Film Review: "The Darkest Minds" (2018).

"If you're one of us, come find us." This is The Darkest Minds. This dystopian science fiction thriller film directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, adapted by Chad Hodge, and based on Alexandra Bracken's young adult novel of the same name. When teens mysteriously develop powerful new abilities, they are declared a threat by the government and detained. Sixteen-year-old Ruby, one of the most powerful young people anyone has encountered, escapes her camp and joins a group of runaway teens seeking safe haven. Soon this newfound family realizes that, in a world in which the adults in power have betrayed them, running is not enough and they must wage a resistance, using their collective power to take back control of their future.

In mid September 2014, it was announced that 20th Century Fox had bought the film rights to Bracken's young adult novel, the first book in her The Darkest Minds series, with Hodge hired the adapt it. In mid July 2016, it was reported that animation director Jennifer Yuh Nelson had been hired to direct the film, and it would be her first live-action project. In late September, Amandla Stenberg was cast to play the lead role of Ruby Daly. By April 2017, Harris Dickinson, Mandy Moore, Bradley Whitford, Gwendoline Christie, Miya Cech, Skylan Brooks, and Patrick Gibson. Around the same time, principal photography commenced, and took place in Atlanta, Georgia.

The film stars Stenberg, Dickinson, Moore, Whitford, Christie, Cech, Brooks, and Gibson. The cast add personality and physicality to the limp script they're acting out. Sternberg makes for more than uncertain enough of a hero to add detail and meaning to the implosion of this world. There's little artifice to her performance, and the mundane honesty of her reactions create a believability that the world would otherwise lack. However, Sternberg's like a walking empathy battery, wide-open emotionally, easy to read and enormously appealing. Dickinson manages the considerable accomplishment of seeming like a real grown-up man. He makes the character's transformation from hardass to collaborator seem natural, if inevitable. Dickinson is incredibly natural onscreen. Ultimately, the cast tried valiantly to save the day, but the performances, like the film, is chock-full of holes at times.

Unlike the Harry Potter series' tangible, fully dimensional Hogwarts or The Hunger Games' colorfully variegated districts, The Darkest Minds' vision of an unknown dystopian future doesn't have much to distinguish it from a standard-issue post-apocalyptic pic. At least The Hunger Games spawned two terrific movies and a breakthrough star in Jennifer Lawrence. Onscreen, the film ignites only indifference. With an adherence to YA formula that undercuts its individualistic message, the film opens its planned trilogy in disappointingly predictable fashion. The film has great ideas and some terrific character work, but it's given such uneven attention, alternately languished upon and glossed over. The film is more interesting than the average bad movie precisely because it so gratuitously, and even thematically, fails to fit together. The film is simply a plodding and generic dystopian drama.

Simon says The Darkest Minds receives:

Also, see my review for Kung Fu Panda 3.

Film Review: "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018).

"Some missions are not a choice." This is Mission: Impossible - Fallout. This action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It is the sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series, and the sequel to Rogue Nation (2015). Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, along with some familiar allies, race against time after a mission gone wrong.

Talks for a sixth Mission: Impossible film began prior to the release of Rogue Nation in 2015. In November 2015, the film was officially green-lit, with McQuarrie confirming his return as writer and director, as well as producer alongside Cruise, with plans to begin shooting in August 2016. By June 2017, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Michelle Monaghan, and Alec Baldwin were all confirmed to reprise their roles. In the same month, Henry Cavill and Angela Bassett were confirmed to join the cast. Principal photography began in April 2017, and concluded in March 2018. Locations included the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Norway and the United Arab Emirates. Filming lasted 161 shooting days, a few months of filming was halted due to Cruise's injury with his ankle while performing a stunt in London. In August 2017, he was able to grab onto the other building thanks to a harness strapped onto him, but his ankle fractured upon the impact of the jump. Cruise then got up and attempted to run it off, which was what the scene called for, before he and the crew decided to stop filming. The footage of the stunt used in the film and its trailers just so happened to be the actual injury.

