Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Review

Once again Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is drunk, pirates appear, ships explode, and ghosts are inconsequentially pertinent to the plot. If "Cutthroat Island" didn't kill the pirate genre, then "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" will.

I will admit, the film opens promisingly enough, when a new bank is being christened, lauded the safest safe in all of fictional pirate land. They swing open the door to the public, only to find Jack drunk inside. As it turns out, he is here to steal the safe, but when gunshots scare the horses, the entire bank is pulled from the ground. Remember kids, don't rob and drink.This one scene is the most fun in the entire running time, where both main and secondary characters are pulled onto the bank and off of the lumbering building, all clearly shot and genuinely fun to watch. This is the sole moment when the flick achieves the low-rent "Indiana Jones" style the rest of the film lusts for, where action is blended masterfully with humor and spectacle. Save for the rare land reprieve, the remainder of film then sets off on the open seas, where it becomes murky, with clumsy closeups of characters reacting to ghosts, pirates, and ghost pirates (as well as ghost sharks) and poorly staged action on what looked to be slightly unfinished CGI landscapes (or does that make them waterscapes?).

The plot chronicles Armando Salazar (Javier Bardem), a talented actor wasted here as a pirate hunter who met his maker from the soused Mr. Sparrow. His usual flamboyance are diluted behind pounds of makeup and CGI as a ghost trapped in the Devil's Triangle. Well, that is until dipsomaniac Jack barters his compass for a drink, which frees the pirate-prejudice man to scour the seas in a manic search for the alcoholic swashbuckler. In toe are Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), son of Orlando Bloom's character in the franchise (the actor has nothing but a glorified cameo here) who is after Jack so that he can help him find the Trident of Poseidon, and Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), an orphan (?) and astronomer who is convicted of witchcraft. She believes Henry can help her find the trident, and he thinks Jack can help him do the same. In between all of this, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) enters a plea bargain with the Salazar (remember him from earlier in the plot?), to help the ghost man find Jack so that he will spare his own life.

If that does not make any sense, that is because the film has failed at cohesive story telling. This is the fifth film in the franchise, based on a ride at Disneyland, and has been going on for fourteen years, so to give the filmmakers any slack would be to accept their exploitation of a gimmick premise. And although I did indeed follow the plot, there are far too many primary, secondary, and tertiary characters here, each with far too much to say but without anything interesting to speak of. Every single hero and villain here is a stereotype of actual film characters, but only star Johnny Depp seems to realize that, and have fun with it. Inside all the luscious outfits and beneath the eyeliner are shells of anything human, and with all the CGI here, I'm half surprised this was not entirely made inside a computer.

But perhaps the biggest disappointment here is the film's diluted definition of the genre of "pirates:" people have bad teeth, ships are sailed, and ragged clothing is worn, but that is it. The gunfire is all shockingly accurate but unsatisfying, as well as the sword fighting, where blades are tapped together, the actor is replaced by stunt double, who promptly falls on the floor to avoid choreographed swordsmanship. All honest buccaneering has been attenuated into generic explosions and mythological action. Picture this, the water is parted late in the film. No, this is not the telling of Exodus, this is a film out of ideas.

Alien Covenant Review

In the land of sequels and prequels, "Alien Covenant" is a sequel to a prequel! Those gooey monsters from the original 1979 film are front and center, as well as several variations on the titular beast, not unlike the dog/ox alien attempt from the franchise's third offering. Not much has changed in nearly forty years; unknowing space-crew finds themselves on an extraterrestrial planet, and blood is splattered, both human and alien (ah yes, cannot forget that the last one's body fluid is acid).

The team this time are colonists, setting out to a distant planet that can sustain human life. But the crew awakes when the ship is struck by what the script calls "neutrino burst," but the captain's sleeping pod malfunctions, killing him. This introductory to our cast already has them dealing with death and questioning their new captain Chris Oram (Billy Crudup), who is a man of faith. During repairs to the ship, the pilot Tennessee's (Danny McBride) helmet intercepts an S.O.S. from a nearby planet. Of course, the crew fly down to investigate, only to find mysterious ruins of a foreign spaceship, as well as crops of wheat. Who planted it? What could have flown a ship like that? The film proposes many questions without ever actually asking many, and has even fewer answers. It is a showcase for the power of practical effects, with grandiose set designs that had me filled with both wonder and unease.

Of course, it would not be an "Alien" movie without an android. This time the robot is Walter (Michael Fassbender), who dresses a little sloppy and comes off far more disinterested of reciting company propaganda than the franchise's previous droids. But that is not all! There is another synthetic, found on the enigmatic planet's curious rubble, named David, who is additionally played by Michael Fassbender. He is of course the same cyborg from this film's predecessor, and rescues our space cadets from a particular nasty situation. This dual role for Michael is wonderful: both characters share much of their screen time together, where you can watch how different he makes each artificial man, complete with their own facial expressions, accents, and body movements. There is a heavy pseudoeroticism to their relationship, not only a testament to the actor's talents but also an illusion to the Xenomorph's innate amorous essence; this is perhaps the most sexual franchise that contains so little nudity.

