Terminator Genisys

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Terminator Genisys is the fifth Terminator film, the fourth to feature the real Arnold Schwarzenegger, and further alters the timeline established in the first two films. This time Kyle Reese goes back to 1984, when the first film takes place, but encounters a Sarah Connor who has been raised by a Terminator. He, Sarah and Arnold must now go to 2017 to prevent Google from starting the robot apocalypse.

Nick: There is too much going on in this movie for just one viewing with all the homages that feel rather forced and the time jumps that try to rework the story concocted by the previous installments. If this was the first movie of the series a teenager viewed, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were quite confused. It seems there should have been a disclaimer stating Prerequisite:  Have to see the first two installments to enroll.

Dustin: I agree. This doesn’t work as a stand-alone movie. The producers take for granted the audience has seen at least the first two movies (which is probably a safe bet, in their defense). The third and fourth film aren’t really necessary for the understanding. The only thing that mattered to the timeline in the third movie is the idea Judgement Day can be delayed, but not prevented. The fourth one had some backstory, but not enough to matter, and introduced CGI Arnold. The callbacks to the first two were enjoyable, they kept me waiting to see how they would subvert expectations. The main problem with making more and more of these movies, well after Judgement Day should have already happened, is the time travel logistics get more and more convoluted, from being pretty simple in the first, to be downright confusing this time.

Nick: All the sequels have lacked the intensity of the first two films. They made their characters run around a lot more, but to what end? The first and second had so much horror it really felt like any character could die and it would be heartbreaking! There is no more heart in the series. When John Connor ends up a Terminator it should be jaw dropping, and yet I didn’t even flinch.

Dustin: I think part of that could be because this is a PG-13 film in a series that should be rated R. Granted, fewer teens would be able to get into an R-rated film, which will hurt the bottom line. But, like you said, the lack of intensity this film had compared to the first two definitely hurt.

Another reason could be some of the homages to the first films feel more like parody, or meta-jokes. Ex-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R, California) attempts to come off as human and his companions’ reactions produce as many groans as laughs.

Nick: Genisys does look exceptional though, and the fight between Arnie and his younger self was one of the highlights.

Dustin: There were a number of things I liked, mostly in the first half when we’re still discovering this modified, once-familiar story. I was expecting to hate the idea Sarah Connor was raised by Arnold, but I actually found their relationship somewhat touching. You get the idea the Terminator may have some fatherly feelings toward her, dare I say love?, that isn’t part of his programming.

I also found the sci-fi message somewhat relevant. Judgement Day is when a cloud-like technology (a thinly veiled Google), uses the death-grip it has over humanity to bring about its destruction. I don’t think Google would really do that, but as I use my Google Fiber Internet service, write this with you on Google Docs, then post on Blogger (a Google service), linking to a YouTube video (ditto, Google) for the trailer, I can’t help but think humanity relies on them a little too much.

Nick: I have also singled in on your location using Google Maps! You look very good.

Dustin: Huh?! Can Google’s satellites see through my roof?

Nick: And through YOUR SOUL! (With an algorithm recreating your soul based on your Internet searches, which are really quite disturbing, Dustin.)

Dustin: Do you see me waving?

Nick: No, but I see you giving me the bird.

Dustin: Where were we?

Nick: The most enjoyable parts for me were between Pops (Old Arnie) and Sarah Connor. I would rather have a prequel of Sarah growing up with Pops as a father than another sequel where there are four time jumps and 37 homages.  

Dustin: I’d like a prequel where they explain the reason the machines programmed the Terminator to have a thick Austrian accent when the idea was for him to blend in.

Emilia Clarke looks enough like Linda Hamilton for the role, and she has plenty of screen presence, but she doesn’t really carry it as well. I believed Hamilton in the first one when she was a down-to-earth waitress, and I believed her in the second one when she was a tough-as-nails survivalist. Clarke might be a little too soft around the edges to be believable. She looks more childlike than Hamilton (even though she’s 28, just slightly younger than Hamilton was in the first movie).

I didn’t realize this was the same chick from Game of Thrones until my wife informed me. I think she looks better as a blonde (figure 1, below), as did Emily Browning in Sucker Punch (figure 2). I guess I just have a thing for blondes with wavy hair, which is why I married an Asian woman.

figure 1: Emilia Clarke as a blonde, Game of Thrones (right), as a brunette, Terminator Genisys

figure 2: Emily Browning as a blonde, Sucker Punch (right), as a brunette, Pompeii

Nick: I kept thinking those same things about her character, but her whole life has been different so she would be much different. Instead of meeting the Terminator at 19 and trying to kill her, she met one at 9 who raised her into a very different Sarah Connor. So it’s difficult to say she didn’t play Sarah Connor as well, but more like the character of Sarah Connor was more interesting in the first two installments.

