Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice review

BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE:

BATMAN AND SUPERMAN CLASH IN OVERSTUFFED DC FOLLOW-UP!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** 1/2 out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

It’s God VS Man, Day VS Night in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

            Well, this is it, the second film in the DC Extended Universe franchise following 2013’s Man of Steel. You know the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yeah, that’s an interesting and risky experiment that really paid off and the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing and was planned right from the beginning.

            Unlike Marvel, the DC Extended Universe was first announced after the success of Man of Steel, strike 1, none of the producers were the president of DC Comics, strike 2, and instead of following Man of Steel with a legit sequel or introduce a new superhero in a completely different movie, they jump right into a crossover with the Caped Crusader of Gotham City, Batman, strike 3.

            That’s where Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice comes in, directed by Man of Steel’s Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen) and Henry Cavill (I Capture the Castle, Stardust, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), Amy Adams (Enchanted, The Fighter, American Hustle), Diane Lane (Unfaithful, Under the Tuscan Sun, Cinema Verite), and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix trilogy, Mystic River, Mission: Impossible III) reprise their roles as Clark Kent/Superman, Lois Lane, Martha Kent, and Perry White, and in the Batsuit we have Ben Affleck (The Town, Argo, Gone Girl) as Bruce Wayne/Batman, conveniently four years after the final time Christian Bale donned it. The hype for this movie when it was announced was mad, I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing ads for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, whether it’s posters, trailers, billboards, commercials on TV, it was one of the most hyped up superhero movies since The Avengers and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, and I’ve only seen a few advertisements for Deadpool.

            But hype aside, does the film live up to what it promised? Surprisingly not as much as you would think. I didn’t hate the movie or anything and I definitely don’t consider it to be the worst Batman and Superman movie ever made, need we forget Batman & Robin, Superman III, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? Yeah, if you’re considering this to be a downfall for Batman and Superman, clearly you have not seen any of those movies.

            After General Zod’s mayhem from the last film, we find the city of Metropolis in a tough decision, should Superman be blamed for the damage that he and Zod caused during their brawl? While that’s going on, the press of Metropolis realizes that there is a mysterious Bat vigilante in Gotham City fighting crime and possibly posing as a threat to the Son of Krypton.

            Billionaire, Bruce Wayne who covertly operates Gotham City as Batman steps into the picture and blames Superman for all the casualties that resulted from his battle with Zod. Clark sees Batman as dangerous figure and seeks to expose him, even if it involves fighting him.

            Meanwhile an even more sinister figure steps into the picture as young businessman, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg-Zombieland, The Social Network, Now You See Me) and CEO of LexCorp who has a serious grudge with Superman, who he claims is his arch-nemesis and plots to unlock the secret to make Kryptonite, the only element that can destroy Superman, trick Batman into battling him to the death, and kill him with a spear of Kryptonite.

            So it’s a one on one, Mono E Mono, face off to save the city from total destruction, it’s God VS Man, Day VS Night, Son of Krypton VS Bat of Gotham.

            The film also stars Gal Gadot (Fast & Furious franchise, Date Night, Triple 9) as 5,000-year-old Amazonian princess superhero, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, Jeremy Irons (The Lion King, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Race) as Bruce Wayne’s loyal butler, Alfred Pennyworth, and Holly Hunter (Broadcast News, The Piano, The Incredibles) as Senator Judy Finch.

            Overall, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a rather choppy superhero movie and not the best film to follow Man of Steel up with. The biggest problem with the movie is it had to follow Man of Steel up, introduce and develop the new Batman, introduce Wonder Woman, have Batman and Superman fight each other, and have Batman and Superman team up in the end to save the day, I don’t think I’m giving away anything, if you’ve seen all the trailers, you pretty much know what the movie is about coming in.

            It’s too heavy on story, when this should have just been a big flashy action-packed extravaganza like The Avengers. Not to mention a lot of plot elements and characters don’t really go anywhere.

