OVP: Onward (2020)

Film: Onward (2020)
Stars: Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer
Director: Dan Scanlon
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're continuing on the week with movies released this year with what was supposed to be the first film I saw that was (calendar-year) released in 2020 in theaters.  I had plans to go to this movie, but right around the time of when I was going to catch it (February is a busy time at my job), Covid broke out, and suddenly I was petrified to go to any movies, and quickly they shut down.  As a result, Onward joins a very select list of Pixar films that I did not see originally in theaters (which is a bummer, though not as much of a bummer as other things...you know, we're allowed to have a gamut of disappointments from the valid to the vapid through all of this).  Either way, this movie is now on Disney+ and so I caught it and can weigh in on the latest from the Mouse House's cool kid brother.

(Spoilers Ahead) We live in a modern-day world where the convenience of technology has made magic, once a centerpiece of this realm, commonplace, even though our main characters are elves and we frequently encounter throughout the film creatures of myth.  The main characters are Ian (Holland) and Barley Lightfoot (Pratt), who are raised by a single mother Laurel (Louis-Dreyfus).  Their father died many years earlier, before Ian was born, and on Ian's sixteenth birthday, he encounters a spell that his father had left him as a present, allowing him the opportunity to see his father again for one day if he can break the spell.  However, while Ian figures out the spell, his overzealous older brother Barley goofs it up, so that only his father's legs return.  The two start out on a quest to bring back their father for the full day, knowing that there's a ticking clock on if Ian will get to have the reunion with his father he always dreamed of having.

Onward isn't a great movie, and it's probably one that would've been a bit of a disappointment in general for Pixar even if it hadn't been for Covid totally tanking the box office (I think, ultimately, it would have won back enough to be a modest hit internationally, but wouldn't remotely approach the recent box office of Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4, or even an original like Coco.  This is partially because the film does lack a lot of mojo and world-building.  We're given a fairy tale, really Pixar's first foray into territory that Disney had already perfected, and they don't really know how to bring the magic to the movie.  The film's mid-section is repetitive and a bit confusing, not utilizing ace hires Louis-Dreyfus and Octavia Spencer enough for what could have been great side bits (Spencer plays a manticore restauranteur).  It's not bad, and it's fun throughout, but this isn't really what we've come to expect from a Pixar original-even in the age of the sequels being more-and-more disappointing, the originals have by-and-large kept their original sheen.

That is, except for the ending.  Onward finishes in a better place than virtually any movie I've seen compared to the rest of the film than any picture I've seen in a while.  The ending doesn't go for the easy tears of a joyful momentary reunion between Ian and his father, but instead underlines that Barley was the father figure that Ian needed most, but in exchange Barley never really got to say goodbye to the only father figure he had ever known.  As a result, when a situation with a golem-like figure precludes them both from going forward to see their father, Ian sacrifices his big moment with his dad to let Barley go and say goodbye to the man he'd never properly let go of; it's a beautiful, unexpected ending to a film that probably hasn't earned such a big payoff, but you aren't going to care because you'll be crying throughout.  I don't do half stars on this blog, and so this is getting a 3-star since the movie earned it, but it's a high 3-star, bordering on four, just because of how beautiful the finale ends up being to a fair picture.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)

Film: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Jason Sand, Brooklynn Prince, Maya Rudolph, Will Farrell, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Cobie Smulders, Ralph Fiennes, Bruce Willis...it's a lot of cast
Director: Mike Mitchell
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

When the first Lego Movie came out five years ago, it felt like an unexpected phenomenon.  Buoyed by a not-yet-ubiquitous Chris Pratt, the John Everyman of Emmet as the main character in a film with a metric ton of site gags and inside jokes toward the Lego Culture was a genuinely good movie, as much an awesome commercial as it was a relentless pop culture orgy.  Since then, we've actually had two more installments in the series, with the equally as good The Lego Batman Movie, and then the first misfire in the series The Lego Ninjago Movie (full disclosure: I haven't seen this picture yet, so the "misfire" label is based on box office/critical consensus and not my own personal estimation).  As a result, The Lego Movie 2 arrives really as the fourth film in the series, and with weightier expectations about what it can accomplish compared to the first film in the series.  The movie falls in the middle of those expectations, still clever in its moments, but weighted down by knowing it could be better and with gags that fall flat as often as they soar.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie picks up a few seconds after the events of the previous movie, with a war of sorts breaking out between the Duplos in the last moments of the first film, and then over the next few years we see the destruction of the Legos' world at the hands of the Duplos, repeatedly destroying their cities.  This results in a sort of Mad Max-style dystopia where Lucy (Banks) takes on the role of Max, and is perplexed why Emmet (Pratt) seems to act as if nothing has changed.  One day a mysterious masked stranger (Beatriz) comes to their city, and steals away a number of the characters, including Batman (Arnett), Benny (Day), Unikitty (Brie), and Lucy.  Emmet tries to track them down, and eventually finds a mysterious city with a potentially duplicitous shape-shifting Queen (Haddish) presiding.

The film, before I get to the bad, is super cute at parts.  The overall song score is considerably better than the first film, in my opinion, though I doubt they get the cultural cache of "Everything is Awesome."  You will almost certainly be adding "Catchy Song" to your iPhone, and Tiffany Haddish nails her evil villain number (even though, it turns out, she's not an evil villain), and in my opinion steals the movie out-from-under everyone around her.  There are a few site gags that are really strong, mostly surrounding Haddish's shape-shifting Queen, and some of the previous film's characters, like Arnett's Batman, remain hilarious.

So why am I just "meh" about the film?  Honestly, it's because the story itself is a bit of a drag. Unlike the first movie, there's no surprise about the real-world here.  We know the real-world exists, and it's pretty obvious to anyone over the age of seven that our main character has a baby sister who is trying to befriend him by copying his favorite hobby of legos.  This sentimentality is so omnipresent that it makes The Lego Movie 2 feel less like a film and more like a proper commercial: "see, the whole family can unite with Legos!"  This might be naive, but if I'm going to be forced to watch product placement, I want it to feel fresh.  It doesn't help that Banks & Pratt have become near-constant presences at the movies in the past few years, and since neither seem to change up their schtick, this is something we've already seen even when its new.  Tiffany Haddish is at risk for this in the future, but at least she hasn't done a G-Rated version of her screen persona yet so the Queen is a new element to this universe, something sorely lacking in the rest of the movie.  It's possible from the box office that this may be the final installment of the Lego franchise, or at least the last one that features Emmet & Lucy-if this is the best they can come up with, perhaps that's a good thing.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Film: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Jeff Goldblum
Director: JA Bayona
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I hated the first Jurassic World with a blinding rage (seriously, see the review-it's brutal), so it was never a guarantee that I would catch the film.  However, I went on a date and wasn't going to quibble too hard about catching it, and the reviews (both RT and from friends) indicated that it was considerably better than the first installment, so I thought I'd take a shot.  After all, Jurassic Park is one of my all-time favorite movies, the picture managed to find one of the original stars (Jeff Goldblum) to add to its roster, and it couldn't possibly be worse than that travesty, right?  The latter half of that question proved correct-it is, in fact, better than the first film.  But that shouldn't be confused for the film being good or remotely close to it.  At this point, we're all just wondering if the Jurassic World movies are instead a copy of the Transformers pictures-mindless drones of summer blockbusters churning out increasingly unnecessary sequels that the public will lap up because that's what's expected.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place shortly after the events of the previous film, though with a shocking change in a lot of the characters' personalities, the island that contains all of the dinosaurs is now under attack not from man or a meteor, but instead by a volcano that is set to erupt. The film follows Eli Mills (Spall), a handsome assistant to a previously undisclosed partner of Richard Attenborough's John Hammond, Benjamin Lockwood (Cromwell, filling in for one of many suspensions-of-belief the film takes that suddenly we have an important character that was never mentioned or seen previously).  Mills recruits Claire (Howard) and Owen (Pratt) to return to the island to help save the dinosaurs once again from extinction, particularly the raptor Blue, whom Owen trained.  Once there, they realize that Mills tricked them to try and turn a profit on the dinosaurs to use them as weapons of war, and work with a small band of nerds to eventually get back to the mainland, track down the dinosaurs before they're auctioned off, and then after a side story where we find out that Lockwood is also trying to clone human beings, his cloned granddaughter frees the dinosaur with a push-of-a-button in a ridiculously hammy scene where she protests "they're just like me" and we see a world that is now filled with dinosaurs, staking a claim through the deserts and into cities.