The cast includes Cruise, Rhames, Pegg, Ferguson, Harris, Monaghan and Baldwin, with Cavill and Bassett. The performances given by the cast made this instalment more action-packed than its predecessor. Cruise once again proves he is an action star without equal by uping the ante. But Cavill and Harris proved to be less than memorable or intimidating adversaries, giving wooden and under-utilized performances.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout continues the franchise's thrilling resurgence. Somehow, the franchise keeps topping itself, and this instalment proves to be one of the most entertaining Ethan Hunt adventures. The franchise still has plenty of fight left in it, with no signs of slowing down. However, rather than go full auteur on the formulaic material, McQuarrie instead offers a kind of greatest-hits package: Fallout marries the shifting loyalties of Brian De Palma's original to the kinetic action beats of John Woo's series nadir and the all-set-piece structure of Brad Bird's series zenith, yet adding a less omnipotent villain than the one Philip Seymour Hoffman played in J.J. Abrams' entry. In some ways, it’s the least visually or conceptually distinctive of the five movies, leaning on what's worked before rather than forging its own path. Nonetheless, it's still breathlessly thrilling to the point where all you can do is pick your jaw off your lap and grin at the breathtakingly bananas spectacle you've just witnessed.

Simon says Mission: Impossible - Fallout receives:

Also, see my review for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

Film Review: "Blindspotting" (2018).

"Change The Way You See" with Blindspotting. This comedy-drama film directed by Carlos López Estrada, and written by Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. Collin must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning in his Oakland, Calif., neighborhood. His bond with his volatile best friend soon gets tested when Collin sees a police officer shoot a suspect in the back during a chase through the streets. Things soon come to a head when the buddies attend a party at the upscale home of a young and wealthy tech entrepreneur.

The screenplay was written by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs over a period of nine years. Daveed, who grew up in Oakland, and Rafael, who grew up in bordering Berkeley, California, felt that cinematic portrayals of the San Francisco Bay Area have constantly "missed something". They wanted to draw attention to the culture, community, and sense of "heightened reality" that shape life in Oakland. The film addresses issues of gentrification, police violence, and racism. Diggs and Casal said about 90% of the film is a result of the first draft, with various rewrites done as filming took place to update it to reflect modern times. Due to Diggs being constantly busy performing in Hamilton, the pair had to delay the film for an extended period of time. By June 2017, Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Wayne Knight, and Leland Orser rounded out the film's cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and lasted for twenty-two days. Filming took place in Oakland, California.

The film stars Diggs, Casal, Gavankar, Jones, Embry, Campbell-Martin, Ambudkar, Knight, and Orser. Diggs and Casal come over as hard-boiled city guys, total cynics with a world-view of sublime simplicity, and that all fits perfectly with the film's other parts. There's even room, in the midst of the emotional drama, for a surprising amount of grace, humor, and whimsy.

The film is, by any objective standard, a messy wreck. That this is so does not in anyway change that it is an absolutely wonderful movie. The humor is predicated on underplaying in overscaled situations, which is sporadically funny in a Keaton-esque way but soon sputters out through sheer, uninspired repetition. The story is thin, but there's a consistently wonderful over-the-top mentality. It's many excesses just make this brilliant slapstick musical even more enjoyable. The film is a big, loud, often obnoxious, but surprisingly sweet-tempered. There's even room, in the midst of the carnage and mayhem, for a surprising amount of grace, humor, and whimsy. At times, the film is formless, chaotic and lazy, and quite brilliant because of it. The film can be an undisciplined, overlong tale that substitutes spectacle or a coherent narrative. This short and underdeveloped comedy-drama has an energy and individuality lacking in similar films nowadays. The film retains a huge contemporary kick, thanks in large part to Digg and Casal's easy rapport, a smattering of daft, shaggy humour and some truly emotionally dramatic moments.

Simon says Blindspotting receives:

Film Review: "Shock and Awe" (2018).

"The Truth Matters" in Shock and Awe. This political drama film directed by Rob Reiner and written by Joey Hartstone. In 2003, as the Bush administration prepares to invade Iraq, skeptical journalists question the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.

By early October 2016, Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, Milla Jovovich, Richard Schiff, and Reiner were cast in a political drama to be directed by Reiner and written by Hartstone, marking their second collaboration after LBJ (2016). At the same time, principal photography commenced, and took place in Louisiana and Washington, D.C.

The film stars Harrelson, Marsden, Reiner, Jones, Biel, Jovovich, and Schiff. The cast delivered powerhouse performances in this straightforward, solid political drama. The best thing the director has going for him is his cast. Reiner has enough spice to keep the viewer alert and attentive with this cast. The cast captures dogged, hardworking approach to politics. They inject pace, energy and colour into a familiar storytelling approach that flicks back and forth across the period. Harrelson and Marsden gave it all they had as the gruff, emotionally needy and politically savvy reporters. It's well-calibrated performances, with Harrelson and Marsden convincingly conveying how Landay and Strobel felt the weight of the world on their shoulders and took on that challenge in mostly admirable ways.

