Terminator Genisys

Rebooting a series that’s grown stale or been dormant for a while is one thing. There’s a whiff of arrogance, however, to the recent trend of selective sequels that pick and choose which previous entries they want to follow, as if saying to certain films and the people who made them that they’re not good enough to even be acknowledged. Such hubris is risky, for if a movie can just pretend like predecessors it deems lesser never happened, it’s certainly fair to think that it, too, will be forgotten if it’s anything less than a worthy successor to the franchise’s best efforts. 

Terminator Genisys, the fifth Terminator movie but acting as a direct sequel to Terminator 2, surprisingly pulls it off. It doesn’t measure up to the skill, imagination, and pure thrills of James Cameron’s first two installments, and we’ll have to wait and see if its box office intake gives it staying power in the franchise going forward. But solely on its merits, it’s a solidly fun and entertaining follow-up, more so than any other entries in the series in the nearly quarter-century since T2 (though I still contend that Terminator Salvation, the last attempt at a reboot from 2009, was not bad).

The original Terminator ended with an interesting time-travel twist, but every successive entry made a bigger and bigger mess of continuity. Each new sequel pushed the apocalyptic future a few years later and later, and seemed to just hope the audience wouldn’t notice. Since we’re now well past the initial dates the films predicted the Terminators would take over, Genisys makes the wise move of resetting the whole timeline, à la X-Men: Days of Future Past. It still leaves some things unexplained (some of them deliberately, planting seeds for more sequels), but it works for the most part, and is not too complicated and confusing to just enjoy the flick.

The film opens with John Connor (Jason Clarke) leading the human forces to victory against the machines of the evil Skynet in the year 2029. Afterward, as in the original 1984 picture, soldier Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) is sent back in time to protect John’s mother Sarah (Emilia Clarke) from a Terminator sent back to kill her. Upon arriving in 1984, however, Reese finds that the timeline has changed, and Sarah is not a damsel in distress but a warrior fully aware of her destiny. Also, her closest ally is an aged Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who was sent back in time to protect her as a child. The new mission is for the three to travel into this new future (a 2017 that looks little different from right now) and stop Skynet’s latest plan for world domination.

One might recall that in T2, in addition to making a sequel, James Cameron took the opportunity to recreate parts of the first film with the blockbuster budget he didn’t have the first time around, from the overall plot to specific sequences and lines of dialogue. Genisys takes the same approach. The opening finally gives us the big final battle between man and machine Cameron envisioned but never produced. Also, since the visual effects T2 introduced have long since become commonplace, the main villain is similar to the liquid metal T-1000, only several steps ahead in terms of CGI (a seperate T-1000 is also thrown in the mix, with Lee Byung-hun taking over the role from Robert Patrick). One could dismiss it as derivative, repetitive, or unimaginative, but then, what reboot or sequel isn’t?

The problem actually isn’t the things that stayed the same, but that the film tries new things. Mostly, it’s the villains. I won’t reveal much about the main bad guy (though—SPOILER!—the trailers already did), just that their subplot and characterization, which aim to add a new element, are merely superfluous. The secondary antagonist, a personification of a malevolent computer program played by Matt Smith, is exhaustively chatty instead of threatening. Neither are as effective as the icy, stone-faced baddies of Terminators past. Also, recent Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons is randomly inserted as comic relief and really doesn’t fit. He’s funny, to be sure, but he only seems there as a way to plug holes in the plot, to bail out the screenwriters where they wrote the script into a dead end.

The main protagonists do their jobs better. Courtney, a reliable action movie role-player, is convincingly soldierly, and Clarke more than respectably carries the torch for Linda Hamilton. But, even though the character dynamics try to relegate him to a secondary wisecracking old man role, Schwarzenegger is still the one who makes the movie. Even at his age, he sells it well, brandishing a shotgun and wearing sunglasses, dropping terse, hilarious one-liners, and even taking part in some grueling combat. After a series of flops since he left the Governor’s mansion, it’s great to see him back in top form, and he reminds us to have fun even if the picture’s stretching our limits of believability.

