The old truism “Less is more” has been thrown into the interdimensional void with the release of the new jam-packed superhero film “Justice League.”
At almost two hours and featuring the talents of not one but two high-powered directors—Joss Whedon took over for Zach Synder who stepped away in post-production due to personal issues—it features the top-line DC heroes like Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) plus a host of others like Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Mamoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Then there’s odds and ends like Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta, villains such as Lex Luther (Jesse Eisenberg) and the motion captured Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf and significant others like Martha Kent (Diane Lane), Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and James Gordon (J. K. Simmons).
Phew. That’s a whole lotta movie. I wonder, is there anyone left to make other superhero films?
“Justice League” takes place months after the events of the grim-faced “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Superman, apparently, is out of the picture—we see a newspaper with the headline “Disappearing heroes. Did they return to their planets?” accompanied with photos of David Bowie, Prince and Superman—so billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Affleck) and Diana Prince (Gadot) a.k.a. Princess Diana of Themyscira assemble a team of super-dupers including the world’s fastest boy, Barry Allen (Miller), merman Arthur Curry (Momoa) and man-machine Victor Stone (Fisher). “There are enemies coming from far away,” says Wayne. “I need warriors right now.”
Their job? To combat alien military officer Steppenwolf—“I am the end of worlds!”—and his army of winged shock troops called Terror Demons. How do we know Steppenwolf is the villain? He has big silver and says things like, “Praise to the mother of horrors!” These are bad dudes and if they lay their hands on the three earthbound Mother Boxes—perpetual energy matrixes that, if joined together, destroy as they create—not even the combined forces of all the DC superheroes will be able to save the planet and stop Steppenwolf from taking his place among the new gods! “One misses the days when the biggest concerns were wind up exploding penguins,” moans Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons).
The first hour of “Justice League” is essentially a long origin story, detailing the backstories of each of the new characters. It’s still sombre and underscored with a VERY dramatic soundtrack by Danny Elfman. At the same time it doesn’t take itself as seriously as “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” It’s hard not to find the humour in Bruce Wayne pseudo-seriously asking Aquaman if he can talk to fish. The funny stuff is a welcome addition. The downhearted tone of Synder’s previous film was oppressive, sending the audience on a one-way trip to Bleaktown, USA.
“Justice League,” by comparison, has hills and valleys. Moments of weight play off the lighter scenes, combining to create an overall more enjoyable experience. It even ends on a hopeful note. “Heroes remind us that hope is everywhere,” Lane writes at the end of the film. “You can see it. All you have to do is look up in the sky.”
“Justice League” features a typical-destroy-the-whole-damn-planet-and-bathe-in-your-blood style villain and there’s still way too much CGI but allowing the characters to acknowledge the ridiculousness of their situations—I’m looking at you Aquaman!—doesn’t make it a silly movie. Rather, it makes it a self-aware film that winks at the audience while providing a simple, action-packed story of good vs. evil.
If the word ‘lurid’ didn’t already appear on page 489 of my Oxford English Dictionary it might have been coined to describe “The Bad Batch,” a new slice of misery from director Ana Lily Amirpour. This dystopian cannibal freak out isn’t really very good but if Amirpour’s intention was to make an unpleasant, slackly paced look at life after a calamity, she has succeeded spectacularly.
Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is part of the Bad Batch, a large group of murderers, drug dealers and other deplorables no longer wanted in the United States. In Amirpour’s post apocalyptic world the unwanted are numbered, tattooed, escorted to a wasteland in Texas and dropped off outside of an electric fence to fend for themselves. Arlen’s new, dusty world is a wasteland, a dangerous place where Keanu Reeves is a Jim Jones figure called The Dream and if you’re not careful you might end up as a main course for the cannibals who now eat humans to survive.
Soon she is kidnapped, carved up, her arm and leg becoming an entrée for vicious flesh eaters who keep her in chains until she escapes with the help of a gnarly old hermit played by Jim Carrey. She lands at Comfort, the ironically named compound run by cult leader The Dream. On the outskirts of Comfort Arlen exacts revenge on one of the cannibals who turned her into a midday snack. Grabbing the woman’s child she returns to the compound. When the little girl disappears her father, the mountainous and muscly Miami Man (Jason Momoa), comes looking for her. Arlene, high on acid, meets him and the two form an unlikely bond as they search for his daughter.
Amirpour is a gifted director—her “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” is like no other vampire movie—but her ideas here echo a little too loudly with reverberations from “Mad Max” and other dystopian movies. “The Bad Batch” starts strong with startling images but every time it works up a head of steam it veers off track. Its languid pace and stretched-out story makes the two-hour running time feel much longer.