            Bruce Wayne supposedly lost Robin, he has a bunch of nightmares and hallucinations and you forget about these elements shortly afterwards, we know very little about Batman here. Granted the Tim Burton Batman movie from 1989 kept Batman a mystery but you at least know his story and what caused him to become a superhero, this movie just left me asking a bunch of questions in my head that probably could have been answered if they dug deeper into Batman’s character, but you gotta get the Clark Kent x Lois Lane, Superman, and Lex Luthor half of the movie in there too, so it comes off as choppily put together.

            Also while Gal Gadot was pretty awesome as Wonder Woman, she doesn’t really have an impact on anything, you could have taken her out of the movie and it wouldn’t impact much. I’m pretty sure Batman battling Superman are enough to hold a movie, you don’t need to constantly develop characters and plot elements that we’re eventually going to know later on in the Universe.

            Okay, let’s talk about Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, he’s entertaining, but not in the same way as Gene Hackman or Kevin Spacey, more along the lines of Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face from Batman Forever and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin. To his credit, he looks like he’s having a lot of fun with the performance, it just comes off as silly, if they went for someone like Mark Strong or Bryan Cranston, I don’t think I’d have a problem.

           

            But when the action gets going, it’s pretty fun stuff, for the amount of time it has before the story comes back into the picture. Also Ben Affleck’s take on Batman is pretty neat, not sure if I like him more than Michael Keaton or Christian Bale but I can definitely say it’s a cool take and a huge improvement over his Daredevil performance from 2003, yeah that movie never happened.

If you just want to see Batman battling Superman, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice delivers what it promises, just don’t expect a whole lot, but if you want a more gripping and different kind of comic book movie, Deadpool is playing next door. Sorry DC, close but no explosion, better luck in August with Suicide Squad.

The Divergent Series: Allegiant review

THE DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT:

THIRD TIME IS NOT THE CHARM HERE, NOT EVEN FOR TRIS PRYOR!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

Something big is beyond the wall in The Divergent Series: Allegiant

            I am so sick to death of these two-part film finales to young adult fantasy novels, don’t get me wrong there are good films based on books that do this such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. And yeah this is a gimmick because the filmmakers and studio just want their money, but the filmmakers put a lot of effort into making the last two Harry Potter and Hunger Games movies and are entertaining movies on their own as well as together.

            Then there’s the multiple part film based on books that don’t have enough character or story to fill two movies, or even three movies. I’m jumping the gun a bit here, these are the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn type of 2-part movies, where it’s just extended to boost profits for the studio, and Part 1 was bad, and Part 2 was uhhhh, bad, so 2-part movies aren’t always the way to go.

            So if Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, and even The Hobbit trilogy can split one book into multiple movies, it was only a matter of time before Veronica Roth’s final Divergent novel would get the treatment. And wouldn’t you believe it, it followed in those footsteps, Veronica Roth’s Allegiant book, the final novel in her Divergent series got the 2-part treatment, under the names The Divergent Series: Allegiant and The Divergent Series: Ascendant (Seriously?).

            Obviously if you’ve read my reviews for the other Divergent movie reviews, you probably already know that I thought the first two films were adequate. Yes I agree both Divergent and Insurgent have a lot of problems and they do rehash other films and books in the genre, they at least had a distinct look, a few differences from other young adult books (though nothing big), some decent chemistry from its two leads, and some fun action.

            I haven’t read any of the books, but I tolerated the first two movies in terms of being entertaining movies. They’re just dumb, fun action movies that have some decent characters, if I wanted gripping action that’ll keep me on the edge of my seat and strong plot development in my book to film adaptations I’ll go watch a Harry Potter or Hunger Games movie.

            But all good (or okay) things must have a downfall, in comes The Divergent Series: Allegiant, the third installment of the Divergent film franchise. Unlike the first two movies, Allegiant is very standard and generic in action and the plot constantly rehashes other movies and books, and not even Faction rebels, Tris Pryor (Shailene Woodley-The Descendants, The Spectacular Now, The Fault In Our Stars) and Four (Theo James-Downton Abbey, Underworld: Awakening) have enough screen time together to help me get through this clichéd screenplay that recycles from other movies including their own.