Most importantly, the one element where no Terminator product has ever disappointed is the action department, and Genisys has some great chases, shootouts, and explosions. It all makes for a good time at the movies, even if towards the end it gets a little muddled in CGI. The best sequences are the ones early on, which recreate and alter specific scenes from the very first film. It’s here that this somewhat kid-friendly PG-13 picture comes closest to recreating the intense R-rated suspense from the Terminators of old. In fact, one foot chase through a dark sewer probably contains the most tension the series has had since Schwarzenegger played the bad guy 31 years ago.

Inside Out

Pixar introduced the world to computer animation with the classic film Toy Story (a film I still love to this day). 20 years later, long after computer animation has become standard over hand-drawn cartoon features, the studio still does it better than everyone else. It’s not just the breathtaking visual quality of their work, but the giant heart underneath it. Pixar at its best tells wonderful, emotional stories with fantastic characters, often with a stronger pathos than some of the best live-action drama. So it’s very apt for them to tackle the subject of emotions directly with Inside Out.

Specifically, personified emotions, who onscreen occupy a sort of command center inside the mind of the young girl Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), controlling her behavior and stockpiling memories. For much of Riley’s childhood, Joy (Amy Poehler) has been the dominant emotion, while the other four—Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling)—are only engaged sporadically. But when Riley reaches her tweens and moves to a new place with her family, Joy’s dominance starts to come to an end, and a desperate attempt to salvage happy memories takes her and Sadness on a trek through all corners of Riley’s mind.

Not entirely original, for quite a few pieces of entertainment have explored such a concept (and in one instance it rips a name from a certain R-Rated cartoon). But as with apparently everything, in Pixar’s hands it’s a step above the rest. The film’s depiction of the psyche as an industrious world is quite inventive, and more expansive on the idea than any work before it. It’s so vast and detailed that it feels like we’re seeing only part of an intricately constructed universe, with much more territory to explore should there be any sequels, or spinoff shorts like the Cars and Toy Story Toons (something I’d definitely be on board with).

And as with all things Pixar, this world is brought to life with stunning animation (it’s probably the studio’s most lush, beautiful effort since Finding Nemo), a masterful grasp of humor and feeling, and absolutely spot-on casting. It’s hard to think of a more perfect set of leads, so adept at comedy and yet more than capable of a range of emotions (in addition to the five mains, credit is due to Ricard Kind in a touching role I won’t spoil). This might also be the studio’s funniest picture, for the jokes are hilarious and keep landing even during emotional moments that could make some viewers’ eyes water (which is kind of the point, actually). 

Inside Out is Pixar at its most Pixar. In a sense, it’s almost like a look inside the mind of Pixar, and how they’re able to spin a clever story, effective comedy, and deep feeling into a masterpiece. In that respect, the film is smarter and more sophisticated than the average toon feature, offering a lot of ideas for the viewer to chew on. But that’s not even the most appealing part for adults watching. No, it actually offers something much rarer and more precious: the chance to feel at least a bit little like a child again, not in the overused metaphorical sense but for real. The movie’s imagination can only be described as childlike, so unbeholden is it to any overused tropes of film or TV, and so unspoiled and unburdened by grownup gripes about realism or cynical attitudes Watching the picture not only offers a very funny and colorful peek inside the mind of a kid, but also gives the audience a pure, wonderful feeling of regaining the limitless imagination of a child, something most people lose simply by growing up.

Jurassic World

Jurassic Park didn’t just introduce revolutionary new visual effects, but used them superbly. Besides the awe-inspiring introductory scene and a few heartwarming Steven Spielberg moments, the director expertly staged high-tension sequences around the scarier creatures created for the film. The enclosed encounters with the velociraptors and the slow terror and sheer size of the T. rex were terrifying on screens big and small. It’s for that reason the movie still holds up as a classic, even though the effects it pioneered are now practically a given in major Hollywood productions. Its sequels never really captured that same sense of terror, and increasingly devolved into simplistic “dinosaurs chase people” B movies.

