Reel Entropy

2GUNS is… so… bizarre!

The… buddy cop? movie pairs Drug Enforcement Administration agent Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington) with Naval Intelligence officer Micheal Stigman (Mark Walhberg) as robbers — at first. After robbing a bank where they thought a Mexican drug lord (Edward James Olmos) was stashing his American cash and finding $43 million of the CIA’s money, a wild series of double-crosses ensues and pairs the duo as cops against both the cartel and the corrupt agency.

This movie is worth a watch for the cinematographic discord alone. To say it’s a light-hearted movie about dark subject matter is a half-truth, but that’s the simplest way to put it.

The plot is a veritable circle-jerk of U.S. law enforcement agencies at each other’s throats to the point that the cocaine trade is an afterthought. Narrative expectations are largely satisfied, but not… quite. An all-star supporting cast somehow includes James Marsden and Bill Paxton.

And of course none of these aspects are used for social commentary or raising cinematic quality, but they make the movie more interesting. Normally, that’d be points off for lack of ambition, but there’s too much that’s random about this film to know what director Baltasar Kormákur was going for. Some of the more jarring points include the setting being vague to the point that the audience never really knows whether they’re in Mexico or Texas and Earl’s (Paxton) out-of-place mafia scariness.

The movie also has plenty of objectively good and bad elements, and counting those might be the best way to evaluate it. Walhberg is quicker-mouthed and funnier than any character he’s ever played, and he betrays his rarely-tapped talent here. The action is fairly spectacular, not bad but just short of something special. Though it avoids genuine intrigue, the plot is amusingly convoluted.

On the flipside, the movie gets progressively worse and more generic as it goes on. It feels longer than it is, which is always a bad sign. It does that annoying thing where the first sequence is in the middle of the movie, but everything else is in chronological order for no discernable reason.

Maybe I’m overthinking 2GUNS and it’s really just an average action movie, but there’s something about it that just doesn’t fit within traditional narrative structures.

Joshua Knopp is a formerly professional film critic, licensed massage therapist, journalism and film student at the University of North Texas and a staff writer for the NT Daily. He does not sleep. For questions, rebuttals and further guidance about cinema, you can reach him at reelentropy@gmail.com. At this point, I’d like to remind you that you shouldn’t actually go to movies and form your own opinions. That’s what I’m here for. Be sure to come back this weekend for a review of Elysium.

It’s important that The Wolverine be a good movie, and… it is… kind of…

The film follows Marvel’s indestructible-yet-oddly-sympathetic superhero (Hugh Jackman, who also produces) as he wanders to Japan to say goodbye to a man whose life he’d saved in World War II. Set after X-Men 3, Logan fights depression over killing Jean Grey (Framke Janssen) and is reluctant to return to violent heroism. However, a bizarre combination of plots make him the only line of defense for Mariko Yashida (Tao Okamoto), who is/will become one of the most powerful people in corporate Japan.

Modern American superhero trilogies have been around for 13 years now, and The Wolverine instantly becomes the best part three the trend has produced (no, it’s not technically the third movie in a series of three, but the basic character arc indicates that blah blah blah it’s a part three OK? Deal with it). Comparing it to such catastrophes as Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight Rises is a low bar to set, but it’s fun to see the end of the story arc executed well.

Because The Wolverine is the only movie in its class that’s not completely stupid, I like this movie a lot more than I should. It’s not like the movie is bad, exactly. The action is wild and fun, particularly the bullet-train sequence. Wolverine’s odd chemistry with samurai culture is on full display, and they don’t get too far on the romantic or anti-foreign sides of the scale. Jackman is up to par, as usual, and the Wolverine he brings to life in this movie is particularly emotional. Comedy is well-placed and genuine.

Sadly, speaking objectively, The Wolverine’s flaws do outweigh its good points. The dialogue always has a poorly-thought-out undercurrent, and though it never becomes stupid outright, some of Logan’s lines are pretty wacky. It’s tough to track some of the characters’ motivations. The last act kind of falls apart.