Here the physical and the verbal prevail over the analytic. This ends up placing the film in the category of conventional biopic. There's nothing in the film, and certainly nothing in the scene in question, that conveys anything but the most blasé of platitudes. When the film isn't cracking jokes the film explores Landay and Strobel's desire to inform the public and fears of rejection but doesn't go far enough to ensure compelling results. The film is a consistently compelling history lesson, which puts the spotlight on two men who are forced to navigate the country through one of the most pivotal periods of the last century. There is a richer film here than the generically-told one that Reiner gives us, despite Harrelson's plucky firebrand of a performance. The film isn't a satire like Oliver Stone's serious lampoon of a political scion. It's something less - and weirder. This third-rate but expedient film regrets the decency we've lost and that Reiner is nostalgic for. The film is too conventional and too scattered to add anything of substance or interest to the story. A great, award-worthy performance and some decent dialogue in an otherwise truncated feeling movie. The film captures a tumultuous political era and one of its most profanely colorful leaders with a good deal of insight and emotional torque. Here, Reiner's more like an efficient ride operator, unconcerned about the clankiness of the machinery but certain you'll enjoy the stuff that's supposed to work. Reiner's film fails to do justice to both the men and the fraught times he so fundamentally influenced. A fairly standard-issue political docu-drama that's likely to hold your interest without being especially enlightening or vivid.

Simon says Shock and Awe receives:

Also, see my review for LBJ.

Film Review: "Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle" ("ゴジラ: 決戦機動増殖都市") (2018).

"The last hope of mankind <Mechagodzilla>, is activated" in Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle. This Japanese computer-animated science fiction kaiju film directed by Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita, written by Gen Urobuchi, produced by Toho Animation, and animated by Polygon Pictures. This is the 33rd film in the Godzilla franchise, the 31st Godzilla film produced by Toho, and the second entry in the anime trilogy. It is the sequel to Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017). Haruo and his allies encounter a mysterious aboriginal tribe descended from the humans left behind on Earth 20,000 years ago, and they uncover a mechanized city-sized fortress formed from the long-lost anti-Godzilla weapon called Mechagodzilla.

The second installment in the anime trilogy was announced in a second post-credits scene in the theatrical release of the film revealing the film's Japanese title, poster featuring Mechagodzilla and the film's 2018 release date. The film's Japanese title was revealed as Gojira: Kessen Kidō Zōshoku Toshi (translations varied from Godzilla: Battle Mobile Breeding City to Godzilla: The City Mechanized for the Final Battle), while the English title was later revealed as Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle. In March 2018, the film's official website revealed a new poster, plot details, and that singer XAI will return to perform the film's theme song The Sky Falls. The English dub was produced by Post Haste Digital. Takayuki Hattori will return to compose the soundtrack, marking it his fourth Godzilla film score.

This film features Mechagodzilla, Godzilla's mechanical doppelganger that was first introduced in Gojira tai Mekagojira (1974), and made its most recent appearance in Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003). Mechagodzilla was originally a weapon constructed by alien invaders, but in subsequent films has typically been portrayed as a human-built weapon created to defend the human race from Godzilla and other monsters. This version of Mechagodzilla combines both portrayals, with it being built by the Bilusaludo aliens but with the purpose of defending the Earth from Godzilla. This will be the first Godzilla film to be a sequel to a prior film in the franchise since Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003), which was a direct sequel to Gojira X Mekagojira (2002). All films released since then have been set in brand-new continuities and disregard all previous entries in the franchise.

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle is a dub, empty popcorn movie that delivers on some of its promises, while boasting the best computer-generated animation of any Polygon Pictures movie made up to that point. There are some problems, such as an uninspired script, underdeveloped ideas, a fairly simplistic plot, and character relationships painted in broad strokes. But when all is said and done, I enjoyed it. It's well-made enough that makes for an entertaining hundred minutes. While this movie seems to be aimed at a younger audience, it was still fun. The fight scenes were exciting and though they took up most of the movie, they never dragged on or got boring. A fun enough action film with enough explosions and destruction to satisfy die-hards and casual fans alike.

Simon says Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (ゴジラ: 決戦機動増殖都市) receives:

Also, see my review for Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (ゴジラ: 怪獣惑星).

Film Review: "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation" (2018).

"He's going to need a vacation after this vacation." This is Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. This computer-animated comedy film directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, written by Tartakovsky and Michael McCullers, and produced by Sony Pictures Animation. The monster family embarks on a vacation on a luxury monster cruise ship so Drac can take a summer vacation from providing everyone else's vacation at the hotel. It's smooth sailing for Drac's Pack as the monsters indulge in all of the shipboard fun the cruise has to offer, from monster volleyball to exotic excursions, and catching up on their moon tans. But the dream vacation turns into a nightmare when Mavis realizes Drac has fallen for the mysterious captain of the ship, Ericka, who hides a dangerous secret that could destroy all of monsterkind.

