The Best and Worst Movies of 2016, So Far. (Part 2)

This article is a continuation of the one begun a few days ago in which I talk about my favorite and least favorite movies of 2016 now that summer is over, and show some insight into my rating system as part of the discussion.  The list is in order of release date, not best to worst nor vice versa.

Captain America:  Civil War Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and Starring Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr.

 

 

The 13th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the third Captain America movie, is their most ambitious, yet, with 12 superheroes, a villain, and plenty of side characters all crammed into one movie.  But, because they have been so systematically building their universe bit by bit to this point, they not only manage to pull it off, they exceed what were already high expectations.

Acting  7 out of 10  Arguably the low point of the technical aspects of the film, the acting in Civil War is still very competent.  For every mediocre performance, such as those by Elizabeth Olson and Don Cheadle, there are some truly fantastic ones.  Robert Downey Jr and Paul Rudd are particularly charming, and Tom Holland absolutely nails Spiderman like no actor, even Tobey Maguire, has before.

Writing  8 out of 10  Writing about this many characters and making sense of the plot is achievement enough.  But, every character is given their chance to shine, has real motivation to get involved in the action, develop as a character at least a little bit (and sometimes more than a little), and manage to promote themes that are rarely seen in more serious fare, let alone a comic book action flick, showing that comic book action flicks can be serious fare.

Directing  9 out of 10  As already mentioned, a lot had to be juggled in the making of this movie, and not only does it not seem cluttered, it’s easily understood and incredibly gripping from start to finish.  On top of that, it has some of the most creative action scenes ever put to film.  That airport battle will be a scene that goes down in history.

Visuals  7 out of 10  Most of the special effects are as fantastic as you’d expect, and the action scenes are for the most part incredibly well framed.  But the visuals never go beyond very proficient into beautiful or creative range.

Purpose:  10 out of 10  Captain America: Civil War is perfectly paced, and thus remarkably gripping and entertaining, but it isn’t content to just stop there.  It also gives us real complexity of character motivation and theme without ever losing focus on that entertainment which is what is most important.

Average those out, and we get an 8.2 out of 10 and arguably the best movie in the Marvel sage to date (though if you wanted to argue The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, you’d be very much in your right to do so).

 

X-Men: Apocalypse Directed by Bryan Singer and Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbinder, and Jennifer Lawrence

2016 started out brilliantly.  Never before had there been so many excellent films released in a year before the summer season had even begun.  Sure there were a few hiccups (I’m looking at you Batman v Superman) but overall it was looking like this could be an epic year for Hollywood.  Then X-Men: Apocalypse came along to lead us into what was to be a summer of one disappointment after another.

Acting 3 out of 10  While McAvoy and Fassbinder did their absolute best, the rest of the cast was either too green, and thus gave impassioned but hammy performances, or too bored, giving us dull, wooden portrayals.  Jennifer Lawrence was particularly unhappy to be in the film, it seemed, and even the normally wonder Oscar Isaac just looked lost as the titular villain.

Writing  4 out of 10  Like Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse is an epic story line which includes dozens of characters.  Unlike Civil War the characters are given next to no development, poorly understood motivations, and many are included just because and add nothing to the plot.  That plot is also not the greatest with a villain whose motivations and actions make little sense, scenes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot or even subplots, and the best scene is a carbon copy of a scene from an earlier movie.

Directing 2 out of 10  Much of the movie could have been salvaged, and perhaps even been good, if the director had taken tighter reigns over his cast and crew.  So many of the performances are either bored or confused that its obvious Singer didn’t pay much attention to his actors, there are scenes which don’t belong in the film, and things that seem like they’re missing, and few of the technical aspects are to the level they should be in a feature film.

Visuals 3 out of 10  The special effects and make up for the characters of Nightcrawler and Angel were quite well done, but aside from that nothing in this movie looks right.  The camerawork is shoddy to the point where you sometimes wonder if its pointing in the wrong direction, the special effects aside from the ones mentioned above look like blobs from a psychedelic 70s flick, and the art direction is almost universally dull.

Purpose 2 out of 10  A superhero action flick has one job, and that’s to entertain us through adrenalin rush.  When you have bored actors, camera work and editing so poor you can’t see the action most of the time, and the little action you can see doesn’t look like much more than people surrounded by blobs, and you have a movie that really has no purpose.

And, for those who weren’t doing the math as we go, that makes a total of 2.8 out of 10, also known as lousy.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows Directed by Dave Green and Starring Megan Fox and Will Arnett

Being made for kids is not a good excuse for a movie to have sloppy writing, and I’m not altogether sure this movie was made for kids.

