From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror and movie fan with a blog. Scary.

Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2015)

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Ff movie

The Fantastic Four Face Their Greatest Foes — The Director and Writers of
Fantastic Four 2015!

Brought to you in all its mind-blowing tragedy by Zombos and Company

Embellished by JM Cozzoli
Lettered by Typepad

"The poster is wrong. Change isn't coming for the Fantastic Four," I said to Zombos.

"You are taking this way too personally, you know," he replied. "It is only a reboot of a reboot, once more into the breach and popcorn bucket, after all. Just look at that mugshot poster. Dreadful. One expects them to break into a West Side Story song at any moment."

I started humming the theme from West Side Story. I imagined Ben Grimm  and Victor Von Doom squaring off in a choreographed dance of battle. If only this movie were that clever.

But it isn't. It's contrite. It's tedious. It's misguided. It's not the Fantastic Four, the superheroes that helped usher in the Silver Age of comic books. I was grievously disappointed with Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007, but this is worse. This wounds my comic book fan soul deeply. 

My thoughts were racing alongside the snail-pace of this movie–

–If you dare do another origin story, I'll blow my brains out. We got it, get it, and don't need it anymore. Ditto with Spidey–
 
–Can you please crack open a goddamn Fantastic Four comic book? Just the Kirby and Lee issues will do if — NOT the ULTIMATE series! –you're pressed for time. Note the use of COLORs and CHARACTER INTERPLAY and the ENERGY shown. I know this is hard to believe, but Batman's the gloom and doom guy. Most other superheroes live in a brighter, even chipper, albeit still troubled, world–which always seems to be going toward the apocalyptic, oddly enough–
 
–So, you want me to believe that the most important thing for Dr. Doom and Reed Richards, and just about everyone else in this movie, is finding another dimension. Sticking to this one too demanding for you? It's a hell of a stretch that Richards just happens to have the same itch for dimension hopping that everyone else has, and BAMM! he hooks up with like-minded folk to help complete the dimension hopping project. Wow. Most comic books have more of a plot line than this–

–Why, after taking us to another dimension, are we still in the same one with another gloomy story, gloomy character angst abounding, and insufferably gloomy lighting and color-muting in every freaking scene? I overheard a couple, leaving ahead of me after the early bird showing, say how awful this movie is. They thought the first movie was better. I agree, somewhat, but I'd stop short declaring this movie is awful. It's just misguided. And if you took out the Fantastic Four it would even be okay– 

But it's a movie about the Fantastic Four and that's what's wrong here. So many issues, so many storylines, so many worlds to visit, yet, once again, we watch Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell)–

"You hesitated there. I bet you were tempted to write Tony Kibles and Bits, were you not?" said Zombos, standing over my shoulder like Uatu the Watcher. 

"No, I certainly was not going to be so unprofessional and take a cheap shot like…well, yeah, okay, I was tempted. But I fought it and won, okay," I said in defense.

–in the same story we've seen before, now rehashed with younger characters for the Young Adult market, with zero camera chemistry between them.  So one immediately wonders how good a team they would really be. Doom is more even more anti-social this time, but he's AGAIN imbued with cosmic powers and an alien skin that mimics his actual (and quite technologically lethal) armor in the comic books. It's amazing how Iron Man and every other superhero and villain can get away with wearing a costume or body armor, but Doom's just pegged by Hollywood to forever wear an apologetic and organic suit every time.

He's AGAIN ready to destroy, destroy, destroy. This time he's got a nifty Scanners' ability to blow up heads, which he does a lot. Great summer family movie idea there. Hey, let's give him green-glowing eyes and have him pop heads with splots of blood and gore. He just doesn't use his head-popping power on the FF because, well, then the movie would be over. But everybody else is fair game, okay?

"Yes, but the Thing's (Jamie Bell) rocky start is rather good one, do you not think so? He really looks like a thing this time," said Zombos.

"Sure, for a horror movie, if you think spending most of the movie in a rock pile is super, then I suppose so. Not much clobbering time for the Thing or anyone else for that matter, except for the studio's tacked on battle at the end with Doom in the rock and energy dimension. So Ben Grimm is very very grim all through the movie, gets his rocky start, then mopes some more while we wait for Reed Richards (Miles Teller) to come out of his forced exile and lead the future team he abandoned. Meanwhile Sue Storm (Kate Mara) and Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) come to grips with their powers while the military schmoozes them for tactical engagements. More than two-thirds of the movie is spent on them finding the dimension, then finding themselves, and we don't even get the satisfaction of seeing Richards grow up and take charge. He's caught like a limp noodle. He doesn't come to his senses and return to his friends, he's forced to come back. If I were the Thing I would've bounded him to silly-putty."