The film itself is an improvement mostly because the plot, at least if you don't look too closely at it, makes sense.  Howard's Claire has been rewritten to be more compassionate, more of an environmentalist, and as a result her relationship to the dinosaurs is similar to Owen's, making their romantic relationship a bit more believable.  The idea of the dinosaurs eventually getting to the mainland is intriguing, and actually we get the best scene of the movie during the opening, when the Mosasaurus escapes into the ocean, free to roam and feast.  But the film cannot handle its characters, and would honestly function better as a silent picture.

For starters, there's the idiocy of introducing human cloning.  Yes, in a world where dinosaurs can be cloned it would make sense that we'd turn to bringing people back from the dead, but the storyline feels a bit too huge for the picture and tacked on to have yet another child in the film, and really to give us some more characters to anchor us on the mainland (the film is pretty bereft of "good guys" in the face of a lot of bad guys, so giving us a child feels like a Spielberg-esque requirement that will also allow for some balance to the back-half of the movie).  This entire storyline feels unnecessary, and poorly edited.  Geraldine Chaplin is either doing way more character work than anyone else in this film as the nanny, or had scenes that were cut out as she feels far more important than her character arch would suggest, and really I could have done without all of this side business about human cloning.

The bigger issue, though, is that there is no suspense in the film whatsoever.  Think back to the original Jurassic Park.  The film not only sees the demise of Wayne Knight's Dennis and the "blood-sucking lawyer," but of some of the "good guys" like Samuel L. Jackson's Ray Arnold and Bob Peck's Robert Muldoon also perished.  As a result, there's some suspense in the film over who might live or die, making the dinosaurs seem scary and risky.  Here, though, there's only bad guys (and, it's worth noting, all of the bad guys) that are killed by the dinosaurs.  In many ways we've gotten to the point where the dinosaurs are now the heroes of the film, with you rooting for the raptors and T-Rex's rather than seeing them as the enemy.  This is fine-and-good, but it makes the action sequences kind of pointless-you can't have your cake and eat it too, and we know that since there's a guaranteed sequel that most of these characters will live to fight another dinosaur.  Without that risk, there's no point to the movie-you know what's going to happen, and since the effects are only middling, there's nothing particularly compelling occurring onscreen.  Add in the fact that no one is giving a noteworthy performance here (Chaplin's arguably the best, Toby Jones is the worst, but no one's clearing even the most basic of hurdles here), and you have a movie that's yet another cash grab from Universal.  Fallen Kingdom is better than Jurassic World because it's not desecrating a film classic, but it perhaps commits a greater sin: it's super boring.

OVP: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Film: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elisabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Peter Dinklage, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt (okay, seriously-what was the actor budget like on this film-this cast easily could have cost $200 million by itself)
Director: Anthony and Joe Russo
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars (read the review though, as it's really more a 2-4 star range based on the sequel)

Movies and television have started to collide in being the same mediums, something that I have never been okay with but apparently everyone else is so I've learned to deal.  The reality is that in a world where we simply rely upon "awesome franchises" for so much of our entertainment, and everything old is, well, not necessarily new but more a shattered shell of its former self (but comfortable so "who cares!"), it makes sense that a multi-billion dollar asset like the Avengers series would become essentially a multi-film TV series.  This picture, the 19th in the franchise (I believe I've seen all but two of these movies, though I'd have to double-check) is about as certain of a blockbuster hit as one can get, and because we live in an era where we need to suck up even if we aren't impressed (see also the White House Correspondents' Dinner), it's surely going to be a critical smash.  But I have been hit-or-miss with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and so I was genuinely curious if I was going to leave The Avengers duly-impressed or finding the film lacking.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the aftermath of our last few installments of Captain America, Thor, and Black Panther, and most-importantly finally puts Thanos (Brolin) front-and-center as our villain, as he's been whom we've been building toward for nearly a decade now as our ultimate baddie who will take over the world.  Played in dull purple by Brolin, Thanos is an all-powerful villain that never quite feels as interesting as he should; one of the cardinal sins of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that they never approach the intrigue or a Joker or Lex Luthor when it comes to their bad guys.  Thanos could be more interesting if we let him breath a bit more on his personal philosophy, as in many ways he resembles Bane in his battle for a better humanity through brutal results (he essentially wants to wipe out half of the population of the universe in order to reduce hunger and resource-deprivation).  It's entirely possible they're saving that for the sequel, but that points to perhaps the greatest problem with this movie: it needs a sequel to function, and it needs to be television to work.

Film functioning as television has always had one major flaw: TV shows end, and film franchises frequently do not, at least not while there's serious money on the table.  The best television series allow you to love characters, but also occasionally give you consequences or events that can never be undone.  Look at, say, Lost or Game of Thrones or Mad Men, and how these shows would occasionally kill off characters or end romances or have betrayals that shape the course of the series, never to be entirely glossed over.  As a result, there was genuine risk in what the series was bringing to the viewers, knowing that season finales could shape your viewpoint entirely of what might come next in the franchise.

Here, though, we watch as Spider-Man, Black Panther, Star-Lord, roughly a dozen major characters in the franchise vanish with a literal snap of the fingers in the film's final moments, as Thanos vision for a universe where half of the citizens die suddenly becomes reality.  It's a staggering sequence, with fine work from Danai Gurira (watching her invincible king evaporate in her hands), and especially a squeaky-voiced Tom Holland pleading with Iron Man to save him, the scared teenager behind the superhero emerging as he realizes the consequences of fighting for good.  In a television series, particularly one where I assumed there is only one film left, I would have thought this was a jaw-dropping moment.  Holland's fine protestations would have brought me to tears, realizing that he would leave us too quickly, and I would have been shocked that it hadn't been the actors whose contracts were about to expire (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor) who left us but the theoretical future of the series.  But I'm smart enough to realize that these characters already have films lined up (Spider-Man, in particular, is going to have to start airing trailers before Avengers is seen next year, so I'm not sure how that will even work).  Theoretically, of course, we could see the roles in these films recast, but that seems preposterous-Holland, Boseman, Pratt, these are major stars now that the public wants to see play these roles.  They aren't going to quickly disappear from the franchises, and Disney has too much money on the line to let them go.

As a result, we get a cheap ending to the film.  It's probable that we'll see them brought back next time, and then watch as the expected characters go into the sunset, with a new series of Avengers ready to take the stage, perhaps with Downey, Hemsworth, or Evans a possibility to return in 5-7 years if their careers are suffering.  But it doesn't make this film particularly interesting, and it proves that perpetual stories are too lazy.  There's a lot to like in The Avengers, even if I feel it fails on the most important element (plotting).  The victor of the movies has always truly been the casting directors, finding relative unknowns who ooze movie star charisma to play larger-than-life characters.  There is so much plot, but it's relatively brisk all-things-considered, and were it not for the inevitable deletion of the ending, it would surely stand apart as a great action film.  The movie's performances are uniformly good, with Holland, Cumberbatch, & Saldana being the standouts, and they take the time to give us fun pairings (Rocket & Thor being an obvious highlight, though I also particularly liked Spidey & Doctor Strange).

