Finding Dory Movie Review - An immersive (or, should I say, submersible) experience that you'll never forget!

Pixar has delivered some of the greatest original content that big-budget animation has seen over the years. Classics like Toy Story, Wall-E, and yes, my favorite movie of 2015, Inside Out, have revolutionized animation as well as storytelling. Their ability to use abstract ideas and deliver dramatic characterization and absorbing storytelling while other animation studios use similar ideas for the sake of pandering is what makes them stand out. Their ability to follow up on that material, however, has had some mixed results. The Toy Story trilogy was phenomenal, as each film built upon one another and led to dramatic changes in its characters. Cars 2, on the other hand, really had nowhere else to go with where the characters left off in its predecessor and threw around too many zany ideas for the sake of amusing little kids. The reason I bring both of these up is because Finding Dory holds elements of both of these, holding some rather zany detours, but never too much to entirely distract from some strong, dramatic character development and a lot of touching moments.

In this film, we learn about the origin of Dory and meet her parents, as we find out she got separated from them as a child and, due to her short-term memory loss, forgets where they are, how to find them, and eventually, the fact that she was even looking for them to begin with, all leading to when she's grown up and acquainted with Marlin, as we saw in the first film. One year after she and Marlin find Nemo, she is reminded of her origins and goes out to find her parents at a marine biology institute, where sea creatures are nurtured until they are rehabilitated. Here, she comes across an Octopus named Frank and a whale named Destiny, both of whom help her explore the institute to regain her memory and find her family.

So, instead of an ocean-wide journey in which Marlin goes to find Nemo, Dory is out on a journey to FIND HERSELF.... Tell me I didn't just blow your mind there!

Typically, making what was originally the comic relief in the first film the primary character in the follow-up holds mixed results, but Pixar pulls it off nicely in this flick. The way they do that is by highlighting her ability to keep moving forward (or, you know, just keep swimming) as a huge asset in moving the journey forward, as well as treating every moment where she does regain her memory with the respect and dramatization that it deserves. It's not sappy moralism or treacle; it's a serious, intense change of course for Dory's life, and you feel the weight of it every time it comes up. By the end of it all, you can tell Dory's changed and grown from those experiences. It's similar to the change Marlin made throughout the first flick, and it fits rather nicely.

As expected from Pixar, the animation is gorgeous as well. The amount of detail they go into in recreating undersea life (yes, even in the observatories) is phenomenal to say the least. Every fish moves as a real fish would move, even in the background, and everything from the coral formations to how wet every fish looks on dry land to the tiny little specs in the water.... Pixar did their homework! And yes, being a mostly underwater experience, it's even more immersive in 3D!

But yes, I did mention earlier that there were some zany moments that bothered me a little. I understand that animation is allowed to be zany for the sake of creativity, but while Finding Nemo wasn't always 100% realistic, it at least existed in a realm where you never said to yourself "That could never happen!" In this film, however, we have a few moments of the characters going from point A to point B in ways that just make me shake my head and say "....What the hell am I watching?" Just as one example (slight spoiler), Dory and Frank get to one of the observatories by Frank pushing them around in a baby cart. Yeah, that seems a little out of place compared to what I was just describing, doesn't it?

If I had to sum it up, though, I would say Finding Dory is what I would call a must-see. It has a few weird moments, sure, but it has too many strong moments of characterization to be ignored. It further proves why Pixar is still on top and deserves to be recognized as a strong follow-up to Finding Nemo.

My rating:

The Conjuring 2 Movie Review

James Wan has been a very hit-or-miss director (watch as his Saw movies crumble after the third movie or so... or rather, don't watch), but his talent for horror directing became mostly well-known through 2013's mega-hit, The Conjuring. I've talked to many people about this film, and whether you enjoyed the experience or not, its chill factor was undeniable. It had a creepily slow pace, it built up its scares rather than relying on jump scares like most horror films, and Wan's cinematography brought viewers into an unsettling environment. It's considered by many (myself included) to be one of the all-time greats of horror films. Too bad horror sequels never really hold up.

