family after he breaks one of his mother’s cardinal rules: never stay out past sunset. He is thrust into a quest where he must find a magic sword, helm, and armor in order to fend off an ancient spirit that’s been after him since he was born.

I’m a mark for stop motion animation, so there is a guaranteed level of enjoyment I get from a production like this. I could ramble on for many paragraphs about the animation in Kubo but I’ll cut to the chase and call it mindblowingly good. I don’t know how they did most of this movie. The physical nature of actually moving objects one frame at a time gives stop motion animation life that other forms of animation don’t have. You can almost see the hands of the animator’s in every instance and there is some unbelievable work in this 100 minute film. The intricate detail of the characters, massive sets and puppets, and some awe inspiring set pieces. Just the character of Monkey alone. Looking at the script she must have made a lot of people worry about how they were going to make her work. The fur, her intricate movement just to walk and she’s heavily involved in every action scene. The stuff they accomplished has to be seen to be believed. The boat fight with Monkey and one of The Sisters is just nuts. That whole section is amazing from Kubo making the boat to the action under the water with Kubo and Beetle while Monkey goes to war above.

Kubo is much more than just pretty animation. Its well-casted actors (I especially liked Charlize Theron as Monkey) bring heart to their characters. While the story is rather simple, the script moves elegantly from beat to beat. There’s a great and touching story about family, life and largely, death for you to take in.

Loved every frame of this movie. See it.

With a lot of general negativity surrounding Suicide Squad, I was worried coming into this. As disappointed as I am, I did like it. But it is…off. Not in the quirky movie way like Swiss Army Man but in the “something happened in the making of this” way.

Suicide Squad is an easy premise to describe. A task force (literally Task Force X) is put together by a secret government agency led by Amanda Waller. This team made up of criminals is an expendable one. They are meant to go on the most dangerous covert operations, stop things the general public may or may not know about. A team of lethal people to take on any kind of threat, foreign, domestic or meta-human (like Superman). Anyone on the team disobeys they are killed with a neck bomb on the spot. They die on a mission, oh well. They get caught, all knowledge of them is disavowed. They pull through and the award is some time shaved off of their prison sentence and it’s back into the hole until the next shady mission.

In an attempt to get some rather serious magical muscle, Waller discovers that Dr. June Moon has been possessed by an ancient and powerful being known as The Enchantress. Using the threat of death over Enchantress and a loving aid assigned to Moon, Waller thinks she has her ace in the hole. It doesn’t take long for the confident mortal to be proven painfully wrong. Enchantress revolts and Task Force X is given their first job.

Looking to Suicide Squad’s comic book roots, the cast of characters is mostly from its current iteration. Harley Quinn and Deadshot are the headliners with June Moone and Rick Flag being more or less the hub of the main plot and Diablo being the B plot.

The best part of the movie is easily the casting.  Will Smith holds it down as Will Smith as Deadshot. He’s likable and knows how to work it in an action movie. He’s given the most robust background story. Margot Robbie gives a great live action take on one of DC’s biggest characters, Harley Quinn. Coming out of this movie, she probably has the best chance in appearing in the most sequels/spin-offs. Viola Davis is perfectly cast as Amanda Waller, a staple of many stories in the DC Universe.

The problem is, it’s all diluted. There are too many characters. The first 20 or so minutes is a “here are the characters” get to know you montage. Once the intros are done, we do get some great interactions and lines throughout. But Katana, Captain Boomerang, Slipknot (for obvious reasons), Killer Croc and Diablo are given very little to do. For as big of a push Diablo ultimately gets in the end, he more or less walks around in the background for the entire movie. So all these characters aren’t used well and they eat up valuable time that takes away from fan favorites Harley and Joker. I really like what I saw of Jared Leto’s Joker and he looks fantastic standing next to Harley on screen. That’s a major comic book moment for a lot of people.

I think it’s all too much for one film. With half of the movie being the creation of the team, establishing what WB wants to be a franchise, there needed to be more focus. Ditch the Enchantress and run with Joker trying to get Harley away from Waller’s grasp. The parts with Harley and Joker are great, but it’s all chopped up and feels rushed (they go more their Animated Series love relationship to make it easier to stomach since J is often so horrific to her in the books). Give us more of them! The Enchantress angle is basic, cliched, and the mission ends up being pretty lame. It all makes the decision to shy away from Harley and Joker that much more disappointing.

The action is shockingly sparse too. Very few actions scenes, what’s there is rather short with very few stand out moments. You don’t get to see half of the cast do much of anything. Why is Captain Boomerang in this if we barely see him throw a damn boomerang? If they spent half as much on the set pieces as they did for the soundtrack, we could have seen some really wild stuff. For an ensemble comic book movie where The Avengers set the action bar so many years ago, Suicide Squad is oddly devoid of highlights.  The Squad is full of degenerates and psychos but we never get a real sense of that. It’s so weird, the people we watch come off more or less as nice guys. Again, less would have been more.

