Tom Cruise meets "The Mummy," and disappointment ensues...

Marvel’s doing it.  Warner Bros. is doing it. Fox is doing it.  Sony tried to do it (and blew it, finally surrendering and begging Marvel for help).  Now Universal hops on the “shared universe” bandwagon.  Well, hops AGAIN would be more correct, as this newest iteration of The Mummy is the studio’s THIRD attempt at starting a film series focusing on their catalog of famous monsters, after neither 2010’s The Wolfman or 2014’s Dracula Untold made enough noise to warrant continuing along those lines.  Universal calls it the “Dark Universe,” and it sorta gets me thinking - I’ll bet the filmmakers behind the 1930s’ Frankenstein and Dracula movies weren’t thinking ahead to House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula when they created those classics, but that’s the reality of big-ticket genre filmmaking today.

Instead, eighty years after those masterpieces of pulp, we get CGI ghoulies roaming through a barely-there plot “driven” by a paper-thin protagonist and repeatedly undercut by smart-ass attempts at humor.  At least, like many another underachieving megapicture, The Mummy gives good prologue, setting up its ancient Egyptian villainess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) as a woman scorned who hath plenty of hellish fury.   Unfortunately, after her impressive introduction, we jump ahead to present-day Iraq, where Nick Morton (Tom Cruise), a U.S. soldier who’s really a soldier of fortune, leads his buddy Lt. Vail (Jake Johnson) into a village occupied by local insurgents that Nick also believes holds a great archaeological treasure he can sell to the highest bidder.

Nick doesn’t take much seriously, but he’s not so much roguish as a one-dimensional wiseguy, always ready with a quip to undermine any dramatic or horrific moment, and there’s not much else to him.  Another character describes him, quite correctly, as “utterly without a soul.”  Thus, there’s no solid center to the action that ensues when Ahmanet’s sarcophagus is unearthed and winds up in England after the plane transporting it crashes (in the most effective action scene).  Ahmanet resurrects looking much the worse for wear and goes about sucking the life energy out of assorted hapless victims while pursuing Nick, whom she has targeted as the host of the Egyptian chaos god Set.  Poor beleaguered Nick is also occasionally visited by the jokey spectre of the now-deceased Lt. Vail, and eventually captured by the militaristic followers of one Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe).

Perhaps Nick is so underdeveloped because Dr. Jekyll is the true star of The Mummy, in terms of Dark Universe’s ongoing series development.  He presides over Prodigium, a secret society devoted to the ferreting out of evil, and already has an expansive collection of trophies - vampire skulls, a Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon hand and what appears to be the book from the Stephen Sommers version of The Mummy.  That film similarly buried any horrific potential under digital effects and slaphappiness, but the effect is especially disappointing here because this version of The Mummy keeps edging toward being scary and then retreating, as if fearful of challenging either the audience or the PG-13 rating.  Even a scene that should have been a surefire chill-maker - mummy minions rising from underwater tombs - blunted.  Director Alex Kurtzman keeps the film moving on a superficial level, but the action lacks variety and surprise.

That also goes, unfortunately, for the Mummy herself.  In walking-withered form, we’ve seen her twitchy CG-type many times before, and though Boutella gives a fine performance of what she’s given to do - conveying a palpable sense of vengeful passion - when Ahmanet’s true face is restored, this Mummy lacks what gave the ’30s classics their true heft: a sense of sympathy for their monsters.  Moreover, Dr. Jekyll’s backstory has been reconceived in a manner that robs the character of his tragic dimensions.  It all leads to a climax that attempts to pay off emotional connections that just aren’t there (Jenny Halsey, a rival treasure hunter who becomes Nick’s romantic interest and is played by Annabelle Wallis, is as much a cipher as he is), and concludes with a final scene that has the feel of something tacked on as a result of negative test scores.

Yes, it’s evident Tom Cruise is giving one hundred percent of himself in his role, and I will give credit where it’s due by saying that he always does.  His performance is probably the best thing about The Mummy.  However, he’s not the monster, and in Monster Movies, the monster had better be the star of the show, and this one ain’t… and that’s the overall problem with The Mummy - its makers have surrendered any possibility of a distinctive product with its own personality or identity in pursuit of the almighty “four quadrants.”  When Aesop wrote his fable of the miller, his son and their donkey, he knew that when you try to please everybody, you wind up pleasing nobody and can lose your ass in the process.  Why don’t these studios, in trying so desperately to created “shared universe” film franchises, understand this?

"The Fate of the Furious" - Running Out of Gas, but Will Probably Get You Where You Wanna Go

The Fast/Furious franchise has come a looooong way since its 2001 debut.  What started out as a sorta-cool B-movie-type crime thriller about fast cars, loud music and tough guys in Los Angeles has become a globe-trotting, Bond/Bourne-type spy/heist franchise with a growing group of guys (and girls) working with shadowy government agencies to battle international criminals.  Well, I’m a guy, and I like cars, girls, explosions and heist movies, so while I’ve never been a HUGE fan of this series, for a variety of reasons and circumstances, I’ve seen all of them in a theater, save for the last one.  Whatta ya know, another Friday night rolls around, and it’s this or the Beauty and the Beast remake, so the Big-and-Noisy option wins.  Here we go...

