Reel Entropy

I’d warn for spoilers, but it’s a Nicholas Sparks movie. You all know exactly what’s going to happen.

This movie is about two star-crossed lovers — bull rider Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood), who is struggling to come back from a concussion he sustained a year before, and attentive college senior and sorority girl Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson), who already has an art curation internship lined up for her impending graduation. She’s initially unwilling to join her sisters at the rodeo, where they plan on meeting all the hot guys, but through the magic of peer pressure, she’s there on time and dressed exactly like everyone else to boot.

What chance! What moonlit magic! By some twist of fate, our two heroes catch each other’s eye! After Collins’ ride, the rodeo clowns serendipitously all go out for a cup of coffee at the same time, leaving Collins to clamber over the enclosure toward Danko. He leaves her his hat, as he knows fate and hormones will bring them back together. Continue reading →

So, the grey ATV in this scene is bulletproof, and when the convoy opens fire, they all do this cool thing where the other cars pull back and line up behind it. But really, why was it at the back in the first place? It couldn’t be an issue of speed, since the car kept up with them on the way there. More to the point, why aren’t any of the other cars bulletproof? Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

Binge-watching almost the entire Fast and the Furious series in preparation for Furious 7, I developed a bit of a soft spot for the series. For the first time, I was really able to appreciate action movies purely for the action. Instead of being tiresome, it was a fun and eye-opening binge, which is why Furious 7 was so disappointing.

The movie is set in motion when Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), brother of Fast & Furious 6 villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), swears vengeance on Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew. He quickly hospitalizes Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and kills Han Solo (Sung Kang) for their scheduling conflicts, then moves on to Toretto. After their initial clash, Toretto is approached by top government man Frank Petty (Kurt Russell), who assigns him to rescue Megan Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), inventor of the God’s Eye tracking software that hacks into every camera in the world simultaneously, which Petty promises to loan Toretto so he can hunt Shaw on his own terms.

The key word with this movie is “overboard,” and it applies to just about every aspect in some very subtle ways.

Continue reading →

James King (Will Ferrell) is being hugely racist here, and is put in mortal peril for his ignorance. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

If you don’t know what people mean when they talk about casual racism, check out Get Hard.

After James King (Will Ferrell) is framed for embezzlement and insider trading and sentenced to 10 years in maximum security, he offers $30,000 to his building’s in-house car washer Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart), who he assumes has been to prison because he’s black, to train him to protect himself during his 30 day grace period.

This movie puts casual racism and homophobia on display in two settings — both overtly with a supremely naive main character, but also subvertly with amorphous masses of stereotype-affirming black, Hispanic and gay people.

Continue reading →

Sorry Beyonce, but you’re not the only girl in the world. Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Watching Home, a viewer may well find his or herself contemplating his own existence. What meaning can one’s life really have if one is watching this movie?

The movie follows Oh (Jim Parsons), a clumsy member of a peaceful but invasive alien species. The boov are on the run from the Gorgs, a world-destroying race that has been after them for centuries. The boov come to Earth, relocate everyone to Australia and move in, thinking they are finally safe, but Oh sends an interstellar email to apparently everyone in the universe inviting them to his housewarming party. Oh becomes a fugitive as the rest of his culture tries to hunt him down for his password so they can retract the message — this movie really has no concept of how email works — and in his flight, he bands together with Tip (Rihanna), a human who was missed in the evacuation and separated from her mother.

They say that when you die your life flashes before your eyes, and it’s natural to wonder what we’ll see. We accumulate good experiences, surely hoping they will dominate, and many that cannot will learn to appreciate bad experiences because they’re better than simply lounging about while our bodies slowly decay — bleeding just to know you’re alive, the song goes.

Home isn’t enough of an experience to be bad. That decaying sensation is much more prevalent. As the dull, predictable road movie drags on, viewers are sure to at least consider what they could have been doing with this time, if not fully realizing the emptiness of their lives. Continue reading →

Naomi Watts is 46 and does not look anywhere near old enough to be playing Theo James’ mother, to the point that it actually took me out of the movie because I thought they were going too far to make the cast sexy. Photos courtesy Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate

Insurgent picks up six months after then first film with the lead characters’ discovery that the machines are drilling into Zion. Wait a minute…

Insurgent picks up three days after Divergent with the lead characters on the run from the Erudite ruling class, which assumed power from the lead characters’ home class Abnegation in the first movie. They are quickly found and sent on the run again, and spend the majority of the film continuing on the run, organizing an insurrection as they go. Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley) suffers nightmares and acute guilt, as she holds herself responsible for much of the death in Divergent. Eventually, she is forced to give herself up to Erudite for experimentation on a weird box the bad guy, Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet), found.

All of this is shot in a way obviously inspired by The Matrix series and Inception, with repeated use of that Nightmare on Elm Street trick in which the dream sequences are revealed in surprising, organic ways.

Insurgent carries over Divergent’s poor, jarring pacing, which is its biggest problem. Situations change too fast for the audience to find any footing. Tense situations end before they peak, and eventually, they stop developing any tension at all since the audience is so ready to be whisked swiftly to the next scene.

Continue reading →