Things get hairy for Cayden (Lucas Till) when he discovers a secret about himself. One night, under the light of the silvery moon he turns from high school football star to werewolf fugitive on the run for the grisly murders of his girlfriend and parents.
With the help of lone wolf Wild Joe (John Pyper-Ferguson) he finds refuge in Lupine Ridge, home to farmer and wolf John Tollerman (Stephen McHattie), bar owner Angel (Merritt Patterson) and warring packs of werewolves. Here he hopes to find answers regarding his strange affliction. His presence is welcomed by some of the locals, but pack leader, the big bad wolf Connor (Jason Momoa) doesn’t take kindly to Cayden and wants him gone, one way or another.
“Wolves” is part of the curious genre of teen werewolf movies. There’s romance, mild gore and buff wolves running shirtless through the forest. The only thing missing for teen wolf enthusiasts is Taylor Lautner.
It’s “Twilight”—or maybe should have been called “Tween Wolf”—with characters who have to comb their faces but within its parameters it works well. There aren’t a lot of surprises, but the all-important transformation scenes are furry fun and any horror film with Stephen McHattie is worth a look. On the downside there’s too much narration and Mamoa is a one-note standard issue villain, complete with a top hat and mustache I was surprised he didn’t twirl at least once.
A glance at Jason Momoa’s IMDB page reveals that he is best known for playing roles described as a “vengeful barbarian warrior” or “powerful warlord.” The burly 6′ 4″ actor is famous for roles in Conan the Barbarian and Game of Thrones and often plays tough guys.
Next up he plays a muscle-bound mercenary in Bullet to the Head, an action flick the Hollywood Reporter called “beefy, brainless fun.”
It’s another case of typecasting, perhaps, but it did give him the chance to go mano-a-mano with one of the masters of the genre, Sylvester Stallone.
“You can’t say enough good things about Stallone,” says the Hawaiian-born hunk. “Truly, he is an icon. A legend, and so good at what he does.”
Mamoa even went through a special initiation rite courtesy of the superstar.
While shooting an epic fight scene on the film’s New Orleans set the older actor suggested he “tune me up” with a couple of real looking hits. Promising to pull his punches, Stallone instead landed a “monstrous” knock to the younger actor’s side. Second take, same thing—“He just crumbled me,” Mamoa says—and that’s the shot that made it into the film.
“He got me a couple of times,” Mamoa says. “He’s the old bull. It’s fun to get in there. I’m thirty years younger than him, so it’s cool. Rocky punching me in the ribs. It’s like a shout from the rock.”
But how does someone raise a family when their day job is pretending to decapitate people on screen? Mamoa, who has a young daughter and son with actress Lisa Bonet, says his family always comes to visit when he’s working.
“My daughter was actually on set when I ripped a guy’s throat out on Game of Thrones,” he says. “It’s hilarious. She was with the wardrobe lady, knitting. I said, ‘Are you OK sweetie?’ She said, ‘Yeah Papa,” and went on knitting.”
“They also saw me put the wolf on for the next one (the Canadian-made lycanthropic thriller Wolves).”
He admits it’s an unusual way to raise the kids and when they get older it might be more difficult.
“School’s pretty expensive,” he says. “I may as well get a teacher and bring them with us. I’d rather have my kids going to the Louvre than learning about it in a book.”
These days the most famous Conan is a flame haired TV host with the last name O’Brien, but that may change this weekend when a new Conan hits screens. Instead of chatting up celebrity talking heads this Conan is beheading rival tribesmen.
The new “Conan the Barbarian” has all the earmarks of the infamous Arnold Schwarzenegger 80’s cheese fests. There’s a bare-chested hero (Jason Momoa), damsels in distress (Rachel Nichols), big swords and a character described as “a mysterious warrior of dark magic” (Rose McGowan).
It’s a revenge story sparked by the murder of Conan’s father (Ron Perlman) and the slaughter of everyone in his Cimmerian village by a power hungry bandit (Stephen Lang) and his henchmen. Young Conan witnessed the whole thing and though helpless to stop the carnage then, vows to use his giant muscles and even bigger sword to hunt down and destroy the men at the root of all his daddy issues.
With a name like “Conan the Barbarian” you know pretty much what you in for. “Eat, Pray, Love” this ain’t. Maybe “Eat, Slay, Love.” There are several epic battle scenes, a cool fight with magical sand warriors and the “Clash of the Titan’s” Kraken even makes an appearance. It’s not for the faint of heart (also, horse lovers might want think twice about this as well) but what did you expect from a movie with the word Barbarian in the title?
It’s a kind of take-it-or-leave-it proposition. If you’re a fan of sword and sorcery movies then this will be for you. If the idea of blood spurting off the screen in glorious 3D appeals, then by all means have a look. If not, well the talking ape movie is still in theatres.
