Movie Review: The Stand (2020-2021 Miniseries)

Title: The Stand (2020-2021 Ministeries)
Producer: ABC
Godfrey's Rating: 1 star
Starring: James Marsden, Owen Teague, Henry Zaga, Jovan Adepo

Summary in a Sentence: A modern take on Stephen King's classic apocalyptic/post apocalyptic novel about a superflu, that ends up being a disjointed mess of continuous flashbacks and characters recast as different genders and races ... because 2021?

Stephen King's novel, The Stand, has for some time been one of my favourite novels. It tells not just the story of the disintegration of society over the course of a "super flu" that wipes out 99% of the world's population in a matter of weeks, but also tells a compelling story of good versus evil as two groups of survivors coalesce around two powerful figures.

There was a solid made-for-TV miniseries produced in 1994 starring Gary Sinise and Rob Lowe which, notwithstanding the low production values of made-for-TV shows in that time period was very good, with excellent acting and remaining very true to not just the letter but the spirit of the novel. I had heard good things about the 2020 remake and it was with some excitement that I noticed it available for viewing on Amazon Prime.

I watched two episodes and then skimmed another two before finally giving up. The production value is great, and I think that re-situating the story in modern times (versus the late 80s/early 90s) was fitting and well-executed. Some of the acting/casting was very good ... I thought Gary Sinise could never be replaced as Stu Redman, but James Marsden actually pulled it off. The problem is the manner that the story is presented -- I suppose they did this to try to be "fresh" and "new" but decided to tell the story as a series of flashbacks that jump around between right before the super flu, to shortly after. The "current time" appears to be after all of the "good" people have gathered in Boulder Colorado. As someone very familiar with the novel I could barely follow what was going on. In short, it's an incoherent, disjointed mess.

Aside from being confusing and disjointed, I found that this manner of story-telling really robbed me of the ability to develop empathy and investment in the characters as I follow them through their trials, as in the chronological presentation of the tale in the original novel and 1994 miniseries.

The 2020/21 miniseries creators also decided to change several of the characters to non-white and female possibly because they deemed Stephen King's novel not diverse enough. Changing of characters can work and I don't take issue with it in and of itself, but changing characters just for the sake of changing them doesn't always work especially when the characters are completely reworked. Changing Ralph Brentner, for example, was not just re-gendered, the character was completely changed to turn a humble, bumbling farmer into some sort of hard-bitten warrior woman type. Pretty much the opposite of what that character was and I thought it went against the spirit of the story and the sorts of humble people that God called to His service in the novel.

I don't know what the miniseries was trying to do with existing very strong female characters. Odessa Young as Frannie Goldsmith just came off as perpetually pissed off. Just did not seem remotely like the character of the novel. I know not everyone liked Molly Ringwald in 1994 but I just couldn't like the new take on her at all. Just not a sympathetic character at all, when she's supposed to be one of the main protagonists. To me, rather than changing male characters to female, they would have been better off keeping the strong existing female characters true to the book. It may be that my dislike of the characters is a result of the style of presentation (again, the "disjointed mess").

It felt forced and propagandistic rather than mere artistic license to recast almost every character as nonwhite and/or female. I think it would have worked better if the characters still felt true to the original character ... it did work in some instances, I thought Larry Underwood played by Jovan Adepo worked.

Overall, the incoherence of the story, and the lack of connection to the characters created by all the confusing jumping back-and-forth in time had me tuning out very quickly and giving this 1 star. I would much much rather just re-watch the 1994 miniseries.

Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Review by Godfrey Blackwell
 

 
Title: Edge of Tomorrow
Director: Doug Liman
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton
Excellence: 4 stars (out of 5)
Summary in a Sentence: Another very solid science fiction offering from Tom Cruise that features not just good action and special effects, but a very serviceable underlying plot, lifelike characters that the viewer will connect with, and a great new take on the "Groundhog Day" style reliving of the same day over and over.

This was one of very few films in the last couple decades that I took the time to go see at the theatre and was not disappointed by one bit.

The basic plot is quite straight forward: Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is forced into what's little more than a suicide mission that is part of an attempt to halt the subjugation of earth by aliens called "Mimics". Killed within minutes, Cage then finds himself inexplicably thrown into a time loop - forcing him to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying over and over. He ultimately joins up with Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski and together they try to use his reliving of the same day to defeat the alien menace.

The cinematography was great and the world well-developed and realistic. This certainly helped with the suspension of disbelief, and the battle scenes were well-paced and appropriately devastating to give the viewer a very real sense of how desperate the human battle against the Mimics is.

