Oh, the promise of a new Neill Blombcamp movie. After flooring everyone with District 9, his follow up, Elysium, didn’t come together nearly as well.  Now Chappie is here and it must be said that it fails to completely deliver as well.

Blombcamp comes up with terrific sci-fi ideas and concepts. He’s a great director and his movies look absolutely amazing. Every dollar is seen on screen, the creature and special effects often look like they had to cost two or three times more than what they do. District 9 is currently the pinnacle of his movies because the story and concepts perfectly match. I’d go as far to say that it’s a perfect movie.

When you see the ads, Chappie looks like Robocop and Short Circuit came together. That’s a pretty true statement after watching it. Chappie is mainly about human consciousness. The thing that makes people, people. I think therefor I am, empathy, decision making.

In the not too distant future, a tech company makes security robots that are proving to be very successful in Johannesburg, South Africa. Just 100 units in the field have made massive reduction in crime and helped reduce the deaths of human officers. One of the lead scientists, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) wants to take it to the next level. Make true Artificial Intelligence. A robot that can think on its own and make decisions like a responsible adult human. Deon gets denied by his boss to test his new software on a damaged unit (scout #22) and steals the body to work on it alone. He gets hijacked by three desperate criminals and is forced to bring the unit online so they can use the robot for a major heist.

Wilson’s software works. The robot comes to life, the criminals and Wilson teach it. They name it Chappie and it learns at an incredible rate.

A lot of what works in Chappie is due to the amazing special effects. There’s very few instances where you don’t believe that this robot isn’t real. The illusion of a learning entity with a soul (?) walks and talks on screen with amazing detail. I liked a lot of the concepts of the movie. What it means to be human, the ethics of burgeoning technology. The never ending war on crime and the militarization of law enforcement. There’s a lot of really great character growth and interaction between Chappie and the main cast. Plus, the few action scenes are really good and that always makes me happy.

Now the problems. Much like Elysium, Chappie asks you to suspend your disbelief a lot. The movie takes place just a few years from present day so it’s basically happening right now and the tech capabilities on display is way beyond what we will see anytime soon. With a movie trying to be so grounded, this was hard to get over. I think this odd schism could have easily been solved by pushing the time of the movie a few decades into the future. I wondered why there was a massive Sony logo at the start of the movie and it becomes readily apparent when you see all the Sony hardware at use (it’s a Columbia Pictures flick too). A stack of Playstation 4’s are used in a pivotal scene (which drives the rest of the movie) that’s pretty hard to swallow. Oh, and Hugh Jackman’s hair is atrocious to the point of distraction.

Then there are the goofy convenience moments that let the movie progress. The scouts are given firmware updates with a “guardian key.” This USB stick is integral to the safety protocols of the robot police force and Deon just takes it without anyone noticing or caring for a shocking amount of time (he’s only warned that he’ll be tattled on to his boss at about day 4). When things go crazy and it looks like Deon has gone rogue, his credentials to the office and labs is never revoked so he’s free to move about easily. He steals all sorts of stuff time after time and no one notices. I don’t think it’s possible for a weapons manufacturer to have less security than what we see at Tetravaal.

Plus the movie is rated R for cursing and violence. I think the cursing is rather necessary (and think it’s dumb for a movie to be rated R for the F word), but the violence/gore goes needlessly over the top. One guy gets ripped apart for no good reason. Rather limits who could see this movie (problem still is that if the gore was taken out, the cursing would still earn a R rating).

At the end, I liked Chappie quite a bit (I really like the heart it has), but I’m disappointed it doesn’t get near the quality and joy of District 9. There’s just too many “really?” moments that hold the movie back. I’d put it over Elysium without hesitation, but I think a few more passes on the script could have made Chappie a sci-fi classic.

I have such mixed feelings on Gone Girl. In order to get into them, this is going to be rather spoiler rich review.

There’s nothing to say about the technical mastery (director David Fincher) and quality acting in this movie. This is all about the content. Nick Dunne (Ben Afleck) comes home one average day to the glass coffee table in the living room flipped over. His wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) isn’t there, but all her stuff is. He saw her that morning and alarmed at the scene, calls the police right away.

Amy is missing. Her parents fly into town, hotlines are set up, candle light vigils are started, police and volunteers search for her. Amy is faux famous, her parents use her name, likeness and life as the source of an incredibly popular children’s book series. It isn’t long before the story goes national. Then the police start finding evidence…

This evidence points to Nick being the murder. Blood splatters on kitchen walls, a massive blood pool on the kitchen floor poorly cleaned, a diary, a mistress, his temper flare ups. Nick seems to be telling a lot of lies, it doesn’t look good for him. Part of the Gone Girl story is the power of the media. Once they decide Nick is guilty, he works hard with his lawyer to turn the public opinion around on him. That’s  a tall order that requires a lot of coaching (I like the Nancy Grace doppelganger. Them using each other at the end is very true and telling of news stations today).

