Category: Action/Adventure

ZATHURA: A SPACE ADVENTURE (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 75% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two young brothers (Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo) are drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is hurled through the depths of space by the magical board game they are playing.


If only all family movies were like this.

Too often, so-called family films are mealy-mouthed cream puffs that appeal to the short attention span of their target audience, leaving the parents either bored to tears or fatigued from sitting through 90 minutes of explosions.  The scripts are subpar and tend to treat kids as if they’re not all that bright.

Not Zathura.  With his third film (after the forgettable Made and the Christmas neo-classic Elf), director Jon Favreau proved that he’s the real deal.  Here’s a REAL family film with something for everybody: comedy, family drama, peril, thrills, a killer robot, fearsome aliens, and nostalgia.

The nostalgia part is especially notable.  The board game at the center of the film is constructed to look like something made in the ‘50s or ‘60s, which, to the kids in the film, is practically ancient history.  But for me, I found the film nostalgic in the way it captures the kind of fun I used to have at the movies.

Not that I don’t still have fun, mind you.  It’s just that, when I was a kid, sci-fi and fantasy films felt more real, you know?  It was so easy to imagine myself as a resident of the Goondocks, or discovering an alien in the cornfield behind my house, or building a spaceship in the backyard with my two best friends.  Zathura captures that kind of feeling like few other modern family films can.  It’s a movie that has the potential to live on in the imagination after countless other films have vacated your consciousness.

And the VISUALS.  I don’t know what kind of budget the movie had, but it looks like a $100 million movie.  The killer robot is absolutely convincing, as are the aliens.  Which brings up another great element of the film: danger.  The bad guys in this movie may occasionally look a little cartoony, but they are not to be trifled with.  That’s something a lot of kid’s movies tend to get wrong.  The filmmakers lose their nerve in creating real villains, for fear of pissing off too many parents.  In reality…dude, kids can handle it.  Give the bad guys fangs and spinning saw blades.  It just makes it that much more satisfying when the bad guys LOSE.

Zathura barely made its money back, and that’s including domestic AND worldwide grosses (okay, I looked it up).  I could be wrong, but I’ll bet too many people thought it was a Jumanji ripoff.  It IS based on a book by the same author as Jumanji (and The Polar Express, as it happens).  But it is possible, I think, to see Zathura in its own light.  It’s a fantastic movie that will please all ages.

QUICK TAKE: Serenity (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, Chiwetel Ejiofor
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The crew of the ship Serenity tries to evade an assassin sent to recapture one of their members who is telepathic…and perhaps something more…


In a perfect world, Han Solo would still have shot Greedo in cold blood, not self-defense.  Universal would have stopped with Jaws 2.  Heath Ledger would still be around for at least one more Dark Knight film.

And in that perfect world, Serenity would have spawned two more films, each better than the one before, for a trilogy that would be in the conversation for greatest science-fiction franchise ever.

I do not say this as a fan of Firefly, the short-lived, devoutly-worshipped television show upon which Serenity is based.  When I first saw this movie in 2005, I had no idea why the pilot had dinosaurs on the cockpit dashboard.  I didn’t know why it was such a big deal to see River Tam, this wisp of a girl, performing intricate fight scenes right out of a Jackie Chan movie.  I didn’t know why the characters sprinkled Chinese or Japanese phrases in the middle of their dialogue (sometimes cursing in those languages).  Or why they talked like it was the old West instead of hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

Know what?  It didn’t matter.  Serenity is so well-made and well-written that, after the two main opening sequences, I rolled with it.  I had an immediate sense of the vast history of this “used” universe and the characters within it.  In this world (taking a cue from “Star Wars”), the good guys fly rust-buckets, not sterile starships.  It’s a pure visual pleasure from start to finish.

The great story, screenplay, acting (from actors who are clearly enjoying themselves), effective usage of visual effects, genuine surprises, and one bona fide shocker that had audiences gasping and yelling at the screen…it’s all here.  Shiny!

