Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

I don't remember much about "Jumanji" (1995). Just that I liked it back then. I also don't remember much about "Zathura" (2005). Just that I liked it more than "Jumanji". I'm pretty sure I won't remember much neither about the new "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" (2017). Unless that maybe it's weaker than the first, and clearly below "Zathura".

The new version doesn't seem to be a sequel for the old one, but more towards a remake. The "cursed" board game is replaced by an old arcade that absorbs the players into a jungle where they have to save Jumanji (= the jungle). It's obvious that in such a movie you need to accept a certain level of "SciFi", but somehow the entire bit of grabbing/passing the players into the game seems a bit too childish... I don't know, the initial version, as also the closet in Narnia, or to be more close to the current setting the arcade in "TRON" seemed much more... believable. Anyway... On the good side, leaving the intro apart, the idea of a cursed arcade in which you're trapped has quite a potential to explore. Each player has an avatar in the game that is pretty far from the real form. We have a number of lives and the respawn concept. We have strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, even though the movie covers quite a bit of all these, it loses on the script. The jokes sometimes work, sometimes they don't. The dialogue has a clear age target in the range of 10-16. The story does not offer much surprise - the always present action is running from the bad guys towards the final objective to get the job done.

It's curious how the new "Jumanji" still managed to please enough the critics and didn't land exactly close to the trash bin. I assume it's more about politically correctness than how good is the movie. For instance "Journey to the Center of The Earth" in the same niche is somewhere at 61 on RT in comparison 77 here, and I think it's a bit better than this one. But well... as a family/kids movie I guess it works.

I would've liked to end 2017 with something better, but unfortunately I doubt I'll have time to watch any other movie and also write an entry until the 0:00 between years... so that's it for now. I have to notice that it's the first year, after 10 of blogging, when I didn't have a movie with the maximum rating among my entries. Maybe I got too picky... Maybe I got old and my chemistry with the new releases is fading... Maybe I don't have enough time to watch enough or to choose what to watch... Anyway, Happy New Year! & hopefully next year will be better ;)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Wind River (2017)

From the first scene "Wind River" reminded me of "Winter's Bone". We have the same harsh reality, isolated location, a community at the edge of poverty, lack of police, uncontrolled crime. The similarities stop here. The story is different. In "Wind River" everything starts with the corpse of an 18 years old girl, with rape marks, found frozen at several miles distance from any residence, in the middle of an Indian reservation from Wyoming. The body is discovered by a local hunter, who alerts the local chief of police, who asks the presence of FBI for investigating the case. Tha follows is a drama with crime thriller accents (not the opposite, as it might look like). We have a much stronger accent set on the geographical-social context, starting with a snow storm up to the specific community customs. The crime/thriller part is relatively linear, unlike for instance "Winter's Bone". To make another comparison, Taylor Sheridan who directed and wrote "Hell or High Water" does the same here, and you can feel the same touch, every detail in the whole story/setting being carefully taken care of. To conclude: if you want a mystery story it's probably not the best option, but as a composition movie it's highly recommended.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The Foreigner (2017)

"The Foreigner" is one of the few movies seen since quite a while that hides more than what's shown in the trailer. And that's good... Another good thing is Jackie Chan's presence in a western production that's not a comedy. Otherwise said, you have the opportunity to also see the other face of the actor, who besides the remake of "Karate Kid", didn't really have any drama parts in movies made outside Hong Kong.

The movie is an adaptation of a thriller novel. We have an Asian immigrant, owner of a small London restaurant, whose daughter is killed in a bomb attack set up by a new faction of IRA that breaches the non-aggression agreement with the British government. Our man is not pleased with the answer of authorities who need more time to find the perpetrators, and decides to take the matter in his own hands. That implies traveling to Belfast and contacting the local deputy PM (Pierce Brosnan) an ex-IRA member, who doesn't seem to know much. But "the Chinaman" wants names. From here onward there are two action lines splitting and intersecting again repeatedly until the end. On one side we have a revenge story, where a Chinese in his '60s goes against the whole IRA (let's say that the exotic side of the situation and the way the action's built compensates the Special Forces background cliche). On the other side we have a political thriller with enough threads bound together (that's the surprise part, so let's not detail it).

The production quality is good. Besides the two parts excellently played by Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan one thing to notice is the editing, especially the audio one, which is well backed up also by surprisingly appropriate score given how minimalist is the composition. As a final note, the revenge story, which is as always catchy given the niche, it's much more diffuse and non-violent I'd say compared to what you might think, surprisingly even more than the other story line. Which again, it's something good :)...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Paths of Glory (1957) / Cross of Iron (1977)

There's already some time since I want to put "Paths of Glory" and "Cross of Iron" in a side-by-side entry, enough time to forget pretty much all I wanted to write. By chance, I've watched this year both movies, both of them being part of a similar anti-war niche. "Paths of Glory" is among the first movies of Kubrick, while "Cross of Iron" is an indie movie by Sam Peckinpah (probably the most underrated director of the 70s). Both movies are book adaptations and both have the same antagonist typology - a superior ranked officer, whose primary objective in a critical war situation is a "quest for glory" and (up to some point) also the same typology of the main character - the inferior ranked officer, sick of war, for who the glory equals zero.