It’s good. It should be good. It needs to be good. It’s… OK. Older fans of the comic book character will get to see a good storyline brought to life, along with great if obscure villains like Silver Samurai and Lady Hydra. Fans of the film character, now his own entity, will get to see him finish his journey, for once in an acceptable film.

It’s just not as good as I want it to be.

X-Men: The Days of Future Past is scheduled to come out next year, and is a prime candidate to completely alienate comic fans from adaptations if it’s done poorly. That’ll probably be just OK too. Dealing now with time and multiple Professor X’s and Magneto’s, the X-Men cinematic universe is teetering on the brink of incredible silliness. Here’s hoping they do it right.

Joshua Knopp is a formerly professional film critic, licensed massage therapist, journalism and film student at the University of North Texas and a staff writer for the NT Daily. If you spoil Breaking Bad for him, he might actually kill you. For questions, rebuttals and further guidance about cinema, you can reach him at reelentropy@gmail.com. At this point, I’d like to remind you that you shouldn’t actually go to movies and form your own opinions. That’s what I’m here for. Be sure to come back tomorrow for a review of 2 Guns.

If The Conjuring is the first horror movie you ever see, it might actually be scary.

The film is based on the most malevolent supposedly-true preternatural encounter experienced by real-life demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson). In the new Rhode Island home of Carolyn and Roger Perron (Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston), self-shutting doors, stranger-than-usual sleepwalking sessions and obviously dead apparitions have them searching for the Warrens’ brand of help.

Haunted shenanigans continue and escalate through the film. There are some sub-plots. You know. Sit there for a couple hours, and a feature-length film just sort of happens.

The Conjuring relies heavily on clichés established in better movies. The Exorcist, The Sixth Sense and Paranormal Activity are all more entertaining and more important, and The Conjuring is essentially a mash-up of the three with the scariness, meaningfulness and importance as a film toned way down.

There seems to be a lot about this movie that was only good in theory. Director James Wan uses a bunch of strange shots that are supposed to give the movie a scary atmosphere, but just come off as weird. The Warrens give seminars and talk to journalists to refer to a larger world and make the movie seem more real, but in practice it’s just filler material. About a third of the way through, ghosts with scary makeup show up, but their visual portrayal underwhelms relative to their buildup. They are much scarier before actually hitting the screen.

There’s really no dress to put onto this film. The Conjuring is 112 minutes of telegraphed scares, obvious and tired clichés and boredom. There is nothing distinguishing this as a film and no reason to watch it over the movies it’s obviously imitating.

Joshua Knopp is a formerly professional film critic, licensed massage therapist, journalism and film student at the University of North Texas and a staff writer for the NT Daily. He can very easily put a price on fuel efficiency. For questions, rebuttals and further guidance about cinema, you can reach him at reelentropy@gmail.com. At this point, I’d like to remind you that you shouldn’t actually go to movies and form your own opinions. That’s what I’m here for. Be sure to come back later this week for a review of The Wolverine.

Pacific Rim is the best movie of the summer by a country mile.

I could expound on the plot, but it doesn’t matter. It’s giant monsters vs. giant robots. A wormhole opens in a fracture in the Pacific Ocean and giant monsters come out of it and attack coastal cities. After American armor takes six days to stop the first one, the world’s armies throw aside their differences to build… yeah. Giant monsters vs. giant robots.

It’s actually much more intricate than that. The giant robots are too complex to control mechanically, so they have to be controlled mentally. But they’re too big to be controlled mentally by one person, so each “jaeger” has two pilots assigned to it who have to be in synch with each other at all times. This aspect adds a human element and context for complex relationships and a plot.

The film takes place after jaegers have fallen by the wayside because “kaijus” are emerging from the ocean faster and better adapted to fight, to the point that the mechas aren’t economically feasible and the U.N. has decided to build a giant wall around the ocean.