TRANSPORTER 2 (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 51%

PLOT: An extremely skilled mercenary driver (Statham) is implicated in the kidnapping of the young son of a powerful USA drug official.


When an action film includes a shot of the good guy flipping his car off a ramp so a dangling crane hook can clip off a bomb stuck underneath the car mere SECONDS before it goes off…you either laugh and roll with it or scoff and leave the theater.  I laughed.

Transporter 2 is an example of a movie not really intended for American audiences.  From top to bottom, this is a European action movie, made in the States with the kind of budget unknown in foreign studios.  It was produced by none other than Luc Besson, director of cult classics like Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element.  Here he farms out directing duties to Louis Leterrier, a genre specialist known for Jet Li’s Unleashed, the original Transporter, and, later on, an honest-to-God entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk.

This movie is utter junk food.  It aspires to the kind of delirious cartoonish heights that would later be achieved by Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), but it fails due to too many breaks in the action.  And if you have too many breaks in a movie that’s barely 80 minutes long, something has gone wrong at the screenplay level.  In a movie like this, adding depth of character just gets in the way of the action.

The action itself, while mildly stunning visually, is too sparse.  There’s an extended fight scene in a basement that’s imaginative and well done, making creative use of a fire hose.  There’s a one-sided gun battle in a doctor’s office.  The lone car chase in the film sees the infamous building-to-building car jump from Lethal Weapon 2 and raises it.  And, of course, the bomb-removing flip to a crane.  (I can’t even discuss the finale aboard a plummeting private jet without wincing.)

Other than that, not much here, folks.  For me, this is an all-too-obvious guilty pleasure, something to toss into the player and jack the volume up so the gun battles rattle the walls.  The absurdity of the action allows the movie to flirt with camp classic status, but I usually just fast-forward to the parts where stuff gets blowed up real good.

SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

By Marc S. Sanders

Marvel’s installment of Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings boasts a good cast and set up for an Asian superhero and his band of allies.  I only have one question, couldn’t some of this stuff have waited for the sequel?

Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham wrote an adventurous screenplay for Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy) to direct.  It’s fun and frolicking with magnificent action set pieces that take place on an out of control metro bus on the streets of San Francisco (where every out of control vehicle or car chase work best) and later on a high rise scaffolding in Macau.  While some sequences easily reveal the CGI work at play, the edited choreography of these martial arts scenes work beautifully. 

During the bus sequence, spread eagle jumps and high kicks and low punches by Shang Chi (Simu Liu) are done like a fine dance number as he fights off a gang of thugs who are mysteriously after the pendant he wears around his neck.  Comedienne Awkwafina plays Shang’s best friend Katy who rides the bus crazier than Sandra Bullock ever did.  Later the pursuit of the MaGuffin pendant leads into a meet up with Shang’s equally capable sister Xu Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) and the high-rise scaffolding fight occurs.  Marvelous work in both of these scenes.  The CGI is certainly forgivable.

After that, the film calms itself down to bridge some exposition that was revealed in the prologue of the film.  Shang and Xialing seem to have some parental issues.  Their father Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) somehow acquired a set of ten magically powerful rings that he wears on both forearms.  Like other rings in fantasy/adventure films, these items take out armies and do nothing but conquer.   For once, could these powerful items just make a cup of hot tea or a decent wax job on my car?  When Wenwu uncovers a hidden majestic location to take over, he meets and becomes smitten with Ying Li (Fala Chen).  They fall in love and you’d think they’d live happily ever after, but if that were the case then there would be no movie.    

Beyond what’s described here, not much else mattered to me with this film.  The rings might as well have been Thor’s hammer or Captain America’s shield, or a Maltese Falcon.  A large, epic and very, very long climactic battle takes place so that one of Hollywood’s better known Asian actresses (Michelle Yeoh) can come into the picture and fight.  There’s also a return of a relatively unfavorite character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), the fake out terrorist from Iron Man 3, that pissed off a collection of die hard Marvel geeks yearning for an appearance of the known villain called The Mandarin.  Shang Chi reminds us that this once reputably “threatening” villain is named after an orange.  Yup!  Get over it.  He’s as scary as an orange.  Moving on!  Beyond these appearances, are kaleidoscopes of colorful fantasy creatures like flying serpent dragons and furballs with wings and no face, as well as lion like four legged creatures.  Plenty of stuff for Disney/Marvel to merchandise.