In "Paths of Glory" we have on one side a French general during WW1 who, following a discreet suggestion coming from the army commandment, decides to sacrifice based on preliminary estimation more than half of the people under his command for conquering a hill, a strategic objective that will bring praise and a potential promotion. On the other side, we have a colonel who should carry the order till the end, but fails, the soldiers being unable to advance through enemy fire; consequence - he must choose 3 soldiers, one in each company, for bringing them in front of the martial court for cowardice. In "Cross of Iron" we have a captain of the German army, descending from an Prussian aristocratic family, who in the final days of WW2 asks for a transfer near the enemy lines because he cannot accept getting out of the war without obtaining an Iron Cross for bravery. On the opposite side we have a sergeant, commanding a group of soldiers, saviors of the company in difficult no-exit situations, who refuses to lie on witnessing his superior leading a heroic assault.

The closeness of the two movies is interesting, not necessarily from the war context perspective, but more for the general approach of life: the boss-employee relationship, the world in which each of them lives seen from above by one and closely within by the other, approaching impossible tasks, etc. The similarity has, however, a limit, the movies being split apart by their general feeling, and the character who struggling within the harsh reality takes different directions from some point onward. (Spoilers) One of the characters manifests a loyal insanity up to the point when the accumulated sickness reaches a limit, the other is also a sickened person but one who plans, trying all he can to solve the situation within its constraining bounds. In "Cross of Iron" the sergeant is offered with the opportunity to accuse his superior and he's not doing it. In "Paths of Glory" the colonel is refused on any attempt of defense. Which approach is the right one?... :) I'll just say that it's probably better to watch the movies in reverse chronological order ;) also because I find "Cross of Iron" much more harsh than "Paths of Glory".

Rating:
Paths of Glory - 3.5 out of 5
Cross of Iron - 3 out of 5

Possession (2002)

Old movie, short entry: Somewhere between a cold that I can't get rid of, end-of-year reports, unsolved family issues and other house issues, which again confirmed that December 25th is a backup day for unfinished business and to not expect more because it's not helpful for my morale, I said it might still be a good idea to search for a movie that's more in tone with the period. That didn't come so well either... "Possession" is an old romance, quite corny, that fooled me by being additionally classified as "mystery" by IMDb. We have a couple formed by an American assistant in a literature department somewhere in UK (Aaron Eckhart) and a doctor in another literature department also in UK (Gwyneth Palthrow) who team up for investigating a romantic affair kept secret by a (fictitious) British 19th century poet, whose work apparently dedicated to his wife had actually another target... (or that's left for you to understand by the ending of the movie). All this story has an academic touch of Indiana Jones in a literary version = all sorts of cryptic verse taking us through various deserted mansions, isolated cascades, up to digging up a grave. Besides that we also have a rival group hunting for the same "academic treasure", obviously for mean personal benefits = fame & glory for the century's literary discovery (it's not totally clear what's the difference in case of the first group for this part..., but well, we needed something to make the action slightly more dynamic). Besides the present side, for who's into pure romance we have the 18th century story narrated through flashbacks. With all the risk of seeming insensitive, this whole story is so dull that the main quality it has is to act as a sleeping pill... reason why it actually took 3 attempts to finish the movie. To conclude, maybe the summary and the idea itself might look ok, but the script is much much worse... Enough said.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)

Let's make this quick: SW VIII is better than SW VII - SW VIII is not better than SW II, III, IV, V, VI. Yes, better than I - but worse than II, well... that's my ranking, now some reasons for this...

First of all on the plus side, we have clearly a better shaped story compared to the previous episode, despite all the critics claiming that there are too many confusing twists. I honestly start having doubts either about the average IQ of the critic community in the States or the amount of movies they've watched. Probably in your first seen movie you'll have plenty of twists... don't know, that was loooong ago - here I've seen one and that was it (no spoilers), the rest was predictable. To be fair, there's actually one supposed twist (well... light spoiler) about some change in the main villain that I was hoping not too happen, but it was there... Which brings me to the first minus left from the previous movie - I stick to my opinion that Adam Driver is a bad choice for the main villain, and moreover the character is poorly built. We can evaluate all the major villains of Star Wars: Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, Snoke and even the lower ranked ones: Count Dooku, Jabba, even Boba Fett. There's a certain credibility in all these that a spoiled brat with a sword who smashes his fists into the walls when he gets angry doesn't have. The way Anakin Skywalker = Darth Vader was built in episodes I-III up to giving in to the Dark Side is way beyond what we have here. And the so much criticized wooden acting of Hayden Christensen was actually much more credible in respect to the "interior struggle" than the forced grimaces served now. Well.. Let's stop this here. What else...