In The Conjuring 2, we rejoin the Warrens as they once again explore the supernatural activity occurring in a home in which a family just moved into. (Sound familiar?) This time around, they travel to the UK where the family they visit is being haunted by a ghost who used to live there with his family, as he's constantly telling them to leave. Things are not as they seem this time around, however, as Lorraine Warren finds that this new ghost might tie into an old ghost she's encountered in the past.

I'll give this film its due credit; the Warrens still hold up as legitimate characters. Every scene they're in gives the film a sentimental quality that results in every one of the best scenes in the movie. There's one scene where Ed Warren plays the guitar that's very heartfelt and a soft detour from the rest of the film.

Whenever we get to the "scare" scenes in the film, however, that's when it gets... silly.

Every aspect that made the first film a chilling experience is replaced by a very noisy and often times laughable experience. For example, the first film had a very slow and unsettling pace that made you think it was building up to a jump scare when the chills were actually sneaking their way in. Here, everything goes by so quickly that it feels more like a roller coaster, and you can practically pinpoint every jump scare that the film throws at you. Not only that, though, but it does so in the silliest way possible, to the point where I thought I was looking at an adaptation of Disney's Haunted Mansion (just without Eddie Murphy). For instance, one jump scare involves a toy fire truck coming up to one of the kids. No joke. Heck, the ghost himself reminds me too much of that hobo from that episode of Hey Arnold where the kids are on a subway. ("THIS IS MY HOUSE! GET OUT!")

Overall? If you're looking for a noisy, silly, fast-paced thrill ride as a follow-up to one of the most dreadful, chilling, unsettling film experiences in the past decade (which I could not imagine why you would be looking for that), this film's for you! But if you're looking for a chilling horror experience, I'd say just go back to the first film.

My rating:

A recent thought of mine....

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows Movie Review

It goes without saying that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a silly franchise. Just saying the title, if it doesn't get a chuckle out of you, triggers that funny vibe in your mind that says "Why the hell are we even talking about this?" Why do I mention this? Because out of all the film adaptations for this franchise to ever come out, out of three live-action films, a flopped CG-animated entry, and now, two more live-action films (among a few crappy underground spin-offs), the only film that managed to make it work was the first live-action film from 1990, which, incidentally, wasn't originally studio-produced. It wasn't perfect by any means, but the creators were aware that if fans weren't invested, they wouldn't keep coming back for more, so they chose to take a more serious, well-paced, well-developed route that held a gritty style, fun characters, and even a few strong moments of characterization. Every adaptation after that, however, was merely a studio product, as studios kept looking at Ninja Turtles as the easiest franchise to cash in on and decided to utilize every manipulation cliche during each era as their attempt to get audiences into seats, and who better to utilize manipulation cliches than the master of manipulation himself, Michael Bay? Hence, we have not the first, but the SECOND Bay-produced Ninja Turtles movie, entitled Out of the Shadows, and frankly, I've grown weary of the lack of effort here.

Now, I'll go on board by saying I didn't think the first movie from 2014 was THAT bad. It wasn't good by any means; its character development was incredibly thin, the turtles themselves held some pretty hideous designs, and a lot of the rewrites and production problems were clear as daylight. However, considering that the pitch of a Michael Bay produced Ninja Turtles adaptation with Megan Fox as April O'Neil sounds more like a Robot Chicken sketch than it does a legitimate film project, I feel that it could have been a lot worse than it actually turned out. When compared alongside his Transformers films, it didn't feel overlong, the action scenes were well-paced and cohesive, and the personalities of the turtles were pretty accurate, albeit not fully developed.

I kept all that in mind when seeing the sequel, and it raised my expectations.... perhaps a little too high.

In this film, we rejoin the turtles as they find out that a scientist named Baxter Stockman is working with the Shredder, who busts out of prison, along with two other criminals named Beebop and Rocksteady, only, through a glitch in Baxter's teleportation system, gets sent to another dimension where he meets a monster known as Krang. They very sporadically come to an agreement where Shredder will collect a few items to put together a device that will allow Krang to teleport his war machine, the Technidrome, to Earth for a takeover. Krang then gives him a serum that allows him to transform Beebop and Rocksteady into mutants so that they can help him fight against the turtles as they try to put a stop to his schemes.

