I wanted to do full reviews of all these movies, but life happens and you get backed up. Oh well, summer movie season will do that. Now that it’s over, I thought it’d be a good idea to give my quick thoughts on all the movies I saw this June (minus TMNT: Out of the Shadows, which I got to review in full). Here they are, from best to worst.
Finding Dory
When I first heard that Pixar was making a sequel to their 2003 classic Finding Nemo, my first reaction was “ummm…okay?” Don’t get me wrong, Finding Nemo is an all time great animated movie, and I had confidence in the abilities of the Pixar crew. It was just kind of strange that they would choose to make Finding Dory before Incredibles 2 or Cars 2 (oh wait, that happened…). Well, the I am glad to say that this investment paid off; Finding Dory is a great movie.
To answer the question “can Dory carry her own movie?”, yes, yes she can! From the first flashback of her as a toddler to the final frame, you are with Dory the whole time, rooting for her to find her family. She’s an immensely sympathetic character, even more so than in the first movie. Moving her center stage could have been a swing and a miss, but it actually ended up making her even more likable. And who could go without mentioning the vocal talents of Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen is so damn funny and once again brings so much to the character that I cannot imagine anyone else in this role. If there were a best vocal performance Oscar she’d win it hands down.
Another thing I appreciated was Pixar’s decision to not just rehash the plot of Finding Nemo. The plot kicks off when Dory remembers where her long lost parents lived, so she, Marlin and Nemo go to a California marine hospital to find them. It might sound like a carbon copy, but trust me, it’s not at all. The setting is a lot smaller in scale, but is a nice change of pace from the whole Pacific Ocean. The basic plot points are similar, but still have enough to set them apart that they feel fresh. It also doesn’t go the full Cars 2 route and change too much. Finding Dory strikes the right balance, being readily identifiable as a sequel while changes enough to stand on its own.
Dory also has a nice supporting cast to back her up. We get old favorites like Marlin and Nemo, and cameos from Crush the turtle and Mr. Ray. But there’s also plenty of great new characters. The standout is Hank the octopus (Ed O’Neill), who unlike most fish in the hospital who want to eventually return to the ocean, wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his days in Cleveland! He’s very funny, and the relationship between he and Dory adds a nice layer to the story that separates it from the original. There’s also the injured whales, Destiny and Charlie (Kaitlin Olson and Ty Burrell), and sea lions Fluke and Rudder (Idris Elba and Dominic West reuniting from The Wire), who add a lot to the comedy and are just as entertaining as anyone in Finding Nemo.
Is Finding Dory as good as Finding Nemo? Of course not. Finding Nemo held together better as an overall story; the second act of Finding Dory gets a little repetitive (lots of backtracking!), and the plot’s more predictable this time around. I also would have liked a few more gutbusting laugh-out-loud moments. However, the movie is so entertaining that I hardly cared at all. Finding Dory is a sequel done right, flipping the perspective to an erstwhile sidekick and making her a great protagonist in her own right. It also recaptures the magic of the original while still having the courage to go down its own path. A great movie that’ll surely be one of the summer’s standouts.
Score: A-
The Conjuring 2
I was late to the party on The Conjuring, having seen it just a few months ago. I’m not a big horror fan, and while there are some that I love, I have to wade through a sea of crap to get there. Well, The Conjuring was a diamond in the rough, my favorite horror film since The Descent and among the best films of 2013, period. So here comes The Conjuring 2, a movie I normally wouldn’t be excited for, but it had a pedigree that few horror films can hope to possess.
The film has a simple premise; Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) travel to England to investigate Hodgson family’s house for paranormal activity. But like the first one, director James Wan milks this premise for all the scares it’s worth. It doesn’t have as many “oh shit” moments, but Wan uses his hallmarks to build the tension to a fever pitch. The music, the cinematography, the sound design, and everything else all add up to a pretty scary experience, one that proves that atmospheric tension mixed with the right amount of jump scares is the best way to go.
One thing that separates the Conjuring franchise from much of the horror is the presence of capable actors, and they once again give it their all. Just like in the first film, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are terrific. They play the Warrens so well, have such good chemistry, that I’d go to see The Conjuring 3, 4, 5, 6 just to see them interact. They could look for poltergeists in space, in the hood, wherever, and I’d believe it because of them.