I was seeing a story in Shang Chi, and then I wasn’t.  The long battle sequence goes on and on and on as a means to show off new toys and stuffed animals for the kids.  It all looks very good but it doesn’t lend credence to any storytelling like say in The Lord Of The Rings fare, where an Org could progress a story.  Here, it’s all overkill. 

The strength of Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings lies in an enthusiastically fun cast and the outstanding martial arts moments that are presented.  The fantasy material is too much icing on the cake.  The graphics are good and all but couldn’t that fantasy stuff have been held for another film later on perhaps?  Go with one thing first and then another thing next, because after a while I forgot what kind of movie I was watching and why.

The cast is fine in their roles.  Just fine though.  Simu Liu has the athletic build for the title character.  He looks sharp in the costumes and fight sequences.  Though the fantasy material really takes away from the ranges that we could have appreciated from as an actor.  It’s clear this script is not giving him the same rightful opportunities for good super hero acting that was awarded to Robert Downey Jr or Brie Larson.  Equally same goes for Tony Leung and Meng’er Zhang.  They kind of plain jane.  Awakwfina is given the most to play with for the escapist humor as a fun loving karaoke singer and crazy valet driver.  Later, she quickly becomes an expert archer.  Good stuff there. 

Let’s face it the Asian community sect within Hollywood is not as well represented as it should be by now.  Box office numbers of the past have more than justified a need for Asian culture to be front and center in mainstream films.  There’s been some highlights in the past, most namely with the work of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and films of merit like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Crazy Rich Asians.  It’s pleasing to know that Marvel Comics created a character like Shang Chi back in the late 1970’s.  It just wasn’t capitalized back then as a marquee name like the Hulk or Spider-Man.  Still, Disney and Marvel could have tried a little bit harder here.  Just when I thought we were getting some dimension and checkered past subject matter for Shang Chi and his family to struggle with, Cretton’s film diverts into visual CGI fantasy Candy Land with no depth or substance. 

My recommendation on the next installment, is for Marvel and Disney to dig deeper.  I know there’s a wealth of storytelling here.  So, use a bigger shovel that’ll dig itself all the way to China.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

By Marc S. Sanders

If you are going to rewrite history then go crazy.  Go big and bloody.  Go for broke.  Don’t hold back.  Quentin Tarantino didn’t hold back when he penned and directed Inglourious Basterds, my personal favorite of his films.

To date of when this review is published, Tarantino has directed nine films and if ever the maturity of a director is so evident, it really shows with Basterds where three quarters of the picture is performed in either French or German.  English is secondary here, and Italian is limited to only a couple of “Bonjournos!”  and “Gorlamis!”

Tarantino presents early 1940s France when Germany occupied most of the country and practically rounded up all of the Jews.  In 1941, a cunning detective of a Nazi Colonel, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz performing as one of the greatest villains of all time) visits a French dairy farmer to ensure there are no unaccounted-for Jews scurrying around; scurrying around like their beastly equivalent, the rat.  Landa is the hawk that will most assuredly find them.  This scene is the best written moment within Tarantino’s catalog of various scripts and dialogue exchanges.  The Landa character offers justification as to why a Jew needs to be exterminated to the point that he nearly had me (a conservative practicing Jewish man) believing in his hateful philosophy.  The lines crackle here with Waltz doing most of the talking while the sad dairy farmer can do no more than respond with certifying Landa’s interesting points.  Tarantino closes the peaceful discussion with horrifying violence though.  Hans Landa may be complimentary of a farmer’s milk and his three beautiful daughters.  He may be eloquent in his dialogue albeit French, German or English, but he is a ruthless enforcer of law …of Nazi law at least.  I also would like to note Tarantino’s tactful way of using props like the pipes the characters smoke, the glass of milk that is consumed by Landa and the ink pen and spreadsheet he uses for accounting of the Jews in the area.  There’s an uncomfortable intimidation in all of these items as they are handled by Waltz, the actor.  Later in the film, Waltz will send a chill down your spine as he happily enjoys a delicious strudel with whipped cream.  Inglourious Basterds is a great combination of directing, editing, cinematography and acting.