The plot was fast-paced and well-conceived. There was even a bit of humour here-and-there, and the performances were, without exception, very well done. Special "props" to Bill Paxton for an unexpected (and very strong) performance as a drill sergeant from Kentucky. I was a bit skeptical about the Emily Blunt character going in, but I thought she was done quite well. That she goes into battle wearing a stength-enhancing combat exoskeleton compensates for one of my usual complaints about the "D&D Warrior Babe" trope (i.e. that women physically aren't as strong as men) and she did a good job of portraying a character who is much more than her exterior hard appearance suggests.

I only really had nits about the film. I wasn't crazy about how the military was portrayed, throwing completely untrained troops into battle, but I suppose this was done to convey just how hard-put humanity is. I also thought that Emily Blunt's character engaging in a very strenuous pre-battle workout was unrealistic since no soldier would exhaust themselves like that on the eve of battle, but I can see why it was done in the context of the film to convey her single-minded devotion to her craft (making war against the Mimics).

Overall, I thought this a fine, fine film. One of the most enjoyable new science fiction film I've experienced since Serenity way back in 2005. Unlike Serenity, it did quite well in the box office, thanks no doubt to a robust marketing effort and the star power of Tom Cruise -- who, it must be said, has only rarely let me down. He is a strange, strange man in his personal life, but he chooses good films and performs well in them.

Movie Review: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Title: Snow White and the Huntsman
Director: Rupert Sanders
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron
Godfrey's Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Rating: PG -- I would personally rate it more PG-13 or 14A myself, owing to some of the storyline surrounding the queen and adult themes there, but otherwise there's very little profanity, and the violence is not gruesome. There's a few parts I skipped to allow the whole Swords and Space crew to view.
Summary in a Sentence: A surprisingly good new take on the well-known "Snow White" fairy tale that features a good and pure Snow White, aided by the Hunstman, at war with the evil Queen Ravenna.


Yet further confirmation that if the critics dislike it, I will like it. I went into it this film when it was in the cinema with very low expectations after seeing the trailer. As one friend at the time pointed out, the trailer makes it appear to be yet another "grimdark" adult fantasy film with a large dose of Xena Warrior Princess. In my view, however, the trailer is in fact very misleading in how it portrays the film and it was nothing of the sort. First, a quick synopsis:

In a twist to the fairy tale, the Huntsman ordered to take Snow White into the woods to be killed winds up becoming her protector in a quest to vanquish the Evil Queen.

Now, first to the "darkness" -- I didn't find the film to be all that dark. I didn't find it really any darker than the Lord of the Rings films. Certainly, there are a lot of dark, occult, and black magic elements surrounding the evil queen Ravenna, but this is proper. A dark fantasy, like the ever popular "Game of Thrones",  lacks the good that opposes such evil. Snow White does have that good, not just in the person of Snow White, but we even see the realm of the opponents of the Queen which is not blackened and blighted as her realm is. There are faeries, and the Seven Dwarves (who I thought were great). There was a clear battle of good versus evil.

The film was refreshingly non-feminist, and even to the contrary had a good grasp on traditional "roles" and displayed them well. Contrary to what the trailer suggests, Snow White is not a warrior-woman, and only appears in armour at the end of the film for her own protection. She does not lead the men into battle, but is protected by them, serving as more of a Joan of Arc inspirational sort of role.


In a way, this film was like the "anti-Hunger Games":

• Both films feature young ladies as the main protagonists. Katniss Everdine it is the adoption of male virtues and cynical, self-preserving gender-bending pugilism that wins the day. Whereas Snow White is victorious via her feminine virtues of kindness, gentleness, and empathy coupled with a strong spirit of self-sacrifice.
• The Hunger Games features not only a post-Christian but a completely non-religious society where no character has a shred of Christian virtue. This is not the case at all in Snow White, where there is overt religion (Snow White's praying of the Our Father in one of the opening scenes, the presence of Gothic cathedrals and Caltholic-looking clergy) but more importantly a sense of a certain morality and honour beyond mere self-preservation. Although there were a lot of missed opportunities in this regard and there was no follow-through, the world presented was a much more realistic one.
• Although Snow White is a young adult, in appearance and behaviour of a similar age to Katniss, there is no "adults = evil, youth = good" at play in this film; there is a good mix of adults on both sides.
• Hope: although much of Snow White has an appropriate amount of tension and foreboding, in the end it has a happy ending and throughout the film there is that sense of hope that good can be restored. In the Hunger Games, there is no hope, just liberal despair. 

In terms of technical aspects, the film was certainly adequate to the task, although it was no masterpiece of filmmaking. The sets were good, the costumes credible. The acting was on the whole pretty decent. All was solidly "good" if not anything spectacular. The soundtrack was appropriate and did a good job of setting the tone.

So, on the whole, not a masterpiece or a classic, but a good, solid fantasy film that I rather enjoyed. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it

Movie Review: Ad Astra (2019)

Title: Ad Astra
Director: James Gray
Producer: New Regency Pictures
Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga
Godfrey's Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
Rating: PG; I'd say this rating is appropriate and I'd have little difficulty showing it to the older children (13 and 11) as there not a lot of violence or profanity, and no nudity.
Summary in a Sentence: A thoughtful and stylistic film with great potential, but which falls short of the masterpiece it could have been, due to a lacklustre storyline with some very big plot holes and inconsistencies.

This is a film that I really wanted to be able to give a top rating, since it was full of many of the things I love in a science fiction film: strong thought-inducing themes, beautiful cinematography, relaxed pacing, and a reliance on story rather than big explosions. And while it was certainly worth my return to the cinema for the first time since Blade Runner 2027, I could not help but feel disappointed and cannot give the film more than a middling 3/5 star rating. The plot synopsis from the IMDB page:

Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.

Ad Astra gets full marks for style -- I really liked the retro, 1960s space-race inspired flight and space suits. The "space ships" had a realistic feel to them and the film seemed to give at least decent effort to giving a realistic look and feel to all the sets. The military won major "rule of cool" points for wearing Fallschirmjäger-style splinter camouflage on earth, and orange-red Flecktarn on Mars. This is worth at least half a star bonus in my books.

The filmmaker seemed undecided on what sort of mood to strike. Is the film an optimistic space exploration film? Dystopian future? I'm not even sure ... it was a little bit of a lot of genres, a little bit of 2001/Interstellar, a helping of Moon's paranoia, a dash of Mad Max (moon land pirates), and a pinch of Gattaca (the constant psych evaluations throughout the film). I'm all in favour of mixing things up like this but I just don't know how well it was pulled off ... maybe I just couldn't wrap my mind around the dark aspects when guys are wearing space suits that look like what the Gemini astronauts wore. Having slept on it I think it actually worked better than I felt while watching it.

And while I love "long boring space movies" like 2001, I just couldn't get into this film in the same way. It had a slow pace, but I question the choice of what time was spent on. The viewer gets a few gorgeous space vistas but they are all too fleeting, rather we spend a lot of time inside Roy McBride's head as he sorts through his "daddy issues". The film did have some food for thought, but I think it was too wrapped up in McBride's neurosis and unresolved issues with his father abandoning the family to search for extraterrestrial life and then after all that buildup the final "confrontation" between father and sone was very anticlimactic, almost rushed (perhaps 15 minutes of the 2 hour film are spend actually aboard his father's ship), and very unsatisfying.

I found the acting to be very "low key", unemotional, and flat. This was perhaps intentional (cf. the Gattaca aspect),  but it also made it difficult to connect to the characters.

There were massive, massive plot holes, and inexplicable choices made by various parties. This is mildly spoilerific, but the whole plan to take down Clifford McBride made no sense at all and had zero chance of success until Roy intervened. And it was not clear why the authorities wanted him killed for intervening when he then goes on and carries out the mission. And why is that mission done by some random civilian science vessel that can apparently travel to Neptune in 72 days yet no one had been there since McBride Sr. went (and it took him something like 20 years to get there)? The moon pirates felt random and inconsistent with what's described as a war zone over disputed moon borders -- why do they just kill everyone and wreck the moon buggies instead of trying to steal and capture?

All in all this made for a dangerously close to mediocre film. I still hope that readers will go watch it for the good aspects, because even though this film isn't perfect, it's the type of film we need more of.

Movie Review: Apollo 18 (2011)

Title: Appollo 18
Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego
Producer: Dimension Films
Starring: Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins
Excellence: 3 stars (out of 5)
Summary in a Sentence: A solid entry into the sci-fi/horror genre featuring a classified Apollo mission to the moon as told through decades-old "leaked footage".

This is yet another film that's been dealt with fairly harshly by the critics (25% at Rotten Tomatoes), but which I quite enjoyed. By no means a masterpiece, it was a more than satisfying experience. Many critics didn't like the use of the "Blair Witch Project-style found footage" format but I thought that it was very effective for this particular piece. The plot synopsis from the official webpage states:

Officially, Apollo 17, launched December 17th, 1972 was the last manned mission to the moon. But a year later, in December of 1973, two American astronauts were sent on a secret mission to the moon funded by the US Department of Defense. What you are about to see is the actual footage which the astronauts captured on that mission. While NASA denies its authenticity, others say it's the real reason we've never gone back to the moon. 