Gone Girl has a few hooks. It starts off as this missing person story and it seems to be pretty straight forward. Amy narrates quite a bit of the story, as if she’s talking from the grave. But things seem odd, the pieces of the puzzle are bent a bit. You question if Nick did it, the treasure hunt she has him on for their anniversary is really weird. Then it’s revealed that Amy has set him up. She goes from sympathetic narrator to diabolical sociopath.

Amy’s set up this really clever murder plot to get revenge on her cheating husband. She’s furious at all the time she’s wasted on him. For awhile it looks like she has all the bases covered, down to going to the extreme of killing herself to get him on death row. Turns out, she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. She screws up and has to come up with a contingency plan on the fly.

Up until this point, Gone Girl is really great. All this stuff is unfolding in front of you, and you switch sides on who to hate a few times. It’s a great detective/mystery plot that would do Batman proud. Once that first hook releases, you’re on Nick’s side for the rest of the movie. Watching him and his sister put things together is great. Seeing Amy screw up is so satisfying. She’s so arrogant she never thought her plan wouldn’t work.

Now, my problem comes with what she does to salvage her plan. The first half of the movie is crazy and dark. Then it goes over the deep end. You think everything up to that point was twisted, but that’s just the tip of the lithium infused iceberg. She frames an old flame for her disappearance. This opens up so many variables for her to get caught, that it’s unbelievable (the treasure hunt clues are pretty damning alone and the tons of surveillance footage at his house). It all boils down to the authorities not following up on anything because they completely buy her story from the get go. It’s a sensitive road to walk for sure, but Detective Rhonda Boney raises all sorts of good points and they all give her the immediate stink eye. The scenes with just Amy and Nick when she gets back is the stuff of nightmares, it’s so messed up.

Writing that just made me realize what really bothers me. Amy turns out to be The Joker and Batman never shows up to make her pay for her crimes (Batfleck pun not intended). It is a successful movie though. It accomplishes what it intended to do, but boy do you feel gross at the end of it.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a fun take on the action spy genre. It recognizes the greats (like Bond, Bourne and U.N.C.L.E) and respects them while stretching its legs across the line with new material and a good dose insanity.

Kingsman is an old British Secret Service with only a few active agents (referred to as Knights). When one is killed in action, the recruitment process starts to find a replacement. So begins the movie (and the recruitment) when “Lancelot” is killed on a rescue mission. Turns out, his mission reveals a population culling plot by technology billionaire Richmond Valentine.

Unbeknownst to Gary “Eggsy” Unwin, his father was a Kingsman, killed when Eggsy was a very young boy. Harry Hart (codename: Galahad) has kept tabs on Eggsy due to his father saving his life. Their paths cross at a crucial time in the now twenty-something year olds life, and Harry thinks Eggsy has what it takes to join the service.

So we have all the check marks for a spy movie. Cool and classy heroes, awesome tech/spy gear, hidden bases, double crosses and a villain with a high death toll plot that has to be stopped.  Mix this all together and you have one of the most enjoyable action movies I’ve seen in awhile.

I found a lot to like in Kingsman. Great characters to start. Colin Firth as Harry does a wonderful job as a suave badass and a great father figure to Eggsy. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is really likable right from the start and gets better as his character grows on screen. He’s a good kid given a tough hand whose world is blown open when he hears the truth about his dad. Not only are we watching a spy being made, but a gentleman as well (the wardrobe in this movie is legit impressive).

Samuel L Jackson has fun being Valentine and I appreciate the thought behind him and his plot (also like the nods and discussions about spies and their nemesis’). His right hand woman, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), is completely awesome. She’s got prosthetic legs that she uses as weapons (adding a new level of lethal to Thai kickboxing) and is a joy to watch whenever she is on screen.

Talking about Gazelle brings me to the action. Kingsman is based on the comic book, The Secret Service. by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. As such, the fights and violence are completely over the top. Crazy fight choreography with all manners of destruction. When someone gets shot or stabbed, you see it. There is a set piece that takes place in a church that is one long take of what can only be described as carnage. It’s a hold on for your dear life kind of presentation that enjoys its mayhem, but wisely curbs the uber violence in favor for a more stylized choice (heads explode in this movie, but it’s not gross).

Director  Matthew Vaughn and his crew have made a love letter to one of cinemas favorite genres. It’s smart, funny, sexy and rated R for good reason. If you’re looking for a wild and goofy time at the movies, I say go for Kingsman (please do, I want to see another one)!

What a fun horror movie! As Above So Below turned out to be way better than I thought it was going to be. We go along on a expedition underneath Paris into the catacombs where the remains of 6 million people lay arranged in macabre shrines or otherwise stacked like long forgotten debris. While it’s the perfect setting for a horror movie, why would anyone go wandering around down there alone?

Treasure! More specifically, the Philosopher’s Stone, the legendary holy grail of alchemy. The Stone is said to be able to turn base metals into gold and has incredible powers of rejuvenation, including immortality. I love alchemist lore from watching Full Metal Alchemist, so having that hook turned out to be a real draw for me.

