Movie Review: The Huntsman: Winter's War

Cedric Nicolas-Troyan kicks Snow White out of her own franchise to bring us his feature debut, The Huntsman: Winter's War.

Movie Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Joss Whedon (Serenity) assembles the team one more time for Avengers: Age of Ultron.


It's been an indeterminate amount of time since the previous film, and the Avengers have been raiding one Hydra base after another looking for Strucker and the staff from the first film.  This film starts off on their final raid, where they find the staff and take it back.  They also run into a couple of twins that Strucker has been experimenting on, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen, Godzilla) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kick-Ass) Maximoff.  "He's fast, she's weird".  (Telekinesis weird)  Before Thor takes the staff back to Asgard, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner tinker around with it and find it has an artificial intelligence in it.  Stark has come up with a program called Ultron (without telling anyone else of course) that he was building as an ultimate guardian of Earth.  He sees this AI as a way to complete this project and downloads it.  Of course this all goes wrong and Ultron builds himself a robot body out of Stark's spare parts and decides that the best way to save Earth is by eradicating everyone and letting them start over.  Enter Noah....wait, wrong movie.  Enter the rest of the Avengers to help Iron Man stop the maniac that he created....along with the thousands of robots in Ultron's army.


This film is full of action and humor, just what you want to start kicking off the summer blockbuster season.  One advantage this film has over the previous is that it doesn't have to spend the first half hour introducing the characters to each other.  The opening battle shows that they have been doing this for a while now and are quite comfortable with fighting side by side.  This actually leads to some very fun combo moves between some of the characters.  It's apparent that Stark has slightly modified all of their "uniforms".  The only one that is distracting is Black Widow's tron suit.  I didn't really understand what blue neon lights down the side of her suit did for her.  This camaraderie made for all of the fights to be kind of cool, and there are a LOT of fights in the two and a half hour runtime.  One problem is that there is in-fighting again.  I'd like to see an Avengers movie where they were not fighting each other.  Granted some of it was mind control (which was used in the first film as well), and internal conflict in the team did lead to the Hulk-Buster being pulled out, but some of it was that Cap and Iron Man still don't see eye to eye and it was Iron Man's arrogance that caused the main conflict of the film.  We will of course see this butting of heads continue in the next Captain America, which follows the Civil War storyline.


Ironically, as well as this team works together in the field, and as long as they've been doing this, they don't know bubkis about each other.  We, as viewers, get to see watch their backgrounds come to the foreground.  This is good.  In doing this we also get a lot more focus on Hawkeye.  He doesn't have any superpowers, but we finally get the sense that he is the more grounded and "human" member of the group that holds them together.


This film, like most of the other Marvel films, is trying to expand the world building.  This is good and bad.  In the case of Cap and Iron Man, their conflict leads to the next Cap movie, but it stems from the problem that is the focus of this film, so it doesn't hinder as much.  The problem comes in with the Marvel crew trying to expand the Avengers for the future.  This leads to new characters being introduced and side characters from previous films coming in, all on top of the six core characters we already have.  It's exciting to see all of these superheroes joining the fray, but there are times when it gets to be a bit too much.  Luckily we have Joss Whedon at the helm, who keeps the issues to a minimum and manages to keep it fairly well-balanced throughout.  A lesser director, and we would have had quite the jumbled mess with this gigantic cast.


By now, the majority of this gigantic cast has grown quite comfortable in their respective roles.  This, along with that good old Joss Whedon witty writing keeps the dialogue snappy throughout the whole film.  There are one-liners zinging around all over the place.  I've seen some criticism that it's too much and too forced.  The writing kept me laughing and having a good time through the whole film, so I'm not sure how that's a bad thing.  I will say that even Ultron ended up being funnier than I thought, and that came close to making him less menacing, but I've forgiven it simply because he actually had some of the best lines, and that James Spader voice can keep things menacing even when he's making a joke.  Just like the first Avengers film, this one will require a second viewing to catch all the lines you missed because of the laughter.  Despite how bloated the cast got for this film, everyone did a great job.  The only distracting thing might be the Maximoff twins' accents.  It was like watching Boris and Natasha.  It got a little thick sometimes.  Other than that, they did a fine job too.  One of the other standouts was Paul Bettany.  He plays JARVIS once again, but his character goes further.  Most people know where it goes, but I'll avoid spoilers for those who miraculously avoided that reveal.


