What's on Redbox?--Safety Not Guaranteed

 

“Stormtroopers don’t know anything about lasers or time travel, they’re blue collar workers.”

 

          Released this past summer “Safety not Guaranteed” is one of those small films that slip through the Hollywood cracks only to be discovered on video.  I didn’t even see it in the theater, just like everyone else I was too busy re-watching “Avengers”.  It’s a story about people who are so out of touch with the present and unsure about the future that they are willing to believe in the possibility of traveling to the past to make their life better.  Whether it’s an actual machine or hooking up with an old high school flame, the characters in the film struggle to find their place and who they can share that place with.

Aubrey Plaza (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) is Darius a typical intern with typical intern woes.  Re-stocks toilet paper, gets yelled at, and is labeled a lesbian because she looks emo and doesn’t have a boyfriend.  She’s one of those girls who as her dad played perfectly in one scene by Jeff Garlan (Curb Your Enthusiasm) describes her, someone with a cloud over her.  She decides to tag along on a story for her magazine about a classified ad posted by a guy needing a partner to travel back in time with him.  Naturally this would make a great story because the guy has to be crazy, so Darius and another intern Arnau (Karan Soni) with their staff writer Jeff (Jake Johnson) go to check the guy out.  Kenneth the time traveler in question is played by Mark Duplass, who is one half of the directing duo with his brother Jay.  Here he acts, and does a pretty good job as the slightly off Kenneth.  Darius willingly gets recruited by Kenneth as he trains like a twelve year old before a fake raid on a tree house.  Though with Darius’s help actually breaks into a research facility to steal parts for his time travel machine.

While this is going on and Darius is evidently getting too close, elsewhere Jeff is trying to recapture his youth by finding an old girlfriend in the town they are in.  The relationships work for the most part, mainly because Plaza and Johnson fit the roles really well.  The whole film is really good, it has a charm of indie and doesn’t feel forced even in the formulaic nature of the story.  The characters are funny and charismatic and the story doesn’t overstay its welcome.  It goes from point A to B to C, and you are satisfied when you get to C. “Safety Not Guaranteed” is a great little film, and is worth your time, whether you believe in the travel part or not.

 

--Robert L. Castillo   

Star Wars Episode VII:...

          After thinking about it, I’ve come to the decision that I am very excited about the future of Star Wars.  I was sure that in my lifetime I would see a new Star Wars film, I was just certain it would be well after George passed on and whoever was left the rights would want to be able to send their great-great-great-great-great-grandkids to college.  Thankfully the wait is over sooner than expected and Disney has stepped up with their big pockets and bought Lucasfilm for 4.05 billion dollars (Dr. Evil style).

If there is one thing Disney knows how to do is market the hell out of something, so I’m certain wherever we look for the next few years we are going to see Star Wars of tv, phones, computers, on the road, in the theater, everywhere, it will be there in our face, and some will be sickened by it for sure.  With that will come the eventual drawbacks that will be jumped on like sandpeople on a land-speeder by the haters on the net.  That joke will make more sense to more people in a few years by the way.  Along the way to great Star Wars content we will be besieged by a barrage of kid-friendly, Disney-oriented, over-baked, over-saturated, and a ton of other hyphenated words I can’t even think of right now that will equal, crap.  Just plain Star Wars kiddie crap that will drive fans insane.  Possibly even worse that Jar Jar.  Believe it.

However the silver-lining is that amidst all the smashing garbage on the detention level (‘nother Star Wars joke) we will get a few, and hopefully more gems related to the Star Wars universe, and even more hopefully this greatness will be in the cannon of films that encompass the original trilogy and the prequels.  Speaking of films, that is what is at the foremost in my mind right now.  Since this is a film blog, I am most curious about the seventh Star Wars film.  Yeah, Disney announced three more after the initial one in 2015, just three years and one flying DeLorean DMC-12 ride away.  But the first one is going to set the tone and the path to the future storylines.  I’m less concerned about what Lucas has in treatment form and more curious about who is going to bring it to us.

So for sure we have Kathleen Kennedy, the new president of Lucasfilm in the producers chair, and who else would you want there except the person who helped bring to the screen films like: E.T., The Goonies, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, and The Last Airbender… well ok, but there are definitely more hits than misses on her record, and surprise, Airbender was a hit even though we all hated it.  As far as writers, well Disney has so many at their disposal, from the Pixar guys to their newly acquired Marvel. Even though Joss Whedon is tied up in Avenger-land, he may deserve a peek, and more so the Marvel “Architect’s” who have truly made the company what it is today.  Great writers on great runs like Brian Michael Bendis (Avengers), Matt Fraction (Iron Man), Jonathan Hickman (Fantastic Four), Jason Aaron (Wolverine) and Ed Brubaker (Captain America).  Check out what these guys have done in the past decade and you will see that they know how to tell stories, both big and small.

As for the director’s chair?  A friend of my suggested and I agree that the former Pixar alumni Brad Bird who is coming off his big win with “Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol”, is the best choice, he can write and direct live action and animation, and has proven he can give the proper shot in the arm to a franchise.  He is currently slated to film “1906” a period action/thriller from the sound of it.  But if Disney shows up at his door with a wheel-barrel of money and says bring Star Wars back to life.  Would he say no?