"So, what is your point?" asked Zombos.

"My point is "why?" This scripted character angst works for Batman. He had to confront his demons and win. There's a stronger family dynamic going on in the Fantastic Four. This movie misses all that and focuses on Batman-esque motifs when it needed to riff on what makes the Fantastic Four fantastic. Like their powers, not Jessica Alba."

"But they have their powers in this movie," said Zombos.

"Yes, sort of. But they can't control them this time around. It's torture watching Reed Richards in this movie. It's like a scene out of the Saw series. I can imagine how many kids whose parents took them to see this movie are now checking under their beds at night. The FF's powers are a problem when they never were, so we spend lots of time watching them cope. Except for Ben Grimm, the Thing. His metamorphosis immediately makes him an outsider. He has a legitimate reason to be unhappy and angry and pissed off. Instead, he just mopes around his rock pile, the most herculean creature in Area 51, and takes orders from the military to break things. Talk about script logic."

"Well, then, let us talk about script logic," said Zombos. 

NeXT: The Battle for Script Logic! 

Movie Review: Harbinger Down (2015)

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Zombos Says: Good

Harbinger-down-lance-henriksen

Harbinger Down is a good amorphous-glump-of-moving-terror monster romp in the vein of Leviathan, The Thing, and Slither. The practical special effects build a solid scare into the muck amok storyline, and I strongly disagree with flickfilosopher's summation of the"…cheap shoddiness of the practical FX this demo-reel flick is meant to show off." I give the effects a higher rating than that, as well as the movie overall, making me wonder why the same team that did them had their practical efx pulled from The Thing prequel in favor of the less than stellar GCI replacing it.  

The lean budget (a Kickstarter funded $384,181.00, according to Wikipedia) does show in the studio-bound, dry-docked, boat scenes, belied by a drunken-camera, woozing at the wrong times, making us conscious of all the mid-shots and close-ups constraining tight frames used to hide the lack of waves and weather. Acting and story hold watertight enough, aside from pesky horror tropes and the usual pacing and editing staleness seen in productions like this. Otherwise, some moody and scary horror moments, and a well-time, and dryly delivered, variation on the "we're going to need a bigger boat" conundrum, perk up the minimal plot and sets, creating sufficient appeal for its 82 minutes of run time .

Then there's Lance Henriksen. I'll admit I can never fault his acting and I'd pay good money just to watch him read cereal boxes out loud, melodramatically. He has a face only a camera could appreciate, and a presence that makes supporting cast members look better than they usually are. Is he given enough to do here? No. But it's more than his wasted appearance in Hollow's Grove. Instead of moving the story through him, Sadie (Camille Balsamo) and her fellow graduate classmates, along with her professor (Matt Winston), provide the direction the boat steers in and the desultory chit-chat while we wait for mayhem to ensue. 

Sailing with them are the Harbinger's scripted-go-to odd-ball crewmates including Svet (Milla Bjorn) and Big G (Winston James Francis). The chemistry between them almost happens: the story starts building a love interest–or sexual attraction–but then she's all KGB-big-knife-loving-sexy and he's just big and brutish-sexy–so the love doesn't bud between them. Instead they beat each other up before getting beat up by the monster. A wasted dynamic duo that also needed more to do with their relationship. 

The creature makes its entrance courtesy of a Soviet spacecraft lost years before. The craft's location beacon suddenly starts transmitting again –after all those lost years of inactivity–and the crabbing boat's mission to watch the effect of global warming on Whales (crabbing boat, whales–wild, right?) turns into a salvage operation pitting professor, students, and crew against each other while the monster turns them into human sushi. Just once I'd love to see everyone actually on the same page and in the same direction: fighting the monster in earnest. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

A little face time from Leviathan can be seen at one point, and a lot of tentacles make for a good slithering menace through the above and below decks. I was fooled with a scene that hinted at a more robust monster entrance by having it plop down a flight of stairs, but it never happened. That disappointed me. I was hoping for a little more playfulness with my (and our) expectations. Harbinger Down is more cut and dried in it's choices, though, retaining those common moments we see in movies like this. Not an entirely bad thing when handled well enough and Harbinger Down does handle it well enough for me to recommend you put this on your viewing list.

A courtesy stream-screener was provided for this review.