Can Ready Player One make virtual reality work on film?

Ready Player One

***

Ready Player One is not the penultimate video game movie we've been waiting for.

It seems like every movie about a video game has been a near disaster. Perhaps it's because video games have historically relied less on story and more on game mechanics; perhaps because in order to be faithful to the game experience the genre is too narrow; perhaps its just been bad luck.

When virtual reality was new in the 1990s, there was a spate of movies like, The Net, The Lawnmower Man, and Virtuosity, that attempted to capitalize on the craze, only to find that the idea sounds great on paper, but no one really wants to watch other people play video games on a big screen for two hours.

With both the video game movie trend and the virtual reality trend mostly in the rear view mirror at this point, along comes Ready Player One, the adaptation of the hit novel. And if anyone could be successful at bringing this story to life, surely it would be Steven Spielberg, whose name is virtually (see what I did there?) synonymous with big budget movie spectacle. Could he do for video games what he did for theme parks with Jurassic Park?

Well, sadly the answer is just: sort of. While Ready Player One isn't as bad as Spielberg's poorest movies, it seems to have more in common with Hook and The Adventures of Tintin, than it does with Raiders of the Lost Ark, or The Minority Report. In fact it kind of feels like a cross between Hook and Tintin, with the protagonists being the orphaned kids of the former in the real world, and the cartoony characters of the latter when in the game (where most of the action takes place).

There is so much reliance on emotionally flat motion capture CG characters that the film often feels like an extended cutscene from a video game than an actual adventure film. And to make matters worse, while the film is filled with pop culture references, they mostly come from Warner Bros. properties, and given the studio isn't as steeped in the gaming platform as its rivals at SONY (Playstation) or Vivendi (Activision), or Disney (Electronic Arts), there aren't nearly as many Easter eggs for gamers as there are for movie fans.

But ultimately all the digital pyrotechnics can't make up for the thin human story at the core, which is why a film like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, even with half the budget, succeeds where Ready Player One, just feels like two hours at a video arcade.

A Wrinkle in Time

Oprah as a supreme being... says everything you need to know.

A Wrinkle in Time

It's a bit of a wrinkle in timing

Every once in a while someone decides to make a film about a classic of literature, one that has been so influential on so many subsequent writers that the resulting film is often a) so careful to respect its source material that it takes no chances, and b) seems incredibly derivative, given all the adaptations of subsequent material that were originally influenced by it. Such is the case with Disney's adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

In a day and age when bookstores have huge "young adult" sections dominated by series like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Twilight, it's easy to forget that back when A Wrinkle in Time first appeared there was no such thing as the "young adult" market. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, and their knock-offs, were the closest thing to any type of genre fiction aimed at tweens.

But oh, what the intervening decades have brought! So many authors have been influenced by A Wrinkle in Time that watching this latest Disney iteration (yes, Disney studios have even adapted it once before in the early 2000s) reminds you of so many other films that have done it better. The plot involves the daughter of a NASA astronaut who goes through a tesseract and has to be rescued - does that sound like Interstellar? It is, yet Interstellar did it better. The great danger is the all-corrupting "It". Does that sound like the film IT? It is, though IT did it better. But A Wrinkle in Time is a kids movie! Still there are other kids movies, such as The Never Ending Story, that also do it better - the flight on the back of the undulating flying dog/dragon predates a similar scene in this film where the kids fly on the back of an undulating Reese Witherspoon; The Never Ending Story's themes of family and the danger of the growing "Nothing" make it a similar, but far better film. Even other kids movies like Willy Wonka, and Disney's own Tomorrowland tread similar territory, without being quite so sappy, and would make time better spent.

Which is not to say that A Wrinkle in Time is irredeemably bad, it's just flat, and the timing here is about 50 years too late. Had the film been released in the 1960s, it would have been groundbreaking.

**

American Gigolo

American Gigolo

The film that set the style for the 80s

Every so often a film comes along that defines the look of an era. On February 1, 1980 the film American Gigolo was released, making it among the first major studio films of that decade, and the look of the film set the stage for a radical change in style for the 1980s. Gone were bell bottoms, leisure suits, wide ties and brown, orange and green clothes. Even the film's poster, featuring the film's lead, Richard Gere smartly dressed in an austere environment, in the striped shadows of a Venetian blind exudes 80s cool.

The film opens up with to the strains of Blondie's "Call Me", a song that practically epitomizes 80s New Wave, and quite frankly is far more memorable than the film itself. Though the movie defines the look of the of the 1980s, it's hardly notable for much else. The plot is a plodding two hours of conventional melodrama with Gere's character Julian sleeping with wealthy women, and eventually framed for murdering one of them. The film takes forever to get started, and then forever to wrap up.

Much like one of Julian's trysts - or the decade of the 1980s itself for that matter - American Gigolo is ultimately an emotionally shallow, style over substance affair, most notable for coming along, and perhaps contributing to, a sea change in the American cultural landscape.

(*** out of *****)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (spoiler free review)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(Absolutely Spoiler Free Review)

At GC8 we always try to give spoiler free reviews - but we are EXTRA cautious with the Star Wars franchise, given how everybody wants to be a blank slate going in... to try to achieve that first awe and wonder you had seeing Star Wars for the first time when you were seven years old.

What we can say is that so far the Disney films have been better than the Prequels (including the Disney film that was a prequel: Rogue One), but not as good as the original trilogy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, continues that trend, and is probably the best of the Disney Star Wars films so far.

Having set up the story with The Force Awakens, and Rogue One, The Last Jedi is free to finally go in depth (two and a half hours of depth) to "finish" (yeah, right) what they've started.

And frankly, it's pretty good. We've finally reached a level where practical effects and CGI blend nicely, all the character get plenty of screen time, and most of the original cast is back.

The downside is that none of the new characters (Rei, Kylo, Finn, etc.) are as charismatic or interesting as Luke, Leia, C-3P0, R2-D2, and Chewbacca, and so when the latter are not on screen, you immediately miss them.

Which brings us full circle - to that biggest reason for a spoiler-free review; the desire to go in as a blank slate, and see something you've never seen before with the awe and wonder Star Wars inspired when you were seven. The reality is this series is not going to do that, and it seems almost futile to expect that it ever will again. The more jaded will say it's because you are no longer seven years old, but the reality is that there is an overall familiarity, a been-there-done-that to the series at this point. It's still entertaining and fun, just not all that surprising.








(**** out of 5)

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

The X-Files: I Want to Believe movie poster

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

After pretty much everyone had moved on, The X-Files came up with an encore performance that reminded us why we wanted to believe in the series.

There comes a point in almost every TV series, where the show peaks after which comes a decline and eventual cancellation. Time and time again we've seen that, with rare exception, it's almost always a downhill slide, often with an embarrassing made-for-TV "movie" pilot for a relaunch.

And so it has been for the X-Files. What started as a Kolchak: The Night Stalker type paranormal investigator show - where FBI agent, and true believer Fox Mulder, and skeptical partner Dana Scully investigated a new "X-File" each week - soon devolved into a tedious slog through an overarching alien conspiracy story with endless loose plot threads.

So it's not surprising that even many fans of the show gave up on it after it was canceled and revived to the silver screen in the film The X-Files: Fight the Future, which centered again on the alien conspiracy story yet still failed to resolve anything.

A decade after that film, a second X-Files film made it to the screen, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Judging by the box office numbers, even most fans chose to pass on this one. It did only about 10% of the ticket sales of Fight the Future.

That's a shame, because The X-Files: I Want to Believe is actually a far superior film. Almost completely ignoring the alien conspiracy angle it focuses on what the show did best - the standalone supernatural thriller.

