Riddick

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I love campy sci-fi as much as the next guy. I mean, Dredd was one of the best action movies in recent years. But even I had some trouble swallowing the often too silly Riddick series. Often I felt bored or just frustrated with the stories which were so ridiculous and over the top. But I absolutely can see why people loved at least Pitch Black. More importantly, I don't even completely recognize what makes one campy sci-fi movie a success for me yet. I have a general idea. It's forming.

But what the first two movies have in ridiculousness, this movie has in blandness. Seriously, it is just so plain. It's so derivative that it loses all sense of being a movie about Riddick. And the story is so small, so contained, it makes the previous Chronicle's of Riddick look larger than The Odyssey. It's literally just about Riddick trying to get off planet by tricking some bounty hunters. I guess that would work, even in the same series, but not immediately after such a huge movie like Chronicle's. It feels so trite and so fleeting, almost like a TV special to make fans happy but to do not much else for the rest of us.

That being said, Riddick looks fine. I guess on that 38 million dollar budget I'd have to admit it looks pretty great. But at the same time, I hate the color scheme, this weird yellow tint over pretty much the entirety of the film. It was like watching Man of Steel with its awful grey filter. But at least this had a freakin purpose. The animals are fine looking from a technical standpoint, but they didn't exactly make sense to me physiologically, and they were so jarring in appearance that it wasn't like Avatar or Star Wars where I could just buy it. Those dog things were strange, maybe solely because they were mammalian on this desolate planet. But I'm nitpicking.

The characters in this were so uninteresting and boring, so forced and questionable, that I really didn't care for their safety. Which I suppose works to the films credit, I didn't feel upset at watching their heads get sliced off. But the lack of care for the characters did backfire a bit. I didn't have fun with their deaths either. They'd come and go, and that would be pretty much it. Maybe one or two would gross me out. But none were shocking, none left me laughing or even feeling excited. Instead, it came, it went, it happened. That frustrated me. These movies are great at having awesome death scenes. Maybe I'm spoiled from The Raid, Kick-Ass, and Dredd.

But to the films credit, it did have a fair amount of suspense. There were points that had me feeling a bit apprehensive and wondering what would happen to the characters that was obviously coming. But again, this isn't enough to carry a movie through to the end for me. And thus, I think the rank reflects how much I enjoyed it, even with that suspense.

Rank - 2/5

The Spectacular Now

The Spectacular Now is a movie that I wanted to love. There were two things that I did love, and their names were Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller. I expected nothing less from Woodley, who I've been rooting for ever since her dynamite performance in The Descendants. Miles Teller has always been someone I never much cared for, who now demonstrates perhaps not acting ability, but a true passion for what he's doing. He plays himself, but he plays a softer, more emotional version of himself.

Outside of that, the movie is cute enough. It's got a typical opposites-attract couple (perhaps a bit too painfully reminiscent of A Walk To Remember for my taste), typical high school characters, and a generic enough script with enough lovey-dovey lines to keep girlfriends happy, but not so many that the guys get sick of rolling their eyes. It never soars, though. Any emotion I felt was solely from Woodley making me smile. And lets face it, I'm all but in love with the girl. She could make me smile doing pretty much nothing. I had the distinct feeling watching this film that if I replaced the actors with two different ones, it would not nearly have meant as much. So, kudos to you two. But for the rest of the film, there's plenty to be desired.

By this point, if you've read any of my negative reviews, you know one of my biggest pet peeves is when a movie has no reason to be told. Why did I need to know this story? What made it special, different, worth watching? Sadly, I really have no answer for this. It felt like a pretty generic high school coming of age story, even by normal (not hollywood) standards. Granted, it had a twist of the beginnings of alcoholism, but it didn't use that so significantly that I felt too much dramatic tension from it.

Rotten Tomatoes has its consensus state that the film "avoids typical coming-of-age story trappings". I guess I can agree with that to an extent. But that doesn't mean it avoids generic plot devices. We all see what's coming with Sutter's father. We all know that Woodley's character is going to do (without revealing too much) exactly what she's going to do. There's nothing new in this film, and even though the two leads are adorable together (get away from her Teller...), it's just not enough to distract from the blandness. And that's it, really. I feel bad walking away from this movie thinking that it was only fine. But that's all it was. And sadly, that's all it seemed to strive for.

Rank - 2.5/5