Pixels

Garbage In Motion

Step right up ladies and gentlemen!  Right this way!  

Have I got a film for your viewing displeasure!  

Enter into the cinema to hand over your hard-earned money for a film that defies the senses and baffles the mind!

Interested in a comedy with no jokes?!

A thriller without any peril?!

A film seriously casting the guy from Paul Blart: Mall Cop as the President of the United States?!

Well then, boy, is this film for you!

I honestly try not to swear in my reviews; I feel like it lowers the tone, does the film a disservice and I come across like I cannot voice my arguments properly.

But my God, F##K THIS FILM!

PLOT

When they are 13 years old, Adam Sandler, Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage participate in an arcade video game tournament.  Footage of this, and the games themselves, are sent into outer space as some kind of time capsule or message of peace, I really can't remember.

Anyway, aliens intercept it, interpret it as a declaration of war and therefore send versions of those video games to destroy present-day Earth.

So since Sandler's best friend Kevin James (of Paul Blart: Mall Cop) is the US President...sigh... he enlists Sandler's expertise, as well as Gad and Dinklage to fight back against the video game-aliens.

Think Ghostbusters with video-game aliens replacing the ghosts.

(Good God, I'm so sorry Ghostbusters.  You do not need to be mentioned in the same review as this mess.)

My feelings exactly, Josh Gad.

OPINIONS

"But, Mike...!", I hear you cry, "...just why is this such a horrid stench on the map of movies through the years?!"

I'm glad you asked.

Pixels will be used as evidence in future years when someone eventually decides to call Adam Sandler and Happy Madison Productions on their current strategy of creating bull$hit films for an amazing amount of money (on average $71.5 million, from 2010's Grown Ups up until now), phoning in performances, paying his friends extraordinary fees and never even trying to make their films funny.

What happened to the Adam Sandler of The Wedding Singer?  Happy Gilmore?  Punch-Drunk Love?! The guy who came from Saturday Night Live with so much promise and actual comedic acting-chops?  Instead, Pixels features the 'dead behind the eyes' performance that we've gotten used to over the years.  A guy who turns up to earn the paycheck and then go back to his trailer.

Despite the pixels around him,
Sandler's performance is the most fake thing in this photo...

Uuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this film...

There is just an overall sense of confusion over the movie.

Early on, Sandler jokes that Paul Blart: US President's wife hates him, and they have a chuckle.  But his wife (played by the fantastic Jane Krakowski) adores him and puts up with his buffoonery regardless.

Yeah, we should be disappointed we lost this one...

Whilst combating Pac-Man, Peter Dinklage's character enters a cheat code. A cheat code!  In real life!  Not in a video game, but real life!  How?!  How does that actually work?!  It's never explained!

When the aliens first arrive, they engage in an aerial dogfight, which humans lose against Galaga.  Fair enough. They tell us to prepare for the next battle, but it's Breakout.  They proceed to destroy the Taj Mahal.  How could humans have beaten that?  It's a one player game.

After the humans win one of the battles, they get a video game character as a 'trophy'.  One of these is Qbert, the lovable orange blob thing that lights up steps by jumping on them.  But after the war is over, Qbert just morphs into a female video game character that Josh Gad's creepy basement-dweller has been obsessing over since a teenager.  ......Why?  Where was Qbert's say in this?  Isn't that just a bit sinister?  And does that make her a literal 'trophy-wife'?

I'm getting literally angry thinking about this film.

Why is Peter Dinklage in this pile of rancid slime?  Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Michelle Monaghan, all of them.  They're credible actors that don't have to put up with this $hit.

Qbert before he gets malformed into a man's 'non-speaking pretty thing'

When you have such a plethora of video game franchises to work with, the limitless possibilities of using memorable intellectual properties in humorous scenarios as well as Nintendo's allowance to use iconic characters such as Donkey Kong, Mario and even Duck Hunt, you can't come out with something as terrible and pointless as Pixels.  It's a crime.  Although everything seems to be a crime in this film.

Adam Sandler and Happy Madison Productions kidnapped my childhood innocence.

They stole money from countless unsuspecting audiences around the world.

They beat and battered my sense of decency.