Acting 4 out of 10  Despite the fact that the four guys playing the turtles themselves had a blast playing their parts and passed that fun onto us, the rest of the cast just didn’t bring it to anywhere near the same level.  Will Arnett was passable, as was Laura Linney, but none of the rest of this cast could give a decent performance if they were promised they didn’t have to do anymore of these films if they’d just act well in this one.

Writing 1 out of 10  This is writing at its worst, in a way even worse than schlock films like The Room or Plan Nine From Outer Space, because those are at least fun to laugh at.  Here we are given a story that makes absolutely no sense, people do things just because it was written in the script, and not a single whit of though was put into why anyone does anything other than it might look cool.

Directing 3 out of 10  For all the pacing problems, acting problems, visual problems (getting there in a second) Green at least understands that a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is supposed to be fun.  That’s about all he understood, though.

Visuals 3 out of 10  The special effects are commendable for the most part, and the turtles themselves are quite good, but the camera work is some of the worst I’ve ever seen in an action film.  Once characters start doing something in the acrobatic or fighting vein you may as well close your eyes since you aren’t going to be able to follow a single thing that’s going on, anyway.

Purpose 4 out of 10  While the film did a decent job of capturing the fun of the cartoon, it still didn’t get who its audience is.  If it was trying to bring in the original lovers of the Turtles from the 90s, it forgets that they are adults now and fun does not mean completely assinine and childish to them now.  If it is intended to bring in a new child audience, then why does it have half naked Megan Fox, references from the original show, and writing too unsophisticated even for 7 year-olds.

A pathetic 3.0 out of 10 for the turtles.  Sorry guys, you deserve better.

To be continued in part 3

The best and worst movies of 2016 so far. Plus, where do those ratings numbers come from? (Part 1)

Nearing the end of August in 2016, it can officially be said that summer blockbuster movie season is over for this year.  Kids are returning to school, and the cineplex is returning to smaller budget, but also less stereotypical, fare.  So, now seems like a good time to talk about what’s been particularly great and particularly not so great over the course of the year, so far, and also use that as an excuse to finally explain to my readers the incredibly scientific formula I use to determine the out of 10 ratings I give at the end of every review.

Rather than go in order from best to worst, or vice versa, I’m going to go in order of release date and leave the actual ordered list for the end of the year wrap up when the time comes.  So, without further ado, let’s start with the second review I’ve ever officially done for this blog – Deadpool.

Deadpool  – Directed by Tim Miller and starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, and T.J. Miller

Deadpool is a film that took everyone by surprise despite the fact that everyone apparently really wanted to go see it.  It became the highest grossing February release for Thursday opening, Friday opening in February, opening weekend overall in February, the highest grossing opening weekend for an R-Rated film overall, superhero or otherwise and February or otherwise, the highest grossing X-Men franchise film, and the largest opening ever for 20th Century Fox as a studio.  That’s a lot of records for what’s essentially a superhero gross out comedy.  But, it absolutely deserves all the money, and by using a breakdown of categories which show how I get my ratings numbers, here’s why.

Acting:  7 out of 10.  Not all the acting is fantastic in Deadpool.  T.J. Miller is incredibly one note, though his character doesn’t really need to be more, and Ed Skrein as the villain Ajax shows that his superpower is the ability to bore you to death, but our two leads, Reynolds and Baccarin, do phenomenal work.  Baccarin takes the combination of empathy and sexuality she exhibited on Firefly and cranks it up to an even higher level giving us a character we nearly instantly fall in love with making it easy to see why Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool falls for her so completely, and Reynolds shows us the perfect match of actor to character as his manic sarcastic comedic energy perfectly embodies the superhero who knows he’s just a character in a comic book (movie in this case) and uses a constant barrage of self aware humor to cope with his quite tragic circumstances.

Writing:  9 out of 10.  The story to Deadpool is about as simple as it gets.  It takes place in four acts, and each act is a single scene and situation, for the most part.  This is all the movie needs.  Sometimes the secret to great writing is to not complicate things when it isn’t needed.  The dialogue, while probably mostly improvised where Reynolds is concerned, is sharp, quick witted, fun, and exactly what a high paced superhero film needs, but is also able to convey deep emotion when it needs to.  The romance between Wilson and Vanessa is anything but typical, but there are few people who wouldn’t say that finding a love like theirs is something they’ve always wanted.