Despite all of the above poo-pooing, I think the movie looks fantastic. Spot on costumes and a lot of the VFX look awesome. I love how they made Enchantress look (the hand roll over in the bunker is so cool) and there are some striking visuals with her at the end. Killer Croc is one of my favorite characters and he looks awesome. Fantastic makeup on him even though he just looks oddly scrawny when he comes out of costume (the dude should be thick has a brick house from head to toe). Diablo’s fire abilities rock and the direction is overall solid.

I think Suicide Squad started out being too ambitious. No solid foundation with too many additions weighing it down. This should have been a wild and crazy movie that sits outside of DC’s superhero mold. I’m curious to see the shooting script to see how much was changed in post-production. Is this one that got worse because of studio intervention or was it simply rushed? With some of the wildest villains in the industry on screen, it’s a shame that most of Suicide Squad comes off as disposable.

Swiss Army Man is nuts and I love it for being so weird and unique.

Hank (Paul Dano) is a desperate man stranded on a deserted island. Moments before killing himself, he sees someone wash ashore. Unfortunately, he’s dead. Soon he discovers that the dead man is his ticket off the island and back home. The adventure that follows is one I’ve never seen before.

This is a love it or hate it movie, I don’t think there is a middle ground. If you don’t buy into the premise of how Hank gets off the island, you won’t like the movie. Discovering and using the different ways that Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) can be used as a tool of survival is always crazy and surreal. I bought in from the human jet ski and laughed my ass off through all the major gags.

Swiss Army Man is mostly a story about friendship and being weird. Hank is weird dude. Plus, he’s nuts because he has conversations with a corpse.

This movie works because of Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe. It’s just the two of them for 99% of the movie. Dano makes Hank immediately likable even though he is a guy who’s uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s a deeply troubled guy and I enjoyed finding out more about him. Daniel is simply brilliant, playing a role that’s really the inner hidden voice of Hank. You find out so much about Hank through their conversations, things that Hank didn’t even mean to let out, but Manny reflects them back to him. Plus, Manny isn’t a zombie so he can’t move on his own. Radcliffe is vastly restricted in his performance on what he can do but he nails this bizarre childlike (he doesn’t remember anything about life) character with essentially just his face and line delivery. Without these two I don’t think the movie would have worked.

It’s a brilliantly made film. The runtime is perfect with excellent pacing, it looks fantastic and there are a lot of great in-camera special effects. There isn’t a wasted line of dialog and I even like the end. It’s such a unique story and presentation that it really took me by surprise. A refreshing movie to see when most of Holywood is doing their best to copy whatever the flavor of the year is.

This is the Wolverine everyone has wanted to see! They’ve kept things very quite while filming and I think it’s paid off.

No, this has nothing to do with the election.

Tis the season! I’m way late to this. It was October 15th by the time I realized I haven’t watched any horror movies. I’ll try to knock out 4 more by Halloween. To start:

Krampus– Great, great movie. From the guy that brought us Trick R Treat, comes a story of a family with the misfortune to meet Saint Nicholas’ shadow, Krampus. From the folklore of Austria and Germany comes Krampus, a being that punishes bad children at the end of the year. Max, a boy around 10, is a good kid who loses his faith in Santa Clause when his immediate family comes to visit his home for Christmas. With his belief gone and a wish of ill will towards his family, Krampus hears it and comes knocking with his minions. What starts off as a Christmas movie along the lines of A Christmas Story and Home Alone, Krampus descends into a chaotic monster movie. The build up is just right, everything is calm and step by step the horror comes closer to the house. Stranded and alone, the once bickering family is forced to rally together to survive Krampus’ game of cat and mouse. There are some awesome practical creature effects and a rather surprising ending. I love how Krampus looks. Tall, but hunched over, horns, crazy looking hands. No dialog keeps him extra creepy and different masks hide his face (like the elves) but you can see his eyes and sometimes his real mouth. It’s rated PG-13 so the gore is very low, but there is some crazy stuff that will send younger kids running for the hills. Bonus points for the awesome animated segment for Krampus’ backstory. A great idea with phenomenal follow through (it looks fantastic), I recommend this one a lot.

Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father– This isn’t a horror movie. It’s a documentary. I’m putting this here because it’s real life horror and it’s so mind boggling it fits here. When Andrew Bagby is killed by his deranged girlfriend, his family and friends are devastated. His parents devote their lives to get justice for their son. The girlfriend flees to her native Canada and the parents follow her there when she’s arrested. With the start of the judicial process underway, it’s discovered that she is pregnant with Andrews child. Andrew’s childhood friend, Kurt Kuenne, a film maker, decides to travel the country to collect the stories of Andrew from all his friends and family. The goal is to show Andrew’s son, Zachary, who his father truly was through the dozens of people he touched in his life. While Kurt is doing this, the crazy woman was bailed out not once, but twice by the Canadian government. The reasoning by those in power defies logic. A lunatic was set loose and the results were so catastrophic that many people lost their jobs and new legislation has been pushed to reform Canadian bail law. Like all the best documentaries do, this one one stick to you long after you finish watching it.

