Captain America: Civil War (2016) Marvel – Movie Review

May 7, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Loosely taking off from an idea borne of the giant crossover storyline mostly under the direction of comics writer Mark Millar, Civil War is a movie that addresses something that is not often remarked upon in superhero stories, and that is the cost of the collateral damage, especially in human lives, when super-powered humans battle one another over an urban landscape. The beginning of the film shows us firsthand the cost of trying to save people, as the Avengers’ mission against villain Crossbones in a battle at the heart of Lagos, Nigeria, sees the deaths of many innocent bystanders, including many from the (fictional) country of Wakanda.
Enter Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross, who pushes forward the Sokovia Accords, a law that requires United Nations approval and oversight when engaging in future world-saving battles that might jeopardize the lives of helpless people. Tony Stark, haunted by guilt of a young and promising teen’s death resulting from his own perceived recklessness, signs on, thinking that this law will not only be inevitable, but that agreeing with it now saves them from a more severe implementation down the road. Steve Rogers, once used as a government propaganda tool for things he didn’t always believe in, think it’s a bad idea, not only opening up the superheroes to be used as a tool for a bunch of selfish bureaucrats, but also because the absence of quick and decisive action, or even inaction in some cases, may cost countless more lives down the road.
After a terrorist explosion ends up killing the Wakandan leader, his son, prince T’Challa, who is also a super-powered human clad in a pliable form of vibranium (the same nearly indestructible substance from which Cap’s shield is composed) known as the Black Panther, vows revenge on the responsible party, with signs pointing toward Bucky Barnes, once the Soviet-brainwashed assassin called the Winter Soldier, as the main culprit. Barnes disavows any knowledge, Captain America, who sees the good in him when he’s not triggered into malice, protects his old friend, and together they vow to unearth the real mastermind behind the tragedy. However, they can’t get far, as acting on their own brands them as criminals, which means the Avengers who’ve signed the new law, led by Iron Man, must keep the peace so that costumed vigilantes aren’t acting of their own accord, possibly causing more distrust from the public and governments they’ve sworn to protect.

High-Rise (2015) Tom Hiddleston – Movie Review

May 3, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set in 1975, Tom Hiddleston stars as successful physiologist, Dr. Robert Laing, who has recently moved in to the 25th floor of one of several new high-rise buildings in a not-quite-finished avant-garde apartment complex in London. The architect of the complex, an eccentric architect on the uppermost floor named Anthony Royal, has designed the buildings to never need to be part of the ground-level activity surrounding the buildings, as each one offers its own means of taking care of one’s daily needs, from groceries, to schooling, to entertainment, to a host of other amenities. Although everyone pays the same rent money, the building also seems to have its own class system in terms of who lives on what floor, as the elites live in higher floors than those below. One of those below is Richard Wilder, a documentarian who begins to suspect that there are great inequities in the way the building is structured, threatening to expose it for what it is to the public at large. As the new building begins to show signs of faulty facilities in disrepair, anarchy begins to take hold The resultant chaos erupts into a battle between the haves and have-nots for whatever resources are left to be had within the walls of the structure.

Miles Ahead (2015) Don Cheadle – Movie Review

May 2, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set mainly during the course of about a day in the musician’s life in New York’s Upper West Side (Cincinnati substitutes) in the 1979, when creatively burnt-out Miles had taken a self-imposed five-years-and-counting break from releasing new music. Columbia Records had grown increasingly challenged in their relationship with their most eccentric and erratic recording artist, who claims he would give them something new if they paid him the $20,000 they owe him, with both parties knowing they could all make so much more if he were to hand over the studio recording reel that he’d been working on in the interim. Enter a man claiming to be a highly ambitious Rolling Stone reporter Dave Brill (a fictional character, reportedly scripted in to bring on a white lead actor like McGregor, to help get funding), who wants to not only help his publication sell papers by getting the reclusive Miles Davis to record an increasingly rare in-depth interview with him, but to also facilitate seeing Miles hand over that unpublished recording that is sure to make music history. When the master tape ends up missing, the volatile Miles takes matters into his own hands, resulting in a life-or-death struggle to wrest ownership back where he feels it belongs, at least until he deems it worthy.

Green Room (2015) Patrick Stewart – Movie Review

April 30, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Touring the Pacific Northwest, the D.C.-based punk quartet known as the Ain’t Rights haven’t quite taken this part of the country by storm, ending up taking a bit of a detour from their tour to secure some much-needed gas money for the cross-country trip home by playing in a backwoods Oregon roadhouse for skinhead neo-Nazis. After the gig, they stumble into a room backstage and discover a young woman murdered on the floor, and the skinheads culpable aren’t going to just let them walk out after they’ve alerted the police. As Darcy the dive club’s owner, wants to keep all traces of their activities, illicit and otherwise, from being discovered by the cops, they stage a cover-up story while the Ain’t Rights are locked tight in the room. Knowing that things aren’t going to end well for them, it’s up to the band to try to figure out a way out of the situation before they end up the next victims.

Keanu (2016) Key & Peele – Movie Review

April 29, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Key stars as Clarence, a straight-laced suburbanite who is lured by his recently broken-up slacker cousin Rell, played by Peele, to finally cut loose with his wife away for the weekend. Little do they know that this ‘cutting a little loose’ might involve strippers, drugs and murder, as Rell’s adorable kitty, which has given him his long-lost mojo back, has been taken in a mistaken-identity burglary by Cheddar, the leader of the gang called the Blips (those who left the Bloods or Crips), who will only give Keanu back if the men, who are posing Tectonic and Shark Tank, out-of-towner hitmen called the Allentown gang (mute, trench-coated thugs also played by Key and Peele), who are also on the lookout for the lovable kitten that got away from them during a gunfight at the film’s intro.