Dustin: While it didn’t have the weighty sci-fi ideas of the first two movies, nor the emotional pay offs or intense action, Terminator Genisys is a decent bookend to the series. I honestly don’t think we need another of these movies.

Nick: I wish Cameron would drop his future Avatar movies and just make a proper ending to the Terminator franchise.

Dustin: The proper ending was at the end of Terminator 2. We didn’t need the following three films.

Inside Out

Dustin: 4.5 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4.25 of 5 stars (Live canary)

“America needs the wisdom of Herman’s Head now more than ever.” - Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons

Dustin: Disney/Pixar’s latest animated film takes place almost entirely in the head of its protagonist, Riley, an elementary schoolgirl dealing with her family’s move from Minnesota to San Francisco. The characters in Riley’s head each represent a different emotion, voiced by different comedic talents: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith, The Office), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling).

Nick: I haven’t said this since The Matrix (regretfully) but I can’t wait to see the sequel! If they actually show Riley at 13 the movie might need to be PG-13 because not only will things dramatically change, but she will more than likely be a total bitch as are all 13-year-olds.

Dustin: She seemed a little more mature than most girls her age, but maybe she just had to grow up fast because of her circumstances.

I appreciated almost everything about this movie from beginning to end. The set-up, while familiar, was still handled with a lot of inventiveness, the ideas dealing with psychology were fun, while not really condescending to children, and I definitely applaud Lewis Black for being funny even when he’s toned down to a PG rating.

Nick: It’s quite an achievement to constantly put out material people of all ages and from all over find just as entertaining, but for reasons that are quite different. Inside Out is a film I think I need to see again because it’s normally me telling people how I cried or almost cried in an animated film, but I was never even close here, while most of the people I know are talking like that. Was it emotional for you? I rarely felt anything that would bring out a solitary tear.

Dustin: I got a little misty eyed when it was clear Riley was suffering from depression, something that was masterfully shown rather than told. Also Bing Bong’s final scene. But compared to Toy Story 3, which had me bawling like Nancy Kerrigan throughout, this felt relatively light.

Nick: Toy Story 3, Up, Wall-E and Ratatouille all almost did the job, but not this film. While the sadness is there, I feel showing Sadness as a comical character inside her head might ease that a little. It was obvious to me from the first 20 minutes how the movie would end. Where Joy learns happiness is not the only emotion that can make one happy. It’s cathartic to cry and let off steam, and from doing those things one can be even happier.

Dustin: Joy’s character arc was definitely more satisfying than Riley’s. But I guess the characters in her head are what make up her character. I thought that was a powerful lesson for Joy to learn, that a person needs an emotional range, and someone shouldn’t be cheery every moment of their life.

Nick: The most enjoyable parts were when we were thrown inside other people’s heads and shown their emotions. I wonder if your emotions become more ONE the older you get, which is why they all look similar. It seemed as if they were all of the same gender in the parents’ minds while Riley had three girls and two boys as her emotions. This movie had me thinking a lot. Another of my favorite parts was whenever their was a nod towards film in general. Like the area of abstract thought where the characters get thrown into abstract shapes which is a nod to all the animation styles of the past.

Dustin: I also liked the nod toward the TV show Herman’s Head. When I saw the trailer, I thought, What a shameless ripoff. But at one point, Bill Hader’s character, Fear, was hyperventilating into a paper sack, just like the Wimp character on Herman’s Head. That little homage was enough for me to forgive any plagiarism.

Nick: I have no idea what that is, but I would like to know! I’m assuming its a kids cartoon show, which means we have both referenced a kid’s show in the past two reviews!  

Dustin: It was a live-action sitcom on Fox from the early ‘90s. It was fairly PG-13. One of the emotions was lust, and the character was always horny. It featured the talents of Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) and Hank Azaria (many characters on The Simpsons, including Comic Book Guy). You should try to find the pilot on YouTube or somewhere to get a sense of what it was. It was actually a pretty good show.

Nick: I just looked it up, sounds interesting, though I highly doubt it was the first story with this premise. And I’m curious if it was just a fluke that anxiety would need a paper bag, because I used a paper bag when I had an anxiety attack and it was not an homage to anything.

Dustin: I don’t think it was coincidence. A good writer is aware of similar works when they are working on a project. That’s why I never bought Suzanne Collins’s story about being unaware of Battle Royale when she wrote The Hunger Games. My wife also informed me there was a Japanese manga with the same premise as Inside Out/Herman’s Head.

Nick: Yes, but when you think of a caricature of anxiety, I would picture someone hyperventilating into a paper bag. Not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a thing, so unless there was a comment with it I ain’t buyin’! Archer reference! And Suzanne Collin’s is full of shit! The Hunger Games was a full story ripped off from Battle Royale, which was brushed aside by Collins.