The film diverts into a few separate stories, namely the title characters led by Aldo “The Apache” Raines, played with Tennessee redneck glee by Brad Pitt.  The Basterds consist of mostly Jewish American soldiers tasked with going deep into enemy territory and literally killing and scalping one hundred Nazi soldiers, each.  However, keep at least one alive during each encounter with a carved souvenir on their forehead, to spread the word of the Basterds intent.  This is deliberate B movie Dirty Dozen material and it works because it doesn’t take itself seriously.  Tarantino maintains that pulpy fiction narrative.  A cut to an over-the-top crybaby Adolph Hitler asks, “What is a Hugo Stiglitz?” and then we get a quick pause with big black block letters across the screen spelling out HUGO STIGLITZ.  This guy is a bad ass; a German turncoat who only wants to kill fellow German Nazis.  He’ll shoot them up until they are dead three times over.  He’ll stab them in the face twenty times through a pillow.  He’s not a suave killer.  He likes it violent and bloody messy.  The Basterds are fans.

The heroine of the film is Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent), a Jewish girl who is living undercover as a cinema owner in France.  By implied force she is tasked with presenting Himmler’s proud film of Nazi Germany’s finest war hero, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), recreating his bird’s nest three day sniper battle against an army of three hundred men.  This is where Tarantino does best at writing what he knows, and what he knows best is anything about cinematic film.  He literally uses his knowledge of film and film reels to bridge his story while setting Shoshanna on a mission to actually end World War II in one swift motion.   

In addition, he captures the adoration of film lovers and celebrity status.  Zoller is as heroic a celebrity as John Wayne or Zorro.  When he is recognized in the coffee houses or on the street, he humbly stops his ongoing flirtation with an uninterested Shoshanna, to give an autograph or pose for a picture.

Furthermore, Tarantino applies the scientific knowledge of how 35mm film is more flammable than paper as well as how to edit a film reel to an unexpected moment for Shoshanna’s Nazi audience.  He knows the architecture of a European cinema with its lobby and balconies and seating capacities.  He allows his characters to speak on an intellectual level by discussing great film artists of the time – filmmakers not as well-known as Chaplin here in the United States, but just as great or even artistically better. The art direction of the cinema both inside and out is adorned with washed out, distressed classic noir films.  Shoshanna changes out the lettering of the curved marquee top of the theater as well.  It might sound mundane, but to me it’s all atmospheric.

Beyond the subject of cinematic art, a bad guy will weed out a spy disguised in Nazi garb by recognizing how he signals for three drinks with his hand.  There’s a right way and a wrong way to place an order with a bartender.  Inglourious Basterds may be a fictional historical piece, but it also will give you an education. All of this reminds me that Quentin Tarantino has graduated from the simplicity of Reservoir Dogs to something bigger and grander and glossier.  Production money with a large budget will lend to that status of course, but Tarantino still had to learn to truly know what he was doing.

I will not spoil the ending here.  It’s a bloody blast for sure.  Moreover, it’s shocking.  If anything, Inglourious Basterds introduces an exclusive universe that resides in the mind of Quentin Tarantino where the textbook is thrown away, burned, riddled with bullets and blown up; it is where something else altogether happened, and you know what? I really wish it did actually happen this way.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER VERSE

By Marc S. Sanders

Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse is a spectacular new take on a beloved American tradition.

You know you are in for something good when Peter Parker’s Spider-Man introduces himself by reminding the audience how we know his story and the impact his alter ego has had including a cheesy street dance (Spider-Man 3) and an awful looking popsicle stick from the neighborhood ice cream truck. Then it swiftly jumps to a Brooklyn kid named Miles Morales, a good student who loves art and loves his mom and dad as well, even if he gets embarrassed to be seen stepping out of his dad’s patrol car.