A few moments in Jurassic World come close to recapturing the original’s sense of dread, though don't sustain it for as long or as effectively. For the most part, despite apparently ignoring any previous entries in the series besides the first film, the picture goes in the same simplistic, cheap thrills direction of the earlier sequels. Not quite as successfully, I might add.

In the movie, the Costa Rican island where Jurassic Park took place is now a successful dinosaur zoo theme park. For the newest attraction, the same scientists who brought the prehistoric creatures back to life have spliced the genes of various species to create a hybrid super-dinosaur, the Indominus Rex. As is to be expected, the monster escapes its under-construction pen to wreak havoc on the island, only this time with thousands of tourists instead of just a handful of people.

Despite that, though, there is (disappointingly, if you ask me) no tourist feeding frenzy, for all but one or two action sequences take place in more secluded jungle areas. They’re mostly still entertaining, if a little fleeting (I’ll get to that in a minute). However, the Indominus Rex doesn’t instill a sense of awe like a great digital creature could. This isn’t so much the fault of the film itself as the fact that too much was given away in the trailers. I hate to fault the movie for that, but the fact of the matter is there won’t be many surprises unless the viewer somehow managed to not see any of the picture’s marketing over the past many months (and given its extent, that would have required renunciation of most TV and the Internet).

The problem isn’t so much the dinosaur action, though, but the fact that there’s not a whole lot of it, and most of it is over quite quickly. Much of the runtime is instead allotted to the park itself and the human characters. In regards to the former, a theme park isn’t nearly as cool to look at when it’s obviously just a visual effect. As for the latter, the series has never exactly been a narrative triumph, but the original at least had a reasonable amount of intellectual content. The science might have been inaccurate, but the moral discussion of that science was interesting, yet never overshadowed the dinosaurs that the audience came to see. 

Jurassic World, however, consists mostly of plots and characters you’ve seen before: the workaholic who can’t find time for her family (Bryce Dallas Howard), the hunter with a camaraderie with animals that no one else understands (Chris Pratt), their inevitable romance, two more kids in peril (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins), and the mad military scientist who wants to turn the dinos into weapons (Vincent D'Onofrio). That last subplot in particular is overly complex, not to mention that the logic casting D’Onofrio as the villain shrivels and dies when he turns out to be correct, at least more so than the “heroes” in the picture. Pratt and Howard at least keep up the levity, but it’s not as fun as further dinosaur encounters would have been.

But, in spite of all the time that could have been devoted to more dino chases and destruction, the scenes that are never fail to entertain, if not wow the way Spielberg did 22 years ago. There’s even a highly satisfying dino battle toward the end that will thrill even the sourest, most cynical sequel-fatigued viewer. It’s an entirely watchable movie, not as good as Spielberg’s first sequel The Lost World, but ranking higher than the dopey Jurassic Park III.

San Andreas

If nothing else, San Andreas proves one thing: characters are important in any movie. Even if the main draw is the special effects and destruction, it still matters that we like and care about the people caught in the middle of it. Take, for instance, Michael Bay’s Armageddon, one of the disaster genre’s most frequent critical punching bags. Its lapses in science and the laws of physics are far more egregious than those in San Andreas, and the film far more headache-inducing in its level of noise and flash. And yet, the very funny cast makes it an entirely watchable experience.

The cast of San Andreas does little more than simply occupy the usual archetypes. Dwayne Johnson is the heroic Southern California rescue pilot whose record is spotless. Carla Gugino is his estranged wife in Los Angeles, and Alexandra Daddario their daughter traveling to San Francisco. There, she meets Hugo Johnstone-Burt, the completely perfect dream guy tailor-made to be her love interest, and Art Parkinson as his comic relief kid brother. And Ioan Gruffudd is the rich, selfish new significant other of Gugino’s who we know won’t make it to the credits.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Paul Giamatti is in the picture, too, as the maverick professor explaining all the earthquake science to the audience, but there isn’t even a slight attempt to tie him in to the main narrative.

You can probably connect the dots on your own, but once the shaking starts, Johnson travels across the Golden State to rescue his family be any means (and any vehicles) necessary. The rescuers always remarkably find the exact mode of transportation they need right when they need it, and all the buildings the characters need to get to for whatever reason just happen to be the only ones still standing after an earthquake that, quite literally, splits open the landscape. Such ridiculous coincidences might have been forgivable if the film were tongue-in-cheek, or if the cast would lighten things up a bit with some humor. But no, it’s always serious, even when the happenings can’t possibly be taken seriously and the dialogue is as terribly cliché-loaded as can be. Even Johnson doesn’t bring much fun to his role, which is disappointing because he’s most often such a brash and very funny personality.

Scientific and physical laws are broken frequently, which is almost a given in this type of movie. But more bothersome are the film’s lapses in moral logic. For example, Johnson’s rescue worker forsakes all the destruction happening around him to fly off and rescue his family. The story plays it so we’re supposed to root for him to succeed, but surely he could have saved more lives if he stayed and did his job where he was. Another instance is the fate of Gruffudd’s character. His demise is supposed to be a moment for the audience to applaud, but the way in which it happens also kills thousands of other people. He does some bad things in the film, but we don’t hate him that much. It’s probably pointless to ponder the morality of a disaster movie, but my brain had to do something because the picture sure wasn’t engaging me.

Even the quake effects are rather underwhelming in the grand scheme of things. Maybe there’s just so little else to the movie that they fail to awe very much. Then again, a climactic scene has a major tsunami heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge. And not only is everything obviously CGI, but the entire San Francisco Bay looks tiny. The scope is as expansive as bathtub. Whether it’s shoddy effects or just bad camera work, the film couldn’t even get one of the things everyone came to see right.

Sorry I didn't make it to the wedding...

**DATED SPOILERS HEREIN**

I was late to the Game of Thrones party, and now it turns out I’ll be leaving early. And not only shall I never catch up to where the show is currently, but I didn’t even get to the series’ infamous defining moment: the Red Wedding of two years ago (I’m stopping at season three’s sixth episode “The Climb,” three shy of the bloodbath).

My reasons have nothing to do with recent developments on the show. And lest anyone think my decision is in any way out of squeamishness toward its content, I’ll say that my all-time favorite TV drama is HBO’s sadly departed Deadwood, whose guttermouthed dialogue was nearly the spoken equivalent of hardcore pornography (seriously, check out the show, but make sure your kids, your parents, your wife, your husband, or anyone else isn’t in the same room). I’ve also been a fan of some of the network’s other very R-rated shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Oz, and Eastbound and Down.

I'm tuning out because my brain actually tuned out sometime after the Battle of the Blackwater in season two. Since then, I’ve been watching like it’s a chore, trying to convince myself it’s compelling. Finally, I quit lying to myself and admitted I was bored. No matter how impressively detailed and complex the plot may be or how great its production values (and they were as good as any big budget epic film), it’s for nothing if you don’t care about the characters. And I don't.

The joke about not getting too attached to the characters has been made a million times, but it was in all seriousness never a problem for me. The only things they do are plot and backstab, plot revenge, or get victimized (oh, and have sex, of course). Most of them only have one of these notes to their personality and no more, making who’s good and bad irrelevant because they’re all equally boring. The lone exception is Tyrion Lannister, who Peter Dinklage imbues with a rooting drive for purpose, a rare heart amongst such brutality, and great wit. Or at least he did, for even Tyrion goes flat and appears comparatively less in the third season than before.

Even if I did stick with it until the nasty nuptials, it wouldn’t have been the first time I saw the Red Wedding. Out of curiosity as to why the Internet was so upset, I watched it on YouTube shortly after it first aired, without knowing any of the characters or the context of the event. And to be fair, yes, knowing ahead of time did influence my decision to opt out. I may not have cared about the Starks any more than the rest of the characters, but they were, it appears, the “good guys” in the show. So why continue watching something when all that’s left are the least pleasant players? Although, if a villain is charismatic and compelling to the point that you kind of start to like them, I might still watch a show. But the Lannisters, like all the characters, were not (well, maybe Charles Dance, at times).

I will say this much about the show’s sex and violence: The Sopranos was at one point rebroadcast on basic cable network A&E, albeit with the bloodier scenes and nudity cut out and the swearing dubbed over. Despite some stilted mouth movements, the show still worked, as there was enough substance behind the series' HBO-ness. It’s hard to imagine being able to do the same with Game of Thrones, but if they did, you know what’d be left? The Star Wars prequels! Seriously, all it would be is just endless talking and plotting and politics. It’s more complex and better written than George Lucas’ efforts, maybe, but it'd be just as tedious if not for all the gore and titillation. With it, it’s no deeper than any big, dumb, violent special effects blockbuster movie, just stretched out longer and more explicit.

So, enjoy the rest of show’s run, fans, and the books whenever George R.R. Martin manages to finish them. I hope in the end, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Arya (Maisie Williams) team up to lay waste to Westeros and set up a utopian matriarchal kingdom in its wake, if only to somewhat level off the plight of the show's female characters. But I won't be watching, so I care not what happens.

Mad Max: Fury Road

With its spectacular car chases and bleak, grungy vision of the future that still influences sci-fi to this day, the Mad Max series still holds up very well after three decades. Or at least it did; after the long-gestating fourth installment Fury Road, I’m not so sure it will anymore. The film is the maddest Mad Max of them all, taking the series and its vehicular theatrics to a level so high the old movies seem like a Sunday drive by comparison. In fact, it’s not too much of a stretch to wonder if it renders the entire action genre prior to this point obsolete.

There are shootouts on top of brutal hand-to-hand combat on top of car chases (literally, on top of car chases). Souped-up death machines and motorcycles brave daredevil jumps while chucking explosives and exchanging gunfire, or just regular fire. One vehicle has several amplifiers attached while a passenger shreds on a guitar in place of drums of war, which makes absolutely no practical sense but is totally appropriate nonetheless amidst the chaos (and of course, said instrument later becomes a weapon). Explosions and crashes abound like a freeway pileup at a Fourth of July fireworks show. And yet, every sequence is imaginatively designed and choreographed within an inch of its life, with incredible stunts that leave the viewer with an awed appreciation, as opposed to a mocking disbelief.

Even when the mayhem subsides for a few brief instances, the film has the relentless tone and energy of an action sequence in every department. Comic relief? It’s as blunt as a punch in the gut and all the more effective for it. What about the tortured backstory of the title hero? Instead of slow and thoughtful moments, the picture cuts deep with intense, haunting visions that would be as at home in a horror movie. Even the very plot itself—in which loner Max (Tom Hardy, taking over the role from Mel Gibson) helps convoy driver Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and the enslaved “wives” of warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) escape him and his minions across the post-apocalyptic Australian desert—is obviously built around the long, elaborate car chase battles, as were the plots of the preceding films.

It would be easy to simply write off the entire thing (and the whole series, for that matter) as empty, flashy popcorn violence, but doing so would be wrong, and vastly unfair to series writer-director George Miller and company. From the very first Mad Max, the main selling point was the automotive havoc, but Miller also infused the narratives with creative ideas about the breakdown of society and the dark future the movies presented. Some of them were funny, some just interestingly out-there, some even tragically sad. Most of these little tidbits were only established understatedly, through dialogue or quick views in the background, but that made them no less clever or interesting.