Inside Out had great side characters and gags throughout, from the imaginary friend Bing Bong to Riley’s dream boyfriend, who is a popstar and is obsessed with her and would do anything for her.  

Dustin: Even though this movie wasn’t a tear-jerker like some of Pixar’s other recent films, it was an imaginative, fun adventure with enough visual and emotional variety to carry it. The stakes were refreshingly small-scale for a big-budget film, but felt very real.

Jurassic World

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Jurassic World is an amped up sequel/reboot of the Jurassic Park series, and is the best since the original. The tagline should be “Here we go again!” as this time the genetic engineers have spliced a T-Rex with a velociraptor to create the Indominus Rex, the biggest, scariest dinosaur we’ve seen yet, which serves as a metaphor for both the series and summer blockbusters in general.

Nick: I want people to know where I stand when in comes to the Jurassic Park series so here are my ratings for all of the films: Jurassic Park = 4.5 stars, The Lost World = 2 stars, Jurassic Park III = 3 stars. Jurassic World is easily the best sequel and brings the awe back to the dinosaurs.

Dustin: Jurassic Park is still a solid adventure/special effects film even seen today. I saw the sequels only once when they both first came out, which was enough. I remember being disappointed by The Lost World. I forgot Jurassic Park III within minutes of walking out of the theater. (I remember a few months later when it came out on DVD, I said, “They made a Jurassic Park III?!” Then I remembered I had actually seen it!)

Jurassic World is certainly the first of the sequels to actually feel like a worthy continuation of the series. I wouldn’t say it brought back the “awe” of the dinosaurs. There is no buildup like in JP. The characters seem mostly bored with the dinosaurs, as the technology to clone them has been around for 20 years now in the film’s universe.

Nick: I by no means meant to suggest this film brings back all the awe of the original, but it has more than the last two installments. There is a reason we follow around the youngest cast member and his slightly older brother through the amusement park. As the littlest one is impressed by everything, even a T-rex eating a goat, the older one is only impressed by the things we have never seen before and is suppose to represent the audience of today.  

Now to Jurassic Park III, I just want to defend it a little because director Joe Johnston seems to like to make his films with CGI that makes them look like B-movies, which I am a known sucker for, and it brought back Dr. Alan Grant who was just like Indiana Jones in my eyes growing up. Considering the original films were both made by Spielberg and they are both about scientists who are dragged into adventure I don’t think it’s that ridiculous of a notion.

Dustin: You know how much I hate bad CGI. I would rather have a puppet or a guy in a rubber suit.

I liked how this movie seemed to comment on summer blockbusters. I recently rewatched Jaws, which was the original summer blockbuster. In Jurassic World, a great white shark is fed to a Mosasaurus thing. The scale of today’s summer blockbuster compared to Jaws has gotten ridiculous, and the filmmakers know it.

Nick: Well if the CGI is solid in this film and makes other blockbusters look foolish then I’d say the characters are about on par with the $100 million movies of today. They make the main male character the James Bond where he knows everything and is, besides one little slip up, infallible.  While the main female character is a hundred times worse! She’s belittled for not settling down and having kids and is forced to watch her sister’s kids and treats them coldly until of course they get lost in the middle of the jungle with the Indominous Rex always lurking. She’s then made to chase after them in heels because the script requires her to do so, and yet we still get Chris Pratt giving her shit for wearing them. Then we get a lot of useless backstory for the two main characters, including one scene where they first meet (on screen) and it turns into a squabbling match between two people who went on ONE DATE, seemingly a very long time ago? I personally believe people can care for characters who have no relationship to each other before a dinosaur attack, especially when it entails two kids who are trapped out in the park… Would she not have gone out for them if they weren’t her nephews?

Dustin: There were a lot of people in the park, so I don’t think she would have gotten as invested in those two if they weren’t her nephews.

Nick: But the rest of the people were at least contained together and weren’t out in the park where the dinosaurs roam.

Dustin: I agree the characters weren’t very deep. I’d call them Crichton-esque. Characters in Michael Crichton’s novels tended to be treated as devices to keep the plot moving. So I guess they were true to the source material in that sense.

My wife and her friends also commented on the high heels Bryce Dallas Howard’s character wore throughout the movie. Saying it wasn’t realistic. I was like, “The movie is about a theme park that clones a new type of dinosaur, and you’re complaining because the footwear isn’t realistic?”

Then again, I would complain about that too if I were a woman, because the rules of genetic engineering as they exist in the movie are explained, but we know a normal woman couldn’t run around for hours in high heels.

Nick: My problem with that is not the realism, but how you said the movie looks at the current state of films and tries to fix them with using better CGI, but the story and its characters exist in a more ‘60s era adventure where the women and children are helpless and quite stupid, while the man is incredible and mocks the woman for her womanly ways.  

Jurassic World did have many fun Easter eggs such as the final fight scene that of course includes a T-Rex and velociraptors! The main characters also walk through the old park and kids stumble upon the old park vehicles. The movie served almost as much as an homage than a standalone film. That’s not a complaint because I quite enjoyed it! I was obsessed with Jurassic Park and had many toys representing that fact.

Dustin: The movie also had plenty of visual nods to the first film, with shots that looked almost identical. This Web site did most of the work: http://www.thegeektwins.com/2015/02/jurassic-world-trailer-scenes.html#.VZGAfmMmyNU

I remember a few more, like Indominus Rex doing the same pose as the T-Rex in the original and a shot of a velociraptor giving chase to a moving vehicle from the side mirror.

Nick: I like that the film ends with the possibility of the sequel being like one of my favorite childhood cartoon shows, Dino-Riders!  The commandos take the DNA and it sounds like they might equip them dinos with a whole lot of armour!

Dustin: I don’t think they need to do another sequel. How much bigger can these movies get? And what comments can they make on man playing God or how big and loud blockbusters have gotten that they haven’t already?

Nick: I’m not saying there should be another sequel, but considering how much money the movie has made in two weeks already makes it a certainty there will be a sequel. If it’s like Dino-Riders I could find myself enjoying it on a B-movie-like scale. Or maybe this is one of the next three Mad Max sequels that have already been greenlit! It will be dinosaur-with-guns chases instead of vehicles!

Spy

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars

Dustin: The director/star team of Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy have finally delivered the perfect vehicle for McCarthy’s brand of humor. Spy is a hilarious parody of Bond films and the espionage genre.

Nick: Spy is the funniest movie McCarthy has starred in (including Bridesmaids) though maybe the worst titled. I have yet to meet a person who knew the name of this movie, but still know a Melissa McCarthy movie is out in theaters. I read an interview yesterday where actor Bradley Whitford talks about how studios try to give projects the most generic names possible. Spy comes quite close to the MOST generic possible.

Dustin: I went into this movie a bit wary, feeling let down by their previous attempt (Tammy). This movie had me laughing in the pre-title sequence, and I was hoping they could hold the momentum. Luckily, the movie managed to deliver laughs throughout and had some decently executed action sequences.

Nick: Please don’t mention Tammy. I’m going to go off on a tirade, and we will never get back to Spy! It upsets me McCarthy’s characters most notable quality is they’re fat and also quite mean. Which is the reason most of her films annoy me, but in Spy she is actually a nice person which kind of offsets the fat jokes.

Dustin: She did show some range in the recent film St. Vincent with Bill Murray, which was a great performance from her that wasn’t really talked about because it was more of a Bill Murray film than a Melissa McCarthy one.

Nick: McCarthy did do a great job in St.Vincent, but I don’t consider the movie a starring vehicle for her. The movie was about Vincent’s redemption. If it was about her character’s redemption I can guarantee it would include many fat jokes.

Dustin: I liked how Spy took stylistic elements from the Bond films to establish the tone (which they kept consistent throughout, which is actually a compliment considering how some comedies fail to pull that off). The action sequences weren’t perfect or as well done as most Bond films, but it was certainly better than Taken 2 or Brick Mansions.

Nick: I skipped Taken 2, but I completely agree in terms of Brick Mansions. Most of the action pieces had comedy bits, which kept the tone even. Either coming from Jason Statham’s arrogantly horrible spy or from McCarthy’s moves shocking her villain counterparts.  

Dustin: Jason Statham showed great comedic chops I didn’t realize he was capable of. It was funny an agency that requires U.S. citizenship from its members (and spouses!) would have a Brit “agent.” But given this was a parody of crummy spy films like the Bourne series, it was spot-on.

Nick: The first film I ever saw with Statham was a comedy called Mean Machine. It’s a remake of the Burt Reynold’s Longest Yard, but instead of football they’re playing soccer. Still love that movie, and Statham is the best part. You should check it out. The villains in Spy were also hilarious. Rose Byrne as Rayna was awesome and her henchman was even better with his short but sweet exchanges with McCarthy.

Dustin: This movie was a well-executed comedy. While not a ground-breaking comedy, it did everything it set out to do, which was make a hilarious spy spoof. Actually, this might be the best spy spoof I’ve ever seen, next to The Bourne Supremacy!

Nick: I would need a list of all the spoof movies in order to agree with you, but I can definitely agree that it is the most enjoyable Melissa McCarthy starring vehicle yet!