Were it not for the film's ending inevitably being deleted for something more conventional and keeping the story going perpetually (until we eventually tire of comic book heroes, which may be never), I'd give this a higher ranking, perhaps even a four-star.  But it doesn't work like that.  I know how this game plays out, and I'm not stupid enough to think that the shocking, arguably quite smart, ending to this picture won't be erased for something less intriguing.  As a result, I'm going to go with three stars, though in my head it's more like 2.5  If they keep most of the characters dead in the next film, I'll vote for a 4 star change at that time, but until then they've removed any element of surprise or sacrifice by giving us this ending, and as a result I can't applaud this picture, even if I see its value.

OVP: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

Film: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Kurt Russell, Sylvester Stallone, Karen Gillan, Elizabeth Debicki
Director: James Gunn
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few things have been as consistent (and as profitable) in the past few years as the Marvel Cinematic Universe coming out with 1-2 films a year, having people show up to the movies to catch the latest superhero installment (this also happens with the DC films, but no one seems to like them so it's kind of a bizarre conspiracy theory as to why they all seem to still be insanely profitable).  This May there was no exception, with the followup to one of my personal favorite films in the series, Guardians of the Galaxy (Winter Soldier is still the best movie by a wide margin the series has created, in my opinion) coming out.  Guardians set itself apart from Marvel and in particular the dour DC films by having a sense of humor about its crew, a motley group of space bandits led by a stuck-in-the-80's rebel named Peter Quill (Pratt).  Would the second film live up to the delight of the first?  Let's take a look...

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around Quill, after a hilarious interaction with the Sovereign People (headed by the glorious and vastly-underused-in-every-film Elizabeth Debicki), finding his father Ego (Russell), who is essentially a god that has both created and exists concurrently as a man and as his own planet.  This leads to Quill realizing that he has some magical powers (Starlord, indeed), and bonding with the man whom he never knew growing up.  All-the-while, the Sovereign are intent on coming back and attack him for Rocket slighting them and stealing their batteries, while Yondu (Rooker), Quill's surrogate father, is also being chased toward the planet by his rebelling troupe, who are now under the leadership of Taserface (and yes, the name is properly mocked).

While the film has its fun moments, particularly anything involving Debicki as the Sovereign (easily my favorite storyline of the bunch), I will admit that this felt fun in the way that Pitch Perfect 2 felt fun.  It was great being in the saddle again with these characters, and in particular the chemistry between, say, Cooper's Rocket and Diesel's Groot, or Pratt with pretty much anyone but particularly Russell, is charming, but the wear is starting to show that wouldn't have in the entire series if there hadn't been a sequel.  This may be blasphemous, but the reality is that sequels aren't always a good thing, particularly when they point out ways the initial movie failed, and here it's that the characters are somewhat underwritten and occasionally one-note.  Dave Bautista's Drax, for example, becomes increasingly annoying as the film goes on, his unconventional reactions to social cues being relatively predictable and groan-worthy.  The film is more reliant upon you remembering the minutia of the first film than I was used to for a comic book film (I had to rely for parts of the picture more on my childhood knowledge of the Marvel Universe than I can remember having to do in any comic book picture since before the 2008 relaunch), and is too long.  The entire sequence with Taserface, for starters, is a bit of a drag, and while I enjoy Sly Stallone randomly showing up as much as the next person, between this and Andy Garcia in Passengers, is it in Chris Pratt's contract that an Oscar nominee has to show up and do almost nothing for a paycheck?  Seriously-unless Stallone is being positioned for a later movie or to be the Samuel L. Jackson of the Guardians pictures, I don't get what that was...was he James Gunn's matinee idol or something?  I generally like Stallone, but he had literally nothing to do here.

Still, it was not a film without charms.  Kurt Russell is such a joy to see onscreen always, and he relishes this moment in the spotlight.  In what has to be on either the Makeup or VFX clip reel for the Oscars later this year (from what I've read it was a combination of both), Russell's de-aging at the beginning of the film is the closest I've seen to actually avoiding the Uncanny Valley, perhaps because it's more makeup than CGI (it puts even Rogue One from last year to shame on that front).  In fact, the reliance on traditional makeup in the movie is intense-in a film that is a throwback to a different era (the 1980s continue their bizarre reverence in cinema), James Gunn wanted to celebrate such a time.

Additionally, the movie is funny at parts.  It's hard not to like this crew, even if I feel like the gimmick is being stretched now more than added to...no one wants to see Peter Quill become an Iron Man-level cascade of serious, but the world of Marvel's cinema has never been great about going deeper (the point of a sequel) without finding a solid balance between humor and drama.  This is all to say, I don't know where this goes in the third film, even if the post-credits sequence gives an obvious hint that Adam Warlock could soon be in-store for us.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Are you leaving pleased, but not entirely as pleased as you were the first time?  Where do you think that the Guardians chapter of the Marvel universe should go next?  Are you feeling good about Adam Warlock as the next big challenge for the crew?  And who else is still in-awe of that Kurt Russell effect?  Share below!

OVP: Passengers (2016)

Film: Passengers (2016)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne
Director: Morten Tyldum
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Production Design, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Trailers are meant to want to get you to a movie.  I mean, that's kind of the point-put the best parts of the movie into the trailer, and hope for the best, right?  It's weird, however, to go back to see trailers to movies you know by heart and see snippets or line readings that aren't actually in the movie, that clearly were part of a last minute editing decision that sliced a slower scene that might have had one snappy line out of the movie.  This is fine.  What's not fine is when a movie completely sells you something that isn't remotely what you signed up for, particularly when doing so also resulted in you knowing how the movie was going to end.  Thus is the case with Passengers.

(Spoilers Ahead) On the surface the film is a relatively simple love story.  You have lovable Jim Preston (Pratt), a sweet engineer smitten with a beautiful author named Aurora (Lawrence).  They are stuck on an intergalactic cruise ship to another planet, but they can't get back into their hibernation pods because the ship never planned for them to not work (which feels like a huge insurance issue, but whatever), and therefore are stuck for ninety years essentially spending their entire existence on a ship where they'll die before they reach their destination.  It's a cool concept for a story-Gravity meets Titanic, in a way, and we learn as the film goes on that there's something wrong with the ship that caused Jim to wake up.  It's not Celine and Julie Go Boating or anything, but it's a giant blockbuster starring two well-loved movie stars in space.  I mean, what's not to like?

Except, there's a problem here ("there's always a problem with you lately, John" says the world).  Jim woke up unexpectedly, unfortunately, but Aurora didn't.  It was only his pod that malfunctioned-hers was fine until he, after stalking her for months (you can't send a message that won't take 55 years, but somehow you have access to the entire back catalog of Wikipedia), decided to jimmy open her hibernation pod so that he would have companionship, essentially murdering her for his own selfish reasons.  In the trailers, this is not indicated, as it seems more like it's just the two of them that have woken up from this century-long slumber, but in reality he steals her for his own out of loneliness and hormones, and the movie never properly addresses this.  I mean, yes, she's upset when she finds out, but she still chooses to stay with him for eternity and forgives him extremely quickly even though he stole her life.