In September 2015, before the release of Hotel Transylvania 2, Sony was "talking about number 3 and moving forward and taking the franchise to the next level." In the same month, Tartakovsky revealed that he would not be returning, due to working on Can You Imagine? Even though the project would later be shelved. Tartakovsky told TheWrap that "two is enough. I have a lot of other ideas, and I kind of have to express them and have them come out." In November 2015, Sony Pictures Animation announced that the third film, under the tentative title of Hotel Transylvania 3. It was also confirmed that Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key, Molly Shannon, and Mel Brooks would return to reprise their roles. In June 2016, Sony and Tartakovsky confirmed that he would be returning for the film, despite previously leaving the series to develop other projects, including the final season of Samurai Jack. According to Tartakovsky, he returned after he got an inspiration from a "miserable" family vacation and major inspiration for the film from the Chevy Chase National Lampoon's Vacation movies as the film would take place aboard a cruise ship. Another idea for the film was to properly introduce Van Helsing. An idea that was dropped from the first film where Johnny was a descendant of Van Helsing, which would have created more conflict between Dracula and Johnny. By early November 2017, the film had been entitled as Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. Despite having a September 21, 2018 release date, the film was pushed forward two months to allow Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018) to take that date, though that film would later be pushed back a month to October 12th the same year.

The film features the voice talents of Sandler, Samberg, Gomez, James, Spade, Buscemi, Key, Shannon, and Brooks, reprising their roles, with new additions Kathryn Hahn and Jim Gaffigan. Despite giving hilarious performances, one can't help but feel that the series has become a rickety skeleton designed for Sandler and company to drop their litany of cornball punchlines and gags.

While Genndy Tartakovsky's animation is top-notch, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation doesn't live up to the first two monster mash.

Simon says Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation receives:

Also, see my review for Hotel Transylvania 2 and Samurai Jack.

Film Review: "Sorry to Bother You" (2018).

"Destiny is calling" in Sorry to Bother You. This dark comedy film written and directed by Boots Riley, in his directorial debut. In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success, propelling him into a universe of greed.

Riley describes the film as "an absurdist dark comedy with aspects of magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing". The screenplay was inspired by his own time working as a telemarketer and telefundraiser in California and his need to put on a different voice to find success. In 2012, Riley finished the screenplay, and with no means to produce it, recorded an album of the same title with his band The Coup, inspired by the story. In 2014, the screenplay was originally published in full as part of McSweeney's issue 48. By late June 2017, it was announced that production would go forward on the film with Riley as director. In addition, Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, Forest Whitaker, David Cross, Lily James, Patton Oswalt, and Rosario Dawson were cast. At the same time, with a budget of $3.2 million, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in late July. Filming took place in Oakland, California.

The film stars Stanfield, Thompson, Hardwick, Crews, Glover, Yeun, Hammer, Whitaker, Cross, James, Oswalt, and Dawson. Stanfield lives it up as Cassius Green and swaggers into a staggering performance. Deplorable, hysterical, phenomenal. Stanfield runs away with Cassius, magnetic as he trains to hunt, brutally funny when high on greed, he turns on his "white" voice. Stanfield and Cross make an oddly perfect two sides of the same coin, as their dryly humorous performances throw contrast to the film's real comedic bread and butter, all of the eccentricities flying around them.

Riley roars back to the screen with the film, an almost two-hour show stuffed with dark humor, gross-out gags and one awesome performance by Stanfield. Riley has written a marvelously comedic script, with howlingly funny bits of dialogue. But perhaps its most magnificent accent is the delightful Stanfield in perhaps his best film yet. When the film focuses on Cassius' business and stays in the workplace, it is at its best, taking viewers on an exhilarating ride. But, oddly, the biggest problem with this film about excess and over indulgence is that it feels too excessive. Riley crafts a pithy script, laced with salacious one-liners, and he illuminates the best and the worst of the human race. While Riley's debut effort resembles The Wolf of Wall Street in its absurdist tone and progressively exhausting succession of wild occurrences, it's Do the Right Thing that is clearly the film's closest cousin. It is a good film but it's also polarizing. A viewer is either going to love it or hate it. The reason being not because the film itself is bad - it's an A+ effort on all fronts - but because the story is repulsive.

Simon says Sorry to Bother You receives: