The Call of the Wild (2020)

I think whoever put together the trailers for Call of the Wild deserves some credit.  They did the best they could with what they had.  It looked like they were told to make it look like an exciting movie, but couldn’t quite pull it off.  The same goes for the movie.  There are parts of it that have some excitement and drama, but the movie doesn’t quite pull it off.

The narrative follows Buck, the large St. Bernard–Scotch Collie you may have seen in said trailer.  He starts the movie living in the mansion of Judge Miller in California.  Buck is abducted and sold to a team delivering mail.

The team of dogs is eventually sold to another group, led by a man named Hal.  Hal knows that there’s gold out there and intends to use the dogs to find it.  The dogs will have no part of it, though, as Hal would lead them down a dangerous path.

Buck finally ends up with John Thornton.  The two set off to find gold, sort of like Hal, except they happen to find it.  Both Buck and John come to terms with their respective pasts.  That might mean finding something in Buck’s case or letting go of something in John’s case.

You’d think with a story like this, there would be some excitement.  There was, but what few scenes the movie had were few and far between.  It was mostly pretty boring.

Part of the problem for me was that there was no real permanent antagonist.  When Buck is abducted, he’s abused.  Buck manages to escape that and is cared for by the people delivering mail.  Yet, Buck has an alpha dog to contend with.  We know this will be resolved in short order.

Instead of one main person to hate, Buck is dealt some obstacles to overcome.  It gets to the point where we don’t even get to see Buck rebel against Hal.  Hal leaves with the team of dogs only to tell John about it later in the movie.

I suppose the case could be made that the antagonist is Buck’s insecurity.  Even with that, there doesn’t seem to be a defining scene where Buck confronts that.  There’s no point where we can say that Buck is now confident.

And yes, Buck did look just a little fake.  When he’s running or laying down, he looks real enough.  He’s modeled on a real dog.  My problem is with the facial expressions.  They look a little too anthropomorphic.  They definitely don’t look like they belong on a dog.

This isn’t a great film.  I would debate it being a good film.  It’s notable only for the CGI, which was not perfect.  I think there’s a strong case to be made here for maybe reading the book, instead.

IMDb page

 

The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)

In The Secret Life of Pets, we learned that Max is a very lucky dog to have a home and a human named Katie to care for him.  He’s still lucky.  He has the same home and all and a canine roommate that he learned to get used to.  Things rarely ever stay the same, though.  Max and Duke receive a shock when their human brings home a boyfriend, Chuck.  Chuck becomes Katie’s husband.  Then, Katie becomes pregnant.

Yes, Max is going to have to put up with a rug rat.  After seeing what small children do to other dogs, Max isn’t thrilled.  However, he learns to love Liam.  Max and Duke are like an extra set of parents, doing what they can to help their newest family member.

The trouble is that Max isn’t as good as Duke at handling stress.  Now that Max has to worry about Liam, he sees danger everywhere.  This leads to a nervous habit of scratching his neck, which leads to a visit to the doctor.  And…Max gets The Cone of Shame.

We now have three divergent storylines.  Max, Duke and family go to a farm for a vacation, prompting Max to entrust fellow dog Gidget to watch over his beloved toy, Busy Bee.  Meanwhile, Snowball gets to play hero and rescue a tiger from a circus.  The three stories converge at the end, making for an interesting chase scene.

I’ve been reading complaints about having three story lines.  It’s not that bad.  Each one is at least entertaining and it’s not unusual for a TV show to do the same thing.  (CSI would often have two cases per episode.)  My impression is that the movie was written this way rather than having several otherwise-rejected story lines being merged together.

I could see them having been written as filler.  It’s not clear why Max would need someone to babysit his toy.  It would be more likely that Katie would bring it with them.  That does seem like it’s being done to set up the detour into The Land of the Crazy Cat Lady.  However, that was a pretty epic journey.

Having Snowball save a tiger was also strange.  At this point, circuses are anachronistic.  (Do we even have any traveling circuses any more?)  If I were writing the movie, I probably would have gone with a collector of exotic pets.  It would have made more sense.  It’s also a little odd that the tiger is so docile.  Tigers are wild animals and have been known to attack their captors, even after years or decades in captivity.

