REVIEW: Terminator Salvation

23 06 2015

To get one thing straight, I adore the James Cameron “Terminator” films.  I have written a full essay on Sarah Connor’s femininity for class (if you’re interested in reading it, leave your email in the comments) and will gladly stop on whatever cable channel happens to exhibit the morphing metal men on any given weekend afternoon.

Yet as different directors, writers, and creative teams have dragged out the franchise, the movies lose what makes them special.  Sure, the time travel proves fascinating, but the human characters grappling with fate, agency, and responsibility set the series apart.  Fixating on the minutiae of revisionist timelines does little to capture the appeal of the original two films; this proves the primary sin of McG’s “Terminator Salvation.”

John Brancato and Michael Ferris’ script toys around with two pivotal characters in the mythology of the series: resistance leader John Connor (Christian Bale) and his father from the future, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin).  John must continue to wage the war against the sentient Skynet system that aims to destroy humanity, although he must also ensure that Reese survives until the point when he goes back in time to inseminate Sarah Connor.  The mysterious arrival of cyborg Marcus (Sam Worthington) in the presence of Reese throws a wrinkle in everything and essentially constitutes the entire conflict of “Terminator Salvation.”

If you think this sounds like a movie made for only the most hardcore fanboys, you are correct.  Seemingly, the only aim of “Terminator Salvation” is to add even more wrinkles and potential plot holes to the scrambled clock of the series’ narrative.  If Cameron’s films were mind-involving blockbusters, McG’s movie is just a head-scratcher that cannot even fall back on visuals or performances to save it.  Bale and Worthington, the films dueling leads, each turn in work about as dull as McG’s color palette of muted gray.  They grow the franchise longer, sure, but not deeper or better.  C / 2stars


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REVIEW: This Means War

28 11 2012

Guilty pleasures.  We all have them, even people like me who put on the serious critic face and laud the potential contributions to cinema in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.”  Mine happen to be romantic comedies, which don’t disgust me as much as most reviewers (or men, for that matter).  As long as I buy the chemistry and the formula isn’t totally cloying or transparent, I’ll generally find some enjoyment.

Maybe the auditorium of my tiny seat-back on the plane ride home from France made me a particular captive viewer, but I was totally enthralled by “This Means War.”  I found myself laughing at inappropriately loud levels and thus the victim of a number of sharply cutting glances from my mom.  For whatever reason, I was just totally operating on this movie’s wavelength.

Sure, it’s brutally corny at times.  (What rom-com isn’t these days?)  Some of the melding of action with the inherently chick flick core of the film doesn’t always function as smoothly as it should.  The relationships aren’t always totally believable, probably a victim of how they are written on the page.  However, in spite of all this, I had a good time and was willing to put a lot of my issues to rest.

The fun probably came from just how much I enjoy these three actors.  I will probably always view any Reese Witherspoon film through a rosy lens because of my well-documented crush on her since around, oh, 2001.  As Lauren, she finds herself in a familiar predicament for Reese Witherspoon characters – choosing between two men vying for her heart (“Water for Elephants,” “How Do You Know,” and “Sweet Home Alabama” have all hinged on a similar dilemma.)

The competition is all the fun as her suitors are best friends from their work in the CIA.  Chris Pine’s FDR is the more suave, rom-com jerk that the audience and the girl eventually come around to like.  But Tom Hardy’s Tuck is a quieter, more sensitive guy and proves to be an interesting antidote to the typical kind of guy that screws her over.  Hardy struggles a bit with the romantic side of Tuck, and it’s clear that he’s best off in manly man movies like “Bronson” and “Lawless.”  In the latter movie, Jessica Chastain is the one who has to court him, and that seems more logical.

Oh, and as Lauren struggles to decide as she dates both men, we are treated to a running commentary of Chelsea Handler as her sister Trish.  She brings an incredibly beautiful sardonic and deprecating wit to “This Means War” that most genre flicks lack these days, voicing the frustrations we often have as viewers.  Leave it to Handler, one of the funniest women in the world right now, to turn the typical groans into side-splitting laughs.  B+ / 


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