Friday, August 22, 2014

Zombie Column: Vancouver Edition

Last weekend, I returned to Vancouver to continue the quest Evan and I had to see every movie ever. Okay, that's a lie. I had a family vacation on Vancouver Island for a week, and when that was done, I hung around in Van City for a few days so Evan and I could catch up on the latest blockbusters we had both missed. We caught Guardians of the Galaxy on Wednesday night, then on Friday we drove to a theatre and saw The Expendables 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hercules, and 22 Jump Street. Yes, we got back home at a quarter to one in the morning. Yes, it was worth it. Throughout my visit, we also watched Sabotage on VoD, the first half of Blitz (it was too boring to continue) then switched to watch Superhero movie. I also watched the first season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Evan worked on Thursday, and I didn't have anything else to do), and on Thursday evening, we went to an improv comedy show instead of a movie, because I've never gone to a real one before, and I can always catch up on movies with the interwebz.

Previews were actually pretty varied. We saw a few twice, but we also saw many that were way out there. The Judge, The Equalizer, Swearnet: The Movie, Dr. Cabbie, the Maze Runner, The Boxtrolls, Dracula Untold, Interstellar, The Interview, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water, Big Hero 6 (and if your wondering why these kids movies are showing up as previews for the movies we saw ... we are too).
So, here are a few paragraphs on each, hopefully with enough funny to get you to stick around. Or not, whatever. Feel free to skip to the movie you want to see me write about.

Guardians of the Galaxy

A lot of people questioned why Marvel was making Guardians of the Galaxy, considering its weird premise and limited readership. I'm not quite sure why they questioned it, though; it's Marvel. They have quality writers putting good material together, and they pick underrated directors who always do good work. All of the MCU movies have been big or massive hits.

The movie starts with Peter Quill as a young boy, who gets abducted by aliens right after his mother passes away. From there, he grows into a thief. A pretty good one, actually, who can think on his feet and get himself (and his friends) out or jams repeatedly throughout the movie. Anyway, he steals the wrong thing, which gets Gamora on his trail to steal the thing back. Also, he has a bounty on his head, for which Rocket and his partner Groot track him down. They all track him down at once, for which they are arrested and tossed in jail, where they meet Drax, and the story goes from there.

It's from Marvel, so the writing's good, and it's far funnier than I would have thought (mind you, the director is James Gunn, who did Slither, a well-regarded horror/comedy that starred Nathan Fillion, which is probably why he shows up in the credits of Guardians as "Monstrous Convict"). The action's great, and the music is ... 80's. Let's just leave it at that, and call it a theatre movie. Actually, let's call it up there with The Avengers as one of the best Marvel Movies, and one of the best movies I've seen.

The Expendables 3

Whooooooo! More old guys exploding things, punching things, shooting things, kicking things, driving things through other things, and pile-driving things. Also, for some reason, talking about things. Uh, not quite what I bargained for, but alright.

The main plot of the movie is that Barney Ross (Stallone) discovers his old partner (an original Expendable) Stonebanks (Gibson) is now an arms dealer. Barney thought he'd killed him awhile ago, but nope, he's still a live and now a rich dirtbag. The CIA hires Barney to get Stonebanks (but take him to The Hague for war crimes, so he can't just bomb Stonebanks from afar). He figures going after Stonebanks personally is a suicide mission, and doesn't want to drag the rest of his team down with him, so he fires them all and goes to his friend (Grammar) to hire a bunch of skilled but slightly suicidal new kids for the mission. Anyway, things go sideways, the old team shows up, and small country's army gets blown up at the end, because we'd all wondered if they could actually take on an army or not (yes. the answer is yes).

The worst thing about this movie is that there's not enough action, which would normally be a mortal sin in a movie like this. There's an action scene for the cold open, and an action scene after the title screen (which is unusual, since almost all movies have exposition after the title screen), and then the climax is about half an hour of really good action. But the middle of the movie is almost devoid of any action at all, which should be unforgivable. However, about halfway through, Antonio Banderas joins the team and really brings the funny. He makes up for the lack of action (Evan didn't think so), and so I'm grading this movie as a theatre movie.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the story of a brave, hard-working, ridiculously hot fluff-piece reporter who's fired for telling her producer that there are Mutant Turtles fighting crime. They're only teenagers, but they're ninjas. I'd fire her too. Okay, I wouldn't; she's Megan Fox.

This movie is often referred to as Michael Bay's TMNT, despite the fact that Jonathan Liebesman directed it. Bay only produces it. I mean, Bay also produced a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it was only known as that piece of crap that no one watched, not Michael Bay's Piece of Crap that No One Watched.

Still, this could be a Michael Bay movie. The action is pretty good, the CGI is (mostly) good, the music’s good, the humour’s there. I also liked how they mixed it up a bit from previous movies. Usually, Raphael’s all angsty, goes off by himself, and gets kidnapped (in TMNT – from 2007 – it’s his angst that leads to Leo getting kidnapped instead, but still … angst). This time, Raph’s still angsty, but it’s the other three that get captured, and he has to go rescue them. It also gives a nice reason for why Raph’s angsty.

