REVIEW: Premium Rush

By Chris Luckett

3 1/2 stars out of 5

            The best male performance last year was Michael Shannon’s lead role in the criminally under-seen Take Shelter. Shannon is at the stage of his career when he’s recognizable by most but identifiable by few. His performance in Take Shelter was finely nuanced, a poignant and mysterious look at a man who is either becoming prophetic or schizophrenic. It was a brilliant piece of acting, earning him numerous accolades and awards. Shannon firmly proved he is one of the most gifted actors of our time.

            This is not that performance. Shannon throws all subtlety out the window in Premium Rush. This is a movie built for one purpose and one purpose only – fun – and Shannon takes full advantage of the carefree environment to ham it up and chew the scenery harder than anyone probably has since Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns.

            Premium Rush is an action movie that doesn’t try to be anything more what it is. It’s not concerned with labyrinthine twists or evocative emotion; it just wants to entertain you.

Image property of Columbia Pictures

            Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as bike messenger Wilee (yes, like the coyote), a man who weaves through Manhattan traffic the way Bobby Fischer played chess. (There are numerous sequences in which Wilee has to quickly react to an obstacle and reviews every outcome in a split-second, like Robert Downey, Jr. in Sherlock Holmes.) He’s capable of much more than being a daredevil courier, but loves what he does.

            Wilee’s loves his it far less when, one day, he is tasked with delivering a package of significant worth. Wilee isn’t aware of its value. Nor is he aware of another man who wants the package at any cost. What should be a simple Point-A-to-Point-B delivery becomes a crazy cat-and-mouse game between Wilee and a crooked cop who’ll stop at nothing to steal the package and use it to pay off his life-threatening gambling debts.

Image property of Columbia Pictures

            Really, the package itself doesn’t even matter. It’s a MacGuffin, a simple plot device whose sole purpose is to drive the action. It could just as well be a mysterious briefcase or the Ark of the Covenant.

            This is by no means uncommon in action movies. Many great thrillers have done it, from The Maltese Falcon to Mission: Impossible III. The key to a great movie with a MacGuffin is how well the movie distracts you from the pointlessness of the plot. That’s the only area where Premium Rush really seems the stumble.

            David Koepp, the screenwriter behind Jurassic Park and Panic Room, does an admirable job keeping the kinetic energy up and helping you really feel the speed at which the action’s happening. Unfortunately, the movie drags on just a bit too long, even at a slim 91 minutes.

            By the final act, I found myself just too aware of the preposterousness of Wilee’s investment in such a high-stakes game of corruption and casualties. A subplot with a NYPD bike cop who routinely gets picked on by couriers to the point of basically being bullied also wore its welcome out with me early on.

            Gordon-Levitt does a wonderful job with Wilee, although after such strong performances in 500 Days of Summer, Inception, and even The Dark Knight Rises, it’s a bit disappointing to see him not doing anything more in this role beyond just being likeable. Still, that likeability does carry most of the movie.

            Premium Rush also has an interesting sense of humour to itself. It’s very subtle at times, very loud at others, and just generally different than I expected to find in this type of movie. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the movie is outright funny, but it certainly doesn’t take itself very seriously. That helps it a lot.

Image property of Columbia Pictures

            And then there’s that performance of Michael Shannon’s. He may be overacting like the best of them, but what a joy it is to watch. He makes his dirty cop a psychopathic time bomb, always on the verge of blowing up. And the times he does, it rivals the best dramatic explosions of Christopher Walken or Al Pacino.

            The pacing problems ultimately prevent the movie from being anything more than an enjoyable late-summer thrill ride, but Premium Rush is a good for what it is: easy on the brain, but fleeting in the memory -- a lean but mostly satisfying meal to cap off a rather supersized summer.

SPECIAL: Summer Movie Wrap-Up 2012

By Chris Luckett

In a summer of blockbusters and superheroes, 2012 has already delivered its share of great movies – not to mention a stinker or two. If you’re looking for some last-minute summer flicks to catch or some great DVDs to rent soon, here’s a helpful guide.