If that doesn't sound like one of the most poorly assembled attempts at cramming in giant chunks of fan service in the world, I don't know what does.... Oh wait, yes I do...

This movie has the exact same problem as Nickelodeon's other attempt at a live-action franchise, The Last Airbender; it attempts to cover a lot of material in its franchise in a very short running time. But whereas that film had too much material that it absolutely had to cover as an adaptation of the entire first season of the show, this one did not need to cover as much ground as it did. As much as the first film could have benefited from a few more scenes of establishment, it at least kept its plot simple and straight-forward for its condensed running time. Here, they're trying too hard to cram in all these characters when maybe one or two additional characters would have been enough to get fans' attention. This was a smarter trick that Marvel pulled off with their movies, introducing two or three characters at a time for each movie and utilizing its already established characters to their full advantage. Heck, this film doesn't even have fully developed characters to hinge on!

Even on a technical level, it's not all that impressive. The action scenes are well-constructed and riveting, though not what I would call thrilling due to a lack of investment in the characters, but the CGI on the characters is fake, alongside the always disturbing motion-capture animation in which the characters are ALWAYS MOVING. And unlike the first film where the CG characters fighting against real-life Foot Clan soldiers was a little impressive, here, it's literally reduced to CG characters fighting CG characters, and it's just as much of a messy ensemble as you might think.

The terrible cast is kind of a standout here as well. Megan Fox gets her sensual side exploited one too many times throughout the flick, something the first film surprisingly avoided, and while Will Arnett is barely in the film, his part is still confusing and kinda pointless. But the worst has to be Stephen Amell as Casey Jones; it's literally as if they just took an entirely different character, threw a mask on him, gave him a hockey stick, and called him Casey Jones. You want proof? He's a cop in this version. Yeah, let that sink in.

It shouldn't come as any shocker that a Bay-produced Ninja Turtles movie sucks, but honestly, I'm kinda shocked that there's even a sequel to begin with. We might as well face facts that no studio-produced Ninja Turtles movie will ever hold up a candle to the classic 1990 film, no matter how many modern cliches studios try to cram into each adaptation.

My rating:

X-men Apocalypse Movie Review

A small part of me really wishes that Bryan Singer was not the most consistent director of the X-Men movies. X-Men, the summer blockbuster from 2000, came out at a time when comic book movies were at an all-time low and basically kick-started a lot of the comic book movies we look up to today. So, no X-Men, no Captain America: Civil War. With that in mind, though, it really doesn't hold up all that well today; the production looks cheap, the actors, despite a great cast, deliver underwhelming performances, and its plot line is pretty simplistic. Singer's not what I would call a bad director, but he is pretty uninspired. Even his slightly superior sequel doesn't exactly rank up as one of my all-time favorites. (That title belongs to Matthew Vaughn's prequel, X-Men: First Class, an amazing adaptation that relies on his energetic and crisp style, along with a powerhouse screenplay, to look past an admittedly rushed production to deliver one of the gems of comic book movies.) What I do realize after seeing X-Men Apocalypse, however, is that Singer knows the film franchise from front to back and is willing to utilize that knowledge to his advantage, and that's precisely what he did with this film, delivering one of the more well-paced and well-developed entries into the franchise, even if it's not the most well-constructed.

This time around, the team, still in their young First Class incarnation, has to fight against the world's first mutant known as En Sabah Nur, otherwise known as Apocalypse, who's brought back to life after thousands of years and seeks to destroy the world and start life anew. He gathers up a series of followers to assist him in his havoc, including Magneto and a woman named Ororo Munroe (known to fans as Storm).

.... I can't really talk about any more plot without diving into spoilers.

