My Top 10 WORST Movies of 2015!

Well, it's that time of year again, the time to wipe the cinematic bird shit off the windshield of my mind. In 2015, I actively avoided a lot of junk, so you won't see any mentions of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, Hot Pursuit, or Fifty Shades of Grey. However, you can't dodge 'em all. So, as part of my tradition, the first part of my annual retrospective begins, with my top 10 WORST movies of 2015!

A Few Films For Whom I Spared the Axe:
- Poltergeist
- Insidious: Chapter 3
- Chappie
- '71
- The Transporter Refueled

10) Project Almanac: This was last January's addition to the "_____-crossed-with-found-footage" genre. For a few years, horror was the only one paired with the style, but if it's easy to make and profit's all but guaranteed, why not spread the love?

Because the result is a time travel picture that's riddled not only with lazily-written archetypes and plot, but now features the additional hurdle of explaining why a camera is filming EVERYTHING.

Three teens (the smart one, the crude one, and the minority) build a time machine out of Xbox parts and partake in the wish fulfillment one expects: they get rich, get the girl, fight bullies, etc. Problem is, this only fills up twenty minutes, so in the span of a few scenes, the stakes go from "Can I date the girl?" to "Can I stop the implosion of the space-time continuum?" so fast, it causes whiplash. The latter half of this film is so sloppily laden with cliches and rip-offs from other films, that by the end, if only to prevent a migraine, I gave up trying to understand, and settled for one of the movie's twenty explanations that felt familiar. Familiar is not a synonym for satisfying.

9) The Last Witch Hunter: Didn't this kind of movie die in the mid-2000's? With Constantine, Van Helsing, and the Mummy series? Let's take an action hero and have him save the world from some poorly CGI'd supernatural forces - rinse, wash, and repeat. Welcome to The Last Witch Hunter.

I feel this film's running on autopilot, but Vin Diesel isn't. He genuinely seems excited to play this character, to swing around a fire sword and be the hero who punches rock spiders in the face; it wouldn't surprise me if Vin Diesel was the product of a Big-style wish, where he was twelve and wished to be a 30-year-old muscleman. The glee and exuberance he brings to this otherwise hackneyed, stale product is the film's only source of light.

Otherwise, there are one-liners, magic fights, a hot girl, some shallow backstory involving the death of family, a fish-out-of-water element; I've seen these things before, and the fact that Michael Caine is involved only cements the thought further in my mind that paychecks needed to be made, and the thought process behind it was nigh-bankrupt.

8) Max: What do you get when you cross the director of Remember the Titans and the writer of Rambo III? A heartwarming story about a boy, his PTSD-ridden dog, and an arms-smuggling cartel of course! Doesn't that sound like the greatest of family-friendly entertainment?

Max is a maddeningly stupid film with good intentions. It's important to recognize the work dogs in the military do, serving as scouts and trackers. The film's initial scenes, where Max helps his handler's troop sniff out weapons, being thrust into battle, laden with explosions and all sorts of gunfire, is hard to watch. It helps us understand the kind of trauma Max undergoes from war, especially when his handler dies.

If the film were focused solely on the relationship between the handler's brother and dog, each dealing with their grief and anxiety, the movie could turn out a touching drama. However, Max feels the need to waste time with a pointless love interest, a racist Mexican stereotype, and a forced '80s-era action subplot, masqueraded behind patriotic iconography and atmosphere, because apparently, the filmmakers think we'll find it impossible to criticize anything with an American flag on it.

It's in the last thirty minutes the film gets ridiculous, as Max and the boy take on cartel thugs (who happen to have their own Rottweilers, because the playing field needs to be even). The characters make the dumbest tactical decisions, not least of which being the boy's mom, who just lets he and his friends bike off alone into the forest without any police support. This latter conflict is completely unnecessary, and reeks of a screenwriter who lacks the confidence to let the strength of the drama play out naturally.

Max came out the same weekend as Ted 2, made in an attempt to grab all the box office from the anti-Ted crowd. It's a film that feels manipulative, tugging at heartstrings and using key images of patriotism, the Marines, and right-wing values in order to appease its market share, even if the story is lazily written and executed. War dogs don't deserve this kind of tribute.

7) Taken 3: The budget for Taken 3 was around $48 million. $20 million went to Liam Neeson. Say what you want about the film, the man knows how to get paid.

Taken 3 reminds me of a short film I made for a class sophomore year, where I showed a character going up the stairs in two steps - from the floor to the stair and the stair to the second floor. In my mind, I had to use two cuts to convey one motion. I didn't give my audience enough credit to understand what I meant; I was in high school and had never made a film. So why does Olivier Megaton, director of Taken 2, Colombiana, and Transporter 3, films produced for commercial release, with million-dollar budgets, think he can get away with using SEVEN cuts to show Liam Neeson jumping a fence?

This is the worst-directed action film I have ever seen, with camerawork that makes it look like the operator's undergoing a gang initiation, lifeless fight sequences, and a cast who's making it too apparent they're there to collect a paycheck. There's a highway chase that's filmed so incomprehensibly, I let the seizure of 18-wheelers and sports car squeals wash over me, without any attempt to make sense of it. By the end, my friend had a migraine.

It bodes worse for Taken 3 that not four months had passed before Run All Night, the gruff, hard "R" mafia/cop chase flick brought Neeson back to form. That film is no masterpiece, but he shows more life, personality, and dirty charm than in both Taken sequels combined. And the best part is the camera stays still.


6) Jupiter Ascending: February's Jupiter Ascending is an anti-masterpiece, an infinitely ambitious, completely misguided, cosmically beautiful and bloated mess of a film. Made on a $176 million budget and grossing only $47 million, this was 2015's first truly colossal bomb.