Miles resides in one universe that we soon learn is separate from other universes that each have a spider version of their own. Look out though, because the universes are about to collide thanks to the dastardly Kingpin.

I’ll save the rest of the storyline for you to check out. There are some terrific surprises embedded in Miles’ journey to becoming a Spider-Man mixed with tragedy and surprising humor.

The animation took me a little to get used to but it was not a challenge. It’s a slick rainbow of different splashes of color. The action moves fast and I even got chills when a variation of Peter Parker encourages Miles to take a leap of faith, a moment that is inspiring for any young kid no matter if they are a boy, girl, White, Black, Hispanic or whatever.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse reminds you that you can be whatever you want to be. Nothing and no one can stop you. Sure, its lesson sounds trite and done before but this film allows you to soar through inspiration. It’s difficult to describe the exhilaration, really. You have to see it for yourself to understand. Some might not accept this interpretation of the wall crawler. Some will embrace it. I never expected to love this film as much as I did. I was reluctant to see it and only opted to do so, once the incredibly positive reviews came out. This film is worthy of its praise.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse might just be the best animated film of 2018.

AQUAMAN

By Marc S. Sanders

The next installment in the DC Cinematic Universe takes place in the ocean. Too bad the ocean is just too murky. James Wan’s Aquaman is muddied in long, boring, unsurrendering exposition and CGI. It is a film based on the most famous of all the undersea super heroes who is destined to be King of Atlantis. HE’S HALF MAN! HE’S HALF FISH! HE’S AQUAMAN, AND HE MUST BE KING!!!! That’s about all we should have to know to appreciate the storytelling of this film. However, Wan left me guessing just what the hell everyone was talking about for most of the film. King Orm (boring Patrick Wilson) declares takeover of this kingdom and take over of that kingdom and I’m like what, who, how, why???? Who the hell is he talking about? Why is this a threat? What will this mean for everyone? Shut up! Stop talking! Show me something! In the immortal words of Syndrome (from a better super hero film), “Stop Monolouging!!!!”

The first problem is when we are brought from one ocean floor to another and another and another and they all have location names like Kingdom of the Starfish Curtain or Dwelling of the Stingray Horse or some such thing. So what? These locales are literally shown for no more seven seconds before it moves to another location. This isn’t Krypton or the Batcave. We get to go to “Somewhere In The Atlantic Ocean” or “Somewhere In The Indian Ocean,” but so???? And????? Wan seems too proud to uncover these geographical areas that hold no measure.

Then there is the cast of characters. We got Dolph Lungren with a red beard, Willem Dafoe with a slicked back ponytail, Amber Heard beautiful as the love interest Mera, Nicole Kidman with her alabaster skin looking angelic as a queen and mother to Arthur Curry (the Aquaman title character) and Patrick Wilson, blond, white and curiously looking like the Hanna Barbera Aquaman during the days of Super Friends. Wilson is the big bad here and he’s kind of boring, kind of not intimidating, kind of the guy who looks too innocent to ever be cast as a villain in any film.

Let’s go off subject for a moment, shall we? Jason Momoa is the best thing about Aquaman and he makes a great Aquaman. I knew that when I saw him in the role in last year’s Justice League (a much better film; yes the Joss Whedon cut). Momoa is ripped, muscled and tattooed perfectly with long flowing charcoal hair, a perfect beard and sparkling blue eyes. This guy looks great on land while downing full pints of beer with his dad, or under CGI water. As I became less and less interested as the movie went on, I found it curious that the image of Momoa’s Aquaman is destined to defeat the image of Patrick Wilson’s (supposedly) ruthless King Orm, also known as Ocean Master. It’s as if the gorgeous motorcycle dude is meant to erase the much maligned (see countless GIFs and a couple of Big Bang Theory episodes) Hanna Barbera blond boy image.