They indecently exposed their cash-hungry scheme to throw together a film just to create box-office.

They fraudulently sold me the idea of fantastically-realised video games in real life.

And they murdered any chance of that happening in the future.

LET'S WRAP IT UP

In someone else's hands, Pixels could have been an ode to a time-long-forgotten.  It could have joined the ranks of Wreck-It-Ralph and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World as examples of love letters to the past-time.

Arcade machines could have made a retro comeback into popular culture instead of kitsh memorabilia.

Hell, Nintendo could have started to come around to the idea of a Legend of Zelda or Metroid film, but Sandler and director Chris Columbus took the easy route.

"Let's just put random video game characters everywhere!  It doesn't matter about context!  Nostalgia will mask everything!"

Stuff like this is why video games aren't treated with the same respect as films and books as an art form.  You've set the gaming community back another few years, so thank you for that.

From a true fan of both video games and film, fuck you Happy Madison Productions.  And goodnight.

Rating - 1/10 (since I can't give 0/10)

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Fantastic Four

Fantastic For Insomnia

BACKGROUND

The history of the Fantastic Four movies is a long and complicated thing.  But I'll try to be brief...

The Cowlick hairdo was all the rage back then...

Back in 1986, the Constantin Film company bought the movie rights to adapt the comic book supergroup to the big screen.  

However with nothing happening in the eight years after, Roger Corman was hired in 1994 to produce a low-budget film so that the company could retain the rights and not have them revert back to Marvel.  

The Fantastic Four had a trailer and a promotional tour, and even the cast were excited for it's upcoming release, but nothing ever happened... With the film inexplicably shelved, the movie rights were bought by 20th Century Fox.

2005 comes around and the Jessica Alba/Chris Evans-version of Fantastic 4 is released to mediocre reviews but box-office success, resulting in the sequel Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer two years later.  

But since audiences weren't clamouring for a three-quel to this underwhelming super-hero franchise, things then went dark for a few years.

Slowly but surely, the rapidly-expiring movie rights came into contention again.

I can only imagine a shareholder meeting went something like this...

"If another Fantastic Four movie doesn't get made soon, the rights will revert back to Marvel!  You know, those guys who are killing the box-office with their massively impressive and coherent Cinematic Universe!  

We can't let them get their hands on some superheroes who could be included in the next Avengers film!  That'd be terrible for us!  Let's do what we did with those god-awful Amazing Spider-Man films and just throw one together!"

And here we find 2015's Fantastic Four, or FantFourStic as the poster would have you believe...

"PLOT"

When they're freaking ten years old, Reed Richards (Miles Teller) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) manage to crack teleportation.  Seriously.  But no one believes them... despite the overwhelming evidence they can produce.

Cut to a few years later, and Dr Franklin Storm recruits Reed to work in his laboratory trying to crack inter-dimensional teleportation.  There he meet the reckless technician Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), his adopted scientist sister Sue Storm (Kate Mara) and the loner genius Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) who has a crush on Sue.

After figuring out how they can cross into another dimension within days of Reed's arrival, they are told they can't travel though (rightfully, since they're nerds, not astronauts).  So Reed and his team get drunk, behave like idiots and go through anyway!

Whilst there, they get touched by mysterious goop, blah blah blah, Victor gets covered in the stuff, blah blah blah, they come back and they have super-powers! What a shocker, you get the idea...

OPINIONS

Oh my God, this film.  Where to begin...?

This film made me legitimately angry.  Seriously.  At one point I got so frustrated with the confusing mess on screen, I shouted out "DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON?!" quite late on into the film.  

Thankfully I was sat with friends in an empty screening so it was answered with equally confused shakes of the head, and not in my removal from the screen.

The entire film feels like a 100 minute long trailer for another film that never happens.  There are hints at potential tension that never occurs, ruined friendships that just get fixed in an instant and romance triangles that spectacularly never get touched upon.

Remember when things were fun and light-hearted? *sigh*

The main problem stems from the fact the director Josh Trank (director of semi-superhero film Chronicle) wanted to take the film in a realistic and gritty direction, similar to The Dark Knight or Man of Steel, and treating the super-abilities like deformities or illnesses. 

Admittedly, that is an interesting approach to the subject of super-powers, especially in the scene where Reed is just getting used to his stretching ability and you can hear bones crack as they grow and shrink in size.

However, the Fantastic Four as a group have always been a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek style of superhero.  The problem with FantFourStic is by taking out all the fun of the powers and portraying them as freaks or social outcasts, you drape a black cloud over all the action and drama. 

You feel like it's a chore to be in their company, something that is the complete opposite with any film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially Ant-Man, released only a few weeks prior to FantFourStic.

Another issue the film suffers from is that none of the main four characters are interesting, or even likeable. 

Reed is a power-hungry narcissist who abandons his friends at the first sign of trouble.  

Ben is hardly in the damn film, and yet when he turns into The Thing, he just becomes a Hulk-For-Hire, sitting miserably in his room, unhappy with his mere existence.  

Sue is just boring and has no personality, other than Daddy's Girl.  

And I know the character of Johnny Storm is a 'hot-head' with a heart of gold, but damn I never realised how perfect Chris Evans was in the role before I saw someone else try to portray him. Nothing against Michael B. Jordan, but his cocky and arrogant Human Torch has no endearing qualities at all.

All of that is before we even touch on Victor Von Doom.

This is Doom by the way.
You'll see him for all of ten minutes,

Toby Kebbell is SUCH an amazing talent, and yet in FantFourStic, he is given nothing to work with.  

He starts off as a wayward protégé of Dr Storm's, hating the world and playing video games (which was a persona I was willing to go along with).  

When he is brought onto the team, he becomes a standard boring scientist, jealous of Reed and Sue's growing 'relationship'.  

A year after his abandonment on Planet Zero (or wherever they got sent to), he ultimately becomes a crazed and maniacal psychopath fused with a mysterious and unexplained green goo.

Dr. Doom is considered to be one of the greatest supervillains of all time, and he is given around 10-15 minutes of screen time!  And in those short few minutes, he manages to rack up an impressive and unnecessary kill-count for a 12A-rated film.  All killed by squeezing people's heads until they break using his, again unexplained, telekinetic abilities.  Yay!  Happy! Fun! Superheros for kids!

LET'S WRAP IT UP

God, I could carry on for a whole other article about what is wrong with FantFourStic, but you get the picture.  It's just such a mess.  All soulless and empty, with the main goal to just keep the movie rights in the greedy hands of 20th Century Fox.

The film disappoints on nearly every level, but coming from such a promising director and with the initial scenes having some degree of potential, it's just even more of a let-down.

Hopefully Marvel/Disney will see the damage that their child's guardian is doing to it and step in before another reboot is shoved down our throats in ten years time.  They've managed to successfully negotiate a deal for joint custody of Spider-Man, hopefully they can do the same with the Fantastic Four.

I would call this film the worst of the year so far, but I know a film that is worse... and that's getting reviewed next...

Rating - 2/10

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Inside Out / Song Of The Sea (Two For Tuesday)

A Bittersweet Symphony

Over the past few weeks, I've been a bit backlogged with certain personal situations, so I haven't been able to keep up with some of the more current releases.

However, there are two films which I made special effort to go and watch; the Irish animation Song of the Sea and Disney/Pixar's Inside Out.

I have since watched both of them three times each.

It's no real shock for a film critic to desire to see the newest Pixar film, as their backlog of films more than speaks for itself in terms of quality.  However, I had heard so many fantastic things about Song of The Sea, I felt like I had to try and catch it before it disappeared.

Surprisingly, they share a number of similarities.  Not just in the quality of their respective animation, but the depth of their scripts, the use of music, and the array of memorable characters and unique worlds that deserve to be featured up there amongst the greats of animation.

Song of the Sea begins with a young boy, Ben, in 1980s Ireland.  After his mother mysteriously leaves him and his father with a newly-born girl, Saoirse (pronounced 'Sher-sha'), Ben grows to resent Saoirse, blaming her for his mother's disappearance and is bewildered why Saoirse has yet to utter a single word in the six years since that night.  However Ben doesn't realise that Saoirse is a 'selkie', a human capable of transforming into a seal, who needs to sing The Song Of The Sea so all faeries can return to their home.