Honestly, there's a soft spot in my heart for it, because the movie is directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix), so the production design, costuming, makeup, and visual effects (as far as backgrounds go), are top notch. This duo is so good at building a world, showing an audience something that's both inspired by science fiction of the past, but done in a completely new way. The film has a gloss that feels right at home with what would be something like a soap opera set in space.

Unfortunately, that soap opera element is what plagues Jupiter Ascending. For all intents and purposes, this is a $176 million version of Dallas set in space. The basic plot involves Mary Sue - I mean, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) - being whisked from alien bounty hunter to alien half-wolf/half-human hero (Channing Tatum) as she learns she's the genetic owner of a load of planets (including Earth) and star systems in the galaxy. That's weird, but not too hard to follow...until you add in three siblings and their subplots involving each of their attempts to swindle, steal, or otherwise influence Jupiter to give them her planets. There's a lot of space law mumbo-jumbo (even a scene set in this world's version of the DMV), erratically dorky metaphors (all of Earth's bees surround her in a protective cloud armor because bees can, ya know, sense royalty), and some of the most cringe-worthy and yet, wholly wonderfully quotable lines of the decade.

Had this film been trimmed down half an hour and the plot kept relatively simple, I could recommend this as a great movie to riff, but in a packed theater on a Friday night, I found myself bored, confused, and eventually annoyed. Eddie Redmayne, mere weeks before he would win the Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything, gives a performance that suggests the Wachowskis slipped quaaludes and speed in his drinks before every scene; he goes from an effeminate cooing lull to a psychotic rage in the snap of a finger. Needless to say, he's the best part of the movie - a dash of goofiness in a film that takes itself too seriously.


5) Youth: Welcome back, Michael Caine, to your second inclusion on the list. This choice may be my greatest point of contention with the general populace, because Rotten Tomatoes gives this a 75%, the film's earned Golden Globes and Palme D'Or nominations, in a film that thoroughly reeks of pretension and apathy.

Caine plays a retired composer on vacation with his daughter (Rachel Weisz) at a Swiss mountain resort. Along with Caine is his best friend, an auteur director player by Harvey Keitel, who's working with his team of twenty-somethings on the last draft of his "testament", his legacy project. They come across a cast of strange characters, including a mustachioed actor known only for voicing a robot (Paul Dano), a stupidly-rich, rotund South American (Roly Serrano), and an always-horny, Just Dance-playing massuese (Luna Zimic Mijovic).

The movie slugs around aimlessly, as Caine and Keitel engage in conversations about how life isn't what it used to be, artists search for the truth, and music requires not experience or understanding to appreciate it. None of these mini think pieces feel connected, and are inter-cut with odd musical performances or abstract transitions, filled with gorgeously composed shots - "a tale...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

In reflection, I'm grasping at straws to find how each person's story and adventure relates back to youth, but in the grand scheme, the film is such an ordeal to watch, that when a scene featuring Caine and Keitel spying on an elderly couple having sex in the forest appears...what the hell do you even say to that?


4) Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: The night my friends and I went to go see Scouts' Guide, the theater I work at wasn't playing it, so I couldn't get in for free. That night, I spent $33 on three tickets for me, my girlfriend, and friend. I'm pretty sure this was the worst financial decision I've ever made.

Scouts is an idiotic film, and if you enjoy such winning jokes as taking selfies with a topless zombie cop, or an undead Cloris Leachman licking a teenage anus, you may be able to nestle comfortably in its chokehold of stupidity. The film was sold as a balls-to-the-wall goofy horror-comedy, where the main characters' scouting skills would be put to perfect use against the zombies, full of D.I.Y. weaponry. Sadly, this only takes up about ten minutes of the climax. Watching the boys kick ass is fun, when the cinematography is intelligible, a feat achieved about 30% of the time. Devoid of the cheerful slapstick featured in something like Evil Dead II, this film relies on its characters: vapid, disgusting, misogynistic stereotypes of millenials.

As a zombie film, it breaks its already arbitrary rules to create an unconvincing invasion. As a comedy, the jokes fall flat, when they don't appeal to anyone who finds genitalia the apex of humor. The horror is non-existent, left only to a smattering of jumpscares. When the film tries to have a heart and be earnest about friendship, it's awkward, because the bulk of the film is spent with characters who could really give a rat's ass about each other. As Paramount heavily promoted the trailer in the middle of the ending credits of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, the true intentions for Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse are revealed: to make a buck - quick, cheap, and effortless.

3) Unfriended: Any novelty that Unfriended has will die within the next three years. With the quickening pace of technology, the demise of a program like Skype, in favor of some hologram or virtual reality communication simulator is all but certain. So, if a movie based entirely on watching someone's computer screen, navigating between Skype, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube is going to be old news in a couple years, the only thing that could propel Unfriended into long-term relevance is its quality as a movie - characters, plot, cinematography, dialogue, etc.

There's not a chance in hell.

Unfriended director Levan Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves take inspiration from the kind of film criticism that dismissed Friday the 13th as a misanthropic youth's torture porn. A horror audience, in their minds, is only there to revel in murder, playing out high school revenge fantasies, so in order to really get a crowd worked up, Gabriadze and Greaves make their characters petty, loathsome, and obnoxious. They reduce teenagers to hormonal sociopaths, who, when faced with the prospect of death, will place more attention on eating-disorder rumors and "Never Have I Ever" than the creepy Skype ghost killing off their friends one by one.

It's not like awful teenagers in horror movies are uncommon, though I must admit, these stereotypes have gotten more extreme since the films of the '80s. Where Unfriended steps out of "obnoxious" and into "insulting" is when it tries to interject an anti-bullying message. The awful teens are getting their fair dose of karma, and at the end, it looks as if the last person standing will have to bear the weight and scope of the consequences, stemming off of a stupid and vicious joke.