It still ends up being a fun movie.  It would seem that many of the errant details are done more for a joke, like having the tiger act like a house cat might.  It’s going to be fun for both kids and adults.  I just wonder how many kids will want a pet tiger.

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Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

If you’re going to wait 35 years to do a sequel, you want to make sure you get it right.  It’s often difficult to get a story that flows naturally from the first.  In some cases, like the Terminator movies, it works.  The first two movies of that franchise were originally envisioned as one script.  Back to the Future was supposed to be a standalone movie.  Its success spawned two sequels that happened to work.  Then, you have cases where the sequels are little more than a basic rewrite of the first.  (Yes, Home Alone 2.  I’m looking at you.)

Bladrunner 2049 is sort of an odd sequel.  It doesn’t exactly continue the story of the first movie.  Instead, it draws from it.  It’s a new story that might have run parallel except that it takes place three decades after the first movie.  A title card tells us that Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt and eventually acquired by a new company.  For those that don’t recall, Tyrell made the  Replicant bad guys in the original movie.  The new company has made better Replicants.  They don’t start uprisings.

KD9-3.7 is just such a Replicant.  In fact, he’s a blade runner, exactly like Deckard was.  After retiring (killing) a Replicant, he discovers a box.  Inside the box could upend everything about Replicants.  K is given the task of burying everything about the box and its contents, lest stars implode and civilizations collapse.

Like many futuristic dystopian movies, it’s never that simple.  It all comes back to Rick Deckard and the aftermath of the original movie.  You may recall that Deckard ran off with Rachael, who he had discovered was artificial.  Much of Bladerunner 2049 is original.  You get a cameo from Edward James Olmos and even Sean Young.  However, Ryan Gosling is carrying most of of the movie.  Harrison Ford doesn’t even show up until pretty late in the movie.

This isn’t to say I was disappointed with the movie.  There were some throwbacks, like the music.  (This is a world where Atari is still a major player, apparently.)  The movie doesn’t go overboard with this.  The appearance of Gaff and Rachael make sense in the context of the movie.  Wouldn’t you want to talk to someone who knew Deckard?

The movie is still about what it means to be free and what it means to be real, although the narrative is a little different.  K has a regular job with the police, but he still has to go through testing.  (Replicants have much longer life spans; the tradeoff is muted emotions.)  Things go off the rails for him when he fails a test.  His lieutenant is sympathetic, but there’s only so much she can do.

Then, there’s K’s ‘girlfriend’, who just happens to be a hologram.  If K is more (or less) human than human, what does that make Joi?  Is she any less programmed than him?  (Do holograms dream of Replicant sheep?)  It gets a little complicated, to say the least.  He’s able to buy her freedom via a portable emitter, but at what cost?  She can be a liability just as much as he can.

The movie is somewhat long at 2:44.  I had caught it back on a flight back to the United States from Shanghai.  A long running time was a virtue here.  It might not be so for everyone, though.  Make sure you have a solid chunk of time to watch it.

The movie was about as dark as the original.  If you’ve seen Bladerunner there shouldn’t be any surprises in terms of the movie’s tone.  It’s still dark.  It’s just violent and sexual enough that parents should probably use some discretion.  It’s not going to be for everyone, but I’d say that your enjoyment of the first movie is probably going to be a good indicator of whether or not you’ll like this one.

IMDb page

Blade Runner (1982)

The first time I saw Blade Runner was many years ago and it had narration.  The narration was from the theatrical cut and has been removed from all subsequent cuts.  I remember liking the narration and that others didn’t.  Not liking the narration seems to have the overwhelming majority when it comes to opinion, which is what makes the theatrical version somewhat difficult to come by.

Either way, the basic story is the same.  Rick Deckard is brought out of retirement to hunt down four individuals.  Why are any the four individuals so important?  They’re replicants, or artificial people made for off-world labor.  They’re not allowed back on Earth.  Deckard is what’s called a blade runner.  He hunts down and ‘retires’ replicants.  The four replicants are the top of the line, so they need the best blade runner out there.

The movie has gained cult status in the years following its release.  It’s known for being very dark and with good reason.  Aside from the violence, which I’ll get to, I don’t think there were many scenes with daylight.  Everything seems to be at night, which makes the illuminated billboards (and product placement) stand out a little more.  As if that weren’t enough, it seems that it’s almost always raining in the Los Angeles of the future.