It was not an intense, edge-of-your-seat sort of thriller. Perhaps since I don't see movies very often (I watch them about as often as I review them, i.e. once per month) I have not been so inured to bursts of adrenaline and was able to appreciate the more measured and realistic pace. The last ten minutes were appropriately suspenseful, but I thought that the real treasure of this film was the feeling of desolation and being utterly alone and cut-off that was given. I thought that the scene where they come upon the abandoned Soviet moon lander was especially chilling.

The realistic portrayal of a moon mission added to the enjoyment for me. As one who was born too late to live through the space race, but who studied it avidly as a youngster, I thought this aspect was particularly well-done. It wasn't a high-tech adventure and it was very easy to suspend disbelief. I thought that the actors all gave very credible performances. The eerily beautiful moonscape was well-done; the special effects overall made it all seem real -- although I'm really not sure what point a BluRay/HD version of this film serves, given that it is all purposely in 1960s quality.

Movie Review: The Hunger Games (2012)

Title: The Hunger Games
Director: Gary Ross
Distributor: Lionsgate
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson
Godfrey's Rating: 1.5 stars (out of 5)
Summary in a Sentence: A sub-par "dystopian future"-themed film that features the disturbing spectacle of children killing each other in gladiatorial-style games, which neverthless touched something in the young-adult crowd, becoming a box-office smash with several sequels

I went to see this film in the theatre solely as social research and to see what all the fuss was about. A film that grosses $150 million in its opening weekend must have some special appeal. I went in with low expectations -- living under a rock as I do, I was largely ignorant of the whole Hunger Games phenomenon. I knew nothing of the plot save the vaguest idea of the concept. It wasn't terrible, but I'm glad I went on "Cheap Tuesday".

So the basic plot is, per Internet Movie Database:

In a dystopian future, the totalitarian nation of Panem is divided between 12 districts and the Capitol. Each year two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal retribution for a past rebellion, the televised games are broadcast throughout Panem. The 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors while the citizens of Panem are required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as District 12's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. 

There really isn't much more to it than that. After the intial heroic act of volunteering to take her sister's place, the rest of the film is just a bunch of action sequences as Katniss tries to stay alive (with the mandatory shaky hand-held camera preventing the viewer from seeing much of it). Rather ho-hum I thought on the whole, although there were some things that were quite good.

I thought the Running Man-esque critique of modern media and the voyeurism of reality shows was quite well done. Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, the host of The Hunger Games was perfect. The "look" of the film, the art direction, etc., something that I pay close attention to was very well done also. The violence was treated decently insofar as it conveyed some of the horror inherent in children killing each other, without being too graphic.

But those good things do not add up to a good film. I thought that many aspects were highly problematic, and the biggest is that this is a truly post-Christian film in that the main protagonist has not a shred of Christian virtue -- and nor does anyone else. As I said, after the first self-sacrificing move for her sister, it's all self preservation and this really perverts what could have been a dark, yet powerful indictment of modern society. This unChristian ethical void leads of other things like the pagan glorification of suicide at the end of the film. I am NOT a fan of the "Xena Warrior Princess" politically correct gender-bending pugilism -- and therefore did not enjoy the concept of Katniss, a 16-year-old girl, who is capable of defeating all comers in hand-to-hand combat. It's not only horribly cliché and overused in sci fi especially, it's also just plain wrong. Wrong in that women in general aren't just as good at fighting as men, and from a Christian perspective the idea of women fighting is repulsive.  Even the Romans found the spectacle of gladiatrices intolerable and reformed them out of existence after Nero. The whole "adults = evil, children = good" trope (as exemplified by the fact that all the adult characters were either evil or useless, save, interestingly, Katniss' fashion consultant) so common in modern-day literature is really tiring and insidious.

Which leads me to why I think this film franchise is/was so popular. There is a strong theme of abandonment by parents/adults/society in the film that I think really resonates with today's youth.  So I can see why they have consumed this film in large numbers. But for my money, I do not recommend anyone rush out to see it except maybe as a way of gaining some insight into today's young adults?

Movie Review: Ultramarines (2010)

Title: Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie
Director: James Mather and Stephen St. Leger
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Terence Stamp, John Hurt, Sean Pertwee
Excellence: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
Rating: R; I am really not sure why this film is rated R, I think that teenage boys can watch it fine; there is some science fiction violence of guys in big metal suits shooting at each other or fighting demons with chainsaw-swords, but no profanity or "adult subject matter" at all.
Summary in a Sentence: An enjoyable venture into the "grim darkness of the far future" where power-armoured space marines fight demons.