I feel like the biggest reason why critics were split on this movie is because it's not very traditional storytelling, at least not for comic book movies. Most of the time, a comic book movie is able to go from point A to point B, much like the recent Deadpool. However, this film is more like jumping back and forth between points A, B, and C, with all of them eventually pointing to D. This is the kind of "in-cohesive" complaint that comes across blockbusters like Spider-Man 3 or the third Pirates of the Caribbean. However, I didn't mind this as much for two reasons: One, it did all have a point, and it was at least all about the X-Men; they didn't cut away from the main plot to focus on some snobby teen job hunting (LOOKING AT YOU, TRANSFORMERS 3); and two, every plot line had time to develop and breathe as it needed to, most likely the reason why this turned out to be the longest of the X-Men movies, which gave it a rather epic feel to it that made it one of the most emotionally powerful of them all.

That's not to say the film doesn't have a few problems either. For one, Apocalypse is kind of a bland villain; he's mostly there to spew out this "EPIC" dialogue, as if he thinks he's quoting the Bible or something, and his costume and make-up look like a Power Rangers getup. Alongside that, though, Bryan Singer's bland, smooth style really makes me wanna beg Vaughn to come back.

On the whole, though, I do appreciate how well they handled the emotional side of the story. I almost feel like this was the powerhouse epic that the franchise was building up to, and I suppose it did take a director that was there for most of the movies to assemble it consistently and properly. I'd say check it out!

Money Monster Movie Review (SPOILERS!)

This has been a very strange experience for me, folks. I had to sleep on this, I had to work my way through every bit of what I've experienced, and now, I'm just sitting here asking myself "How?" How could these top-notch, Oscar-worthy actors say yes to such a nonsensical, absurd, blown-out-of-proportion screenplay? How could Jodie Foster bring her well-constructed style to such a mess of a story? Frankly, there's really only one way I can break this down, and that's to.... Well, break this down. Beyond this paragraph, my review is going to hold major spoilers, as I look at the plot scene-by-scene and attempt to explain why this film doesn't work. But to put it bluntly now: I like the performances, I like the directorial style, and there's a few funny lines every once in a while, but honestly, I'm too baffled by the plot to recommend it. But if you want to see it and you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading from here.

Captain America: Civil War Movie Review

What can you say about this one? Marvel has beaten all odds by this point. Most franchises die after the fourth movie, but Marvel has made thirteen movies without failing once, in box office, critical reception, or even fan reception. Now, we have a long line-up of characters that we would love to see in the ultimate showdown, and that's what Marvel ends up delivering on. The strange thing, though, is that even if you didn't follow these characters and you weren't concerned about them brawling, Captain America: Civil War would still be a gripping story with well-developed, fleshed-out, relatable characters that marks the high point in the Marvel legacy (yes, even better than The Avengers).

The film picks up where the last Captain America film, Winter Soldier, left off. Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans, receives word that his friend, Bucky Barnes, is out to kill him. However, things get complicated when the United Nations decides to pass the Sokovia Accords, which will allow them to supervise and better control the Avengers. Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., gives his consent to this, feeling guilty for a lot of the havoc (as well as death) that occurred in the events of Age of Ultron. Because of this, Steve feels that the government won't give Bucky the trial that he deserves, so he decides to detain him himself and help him get his head straight and remember who he is. Stark, simply trying to follow the law, takes action against Steve's rebellious actions, resulting in the Avengers splitting apart into two separate teams and going to war against each other in one of the biggest clashes in comic book history.

What sets this apart from being a basic clash of superheroes that we could have seen in a Youtube parody is the compelling drama in place. You know there's a disagreement going on, you know there's no contrast, and yet you agree with both sides. Conflicting ideals and high-stake drama like this make the action that much more gripping, something Snyder missed with Batman v Superman a month ago.

But while we're on the matter, let's talk about the superhero roster here. The old characters from the previous movies are well-handled and stick to their previous personalities, but the new characters are surprisingly given just enough development time as well. Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther delivers a well-developed origin story that fans most likely didn't expect to get until his stand-alone movie, and while Tom Holland's role as Spider-Man is brief, it's well-served and believable. I was even pleasantly surprised by the appearance of Paul Rudd as Ant-Man.

I would say that I recommend you check this out, but let's be honest, you probably already did. What, you didn't? WELL, GO SEE IT THEN!

Rating: