First good video game movie? First good video game movie!

Posted on April 17, 2018 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

9/10 Rampage has The Rock fist-bumping an albino gorilla. It’s fucking awesome!

In low orbit, a lab rat that has received Energyne’s secret gene mutation formula breaks free and barrels through a satellite testing facility. As the shuttle disintegrates, three remaining vials scatter across North America, including one that lands in the San Diego wildlife preserve where  Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) watches over George (Jason Liles), one of the last albino lowland gorillas in the world. Normally peaceful, if a bit of a pottymouth, George swells to twice his size overnight and begins recklessly destroying everything around him. As George berserks through San Diego and a similarly afflicted grey wolf thunders through the Wyoming mountains, killing for sport, Energyne’s evil CEO Claire Wyden (Malin Âkerman) activates a sub-sonic broadcast to summon her creations to headquarters. George and Ralph stampede to Chicago and just trash the place — all while a previously unknown monster, Lizzie the crocodile, storms up the Illinois river.

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Silence is golden in outstanding creature feature ‘A Quiet Place’

Posted on April 7, 2018 by reelentropy

A Quiet Place uses ambient sound to enhance its characters’ silence. Images courtesy Paramount Pictures.

9/10 I think I’d enjoy living in the world of A Quiet Place. Anybody who snores, snorts or eats popcorn one kernel at a time while chewing with her mouth open like a fucking animal has been brutally killed.

In the near future, humanity has been nearly wiped out after an invasion of feral aliens. Blindingly fast and completely bulletproof, the monsters cut through the population in a matter of weeks, but before society completely collapses, word breaks that the monsters are blind and completely reliant on their sense of hearing.

Already adjusted to their deaf firstborn daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and with a patriarch who already tended toward survivalism in Lee (John Krasinski, who also writes and directs), the Abbott family was ideally placed to survive in this new world. But almost 500 days after the monsters’ arrival, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is about to deliver their fourth child. A Quiet Place tells the story of their silent survival, and of the night they could remain silent no longer.

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‘Ready Player One’ is pure blockbuster magic

Posted on April 5, 2018 by reelentropy

Oh, that poster! Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

9/10 Ready Player One is a blue-blooded blockbuster, a brass bonanza of nostalgia, special effects and action.

In 2045, overpopulation has turned Earth’s major cities into desperate slums. Most of the population regularly escapes to the OASIS, a massive multiplayer virtual reality simulation consisting of entire worlds of entertainment and possibility. The game’s creator, James Halliday (Mark Rylance) died and left the rights to control the game hidden in an Easter egg somewhere in the game, but in five years, no one has found it. After intense, beyond religious study of Halliday’s life, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) finally finds what he needs to progress. He, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and Aech (Lena Waithe) end up in a race against the corporate slaves of Innovative Online Industries and CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), who want to ruin the OASIS by putting up a ton of ads all over the place and implementing pay-to-win systems.

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Soderbergh scintillates with cell phones in ‘Unsane’

Posted on April 4, 2018 by reelentropy

8/10 Steven Soderbergh’s quietly released Unsane already lost almost 100 screens from its March 23 release to its second weekend to Easter releases, and it will continue to drop out of theaters precipitously with an exciting April schedule on the horizon. That’s a sad thing, because this is one special movie.

After leaving Boston for suburban Pennsylvania after two years on the run, Swayer Valentini (Claire Foy) thinks she’s finally escaped her stalker for good, but her PTSD still prevents her from leading a happy life. She seeks help, but her therapist tricks her into committing herself as part of an insurance scam. Things go from bad to worse when Valentini discovers her stalker, David Strine (Joshua Leonard), has picked up a job at the asylum as an orderly.

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‘Uprising’ doesn’t live up to original, its own potential

Posted on April 4, 2018 by reelentropy

Striking images, like this one of the final category six kaiju, do dot the finished film. Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

4/10 Pacific Rim: Uprising is a three hour epic adventure that’s been stuffed into a 111 minute box.

Ten years after his father sacrificed himself in the Battle of the Breach, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega, who also produces) has grown up on the street in a post-war world, the privilege of his name allowing him to spend time in and out of the military instead of prison. He’s pressed into service again after being caught in an unauthorized jaeger with its maker, a talented scrapper named Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny). Pentecost trains cadets — one of which is Namani — to be the last of the jaeger pilots before a Chinese drone program is approved to take over.

But, treachery! At the Pan-Pacific Defense Council summit in Sydney, a rogue jaeger assassinates Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), another hero of the Battle of the Breach and Pentecost’s adopted sister, before she can deliver her assessment on the drone program. Aboard the Gypsy Avenger, Pentecost and copilot Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood) follow clues to Siberia and uncover a plot to re-open the breach and begin a second phase of the Kaiju War.

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