MOONFALL

Halle Berry     Patrick Wilson     John Bradley     Michael Pena

Donald Sutherland     Charlie Plummer 

            This movie is a disaster—but not in the way the filmmakers intended.  It’s the disaster.  The thinly drawn characters, the inane/stereotypical dialog and awkward dreamed-up situations make it hard to sit through.  Special effects are about the only aspect of Moonfall that have a chance to entertain.

            The story starts in such a hodge-podge, it’s difficult to discern the plot and sort out the characters.  People and technical information are thrown out rapid-fire in the first few minutes so that it takes some time to get oriented.  Finally, we begin to see that something major is happening with the moon that if not stopped will endanger the earth.  Institutions such as NASA and the military are portrayed as run by self-serving fools.  For instance, there is the military solution considered of nuking the moon, with no regard to fall-out danger to the earth.

            The main characters include Brian Harper (Wilson), a disgraced astronaut who is blamed for his friend-colleague’s death, his ex-wife Jo (Berry) who is now married to a general in the military and who is made the leader of NASA where she is employed by the current chief as he is running out the door, and hapless janitor KC Houseman (Bradley) impersonating a scientist-astronaut and claiming to understand a complexity in the universe that has stumped the real scientists.  In the movie, he is proven to be right.  The upshot is that these three are going to revisit the moon, discover what is wrong and make things all right on earth.

            In the process of the tale, discounted characters turn out to be heroes, government departments and authorities are portrayed as incompetent fools, and somehow miraculous things just happen in order to carry the story along or save the characters.  Tender parent-child scenes are thrown in liberally sometimes during the height of emergencies, and conflicts get resolved somehow, even between ex-spouses.

            Most of these shortcomings can be attributed to the director Roland Emmereich, whose past films have many of the same elements (e.g., Stargate, The Day after Tomorrow, The Patriot, and Independence Day) discussed above and for which he has been criticized.  What Roger Ebert said about Stargate could be said about Moonfall: “Stargate” is the kind of movie where a soldier can be transported to “the other side of the known universe” in a whirlpool of bizarre special effects, step into a temple on an alien planet, and say, “What a rush!”  https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/stargate-1994.

            Cinematography (Robby Baumgartner) and special/visual effects are about the only aspects of Moonfall worth your time.  Not only are they entertaining, but the viewer can appreciate them as works of art and technology.  The scenes in space are breath-taking and convincingly take you to another world.

 

The telling of the story is hard to bear, but cinematography and special effects might be worth your time.

 

Grade:  D                              By Donna R. Copeland

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM

Keanu Reeves     Halle Berry     Ian McShane     Laurence Fishburne

Mark Dacascos     Asia Kate Dillon     Lane Reddick     Anjelica Huston

     ‘Parabellum’ apparently means “call to war”, which is the theme of John Wick:  Chapter 3.  Repeatedly, we see groups aligning up against one or more persons, and agents being sent out to “be of service” (“I have served…years; I will be of service.” is the ritualistic response to a challenge)—which usually means taking someone out.  But the central character to go to war with is John Wick (Keanu Reeves, in his third appearance as Wick).

     By the third John Wick film, most of the drama and character development have been expended in the first two, and in this third we get what looks like a stunt man’s dream:  endless scenes of choreographed fights that used to be fascinating, but by now have become repetitive and tedious.  As with many action films, the fight scenes go on for 30 minutes or more.  This is understandable in view of the director Chad Stehelski’s background as a stuntman, but when that is essentially all that’s in a movie, it can’t hold the interest of those of us wanting a story.

     John Wick 3 is marked by extremely violent fight scenes that sometimes are accentuated by humorous images, which did indeed bring laughs from the viewers.  As in cartoons like “Bugs Bunny”, stunts are punctuated with humor, usually from one character clobbering another in rapid sequences with bodies flying into each other or into things like glass cases and careening every which way.  Many are cleverly done and get chuckles and guffaws from the audience.  There are swords that go completely through a man, with the point appearing on his backside and swords or guns being shoved into a man’s head then pounded to drive it in further.  One has to see it as a cartoon; otherwise, it’s just sick.

     In this version of John Wick (Reeves) has a bounty on his head to the tune of $14 million for killing someone in the Continental Hotel where the rule is that no blood can be shed there.       This rule comes down from the “High Table”, a mysterious group with inviolable rules overseeing underground criminal operations in the city. Wick tries various strategies (and wins out in a formidable number of hostile encounters) to redeem himself, eventually ending up in Morocco where the highest of highs gives him instructions for expiation, but only after he does extreme penance.  Then even more battles occur on a set reminiscent of Wick 2, which had mirrors.  This one has see-through glass everywhere in many configurations and on multiple levels.  (It’s a stunning set design.)