It's hard to recover from that without the movie feeling like it has deeply uncomfortable sexual politics.  For starters, it sort of forgives him for being lonely and desperate, and there are worse things in the world than getting stuck on a deserted island with Chris Pratt, but when he actually puts you on the deserted island, essentially robbing you of all of your dreams-it's hard to find a way to look at this in a feminist way and not want to smack him.  Honestly-I struggled pretty furiously with this in the back half of the movie, and there was really no way that this felt okay, particularly when she decides to spend her life with him (also-side note, was anyone else worried they were going to get pregnant and we'd meet when one of their kids when Andy Garcia showed up, wordlessly, in the final moments?).  What he did was unforgivable, and she was still incredibly angry at him right up until she changes her mind about spending eternity with him.  There is tons to dislike about the movie, quite frankly (there's some gaping plot holes in knowing that a ship can take 240 years to get to Earth and back, for starters-how many voyages has this thing taken that they have pictures of the planet-what year is it, exactly, that they still have journalists and the Pulitzer Prize?), but none is as creepy as the central one that Jennifer Lawrence spends eternity with her murderer.

The film received two Oscar nominations, one for Best Art Direction (which is actually really cool-I loved some of the touches they made, crossing an elegant spacial experience with a luxury liner) and one for Score (ehh, but it's Thomas Newman so I should have seen it coming), and none for Visual Effects, which was probably a miss as they're actually interesting, even if the only really "wow" moment is Lawrence nearly drowning in a pool of suspended water.  But it's a pity that messed-up sexual politics and an abysmal finale wasted what could have been a fun blockbuster starring two of our more charismatic working movie stars.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Were you like me, unable to separate the creepiness of Pratt's character to get behind what otherwise could have been decent escapist fare?  Or are you a fan regardless?  And what do you make of these two Oscar nominations-any chance it scores a win?

Emmy Predictions: The Comedies

Yesterday we went through the Emmy predictions for the drama categories, so it only makes sense that we give comedies their due today.  Let's see below how things turn out in what has basically been the Modern Family categories for the past five years.

Best Comedy Series

1. Modern Family
2. Veep
3. The Big Bang Theory
4. Transparent
5. Louie
6. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
7. Silicon Valley

The Lowdown: Before you start to complain, yes, I do think that Modern Family will almost certainly lose this season-the backlash is too high and it's at a point where it might pick up an acting trophy still, but the big enchilada is out of its reach.  However, this is a prediction for the nominations, and it would be a massive upset if it missed a nomination, so it gets the top post, as do all of last year's eligible nominees.  With Orange is the New Black now over in drama and the field expanded, that still leaves room for two, and because of the buzz I'm going with the Tina Fey-creation Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and the zeitgeist-y Transparent over Jane the Virgin, though I feel like there might be a contingency of the Academy that wants to honor the CW for finally having a show that could compete here.  If there's a surprise, it's Jane.

Best Actor in a Comedy Series

1. Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent)
2. Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory)
3. Louis CK (Louie)
4. William H. Macy (Shameless)
5. Matt LeBlanc (Episodes)
6. Don Cheadle (House of Lies)

The Lowdown: That yawn you're feeling is collective, but what do you expect me to do here?  This is a category that has seen finer days and is one that the Emmys just keep repeating and repeating and repeating.  It says something that I went with five of last year's nominees (Ricky Gervais in Derek wasn't eligible) and the new guy is a six-time Emmy nominee who is almost certain to win.  The only other major names are Billy Crystal in The Comedians and Anthony Anderson in Black-ish, neither of which are what you'd call new-and-exciting nominees.  At least Tambor has never won before so we'll be crossing him off the list of actors who needed an Emmy this year.

Best Actress in a Comedy Series

1. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep)
2. Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation)
3. Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie)
4. Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)
5. Lisa Kudrow (The Comeback)
6. Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin)

The Lowdown: Unlike its comedic male counterpart but very much like its dramatic female counterpart, Lead Actress in a Comedy seems like a race both for nominations and for wins.  We'll have to wait a few months to see if Amy Poehler gets a sentimental trophy after years of chasing one for Parks (though it seems likely she'll win for hosting the Globes so it might not be as emotional as we would like) or whether JLD gets another trophy, but both are in, as is perennial nominee Edie Falco.  Lisa Kudrow got in about a decade ago for Valerie Cherish, and I think she has enough pull to make it again, as does Ellie Kemper as the title character on Kimmy Schmidt.  For the final slot, I could have gone with legends Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin for Grace & Frankie, but I have a feeling they'll cancel each other out (though Tomlin has a slight advantage in the polls), and Amy Schumer might have made it in a less-charged field, but I think that the new star buzz of Gina Rodriguez is going to get her just over the finish line (and potentially throw a monkey wrench in the process in the JLD v. Amy Poehler battle).

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

1. Ty Burrell (Modern Family)
2. Tony Hale (Veep)
3. Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)
4. Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine)
5. Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family)
6. Hugh Laurie (Veep)

The Lowdown: It's always hard to tell which of the Modern Family guys is going to randomly make it and which aren't, so I'm going with the two from last year again and calling it a day (it could really be any combination of the four, though Burrell surely has to make it).  Tony Hale and Andre Braugher are mandatory nominees at this point, and I suspect that Tituss Burgess is not only going to be the new man on the block, but probably will end up winning for his scene-stealing Titus.  Finishing off the category could well be Hugh Laurie, a longtime Emmy bridesmaid still in the hunt for his first trophy.  Depending on the strength of Grace & Frankie Martin Sheen or Sam Waterston, both Emmy perennials themselves could also make it, as could bonafide movie star Chris Pratt (lest we forget George Clooney started gaining nominations when he began headlining movies), but I'm sticking with these six for now.

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

1. Allison Janney (Mom)
2. Julie Bowen (Modern Family)
3. Anna Chlumsky (Veep)
4. Judith Light (Transparent)
5. Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live)
6. Mayim Bialik (The Big Bang Theory)

The Lowdown: I feel like the Top 5 are set in stone.  You have endless nominees like Janney and Bowen, Kate McKinnon who is basically just getting warm-up citations for next year, when she will likely win for her Hillary Clinton election-season performance (she's the new Amy Poehler, except I think she might actually take it), Anna Chlumsky who benefits from a less competitive field and two previous nominations to have a base of support, and Judith Light, a TV icon who has only one nomination to her name and has a plum role in a major series.  The final slot comes down to a few questions.  I feel like love for The Big Bang Theory slipped quite a bit this season, and Bialik is vulnerable despite three previous nods for the same role, but there's only really two contenders who could take her out.  One is Sofia Vergara, who is on a show that people are also a bit tired of (and let's face it, hasn't had the best year, press-wise) and the other is a new show with Emmy favorite Jane Krakowski (Kimmy Schmidt), which could be stronger than we expect, but her role is definitely the third showiest-will that be enough?  I could honestly see Vergara or Krakowski both sneaking in at this point, but without some more proof I'm sticking with Bialik.

And there you have it-we still have Miniseries to go, but in the meantime, share your thoughts on whom you think should and will win, and which nominees I was crazy to skip!

Jurassic World (2015)

Film: Jurassic World (2015)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Nick Robinson, Ty Simpkins, Vincent D'Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Jake Johnson, Judy Greer
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I loved the first Jurassic Park movie.  It was a magnificent film, my personal favorite not only of Steven Spielberg's movies, but also of popcorn flicks in general.  Yes, there was some silliness and it might seem inappropriate to say that it's better than, say, Jaws or Schindler's List, but the heart wants what it wants, and this is a superb film with effects that have stood the test of time in ways few other films have ever dreamt of doing.  That, plus game and iconic performances from pretty much everyone involved (it says something that despite the fact that BD Wong hasn't appeared in one of the films in 22 years and is only onscreen in the 1993 film for a handful of moments that we still recognize he's our link to the previous flick) make it classic.  The film knew how to put care and wonder into the film, and create rounded individuals with hopes, dreams, and wonderfully quotable lines ("Clever girl", "Hold onto your butts").