As a testament to how ridiculously "time flies", this film is almost a decade old, and given its age I would probably not bother with a review but for the fact that (a) it's the only official Warhammer 40,000 movie produced thus far (and we are fans of 40k) and (b) there's been so little in theatres that piqued my interest, I've not seen a new science fiction film since Interstellar!

I give the film 2.5 stars ... it's not great, but it's far from awful. Fans of Warhammer 40,000 are deeply divided over the film and it generally did poorly which is why I think Games Workshop has not made further attempts. But I thought it had some interesting characters and some good action, and lots of cool very 40k stuff like the skull-helmeted chaplain shouting "burn heretics" as he takes down a group of Chaos Marines (basically devil worshipping bad-guys in the 40k universe).

The film is very short, at barely over an hour long, so it felt more like an episode of a TV show than a movie. As a TV series it's something I'd watch again and I find this film to be pleasurable enough to watch ever once in a while when I was a pure "popcorn" type of film that is not deep but has a decent basic adventure story and some demon-fighting action.

Movie Review: Serenity (2005)

Title: Serenity
Director and Writer: Joss Whedon
Producer: Universal Studios
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Gina Torres, and Summer Glau
Godgrey's Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Rating: PG-13; I'd say this rating is fairly appropriate and would not let my children see it until at least 13, perhaps a little older due to some intense sequences and mature subject matter.
Summary in a Sentence: A fantastic space opera with strong anti-utopian themes, interesting characters, and lots of action.

This film came out in 2005, so by 2019 it's considered "an oldie but a goodie" and in my view well worth revisiting as one of Dad's favourites (although it still has some mature themes so none of the younger contributors to this blog have seen it yet). It is a space opera, but not just any space opera. It is the best in the genre I've ever seen, combining everything that made the original Star Wars movies better than the "prequels", but with modern special effects and better actors and characters.

First, a quick plot synopsis from the Internet Movie Database:

The crew of Serenity will take any job, even if that job isn't exactly legal. Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his crew take small smuggling and robbery jobs to keep their ship afloat, and to stay under the radar of The Alliance, the galactic conglomerate that not only rules the galaxy, but was on the opposite side of the war Mal lost years ago. But when Simon (Sean Maher) and his unstable, telepathic sister, River (Summer Glau) join the crew, they get in much more trouble than they bargained for. A government operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is after River, because she stumbled onto a secret no one was supposed to know... and the alliance will do anything to get her back.

At the time I first saw this film I had never seen the TV series "Firefly", but I was not lost at all in this film and enjoyed it immensely. I have since acquired the series and consider it highly worthwhile but in no way necessary to an appreciation of Serenity. In fact, it is the only movie in years (save the Lord of the Rings Trilogy) that I thought was worth seeing more than once in the theatre, and my wife and I in fact watched it three times.

I really can't say enough about how enjoyable this film is to watch. Suprisingly, it did quite poorly at the box office and was on the big screen for a few short weeks only (or maybe not surprising -- many of my favourite films tanked at the box office). I'm not sure why it was so unpopular, because despite the anti-utopian themes that I alluded to at the very beginning of this review, it had all the things that one would expect to make a blockbuster: good characters, good storyline, good special effects, good action.

The overarching theme of the film is more Catholic than I'm sure the writer could imagine. This manifests itself in the following ways:

• Anti one-world government - "The Alliance" is run by an intergalactic "parliament" which manipulates and controls the masses through the media, and will brook no contradiction. Their agents are brutal and merciless.
• Anti-evolution of man/anti-utopian - At one point in the film, Captain Reynolds attack's the Alliance's attempts to further mould man in the image they desire through the use of genetic manipulation via drugs saying, "I do not hold to that". The results of their attempts are horrific, but also an extrapolation of where the social engineering in our own world is headed (see the film to learn more).
• Pro- some old-world values - Although the crew of Serenity is rather rough around the edges, the also practice a great deal of self-sacrifice, loyalty, and courage.

Now, it definitely has some modernist elements to it and I'm 99% sure the writer/director Joss Whedon is an atheist and it shows, but overall, it's much better than the vast majority of Hollywood films in terms of the messages it tries to convey.

I'll try to sum up quickly the other things that I loved about this film: the special effects sequences were nicely understated (unlike the recent Star Wars movies which sometimes felt like watching someone else play a video game) and when they did appear they were done very well. All of the action sequences were meaningful to the plot. The characters were very realistic and engaging.

As one review I read stated: "for those looking for an original and thrilling movie experience, this will shock and amaze." I think I felt walking away from Serenity a little of what people from a previous generation felt walking out of Star Wars the first time in 1977. Even if you aren't a science fiction fan, put this on your list of movies to watch.