Category: Juame Collet-Serra

CARRY-ON

By Marc S. Sanders

Action movies have been done to death, haven’t they?  Yet, don’t we still get a kick out of them?

Sure, I need my TCM classics like It Happened One Night or my updated biographies like Angelina Jolie’s Maria, but action movies are like the best junk food without any of the calories.  Still, an action picture has to have that special attraction if it is to stand apart from the others.  I got bloated by the time I got to the fourth Lethal Weapon.  The first is a perfect wham bang shoot ‘em up set during Christmas time. Now Netflix grants us a long-lasting candy cane with its airport run around chaser flick known as Carry-On.

What makes this mad bomber fest a smash is that the hero, TSA agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton), actually cries out of fear and pain as the bad guy beats up on him and frightens him into direct obedience.  He begs with tears coming down his cheeks for the bad guy to just stop with his mission.  He screams “WHY ME?”  The Rock, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Ford, Gibson – those guys don’t cry.  Yet, little Ethan Kopek does, and once he gets his wits about him does he truly become a super hero.  I recall the moment happens in the last twenty minutes of the picture.  Ethan throws off his pansy TSA uniform shirt and makes a go at saving the day in his black undershirt.  Now he’s earned John McClane’s respect.

On the busiest travel day of the year, December 24th, Ethan is assigned to scan the carry on luggage ensuring travelers have not packed contraband items.  He and his colleagues have to put up with all the typical TSA complaints that come with the job.  My hat’s off to screenwriter T.J. Fixman for allowing some time to show the challenges of this occupation.  It adds some truth, comedy and depth to a thankless job that’s hardly celebrated or acknowledged like cops, doctors, athletes, and attorneys.  

Ethan is handed an earpiece and a mysterious voice, provided by Jason Bateman, gives him direct instructions to allow one black suitcase with a red ribbon to pass through inspection.  If Ethan deviates in any way at all, the voice promises that Nora (Sophia Carson) will be killed.  She is Ethan’s pregnant girlfriend and also runs airport security at LAX.  

Movies like this function like a game or sport.  The villain sets up boundaries.  How is Ethan going to save the day or get around the unexpected while trying to avoid harm to Nora or the airport as a whole?  As far as he knows, he is always being watched by the guy talking in his ear.  There’s rules and obstacles he must observe.  Granted, Carry-On allows a lot of unlikely and hard to buy conveniences to let our hero obtain the advantage, but he’s also not Superman, and at times when you believe Ethan is coming out ahead, Bateman’s antagonist changes up the game.  

Heck! A bomb is activated not at the end of the movie, but dead center right in the middle of the story.  Normally, the end all be all explosive serves as the final exclamation point with the expected digital clock countdown.  However, in Carry-On if it can get deactivated, there will still be more story to go.  Bateman’s villain really has everything thought out and Egerton’s character has no choice but to man up to the plate once again.

A side story with Danielle Deadwyler as an investigative cop named Elena will eventually intersect with the main narrative.  It’s nothing special until a car ride on the way to the airport plays Wham’s Last Christmas on the radio and the scene explodes into a mind-blowing thrill reminiscent of what I saw in Children Of Men twenty years ago.  The construction of this scene alone is absolute fun.  

Deadwyler’s character is written with a lot of carte blanche to allow Ethan to save the day.  No, none of this is ever likely to be how things go.  Yet, I recall Arnold Schwarzenegger being thrown out of an airplane and surviving a crash landing in a garbage heap thirty thousand feet below (Eraser).

If you watch Carry-On, I will not be surprised if you protest its merits based on a collection of plot holes.  The most glaring one to me is that LAX does not look nearly as crowded as the script insists, nor what I’d expect on Christmas Eve day.  Also, traffic is really easy to get around on the way to the airport.  (New Orleans fills in for Los Angeles.). However, just because Dreamworks and Netflix cut corners on spending for more extras and scenic inconveniences, it does not mean my enjoyment with the film is suspended. 

To make up for where the film’s budget might have come in the way, there are storyline surprises that enter from nowhere. Logic is applied to what’s inserted at these opportune times.  Ethan and Elena experience a set back and now new forms of game play must take hold.  You accept what’s thrown at you because of the cast and set ups.