Jon Favreau is a hell of a director. He also knows how important a great cast and crew is. A reimagination of the decades old book and decades old animated Disney movie, The Jungle Book is an impressive movie and a technical marvel.

Found in the jungle as a very young boy by the panther Bagheera, Mowgli is being raised by wolves. Referred to as a “man cub” Mowgli has a hard time finding his place in the pack. When the tiger, Shere Khan, finds out a human is living amongst them he vows to kill him. In his journey to stay alive, Mowgli discovers fantastic characters, danger, and himself.

Right from the start, The Jungle Book grabs you by the eyeballs and guides you through a world that only great cinema can. From the Disney logo, we zoom away from Cinderella’s castle over the water into a river bed surrounded by foliage. Once through the film’s logo, the camera turns to the right and we’re in the Jungle Book. Mowgli is played by Neel Sethi, and aside from a quick scene with his father, is the only real life character in the movie. All the animals and 99% of the environment is computer generated. Cutting edge is putting it mildly. The animation on every level is amazing. The animals all have weight to them making them look that much more real. Even though talking animals is fantasy, it all looks right and is convincing to the point where my suspension of disbelief was locked in and I just believed that all of this was happening. The “Bare Necessities” song with Baloo (perfect casting Bill Murray) in the river is crazy. The finale is especially mind blowing.

The amount of care and planning to pull this movie off is impressive. Remaking a beloved classic is a daunting  task to start with and the way they pushed this story with new tech is daring. So much could have gone wrong.  The cinematography is genre defining stuff. It’s shot so well, the transitions are perfect and the soundtrack pulls everything together. With Favreau launching the MCU with Iron Man in 2008 and this, he is Disney’s golden goose. They’ll let this man do whatever he wants and we’ll all be waiting for it. This was a big surprise for me.

Wow. The Little Prince, written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and first published in 1943. I’ve never heard of Le Petit Prince until seeing this trailer after Netflix had picked it up. It’s a gorgeous and meaningful animated film that reaches the bar Pixar frequently raises (the closest comparison is Inside Out).

The movie opens with The Little Girl and her Mother in a waiting room for an entrance interview for a prestigious academy with other potential students. The Little Girl and her Mother have clearly been prepping for this moment. The door opens and a shell-shocked kid and his crying parents walk by. The Little Girl is next. Confident and rehearsed, she takes her place ready to knock their questions out of the park. She’s asked a question she wasn’t prepared for and goes down in flames. No matter, her mother says, we’ll pivot to Plan B, prep you up again and you’ll be in that school. Her mother constructs an elaborate and exhaustive plan (move into the school district and study like mad) for her daughter’s summer vacation.

Moving to their new home, two things are apparent. One, The Little Girl is very lonely. It’s just her and her mother and her mother works all the time. The Little Girl is expected to stick to a rigors schedule to prepare her for her future. Everything around her is structured and pale. Second, they moved next door to a kooky old man. All the neighbors think he’s nuts.

What happens next is The Little Girl and her new neighbor, The Aviator (Jeff Bridges is perfect), become friends. Seemingly, her first friend. He shows her a life of creativity and wonder. Everything isn’t made up of straight lines, right angles and a monochrome color scheme. His world formed by The Little Prince.

I’m going to skip over a ton of details, but through the 105 minute runtime, your shown a story of what we hold dearest in life. Human connections and the ability to remember them. In telling her about The Little Prince (as told by The Aviator, it’s his memories that he’s written down), he shows The Little Girl the first steps at becoming an adult. She’s been put into a void that’s been created with competition/academics and solitude with only one voice leading her by the hand in a single direction. All the choices are made for her, there is no room to explore or ask her own questions.

The Little Prince shows her a world of possibilities where we’re linked by relationships. Reaching out to others is something we all need to do. Experiencing the world and learning together enriches people in ways books can’t.  Some of those relationships may be temporary and some of them long-lasting. The hardest part of that (re: life) is that every connection does end. Physically it ends. But that doesn’t mean the relationship stops. We have our memories. It’s important not to forget.

The Little Girl’s life is shown to us using really good CG animation. While the latest Pixar and Dreamworks movie push the tech further with more ambitious set pieces and special effects, what they’ve done here is very attractive. The facial animation is the main highlight and the later segment with The Little Girl on her adventure to find The Little Prince shows off some serious technical chops.

The star of the show is the gorgeous stop-motion animation used for The Aviator telling the story of The Little Prince. Everything looks like it’s made of paper as we flit and bound from each segment. From the desert to tiny planets to green landscapes with trees and rose archways with the companionship of The Fox, it’s all amazing. The division of CG and stop-motion (there’s some 2D animation too!) works incredibly well. Great idea and execution.

A big surprise for me, I liked it a lot.