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THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN – Those who scoffed at the announcement of a Spider-Man reboot just over a decade after the first movie and a mere five years after the last have been shown the problem with pre-judging. The re-imagining with Andrew Garfield in the red-and-blue suit swings higher than the Tobey Maguire original ever reached. While the loss of J.K. Simmons’ newspaper editor is felt, all the new faces (Emma Stone, Denis Leary, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Rhys Ifans) do wonders with their stock roles. It may not have been the biggest or most impressive superhero movie of the summer, but it was the most fun.

THE AVENGERS – After four years of build-up, Marvel unleashed its first umbrella picture, combining the leads from Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger, and both Iron Mans. The Avengers is a movie with everything you could want in a blockbuster; it was hard to find a better time to be had at the theatres this summer. With so many strong characters vying for centre stage, and so much narrative ground to be covered, the fact the movie works so well is, quite simply... a marvel.

BATTLESHIP – Who would have expected Taylor Kitsch would follow the disappointing and muddled John Carter with an even worse movie? In a bomb of sizable proportions, the movie adaptation of the classic Hasbro game manages to take a stupid premise for a movie and make it even dumber, with atrociously bad dialogue and supporting “performances” by Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker. Oh, and there’s aliens for some reason. Nobody sunk this Battleship; it’s just dead in the water.

Image property of Warner Bros.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES – With so much hype, the conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy was bound to disappoint in some ways. For the most part, though, The Dark Knight Rises is a gloriously epic movie, with ideas and action scenes that are almost too large for just one movie to tackle. Tom Hardy’s Bane may not have been as fascinating a villain as Heath Ledger’s Joker, but Nolan ingeniously makes Bane nearly unintelligible, giving him a mystery and an unpredictability that couldn’t have been achieved otherwise. The ending may try too hard to please everyone, but this is a worthy climax to the greatest superhero movie trilogy to date.

THE DICTATOR – Not as brilliant as Borat but not as awful as Ali G: Indahouse, The Dictator pretty much delivers what it promises. For the first time since before Borat and Bruno, Sasha Baron Cohen relies on a script and fellow actors, with mixed results. When the writing works, Admiral General Aladeen’s misadventures in NYC recall the finest moments of Coming to America; when it doesn’t, it makes you miss the refreshing spontaneity of his unscripted comedies. Overall, though, The Dictator succeeds more often than it fails.

MEN IN BLACK 3 – Like most movie trilogies, the third entry proved better than the second, if still not as great as the original. By breaking with the formula, having Agent J travel back to the ‘60s, and making the movie a time travel comedy, the newest Men in Black feels almost as fresh as it did when Will Smith first slipped on those Ray-Bans. Josh Brolin proves just what an adept comedic actor he can be, as well, perfectly imitating Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K’s younger self.

MOONRISE KINGDOM – Wes Anderson is the only modern movie director whose work is instantly identifiable through visual style alone, and his Moonrise Kingdom is no exception. The posed, almost-storybook look he gave earlier movies like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox works wonderfully here, giving this tale of two runaway children in the 1960s a wonderfully timeless feel. Fans of dry humour will find much to love.

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THE PIRATES!: BAND OF MISFITS – The minds behind the Wallace & Gromit series return with another clay-mated piece of brilliance. The jokes fly as fast and frantically as those in Airplane! or The Naked Gun, weaving every possible style of comedy into a delightful tapestry. Top that off with hilarious voice work from the likes of Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, and David Tennant, and you get one of the best animated movies in years.

PROMETHEUS – The question of whether or not it’s an Alien prequel was rendered moot by the awesome spectacle of a fantastic sci-fi story with an original voice. Not only is this the most visually impressive movie of the summer, it also intersperses a hearty dose of intelligence amongst its action and terror. Some derided the movie for being too confusing or slow at times, but Prometheus has its aim not at being a monster-of-the-week movie but at standing alongside genre masterpieces 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien. It nearly makes it there.

TED – “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane set his sights on live-action for the first time, with surprising success. He gets good distance out of a seemingly one-note joke. Much like MacFarlane’s TV shows, every scene in Ted continues until the jokes run out of steam, at which point, a new scene begins. The movie takes an odd turn in the last act and runs a good 20 minutes too long, but Ted is certainly the funniest movie of a rather disappointing summer for comedies.