Taron Egerton is a deliberately wimpy, but also an attractive, unlikely hero.  Jason Bateman ranks with other impressive Die Hard type movie villains like Alan Rickman, Tommy Lee Jones and Dennis Hopper.

Carry-On’s director, Jaume Collet-Serra, is well aware of the near miss escapes that allow his movie to…well…carry on.  He really doesn’t try to hide or distract from the plot holes or questions that audiences may argue.  Yet, I say who cares? This cast of mostly unknowns step up to embrace the dialogue and circumstances of the script while trying to win the game.  

Look, anything you see in Carry-On can theoretically happen.  

Would it happen?  

Let’s just change the subject please.  You have a plane to catch.

THE COMMUTER

By Marc S. Sanders

Sometimes it gets boring to have your suspension of disbelief tested with a movie.  Especially if it is a movie where there’s that eye in the sky that can see everything the hero does, thereby making his dilemma that much harder.  Downright impossible, actually.

You know what I mean when I say eye in the sky?  That’s where the villain or the antagonist can see everything the hero attempts to do to save the day, and every time he tries something like making a cell phone call or writing a secret message on a piece of paper (hidden next to his thigh under the table) for someone else to see, the bad guy always knows what he’s doing. It’s a wonder if the protagonist can even take a leak in private.

In The Commuter, Liam Neeson plays a former New York cop, now insurance salesman, who takes his morning and afternoon train from upstate into the city and then back after work.  Everyday, it’s the same regulars on the train while Neeson’s character, Michael MacCauley, reads the classic literature books that his son is assigned to cover for school.  I guess it’s the way they bond, and it’s pretty fortunate that this is Mike’s hobby because on the day he gets fired from his job, it might come in handy.  Go figure.  These bad guys messed with the wrong avid reader.  I mean he’s reading The Grapes Of Wrath for heaven’s sake.

Just before Mike enters the train, his wallet and cell phone are pickpocketed.  He defeatedly slumps down in his seat and shortly after an alluring woman named Joanna played by Vera Farmiga sits across from him and proposes a hypothetical.  Find twenty-five thousand in cash hidden somewhere in the bathroom.  Then seek out a passenger who identifies as Prynne and swipe the bag that person is holding.  Once that is done, he’ll collect an additional seventy-five thousand, but it must be done before the train reaches the Cold Spring station.  Joanna leaves the train making the offer sound so simple.

Considering Mike just lost his job and he’s got no cash savings as well as his son’s college tuition to pay for, he retrieves the hidden money and tries to make a clean getaway at the next stop.  However, he’s immediately halted by someone who gives him an envelope with his wife’s wedding ring in it.  Now, he knows this woman and whoever else is setting him up with his wife and son in possible danger.

As he finds a way to communicate with Joanna by phone, Mike tests just how serious she and her cohorts are, and that’s when a couple of people wind up dead.  Ultimately, the only way out of this conundrum is for Mike to find out which passenger is Prynne.

Much of the running time of The Commuter is occupied with red herrings.  Could Prynne be the punk girl with the nose ring (Florence Pugh)?  Is it the asshole Investment Banker with the phone earpiece?  Maybe it’s the guy all dressed in black?  Or the one with the guitar case?  Yeah.  It could be any one of these folks who Mike does not recognize as regular travelers.  I won’t even tell you if any of the people are the real Prynne or not, but I knew what to expect from this kind of storytelling pattern.  Mike finds a way to small talk some of them and seek out clues.  He uses the conductors by explaining that he sees something suspicious and suggests they look in their parcels.  At times, I felt like I was playing the Clue or Guess Who?  or Twenty Questions.  I dunno.  This kind of set up for a movie just seems too silly.

Sixty-year-old Mike also engages in hand-to-hand fist fights with some suspects.  I don’t know how old Liam Neeson is, but Mike says he’s sixty, and sixty-year-old Mike endures getting his head bashed through more than one speeding train window, plus a couple of knife slashes and some ass kickings, in his pursuit for the truth.  I know.  He’s a cop so he’s got fighting skills.  That’s okay.  I buy that, but to have your head bashed through doubled paned windows while this commuter train is going a hundred miles an hour? Well, that’s enough stretching for one day.