The CGI does its best. After all, how else do you film a movie that primarily takes place under the ocean? It’s colorful. The effort is there. What I took issue with was the great battles between all these kingdoms. I couldn’t tell who was fighting who, who was with who, and who lived and who died, not to mention how they fight. Was it with spears? Laser guns? Swords? Hammers? Pies? What?????? I know these are underwater battles, but why can’t any of these great kingdom of kingdoms movies learn from the best like Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films or Ridley Scott’s Gladiator? There is something more literal in those grand battles. You could always recognize who was charging at whom. In Aquaman, it’s mass hysteria, riots in the ocean streets.

The villain Black Manta is next best thing after Momoa. Played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Unfortunately, he’s not given much to do. He’s out for revenge against Aquaman. That’s been done before. What saves the character is the costume and helmet. Now this is a villain!!!!! He looks badass with red sonic blasts shooting out of his eyes and he’s agile; the filmmakers at least got the image and movements of this guy right. The best scene of the film takes place on land in what looks to be the Greek Isles. Lots of rooftop jumping, statue shattering, and wall breaking with good fisticuffs are in play here between Momoa and Abdul-Mateen. It’s a good long scene. Then, oh yeah, we gotta go back to Wilson and Dafoe talking about something somewhere that’s labeled with some “legendary” location amid some coral.

James Wan and the writers of Aquaman try too hard. There’s too much going on here that doesn’t belong. I don’t know how a pre teen kid nor an adult could sit through these boring conversations of fiction that is unfamiliar to many. Again, none of this is the stuff of legend like Lord Of The Rings, or Krypton, or Gotham City, or even Star Wars or Star Trek. If only Wan and crew didn’t elevate the importance of things that even they show are just not that important. Stick with the simplicity guys. At least, you got the Atlanteans riding Sea Horses. Nice touch, there!

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD

By Marc S. Sanders

The Wizarding World franchise of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts has suffered its first absolute failure, and much of it is owed to staple director David Yates, and more importantly JK Rowling.

I’ve been saying it for years. The wealthiest woman in the world possesses an incredible imagination, but it serves as an Achilles Heel because ALL of that creativity is thrown into her works along with the kitchen sink, the kitchen and 30 or 40 bedrooms. It’s much too much.

The Crimes Of Grindelwald is mired in overly long confusion. A week ago, I more or less praised the prior installment but I noted that it seemed as if 5 different stories were going on at once and none of them had anything to do with the other. The new film doesn’t just suffer from the ailment. Rather, it is slaughtered by it. It seemed like there were 50 stories going at once. None of them were very interesting. Everything seemed bland, and all of it was near indecipherable.

The lead is once again played by a charismatic, yet innocent looking Eddie Redmayne as beast caretaker Newt Scamander. Redmayne has the mannerisms down. He fits comfortably in the early 20th century England, the costume works well on him, but he speaks in gibberish it seems. As well, Rowling has written his role so as not to reveal everything he knows. He feels incomplete. In this film, he also feels irrelevant to anything that is going on. I couldn’t figure out his purpose. His random pet beasts’ appearances offer nothing to progress anything or anyone. They are helpless creatures. He is assigned early on in tracking down prison escapee Grindlewald, played with disappointing reservations by Johnny Depp and yet I don’t recall a showdown between them or an acknowledgement of each other.

Grindlewald is a disappointing character. He’s bent on making the magical world full of pure blood magic folk. That’s all we know ahead of his albino threatening appearance. Sure he’s got a past with a young Dumbledore (a well cast Jude Law), but hardly anything is written for Depp to play with. He’s flat. He doesn’t amp up the evil. This is Johnny Depp, formerly Jack Sparrow and a half dozen Tim Burton characters before???? He has few lines in a very long picture. He does not declare his cause really. His motivations are only explained in long drawn out scenes by some boring magic politicians. All talk in these scenes, no magic and thus very dull.

