Tusk (2014)

Score: 0 / 5

Wallace hosts a podcast that showcases and humiliates viral videos and what we might call "epic fails". He and his partner Teddy learn of one particularly famous one in Canada, and he goes to interview the guy. Upon arriving and learning of his suicide, Wallace seeks out a place to stay for the night and collect a new story. Traveling to a remote location, he finds a reclusive old seaman named Howard Howe, who promises to tell him stories. Howard, though, drugs and incapacitates Wallace and reveals his intent to dehumanize and torture him. Teddy and Wallace's girlfriend Ally (yes, she is in a relationship with both young men) go looking for him, and do indeed find him with the help of eccentric detective Guy LaPointe.

I hated this movie. Hated it. Hated the characters, hated the special effects. hated the script. Hated most of the running time, hated the flashbacks, hated the direction.  I hated the confused, ambiguous correlation between child abuse and misanthropy in Howard, whose identity as a Duplessis orphan supposedly dictates his activities as a serial killer. I hated his grotesque secondary motive for mutilating the bodies he abducts: Once, while at sea, he was rescued by a walrus that he eventually named Mr. Tusk before eating him to survive. Now he seeks to re-create Mr. Tusk so that it may have a fighting chance at life again. To that end, he tortures and dismembers his victims to physically make them into walruses. I hated the overused comparison between the verbal barbarism of the podcasts and the physical barbarism of the podcaster's body. I hated the lazy challenges to a human-animal dichotomy. I hated the humorless attempts at comedy and the insipid images of horror.

It's sick. A twisted Frankenstein of horror comedies, director Kevin Smith tries to combine the freaky weirdness of The Fly with Silence of the Lambs with a knowing sense of humor. He fails. It's never funny or scary and only occasionally disturbing. I had to get out of my chair and leave twice during the viewing because I just couldn't take it anymore. About halfway through the movie, Wallace gets his tongue cut out (or something to that effect), rendering his dialogue for the remainder to be nothing more than gargling screams. The only sense offended worse than hearing, however, is sight. Robert Kurtzman's disgusting walrus bodysuit fits perfectly into the film, that is, a disgusting centerpiece to a cinematic garbage dump.

The only thing I liked in the film was Johnny Depp in his uncredited role as Guy LaPointe. His accent, facial hair, mannerisms are worth a watch. But do yourself a favor and Youtube his scenes. It's not that the movie is just a waste of time. You'll actually wish you could un-see it.

IMDb: Tusk

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Score: 3 / 5

I loved this movie. I love pirates, I love Geoffrey Rush, I love the swashbuckling action and high-seas fantasy. It's become cool to hate the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise for reasons I cannot comprehend; it remains one of my favorite series of any media. Yet for all my enthusiasm and affection for this movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales is a bloated, waterlogged disappointment.

It's safe, in this instance, to squarely blame the script. We can only bitterly wonder what was in Jeff Nathanson's mind as he wrote this mess of a tale. The brilliance of Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal is nowhere to be found here. Instead we get a haphazard tale that takes intriguing ideas and enchanting mythology and butchers them into a collage of weirdness that is left unexplained and, worse, underappreciated. The basic premise of the film makes almost no sense as timelines are made arbitrary and characters don't age as they should. And, perhaps worst of all, the dialogue is laughably banal, using frequent and lazy sexual innuendo to offset the occasional expository hooey that feels like an elementary book's back-cover summary. Even casual interactions between characters reveal nothing beyond the comparable shallowness of each. One can only hope that Nathanson's upcoming work on The Lion King remake can see him return to some sort of form.

Have I lambasted it enough yet? Perhaps not, as I consider the direction under Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. The relative unknowns have their moments of style and flair, notably in one scene when Jack Sparrow faces the guillotine leaves you feeling particularly elated. But their slipshod sense of characters, incoherent pacing, and bizarre tendency to randomly break into slow motion are bewildering more often than not. They want to tie in too many threads, keep the focus on too many people doing too many things, and answer questions that were never asked.

**SPOILER ALERT**

The film takes place almost twenty years after At World's End, making Henry Turner about 19 years old. Having searched his entire young life for a way to save his father from his cursed fate aboard the Flying Dutchman, he embarks on a quest to find the Trident of Poseidon, which can apparently control the sea and break marine curses. He teams up with young astronomer and scientist Carina, an orphaned girl wrongfully accused of witchcraft, before the two join Captain Jack Sparrow's escape from the law to the open ocean. Concurrent with all this, Captain Salazar and his ghostly crew of pirate-killers escape from the Bermuda Triangle hell-bent on finding and murdering Jack, the pirate who entrapped them there.