Or the ghost will just lash out at the screen and kill them. The end.

To trade out an ending, that while not executed effectively, belies the promise of some sense of morality, for a cheap scare; to trade out significant commentary about cyber-bullying, an act which serves as one of the motives for the approximately 4,600 suicides of youth aged between 10 and 24 (TEN YEARS OLD), for a ten-second spook, is morally condemning.

And the fact it sits at a "fresh" 62% on Rotten Tomatoes sickens me.

2) Love the Coopers: I had a tough time debating between this and my #1 choice; I'll tease the next spot with this - I never thought I would leave a movie theater as angry throughout the latter half of 2015 as I did leaving the next film in the list. Love the Coopers missed being the year's worst by the skin of its ass.

At face value, this should've been something I loved. For those who don't know, my favorite movie is A Christmas Story. In particular, I'm a fan of its realistic portrayal of all sorts of people's sentiments about the holiday - good, bad, and even the "Bah, humbug!" I'm also just a sucker for Christmas movies in general; I love the wintry atmosphere and even with a crude or adult-oriented flick like Bad Santa, the heart and joy of the holiday manages to squeak out. I enjoy movies based around an ensemble: Birdman, Silver Linings Playbook, Love Actually, Trumbo, Reservoir Dogs, 12 Angry Men, Valentine's Day. Damn it, I get a kick out of freakin' VALENTINE'S DAY, a kitschy, star-studded holiday movie. Why do I hate Love the Coopers so much?

After thinking about it in bursts of fury for a couple months, I think the film is indecisive on what it wants to be. It tries to present Christmas in the way all kinds of people think about it, but its characters are all offensive, punchable stereotypes: Olivia Munn is an alcoholic failed writer who demonizes a soldier, without provocation, for his Christian and Republican beliefs; Marisa Tomei squawks and chatters in the back of Anthony Mackie's cop car as a woman whose petty jealousy towards her sister leads her to steal a brooch and walk out the store with it in her mouth; the final straw to break John Goodman's forty-year marriage to Diane Keaton is their inability to take a safari trip to Africa (oh, boo-hoo). These characters aren't charming or funny, given any redeeming qualities to help me overlook their pathetic attitudes towards their families.

And I wouldn't have quite the problem I do if the film was meant as a complete lambaste on the fake smiles we give each other at the holiday table ever year, but in the last half-hour, the movie tries to go sincere, and it doesn't earn it. It doesn't matter how cute the resolution is; I had to sit through eighty minutes of people being absolutely awful to each other. I'm just saying, if you punch me in the face, a candy cane won't make it any better. Love the Coopers was an absolute slog to sit through; luckily, I got to see Spotlight afterwards, and all was right with the world.

1) The Gallows: If you've been reading my work since July, any time I make reference to horror, I use this film as a benchmark. In a strange admission, I have to thank this movie for giving a name to my pain, an example of everything that is wrong with this genre. The Gallows is moronic like Scouts and maddening like Unfriended, but the contempt it holds for an audience condemns it further, not as just a failure, but rather an affront to all moviegoers.

A ghost haunts a high school; stupid teens are rummaging around at night. Add some found-footage and a heap of jack-in-the-box jumps at the screen, and you've got a 2000's-era scary movie. However, The Gallows adds Ryan.

Ryan (Ryan Shoos) is a repugnant, morally bankrupt bully, picking on "geeks" like it's the '80s, with the most infuriating, snide, crackling whine in recorded history (if Whitey's from Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights is the 8th circle of Hell, Ryan's is the 10th). He is the person the movie follows for 80% of the running time, and we also have the misfortune of having him as our camera operator. My blood is about to evaporate.

The ghost's motive makes no sense; neither does our heroes' (I feel dirty writing that) solution. It doesn't take a master of metaphysics to realize correlation doesn't equal causation - just because the ghost kills using the gallows doesn't mean it's a good idea to go over there and abandon the open door to freedom. And with that move, the movie spits in our faces, mocking us by acknowledging their writing is shoddy and refusing to fix our suspension of disbelief; they don't care about the story, but rather the width of their wallets.

What hurts me the most about The Gallows is that in 2015, like every year, there were imaginative films, like Room, Turbo Kid, It Follows, and Ex Machina, who received little to nothing in the way of support from major production companies or distributors. The Gallows was released by New Line Cinema, distributed by Warner Bros.

I bring this up to urge you all: vote with your wallets. If you love a movie, don't pirate it. Go to the theater and enjoy an unique experience. When we support art, and support can be anything from sales to time to promotion, the business side takes notice, and gives us more of what we want. When we pay to see crap, crap is what we get; isn't that common sense? Show business is a two-way street, so let's make sure ours is clean before we start complaining.

Thank you all for reading throughout this last year; I'm the Man Without a Plan, more appreciative of anyone who's stuck around to the end of this than anyone will truly ever know, signing off.

"The Hateful Eight" Review

I think of Quentin Tarantino as a mixing board, full of sounds, knobs, buttons, and effects - his calling cards. A Tarantino film is a realized vision: bloody, shocking, full of gallows humor, turning genre conventions on their heads. So, if we look at these elements as knobs on the board, The Hateful Eight, his latest, features all of Tarantino's tools, but here, he dials up the comedy and strength of his direction. It's manic, gruesome, gripping, and chock full of the kind of laughs you feel dirty for indulging.