Where The Conjuring 2 falters is precisely what the first film avoided; indulging in cliches. It’s not to the point of ruining the movie, mind you, but for a non-horror fan like me they can easily wear on you. I’m fine with jump scares, but they need to be used sparingly in order to work. This film has a lot of them, and they’re not always well placed, sometimes being used where a subtle music piece or a creeping buildup would do the trick better. There’s also a period in the second act where the film drags for too long, slowing the pace to a crawl. Luckily, it comes roaring back for the finale, but the lull is noticeable.
While it doesn’t equal the first Conjuring, The Conjuring 2 is a solid horror sequel, with a lot of scares, great performances, and another star turn by director James Wan. If/when The Conjuring 3 is announced, I will be a very happy man.
Score: B
Warcraft
Given the track record of video game movies (e.g. CRAP), I’m a little surprised that I was looking forward to Warcraft so much. Maybe it’s residual affection for my pre-teen WoW days, but I had a lot of hope that Warcraft would be the movie to bring video games to the screen the right way. The marketing hasn’t knocked my socks off, but a lot of the casting intrigued me, I love director Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code), and I’m always up for a good fantasy epic. So was Warcraft the first great video game movie? No, and I can definitely see why it got a lot of negative feedback. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Warcraft tells what’s basically a first contact story in a fantasy world; orcs and humans meeting for the first time after the orcs’ world is torn apart, and coming into conflict when their cultures clash. Except it’s more Dawn of the Planet of the Apes than Independence Day. The stuff with the orcs is by far the best part of the movie, thanks to showing that not all orcs are evil, but that they’re a race just as complex as humans. You have evil orcs like the sorcerer antagonist Gul’dan, but you also have heroes like Durotan who just want to protect their people and live in peace. The portrayal of the orcs is the main reason why, despite all its flaws, I’d like to see a Warcraft movie franchise; you don’t need them to be uniformly evil like in The Lord of the Rings, and can explore how they interact with the archetypically “good” races.
Beyond the orcs, Warcraft sets up an engrossing fantasy world. While watching this movie, I got flashbacks to my twelve year old self exploring Azeroth and remembered all that I loved about the games (even though I sucked every one of them). You might get a Tolkien vibe at first glance, what with the humans, elves, dwarves, etc., but it’s a different breed entirely. Just like Middle-Earth, there are so many stories to tell in this world, whether they’re adventures about saving the world or tense political dramas.
Some of the acting, particularly in the orc camp, is great. The standout is Toby Kebbell of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes film as the orc hero, Durotan. Out of all the characters, I was with him most of all. He sees Gul’dan, the man who plunged the orcs’ homeland into chaos, trying to rule over the survivors and does not like what he sees one bit, trying his best to save as many as he can. Other actors that brought their A-game include Dominic Cooper as Llane, King of Stormwind; Paula Patton as Garona, a half-orc sent employed by the humans as a spy; and Robert Kazinsky as Durotan’s best friend Orgrim.
However, there were other actors who I thought were completely miscast. From what I’ve seen of Vikings, Travis Fimmel is a good actor, but I didn’t think he was right for the role of the Sir Anduin, the main character on the human side. It’s not that he was bad, but something felt a little bit off, like his character should’ve been a supporting one rather than a main player. I would’ve preferred seeing King Llane take on the protagonist role, since he was a much more interesting character. Ben Foster, another great actor, felt very out of place playing a mage more suited for the likes of an older actor. However, the only actor that was outright bad was the young man playing Foster’s apprentice. He felt like a cut-rate Harry Potter meets Peeta, wooden and unprepared for such a big film. Sorry guy, but this wasn’t your time to shine. Maybe next time.
Warcraft also something in common with another controversial movie that I happened to like, Batman v Superman; a disjointed and clumsy narrative structure. It felt like there was a lot more story to tell, but the studio/filmmakers were worried about going over two hours and cut too much. A lot of plot points are glossed over too quickly, and the exposition, while necessary to a degree, was too thick for my liking. The movie also loses a lot of steam in the third act, mostly because of a few plot developments that took away my reason for caring. Disappointing, especially after all the great set-up in the beginning.
Overall, I liked Warcraft, but I wanted a lot more. That said, I feel there’s more to tell, and thanks to it doing gangbusters overseas I have hope for a sequel to do it better. I understand why a lot of people would dislike this movie, especially if they have no interest in fantasy. But for me it was a fun time at the movies, a decent introduction to a world worth revisiting.