So how does Joanna stay one step ahead of Mike to ensure he’s playing by the rules?  Well, apparently there are cameras positioned in the overhead vents of every train car that can follow his every move.  C’mon now!  I’d rather the writers and director simply turn this into a sci fi cheapo and declare the villain omnipotent.  This train is at least six cars long.  Maybe seven, and the length of each one is maybe five yards if I’m being conservative, and I’m supposed to believe that these cameras cover every nook and cranny of every single train car?  Seriously, stop stretching.  You’re bound to pull something.

I stayed with The Commuter until the end because frankly I was curious who Prynne turned out to be and what the significance of this particular passenger was to the interests of Joanna. It actually works.  It’s Mike’s convenience in detective work and the powers operating against him that’s ridiculous. 

Moreover, the visuals are incredibly distracting in this picture.  The CGI could not be more apparent anytime Liam Neeson throws a punch or takes one across the chin or out a broken window.  The animation of the CGI appears terribly false.  It looks unfinished and rushed for editing as Neeson’s facial expressions of pain and struggle contort in odd ways.  The bad guys he gets into fisticuffs with appear to have the same problem.  Truly some of the worst action scenes I can remember watching in quite some time. 

The speed of the train looks false as well.  I read where Liam Neeson said that the settings within the train cars were shot on a soundstage.  Afterwards, director Juame Collet-Serra was challenged with changing the outdoor scenery of the train on a constant basis to simulate ongoing speed and movement.  I imagine this is all incredibly challenging.  I don’t know how to do it.  However, it just does not work.

The visuals for most of The Commuter fail tremendously.  Last year’s most recent installment of Mission: Impossible demonstrated how a speeding train should look in an action picture.  With this movie though, the finalized print was rushed for that all so busy January release in 2018.  Look, if you can’t do it right, then let somebody else handle the job, or better yet, make a better movie.

The Commuter would have been a much better and much shorter film had Mike never let his curiosity overtake him and go to the bathroom for that money.  Mike, why couldn’t you just stay in your seat and finish reading your Steinbeck?

BLACK ADAM

By Marc S. Sanders

Black Adam has to be the first superhero movie that apologizes for the mind numbingly stupid two hours you just endured, by offering up an enticing ninety second end credits scene.  That’s all that this headache inducing piece of noise has going for it; the end credit scene.  The film is so headache inducing that I’d rather be serenaded with a duet performance of a car alarm and a leaf blower singing a rendition of a song I’ve always despised, like Red, Red Wine.

About twenty minutes into Dwayne Johnson’s debut into the DC Cinematic Universe, as the title character, I reflected on Raiders Of The Lost Ark from 1981.  Remember when the government suits ask Indiana Jones about the significance of the Ark Of The Covenant?  It took three minutes to sum up what was at stake, what the hero was going after and who he was expected to be up against.  That’s it.  After that, the piece was constructed to offer up one kind of stunt or action sequence or visual effect after another.  The difference is that everything you saw served its story and thus carried on the pursuit. How I long for the days of intelligent writing.

Black Adam tries at least three times over the course of two hours to explain brainless conjecture about an ancient city where its inhabitants dig for some powerful element, called Eternium, at the behest of their harsh ruler.  Then there’s something about a crown and a slave boy who comes into play.  Later, I think his father is mentioned, but I was nodding off by then.  I’m only mad at myself for focusing more on inhaling the contents of my popcorn bucket rather than getting invested in a movie.  My mission was no longer to maintain an interest in this big budget comic book tripe.  Now, I was destined to get to the bottom of my overly priced snack food container.  This is not why I go to the movies, people!

When the movie is not talking (which hardly ever happens), it is pounding at my cranium with horrible CGI dust clouds and lightning bolts that offer up blindingly, irritating sights and bombastic sounds.  My eyes hurt.  My ears hurt.  Light a firecracker, drop it in a tuba and blow.  It’s likely more soothing to the senses.  For surround sound, turn on your garbage disposal with your car keys in it.  It’ll all be much more harmonious and pleasant. 