We have lots of cliche, but you can expect that so let's give it a pass. The screenwriting is ok overall. What's bad is the editing, actually terrible for a movie at this budget. Example I: I understand that you don't need all the details, but we have at least one scene where you feel the need for something intermediate to figure out how the present characters got there. Example II: Carrie Fisher moved into a different dimension this year, and I suppose that some of the scenes were edited afterwards with/without a digitized Leia - that wouldn't be a problem, if you couldn't see at least once an overlapping of two characters in different shots (but well... maybe it's harder in 3D to take into account the look angle of an actor). Anyway... I could nag also about the title of the movie :) but I'd rather end this on the positive side. There is something that I think it's above what I've seen in the other Star Wars, and that's the role of Mark Hamill who never impressed me much as an actor (not that he's bad or something, but let's be fair... his career is mostly formed of voice-overs and less live). I was surprised once before in "Sushi Girl", but I thought that's an exception. The second one was here. Probably the script contributed to it, getting us to a main swordfight to remember (especially the scene just before). But enough spoilers ;) ...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 ( just to be a bit above Episode VII :P )

Winter-Spring 2017-2018 Movie Preview - Part 2

Let's quickly move also through what's announced for Spring 2018, since we anyway don't have too many trailers released yet. At least for me, if there is any animation announced for next year that could compete with "Early Man", that's "Isle of Dogs" - out in March 2018, written and directed by Wes Anderson. Instead of more details I guess it's enough to enumerate: "Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Moonrise Kingdom", "Grand Budapest Hotel". Well, to be fair.. it's probably obvious that the movie we have here doesn't have the same target age as a typical Pixar/Dreamworks animation, and not even as Aardman stuff, speaking about "Early Man". But let's cut the chit-chat... here's the trailer:

"Pacific Rim: Uprising" doesn't seem to have much left (except the main topic) from the first "Pacific Rim". The director, writers, cast, all are changed. My expectations are even lower than what I had for the first movie, but there I was so surprised about the outcome that looking back I can't really explain how that happened. I could hope the same for here, but still... back then we had a Guillermo del Toro behind the whole thing, here...

The first thing that pops into my mind about "Ready Player One" is that's the first SciFi made by Spielberg since "War of the Worlds". The second thing is that I really, really, really hope it won't be like "War of the Worlds" :| ...

"Rampage" looks like a sort of King Kong meets Sharknado meets Insert-your-favorite-giant-creature-here. Or the type of summer movie that doesn't seem to be so bankable and it gets a release date at some point where there's not much competition announced (April in this case).

We end in May with the next "Avengers: Infinity Wars". I'm not gonna spend more time to repeat again my opinion on super-hero movies, especially the ones Marvel releases (unfortunately there was nothing else announced for this month).

Winter-Spring 2017-2018 Movie Preview - Part 1

Without delaying also with an intro a post that I should've written 3 weeks ago, let's just start this preview round with "The Shape of Water". Already having an early December limited release, the movie is the most recent by Guillermo del Toro. Based on the first reviews it seems to get a bit more close to "Pan's Labyrinth"/"Pacific Rim"/"Hellboy", otherwise said the better times, at least compared to the last movie he wrote and directed - "Crimson Peak", which I'd rather avoid remembering.

Obviously, the title poster for this month is "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi". But more about this one in a future entry.

"Downsizing" is the most recent movie written and directed by Alexander Payne ("Sideways", "Descendants", "Nebraska"). At a first sight it seems to be a turn of the director towards something else more close to a light SciFi, compared with the previous line-up. Although if we think a bit, and we consider that in all the previous the location had a major role...

We begin January 2018 with "Proud Mary". What seems to be the female alternative to "John Wick". Hopefully it won't be as messy as the last attempt = "Atomic Blonde"...

Even though Aardman had some other cinema releases, the last animation directed by Nick Park - "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" - was in 2005 (5 years after "Chicken Run"). He's finally back: "Early Man". The only thing I'm afraid of is that I might expect too much after all these years, although the trailer doesn't look bad.

"Day of the Dead: Bloodline" is the second remake we see for one of the George Romero's classic zombie-horrors. The first was "Dawn of the Dead" in Zack Snyder's version from 2004, and that wasn't bad at all. Here, however, I have some doubts, the guy in charge - Hector Vicens - not having much experience with directing (not that Snyder had any CV in 2004...).

I noticed lately a drastically decrease in my appetite for horrors. However, I'll close the winter preview with something that caught my eye and is still in this area. In February we'll have the release for "Winchester". There's a house somewhere in the U.S. that was continuously constructed for several tens of years and finally left unfinished, currently reaching the status of a tourist attraction as one of the weirdest buildings in the world. The owner was the widow of the well-known rifle manufacturer with the same name. So, the background story of the movie is real, but probably heavily romanticized. In any case, seems to have something different in it...