Elvis & Nixon (2016) Michael Shannon – Movie Reviews

April 29, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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In this semi-fictional yarn, the impetus for Elvis wanting to meet with either J. Edgar Hoover or Nixon is born from his growing discontent at seeing where America has been headed, particularly in the growing cultural unrest among its people, from the hippie movement, to the pot smokers, to the war protestors, to the Black Panthers. The King decides that he can actually help the country if he can be made a Federal Agent. Joined by his “Memphis Mafia” friends Jerry Schilling from Hollywood and bodyguard Sonny West, Elvis travels to the White House in order to have an impromptu meeting with the President, hoping to convince him to get the badge he will need to carry out his “agent at large” duties. The road seems at an impasse, but Nixon’s aides, sensing that a photograph of the two together could endear him come re-election time to large swaths of Elvis fans, particularly in the South, try to make it happen, despite Nixon’s initial protests.

The Jungle Book (2016) Disney – Movie Reviews

April 27, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Neel Sethi stars as young Mowgli, raised in the jungles of (presumably) India by a pack of wolves after his father is slain by the power-hungry tiger Shere Khan, who does not like humans one bit, fearing that the older Mowgli gets, the more he will threaten their way of life. Sensing the danger from the lurking tiger, Mowgli’s savior and mentor, a panther named Bagheera, decides that the young “man-cub” is in mortal danger, striving to escort the tyke to the place where he’ll be most protected: a village of human beings in relatively close vicinity. However, the road to civilization proves to be just as treacherous, especially when Bagheera loses track of the man-cub’s whereabouts, leaving him susceptible to giant bears, hypnotizing pythons, stinging bees, and disturbingly ambitious apes.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016) Chris Hemsworth – Review

April 26, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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On the prequel front, we find that the wicked Queen Ravenna (Theron) has a sister named Freya (Blunt), a more benevolent (at least at first) younger sibling who is seemingly always in the eldest’s shadow. Freya ends up in an affair with a handsome duke and soon has his child, but instead of starting a new life with her, the duke destroys their future by killing the baby. The resultant grief Freya fees at the deplorable act brings out latent superpowers within her to control the powers of cold and ice, which she not only uses to get revenge, but, once leaving to form her own kingdom up north, she also aims to make use of in order to raise and train many of the children of the land to not only fight for her as “Huntsmen” (who don’t hunt?), but to also forbid them dreaded thing she was denied in life through the cowardly actions of her ex: love.

Two of the children in her Huntsman training regime are Eric and Sara, not only her best warriors, but also secretly in love with ach other. Knowing they can never openly live a life together as lovers, Eric and Sara, now grown, vow to leave their responsibilities and start a life together on their own, but Freya catches wind and forces a wedge, quite literally, between the would-be couple. From there, we presume, comes the events of Snow White and her battle with Ravenna, who ends up mortally defeated, and the rest of the film continues Eric’s story as he goes on the quest to find the magical mirror, which leads him to also discover that many things he believed to be true were merely deceptions.

A Hologram for the King (2016) Tom Hanks – Movie Review

April 23, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Tom Hanks plays Alan Clay, a recently divorced IT salesman, down on his luck in both his personal and professional life, called out on a rare assignment to Saudi Arabia in order to try to peddle his company’s pricey holographic technology to the king for use in their rich country. Many missteps occur as Alan is never quite able to get his bearings there either, persistently having to call for a ride with a local cab driver named Yousef to get him to the site in a tardy fashion, often giving the American fish-out-of-water a crash course on local customs, while he has to return day after day to try to get help for his IT team to be able to set up optimal conditions for the presentation to the king who is told will be coming soon but never does. Meanwhile, Alan is lured to the possibility of something more around the corner, spending some choice time with a lusty Danish executuve named Hanne, and some flirtatious encounters with Dr. Zahra Hakem, who is treating him for a growing cyst on his back, a symbol of the woes he carries around that continue to fester, further increasing his escalating anxiety.

April and the Extraordinary World (2015) – Movie Review

April 22, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Comic book legend Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel provides the inspiration for this loose big screen adaptation from France, from screenwriters Franck Ekinci (who-codirects with Christian Desmares) and Benjamin Legrand, with graphic design work on the film by Tardi himself. It’s a steampunk alternate world where Earth’s has progressed little scientifically since the Industrial Revolution, primarily because scientists have been outlawed, and they’ve begun disappearing en masse.

Most of the film is set in that alternate Paris in 1941, under the rule of Napoleon V, where much of the power supplied to the world comes from pre-fossil fuels like coal, charcoal and wood from the rapidly dwindling forests of the world. April is an inventive orphaned woman with a smart-alecky talking cat named Darwin. She lost her scientist parents at a young age when it was discovered that they had possibly invented something called the Ultimate Serum, a chemical cocktail that makes its imbiber rejuvenated, cured of disease, and virtually immortal — something that could tip the global war for resources in France’s favor should they be able to create their own invincible super-soldiers. April is being closely monitored from several interested parties in case she happens to stumble on the potent concoction, or invent it on her own, with the tenacious French policeman, Gaspard Pizoni, on orders to observe her every move. April makes that discovery, but finds an even larger one emerges that threatens to shift the balance of world power in an entirely unexpected direction.