Early in the film, a kaiju is shown getting through the wall in about an hour, so clearly that’s not going to work. The four remaining jaegers must find a way to collapse the portal before the kaijus are coming too fast to handle.

Go see this movie. Want to see fantastic martial arts sequences? Go see this movie. Want to see the truest, least contrived cinema romance in years? Go see this movie. Want to see a giant monster choke to death on the husk of Ron Perlman? Go see this movie.

Pacific Rim is everything a blockbuster should be, and more importantly, these days at least, it’s nothing that a blockbuster shouldn’t be. Every summer, film after pulpy film slithers through the theatres, its every action sequence marred by obvious physical impossibilities, its every special effect obviously a computer graphic plastered onto film. Audiences walk out with their big action itch satisfied, but somehow still feeling cheated by the lack of care or thought put into the movie. This is a genre that is inexorably and inexplicably monopolized by the stupid and the careless. But this film has neither affliction.

The dialogue, while never really the focus, is clever enough to not take away from the main event — giant monsters vs. giant robots. Just enough context is added that the audience cares about the outcome, and the big kids are off to the races, but the dialogue is good enough that it feels like there’s more than that going on. It feels like there are real people piloting and commanding these mechas, and a real world that stands to be destroyed by the Godzilla-surrogates

Writer/director/producer Guillermo Del Toro is spot on with his creatures here — every kaiju and jaeger has its own on-screen personality and soul. But he knocks the script and non-giant scenes out of the park, too– a rarity for a director known for cool creatures but not much else. Charlies Hunnam and Day, alongside the incomparable Idris Elba, deliver sterling performances that drive the surprisingly OK dialogue.

Pacific Rim is a movie you can watch out of the corner of your eye, a movie you can latch both eyes on to and a movie you can actually think about without losing value to the viewer. It’s Godzilla without the camp and semi-racist context. It’s Transformers without Michael Bay.

There’s too much narration at the start, but that’s the only problem. That’s it. It is almost flawless, and simply being flawless within its oft-flawed genre makes Pacific Rim perfect within greater moviedom.

Joshua Knopp is a formerly professional film critic, licensed massage therapist, journalism and film student at the University of North Texas and a staff writer for the NT Daily. Unlike the State of Florida, he does not think it’s OK to murder suspicious-looking teens. For questions, rebuttals and further guidance about cinema, you can reach him at reelentropy@gmail.com. At this point, I’d like to remind you that you shouldn’t actually go to movies and form your own opinions. That’s what I’m here for. Be sure to come back later this week for a review of The Conjuring.

Despicable Me 2 is just so wonderful.

The sequel to the 2010 hit sees Gru (Steve Carell) returning to action to help the Anti-Villain League. The league has lost a mutating agent, and to catch a supervillain, they feel they need one. Gru’s calm life as a single father is thrown out the door as he hunts villains, his daughter’s suitors and love.

In American sequels, producers typically try to identify the best part of the first movie and accentuate it. Oddly, while minions are clearly the best part of Despicable Me, they are minimized in the sequel. They have their own scenes, and those are funny, but the majority of the screen time is dedicated to Gru and Lucy (Kristen Wiig). But that implies there’s something wrong with Gru and Lucy’s romance, and really there isn’t. I wish the minions were in it more, but that’s the only gripe.

Despicable Me 2 carries all the super-absurdity anyone could expect from cartoons since The Incredibles and Megamind set the bar for the niche genre.

It’s a bit of a tap-in from the studio, but that doesn’t matter. The film is delightful and wonderful without qualification, and everyone should enjoy it.

A spin-off film, Minions, is set for 2014 release.

Joshua Knopp is a formerly professional film critic, licensed massage therapist, journalism and film student at the University of North Texas and a staff writer for the NT Daily. He loves Moira Applebaum soooo much. For questions, rebuttals and further guidance about cinema, you can reach him at reelentropy@gmail.com. At this point, I’d like to remind you that you shouldn’t actually go to movies and form your own opinions. That’s what I’m here for. Be sure to come back later this week for a review of Pacific Rim.