"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" Blu-ray Review

Rewatched in prep for seeing War For the Planet of the Apes. Original review here and is still valid.

Score: 9/10. Buy it.

"Independence Day: Resurgence" Blu-ray Review

For Independence Day, the missus and I watched last Independence Day's flop, Independence Day: Resurgence because with the neighborhood sounding like Beirut with all the fireworks in the 'hood, we weren't going to bother with something deep. Even by the standards of dumb Roland Emmerich destructo-porn, it looked bad; the reviews were rough; and the Cinema Sins and Honest Trailers seemed sufficient to kill any curiosity in the endeavor.

But we still watched it because I'd picked up a cheap ($2.50) Blu-ray and, yeah, it's pretty terrible. Emmerich has always been the reference point to show that for all his myriad faults, Michael Bay ain't Roland Emmerich, but even Emmerich seems to be phoning in his work here. The original Independence Day was no great shakes despite its cheesy Nineties success and star-making performance from Will Smith (who declined to be in this sequel, his character killed off and replaced by a son who must've gotten his non-charisma from Mom's side), but ID:R doesn't even seem to want to try. I'm not even going to bother recapping the dumb plot, trite conflicts and cheesy story; it's not worth it.

The visual effects occasionally benefit from 20 years of technological advances (just as Earth did after looting the crashed spaceships from the first movie), but a frequently quite cheap-looking as you can tell they shot on empty soundstages and composited in the backgrounds as badly as The Martian did quite well. As laughable as some of the "they survive this" scenes of destruction were in 2012 or San Andreas, it's just ludicrous here.

I didn't watch the extras, but the transfer is clean and the audio booming. There are better movies as movies to show off your home theater with. 

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

The "They like to get the landmarks" line which closes the trailer isn't in the final movie. Weak.

"Baby Driver" Review

I've seen everything Edgar Wright has made, but the trailers for Baby Driver didn't really feel like one of his movies; they felt like an oddly dark crime flick at odds with the usual levity his films had. (It didn't help that the title sounded like a kiddie picture like The Boss Baby.) The critics have spooged over it (98% RT score), but they always go crazy for anything that's not a sequel and Wright has been the Wronged Auteur after putting in 8 years developing Ant-Man only to leave the project over "creative differences" with Marvel. I went into the show with mixed impressions and, unfortunately, the movie lived down to my expectations. (Though the missus thought it was awesome.)

Ansel Elgort (I remember when Hollywood imposed better names on their performers) plays Baby, a getaway driver (see how that works?) for Kevin Spacey's crime boss whose car with a trunk full of valuable MacGuffins he stole thus obliging him to work off the debt by being the wheelman for heists Spacey masterminds. He's almost paid up and his just One More Job to work before he's free.

He's made the acquaintance of a pretty waitress (Lily James from the live-action Cinderella, looking like a young Madchen Amick) and is smitten with her, but this being a gangster movie, that One Last Job rapidly turns into a You Didn't Think You Were Going To Just Walk Away From This Life, Did You? and with the arrival of a scary new shooter named Bats (Jamie Foxx, actually acting for a change), the stakes are raised to the roof with deadly results.

While the car chases and gunfights are snappily shot and edited to the hipster-bait soundtrack with gun blasts in time with the rhythm (a thing first noted in the terrific Suicide Squad trailer and aped by so many other trailers now), there is an inescapable thinness to the plot and characters. We know nothing about James' character other than she's pretty and sweet and Baby is nearly a cipher; what was he going to do if Spacey had let him go? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When things get really dark in the last act, it's just too mean and gritty and less fun, despite being flashily executed.

I attribute these failings to Wright having sole authorship of the script. His "Cornetto Trilogy" (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End) were all co-written with Simon Pegg and the sublime Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had a co-writer and source material. Without the leavening of another voice, he's sort of exposed as more of a sharp director. There's no shame in that, but it unbalances the mix. There are some big laughs - a bit involving sunglasses is hilarious - and the performances are solid, but it just didn't  work well enough for me. It's not a complete wreck; more of a parking lot fender bender.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.

"Kedi" Review

If you're a cat-lover, you're going to want to see Kedi, the lovely documentary about the street cats of Istanbul. Unfortunately, it's not particularly convenient to see it.

Turkey's largest city, with a population of nearly 15 million people, sits straddling the divide between Europe and Asia. Thousands of years old and a major land and sea trade crossroads, ships from all over the world who had cats on board to control rodents found their mousers hopping off with the cargo and taking up residence.

With so many cats and so many people, you'd think they'd collide but as Kedi shows, they not only co-exist, but sometimes co-depend with many humans making great efforts to feed and love their furry feline friends. From the woman who cooks 20 pounds of chicken(!) per day to the fellow who walks around with bags of food, succoring large herds of kittehs to the woman who lets one cat in who promptly eats her indoor cat's food to the polite cat who parks outside a restaurant, never coming in or begging from the customers, but brushing his paws on the glass until they bring out smoked meats and fine cheeses, the cats of Istanbul have it made, at least in this telling.

Beautifully photographed with both soaring, tourist bureau-grade aerial drone shots of the skyline and cats-eye level tracking shots which follow the cats on their travels, Kedi makes you want to pet and cuddle all the cute critters and be happy that so many treat them as honored neighbors and not pests, even when they're biting fish off the mongers stand. One featured fellow credits caring for the kittehs for bringing him back after a nervous breakdown.

The biggest problem with Kedi is that it's a YouTube Original film meaning only YouTube Red subscribers can see it. I've had a Google Play Music subscription (it's like Spotify, but costs me a couple bucks less because I was an early adopter) for ages and got YouTube Red along with it when that started (it works vice versa, too; you get both regardless of what you sign up for), so it wasn't a problem for me, but most people have Netflix and maybe Amazon Prime and/or Hulu. Kedi is kinda stuck with no one to pet it in it's current location. If you can get a free trial, but all means put this at the top of your queue.

Score: 8.5/10. Catch it on YouTube Red.

"47 Meters Down" Review

It would be easy to presume that the girls vs. sharks flick 47 Meters Down was a quicky ripoff of last summer's sleeper girl vs. shark flick The Shallows, but it was originally slated for VOD/DVD release under the title of In The Deep less than two months after The Shallows came out in June 2016, but after seeing the success of Blake Lively's lively thriller and smelling cash-in blood in the water, another studio bought the rights and saved it for summer 2017 release, to much less success.

Watch the trailer:



That's it, folks. Claire Holt and Mandy Moore are girls on vacation in Mexico. Moore is nursing a broken heart from a breakup, so Holt convinces her to go clubbing. They meet a couple of hot locals who take them on sharking trip, the cable breaks and how will they make it up to the surface?

On its surface, 47 Meters Down should offer double the trouble of The Shallows: Instead of one babe, there's two (though come on, Blake Lively>>>Holt and Moore); instead of one shark, there are many; instead of being trapped on a rock on the surface waiting for the tide to come in, they're trapped in a cage on the ocean floor, running out of air.

But the crucial difference is that in the dark murky ocean depths, it feels claustrophobic and inert. While helping with the tension of whether sharks lurk just out of view, it rapidly feels rote. Director Johannes Roberts doesn't do much to make it visually interesting and when the sharks chomp on people, it's handled haphazardly.The third act fake-out and ending are unsatisfying as well.

Score: 3/10. Skip it and watch The Shallows.