And I have also seen and been okay with the follow-up films.  It's been so many years since I saw The Lost World and Jurassic Park III that I can't really weigh in on either with great authority, but I remember thinking "good, not great" for both of them.  The Lost World felt like a disappointment but still held up effects-wise (I wanted Sam Neill back, not Jeff Goldblum), while the third film I only really remember how snug Alessandro Nivola's pants were (I was a 17-year-old closeted gay teen, this was where my focus typically was).  Neither blasphemed on the original, but didn't really compliment it enough that I felt I had to watch them over and over again like I did the first movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) Which brings us to Jurassic World, a film that does pretty much everything in its power to try and destroy my memories of the original movie.  Set years after the original, the film follows a similar plot to the first  movie, occasionally straying (there's not really a great John Hammond-style character in this movie), but by-and-large we get "bigger, stronger, faster" but at no point, in any capacity, to we get better.  This movie is mindless garbage, the kind that critics feel that they need to rescue by saying "good popcorn flick" and "action-packed" when in reality what they should be saying is "the studios spent way too much money on this for it to fail, so we're going to pretend like it's not as mind-numbingly awful as a Transformers movie."

I don't even know where to begin in terms of the awful, but let's start with where it should have actually improved-the effects.  I don't know how twenty years worth of special effects, with movies like Titanic, Avatar, and Gravity all in its wake, couldn't cause some improvement on the original, but the movie looks plastic, cheap.  The special effects don't interact with the actors well and the CGI that is utilized looks inauthentic compared to the original dinosaurs.  Too much of the film is shot in close-up, so we don't get the feel of the size of the dinosaurs and every scene pretty much falters whenever it's trying to get a wow.  The mososaur, or whatever you call the sea creature, is on-paper way more interesting than the genetically created one, but it also looks fake and waits around way too long to show up in key battles.

The film's screenplay is appallingly bad.  The movie falls into literally every cliche known to man, from the rough-and-tumble Abecrombie model who has a day job as a raptor trainer to the beautiful uptight woman who needs a bunch of near-death experiences and an obnoxious sister to harp on her about her life choices (all due respect, Judy Greer, but your sister arranged for a $30,000 trip for your sons while you get a divorce-let's save the judgment) to two of the most obnoxious children you've ever seen.  Seriously, the only reason that Nick Robinson was hired was because he's hot and can sell Tiger Beat issues, and Ty Simpkins is so annoying and cloying that you kind of wish the raptor would just help us all out here.  Honestly, the entire cast feels like a list of actors who are trying to be worse than the next-we get Vincent D'Onofrio as the world's stupidest villain, Jake Johnson as some random Jeff Goldblum wannabe, and BD Wong as someone far too naive to also be a genius.  No one is giving a good performance in this film, and that's something I never thought I'd say about Chris Pratt and Judy Greer.

The plot is certainly the worst thing about it, principally because of the ridiculous holes permeating it.  Why, for example, does Bryce Dallas Howard head across the island to track the Indominus Rex instead of picking up a phone?  What precisely was it that Bryce Dallas Howard didn't see in Chris Pratt (noble, handsome, built like a Brooklyn firefighter) that she suddenly saw later in the movie since his character never changes?  And why is it that every female character in the film is portrayed as a harpy?  Throw in the two kids conveniently running away from their babysitter (I doubt very much that a corporate-ladder climber like the woman who is babysitting them would abandon her boss's nephews), the fact that the children's parents' divorce plays absolutely no role in the story, and countless other ridiculous notions (the entire "allegiance of the raptors" thing was a frightful mess, not to mention the new "dinosaur language" found between the T-Rex and the raptor), and you get the worst thing to happen to a classic movie since Indiana Jones 4.

Those were my thoughts on this pointless piece of garbage that will inevitably gross a billion dollars, providing us with a near-certain sequel.  What were yours?  Anyone want to defend, well, any of it (if so, do not use the words "mindless but fun" without expecting a massive eye roll)?  And if you need a place to vent, the comments section is there for that as well.

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

I'm going to be a little bit sketchy potentially about posting over the next couple of days (I have company in town), though I'll try to get something out.  If nothing else, I'll try and tweet more to stay in touch (we'll be having a massive influx of posts the week before the 4th, though, since I have the week off and am going to be watching SOOOO many movies).  In the meantime, let's link it up!

In Entertainment...

-Finn Wittrock is returning to American Horror Story next season, and Jason over at MNPP chronicles his hope for Wittrock's story line (as always with Jason, it's slightly NSFW, but his blog is always so funny, and just turned ten so celebrate!).  I have to say, I'm really uneasy about the next season of American Horror Story, mostly because I think I might be done with it.  I was glued the first two seasons, got incredibly bored with the highly-convoluted third season, and was really underwhelmed in Season Four with the HUGE exception of Dandy Mott, Wittrock's Emmy-worthy creation.  As a result, with Jessica Lange gone I was really ready to give up, and Lady Gaga's entry as a leading actor was all the more reason, in my opinion, to get out (I get it, she can "actually sing," but so can Audra McDonald, Sutton Foster, Kelli O'Hara, and Jessie Mueller, and yet none of them ever get this sort of break despite also being able to "actually act"...and being better singers).  Until Gaga has her Silkwood moment, I'm out, but will probably still try and find the clips of what Finn does next on the series.

-(Spoilers Ahead if you haven't caught up with Game of Thrones) After this past week, when we saw the Walk of Shame from Cersei on Game of Thrones, more and more people are talking about quitting watching Game of Thrones.  This, combined with Sansa's rape scene, Princess Shireen's heinous death, and the wildly discussed death of Jon Snow, arguably the series most popular character give or take Tyrion, has made people wonder if perhaps the show has jumped the shark.  While I will not be amongst those who quits and think that some of these decisions were interesting (the Cersei Walk of Shame was painful to watch, but it does give her a different sort of motive for the next season if you look at this from a purely character-based angle, since she is the de facto monarch), I have to agree that this wasn't the greatest season of the show from a completely story-structure angle (though it exhibited some of the best acting), and I wonder if occasionally these moments were utilized more as water-cooler than in ways that will actually aid the storyline (I refuse to believe there's a better resolution to this series than Jon Snow ending up either taking the Iron Throne, or at the very least becoming the Lord of Winterfell).  I think the principle problem is that the show bit off more than it could handle this season-the Tyrells' imprisonment felt completely forgotten, and the Jamie/Marcella bit seemed too rushed.  All-in-all, while it may still be my favorite show on TV (it has competition from a couple of other series, including the soon-to-arrive Leftovers), I do wish they would have paced it a bit more-we don't want this to become a polarizing Lost-style situation in the final two years, and if they needed it to be eight, HBO is hardly going to quibble considering the continued ratings.

-IndieWire chronicles why television is far more diverse when it comes to celebrated TV movies than film is.  While IndieWire is always a site with a ridiculously short memory (seriously-Frances McDormand's career-best performance in Olive Kitteridge and not Fargo?), they have a point about the elasticity of television and the way that its business model allows for more risk since so much original content is needed.

In Politics...

Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC)

-The Washington Post has a great article chronicling the history of the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina Capitol, which was notably not at half-mast after the racially-charged shootings in Charleston early last week.  The article provides a good explanation on its history, but it doesn't answer the obvious question everyone in the country that doesn't participate in Civil War reenactments is asking: "why the hell didn't this flag get taken down over a century ago?"  Seriously, no one in their right mind could look at the Confederate Flag and not see the clear racist implications behind it.  It'd be as if Germans wanted to keep flying the Swastika because of its link to history.  I think it is a damn shame that despite the fact that other modernized countries don't have these sorts of mass shootings and the only major difference is their gun laws, we have politicians like Gov. Haley who refuse to endorse the need for gun legislation.  But I think it's truly beyond reprehensible that that flag is still flying in the wake of this tragedy, and that it gets to fly at all on government property.