     Moreso than in the previous Wick films, this one involves shifting loyalties and very little drama in terms of personal interactions or character development.  For instance, Wick’s relationship with Sofia (Berry) is not explained, other than that they had a history that left her so resentful she leaves him on the desert sands, making a big show of depriving him of water in a gruesome way.  

     Keanu Reeves owns the character of John Wick admirably, as he has done for the previous renditions, but the constant “mano-a-mano” encounters show him to be as weary as we are of the endless struggles.  A fresh new exotic face is Asia Kate Dillon, as the Continental’s chief, who conveys a mixture of threat and decisiveness.  She is good, but I would have liked to see more mercilessness, a fault that I attribute to the writers or director rather than to the actress.  Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne are marvelous in their continuing roles as underground criminal elements.  Halle Barry did well with what she had; her storyline did not add much, and her character needed to be much more developed to make it interesting.

John Wick is on the run (i.e., in a string of stunts and cartoon-like maneuvers) with a $14 mil bounty on his head after breaking an almost inviolable rule in a consecrated place.

Grade:  C+                                    By Donna R. Copeland

KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

Taron Egerton     Mark Strong     Julianne Moore     Colin Firth     Halle Berry

Elton John     Michael Gambon     Channing Tatum     Jeff Bridges     Bruce Greenwood     Emily Watson

     Those who really took to the first Kingsman (2014) are likely to be disappointed in the second adaptation of the Mark Millar/David Gibbons comic book (“The Secret Service”), even though the writing/directing team is the same (Matthew Vaughn, director, and co-writer Jane Goldman), as is the cinematographer (George Richmond).  Where the first film went beyond the flashy technological effects to get in social commentary about the environment, social class, compassion, cooperation, and violence, this version seems to be preoccupied with technology, staging one combat scene after another, without much else in between.  And this is two-plus hours of screen time.

     Harry Hart’s (Firth) trainee from the first film, Eggsy (Egerton), is now an agent working with Merlin (Strong) to rein in a mega drug cartel run by the ruthless Poppy (Moore), who has ambitions to addict the whole world to increase her sales, but has ready an antidote against the disastrous effects of her doctored drugs, thereby retaining a continuous client base.  She concocts a plan, essentially putting the President of the United States (Greenwood) into a bind where, no matter what he does after he signs the agreement, Poppy’s plan will go through.

     The action takes Eggsy and Merlin to Kentucky, where they meet with private intelligence operatives and discover Hart—who was thought dead—but is alive in a compromised state.  They join forces to go after Poppy, loyalties switch back and forth, and multiple battles take place.  (It’s a bit ironic that in the first film, private intelligence agencies are shown to be bad; whereas in this film, the Kingsmen have little trouble collaborating with them, although, of course, a number of suspicions are raised and tested.)

     The script seems to be the biggest problem in The Golden Circle.  It has little substance or character development so becomes, to me, like a trade show for special effects, showing unbelievable lassos, hacking capabilities, and other tools that the characters seem to have ready for any situation, and these are inserted into so many combat scenes any interesting or engaging story is submerged.  Eggsy as the fresh-faced new Kingsman agent seems ill-suited to the tasks placed before him; and although Hart is brought “back to life” to back him up, his status seems so compromised in the beginning and through most of the action, his successes veer toward the unbelievable. 

     The filmmakers can boast about the number of A-list actors in the film:  Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Julianne Moore, Halle Berry, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Greenwood, and Emily Watson, and they all perform really well; however, many have little screen time or impactful roles.  Tatum, Bridges, Greenwood, and Watson are only in a few scenes.  Julianne Moore, an outstanding actress, is not quite as formidable as the witch Poppy should be.  She should send chills up your spine, but although Poppy does unbelievably heinous things, it’s hard to imagine these actions coming from the character portrayed by Moore, a fault of the script and/or direction rather than her performance per se.  Elton John is a highlight in all this; he is his character and plays it to the hilt.  His persona and what he does hits the mark, about the only time in the film this happens.

This film is a puzzlement.  Although the original show runners are the same and the actors are top-notch, this version of the Kingsman productions falls far short of the original.

Grade:  C-                                                             By Donna R. Copeland