On the snow-capped mountains of Wyoming, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a Union soldier turned bounty hunter, stops a carriage, hoping to hitch a ride to Red Rock, where he'll collect $8,000 for the heads of three men. This carriage is run by John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell), a gruff, focused, distrustful, takes-not-a-single-solitary-ounce-of-shit bounty hunter, known for choosing the latter option of "dead or alive"; as Major Warren states, "When John Ruth, 'The Hangman', catches you...you hang." The unfortunate prisoner is Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a black-toothed wildcat of a woman, wanted for murder.

Begrudgingly, John allows Major Warren to hitch a ride, and later, even more begrudgingly, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), soon-to-be sheriff of Red Rock, on board. A blizzard threatens to overtake the carriage, so the group find shelter in Minnie's Haberdashery, coming across a group of four eccentric men - a suave, foppish hangman (Tim Roth), a larger-than-life Mexican groundskeeper (Demian Bichir), an introverted autobiographer cowboy (Michael Madsen), and the most racist of ex-Confederate generals (Bruce Dern).

Comparisons to John Carpenter's The Thing have been made, and the influence shows (outside of composer Ennio Morricone's using some of his unused tracks for that film here). For all the hullabaloo about the movie being shot on ultra-wide 70mm film stock, most of the story takes place indoors. When the characters do go outside, an endless snowstorm often awaits them, and cinematographer Robert Richardson presents pristine, untouched landscapes - desolate as they are gorgeous. With no escape available, the indoor tension grows, forcing characters to face each other head-on, a move that works to the film's advantage.

And does it ever. If ever Tarantino was a master at anything, it was writing for an ensemble. These eight people are burdened with baggage, prejudice, selfishness, deception, and self-crafted fronts. While all of the performers do wonderfully (I want Tim Roth's dorky mustachioed smile on a shirt), I highlight three: Sam Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Walton Goggins. Jackson is on fire, serving as the closest the audience gets to a foundation, as the "normal" one among the crazies. However, it's his multiple layers of slyness that get me, his ability to reveal new parts of Major Warren that are surprising, but not out of left field. No one delivers Tarantino's dialogue quite like him, and no one will ever pull out the kind of messed-up comedy and smug, brilliant madness like he does. Since Django Unchained, this is his best role. In the same way, I love Leigh's Daisy. She doesn't have a lot of dialogue (what a twist!), but from the jump, I get a sense she's not all there, and I doubt she's ever been. She's feral and crass, but patient, and most of the movie is watching her to see how she takes everything in, waiting for a chance to strike. And then there's Goggins' Sheriff Chris Mannix. He's not as three-dimensional. In fact, he's pretty easy to figure out: good old-fashioned Confederate boy with his daddy's legacy on his shoulder. However, Goggins' awkward, smile-a-minute, almost vaudeville performance kills me. He and Jackson get me laughing hard almost every time they're on-screen; it's a glorious time.

I've noticed a theme in Tarantino's work over the years; his characters are often impersonal killers. Pulp Fiction has hitmen, Kill Bill has assassins, Inglorious Basterds has mercenaries, and both Django and The Hateful Eight have bounty hunters. In this film, Tim Roth tells Kurt Russell, "Justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice." The line is poignant and wraps up the idea in a nice little bow, but does the movie believe it? 

I say no, not for this or any of the aforementioned works. As much as Major Warren and John Ruth discuss prices for heads and the ins-and-outs of the bounty business, Major Warren talks about his kills with righteous fury, and John Ruth gets a sick sense of pride in seeing his prisoners, the guilty, hang. Every stab and blood-splattered corpse, for as much as people fake aloofness, is personal. I think Tarantino holds up a mirror to our understanding of justice, indulging us in the best and worst of what our instinct desires. We celebrate when the Bride goes after Bill and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, rejoice when Django hunts down Calvin Candie, cheer on the Basterds blowing a cornucopia of varying-caliber bullets into Hitler. When someone is wronged, we feel they're given a moral standing to seek out vengeance, or at the least, recompense. 

This film gives none of its characters that moral standing, and their passion for killing makes them bullies, using rhetoric to justify it to themselves. So does The Hateful Eight say justice is a lost cause, and that instinct should dictate our right/wrong spectrum?  No, I believe Tarantino challenges us to not accept justice at face value and abandon the pretense of objectivity among our law enforcers.

The Hateful Eight isn't Tarantino's best work (I reserve that spot for Kill Bill), but it's more of what we love: witty dialogue, characters we can watch read the newspapers for days on end, and the visceral madness that looks at our own crazy world and pushes it to the max. If you have the Roadshow within reach, where you can screen the film in 70mm and experience the full three-hour cut, featuring an overture, intermission, and Playbill-like program, do it. It makes as a great holiday gift for any movie fan. 

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Review (100th Post!)

The Force Awakens is A New Hope for 2015.

In a year that's brought us Creed and Jurassic World, two sequels to popular franchises that balance well the need to reinvent and the need to maintain the spirit of its predecessors, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens comes out on top as not only a worthy successor to Return of the Jedi or one of the best entries in the franchise (in my mind, second only to Empire), but as a well-crafted, thoughtful, intelligent, and exhilarating story, that along with recent movies Ex Machina and The Martian, bring about a rejuvenation for science fiction.

Set 30 years after Jedi, the galaxy is threatened by the First Order, a fascist regime led by the ominous Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and his menacing apprentice, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) leads the Resistance, searching for her missing brother, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), to gather his help. Leia sends her best pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), along with his droid, BB-8, to the planet Jakku to retrieve a potential map to Luke's wherabouts. The First Order attacks Poe's hideout; he and BB-8 get separated, but not before Poe gives BB-8 the map. The droid comes across an ex-Stormtrooper named Finn (John Boyega) and a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley); and together, they work to bring BB-8 back to the Resistance, find Luke, and stop the First Order before they dismantle the Republic, piece by piece.