Scarlett is obsessed with finding the Philosopher’s Stone to finish her late father’s work. She gets a young man named Benji to document the last leg of the journey and finds an old flame (George) to help her translate a major piece of the puzzle that she nearly died to get her hands on. Soon, they believe they have found where Nicolas Flemel put the stone, in a hidden section of the catacombs under Paris. With three guides who say they know their way around, they go in together. It isn’t long before things get weird. And then crazy dangerous. There’s a reason this thing was hidden away hundreds of feet below ground generations ago.

This journey to the outer rim of hell is presented as footage captured from the cameras the characters brought with them. While in the  “found footage” genre, the movie doesn’t stick to any presentation rule. It’s more like you’re going with them and jumping from camera to camera to get the best view of what’s going on as it’s happening. It’s kind of like being a character and a omnipresent observer at the same time. I think it works well, as once the movie goes underground, you’re crammed in with this group feeling like if they don’t get out, neither will you. There’s a Dante’s Inferno tilt to the movie mixed into the lore of the Philosopher’s Stone that I think worked really well together.

The darkness, weird audio and the unrelenting claustrophobia really sell the tension and fear. There are some crazy good ideas in As Above So Below, the creativity was a blast to watch (kudos to the special effects work) and direction is often great (absolutely loved the last shot).  I liked all the characters and aside from them reacting to the early crazy stuff too calmly (and continuity problems with people getting wet and dry), it all felt believable.

The Descent (2009) is the easiest comparison to this movie, but I think that’s much more of a monster movie than this. The motivation and history used for As Above So Below make it stand on it’s own and totally worth checking out. Of the horror movies I’ve seen recently, I dug this as much as Afflicted and VHS 2. Remember, the only way out is down!

Sounding

Hale gave Ava a much bigger scare last week than I thought. Thinking her cover was about to blown to Boyd, Ava tried to pull a runner. With just a few bucks and no real plan, she tried to get a new car from Ellstin Limehouse. Frantic to get things back in order, Raylan gets Constable Bob Sweeny to track her down before she can get too far and ensures that Albert Fekus isn’t going to reveal that Ava is a CI to Duffy and Hale. Boyd is still gung-ho on breaking into the vault and looks for help in a rather risky person, Avery is now more than annoyed that he can’t buy up anymore property thanks to some meddling. That fortunately puts Calhoun in the cross hairs for giving out information he shouldn’t have.

The three moving pieces of the show have been spinning like tops right next to each other for a few episodes now. I can almost taste the tension in the air. With seven episodes left, I can’t really see how this is going to pan out yet. It feels like the collision is happening really soon, but if it happens in the next 2 episodes, what’s left to explore? And if it doesn’t, the build up may feel like it’s going too long. We keep bumping into the same walls. Ava feels like jumping ship everyday, Duffy and Hale are swooping around like vultures and Boyd is slowly trying to get a working plan in order. With Avery being poked so much by Raylan, it can’t be much longer before he acts to take some people out. Raylan just wants to finally catch Boyd, but he’s really on a timer to get it done now.

The first Purge movie left little mark on me. I wrote two sentences about it. It was made for next to nothing and pulled in nearly $100 million at the box office worldwide, so it managed to get a sequel. I have no idea how The Purge did so well, I can’t believe word of mouth didn’t kill it. But here we are and as all the buzz I heard about it said, Anarchy is a much better movie.

The Purge: Anarchy is what the first movie should have been. Way more interesting, way more engaging. It’s the exact same premise as the first (once a year, from 7pm to 7am, all crimes including murder are legal in America. The Purge is a holiday), but it follows three groups of people who’s paths intersect.

“Sergeant” is a man armed to the teeth with a kitted out car to accomplish his mission. Eva and Cali, mother and daughter, get pulled out of their home by an organized group wearing combat gear. Shane and Liz are a couple who get stranded downtown by a different group of organized masked men who seem to be abducting instead of killing as well.

With these characters, they each come from different areas and circumstances. There’s a lot more meat to this movie than the first. Anarchy takes a bigger picture exploring the wealth disparity and class warfare that is growing in the US. The reasons, effects and new mutations of the Purge come to light. While there is a significant amount of murder and mayhem in this movie, the most disturbing part is thinking that something like this actually happening doesn’t seem all that far fetched. Now that I think of it, The Purge is the American take of Battle Royale.

The Purge is this crazy system put in place by those that are supposed to know what’s best for the country (and they were voted into government). One of my favorite parts of this movie is that rational people are starting to fight back. This Purge is the 6th one to happen and the growing dissent is taking an active approach to stopping the madness. A revolution from those being crushed must happen to change the system. The set up for the third movie is an exciting one.

I can’t think of many movies that their sequel was so much better than the original. The Purge is a good idea on paper, it just didn’t come together right. Anarchy is the execution matching the idea. By all means, skip watching the first. You won’t miss a thing. In fact, it’s really easy to just forget the first exists, just call Anarchy the first Purge movie.