While trying to acclimate myself to this new adventure and its new faces, I found myself annoyed that there was no mention of Angelica the lovely pirate whom Jack left on a cay with a voodoo doll of himself. We still don't know what became of Syrena the mermaid or Philip the missionary. We do, thankfully, see a wealthy and powerful Barbossa as captain of the Queen Anne's Revenge and his restoration of the Black Pearl from Blackbeard's bottle. And, of course, we get a couple brief scenes featuring Will and Elizabeth Turner, though their presence is woefully short-lived.

With the exception of some spectacular ghost soldiers (essentially pirates, but not by name), an island of stars, and the show-stopping but sadly brief presence of predatory ghost sharks (GHOST. SHARKS.), the film has little in the way of novelty or awe. I'm glad something in this series finally mentioned the Bermuda Triangle, and it's pretty cool, but the mythology is underwritten and confused, linking it to Jack's compass in a nonsensical manner. Worse, and unforgivably in my opinion, the climax comes with the revelation that Carina the astronomer is actually Barbossa's long-lost daughter, not long before he dies to save everyone from Salazar. Why the film felt the need to kill off the best character and actor in the franchise is far beyond me. While he's already been brought back from the dead once and presumably could again, the witch-goddess Tia Dalma is long out of the picture. This film tries to re-do her in the form of Shansa, another tattooed witch persecuted by a naval officer (in the form of David Wenham, no less), but she's in it so sparsely I wonder if she wasn't just a fever dream.

The film ends rather firmly, thank heaven, and even eked out a little tear from me in the last scene. But stick around after the credits: we see Will Turner, free of the Dutchman and sleeping with a radiant Keira Knightley in her second scene in the movie, having nightmares of his curse. The shadow of Davy Jones falls across his bed and we see a crab claw snap before he awakens, horrified. As he falls asleep again, safe in the arms of his love, the camera pans down to see wet barnacles on the ground, suggesting his nightmare wasn't only in his head. Should Disney dive in for another swashbuckling adventure, could they resurrect Bill Nighy as the devilish fish-man? I certainly hope not, but the possibilities of Will's post-traumatic stress from the curse are at least intriguing.

This franchise, which could go on forever considering the endless ideas of mythic adventures in the Caribbean, will probably not see another installment. If it does, as I dearly pray it will, Disney desperately needs to double- and triple-check who it hires to write and direct. This bunch of flotsam and jetsam should have had to walk the plank.

IMDb: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Trumbo (2015)

Score: 4.5 / 5

As its name suggests, this movie is all about Dalton Trumbo. The elite Hollywood screenwriter whose active membership in the US Communist Party resulted in being blacklisted along with many others in his profession. The trials and tribulations of Trumbo are showcased here in realistic yet almost operatic terms, and at each new conflict we an imagine the man collapsing, ending the real-life horrors of the time. Yet through perseverance, friendship, hard work, and the passing of time, eventually the blacklist was ended, the House Un-American Activities Committee was dissolved, and Trumbo received (even posthumously) due recognition for his work during the '50s and '60s, including his Oscar for Roman Holiday. It's not always an easy movie to watch, as financial difficulty and social unrest lead to bankruptcy, ostracism, even suicide, but by the end we appreciate the sacrifices made and the trauma inflicted on those who stood firm in their beliefs or suffered for compromising them.

When I consider the last year or so of celebrities and performers declaring political alliances and sympathies, this movie was distinctly prescient. While there is, as yet, not much of a witch hunt to compare with Trumbo's time, the seeds have been sown. We see celebrities alternately lauded and demonized for their political opinions and support, media straddling lines between "fake news" and defending against attack, a president whose own dalliances with show business were only occasionally popular with a particular audience, and people's careers subjected to the whims of polarized commentary. Some may decry this movie as sympathizing with Communism, but in doing so they paint themselves to be the same color as those involved in the Red Scare and subsequent hunt; that is to say, the same as the "villains" of this movie. Consider, for example, our current president who repeatedly touted the "liar" "Crooked Hillary" and almost daily chastises "fake news" while concurrently exaggerating, lying, and using "alternative facts" to explain his administration. It's the same political miasma then and now, which makes the film all the more troubling to watch.