So we have a courier droid with valuable information teaming up with a group of misfits to stop a corrupt empire led by a ruler cloaked in shadow and his masked, Force-using apprentice. Sound familiar? I can't ignore the Internet's backlash on how similar the plot is to A New Hope, but I'm the child of the school of Ebert. It's not about if it's been done, but how well it's done. For The Force Awakens, God is in the details.

There IS an intragalactic battle going on - they don't call it Star Wars and spend the first hour debating trade negotiations - but in a move for the wiser, director J.J. Abrams focuses on the internal conflict rather than the external, placing the characters at the forefront. Bolstered by a multitude of smaller scenes, with solid performances from Boyega, Isaac, and Driver, and a star-making performance from Ridley, The Force Awakens achieves a rare kind of intimacy seen in epics of this scale. Through these people's interactions, their motivations, fears, and conflicts weave together as the bulk of the drama. Don't mistake the movie for a character dissection the likes of a Christopher Nolan piece - Abrams is making a family film, after all - but through these actors, these simple characters shine through; Finn, Rey, Poe, and Kylo Ren are destines to join Han, Leia, and Luke as household names.

Speaking of household names, Daisy Ridley is brilliant, easily holding her own in scenes with Harrison Ford. Rey runs the emotional gamut, from a staff-wielding bad-ass to an emotionally insecure young woman, due to childhood abandonment from her parents. She's engaging in every one of her scenes, serving up the film's best laughs, lines, fights, and heart.

Adam Driver's Kylo Ren is another performance of note, an example of the character overshadowing the performer. This is no fault of Driver's; from the first trailer, Kylo intimidated and excited fans, old and new, curious to see how he stacks up to Vader. Kylo is more explosive, responding to any failure with Force torture or a lightsaber to the face. His mastery of the Force is nigh-unbelievable, performing feats that literally cause me to blurt out "Woah!" Add a psychotic obsession with following Darth Vader's legacy, and you've got one hell of a villain, played with charm, menace, and insanity by Driver.

The original trilogy (Episodes IV-VI) featured X-wing and lightsaber battles, but some scenes  pale in comparison (*cough cough* Obi-Wan & Darth Vader) to modern, briskly-paced action. On the flipside, the prequel trilogy featured more action, but there was so much CGI littered throughout, I and many audience members felt we were watching a video game we couldn't ever play. Abrams finds the happiest of mediums, blending practical effects (just look at the sparks when the Stormtroopers fire) with new techniques and cinematography. In one scene, The First Order ambushes our heroes in a forest-like planet (not Endor), and the camera seamlessly weaves back and forth from the battle on the ground to the skies, giving a fantastic vantage point to all the action. Gone is the shaky cam, gone are the flashy fights. Everything is shot smoothly, but the choreography is muscular, dirty; these remind me more of scenes from this year's Macbeth, and it feels right. Soldiers and warriors don't do backflips and crazy twirls, is all I'm saying.

The movie begins with text that reads: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...", followed by a burst of brass, watching the title "Star Wars" appear and zoom into a black starry background (...spoiler alert). As I sat in the smack-dab middle of the Thursday night 10:30 showing in the biggest auditorium of my theater, I, like many of my costumed, T-shirt repping, Chewbacca-impersonating friends, waited, on bated breath, to see that title card, to feel the punch of the fanfare rip out of the speakers and send chills up my spine. There was always going to be a level of fan service in The Force Awakens that A New Hope would never have; this isn't just a blockbuster, this is a cross-generational cultural event. So, whenever an old character is revealed, with all the bells and heart-tugging whistles; or when a character references something from Episode IV, Abrams and crew do part of their job, by sending chills of nostalgia and love for these staples of many people's childhoods through their bones.

However, for all the good of nostalgia, the fan service is laden throughout, and ultimately makes this weaker. Sometimes the execution is so obvious, almost a fourth-wall-breaking wink to the audience, it pulls me out of the story. This disconnect isn't felt all the time; when done right (typically, that word is synonymous with 'subtly'), it gets a bigger, and often, more jubilatory reaction from the crowd. It replaces a tease with pleasant surprise, and it's easier to bring myself back to the scene in question. This issue doesn't harm the movie in any major way; I agree it's a nitpick. However, it's in no way the most persnickety of the nitpicks you'll find on the Internet (god help you if you decide to browse a forum in the next few months), and it's something that could have been handled a tad smoother.

All right, let's bring it back full circle. Before The Force Awakens, I would rank the movies in the following order, from best to worst - 5, 4, 6, 3, 1, 2 (Attack of the Clones is an ungodly bore. The Phantom Menace offends me, but at least I have something to say about it). So, I can only assume you, like the many others who've asked me over the weekend follow this statement with, "How do you rank this one?" Well, I, like others I've talked to, rank it just behind The Empire Strikes Back. I know there are some that say this is the best; don't think me a curmudgeon.

I mentioned at the beginning I think this film is comparable to A New Hope. With further reflection, I find it better. I think the acting and direction are miles ahead of the original. I'm enthralled by the action, and there are shots composed so beautifully, it demands to be seen in a theater, if only so you can feel yourself sinking into the screen. I think the storytelling goes down different unique, thought-provoking angles that could be great to explore even further, expand on the mythology. Why do I not call this the best? Because it's only the beginning.