There’s an early prison escape for Grindelwald but thanks to David Yates and his team, it is very hard to follow who is disappearing and reappearing and how it’s all happening. Like the whole film, the cinematography is very dark (and this wasn’t even 3D). Everything is so dim in this film. It’s as if Yates was not confident in his spookiness he demanded all camera lamps be turned off while the dry ice machine is turned on. This is including in the daylight scenes. The editing of this opening scene is choppy at best. Visual effects are masked with dark blurs and loud sounds and music to heighten danger that just doesn’t feel very urgent.

The cast is way too large. My favorite character from the prior film, Stanley Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is given nothing to do and considering his memory of magic had been erased, his purpose for returning is poorly explained. This time, there’s nothing cute or charming written about Kowalski. You’d have the same film whether he was here or not. He serves no point and when he’s given material to fawn over Queenie (Alison Sudol) his love interest, and also pointless, it amounts to nothing. Katherine Waterston as Tina, Newt’s love interest American partner, as well serves no meaning. She’s there because she must be paired up with Newt.

So Rowling as before on other occasions brings back the four main characters from the first film and just gives them nothing to do. Rowling is notorious for side stories in her Harry Potter novels. Fans really love that it paints an ongoing landscape of this world. Here however, her original screenplay oversteps.

The Crimes Of Grindelwald is not funny or whimsical. Nothing is jaw dropping or fun for the whole family. (This is a franchise spawned from young adult novels??????) It all feels like edited junk from all the other films thrown into this one. There’s nothing new here in tricks or treats. Grindelwald ignites beautiful glowing blue fire at the end. So? We’d seen that already.

The film is obese on characters and side tracks. It is poorly filmed in foggy settings and gloomy skies, and the editing is a patchwork moldy blanket of irrelevance.

As you try to find the stitching between all the stories, you realize that you are working too damn hard. What I’d give for a little magic right now!

THE DELTA FORCE

By Marc S. Sanders

In the 1980s, a small production company named Cannon Films was started by an Israeli named Menachem Golan.  It churned out at least a dozen Charles Bronsan cheapy crime dramas and gave longevity to his Death Wish series of films.  Cannon also provided another franchise called American Ninja with action star Michael Dudikoff.  Dudikoff, nor any of his films won an Oscar, much less a Golden Globe or even an MTV Movie Award.  The poor guy with twenty bottles of mousse in his hair didn’t even get turned into an action figure. 

While I did see Death Wish 3, ahem…five times in the movie theatres (I mean there’s an outstanding final thirty minutes of a wall to wall shootout action in that film, and it was all a 13 year old boy yearned for at the time), Golan’s best product that I have at least seen to date is The Delta Force, featuring Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin and a host of stars most recently having been featured in every disaster film to crank out of the 1970s; Shelly Winters from The Poseidon Adventure, Robert Vaughn from The Towering Inferno and George Kennedy from every Airport movie under the sun.

Golan directed this film that was inspired by the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight heading for Athens, Greece and he pretty much directed two different kinds of films in one.  The first hour focuses on the Libyan hijackers, led by an unrecognizable and terrifying Robert Forester, and their hostages.  A plane carrying mostly Americans is taken captive in midair and is diverted to Beirut.  Like the real-life event, a German born American stewardess is forced to select the Jewish passengers (Winters, Lanie Kazan, Joey Bishop and Martin Balsam) and separate them for an unknown fate.  An American Navy serviceman is also brutally tormented and later, an airline pilot (Bo Svenson) is interviewed by the media from the open window of the grounded plane’s cockpit, complete with a gun to his head.  All of this happened during that harrowing event.  Golan does a very good job of capturing these moments with heartbreak, fear and genuine terror.  The Jewish selection process is a scene that I take very personally, and it is not overdramatized as it glaringly hearkens back to the atrocities of the Nazis who sent millions of Jews to certain death, torture and concentration camps.  Remember, this film was released only 40 years after those terrible events.  Golan’s filmmaking makes certain the Holocaust is never forgotten.