And, apart from these timely plot points and themes, Trumbo is a damn fine movie. Yet another winner from Bleecker Street, this flick delves deep into the mythic power structure of old Hollywood in a manner seemingly calculated to entrap those of us who love movies about movies. That is to say, while certain aspects -- Helen Mirren's flamboyant costumes and John Goodman's mania -- are meant to appeal to audiences at large, a dense script and layered references to '50s sociopolitical climate and pop culture feature clear attempts to garner critical acclaim. What sets this movie apart, however, is that it is successful in its endeavors.

Trumbo's pleasures are manifold, and its cast supplies most of them. While Mirren and Goodman, as already mentioned, provide sparkling focal points, the movie belongs squarely to Bryan Cranston. He disappears into the role, smoking and typing away in his tub between emphatic monologues of great drama. From behind thick eyeglasses, his eyes sparkle with wit and insight we can only imagine might compare with the real man's. Everyone follows his lead, though, and each performance matches with nuance and truth, especially those portraying iconic actors John Wayne and Kirk Douglas (David James Elliott and Dean O'Gorman, respectively), who don't allow the real people's "isms" to make caricatures of their delivery.

My only real concern with the movie is that it takes the mystery out of the man. Even now, the literature about him (and that he wrote) is a little in love with the ambiguity and shady atmosphere around Trumbo. While it certainly serves the film to open up his life and give him the star billing he long deserved, I find myself wishing his own smoke would cloud around again. That's just personal preference, though: I find a man of mystery far more beguiling than a man whose life has been laid bare on the silver screen. Then again, it's only by broadly sharing stories like his that the damaging prejudices against Communism may finally begin to wane.

IMDb: Trumbo

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Score: 4.5 / 5

It's still one of the best franchises out there.

Alien: Covenant, despite its title, is a fitting continuation of the series that re-invents itself as often and as well as its titular villain. An awesome, roller coaster of a movie, it exhibits pitch-perfect sci-fi horror with expert pacing and awesome production value. It feeds off the energy that this series exudes so well, and leaves us craving ever more (thankfully, Ridley Scott has indeed promised at least two future films). Though attempting to connect its title to the iconic 1979 Alien classic, the film bears far more resemblance to the 2012 prequel Prometheus. Of course, it's a direct sequel to that film, also starring Michael Fassbender, taking place not long after the end of Prometheus (about 15 years, if my notes are correct).

Though Prometheus was criticized by some for its existential themes and broad metaphysics, I found it to be the most engaging of the series, after of course the deeply disturbing original. It gave us that disgusting alien-monster C-section scene, don't forget! Covenant similarly pushes the body horror and does so as befits a sequel: more often, more intense. It also -- though it seems many critics are telling us otherwise -- continues and builds upon the existential crises in its themes and plot. In fact, I found parsing through the mysteries it raises far more engaging than any violence and blood on screen.

It's the same story as all the others in this franchise. A colony ship (yes, the stakes are much bigger here), after suffering malfunctions, receives a signal from a nearby planet and goes to investigate. they discover a seeming paradise, even better than the world they had intended to colonize. Soon the exploration crew discovers a crashed ship, and their attempts to unravel its mystery are paralleled by their desperate fight for survival against vicious, bloodthirsty alien monsters.

How does it differ from the others, then? I don't want to spoil too much, but there is some we can safely mention here. David, the synthetic aboard the Prometheus survived the crash of his and Elizabeth Shaw's hijacked Engineer vessel, as did the black liquid bioweapon he used to destroy that expedition. On this new world, he has continued his experiments with it, though the film fails to explore the many questions that raises. Why did the Engineers create it, or did they create it? Were they going to use it to create life or destroy life? David has been attempting to use it to fashion an ideal form of the iconic alien monster, but still we're not sure why or to what end. We see some o his experiments -- or what we assume are his experiments -- including pod-like flora whose spores float through the air and "impregnate" the humans with the beasts. Later, after David has revealed his experimentation with a type of insect that lays its eggs in a host to be cannibalized, we see a room of eggs we recognize as the Xenomorph eggs, but where did they come from? How did David make those eggs without a Queen? Which came first, the Alien or the creepy slimy egg?

Maybe I was reading too far into it, or not far enough, but the film seemed to raise as many questions as it answered. It makes sense, narratively, of course, but it seems Scott and his team are deliberately withholding some information, some ties between ideas and films that might assuage our anxiety and fill in the blanks (not plot holes, mind, just blank spaces). Of course, even the next film may well answer all; the ending of Covenant is so arrestingly disturbing that most of the audience in the screening I attended stayed long after the credits started rolling.