All in all, this is a very exciting time for Star Wars fans, and as I said there will be things we wish never would have been brought to life, but in the exchange we will get some great stuff that will remind us why we became fans in the first place, and how we still want the force to be with us…always.

--Robert L. Castillo         

Fun Size

               Everyone loves a good teen comedy. You always want to find that one that “speaks” for its generation.  In the eighties you had any John Hughes movie, while in the nineties you had “Clueless” and “American Pie”. For the last twelve years I think you would be hard pressed to find that movie of its generation, and I hate to say but you will still be looking after watching “Fun Size”.

              That is not to say “Fun Size” is a bad movie, it’s just nothing special, it’s much like so many other movies that come out in any given year. Wren (Victoria Justice) is your normal quiet teen. Her father passed away a year before and she is left with her mother Joy (Chelsea Handler), who thinks she is in her twenties again, and a little brother Albert (Jackson Nicoll), who doesn’t speak anymore. Wren’s best friend April (Jane Levy) longs for her and Wren to be one of the cool kids. So April’s plan is to get invited to a certain Halloween party, where their social status will change and they will be taken to the promise land of the popular kid-dom. April’s plan is ruined when Wren has to take her brother trick or treating. Wren loses Albert while inside a haunted house and begins a search that will take her everywhere, including finding love on the way.

            “Fun Size” like I said before is nothing special. It has some decent moments, and Jackson Nicoll is by far the most entertaining part of the movie, and he doesn’t even speak for ninety five percent of the film. The story was written by Max Werner and directed by Josh Schwartz, both who came from Television and this being both their feature debuts. I don’t really know what the target audience is for this movie, it is rated PG-13, I think teenagers will bored by it and kids who might like it can’t get in to see it. If you are looking for something to see this weekend, but you don’t want to be scared, this isn’t a bad choice. If though you are looking for something that stands out, then you might want to pass on this one that’s small on ‘size’ and even smaller on ‘fun’.

Brian Taylor

                                                                   

Flashback "Dark" Corner--The Omen

“Look at me Damien.  It’s all for you!”

 

          From its opening piano/chanting in the haunting score by Jerry Goldsmith and the incredible image of a child whose shadow is an upside down cross, you know you are in for something, so you keep watching.

The 1976 horror masterpiece “The Omen” directed by Richard Donner who would later give us “Superman: The Movie”, “The Goonies” and the Lethal Weapon series first put us at the beginning of the end with the birth of the antichrist.  Right from the get go, you know it’s gonna be bad when a priest flat out tells Gregory Peck’s (To Kill a Mockingbird) character Robert Thorn to lie to his wife Kathy played by Lee Remick.  And it’s such a huge lie, of course that can’t go wrong at all.  Thorn is an U. S. ambassador who moves his family from Rome where his child is born to London, when it only takes ten minutes in to see things get really, really creepy.  When the nanny of their child Damien is dispatched in a memorable scene.

So memorable in fact this was the first scene described to me by my cousin who was allowed to watch horror movies before me.  He showed me a book that had the images of the making of “The Omen” and showed the nanny scene.  We looked through the book to see any other grizzly images, and did, but it didn’t ruin my viewing of it when I finally did see the film.  Interesting side note on the previous side note, that book about the making of the movie we were looking at, was at a used book sale on the grounds of a church.

What I noticed watching the film now as a film lover is that it’s truly an amazing picture.  Not just scary, or gruesome, and there’s no shortage of that, but the way it was shot by Donner, like someone or something always peeking in at odd angles, or through gates and pillars from a distance.  And the almost inhuman close-ups which take up half the screen and wide shots of characters eyes, you can almost see their souls.  Also being that all the effects were done practically makes the movie feel even more impressive.  People talk about the shot of one character falling from a second story, which is a little dated, but the crazy baboons, fleeing giraffes, stalking dogs, and the still amazing decapitation scene that is one of the best looking and original kills ever put to screen cements this as one of my favorite films.

As I said before it’s not just well done horror, but as a film it hits all the right notes, the build-up really works and makes sense as it goes along.  One thing leads to another and another as Peck’s character is truly the average man put in an extraordinary situation.  I mean this movie takes Atticus Finch to the brink where he eventually takes an ancient ice pick to a child.  And you believe it.  That is where great stories come from, and this is a story that has been interpreted albeit in a fantastic way by the most famous narrative, the Bible.

My cousin would later tell me about the sequels which sounded better as he told them than they actually were when I saw them.  Now they feel like a pre-curser to the Final Destination series.  And I honestly never bothered with the 2006 remake.  But in ’76 filmmakers really knew how to make movies, and they knew how to give you the feeling of true terror.  Check out “The Omen” again, and if you’ve never seen it, watch it alone at night, and try not to get un-nerved by the chanting and whispering of the voices as dogs stalk the hallways, in the dark.