            Ruthless Faction leader, Jeanine is dead (Yeah, little spoiler from the last movie!) and Four’s mother, Evelyn Johnson-Eaton (Naomi Watts-The Ring, 21 Grams, King Kong), the leader of the Factionless now controls Jeanine’s old empire in hopes of erasing the Faction system. Meanwhile our Divergent heroes, Tris, Four, and their friends, Christina (Zoe Kravitz-X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dope), Tori (Maggie Q-Jackie Chan Presents: Metal Mayhem, Mission: Impossible III, Live Free or Die Hard), Peter (Miles Teller-The Spectacular Now, Whiplash, Fantastic Four), and Tris’ brother, Caleb (Ansel Elgort-Carrie, The Fault In Our Stars, Paper Towns) in hopes of forgiveness (Ahem, Insurgent!) take off to find out the truth behind the wall separating the Chicago dystopia from the rest of the world to search for a peaceful solution to a battle beginning to rise between the Factions and Factionless.

            Shortly after making it outside the wall, they soon learn shocking truths behind what happened to the world from the leader of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, David (Jeff Daniels-Newsroom, Looper, The Martian), the organization responsible for the Faction experiment in Chicago. As the battle that could threaten humanity escalates, Tris and Four must decide who they can really trust to survive and will have to make difficult choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love in order to save their home.

            Overall, The Divergent Series: Allegiant is by far the weakest installment of the Divergent franchise, I’m not calling it the worst I’ve seen or anything like that, but compared to Divergent and Insurgent, it’s rather underwhelming. The action sequences are just standard action that we’ve seen a million times before, the plot constantly rehashes clichés and plot devices from other movies, first it’s like The Hunger Games, then it becomes Mad Max: Fury Road, then it becomes X-Men (mainly because the Bureau looks exactly like Charles Xavier’s lair), and the characters are developed in a very lackluster way, and not enough screen-time of Tris and Four together.

The film even decides to rehash old clichés from the other Divergent movies, even with Kate Winslet’s character from the previous two films killed off, both Naomi Watts and Jeff Daniels practically rehash what she did in the other two movies, you could have just replaced them with two Kate Winslet clones, and then there’s Peter’s character remember Miles Teller in Insurgent, he does the exact same thing he did in the second movie here as well, seriously can this guy just pick an identity and stick with it?

But with that said, Shailene Woodley and Theo James, whenever they do have screen-time together, they undeniably have decent chemistry, they’re basically the only cool characters throughout the entire thing, also one or two action scenes I thought were neat, and Miles Teller can get a good laugh once in a while. Unfortunately, I just felt this installment was really lacking, which is odd because I didn’t feel the earlier movies to be very strong either, if you’re not already a fan of these movies, this won’t change anything.

It’s just an underwhelming installment to a mediocre franchise, and a perfect example of a two-part movie that didn’t need to be made, hopefully The Divergent Series: Ascendant will fix the problems I have here. Because as is, this makes me want a Faction to separate me from this movie.
A little addendum to this review, when I wrote this movie review I was under the impression that The Divergent Series: Allegiant would be a 2-parter and be followed up with The Divergent Series: Ascendent the following year. Well, it never happened and the conclusion to the franchise never came into fruition. So you're looking at a movie franchise that never ended, it just stopped and I'm pissed. 

10 Cloverfield Lane review

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE:

A TENSE, GRIPPING, HUMOROUS, AND THOROUGHLY SUSPENSEFUL EXPERIENCE!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** 1/2 out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND BAD ROBOT

Something is coming in 10 Cloverfield Lane

            Producer J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Star Trek, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) goes back to his monster movie route that made him an iconic Hollywood filmmaker. A spiritual sequel to his 2008 found-footage monster movie hit, Cloverfield, which received positive reviews upon its release and was a box office success.

            Granted the found-footage style filmmaking is an acquired taste, and this was back before found-footage was everywhere (Blame Paranormal Activity!), this was one of the first films to capitalize on the success of The Blair Witch Project, which practically perfected the found-footage filmmaking style. When I first saw Cloverfield back in 2008, I was split on the movie at first, but after some time I started to appreciate the approach Abrams and director, Matt Reeves were going for and thought the shaky home movie style of camera work gave the film a unique look and I still enjoy the movie today.

            So in comes 10 Cloverfield Lane, produced by Abrams again and directed by newcomer, Dan Trachtenberg, which unlike the first film abandons the found-footage style and replaces the lesser known actors from the first film with actors like John Goodman (The Big Lebowski, Flight, Transformers: Age of Extinction) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Sky High, Scott Pilgrim VS The World, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). It looked interesting by the advertising and I still find the marketing campaign for this movie to be some of the best marketing I’ve seen for a movie in a very long time.

            Seeing how I admired the first Cloverfield, I came into this movie with an open-mind and very little knowledge of the film, thankfully the trailers and commercials showed little which added to the hype. And after seeing the movie, I enjoyed it a lot, the first film while I did like it, I didn’t think it was all that scary nor really all that suspenseful, THIS on the other hand had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish, no joke.

            Unlike Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane has very few monsters but its replaced by a creepy John Goodman and three people locked in a bunker. It’s hard for me to categorize it as a Cloverfield movie but as a suspenseful thriller, it has some of the best build-up in a scary movie you’ll ever see.

            The film follows Michelle (Winstead) hitting the road and her car suddenly crashing and going off the road after a distracting phone call by her ex-boyfriend. She is unconscious but then wakes up in a creepy old bunker under a farmhouse managed by a man named Howard (Goodman) who claims he saved her life after a sudden attack hit and caused people to die.
            Howard has been preparing for Doomsday to hit for a long time and informs Michelle that under any circumstances she is not allowed to leave. After a couple gripping attempts to escape she slowly figures out the world she once knew may be gone forever.

            She soon meets, Emmet (John Gallagher Jr.-Short Term 12, The Newsroom, Olive Kitteridge) who was also brought down by Howard and believes his Doomsday story. They slowly realize that the person who supposedly saved their lives may not be trusted and attempt to discover the truth behind why they’re really in the bunker or die trying and what’s going on in the world.

            Overall, 10 Cloverfield Lane is probably one of the best thriller films I’ve seen in a while, not because its gory or full of shock scares, but actually because the film takes its time and builds up to the scares in a very effective way. Mainly because most of the movie takes place in a bunker with only three characters throughout the entire thing.

            The film brilliantly builds up and keeps you guessing until the final act where it makes your jaw drops to the ground in shock. Before any supernatural elements come in, most of the terror comes from Goodman’s performance which is undeniably a creepy performance.

            I mean it, John Goodman usually plays either the nice guy or a crazy over the top guy in a funny way in his movies, but here, John Goodman is this complete bastard all throughout the movie and you have no idea what he’s thinking or if the other two characters can really trust him, honestly he’s scarier than the actual Cloverfield monster, which really isn’t that scary to begin with, that’s the sign of a really good actor.

            As a Cloverfield movie, it could have used more monsters and mayhem but as its own unique movie that shares some of its DNA, it’s a smart, clever, well put together movie that doesn’t rely much on big budget special effects but rather slow, quiet, shivering suspense. It almost feels like a Cloverfield version of last year’s Oscar® winning film, Room, two people locked in this room with no way to escape and a creepy guy always watching them, except replace the graphic content from Room with an apocalyptic element.

            If you’re a fan of Cloverfield, don’t expect shaky cams and giant monsters here, and it’s not even a direct Cloverfield sequel, it’s like if Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was a good movie. But if you want a different kind of scary movie that doesn’t rely on flashy special effects or shock gore, you’ll get what you want here, it’s a visit to 10 Cloverfield Lane that is definitely worth it.