One last thing of note was the use Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff).  Of course this same character was used in X-Men: Days of Future Past last year, and ended up having one of the best scenes in any movie of the entire year.  I was quite intrigued to see how they used the character after such an amazing sequence in the X-Men film.  Did this new Pietro have any scene that was as cool as the other one?  No.  Did this make him a lesser version?  No.  I thought he was well used in this film.  The problem with X-Men, is that he had that cool scene and then was tossed to the side and forgotten about.  Whedon and company gave him more to do and a little more character development.  The sum of the parts add up, and they were used differently enough that you can appreciate both versions.


So, there were a couple minor flaws (including an unnecessary and distracting budding romance storyline), but don't let them deter you from seeing this.  They are minor.  This film has what you want in a summer movie.  The action scenes are great, and the dialogue is quick-paced and witty.  Also, even at 2 1/2 hours, I felt it moved even quicker than the previous Avengers film.  Go see this soon, with a big crowd.  Grab the popcorn and enjoy.


Rating: *********- (9 out of 10) [Full price!]


Memorable Quote:
Captain America: Language!

Movie Review: Blackhat

Michael Mann (Heat) hacks his way into theaters with Blackhat.

A nuclear plant in China is hacked into, resulting in the explosion of the plant by overheating the pumps.  Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang, Lust, Caution), a member of China's cyber warfare division, is given the task of tracking down the hacker.  Meanwhile, in the states, a trade exchange is also hacked into.  It seems that the same virus was used in both cases.  Dawai, along with his sister Lien (Wei Tang, Lust, Caution), work together with the FBI.  It comes out that Chen had written the original code for the virus, along with his old college roommate.  Enter super-hacker, extraoridnaire, Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth, The Cabin in the Woods).  He's been in prison for computer crimes, but Dawai insists that he be released to help them catch the hacker.  What follows is an hour and a half of computer typing and code.  Then we get 20 minutes of action to spice it up, which is too little, too late.

I went into this movie wanting to like it.  I really did.  I feel that Mann has more hits than misses.  This just happens to be one of his biggest misses.  Ultimately, what killed this movie for me, is what usually draws me to most of his work.  The guy brings a level of authenticity to his films.  You want to know what authenticity in hacking is?  It's boring.  Forget all those movies where people can hack into anything with the touch of a button on a cell phone.  Real hackers send a .pdf file with a virus attached and wait for someone to open it up.  It's not real exciting.  That seems to be exactly what you get for the majority of this film.

It's almost as if Mann realized this exact problem with about a third to a fourth of the movie left.  He thought, wait a minute, I've got Chris Hemsworth.  There should be more action.  So, it turns out that Hathaway is not just a super-hacker, he can also kick all sorts of ass.  The problem with this, is that he ends up going on FBI raids.  He's a criminal being used for his computer skills.  Why is he now fighting alongside the FBI in shootouts, even if he is very capable?  I will admit, some of the kills towards the end are quite brutal.  Still, too little, too late.

So, what is it that you need if your "thriller" is nearly void of any action?  How about a good script, with some engaging dialogue?  That's another thing you will sadly not find in this film.  I can't really recall any dialogue in this film that held my attention.  Lien may have had some good lines, but I wouldn't have noticed because her English was so broken that for most of the film I could barely understand a word she said.

That brings us to the actors themselves.  I thought they were all kind of wasted here.  I genuinely like Hemsworth, but he wasn't given much to do with this role.  Viola Davis was also a big wasted opportunity as the FBI agent they worked alongside.  I think she is an excellent actress, but again, was given nothing to do.  All the other roles seemed to be just as forgettable.  The hacker himself did not even get any face time until the end.  It's unclear what the motivation was for filming him with his face hidden throughout the movie.  There is no impact whatsoever when it is revealed who he is.

One thing that did work in this movie was the cinematography.  Like most Mann films, the way he sets up his shots, it feels as if you are right there with the characters.  There's a grittiness and a realness to you that just kind of draws you in.  This, again, isn't enough to save the movie though.

With the real life threat of hackers going on today, such as the big Sony hack, this film could have had some real relevance.  Instead it just kind of falls flat.  The cinematography is good and the action picks up towards the end.  I even appreciate that it gives us a realistic view of hacking. It's just not enough.  Also, if you want to know what blackhat actually means, pay close attention.  It's thrown into the dialogue almost as if it was an afterthought.

Rating: ***------- (3 out of 10) [don't go out of your way]

Memorable Quote:

Hathaway: I'm doing time.  Time isn't doing me.