Directing:  7 out of 10.  Much like the writing, the directing in Deadpool is kept simple, and that’s exactly the treatment it needed.  The film’s focus is on the humor, the action, and the love story, and on each of these exactly when and to the right amount they need to be.  There are some issues with the direction, the location of the final battle, while funny, could have been more interesting and dynamic, and a few of the actors, including bit parts and extras, could have used more instruction on what they were meant to be doing, but overall, the pacing, editing, and tone of Deadpool were right on the money.

Visuals:  7 out of 10.  The cinematography was quite competent, if never exciting, and the art direction was actually mediocre to occasionally downright bad, but the costumes, particularly Deadpool’s super suit, were wonderful, and the special effects were better than a relatively low budget (by superhero movie standards) movie had any right to have.  In short, it was seamless, with occasional bits of hilarious wows, particularly in the bits between Deadpool and Colossus.

Purpose:  10 out of 10  Deadpool did not want to educate us or make us think, it intended only to make us laugh primarily and become engrossed in Wade Wilson’s story as he goes from mercenary to lover to superhero, and it does all of this as well as any movie about Deadpool possibly could.  It uses crass, self aware, self referential humor as well as any story ever has, and it uses it well combination with action, romance, tension, or whatever other emotional focus any given scene needs.  Deadpool makes us cheer, smile, root for our hero, feel sorry for him, understand him, but most of all, it makes us laugh, and these emotional responses are exactly what Deadpool is trying to bring out in us.

Average these 5 categories out and we get an overall score of 8 out of 10 (.2 lower than my initial rating, meaning that this is a film that has fallen slightly in my estimation since my initial viewing, but only very slightly).

Zootopia – Directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore, and starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, and Idris Elba

Acting:  7 out of 10  Voice acting is a different art form than more traditional acting, that is true, but while it may not be as physically demanding, that just means that the actor has even more of a responsibility to convey what they need to through voice alone (that and have faith in the animators unless they are also doing motion capture work, in which case we’re back to the physically demanding).  Every single character in Zootopia had to both embody and break a stereotype in nearly equal measure, giving the voice actors a duty to express both character and theme using only their voice while also making for an entertaining performance, and with few exceptions none of which are major characters they not only accomplish this but go above and beyond what could be expected.

Writing: 10 out of 10  Zootopia is an absolute triumph where the art of screenwriting is concerned.  It manages to be a film both for kids and adults at the same time, but not on different levels as many animated features are, both groups can enjoy it on the same level, even if they won’t necessarily experience it in exactly the same way.  It has a plot complicated enough for adults to have to think through, and be practically Chinatown or The Usual Suspects for the younger crowd, but the most important element of the script is in the way it uses the animal characters and society as a metaphor for modern race relations in a far more nuanced and insightful way than most adult films which focus on racial themes manage.  The writing isn’t 100% perfect, I do feel there is one scene which undermines the themes of the rest of the film, but it’s about as close as can realistically be expected.

Directing: 7 out of 10  At least one scene, and perhaps a handful of beats within scenes, probably should have been edited out of the movie, but overall Zootopia does a fantastic job of balancing plot with theme and keeping the pace brisk, the world fascinating and consistent, and build up and release of tension wonderfully timed.  I do however have to question the decision of including Shakira in the movie.  It’s obvious they are trying to make her song the next Let It Go even though Zootopia is not a musical (and, in fact, has a great gag at Frozen’s expense) but it just did not work.

Visuals: 9 out of 10  The only reason the visuals in Zootopia get knocked down a point at all is due to the fact that the character design does not have a great deal of creativity, all character models are pretty much exactly what you’d expect from anthropomorphic animals (though keeping their real life size differences was a stroke of genius).  Aside from that, though, the animation in Zootopia is absolutely fantastic.  The animals themselves are detailed down to every single piece of fur, and city design and look is wondrous to behold with every part of Zootopia being its own entity with a practical  function in both the story and in the fictional goings on of the city but not one you would necessarily think of as obvious.

Purpose:  10 out of 10  Zootopia succeeds on every level for every audience.  Humorous, gripping, and though provoking, not to mention emotional and all this for both children and adults in equal measure.  It may not propose any solutions to what to do about racism, but it has an awful lot to say about how to recognize it in ourselves and others and where it comes from.  Zootopia hits the sweet spot in everything it attempts to do, and ended up being the biggest surprise of 2016 to date for me because of this.

Average these scores out and you get 8.6 out of 10 (or slightly better than my initial reaction, and films that grow in estimation upon rewatches and reflection tend to be the ones that become classics)

(This was originally intended to be one article covering the whole year so far, but only two movies in, and only to the beginning of March, and this is already running long and the time is running late in my locale, so it looks like this is going to become a continuing series.  The next installment will be up sometime in the next couple of days.)