A good trilogy doesn't jam all of its story into the first installment. Flash back to first grade, kids - a story has a beginning, middle, and end. With Episode VIII coming in 2017, new director Rian Johnson (Looper) and his team will be taking these characters further, pushing the action, pushing the story in new directions, on a path that seems like an honest-to-god mystery. The landscape is still unpredictable, and I'm excited. Reader, meet my inner optimist - the only reason The Force Awakens isn't the best Star Wars movie is because the best is only yet to come.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

"Macbeth" Review

Any adaptation of a play, consciously or not, will adopt a theatrical aesthetic. The performers exaggerate, the action constricts to a few locations. Theatre is also flexible. With runs that can last for months, every day is different and subject to a varying degree of improvisation and fluidity. So if film adaptations are subject to that kind of looseness, why shouldn't an audience member's experience be?

Enter me, into the screening of Justin Kurzel's Macbeth. It's a late Friday morning, and I, as per usual, haven't eaten breakfast. I, also as per usual, am running on three hours of sleep. Great idea, I then presume, to take in 2+ hours of Shakespearean dialogue, drizzled with an accent famous for its ease of understanding: a Scottish brogue.

I didn't catch a word.

Ay, here's a rub of theatre rearing its ugly head - how do you reach the guy in the back; the schmuck who wouldn't have seen your tale if not for his desire to come in out of the cold; the guy who's deaf in one ear and lost the other in Korea; the stupid, tired, hungry 22-year-old running on 75% brain power? The solution, my friends, is direction. The director treats each element of a work, the visuals, actors, music, screenwriting, and editing, like puzzle pieces. If they're good, each piece fits with the others so well, that even when a piece is missing, anyone will be able to make out what the picture is.

Macbeth is adeptly directed by Kurzel (The Snowtown Murders and next year's Assassin's Creed), blending epic landscapes with intimate soliloquies, eye-catching cinematography with nuanced performance. It's a beautiful movie about people who do ugly, sinful things, and Kurzel takes his time with the transformation, revealing how a simple spark can corrupt a good man.

(I can't believe I'm about to give a synopsis for a nearly 400-year-old story, but here we go.) Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) is the thane (think a governor who reports to a king) of Glamis, a province in Scotland. He serves as general of King Duncan's (David Thewlis) army, and after a successful battle, is visited by the Three Witches, who prophesy he will become the King of Scotland. As soon as Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard), his wife, become privy to this information, she becomes lustful of the potential for high status and power, planting the seed in Macbeth's mind to kill King Duncan and usurp the throne. Macbeth succeeds, and after gaining the throne, devolves into madness, paranoia, and overwhelming guilt, ready to kill anyone who crosses his path.

Much of my enjoyment and understanding comes from the actors, primarily the two leads. Fassbender and Cotillard each showcase a large range, while honestly, playing their roles down. Fassbender is an actor with such particular performances; he sells madness, not lunacy. He goes just the right amount in whatever emotional direction he's given that I feel this man as the character, not the actor approaching the role. He's intimidating, ferocious, unhinged, tragic, and frail. On the opposite spectrum, Cotillard's Lady Macbeth is subdued, the serpent whispering in Macbeth's ear, the one who reins him back in from his more manic episodes. However, for a woman who could be played just as a heartless monster, Cotillard portrays her with grace and surprising humanity.

This couple could, so easily, be over-the-top Bond villains. I admit my bias; this is the first time I'm introduced to these characters, so I include no other interpretations or general consensus on how these roles are usually played, but Kurzel locks these actors in their own heads for a fair portion of the film, as they question their ambitions and actions. As a result, we, the audience, have an easier time empathizing. It makes the evil they commit more terrifying, because if they're regular people, like us, how easy could it be for any one of us to be corrupted as violently or quickly as they?

Kurzel gives the film the spectacle where it needs it - the environments. From lush valleys to blood-soaked battlefields and cathedrals as treacherous as they are holy, he, along with cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, give this Scotland the Shakespearean scope it needs. The production is overwhelming, as it should be. The stakes are always high, and full of tension; life and death lies in the balance at all times, from the film's visceral reds and oranges to its melancholy greys and blues. For my money, this is the year's best cinematography, laden with images that blow me away with their beauty, in the midst of ugliness.

For some, Macbeth may be better on rental. I'm a huge fan of dialogue, the way it looks, sounds, and reads. While the Scottish brogue gives the story a lyrical, musical quality, a conversational nature further separating its performers from theatre's exaggerated traditions, some may find they like it better when they can catch all the details reading the subtitles. I understand and appreciate that decision entirely, but there really is nothing like seeing this in the cinema, with the massive screen and floor-to-ceiling sound. The monologues can drag a bit, but when the film turns it up to 10, you see it, you hear it, you feel it in your bones. The puzzle's always visible; give this film a shot.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

Author's note: After two years, a lot of movies, and a lot of hours spent staring at my computer screen waiting for inspiration like lightning, my next post will be the Man Without a Plan's 100th. It's insane to think that I've done so many of these reviews, and am continuing to do so, but for a guy perpetually clueless as to what I should be doing, I figure I should give some insight as to what's next. I'm pretty damn sure this won't be a surprise, but I might as well just spit it out. Next time, on The Man Without a Plan, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Biggest highlight of my blog should equal the biggest movie of the year, right?

"Krampus" Review

When I think of Krampus, I think of my preteen years, when I fell in love with any story with a wicked sense of humor, like The Evil Dead. I fell for movies that balanced creepiness and goofiness without dumbing it down, like Gremlins. This was also around the time when I first discovered A Christmas Story, whose characters felt like real people, with insecurities, flaws, and selfish desires. A Christmas Story isn't heartless, though; the warmth, the spirit of Christmas shines through, in the atmosphere, the characters' hopes. I don't fall for cynicism, but I don't fall for saccharine material, either. Both ends of that spectrum betray a sense of falsehood, and that, I think, is death to film. A movie can be rooted in imagination, don't get me wrong, but whenever it feels like a filmmaker approaches a story with a lack of honest passion, it stops feeling like a movie and more like an exercise. Krampus brings me back to that mischievous, heart-warming, boundlessly creative state of mind I fell in love with ten years ago.

