PDInk

The latest from DC animation Studios is Justice League: Throne of Atlantis; the second excursion into the New 52 universe via animated feature. As with all DC animated features of late it’s beautifully visually realized but sadly this one seems to fall flat in terms of Story and Plot. The following review may contain minor spoilers so readers beware.

 Justice League: Throne of Atlantis picks up a few months after the events of the previous film Justice League: War.  The members of the recently formed League are still trying to work together and would much prefer to go solo and see the League as only a publicity stunt. As the different leaguers attend to their own agendas there’s a plot afoot beneath the earth’s oceans.  The events of Justice League: War has caused the death of the King of Atlantis and now the long fabled society is readying for war with the surface world. The Queen of Atlantis vies for peace while her son and heir apparent Prince Orm teams up with Black Manta in a plot to overthrow the queen and wipe out the surface using the nuclear fuel of a pillaged Military Submarine. The loss of the Sub and all hands on board garners the attention of League member Cyborg while the Queen sends her royal guard to seek out another heir to the throne, a man named Arthur Curry. Soon Curry and the league are pulled under the waves and into the intrigue of war.

As always I’ll start with what worked for me before I move on to what didn’t. As I said the animation is visually stunning and the action scenes are pretty fun and when it comes to Mera its all stuff we’ve never really seen before. The voice cast is great from notable big screen alum Sean Astin as Shazam, Nathan Fillion as Grean Lantern and Rosario Dawson as Wonder Woman to voice talent Matt Lanter as Arthur Curry and Jason O’Mara as Batman. The scenes with Superman and Wonder were charming and provided a hint at what might one day be a great romance. Sadly that’s pretty much were the positives end and the tide of negative begins.

This movie as a whole suffers from trying to do too much in too little time.  The filmmakers attempt to explore the league members and their individual problems and hang ups and the politics of Atlantis and the origins of Aquaman and the birth of the League itself. Which in and of itself is not a problem the problem comes when they have 88 minutes to do all that.  The plots and concepts are rushed and under developed.  The characters of Black Manta and Orm (Ocean Master) are unoriginal in their execution and fall flat. There are plot holes and background information gaps that go unfilled and unexplained. Arthur Curry is throw into this whole new world of living and breathing underwater and he never makes mention of it, he suddenly and inexplicable stars talking to sea life (which seems amazing to other Atlantians) but no one says anything about it. And for some reason Ocean Master a C list villainat best in the Justice League rouges gallery is somehow able to not only hold his own against the entire league but also get the upper hand time after time. It’s a pretty serious drop in quality as far as the story telling is concerned.

I make very few DVD/ Bluray purchases now and days but I always find the money for a DC/ Warner Bros Animation Studio films, I kind of wish I hadn’t picked this one up. Overall it’s pretty but forgettable, shiny but unoriginal, a hot girl at the bar that has absolutely nothing interesting or smart to say. If you’re a fan of the previous DC animated Justice League features you might want to wait till you can rent this one on from Redbox cause $1.50 is about all its worth. Overall grade C-       

Did your wife or girlfriend insist that you go see Fifty Shades of Grey for Valentine’s Day? Poor sucker. The Wife and I went out and saw Kingsmen: The Secret Service because she’s a down ass chick.  It’s smooth, it’s funny, it’s violent, it’s unapologetically British and it’s definitely totally Dench. Kingsmen: The Secret Service is a non-super hero comic book adaptation spy extravaganza from director Mathew Vaughn and comic book genius Mark Millar. The following review may contain some minor spoilers so readers beware.   

The Kingsmen are a Kabul of clandestine English gentlemen who so happen to be the world’s foremost purveyors of fine English formal wear and of international intelligence and espionage. Their ranks include the best and brightest sworn to protect the world from all those who would see it harmed. The film follows one such gentlemen agent code named Galahad played by Colin Firth as he searches for a suitable replacement for a fallen comrade at the same time trying to foil the plotting of an evil criminal mastermind named Valentine played by a lisping Samuel L Jackson hell bent on destroying the world as we know it. Galahad sponsors young brogue Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton) as his candidate into the Secret Service. Eggsy must compete with ten elitist high society youths to win the coveted position of Kingsmen. Michael Caine plays Kingsmen leader code named Arthur and Mark Strong plays Kingsmen tech-expert and recruits trainer code named Merlin.