Score: B-
Free State of Jones
A civil war movie about whites and blacks teaming up to buck the Confederacy and establish their own mini-state? Based on a true story? Starring Matthew McConaughey? Sign me up! I was always excited for Free State of Jones. It had an impressive cast, the trailer had one me over, and it portrays a period of history that is tragically underused in film. So, obviously this movie was going to be great, right?
Before I get into this, I did not hate Free State of Jones. In fact, there were elements that I thought were great, especially the acting. Of course, Matthew McConaughey is great in it. We’re now past the McConassaince and are now in the Age of McConaughey, where all the Fool’s Golds have been washed away and replaced with The Lincoln Lawyer and Dallas Buyers Club, and in Free State of Jones McConaughey proves his star has not dimmed. Gugu Mbatha Raw (Belle, Beyond the Lights, Concussion) also continues her rise, and Mahershala Ali (Predators, the last two The Hunger Games films) gets his chance to be in the spot light. I hope this movie’s poor quality doesn’t prevent him from getting more big roles, because he really deserves them.
One of the things I’ve heard about Free State of Jones is it has no story. That’s not true; it has a thousand stories. Seriously, this movie is so overstuffed. It seems like every character has a story to tell, even when we really don’t need to hear them and they could be in the background. This lack of focus means that the film isn’t nearly as moving as it could have been, feeling more like a second-rate History Channel special than an actual movie. It’s a great example of a film that’s too ambitious for its own good, trying to be an epic and getting carried away with its much too wide scope.
It pains me to say that Free State of Jones is one of the most disappointing movies of the year so far. I was hoping for Oscar season five months early, but instead I felt like I was back in the dump months. Well, at least the actors kept it from being a total waste.
Score: C
Independence Day: Resurgence
Independence Day: Revenge of the Fallen! Independence Day: The Phantom Menace! Independence Day: The Quickening! All fitting titles for a film of this quality.
No beating around the bush with this one; Independence Day: Resurgence suuuuuuuucks! I had some hope for it after seeing the first teaser, but all my hopes for a dumb fun action movie went up in flames as soon as the movie started.
I’m not gonna pretend that Independence Day had a great story or Shakespearian writing, but those elements were at least tolerable and didn’t get in the way of the fun. Resurgence, on the other hand, is one of the worst scripts I have ever seen put to screen. The worst part of the film, if I had to pick one element, is the dialogue. Where the Independence Day had some quotable one-liners, this one made me want to rip out my eardrums whenever someone opened their mouth. Especially painful are the attempts at comedy? I may go hard on Michael Bay’s Transformers humor, but ID: R makes those movies look like The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I audibly groaned whenever one of those stupid characters tried to give me a chuckle, and I’m still doing it even a week later. UUUUUUUUGH!
The plot and the world created for this film is also nothing short of horrendous. Yes, the first film was cheesy and didn’t have a great story, but it was believable enough that I could sort of relate to it. Here Earth is basically a hyper-futuristic world that feels more like Coruscant than anything feeling at home in this franchise. Nothing ever feels real, not the relationships, not the battles, not even the way humanity’s able to survive! Seriously, how do you fight back against a spaceship the size of a country! You don’t! You’re gonna die! Accept it! And the ending? One of the most pathetic sequel hooks this side of Maze Runner.
Finally, the acting is atrocious. I may have been worried about the casting of the poor man’s Chris Hemsworth, Liam…Hemsworth, but he gives one of the less embarrassing performances. Jeff Goldblum’s back, but not with a vengeance, phoning in it so visibly that you can see the “fuck you, pay me” rolling off his lips. Maika Monroe follows up her star turn in It Follows by not doing much of anything. But the saddest display of acting, especially since I love Star Trek: The Next Generation is Brent Spiner. He’s so goofy and over-the-top that, in a film full of bad performances, he stuck out for all the wrong reasons. Everyone’s lines failed, but his fell the hardest and fastest. The one saving grace in the film is Bill Pullman, who still projects enough presidential toughness and grace to give the movie and ounce of dignity.
Also, no Harvey Fierstein! You can’t do that!
As far as I’m concerned, Roland Emmerich is at the top of the Hollywood shit-list. He took his masterpiece and gave it one of the worst sequels I have ever seen, and the worst movie of 2016 so far. We’ll always have Independence Day, but now this shit is burned into my memory.
Score: F
Pierce at the Movies 