-If there's an under-the-radar story of the week, it has to have been the continued unease between organized labor and House Democrats after the past few weeks of the fast-track votes.  Yes, the AFL-CIO scored a coup by getting Nancy Pelosi and the majority of the caucus to buck the president, but it was at a price.  Democrats have done a really good job of backing incumbents and their own regardless of tough votes, but targeted attacks on people like Reps. Ami Bera, Scott Peters, and Kathleen Rice not only make Democrats uneasy, but they also potentially alienate allies on almost every other labor issue.  More than one Democrat has noted that labor has been attacking only Democrats, not Republicans in marginal districts on this vote, and that strategy didn't work at all for the Tea Party in the long run...

-If you don't have the time to read through the pope's entire encyclical, but you do want to stay informed, here's your perfect article.  It details the Pope's stances on coal specifically (he views it more unfavorably than even oil or gas), he's against carbon trading, and has some sharp things to say about iPhones.  Overall I'm pumped about this, I have to say-while I don't 100% agree with every point he makes, this is a huge step in the right direction on a critical issue.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-With all due respect to all of the women who got dressed up for the Swedish royal wedding, this is the only picture you're going to care about seeing.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-Caspar Lee has arguably his funniest video of all time with Jurassic World star Chris Pratt.  Somewhere my brother is wishing he had started making YouTube videos five years ago so he could have done this interview:

Just One More...

-You might know this about me, but I have a mild obsession with Pippa Middleton.  I have lurved her since the Royal Wedding, and am constantly looking in the Wimbledon stands to see if she is there (Middleton sister watching is basically as important to Wimbledon now as Pimm's and strawberries-and-cream and Andy Murray's white underwear).  It seems that Tommy Hilfiger is also interested in Pippa, as she may soon be the face of his brand.  I say go for it-if you aren't going to date Harry, you might as well jump into fully-fledged celebrity stardom.

OVP: Wanted (2008)

Film: Wanted (2008)
Stars: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Kretschmann, Common, Terence Stamp, Chris Pratt
Director: Timu Bekmambetov
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Well, that streak just took a huge hit in the head.  After a weirdly long spell of good to wonderful movies, I got my first clunker in a while this morning when I was watching Wanted, a film that you vaguely remember seeing seven years ago, and are surprised to find out Chris Pratt was in (and is naked in for you Andy Dwyer enthusiasts, for the record).  It's a film that you remember being kind of cool, with lots of shifting and angled bullets, plus Angelina Jolie holding a gun, which is always exciting, right?  The answer is decidedly wrong, as this movie is a joke, frequently relying on boring twists, ridiculous plots, and an oddly bad lead performance from the usually reliable James McAvoy.  It also got two Oscar nominations, which is why it's on this blog, but we'll get into that soon enough.  First, though, let's tackle that pesky thing called the plot (a word, perhaps, the screenwriters should have looked up in the dictionary prior than sitting front of their keyboards).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Wesley Gibson (McAvoy), a cubicle drone who lives his life on autopilot, constantly being berated by his boss and watching as his best friend Barry (Pratt) consistently one-ups him and has sex with his girlfriend.  The characters on this end of Wesley's life are meant to be nothing more than tropes, and that's really what they are.  Pratt is always watchable, and elevates what could be an even bigger loser role (the way he seems impressed with Wesley later in the film for punching him is vintage Andy Dwyer), but being cute only gets you so far in a movie, and the female roles are out of a classic straight-dude manual on female cliches.  Wesley is brought into a fraternity of assassins who want him to track down the man who killed his father named Cross (Kretschmann), being mentored by the gorgeous Fox (Jolie...get it, because she's a fox...my god this movie is opaque) and being watched over by Sloan (Freeman) who serves as his boss and shows him the magical loom that spins out whom the assassins are going to kill.

This presents the first of many problems, because you see Morgan Freeman's Sloan is actually the bad guy.  This is obvious because Thomas Kretschmann has no scenes showing him to be the bad guy and never actually seems to want to kill James McAvoy.  Kretschmann is bordering on the "little too young" to be McAvoy's actual father, for the record, but that's where the film points him in the plot.  As a result of this, we sort of have to question the intelligence of every other assassin in the group for never questioning exactly what happens with the loom and whether vigilante justice is a good idea.  A thousand years is a long time for some common skepticism to not rear its thoughtful head, and it's hard to believe a random desk jockey is the one to take down a thousand years of training.

There are other problems with the film of course.  There's the obvious weirdness about McAvoy's skills being genetic enough so that he can shoot the wings off a fly instantaneously but he can't just get out into the field.  There's also the fact that every character other than Wesley is woefully underwritten, to the point where when Angelina Jolie pulls out the dead father card, you feel like she's borrowing the speech from another of her movies.  Jolie is watchable in a movie-star-sort-of-way in every action movie you can think of, but between Wanted and Salt, I get the sense that she really doesn't know how to pick out a decent action adventure and am hoping that she sticks to dramas going forward, or at least has whomever picked Mr. and Mrs. Smith on-board to help select the film.  Morgan Freeman, the only other big name actor at the time, has a gravitas in everything he does, but this is really underwritten and he doesn't get too much juiciness, particularly since we don't get a moment of questioning why he would be so foolish as to, in the film's final scene, go into Wesley's place-of-work to kill him, knowing full well that it could be a trap.

This final scene, however, illustrates the worst part of the movie: Wesley is a jackass.  I can't recall seeing an action movie with a less likable protagonist.  At the beginning of the film he's wasting his life, somehow trying to seem like not only everyone at home, but also a common man, but he's a lot less than the common man.  He's someone that doesn't even care that his girlfriend is cheating on him, that he works a job that he's not good at and where his boss treats him like garbage.  Then he's impetuous about being an assassin, a job he only has because of his DNA.  And finally, in the film's final fourth-wall breaking scene he condescendingly asks the audience what "they have done lately," never having enough self-awareness to realize everything he did was because it was handed to him.  McAvoy doesn't modulate any of this jerk-like nature, he exacerbates it, perhaps because the ambitious young Scot doesn't relate to such a loser.  I generally like McAvoy in pretty much everything, but this is a bad performance, coupled with a pretty lousy American accent (note to British actors: don't just flatten your accent when you move here, you have to have some sort of regional dialect to go with your voice), and shows that he's just not meant to play someone unlikable and make them at least relatable.  He looks wicked hot, but like so many women in Transformers movies have found out, that's not really enough to carry a movie.

The film received two Oscar nominations, both in the sound categories.  I have a feeling it gained both nominations due to the whooshing of the bullets, an admittedly eye-catching (if ludicrously over-produced) effect, as well as for the bevy of Oscar friendly names associated with the film's sound-work (2-time winner Chris Jenkins, along with 7-time nominees Wylie Stateman and Frank Montano), as the rest of the sound is mostly music and crashing trains, nothing particularly noteworthy or special going on here.

All-in-all, with just one film left before we kick off the 2008 OVP, I'm feeling like I might have chosen duds to end the race with, but what do you think?  Anyone want to stick up for Wanted (it was a hit back in the day, so someone must like it)?  Where does this rank on your personal James McAvoy favorites list?  And when compared to the likes of The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, WALL-E, Iron Man, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where does the sound-work in this picture rank?