What little I know of Black Adam is limited to a scant few comic book images.  Long before I knew of Dwayne Johnson, it seemed inevitable that only this guy could play the part.  It’s an uncanny resemblance.  No one else can play this role.  The supporting cast is promising, especially a sophisticated and well-aged Pierce Brosnan as the one with sorcerer like powers.  His Dr. Fate is maybe DC’s equivalent to Marvel’s Dr. Strange.  Aldis Hodge is Hawkman, and he looks absolutely confident in the guise with outspread bird wings and a kick ass helmet and spiked ball on a staff for a personal weapon.  A guy named Noah Centineo is the Atom Smasher.  He’s cute enough to fill the void for Ezra Miller when he eventually gets fired from his cushy gig as the Flash.

So, I don’t get it.  Warner Bros and DC assemble a terrifically talented cast who not only look good in the costumes, but can act with timing as well. Yet, they give them nothing to do but be digitized in terrible CGI that makes the Hanna Barbera Superfriends cartoons look like breakthrough technology.  Everything looks terribly animated in Black Adam, and therefore it’s as boring as a church sermon that won’t end because the minister is overindulging in chastising you for cheating on your diet.  Johnson on the big screen flying up to the top of a towering monument looks ridiculous, like an ¾ inch action figure next to a life size kitchen refrigerator.  I’m supposed to believe that’s Dwayne Johnson up there?  Probably because Johnson was not in the image, or if he was there, he had no concept what he was supposed to be looking at.  Captions like this happen multiple times here, but they are all devoid of emotion or depth.  The statue itself looks unfinished by the effects wizards.  There’s hardly any detail to it. What’s it supposed to signify?  I completely bought it when Christopher Reeve flew against the skyscrapers of Metropolis way back when.  In today’s age of films, this movie takes about a hundred steps back in progress.  Everything looks artificial.  Nothing looks convincing.

Black Adam is also unsure of a well contained story.  I’ll take no issue with the movie being episodic if that’s what its intention was meant to be.  First the main character is fighting a military that stems from I don’t know what organization or country.  They fire rockets and machine guns at him.  Does nothing.  So, what do I care?  Then he’s fighting the other super heroes in the picture.  They pound each other into the desert streets and dust clouds heighten into the earth.  What’s to be gained from any of that? Black Adam then fights a gang that looks no more threatening than a lame motorcycle posse.  Eventually, he’s battling some kind of CGI devil monster who needs a cough drop.  This guy mustn’t sit on the throne located at the top peak over the city.  If he does, all hell breaks loose and blah, blah, blah.  This is like watching a lame CW TV series crammed into two long tortuous hours.  How does this movie go from here to there and then over there and end up wherever?  I gave up trying to string it all together.

It’s ridiculous how dumb Black Adam is, especially when you consider how much thought went into a ninety second epilogue teaser before you leave the theatre.  I’m sorry but I expect these filmmakers and studios who harbor these big budgets and hype to work on the same level of imagination and craft as a Steven Spielberg or a Christopher Nolan.  Nolan reinvented the Batman franchise.  He took his time to flesh out character motivation while painting a scenery for his own flavor of Gotham City.  Marvel did this as well when Jon Favreau was wise enough to follow a Spielbergian trajectory with the original Iron Man.  Kevin Feige often has not broken the formula since, because it succeeds.  Black Adam neglects all of these techniques.  Its lack of any quality is traitorous towards its consumers.

I don’t recall a conversation among the characters that lasts longer than four sentences.  By the end of the film, I’m not sure if Black Adam is a bad guy or a good guy.  I don’t know what was resolved to tie up the picture.  I don’t know when the turning point occurred, and Black Adam got an upper hand over anyone he does battle with.  Actually, he’s never challenged or weakened.  So, where’s the suspense?  What stakes are at play?

Black Adam functions as an eight-year-old kid in his room with his toy action figures.  They crash into another and the child makes a “pshoosh!” sound with his duck face lips.  I expect eight-year-olds to just enjoy their play things.  They don’t have to focus on exposition for themselves or anyone else.  Let them escape.  However, I didn’t pay to watch an eight-year-old play on the floor with his toys. 

The failure of this movie is inexcusable.  It angers me that filmmakers with unlimited resources and a wealth of source material are not trying harder like some of their industry peers.  It’s unfair to movie goers to pay for junk primarily assembled on a Dell computer with a wireless mouse.  Coloring books have more texture than this finished product.

Black Adam is a treachery in any context of the word, filmmaking.  It’s not art.  It’s not fun.  It’s nothing more than shit turned white.  It’s not fresh shit.  It’s worse.  It’s rotten shit.