--Robert L. Castillo

Criterion Corner--Branded to Kill

It was bound to happen sooner or later, that I would check out one of these Criterion films and get a wacky one.  Well it was the third one in, so sooner it is.  “Branded to Kill” directed by Seijun Suzuki is a tripped out film about an assassin that gets targeted when he botches a job.  That’s basically the story since all the exposition was cut out of the film in very obvious ways, it’s very chopped up and while there is some cool imagery, over all the film is just plain weird.

It’s a B-movie with action that borders on clever to down-right goofy, the way Hanada (Joe Shishido) takes out an optometrist through a drain-pipe is straight out of a comic book.  Or if you’ve seen it, 1999’s “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai”.  There also is a big thing about the ranking of hitmen, ‘who’s Number 1?’ is the big mystery.  Which leads to a confrontation between Hanada and Number 1 which starts as a game of wits and moments later seen in the Wachowski’s/Donner 1995 film “Assassins”, but then leads to scenes straight from “Three’s Company”.  There is weird visuals and equally weird sex stuff, like Hanada using steaming rice as an aphrodisiac before sex, and then they try to keep within the rating system but end up making the sex creepier.

Still despite its many, many, drawbacks, “Branded to Kill” has a visual style that on its own is worth a look at least once.  Well maybe just a passing glance.  Better yet, check out the trailer, you can see all you need to there.

 

--Robert L. Castillo   

    

Paranormal Activity 4

                             

         Do you like scary movies or things that go bump in the night? If so then you have probably become a pretty big fan of the Paranormal Activity series. It’s been five years since the first one hit the big screen and introduced a new type of horror movie, one that relied on the tension of what was going to happen next.   No longer is there that crazed killer, now you never know where or what unseen force will show up on camera.

    We pick up five years after (Spoilers for the first films) the disappearance of Katie (Katie Featherston) and Hunter, who was last seen walking out of Hunter’s house after Katie killed her sister. Alex (Kathryn Newton) has a normal home life. She lives with her mother and father and her little brother Wyatt. Everything is normal until a little kid Robbie (Brady Allen) and his mother who move in across the street. Something happens to Robbie’s mother and Alex’s family takes Robbie in. Strange things start to happen around the house almost immediately after Robbie moves in. So being the smart kid she is, (and what would these movies be without it) Alex sets up the computers around the house to record the events that happen at night. The computers record some strange things, including Robbie walking around the house in the middle of the night talking to someone. As the nights pass, the events get more and more strange, and you start to wonder if Alex and her family will survive.

   You had to love the originality of the first Paranormal Activity. Horror movies had become stale and torture porn, it was the perfect shot in the arm that the popular genre needed. Over the last five years we have been presented with a new chapter to the ever expanding story of the original character Katie. Each new story did a great job of staying original and adding to the previous film, especially the last installment with a truly eerie ending. Well, there is a saying that all good things come to an end, and this can be said of the films in the paranormal series.  Where in the past the story added to the previous film, it seems this one is stretching to add. There were not as many moments that make you jump out of your seat, and I think that is part of what you look for now. The one thing I did like was how an Xbox Kinect was used as a great way to see things. I wanted this film to be like its predecessors, but instead the wear of four movies in five years has started to show in this series. The good thing is that the genre will reinvent it’s self again, does this mean the end of The Paranormal films?  It will carry on, I just hope it finds its magic for the next installment, and rediscovers ways to make us scared to sleep with the lights off, or your Xbox off for that matter.

Brian Taylor

                                                        

Alex Cross

   

     In the early nineties James Patterson introduced a character that would become very popular for readers. The novel was called “Along Came a Spider”, where we first meet Detective Alex Cross. Eighteen novels and two films later, we have gotten to know Detective Cross very well. After an eleven year absence from the big screen, Detective Cross is back and there is something different about him. 

     For starters Detective Cross is now played by Tyler Perry, yes the same Tyler Perry who has created a film empire playing everyone’s favorite grandmother. Perry plays Cross as he is at a crossroads, where he is deciding his career future. He is a Detroit detective who has a team who always seems to solve the cases that need to be solved. His partner and friend since kindergarten, Tommy (Ed Burns) plays the perfect counterpart to Cross. Everything in Detroit is not well though. Cross is called in on a case that is more disturbing than most; who he thinks was committed by one man. That man is Picasso (Matthew Fox), who has a thing for torture and drawing. After Cross stops his next planned crime, Picasso takes it personal and hits Cross in a way to make him suffer. With that Cross plans to stop Picasso at all cost and with him his plans.

   It almost seems like this character has faded from most people’s mind. There are still plenty of novels written about the character, but after two films within a few years of each other, why such a gap? Tyler Perry does a great job of stepping into Morgan Freeman’s shoes as Patterson’s star detective. The film adds more action than the first two films, but you would expect that from a film directed by Rob Cohen (xXx, The Fast and the Furious). The story doesn’t follow the book well and is definitely made for the big screen. The movie is entertaining for the most part, but has a few plot points that get left unresolved. I think it is good to reintroduce a good character like Alex Cross back into the world of movies. There is so much source material and so many stories you can do with him. Unfortunately they did not bring him back with a bang, but not exactly at a whimper either. I would like to see Perry come back as Cross, but with a better story, because this is one character that deserves another chance.

Brian Taylor