Let me start off by saying that I love the world they set up and built in this movie. The history and mythology of the Kingsmen is explored enough to make it very intriguing without being overly forceful or boring. The first step in a movie that is, on paper, pretty ridiculous like this or something like John Wick is establish a rich in depth world with rules, do this well and the audience will forgive a lot of the outlandish BS that a movie like this could suffer from. The Story is well crafted and being that I have not read the comics I don’t know whether that’s thanks to comic creator Mark Millar or screenplay writers Jane Goldman and Mathew Vaughn. The cast is brilliant in pretty much every aspect, I totally buy Firth as a dapper action hero and that has a lot to do with Firth’s willingness to do a lot of his own stunts and fights. Young mister Taron Egerton holds his own amongst this pantheon of British acting powerhouses but I think the movie really belongs to Sofia Boutella and Sophie Cookson as Henchwomen Gazelle and Kingsmen inductee Roxy respectively.  Sofia steals ever scene she’s in as Valentine’s blade legged henchwoman (her legs are literally Blades of steal) and as a character she’s just cool, a brilliant call back to the old Bond henchmen. And Sophie as Roxy is equally scene stealing and her character and story arch don’t come off forced. The best part of both roles is that they’re powerful badass women but Millar- Vaughn never uses the fact that they are women as a story point or even make mention it, they are simply badasses; gender is not a factor.   The action and fight chorography is all pretty badass and again the fact that the actors were involved a lot made all the difference. Overall there’s more to like about this movie then not.

Not everything is gold though there are a few things that fall into the negative list for me.  The first and foremost (for me personally) was Samuel L Jackson. I don’t know whose idea it was to play Valentine with this god awful lisp but it annoyed the hell out of me the whole time he’s on screen. The fact that as an evil mastermind Valentine is nauseated by violence and blood I think is pretty great and an opportunity for some great comedy moments but the lisp is just Waterboy levels of stupid. Second issue is the use of the infamous “shaky cam”, while it wasn’t as off putting as in other films (The first Hunger Games, the Dark Knight Trilogy) it’s still way to prevalent in Kingsmen for me to fully enjoy the fights. The only other issue I can think of is the run time, at 2 hours and 10 minutes it kind of starts to drag in a few places. They could remove about 15 minutes from the middle third and I think it would pace better and not feel labored. Even with all that said still a great movie.

Let me take a moment for a bit of a public service notice here…. WARING… this movie is Violent. Like a lot violent. Sure its stylized flashy violence like you would get from a Tarantino movie but there’s a lot of it. Some might say it’s gluttonous in its celebration of violence.  One scene in particular seems to have people’s hackles permanently raised involving a massacre in a church.  Its brutal, it’s in your face and it’s scored to the song Free Bird… so if that sounds like it’s not your bag don’t see this movie, or see it with someone who has already seen it and they can send you out of the theater when that scene’s about to happen. Though I think people are just pissed off that it was in a church if that scene was in a Walmart I don’t think people would be reacting quite so aggressively.    

So overall I think this movie is a definite must see and a bit of a surprise pleasure.  It’s fast and unflinching, gritty and elegant, charming and crass. It’s a fever dream of classic James Bond and modern Jason Bourne with a hint of The Raid whip kicked in to spice things up.  It’s everything I was hoping for going in and perhaps more. Overall grade A-         

Taken 3. It's the first movie I've gotten to see in 2015 and well I just hope this year gets better. Let me first say Taken is one of my Favorite action films of the last 10 years... its a wonderfully brutal action movie that no one really saw coming. Now let me say Taken 2 was, by my account, Stupid and witless and poor beyond reason and expectation. So why did I pay for Taken 3? Because its January, which is widely considered the toilet bowl of movie seasons, and if you're going to play hookie from work to watch a movie and eat hot wings you don't want to go to Selma or American Sniper. In retrospect probably should have seen either one of those... Warning the following my contain spoilers.  

Taken 3 takes place a few years after the events of Taken 2, they tell you this but never go as far as to show you in terms of having the characters reflect the fact that they have been through this shit two other times. I am really maybe Liam Neelson can go through life changing crap like that and not let it affect his every day life but surly the daughter and wife would need some serious counseling and maybe just fucking maybe a self defense class or two. Liam Neelson is back as Brain Mills a man with a particular set of skills and this time he has been framed for the murder of his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) and he must fight the Russian mob and the LA police to clear his name and find the true guilty party. Surprisingly no one's taken in Taken 3 but I guess we have to stick to the name at this point. Forest Whittaker plays the A typical police detective out to get his man ignoring every bit of common scene along the way. Maggie Grace returns as Kim the always in danger daughter and much like Taken 2 she provides little to nothing in this movie. And the rest of the movie is populated by dime store generic villains, if someone comes on screen that looks like he might be a bad guy... well he is because they make it that obvious. 

One of the biggest issues I have is the fact that its mentioned in the movie that the LA police have knowledge of the events of the previous two films, events that have our main character killing most of Paris to save is daughter and blowing up most of Istanbul to save his wife, yet the police believe Liam Neeson is capable of killing his wife and is a danger to his daughter. The police do very little if any investigation into the current events but simply throw everything into finding the man they KNOW to be a one man army. Stop and think for one fucking second.  The “twist” in the plot is 1000 degrees of obvious, the pacing is slow to the point of coma and the action is bland and frankly kind of shitty.

This movie is pretty much the ugly love child of Taken and the Fugitive but sadly it didn't inherent any of the things that made either movie good. It's painfully dull and slow. The action is surprisingly uninspired. The plot is redundant, elementary and predictable to the point that Stevie Wonder can see where things are goings. The acting is fair but the characters unoriginal. It's simply a subpar movie though in fairness it's not nearly as stupid as Taken 2.  Taken 2 had more Stupid and more Action and it seems all they did was dial back a notch or two on both, which doesn't work.