OPINION: Facts in Flux

by Chris Luckett

If you were fooled by the picture circulating around yesterday, you weren't alone. Many unsuspecting web surfers were duped into thinking Doc Emmett Brown and Marty McFly travelled to June 27, 2012 in Back to the Future, Part II. Unfortunately, to quote the Clerks animated series, it was just a hoax played by an idiot with too much time on his hands. Here's why:

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Back to the Future took place on Oct. 26, 1985. Marty travelled back to Oct. 26, 1955 in the first movie. Because the DeLorean had been programmed to go 30 years into the past for the first trip, Doc Brown set it to travel to Oct. 26, 2015 -- 30 years into the future -- at the end of the first movie. Exhibit A:

MARTY: So, how far ahead are you going?

DOC: About 30 years. It's a nice, round number.

(The reason he said "about" 30 years is simply that, due to leap years, exactly 30 years wouldn't quite be Oct. 26)

Then, Doc Brown returns right before the end of the movie -- the last scene of which is also the first scene in Back to the Future, Part II -- exclaiming that Marty has to come back to the future with him ("You and Jennifer turn out fine; it's your kids, Marty!") Because when Doc Brown had arrived on Oct. 26, 2015, Marty Jr. had been set up by Griff Tannen ("The justice system works swiftly in the future, now that they're abolished all lawyers," Doc tells Marty), Doc brings Marty with him back to the future five days earlier, to Oct. 21, 2015, to prevent Marty, Jr. from agreeing to help Griff, thus preventing Marty, Jr.'s arrest, thus saving the McFly family -- until they then mess up the timeline again and have to fix it again. Exhibit B:

Image property of Universal Pictures

So June 27, 2012 has no relevance at all to the series. Not only did they not travel to 2012, because 27 years is not "a nice, round number," but none of the three movies ever took place in June. (For those curious, Marty travelled to Oct. 26, 1885 in Back to the Future, Part III.)

Two years ago, a photoshopped image of the DeLorean's "destination dashboard" was circulated with the date July 5, 2010, in promotion of the trilogy's release on Blu-Ray that year. (The website TotalFilm eventually 'fessed up to creating that hoax.) Exhibit C:

Image property of TotalFilm

Some prankster/idiot decided to photoshop June 27, 2012 into that same image a few days ago and started circulating it around the Internet, which is the picture you've been seeing. But since Marty and Doc travelled 30 years into the future from 1985, it will still be another three years before we arrive at the same date they went to.

On the plus side, though, that does mean only three more years until Hoverboards.

REVIEW: Prometheus

by Chris Luckett

4 1/2 stars out of 5

Image property of 20th Century Fox

Prometheus arrives with outrageous expectations, for a movie whose title doesn’t have a 2 or a 3 at the end. Much has been written in the last year about whether it is or isn’t an Alien prequel, but the real appeal should be this: Ridley Scott has made another science-fiction movie.

            Ridley Scott is a director whose name most people recognize, although many people also probably couldn’t tell you anything he’s directed. Legend, Thelma & Louise, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Dawn, Kingdom of Heaven, and American Gangster are eight of his most famous. His two arguably most well-known, however, pioneered sci-fi as we know it today: 1979’s Alien and 1982’s Blade Runner.

            After introducing the revolutionary idea that future civilizations and technologies may be run-down and grimy, as opposed to the established thinking of spaceships being gleaming white and cutting-edge, Scott left the genre to focus on others. It’s been thirty years since his last foray past “present day.”

            Those years have not proved a hindrance or handicap for Scott. Prometheus delivers in almost every way one could want it to, even if it ends up biting off more than it can chew.

            Let’s get the other question out of the way right now, though. Is it an Alien prequel? Well, only in the way that Clerks is a prequel to Dogma or that National Lampoon’s Vacation is a prequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Which is mostly to say: no, it’s not really a prequel.