The film centers on Max (Emjay Anthony), a boy who's having a crisis of faith about Santa Claus. Initially, Max seems too old to be still on the fence, but I think the movie suggests the crisis is a struggle to keep his Christmas spirit alive, in spite of the rampant materialism and stress surrounding him. His family, including his father (Adam Scott), mother (Toni Collette), and sister (Stefanie LaVie Owen), approach the holidays with dread, completely resigned on the so-called new meaning of Christmas; the only one who's trying to keep festive is Max's German-speaking grandmother, Omi (Krista Stadler).

Max's uncle (David Koechner), aunt (Allison Tolman), cousins, and grand-aunt (Conchata Ferrell) arrive for the holidays - a good ol' fashioned group of gun-totin', Hummer-driving rednecks. The dysfunction grows as the two families clash, and when the cousins read Max's letter to Santa mockingly at the dinner table, it's the last straw. Max rips up his letter and tosses it out the window, unaware of the demonic presence he's summoned. A nightmarish blizzard swoops in, and with it, the horned monster Krampus.

I saw Love the Coopers a couple weeks ago, so when this film started with similar familiar dysfunction, I coiled up in worry. However, two things make Krampus work. For one, the tone is defined. From the jump, the families are cruel to each other, and tension builds until each member reaches their breaking point. Love the Coopers couldn't decide whether it wanted to softball dysfunction or let the characters express true disdain; Krampus doesn't pull any punches, and writers Todd Casey, Zach Shields, and Michael Dougherty (the film's director) pen jokes that make you feel guilty to laugh. The second thing is that the hatred doesn't last for long; demonic forces have a way of bringing people together. I never wanted a character to die; the film gives each member a redeeming, humanizing moment. (On a brief side note, it's great to see Adam Scott, usually an every-man in Parks and Recreation, adopt a more decisive hero mantle here. It suits him well.)

As Omi explains, because every German-speaking grandmother in a horror movie has encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural, Krampus is known as the "shadow of St. Nicholas". Needless to say, if Santa Claus has reindeer, elves, and a magic bag of toys, Krampus' army looks as if it were designed by Tim Burton on LSD-laced eggnog. I mean this with the most endearing of sentiments: the costumes, puppetry, and visual effects are spot-on, right at home with creature features like Critters, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and The Blob (1988). This movie's been praised for its heavy use of practical effects, which is, in itself, a welcome novelty. However, just because you wave a puppet in front of me doesn't mean I'll believe it's real. This is where Krampus differs. There's so much attention to detail, as far as movement and texture are concerned, that each creature feels alive. It's ironic that Dougherty and crew put so much effort into making the monster seem totally independent from its creators.

When Krampus arrives, the movie cranks up the pace, and at times, it rushes by too quickly for its own good. Characters handle themselves a bit too well; they never find themselves shaking their head in disbelief that, you know, evil gingerbread men exist. I'm not asking for a Christopher Nolan-style roundtable about the symbolic intricacies of candy canes, but just a scene or two where the characters get to lose their breath and freak out for a bit would present the characters as more believable. I fully admit it's a nitpick; between having a character get down to business versus watching them whimper in the corner for an hour...?

As the film progresses, it comes more and more unhinged, absolutely elated to exist in its mad, mad world. Krampus is a horror-comedy with ambition, passion, and heart, more so than the "traditional" Christmas movies I see. I had a blast, and I know I've found another welcome addition to my list of Christmas classics.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

"Victor Frankenstein" Review

In my last piece, Some Thoughts On Annoying Moviegoers, I told the story of watching Victor Frankenstein for review, detailing the disrespect I received from some dolled-up hellions. After I posted it, a friend of mine asked if I'd then seen enough of the film to sufficiently review it. His assumption must have been that I walked out, and to be fair, could you have blamed me? But no, I hung around. Part of the reason why is I've never walked out of a film for anything less than an emergency - a critic's badge of tenacity. But the part I choose to highlight is that a good film more than makes up for the company. Victor Frankenstein is a good film.

Screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle, American Ultra) takes the story's familiar elements - mad scientists, hunchbacks, and "It's alive!" - and crafts his own take, free from allegiance to any previous version, from Shelley's novel to the Universal and Hammer movies. In this film, Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) is a clown in a 19th-Century London circus, constantly abused for being a hunchback. He adopts an interest in anatomy and medicine, and after successfully performing an on-the-spot, life-saving surgery on a trapeze artist (Jessica Brown Findlay), grabs the attention of Dr. Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy). Impressed with Igor's knowledge and talent, Frankenstein recruits him as a partner, on an endeavor to build a body from pieces of dead tissue and reanimate it, creating life in his own image. All the while, an inspector (Andrew Scott) lurks about, growing closer to completing his investigation: a series of robberies of dead animal parts from the local zoo. I'd put two and two together.

Victor Frankenstein is Landis' second screenplay of the year, following American Ultra. I've noticed in his writing a Tarantino-esque approach to genre; he embraces a genre's stylistic trappings, but is self-aware enough to be critical and deviate when necessary. This deviation can result in parody, but often, Landis' take is fresh and full of wit.

McAvoy goes full Gene Wilder here, laden with manic, over-the-top energy. Radcliffe is his counterpoint, unassuming, well-composed, fiercely loyal. Their chemistry makes for the best parts of the movie, where they'll snap banter at each other, or when Igor reacts to Frankenstein's madness. McAvoy's performance makes it difficult to pin Frankenstein down; is he an eccentric genius or an amoral madman? I find evidence for both, and it's McAvoy who's having the time of his life, enraptured in the doctor's larger-than-life persona.