This is during the last half of the movie, which is pretty much all action. The first half of the movie, not so much. Still, it’s not a long movie, so there’s not huge swaths of movie where no action happens (looking at you, Expendables). And then, of course, there’s the elevator scene, in which brothers act like brothers. All in all, I rank this as a theatre movie.

Hercules

Hercules is a movie in which Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays Hercules. I feel like that’s all you need to know.

Just kidding (well, not really, but I’m going to write more anyhow). The movie opens with Herc performing his labours. It cuts to a young guy (Herc’s nephew), who’s narrating the labours while telling a group of bandits not to mess with Herc, being the son of Zeus and all that. The bandits don’t listen (as bandits are wont to do. I have this same problem in video games. Do they not see the massive sword/axe/gun strapped to my back?) and so Herc and his team (hidden from view) take out the bandits. They collect their reward (turns out they’re mercenaries; nothing really supernatural going on) and take a night to revel when a princess stops by to hire them to defend her father’s land, Thrace.

The travel to Thrace and discover that there are no soldiers, because they have already been sent off to fight (and be red-shirted by) a nearby warlord. So Herc and his team train up the remaining villagers. Anyway, there are fights, and training montages, and a twist, and more fights, because this is a movie with The Rock (stupid Faster).

I was a little more into this movie because the military aspects are mirroring a book I’m reading, about a group of futuristic space marines marooned on a death planet. As their equipment fails or runs out of ammo, they have to rely on gear they can scrounge, and the associated tactics, which usually means going Roman with shields, swords, and pikes. And of course, also teaching the friendly natives these tactics. So it was interesting to see that in a movie, even if they left out important details like where their supply train was, or how the hell a giant tent showed up for them to camp in if it was only soldiers marching with only their swords and shields. Still, theatre movie, because I’m not going to rate a Hercules movie starring The Rock as any lower.

22 Jump Street

22 Jump St is almost exactly like 21 Jump Street (the previous movie, not the TV show), a fact that is lampshaded several times. Also lampshaded is the fact that sequels are only made to suck up money (both the precinct and the movie itself have much larger budgets). Still, all the self-deprecating meta-references can’t stop from making this a very funny movie.

As the previous movie hinted at, this time around, Schmidt and Jenko go to college (Whooooo! College!) to party, and to investigate a new drug that also causes death called WHYPHY, because kids these days mix up their drugs and their internet connections, or something. Also, get off my lawn!

While at college, Schmidt meets a nice girl that knows one of the victims of WHYPHY, and Jenko gets to be good friends with the quarterback, which causes friction when he wants to spend more time with the QB than with Schmidt. It’s treated like a relationship, because this is just one of the many jokes in the Jump Street arsenal.

They have many more jokes. I was chuckling through the entire movie, and laughing uproariously at times. The best parts are another drug tripping scene (these ones take place entirely within the subconscious) and an incredibly uncomfortable meal between Schmidt and Ice Cube where Ice Cube flies off the handle, which segues nicely into the next scene of Jenko finding out why it was so uncomfortable, then laughing like a maniac while running around the police station and high-fiving everyone. Channing Tatum puts so much exuberance into these performances it’s impossible not to like them.

So I’m calling it a Theatre movie. There’s not a whole lot of action, but the humour crammed into every corner makes up for it.

Sabotage

We saw sabotage on VoD. It's about a group of DEA agents led by Ahnold who plan on stealing $10 million during a drug bust on a large cartel mansion. They actually have a decent plan. The find the pallet of money (because that's how cartels get money, right?), put it in baggies and tie it to a thin rope, which they then flush down a toilet to retrieve later when they exit via the sewers. Too bad the money's not there. Someone stole it! Oh noes!

Under a black cloud of suspicion (for what? They blew up the money they didn't steal, leaving no evidence they were doing anything wrong except for being financial pyromanics. Which I guess is evidence of doing wrong), the team is investigated for 6 months, but nothing happens. They are eventually put back in the field, but before they can do any ops, someone starts picking them off one by one.

So the movie is essentially a whodunit, with a few action scenes thrown in. It's like Contraband that way. There's not a whole lot, unless your into unnecessary and brief nudity (some at the beginning, once in the middle, because apparently people that own pools do laps in the buff, as neighbours dropping by is unknown in this universe). I did like the tactics, though, because I always give bonus points for military realism. Still, nothing to elevate this film above a cheap DVD rating, and enough action and innovative camera work to keep it from dropping down.

Blitz

We watched Blitz because it had Jason Statham on the cover, playing a cowboy cop, and that's usually a great premise, but this movie is about a serial killer targeting cops in London, and there's almost no action at all, and what little of it is mainly just short burst of violence, and we got about halfway through before we turned it off and watched Superhero movie instead.

Superhero Movie

Contrary to other "Movie" movies, this is not by Seltzer and Friedberg; it's written by the other four writers of Scary Movie, who decided that the former duo shouldn't be the only ones to hock shallow parodies on an unsuspecting audience.