It's a fabulous film. Enough gore and suspense to sate the horror fans, enough mystery and awe to absorb the sci-fi geeks, and enough action to satisfy those early summer blockbuster cravings. It keeps us the feminist punches, gives the queer theorists even more to chew on (and fret over), and does it all with a knowing wink and some new-fashioned razzle dazzle.

IMDb: Alien: Covenant

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Score: 4 / 5

It's the only real way to start summer movie season.

Just a glimpse of the trailer or a poster for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was enough to indicate the colorful excesses of Marvel Studios' newest release. Loaded with eye-popping visual candy, relentless high-speed action, and jokes that could have been written for Deadpool, this smash-bang sci-fi circus has just about everything fans of the series could want. Others, though, may find themselves lost and annoyed pretty quickly.

Where the first Guardians broke the Marvel Cinematic Universe conventions -- its unbridled joy, vibrant style, and raucous humor sharply contrasted the dark, heavy Thor and Captain America sequels -- this one doesn't quite live up to the expectations. While it certainly follows its predecessor's aesthetic, it just fails to feel as fresh. Easy to see why: The last two MCU movies (besides Civil War) were Doctor Strange and Ant-Man, films that similarly broke conventions and staked out new visual frontiers. The bewildering cosmic candy-colored visuals of this film are awesome, but familiar in recent superhero-movie memory.

The bloated, occasionally gimmicky film, however, is by no means a wasted effort. Its dynamics may leave a bit to be desired, but when you have a rambunctious action-adventure this fun, who cares?

A sort of thematic extension of the first film, where we saw Peter Quill seeking belonging and purpose in the world around him, now we follow Peter Quill's search for himself. Who and what is he? The Nova Corps told him his father wasn't human, and while he and his team have been busy living up to their title, his curiosity only grows. One day, in the midst of an apparently unrelated battle, he is saved by a figure who identifies itself as his father. Following him to a nearby planet, the Guardians discover that all is not as it appears, that identity may not be entirely biological, and that power is even more dangerous than they expected.

Sound thematically similar to the first movie? It is, though here the focus is decidedly on Peter Quill more than the whole team (which is fine; I didn't think Chris Pratt could look any better than he did in Jurassic World, but I was so very wrong). Along the way, Rocket faces some tough choices and consequences for his actions which results in surprisingly interesting character development. Yondu, who I just couldn't stand in the first movie, becomes a gripping character here; then again, he is drawn sharply into focus as a central plot point. Nebula sort-of, kind-of joins the team, and her presence is welcome for us if not always her teammates. And while Gamora and Drax stay pretty true to what we already know, the movie is stolen time and again by Baby Groot, whose antics could surely fill their own movie.

You can feel director James Gunn's desperation here, and that's something quite different from the first. He seems to be urgently catering, making sure we laugh at regular intervals, gasp often, and even maybe tear up at the end. We can sense his manic machinations behind the scenes, pushing the pace, revving the energy, throwing every spectacle at us in an effort to beat awe out of us. Occasionally it works, too. Well, okay, maybe only once. The opening scene is the best in the film, and possibly the single best scene in the franchise. Baby Groot turns on a boombox with Quill's new mixtape and proceeds to dance during the opening credits, mostly oblivious to the violent battle happening all around him. It's a perfect example of the organized lunacy that makes Guardians fabulous. Riotously funny, infectiously sweet, it is the perfect introduction to another irreverent swashbuckler featuring our favorite band of freaks.

But dammit, where is Glenn Close??

PS: Stick around after the movie. No less than five tacked-on scenes featured during the credits explore all kinds of stuff. There's the silly and probably inconsequential moments of Kraglin experimenting with Yondu's arrow, Groot growing into a teenager (I can't wait for his antics the next time he's on screen!), and Stan Lee in an extended cameo that seems to wink at the fan theory that he's a Watcher in the MCU. There's the introduction of what were another incarnation of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the comics, led by Sylvester Stallone's character Stakar; I hope we're not going to have a standalone Ravagers movie, but the scene is a cool little nod to the fans (and any fan of Ving Rhames). And, finally, there's the cryptic introduction of what may be a new villain, Adam Warlock, who will probably show up big time in Infinity War or the next Guardians movie; his story often intersected with the Infinity Stones and Thanos.

IMDb: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2