Director Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) takes the Victorian setting and gives it a modern flair, borrowing most from Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films. McGuigan is playful with his camera, opting to use expansive shots, that show off as much of the production design as possible. I would do the same; the design (led by three-time Oscar nominee Eve Stewart) is quite stellar, a nice blend of period piece and B-movie science. And while I'm praising design, Frankenstein's monster is a delight. It's an amalgamation, borrowing the best of every version, from the 1910 Edison Studios film up to 1974's Young Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein is cheesy. It's campy, silly, and ridiculous. However, it is also sincere, and that's most important. It strives to blend slapstick, sci-fi, and action all in one enjoyable clever package, and by god, does it succeed. With two lead performances who wholly believe in this world, plus strong supporting performances by Scott and Findlay, the actors show how much fun they're having, and it's absolutely contagious.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

Some Thoughts on Irritating Moviegoers

For those of you who don't already know, I (unsurprisingly) work at a movie theater. I've heard horror story upon horror story about the worst of the movie-going public - the texters, the talkers, the personal space invaders and obnoxious popcorn chewers. However, I still can't help but be stunned whenever I check up on a theater, and in the very first row, will find some snapback-adorned palooka with his iPhone lit like an emergency beacon. An additional piece of trivia about the physics of light: if it faces you, I WILL see your big dumb face. But I digress.

On Saturday, I went to go see Victor Frankenstein after work. It's around 10:30 at night, and like usual, I walk in, before the previews, to an empty theater. I take my seat in the top row and start crossing my fingers, hoping I'll get the rare but joyous opportunity to catch a flick solo, where I can act out my own episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in comfort.

Ten minutes pass, and unfortunately, a group of five girls, aged about 10-16, and their guardian walk in. The cacophony is packed, concentrated in their posse; I'm getting a Doppler effect as they head up the ramp to enter the theater. At this point, my reaction isn't any different than on any other night. I expect them to sit somewhere near the front, to be able to lean their feet on the railing and chatter amongst themselves. But then, the youngest one makes something known that immediately concerns me: "Screw it, I like to sit in the top row!"

The group sits two seats to my right. They chatter, squawk text, snap selfies - typical stuff. The previews haven't started yet, so I'm on my phone too, playing games. Once the previews start, I null the brightness and tuck my phone away from them, so as not to disturb. I'm a bit unorthodox with phone etiquette. I'm at the movies so often I see the same previews repeatedly; I'd rather play on my phone. This is why I sit in the top row, so the dim light of my phone doesn't distract any eyes above me. Am I overthinking? Probably, but I'd rather not be "THAT guy".

If I'm overthinking, their brains have left the building. They continue their conversations about tacky girls (irony), eyeshadow, and the infinite spookiness of jump-scares. I'm getting annoyed, but I rationalize with myself: "It's just the previews, Daniel. They'll probably quiet down once the movie starts."

My hypothesis is soon put to the test, and my (seemingly) educated guess about common courtesy and appropriate social conduct is shot down, burned to ashes, and spit on. Their phones flash. Their voices grow louder. Their words overlap and buzz like locusts, echoing off the walls. Popcorn is spilled, and in a top-notch "prank", the rest of the bucket is dumped on the girl in the middle. The youngest one and her friend run down the stairs and perch themselves on top of the wall dividing the other set of stairs and entryway.

Two seats away, I'm fuming. My mind races to find a solution, the atom bomb of comments that will command the return of glorious silence. Are these the people who back down to a rebuke or a polite request? Do I talk to them or one of my manager friends? Do I let the guardian (and probable parent) do the gruntwork? How long will I stand this before instinct slits the throat of civility and I launch into a fury?

Suddenly, the youngest pipes up, "I bet you the guy next to us is sitting there like 'I am in hell right now', haha."

Stop everything. This comment says it all. If they were doing all the actions I mentioned before a couple rows in front of me, I could give them a defense of ignorance. But here, this little girl outs the entire group. You know what you're doing is wrong. You have enough social awareness and understanding to know that I'm probably annoyed and infuriated with your actions. Still however, you continue. You pursue your obnoxious agenda, willfully dismissive of anyone else's feelings but your own. You are happily disrespecting me. I feel like this should be the moment when I go postal, but surprisingly, I don't. I watch the movie all the way through, and as soon as the credits hit, I get out of there. I don't give them dirty looks. I don't curse. I don't even say a word. I just leave.

I'm still not sure why I didn't say anything. I'm not good with confrontation, and the last thing I wanted was to take a baseball bat to the hornet's nest and deal with retribution. However, I'd be totally justified; even the guardian tried shutting them up at a few points (to no avail). I guess I'm just aware enough of myself to know that if I spoke with that level of anger, nothing positive would occur from it. As much as I'd relish the shiver-inducing bliss that comes with a well-placed flash of righteous, berserk anger, I decided to be the bigger man.

I know the movie-watching experience is changing. Streaming services are more popular than ever. Netflix and Amazon are getting industry-recognition for their original works (Netflix's Beasts of No Nation has even been sent to the Academy for Oscar consideration). People watch new releases in the comfort of their homes, where they won't be chastised for talking or multi-tasking on their phone. Perhaps I'm an old fogey for even taking the time to write a post like this. Hell, in twenty years, we'll probably go to the movies and sit in bubbles with our own private screens.

But for me, this story isn't about the movie-watching experience. It's about respect. So I urge you, reader, be aware of your surroundings. Extend to your fellow moviegoer the courtesy you would hope they'd give, and I promise, we'll all be in a kinder, happier, better place...and we won't want to key your car in the parking lot.

Thank you all for reading, I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.