This movie parodies the original Sam Raimi Spider-man, right down to the opening about chasing a bus and the narration (that's only used at the beginning) about it all starting with a girl. Then we cut to our Peter Parker substitute who inexplicably has a Harry Potter haircut. There's also his black best friend, Kevin Hart, a Mary-Jane stand in (though this one is blond), and the villain, who's played by the guy that did Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmour, and will thus forever more be known as Shooter McGavin (sorry). Brent Spiner pops up as Shooter's right-hand ... scientist (I guess) and Leslie Nielson gets the coveted Uncle Ben roll (he lives in this one. Oh, spoiler alert).

Anyway, I give this movie a DVD quality rating. I mean, it's probably at the top of the DVD-rating movies, but it doesn't have enough to push it to a Blu-Ray. It's got enough humour, but the budget keeps it down (the sets look a little cheap, and the special effects are slim to none, even if they get a nice floating chair at the end). Still it's got enough laughs that you may want to check it out at some point. Just keep in mind that like all (well, most) parodies, there's going to be toilet and vulgar jokes made, although there are enough minor jokes slipped in that made me giggle.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a star vehicle for Andy Samberg. He'd left Saturday Night Live, he made some music, and a TV executive thought he'd make a great leading role for a sitcom. And then they thought of a premise, so we get a sitcom set in a precinct (quite a bit different than Castle, but what can you do?)

Samberg plays Detective Jake Peralta, a manchild who's nonetheless a great detective. His main character arc throughout the season is to grow up (a little) as well as some later-developing feelings for ...

Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), a fellow detective. She's quite competitive with Jake, and ambitious to boot, which is normally a bad thing (usually plays up the stereotype of a career woman), but this time it's done quite well, because she's desperately looking for a mentor, and thinks she's found it in the form of ...

Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher), an older, black, gay captain who's only dream was to get his own squad. Of course, being gay and black while joining the force in the 80's made this quite difficult, but he overcame it. He also appears to have no emotions, but uses sarcasm quite effectively to cut Jake down to size when he's getting a bit too arrogant or childish. He's brought into the station as the new captain at the beginning of the first episode to replace the "anything goes" old captain who let Jake get away with way too much. Holt arc is to get Jake to gradually shape up, as well as to loosen up (slightly).

Detective Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) is Jake's best friend and occasional partner. He's competent in his own way, but earnest and usually a bit of a buffoon. Truglio plays him to perfection. His arc involves a romance to a fellow foodie, while also getting past his infatuation with ...

Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), who also doesn't have any feelings. In fact, she could easily be mistaken for an attractive man with breasts. No emotions, likes actions movies and fast foods, doesn't care for romantic notions and will tell you about it. Gruff but friendly as well. Her arc is about developing some occasional feelings, and she even enjoys hanging out with Charles once he's over her.

There's also Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), a civilian secretary and one of Jake's oldest friends. She doesn't have much of an arc (She's lazy and doesn't improve) and I didn't like her much because she's super smug and has the annoying habit of also being right. There was one episode later in the season where she and Jake go apartment hunting (he has a crippling addiction to spending money on awesome-but-unnecessary things) and she gives off awesome big-sister vibes, but then the next episode it's back to smug and right.

They're all watched over by Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) who's worked with Holt before and knows how great the Captain will be. He's essentially Terry Crews as a cop, only he's got two small daughters and a wife, and is this scared to go out into the fields for fear of what'll happen to his family if he dies. His arc is him getting over that.

There are also a couple of minor characters, but those are the main ones. The main plot for most episodes is not a crime, or catching criminals, but the interaction of the characters in the station (or away from it, for that matter). And they do that very, very well. If this were a movie, I would absolutely give it a theatre rating. So go watch it.

Improv Sports

I have never had the chance to go see live improv, except for that time I saw some high school improv teams when I was, like, 11. So I guess I have never seen professional live improv. On Thursday, Evan and I wandered down to Gainesville Island and took in an evening of improve at the Vancouver Theatre Sports League, or whatever it’s called.

There were two shows there. The early show was called Trip Improviser (and sponsored by Trip Adviser) and the action was mostly short skits with audience suggestions about where they had been. Quite funny, with a break in the middle just as things were going on a bit too long.

The second show was later and called The Ultimate Improv Championship, because things were about to go down for mixed verbal arts, or something. Two teams would each have 25 minutes to act out scenes, whether they wanted to do one or several. The first team was called “Tapped Out”, and did a variety of scenes essentially using Freeze to transition from one to another. A lot of call-backs, wildly hilarious humour, all done by three very good professionals. Great fun.

The second team was called “Dan Goes to Camp” and was a 25 minute scene about Dan going to a Magic camp (audience suggestion). It wasn’t quite as good as the first team, so Tapped Out won the night, and will presumably defend their title the following week. I’d definitely do it again. It’s not quite as funny as what you can see on TV, but those are edited down from four hours of material, and this was live. Were it a movie, it’d get a Theatre (sports) Rating from me.


All in all, a fun time was had by us. Many theatre quality movies, which was certainly a step up from last time. Maybe by the time we do it again next year, my brain will have recovered.