Prometheus takes place in the year 2093. Alien takes place in 2122. Within the future imagined by Ridley Scott, the events of both movies happen in the same timeline. So, an industrial magnate played by Guy Pearce in Prometheus is name-dropped a few times in Alien. And the planet visited in the opening half of Alien is the same planet that the events in Prometheus take place on. Beyond that, however, there is really no direct correlation between the two movies.

All of which means that if you don’t like Alien, that’s not to say you won’t like Prometheus; nor do you have to have seen any of the Alien movies to appreciate or enjoy Prometheus. It’s a standalone sci-fi thriller that simply happens to share the same potential future as that explored in Alien.

What a sci-fi thriller Prometheus is, though. This, my friends, is the type of movie that deserves witnessing its spectacle on the big screen. I loved The Avengers and The Hunger Games, but I’d be hard-pressed to identify actual shots from those films I remember. There were fantastically gripping scenes, and surely the visual effects and bass explosions were aided by a theatrical environment, but there were no moments that made me stare at the screen in wonder, like used to occur in blockbusters. (As contract, think about the first reveal of a dinosaur in Jurassic Park, or the spaceships first slicing through the clouds in Independence Day, or even the now-cliché “bullet time” in The Matrix).

Image property of 20th Century Fox

Prometheus, on the other       hand, seems ready-made to remind audiences of what spectacle and grandeur in science-fiction used to be. It’s now been a week and a half since I first saw it, and I still vividly recall and can picture over a dozen of the individual sights and “wow” moments in it. There’s no question this is the best-shot and most visually composed blockbuster since 2010’s Inception.

The story concerns one of the oldest questions of humanity: Why are we here? Two scientists, played by Noomi Rapace (star of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Logan Marshall-Green (Devil), find millennia-old cave drawings, etchings, and carvings that all feature the same image of a stick figure reaching toward celestial bodies. When it’s determined that the star-pattern matches an actual cluster of stars – with a planet and moon within sight of it – an expedition is sent into space to find answers. The scientists and an accompanying crew (including Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, and Michael Fassbender in an astounding performance) fly to the planet with the hopes of literally meeting their makers.

Of course, if you’ve seen a single commercial or trailer for Prometheus, you know all sorts of hell breaks loose once they get there. Spelling out how or why would detract from the enjoyment of a movie perfectly skilled at spinning its yarn at just the right speed and with just the right flair.

One thing does bear mentioning, though: this is an intense movie. While its R-rating is certainly indicative that the movie’s for adults, it relies much less on gore than people may expect and much more on nail-biting tension. One scene involving Rapace’s scientist character and an emergency operation had me gripping the armrest so hard I actually pulled a muscle. So be forewarned; while Prometheus is not really a scary movie, that’s not to say it’s without extreme moments of tension.

Image property of 20th Century Fox

Prometheus’s only real problem is that it tries to do too much. With all the technology, characters, architecture, life forms, geology, and physics created specifically for this movie, there almost isn’t enough room for it to be asking so many big questions in the already-grand plot, let alone ones that pry at our very existence.

By the final third of the movie, so much is going on, with so many developments occurring left and right, it almost becomes too much for the movie. There are just too many minor characters, subplots, and veering forks in storytelling to form a cohesive narrative from start to finish, which would have served this movie better. You almost get the sense Scott was so excited to be playing in this sandbox that he couldn’t focus on just one toy to play with.

Still, complaining about a sci-fi movie being too rich with potential and ideas, when so many barely have enough to get by, is like griping about a comedy having too many jokes. Prometheus is the kind of theatrical experience that only comes around once or twice a year. If you have the nerve resolve and you don’t mind lofty questions interspersed with your action, you owe it to yourself to see Prometheus this summer. And on as big a screen as possible.

OPINION: The Tetralogy Trend

by Chris Luckett

            There once was a time when “3” was the magic number for movie series. If a film was successful, it likely would get a sequel. If it was very fortunate, it could get a third entry, rounding out the series into a trilogy.