Despite packing Fury Road to the gills with vehicular destruction, Miller still establishes his pulpiest, most detailed future vision yet in the series, a disturbing cultish world with inventive traits too good to spoil. And though the movie never really slows enough for some introspective moments, it manages to feature character arcs with pathos within its action sequences. All the main characters have some depth: Nicholas Hoult as a doomed cult member, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Courtney Eaton, and Abbey Lee as the five “wives,” and especially Theron, who’s Max’s action hero equal in every way. And in the title role, Tom Hardy doesn’t even need to speak to sell us, so convincing is his mere presence and body language. He might even best Mel Gibson, as while Gibson exuded a smarmy cynicism in the role, Hardy’s surly stoicism is arguably more affecting.

The picture establishes the storyline so that it works as both a sequel for old fans and a starting point for new ones, and both parties will enjoy it equally. It’s a thrilling, wall-to-wall raging piece of entertainment that’s going to be hard for any action blockbuster this summer (or any summer) to top.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

I think it's safe to say the superhero genre is reaching critical mass. Not only is the cinema docket saturated with superheroes (and looks to be that way for years to come), but now individual movies appear to be packing in as many heroes as they can. As if the initial Avenger lineup wasn’t enough already, Age of Ultron adds several new faces to the mix while expanding on the stories of the returning players. And remarkably, the film pulls it off at least as well as the first Avengers, maybe even better. It’s an entry that succeeds in both the macro and the micro, continuing Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s work of clearing the way for a new phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while also working solidly as a standalone picture.

With the world still reeling from the events of Winter Soldier, the film opens with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes raiding a leftover Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D. compound to retrieve a powerful amulet left over from the Battle of New York three years prior. Iron Man Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Hulk alter-ego Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) attempt to harness that power to initiate their secret project: Ultron (James Spader), a peacekeeping artificial intelligence program. Unfortunately, the new program breaks free, and its definition of a peaceful world is one without humans. So it’s up to the Avengers to stop him, as well as face two new Hydra-engineered enemies: super-speedster Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and psychic Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).

The picture brings back everything we loved about the first Avengers, turned up a notch or two. The action and special effects are bigger, more intense, and frankly crazier (the street fight between the Hulk and Iron Man’s Hulkbuster armor may be the best Hulk fight on the big screen so far). Also back is its sense of humor. For a film based on such a dark comic arc and advertised as being so dark, it might be the funniest Marvel movie. More than just keeping the expository scenes going, the comedy also meshes well with some dramatic parts and complements the action scenes, especially the near-slow-mo ones involving Quicksilver. And when it appears Ultron is going to be one of those cold, stoic philosophizing villains, Spader turns on the smarm and attitude to great effect. It almost hurts his standing as the bad guy because it’s so much fun when he’s onscreen.

But for all the elements that make it a fun summer blockbuster, it’s the slower, smaller scenes, the ones that instill these characters with humanity, where the film shines. Namely, all the characters without their own individual franchise get a moment to evolve. We finally learn a little more about Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and that they’re not just emotionless killers. Even better is Banner’s subplot, as his surprisingly sad and moving struggle to control the monster inside him is easily the strongest Hulk story yet (between this and the aforementioned fight with Iron Man, I think it’s safe to say another Hulk film might finally be warranted). And the visions put into the team’s heads by Scarlett Witch, exposing each one’s fears and desires, are a nice, dark touch.

I really enjoyed Age of Ultron, but I’m not sure how well it bodes for Marvel going forward. It succeeds only a hair away from failure; it’s one character cameo away from overload, one convenient save-the-day moment away from losing all tension, one impossible stunt away from crossing the line into sheer ridiculousness. The movie manages to shoulder the whole load but leaves so little room for error, or much else.

I can see why they cut the next Avengers in two.