As for the violence, replicants aren’t very well liked.  They’re given a four-year life span so as not to develop pesky emotions or personalities.  Deckard is allowed to kill with extreme prejudice, which he does in two cases.  A third is killed by Rachael, who is most likely a replicant, herself.

This is where it the lines get blurry.  It seems that normally, replicants are given the skills they need to do their jobs.  With such a short amount of life, one would assume that there’s no time to waste with training.  It’s possible, as with Rachael, to implant a real person’s actual memories.  Does that make Rachael any less of a person than the person she’s based on?

When I first watched Blade Runner, I saw it mostly as an action movie.  You have a police officer hunting down four criminals with the express purpose of killing them.  It wasn’t until I got older that I began to see some of the finer details.  You don’t actually call killing a replicant what it is.  Instead, you say you’re retiring them, as they’re nothing more than a product of the Tyrell Corporation.  Their entire existence is to go into situations too hazardous for humans.  They’re disposable.

If that’s true, what do you call a replicant that thinks she’s a real person?  Is she any less disposable because she seems real?  Is she any more deserving of life because she’s pretty?  Then, there’s Deckard himself.  It’s implied that he may be a replicant, too.

One thing that confused me, though, is that the movie seems to go back and forth between calling them robots and people.  At least one of the makers are referred to as a genetic engineer.  They seem to be made from organically grown parts.  I’m not sure if the brains are organic, though.  It is entirely possible that the brains are mechanical.  It‘s ambiguous, as they’re not really clones and not exactly robots.

The version I got was The Final Cut, which was the last version released.  There is an Ultimate Edition, which contains several version.  I’m not sure how many of the seven different cuts are available, but it seems that if I want the narration, this will have to be the version I have to buy.  I would like to see the theatrical cut to see how well it holds up.  I’m not sure I’d get it any time soon, as it can be a bit tedious for me to watch the same movie twice in such a short time span.  I may wait to see if it becomes available streaming or at the library.

IMDb page

42 (2013)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

In high school, I had a P.E. coach who had lived in Miami when segregation was still in effect.  He told the class that blacks weren’t allowed to be in Miami Beach at night without a work permit.  (If you look at old photos of Miami Beach, it’s also not uncommon to see signs prohibiting Jews.)  I’ve never known segregation in my lifetime.  However, there are still people alive that remember a time when blacks were denied service.

42 is about Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player to play in Major League Baseball.  The movie starts with Robinson playing for the Kansas City Monarchs.  He’s about to be recruited by Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  At first, he’s to play for the Montreal Royals, which is the minor-league affiliate of the Dodgers.  After proving himself, he’s promoted to the major leagues.

Rickey admits that the decision is motivated primarily by money.  Having a black player will attract black fans.  Black fans will pay green dollar bills, meaning more money for the team.  Since money’s on the line, he has to know that Robinson won’t react.  If Robinson responds to a racial slur, people won’t remember what the other guy said.  If he hits someone, no one will care what the other guy did to provoke it.  Papers will report that Robinson lost his cool.

Being that the movie is based on historical events, I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by revealing that everything works out for Robinson.  This isn’t to say it was easy.  Boseman does a great job of showing the frustration of a man that can’t fight back, despite wanting to.  Phillies manager Ben Chapman is shown as having no shortage of racial epithets and unkind remarks to spew at Robinson.  Robinson just has to take it.

It does have that feel-good ending where we get the sense that Robinson has made it, but I’m sure that it was still an uphill battle for him and for other black baseball players that followed.  The recent victory of an American of Indian descent in the Miss America pageant proves that we still have a lot to overcome when it comes to racism.  (We may have gotten rid of the separate bathrooms, but there are still people out there that only see skin deep.)

I normally don’t watch biographical movies.  The only reason I watched this was that my parents had rented it from Netflix and kept it so that I could watch.  I remember seeing the coming attractions and being somewhat interested, so I decided to at least give it a try.  I have to wonder how many of the facts were glossed over.  According to IMDb, some liberties were taken with history, attributing quotes to the wrong people.  I’m not sure how readily he was accepted by his teammates.  Then again, it’s based on a true story, not presented as totally accurate. 

IMDb page