Yeah, this is proper fantasy stuff we're talking about.  Yet it is fully grounded in mid-80s Dublin, with most of the humour coming from when the two worlds collide.  One of the most humorous scenes features ancient faeries, clad in rain macs and leaf moustaches, running from owls whilst crossing busy roads to get to their home on a roundabout.  That kind of stuff.  So utterly charming and whimsical.  And it's all the better for it.

Outside of the fantastical elements of the story, the heart of the film comes from Ben and Saoirse as they travel from their Granny's house back to their own lighthouse home.  Over the course of their journey, Ben learns to become the big brother Saoirse has needed whilst growing up, and their back and forth is undoubtedly familiar to anyone with a brother or sister.  Not just the siblings, but every person in this film is given the most subtle of characterisation, making you feel like you know them the instant they appear on screen.

The film's animation is painstakingly created in a craft paper artistic style, and it feels as if this story couldn't have been told any other way, since it seems to have come straight from a child's fairytale book.  The film's earthy and grounded tones helps balance the realistic tone with the fantastical elements and certainly adds to the ancient Irish folklore from which it comes.

I must give a special mention to the film's soundtrack, written and orchestrated by Bruno Coulais (whose previous work can be heard in Henry Selick's Coraline).  Lisa Hannigan's beautifully haunting vocals provide a mystical quality from the very beginning, adding to the film's ethereal magic.  I made sure I went out straight after watching it and bought the soundtrack as soon as possible.

Song of the Sea was nominated for Best Animated Feature this year at the 87th Academy Awards, losing out to Big Hero 6, and I believe the Academy made a huge mistake.  Nothing against Disney or Big Hero 6, but Song of the Sea is one of the most charming, lovely and heartfelt films I have watched in a long time.  The story has a timeless quality to it, bringing the mythical and ancient folk tales and setting them within modern times to a fantastic result.

Speaking of Best Animated Feature, no doubt a favourite for it this year, if not Best Picture, is Pixar's latest gem Inside Out.

Set within the mind of eleven year old Riley Andersen, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The emotions live in Headquarters, the control centre inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life.  As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.

Since Toy Story 3 back in 2010, Pixar have been through an uncharacteristic 'slump'; Cars 2, Brave and Monsters University were fun in places but generally failed to blow anyone away, which is usually Pixar's bread and butter.  However, with Inside Out, the phrase 'return-to-form' is an understatement.

Firstly, whilst the premise is essentially The Numbskulls (shoutout to all you Beano fans out there!), the writer-director Peter Docter (of Monsters Inc. and Up) utilises the setting of the film to it's highest ability and creates a truly inspired and imaginative masterpiece. 

The broad scale of how varied and colourful Riley's mind is truly mind-boggling.  Through unfortunate events, Joy and Sadness get an unexpected tour through Riley's brain, from where her long-term memories are stored, to where her imagination creates French Frie Forest, dancing rainbow unicorns as well as boyfriends that live in Canada and would die for her.

Whilst the script is hilarious and charming in its scope of explaining certain mental phenomenon (Riley's train of thought is an actual train, dreams are produced in Hollywood-style movie studios etc.), the film also tackles complicated feelings but in a way that is incredibly understandable. The entire plot is centred around Joy and the other emotions figuring out the importance of Sadness in Riley's life. Not a light concept and yet Inside Out makes it seem so simple.

Similar to how Up dealt with emotional loss and Toy Story 3 dealt with moving on with your life once being replaced, both Song of the Sea and Inside Out tackle the issues of maturity and the importance of family, but break it down to a level that even young children can understand.

Not only will Inside Out appeal to kids in the audience with their bright colours and silly characters, but it will appeal to them through the relatable experiences that Riley goes through.   The twenty-somethings that have grown up with Pixar's charm and magic filling their childhoods will fall right back into the groove. The adults will again be shown into the hidden world of how kids actually think and the problems they go through.

That's the extra mile that you get with Pixar films; they feel as if every aspect has been slaved over and perfected, leaving you with just a wonderful film.  I can't recommend both of these films enough. They truly are fantastic for all the family and will touch your heartstrings as well as your funny bones.

Until next time folks, thanks for reading!

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