Reel Entropy

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a huge blast and pretty much everyone should make time to go see it.

Everybody gives Megan Fox a lot of crap for not being very good at this whole acting thing, and she’s not, but this is what she’s acting against. It’s really not as easy a job as everybody says it is.

The movie follows its human lead, mostly — April O’Neal (Megan Fox), a journalist pigeonholed into semi-sexist fluff stories who dreams of getting a big break. Early in the film, she discovers four gigantic, vigilante turtles protecting New York City against the Foot Clan, a bizarre gang of ninjas with no real back story.

The difference between a good CGI action adventure and a bad one is this — the good one focuses on the human lead character. This character is forced to find a way to impact events that are entirely beyond her control. She serves as an entry point for the audience. Most viewers have a lot of trouble getting invested in this sort of movie without some sort of human interest, and this is the character that provides that interest.

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I want one. Like Charlie wants a golden ticket. I want one so bad… Photos courtesy Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios

Some of the initial Twitter reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy compared it to Star Wars, and that’s a pretty accurate comparison. Both movies do exactly the same thing — they take an old-as-dirt story and dress it up in space-opera attire, Star Wars taking directly from Arthurian legend and Guardians of the Galaxy being a much more generic five-man band story. This particular combination of old and new and bold and safe is what makes Star Wars possibly the best movie ever made for a general audience, and Guardians of the Galaxy follows in those footsteps well.

The anchoring protagonist is “Star-Lord” Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a space cowboy destined for greatness who was taken from his home at a young age because of his mother’s death and his father’s “death.” Over the first hour or so, he rounds up a group to help him recover a mysterious orb he stole during an introductory sequence — Gamora (Zoe Saldana), another hero with evil father issues; Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), another space cowboy/pirate who’s only out for himself; Groot (Vin Diesel), a significantly more adorable iteration of Chewbacca; and Drax (Dave Bautista), who parallels with… 3PO? I don’t know.

Over the course of a two-hour romp, the quintet takes on Darth Maul (Lee Pace), who wants to destroy all life on heavily-populated Xandar, for some reason. He reports to Thanos (Josh Brolin), who isn’t very important to this film.

So, yeah, the Star Wars parallels run a little deeper than the basic structure.

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As Hercules, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson– wait, that isn’t… oh shit, this is from the other 2014 swords-and-sandals Hercules movie. Photo courtesy Summit Entertainment

Brett Ratner has a unique and annoying knack for making movies that deliver everything they promise viewers, but are still somehow unsatisfying. Outside of the sublime Rush Hour trilogy, pretty much everything he’s ever made falls into this category.

His new movie, Hercules, strikes exactly these chords. Dwayne Johnson plays the titular demigod and does a good job of making the movie watchable. In this film, Hercules straddles the line between being a god and a mercenary with a divine reputation as he and his team train the Thracian army to ward off attacks from bloodthirsty Rheseus (Tobias Santelmann) and his army of centaurs. During training, Hercules wrestles with memories of the 12 Labors and visions of his lost wife and children who were killed by Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the underworld who’s death was Hercules’ last, uncompleted task for the gods.

The movie is actually very interesting. It’s unclear whether Hercules is the god of legend or a man who has fostered a larger-than-life reputation, and the film is constantly playing with the uncertainty. Glimpses of creatures from Greek myth are layered onto reality, only appearing in dreams or when the light hits them just right. The movie is open to wide interpretation.

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There’s not even very much action. Lucy mostly uses her psychic powers to just own everyone without really trying. Photo courtesy Universal Pictures.

Humans do not use only 10 percent of their brains. That’s fucking stupid, and if you believe it, you’re stupid.

Luc Besson’s new movie, Lucy, is based on this inexplicably wide-spread myth. Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is kidnapped and forced to smuggle drugs in her abdomen. The bag of drugs ruptures, and the intense dose allows her to access more of her brain. She uses her newfound brain powers at first to shut down the drug ring that kidnapped her, then explain the lame premise in further detail to brain researcher Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman).

What Besson has done here is build a bad movie sloppily on top of a good one. The first part of the story is cleverly intercut with rudimentary but effective natural equivalent sequences, such as a cheetah capturing a gazelle as the mobsters kidnap Lucy. It’s not the most original thing in the world, but it makes for an OK artsy experience.

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How did they know he’d grow up to look so much like Ethan Hawke? Witchcraft! Photos courtesy IFC Films.

As good as it is, Boyhood’s main characteristic is that it’s really, really long.

A unique and commendable production, the film as shot with the same actors of the course of 12 years. The script was written on the fly to reflect things happening in the lead actors’ lives. Over the course of the film, Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) grows up as the child of three divorces. His mother’s marriages collapse around him as background music gets more and more recent. There isn’t really a beginning, middle or ending to this film — it just sort of goes on.

Whether or not a viewer enjoys himself, it is a monumental exercise of disciplined filmmaking.

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