If the plot sounds familiar, that is because it is essentially a condensing of the entire franchise into one 123 minute long film. We the audience knows what those facehuggers do, we anticipate a false ending, and we forecast who the leading woman will be- and that she will live until the end. That latter role is Daniels Branson (Katherine Waterston), but I cannot confirm whether or not she makes it until the end. That is because the subtle brilliance of these movies are the variations on the franchise tropes, and the ending here is considerably more understated, and done far more effectively, than the recent space-monster movie "Life."

However, where as director Ridley Scott is at his best lusting over the fetishistic sets, he struggles with the film's more intense moments of the title beast ripping apart the crew members. His use of quick cuts and "shaky-cam" filming do little to stimulate, aside from the flick's introduction to the slimy, human-hosted, creatures. Most attacks occur in the dark of the depressing and damp caves that have housed David since the events of the last picture, reducing suspense into a murky mess of rubber monsters and fake blood. When Scott's dark nightmare does work, the set design, the aliens, all look spectacular, I just wish I could clearly see them.

But the biggest issue here are the humans; there are simply too many! Where as the first film gave us only a handful, we only get so much time with the dozen or so characters, and when most inevitably meet the dripping second mouth of the alien, we feel little emotion- how can I possibly care when when two lovers in the shower meet a bloody climax when their only purpose in the film is to increase its body count?

None of this prevents "Alien Covenant" from being the best movie in the franchise since 1986, as well as one of the best science-fiction films I have seen in a long time. Dear Ridley, I hope to see that last line on the DVD box.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Review

When heavy hitters like Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone star in a movie together, you had better have something interesting for them to do. Well, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" has both of those actors, and comes so close to delivering on that potential. That does not make it a bad film- it is a marginal improvement over the first film, but you cannot help but feel a peculiar sensation wondering why the filmmakers would have gone through all the trouble getting Sly only for him to appear in three brief scenes (I counted).

Mr. Russell fortunately gets a lot more screen time, all of it well deserved, playing Ego, the "god with a little "g"" father of Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt). The two share much of the movie together, and prove that having two charming actors often times results in the two sharing chemistry. However something "off" about Quill's father, or at least that is what one of Star-Lord's buddies thinks, and I will refrain from disclosing whether or not there is something. But the plot that forces the duo together is surprisingly inconsequential, with Quill's band of friends protecting Ayesha's batteries from a slimy CGI thing. They defeat it (of course they did, it is how the film opens), but one of his pals, Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), steals a handful of the batteries, they are hunted down by Ayesha's remote-piloted spaceships. Yes readers, this whole movie, this 136 minute long film all started because of batteries. What a premise...

But with Ego being a god, making Star-Lord a god also, doesn't that mean that any thrill the first "Guardians" film had was moot? (Logic like this is moot to a flick like this.) There is a lot of Kurt here, an actor talented enough to display affection when discussing his past with his long-lost son, but who is far from afraid to ham it up when the script asks for it. This is the Kurt Russell, the amount and the character, I so desperately pined for in "The Fate of the Furious."

The action is tame here, surprising for how many times galaxies are jumped and how many ships zip through space, but much of the time we watch our gang of primary characters talk to each other, then the set changes, then they talk some more. And I did not mind much of what they spoke, but the film frustratingly does not devote everything it has to the emotion it mentions. For each touching revelation there are two jokes slipped in, as if the filmmakers were unconvinced audiences would care for something other than glib remarks and the occasional space battle. Dear movie makers: we do!

The film fails to work on so many levels, particularly in the worlds it attempts to create; how can I be excited to visit alien planets when the lifeforms who inhabit them are simply humans painted green, or gold or blue?! Where is the imagination? Even the architecture is fairly human, never arousing the same foreign feeling that the "Alien" and "Star Wars" franchises so effortlessly evoke. This movie could have taken place on Earth- just trade the spaceships for jet planes and leave the face paint in the dressing room.

Drax (Dave Bautista) is a great example of that point by being such a poor film character, a buff, gray man who's only personality is to make painful observations in the most awkward fashion a screenwriter could imagine. There is so many scenes dedicated to him calling Mantis (Pom Klementieff) "ugly" that I quickly felt genuine dislike for the character (even if Mantis is presented here as more of a stereotype than a character). Rocket is another awful member of the titular gang, a CGI raccoon who's personality is purely to make fun of others for the first half of the film so that he can "learn his lesson" by the end. But his obnoxiousness is not what is most egregious here: he is just a raccoon created inside a computer. There is no personification, he does not "look" unique- he is, a raccoon who talks. His character is more congruous trading in his potty-mouth for dance moves in a Disney sing-a-long.

But Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) proved to be the bane of the movie, a character who says only "I am Groot" the entire film and acts like one of the babies in the "Rugrats" animated TV show. He exists solely to sell toys. The audience loved him. I did not- call me heartless, but he is one tree who is in desperate need of being chopped down.