Image property of Universal Studios

            Many classic film stories were made into trilogies and concluded, with nary a thought of continuing into the unknown territory of “4.” Any series that did get a fourth entry, like Rocky, Lethal Weapon, or Police Academy, managed it by learning a formula and simply replicating the recipe with slightly different ingredients each time. There often was an air of desperation about the idea of a film series continuing past a trilogy and a derision of sorts from many audience members.

            Such times, as long ago as the mid-‘90s, now seem antiquated. So far, 2012 has already brought us fourth entries in the Underworld and American Pie franchises. As this summer season brings audiences to the multiplex in droves, we’re also getting fourth Spider-Man, Ice Age, Step Up, and Bourne movies. Then, to close out the year, studios are giving us Paranormal Activity 4 and what many consider to be a fourth movie in the Peter Jackson-J.R.R. Tolkien partnership, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

            How this phenomenon became such a common occurrence is a subject large enough for a whole other article on sequels, remakes, and brand names. Part of the answer, though, lies buried amidst the piles of sequels that now litter store shelves and dump bins.

            In the ‘90s, movie series were still wrapping up in trilogies. As the decade began, Indy had just retired and the Exorcist series had redeemed itself in a fitting close. Halfway through the 1990s, Jack Ryan and John McClane both rode off into the sunset, with fitting bombastic dignity. As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, even post-‘80s series like Scream wrapped up into their own trilogies.

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            Then something changed. The mentality of audiences became more forgiving of fourth entries. Embracing, even. Despite The Sum of All Fears failing to revive Jack Ryan and both Exorcist prequels bombing, audiences started clamouring to see their old favourites again. Series like Indiana Jones, The Terminator, Die Hard, and Jurassic Park all were being requested. Such fan-driven requests hadn’t ever been uncommon, but the emergence of the Internet in the new millennium suddenly gave these normally soft-spoken audience members a booming voice.

In the last five years alone, we’ve been given Hannibal Rising (the fifth entry, technically, but let’s put semantics aside), Live Free or Die Hard, TMNT, Rambo, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Terminator: Salvation, Scream 4, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Spy Kids 4D: All the Time in the World. Three of those were from 2011 alone. 2012 has lined up eight, with more possibly to come. And let’s not forget the long-in-the-works Austin Powers 4, Beverly Hills Cop IV, and Jurassic Park IV, likely coming soon to a theatre near you.

            To be fair, one major culprit for this that is often ignored (by sheer virtue of it being the fifth entry and not the fourth) is 2005’s Batman Begins. While the modern Batman movies had reached a total of four before the characters were abandoned post-Clooney, it was Batman Begins that showed there was an audience for once-thought stagnant characters and settings.

            Because the tetralogy epidemic took hold in the last decade, one would think the central blame lies with a movie made since Y2K. Truthfully, though, the biggest cause of the boom of modern revisits came before the turn of the century, and it even just recently popped its head back out to survey what it begat and remind those paying attention: The Phantom Menace.

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            There were fourth entries that had succeeded at the box office before Episode I – even fourth sci-fi entries, like 1997’s Alien: Resurrection – but none made the impact that George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars galaxy did in 1999.

            As a double-whammy, the movie got generally mixed reviews, which taught studios that audiences would flock to theatres to see their favourite old-school franchises, regardless of whether the reheated product was any good. This lack of a need for quality control led to the reintroductions of John Connor and Indiana Jones being so scattershot and alternatingly bombastic and lacklustre.

            The Phantom Menace, for better or for worse, changed the landscape of cinema and the box office by making franchises out of series that would otherwise have stayed as trilogies. Whether you think that’s a blessing or a curse probably depends on whether you rushed out two weekends ago to see American Reunion.

            Regardless of how you may feel about them, “fourquels” aren’t going away anytime soon. As long as people are lining up to see Jack Sparrow’s next adventure on the high seas or Ethan Hunt’s next impossible mission, studios will keep churning them out.

In a few years, I wouldn’t even be surprised to see a trailer for The Godfather, Part IV. Myself, I’ll probably be sitting on my couch, re-watching Back to the Future, Part III. I may have already seen it and know what’s going to happen, but there’s just something much more satisfying about a “The End” than a “To Be Continued.”