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

Yowza-that was a jam-packed week, wasn't it?  My cable is out right now, so I'm wandering like a nomad around my house right now, cleaning without the gentle hum of my television to comfort me (I like the noise).  First, though, we need to link it up for the weekend.  Let's get started!

On Entertainment...

-Probably the celebrity-related article of the week that everyone seems to be discussing is the recent Forbes article (she's also on the cover) about Jessica Alba's $1 billion Honest Company, and the enormous success that it has received as Alba created a line of goods that are eco-friendly and chemical-free.  As one of my coworkers pointed out, Alba is beautiful, award-nominated (Golden Globes, y'all!), and now insanely rich (Forbes estimated her net worth as $200 million), so it's hard not to be tapped by the green-eyed monster here.  However, while I have never been a huge fan of Alba's as an actress, I have always really enjoyed her as a celebrity so I'm 100% okay with this.  It's kind of fascinating as well how many female entertainers have transformed a relatively short career as an actress (Alba seems to rarely be in films or television lately) into a hugely successful career in business, as Alba is joined by the likes of Kathy Ireland (whom Forbes also profiled), Jaclyn Smith, and Jessica Simpson in this regard.

-I have to agree with Entertainment Weekly's Chris Lee, who discussed the recent controversy surrounding Emma Stone's casting as a biracial woman who is supposed to be both white and Asian.  I won't be seeing this movie more out of the reviews being abysmal than principle (plus Cameron Crowe gets dangerously too close to Ron Howard for my taste), but honestly-who didn't see this coming?  It's not like there aren't actresses that could take on the role (as Lee points out, Olivia Munn) or that anyone faults casting the Oscar-nominated Stone, but can we just have people play their own ethnicities?  It always ends badly and quite insultingly when this doesn't happen, and in 2015 we should know better.

-I'm aware that this story is a few months old, so it doesn't really belong in the news of the week, but I'm putting this out there in the world in hopes that I can get a comment from someone with a quandary.  I found out this past week that Louise Pentland (aka Sprinkle of Glitter) had separated from her husband in March.  This makes me so sad cause I love Louise and her cheeky ways, but also I am curious-is there a solid YouTuber gossip or news site that I should be following but am not?  This is the third such story that I've missed of this nature, and this isn't something that would have shown up in Louise's Twitter so I wouldn't have seen it there.  If you know, please share in the comments and I would be most grateful!

-Nick Davis over at Nick's Flick Picks finished up his countdown of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival twenty years later as a retrospective.  Nick is one of my favorite Twitterers and bloggers, so please check it out even if you don't know a thing about that slate of films, as he makes pretty much everything entertaining.

On Politics...

Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS)

-Kansas Republicans are looking at raising taxes, which is surely a sentence you don't see every day.  The reason is that the Kansas Republicans have basically run the state into the ground, with massive tax cuts that did nothing to spur employment or spending (which is essentially the point of a tax cut from a pragmatic standpoint), and as a result they have a huge budget deficit that won't go away without cuts to popular spending programs, principally education.  I feel for Kansas teachers and students, I really do, but it's hard to feel bad for a state who knew all of this a year ago and yet reelected the governor (San Brownback) who initiated these cuts.  Blind partisan loyalty is always a bad thing, and if you have a governor who goes completely too far (I'd never elect Alan Grayson as governor, for example), you need to suck it up with the other guy for four years.  They didn't, and now they either have to have a raise in taxes (which is the right decision) or more state spending cuts for education and aid for low-income families (which is the wrong decision).

-The Supreme Court made what may be the biggest eyebrow-raise of the week in terms of the "one person, one vote" theory in terms of how House seats are appropriated.  Currently the House seats are given based on the census, not on how many eligible voters there are in a district, but this court case could change that.  As the article I linked from 538 points out, this probably wouldn't do much in terms of the race for the White House, but it would dramatically help the Republicans in the House.  It also makes little sense-the census makes more sense both because it is an actual representation of the populace (citizens should have representation in Congress, regardless of whether they're old enough to vote or not), and because you only appropriate House seats every ten years, which means that you're going to have a huge bottleneck of people that turn eighteen throughout that time in faster-growing districts, thus defeating the purpose of this exercise.  However, between this, and cases on redistricting, Obamacare, gay marriage, and immigration, the next two cycles for the Supreme Court will be deeply political, particularly in terms of Democrats' viability in Congress and President Obama's agenda.

-Perhaps the biggest must-read article of the week was the Politico magazine article (I love them) regarding Mike Pence and the bizarre protests in his state regarding HIV in Scott County.  Scott County, for those unfamiliar with the scandal is home to a huge HIV epidemic despite being a rural county that normally wouldn't see these sorts of statistics, an aberration that is a result of lower-income people abusing opiods and other intravenous drugs, resulting in shared needle usage.  The governor has put in place a needle-exchange program for the county, but this was under enormous public pressure, with the number of HIV cases in the state resulting from drug use tripling in the past year alone.  I truly don't get the politics of not doing something like this everywhere.  Yes, of course we should try to stem the abuse of prescription and illegal drugs, but HIV and Hepatitis C are deadly diseases, and needle exchange programs work (look at New York, for example, as great proof of their success as syringe-related HIV has dropped dramatically in the state in the past two decades as a result of these programs).  States like Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia have seen huge increases as a result of not championing these programs, and need to expand needle-exchange programs (which, it should be noted, were allowed under federal law until the Republicans reversed the program in 2011 after the Midterms).

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-What most first dates feel like.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-Chris Pratt has been everywhere promoting Jurassic World, and if you find him remotely sexy or funny, you will never want to stop watching the below clip:

Just One More...

-This week it was revealed the Saiga antelope, which are an endangered species housed primarily in Kazakhstan, have been dying off at an alarming rate.  The reasoning is still up for debate, but it's incredibly concerning as over 120,000 (more than one-third of the species total population) have died, likely due to a bacteria that is impacting their already reduced immune systems (which most attribute to unseasonal rainfall as a result of global warming).  Just another reason for climate change legislation...

OVP: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Film: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close
Director: James Gunn
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

You know that moment when you wake up about fifty minutes before your alarm clock is going to go off and you realize that there is no getting back to sleep?  You could try, but you know you're just going to be about to drift off and then suddenly the alarm will go off (and worse, it's a Monday, and so you're going to be cranky because you just were woken up by an alarm clock?).  Yeah, that's what happened to me this lovely August day and so I am already picturing how tired I'm going to be by 8:30 tonight and will be attempting to keep my eyes awake so as not to totally destroy my sleeping pattern.

That has nothing to do with Guardians of the Galaxy, but this is a personal blog so I figured I'd share (see-you have options on what to discuss in the comments!).  Guardians, on the other hand, is hardly a movie that you will want to fall asleep through.  In fact, it's a rather wonderful relief from the doldrums of this summer's tepid Box Office.  After over-serious comic book films and overrated animated fare, it's nice to see a movie that actually knows what its personality is, and doesn't shy away from silliness and comedy and nice, old-fashioned action-adventure.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about one of the below-the-line Marvel comic book teams (I only tangentially knew of the Guardians and have solid comic book nerd bonafides, and none of the members under this particular lineup), and in particular about Peter Quill aka Star-Lord (Pratt).  The film opens with that most cliched of comic book openings, the death of a parent, as Peter's mother lies dying of a disease (that looks like cancer, though I don't know if that's ever confirmed) and she makes a quick mention of his father that goes above Peter's head before slipping off into the abyss (setting up the sequel!).  Peter is then abducted by alien pirates (this is a summer blockbuster, after all) and eventually finds himself off stealing elusive artifacts, in this case a deeply powerful orb.