Do I regret spending the 6 dollars on this movie? No. Do I think this movie is worth leaving the house for? No. Should you instead watch John Wick or the Equalizer? Hell yes. Wait for this one to come on cable or put it on in the background while your cleaning. 

Overall D+. 

Book One – Air: Book One starts some 70 years after the finale of Avatar: the Last Airbender, Avatar Aang has passed away and we’re introduced to the new Avatar, Korra, a passionate young woman of the Southern Water Tribe.  A lot has changed in that 70 years, technology has moved the world away from spirituality and there’s a growing distrust amongst the Non-bending population. Korra in her first adventure out of the water tribe has to stop a revolution while also trying to learn Air-bending and realize her potential as the Avatar. We’re introduced to the concept of “Pro-Bending” a spectator sport that focuses on the bending of Earth, Water and Fire. We also get to see the expansion of Metal-bending a sub form of Earth-bending pioneered by Toph during the last book of Avatar the Last Airbender.  This season feels a little disjointed and I think that has a lot to do with the uncertain direction the creators were playing with. As I understand it this was originally designed as a one season miniseries or special and due to its popularity further episodes and Books were green lite. It’s packed with a lot of action, some great comedy and (personally) way too much romance.  But even from the start this series felt new and by the end we realize that they’re not messing around. Right out of the gate the creators caused a stir by violently killing the books two main villains causing the network to pull the show from the Saturday morning lineup believing the show was too extreme for kids on Saturday morning and tossed it into Friday nights. A strong start Overall B+

Book Two – Spirits: Picking up six months after book one, we find the team dealing with Dark spirits that are terrorizing the human world. Through the exploration of the spirit world we learn the origins of the Avatar and discover that there are those who would destroy the balance between man and spirit and use the spirits to devastate the world. This book we get a Dark Avatar for a short time and the closest this franchise will ever come to a Kaiju battle. The focus is primarily on the spirituality of the Avatar world (as the title would suggest) and puts some of the romance between Korra and Mako to rest and we begin to see hints at the relationship that would become known as Korrasmai (Korra + Asami). The overall feel of this season seems to be an effort to correct some of the issues with Book one and does so pretty well. While there was no controversy the show suffered in ratings due to the sporadic airing schedule, releasing episodes weeks apart at times, not to mention the nearly one year separation between the airing of the book one finale and the book two premiere. Overall A

Book Three – Change: The show picks up only a few weeks after book two and we find that there were repercussions to interfering with the spirit world and one of the biggest is the sudden appearance of the previously nigh extinct airbenders.  Team Korra sets out to recruit the new airbenders and to rebuild the barely surviving Air Nation. One of these new airbenders is an extremist and member of the secret order of the Red Lotus, who are hell bent on removing the shackles of government and leadership from the world in order to force the people into the “freedom” that only Chaos can bring.  With the inclusion of the Red Lotus we’re treated to some of the best displays of Bending ever seen on either show; with Combustion-bending and Lava-bending being by far the coolest.  Unfortunately for the ratings a number of episodes were leaked online months before the series was set to begin and Nickelodeon choose to rush the release of the series with little to no notice to fans.  Then after the on air murder (by means of asphyxiation) of the Earth Queen caused an outcry by parents, combined with the overall low viewership caused the show to be pulled from the air waves and the last four or five episodes were released online. Overall A+

Book Four – Balance: In what most people would consider a ballsy move for a “kids” show this book picks up three years after the events of book three. The world (and avatar Korra) is trying to put itself back together after the chaos of book three. Korra is on the mend and MIA after her battle with the red lotus and the vacuum left by the murder of the Earth Queen has created a shift in the power of the world.  With the Earth Queen dead and the hire apparent a complete idiot (said to be an allegory of George W. Bush) a new leader rises to form the Earth Empire (a clear and chilling parallel to Nazi Germany) and it’s up to Korra to bring the world back from the brink of all-out war.  This season is a bit of a slow burn with the plot building to the series finale and in doing so may at times feel a touch slow.  Of all the season this one probably has the most controversy and behind the scenes drama. The season was released online starting a mere month after the ending of the previous season, made possible by the fact that it was produced (in part) at the same time as book three. The season also faced a budget cut that required the creators to either let the staff go early or cut corners by making a “clip show” from previous book one, two and three episodes, they chose the latter. The finale of the show has also garnered its fair (or unfair) share of controversy and outcry as the creators seemingly dropped the mic ending the show with the strong hint of a same sex relationship between main Character Korra and her long time BFF Asami. While fans of the show were generally elated some conservative groups have spoken out against the show’s message to kids. *** update below*** While this season may be slow in terms of action the overall tone and subtext of the season is ripe with exploration of female empowerment, fascism, racial equality, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, politics and of course the oh so taboo same sex relationship. Overall A