The plot involves a now retired Mulder and Scully, who are drawn back in to help the FBI when an agent disappears and the only clue to her whereabouts are discovered by a priest with psychic visions. The case soon puts Mulder, Scully and the FBI on the trail of an organ harvesting ring. In doing so, Mulder and Scully must face some of their biggest personal demons, Mulder's obsession with his sister's abduction and Scully's Catholic faith, as well as their inability to commit to each other. But all this character development is handled deftly, without taking away from the driving plot, and one would need no prior knowledge of the series to understand the central premise: both characters want to believe in something.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have rarely looked or acted this well on any screen, large or small, and while it's not as good as the best episodes of the series itself, this "forgotten" X-Files film was at least as good, if not better than most Hollywood's other "supernatural thrillers" that were all the rage (thanks at least in part to the success of The X-Files on television) in the first decade of the 2000s.

It would take nearly another decade before the series would return to TV, bumbling along with predictably middling reviews, but The X-Files: I Want to Believe stands as a glimpse at the promise the series once had.

(***1/2 out of *****)

Black Snake Moan

Black Snake Moan

Watch it for the music

Some films exist mostly to showcase music. These films can have fairly simple plots that exist in service to the soundtrack, and if the soundtrack is good enough, it can be worth it. A Hard Days Night did this for The Beatles, The Harder They Come did it for reggae, and Hustle and Flow did it for hip hop. With Black Snake Moan, director Craig Brewer seeks to do for blues music what he did for hip hop with Hustle and Flow,

The plot is pretty straightforward. After his cheating wife leaves him, Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) a poor farmer discovers Rae (Christina Ricci), a young woman with uncontrollable sexual urges badly beaten and left for dead by one of her male acquaintances in front of Lazarus' house. Determined to save her from herself (and redeem himself), he chains her to the radiator of his house until he can "fix" her. It's a simple plot, and frankly at times it can be downright moralistic and preachy, but Jackson and Ricci so subsume themselves into the roles that they help carry it along.

But none of that really matters, the real highlight here is the music. The film features a fantastic blues soundtrack, with Jackson and Ricci even taking turns performing songs in the film. This is the type of film that is best experienced with a good sound system.

Wet Hot American Summer

Mindless fun?

Wet Hot American Summer

Wet Hot American Summer revives a movie trend that was best left for dead 

Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, Hollywood cranked out scores of "teen sex comedies", ostensibly targeted at the teen market, but usually rated R and more popular with young adults. Only in the hands of the most talented writers and directors would something truly memorable like Fast Times at Ridgemont High result. More often it was some forgettable film with "Hot" in the title, like Malibu Hot Summer, Hot Chili, Hot Moves, or Hollywood Hot Tubs.

In hindsight, one of the most remarkable things about these movies is how tame they really were. The aforementioned Fast Times at Ridgemont High originally received an "X" rating, butdespite the titillating titles, there was rarely much explicit sex. Some were too timid to even show toplessness. 

So without the sex, these "sex comedies" were left with just the "comedy" part, which also was often lacking as casting emphasized physically attractive young people rather than comedic talent. All of which adds up to a trend that was best left in the 1980s shopping mall theaters from which they came.

But along comes Wet Hot American Summer to revive everything we never missed about these films. Basically taking it's cues from Meatballs (albeit without a talent like Bill Murray in a major role), Wet Hot American Summer is set at a summer camp, and pretty much follows is a hit (rarely) and miss (frequently) collection of gags over the course of one season at a fictional summer camp in Maine.

Even though the film wallows in early 80s nostalgia, even the soundtrack (usually the saving grace of these kinds of films) is populated with the boring overplayed arena rock by bands also best forgotten like Quarterflash, Foreigner and Loverboy.

Proving once again that there's no accounting for taste, the film has managed to garner a cult following and spawn two Netflix spinoff series, although true to form, there's no nudity, few laughs, and not much to recommend here.