Sprinkled throughout these first hour scenes are bits and pieces of the American strike team known as The Delta Force, led with gruff command by Lee Marvin and silent but deadly Chuck Norris.  These guys gear up, dress in black uniforms, load their aircraft carrier with motorcycles and armed dune buggies, listen to Marvin’s instructions and wait and wait and wait.  There’s something to appreciate in the wait of these skilled snipers and specialists.  Golan doesn’t rush the action.  Material is depicted showing Marvin, Norris and company exploring the options they have for taking out the terrorists and rescuing the hostages.  This is not a typical Rambo movie of destroying the village just to save it.  However, once the action starts, it doesn’t stop and Golan lets Norris do all the things he’s known for while arguably inspiring how POWERFUL Chuck Norris is compared to…well…anything else.  Don’t forget!  Inside Chuck Norris’ chin is ANOTHER FIST!  Also, Superman wears Chuck Norris underoos!  Chuck Norris can unscramble an egg!  Chuck Norris made a snowman out of rain!  It’s hard not to deny these claims when the film boasts a strike team consisting of 20-30 members, but Norris seems to do all the work and heavy lifting. 

It’s hard not to get caught up in The Delta Force.  You wanna see these terrorists get blown up real good.  You also wanna see Chuck Norris ride an agile moped equipped with an endless supply of missiles and ammunition ready to overturn enemy vehicles and bloody up a bad guy until he screams and turns on one foot before dropping dead with his eyes opened.  You also may get a jolt of energy from Alan Silvestri’s rah rah theme music that quickly stays embedded in your subconscious.  I read that his music was used for a time when the Indy 500 would air on TV.  That does not surprise me at all.  Its symphonic themes are as memorable as the Monday Night Football tune.

Unlike, other Norris films this crowd pleaser doesn’t just rely on him and his roundhouse kicks.  There’s a little bit of that schtick for the fans, but I gotta say I was truly touched by the cast as whole.  Lee Marvin (in his final film) echoes George C Scott’s portrayal of Patton.  The collective hostage cast are not overdramatized here.  Golan managed to capture a history to them.  While I thought Shelley Winters was a such joke for fodder in Poseidon, here she is truly sorrowful as she is separated from her husband played by Balsam.  Kazan and Bishop are equally touching.  Reader, this Jewish guy originally from New Jersey, who attended ten years of Yeshiva education, recognizes these folks when they are spirited vacationers early on, and then later tormented prisoners who’ve faced horrors like this before.

I know that Cannon Films also produced another favorite called Runaway Train with an Oscar nominated performance from Jon Voight.  As I write this column, I’ve yet to see that film.  It’s on my radar.  That being said, I have to wonder if Golan and company had stayed on this trajectory of genuine drama like he mustered in portions of The Delta Force, what powerfully impactful films might he also had up his sleeve.  Unfortunately, we were left with too much excess like American Ninja, I’m afraid.

Still, after watching The Delta Force you’ll absolutely believe that Chuck Norris can see things that don’t exist and that he counted to infinity…twice!

THE PREDATOR

By Marc S. Sanders

THE Predator has got to be the worst movie of 2018. Writer and director all about killed the franchise allowing its new property owner, Disney, to never give the possibility of new stories another thought.

It’s terrible.

It makes zero sense. The action is clunky and indecipherable at times. The Predator creatures are not cool. They are ugly for the sake of being ugly, and I think they are pretty stupid as well, as stupid as their pet Predator dogs.

How does a writer of Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and Kiss, Kiss Bang, Bang, write a piece of crap like this where (get this!!!) Olivia Munn plays a JOHNS HOPKINS BIOLOGIST (yes…you read that right) who thankfully is an expert in hand to hand combat and machine guns???? I never knew Johns Hopkins offered military training with every biology major.

This movie is so dumb that it ends with the line “I hope that comes in a size 42.” BRILLIANT!!!

If anything, the sole redeeming quality of this shit is that it motivates me to keep on writing. If this idiotic garbage can get green lit by a major studio, then my material must be Oscar worthy.

SIDE NOTE: Olivia Munn did a last minute petition to have a scene deleted that she realized she performed with a registered sexual predator. Sadly, I think she did this guy an inadvertent favor. Now he doesn’t have to be included in this horrible bomb.