The movie follows this train of thought, and is hardly doing much heavy lifting when it comes to plot ingenuinty.  The film eventually finds Quill trapped in a space jail (I am kind of in love with the art direction of the prison, I have to say, even if the planet of Xandar and all other alien cities in movies lately seem to all want to look like Elysium), and teaming up with a motley crew that includes a beautiful green assassin (Saldana), a smart-mouthed scientifically-manipulated raccoon (Cooper), a powerful but audibly-limited tree mutant named Groot (Diesel), and a literally-minded mass of muscle (Bautista).  Together they move to try and save the planet of Xandar from an evil alien lord called Ronan (Pace), and watch as the all-powerful Thanos (an unrecognizable Josh Brolin...though he may have been performance capture so that might not be on the Makeup department-the lighting was so dark it was hard to tell) stays on the sidelines, waiting for his chance to pounce (in what will inevitably be an upcoming Avengers movie-perhaps the final chapter in all of this giant Marvel roll-out?).  And of course, as this is a summer blockbuster, they are successful.

Let's start out by pointing out where the film doesn't work.  Lee Pace's villain is, well, awful.  And not in the sense that he's an awful murderer, but in the sense that he's horribly drawn in the film.  I don't know why Pace keeps getting cast in such unknowable and underwritten parts (see also his work in The Hobbit, Breaking Dawn, and quite frankly Lincoln), but this is not the way that Hollywood should be treating him after they cancelled Pushing Daisies.  I haven't been watching Halt and Catch Fire, but my hope is that that's at least worthy of him (comment section-anyone recommend this show?).  There's never any personality in this character-he doesn't have the instant iconography that comes with, say, a Batman villain, and the movie doesn't seem to want to give us anything other than that he's a puppet of Thanos (setting up the next movie) and that he's got an inferiority complex.  Next time, let's establish our villains a little better before we destroy them.

I also want to complain about the non-Guardians, particularly John C. Reilly and Glenn Close as the residents of Xandar.  Honestly, I've sort of given up on Reilly since his interesting Paul Thomas Anderson days (does anyone get excited when he's onscreen anymore?), but Close still is a draw for me, so why is she dressed like this is Mars Attacks and given such randomly cliched things to say (are all of her lines lifted from Air Force One?).  This part could have been given to a far less recognizable actress and we'd have been fine-it was almost distracting to see someone of Close's stature playing this part, knowing how little she had to do.

Those two asides being stated, I genuinely enjoyed this movie.  The faults in it may not hold well over time, but this is a "snap judgment" for a reason, and my first trip to this film was a blast.  A lot of that rides on Chris Pratt's easy charm, which oozes from every corner of the screen.  James Gunn clearly wanted to point out the similarities between Pratt and both Billy Campbell's The Rocketeer and especially Harrison Ford.  It may just be coincidence, but Pratt is almost the exact same age that Ford was when he donned the Han Solo vest, and both have the swagger and likability that launch movie careers.  I expect that Andy Dwyer will survive long after his days in Pawnee after seeing this film.  And also, because it must be said-holy crap does he look hot in this movie!  Like the male-equivalent-of-Kate-Upton-donning-a-bikini sexy.  Seriously-that entirely unnecessary scene where he gets down to his underwear was clearly only kept in for catcalls, as it is entirely unnecessary to the plot, but thank you to Oscar-winner Hughes Winborne for keeping it in; this almost makes up for Crash (almost).

Aside from Pratt to lend to your ticket price, there's also Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel's hilarious chemistry as Rocket the Raccoon and Groot.  Both actors do great (albeit fairly unrecognizable) voicework here, and I love the chemistry.  Occasionally characters like these would be milked too often for comic relief or would be too cuddly, but the tone of the film fits them like a glove, and I truly found myself hoping for more of them (I do worry that, like the Minions in Despicable Me 2, they may be overused in the future, however).  The remaining two members (Saldana and Bautista) suffer from being too dour and not really in the tone of the film, and Saldana in particular has yet to really impress me in a role, so I'm a bit disappointed that we're going to be left with her as a love interest to our affable Peter Quill.  But you can't have a pure winner all-the-time, and this movie's great effects (love that golden fence sequence around Ronan's plane-clearly a solid ploy for adding Oscar-nominated to the film's accolades) and confidence make it more than worthy of a few hours in a darkened theater.

Those are my thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy-what are yours?  Is Chris Pratt about to be a movie star (or at least your new go-to fantasy boyfriend)?  Where do you think Thanos will fit in the Marvel cinematic rollout (he's had cameos in two films now)?  And who ever thought that Howard the Duck would make an appearance onscreen again?  Share in the comments!

OVP: The Lego Movie (2014)

Film: The Lego Movie (2013)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman
Director: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Everything is Awesome")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

While recent years have brought an onslaught of superheroes and fairy tales to multiplexes across the planet, it was only a matter of time before toys and games became a mainstay.  I mean, the cross-marketing possibilities are endless-look at what Disney and Mattel have done with their Princess, Tinkerbell, and Barbie lines through the years, creating a multiplatform industry by incorporating what’s going on on a big screen and what’s happening on a DVD.  Nothing better spices up a staid toy that’s been around for decades than a fresh new film.

Of course, this strategy hasn’t always worked (cough Battleship cough) and even a comic masterwork like Clue wasn’t a hit initially.  Therefore, I went into The Lego Movie with my brow furrowed, even with all of the praise being showered upon the film.  Little did I know that I was worried for nothing, as the film was a charming, utter delight.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of the film is pretty easy to solve and follow, with Emmett (Pratt) playing the role of our amiable but clueless hero, and Wildstyle (Banks) the girl he’s destined to fall in love with as they attempt to stop the evil Lord Business (Ferrell).  The film gets a bit long in the middle (occasionally there are too many twists as we’re getting to the obvious next plot shocker), but the movie’s secret weapon is that it is so attuned to its audience.  Most of the kids in the audience will be thrilled to see Batman, Superman, and countless other action heroes enter the screen and this is cheeky fun, but what’s better is all of the callbacks to the Lego brand itself.  From the appearance of the iconic ghosts and ninjas to a quick Duplo tease at the end of the film, the movie plays frequently with the toy brand itself and gives lots of great inside jokes for the adult audience.

The film also animates the story quite beautifully.  Computer-animated, it’s one of the only non-Disney films of its kind to really find the fun, clever color palette that Pixar employs and apply it to the screen. Lego toys are most often in solid patterns and bright, bold colors, so there’s very little tonal shifts and shadows, and instead we are given a cheeky look at the worlds that children created when they were young (which of course matches the big twist toward the end when we get a live-action sequence).

Since I’m in the midst of reviewing multiple Oscar-nominated films, I will point out that this movie could well be the Academy’s surest thing this year for a nomination of released films.  Animated feature this year looks quite lacking; Pixar has no contenders and Disney’s latest is a comic book film, a genre that has fared pretty poorly when the hero doesn’t have a butler named Alfred.  The only other contender that could make a legitimate play for the trophy right now is How to Train Your Dragon 2, but it’s worth noting that in a genre that crushes hard on sequels, only Toy Story 3 has pulled off a win as a follow-up (and it beat Hiccup's original escapade).  Could one of the bigger categories of the Oscars already have been locked up so soon?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

And also share your thoughts on The Lego Movie-I’m currently working my butt off to get through all of the films that I have stockpiled with reviews (most of them from the 2013 Oscar race…and then there’s a pile of films that I’m hoping to see soon and basically I'm just surrounded by oodles of ideas, though we're about to have our first seven-day-in-a-row-post-streak in eons, so at least we're delivering), so I’m far past getting to the party here, but surely some of you must remember the movie.  Did you like it?  Does it play well in the whole hippocampus?  Share your thoughts!