The Fate of the Furious catches up with Dom and Letty (Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez) on their honeymoon in Havana, but their getaway is cut short when a mysteroius woman (Charlize Theron) tracks down Dom and makes him an offer than her can't (or is unable to) refuse. When Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) calls all the old crew in to help with a top secret government operation in Berlin, Dom is forced to turn his back on his team as he gets caught up in the world of cyber-terrorism. Hobbs goes to jail. Letty snaps defiantly at everyone. Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson keep talking lots of smack to each other. More car chases, more property damage, more complete disregard for the laws of physics, a Russian nuclear attack sub, and two hours and fifteen minutes later, our multi-ethnic band is back at the dinner table, dropping hints about a ninth movie that is already scheduled for April of 2019.

There is a pact action movies (and action sequels in particular) make with their audience: accept the rules being bent now and again, and in exchange, you’ll receive elevated payoff that will at least FEEL logical.  What sets The Fate of the Furious apart from most other action movies is that it doesn’t bend the rules at the climax; rather, it breaks them immediately in the opening sequence.  Right from the start, we know that absolutely anything goes, and it just gets more ridiculous from there.  There is only one law of physics in this world: our heroes must succeed.  If Vin Diesel must win a race, a car will go faster in reverse than in Drive after doing a 180-degree spin, and throwing one’s self from that moving, flaming vehicle will result in no more personal injury than smudged slacks.  If a submarine must leave a completely-empty dry dock into open sea within ninety seconds, then so be it.  If we require a fleet of driverless vehicles to be operated from a single remote point of control, then cross-software platform compatibility problems be damned.  Okay, maybe that last one is getting a little picky, but you get my point...

The film is at its best when stripping out emotion altogether and just gearing up for fun, but even that aspect of the movie falls short of its predecessors - Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are an entertaining duo, incessantly attempting to one-up one another as they’re forced to work together, but I didn’t buy the speed of their enemy-turned-buddy relationship.  Kurt Russell is also back as shady government spook Mr. Nobody (in what is basically an extended cameo), and we’ve added Scott Eastwood to operate as his apprentice.  Eastwood hasn’t exactly had a spectacular career to date (probably best known for being the movie hunk in Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” video three years ago), and his character here is pretty much a waste of space and dialogue, really only serving as the butt of two or three of Tyrese Gibson’s one-liners.

The Fate of the Furious may prove that the franchise is at least in fighting form financially at an inconceivable number eight despite the storytelling shortcomings, but that being said, what was innovative and daringly off-the-wall in Fast Five and Furious 6 – and even Furious 7 with its skyscraper-destroying antics – feels a little more pedestrian this time around.  It’s not so much a case of the returns diminishing, but that the series feels so sure of itself at this point that the nutty luster of the last few instalments just doesn’t feel quite so fresh.  Perhaps The Rock soccer-kicking a torpedo into a moving vehicle was supposed to be the newest “wow” moment, but by the time we got to that particular physically-impossible moment, I was sorta past the point of being “wowed.”

The Fate of the Furious is exactly what it aims to be, no more and no less, and I give the filmmakers credit for that.  This movie was never going to reach the emotional heights of Furious 7, and it was never going to bring something fresh to the genre.  It is a relatively-fun experience, but ultimately it’s a flashy, forgettable movie that’s best experienced with the largest tub o' popcorn and tallest Coke Icee the concession stand will sell you.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" leaves me wondering where the other forty-nine are…

I don’t quite know where to begin with this one.  Movies that result from cultural-phenomenon books present a bit of a quandary for a reviewer.  One is expected to review a film as a solitary entity, standing alone and free of whatever faults the source material may have had.  On the other hand, it’s unreasonable to expect a writer to express an issue with a part of such a movie without knowing that some reader somewhere will be shouting at the review “yeah, but in the book, blah, blah, blah, so of course, you don’t get it!!!” There’s no denying some story has existed before, and there are times when it must be acknowledged.  So, let’s get started with some acknowledging...

I even wonder how much a synopsis of the film is necessary, as the book was such a cultural happening three years ago that any reader is most likely already familiar with at least the basic premise.  We all know of the titillating aspects of the story, and how it opening on Valentine’s Day weekend is something of a sick joke on Universal’s part (is THIS the kind of tale you equate with your affection for whomever you hold dearest…?).  Millions of women, and a few men, I suppose, have lost themselves in the modern fairy tale-type story of young college grad Anastasia Steele and her surprising and unexpected “romance” with the cold, intimidating, dominating billionaire Christian Grey.  I’m sure there are quite a few babies out there that were born exactly nine months after their mothers finished the juicier parts of the first book.  Given how I have no intention of reading it, or the other two, I’ll just take the incredible sales figures of the books as testament to the story’s quality.  The movie is what we’re talking about today. 

I hesitate to call Fifty Shades of Grey a flawed film, because I find it hard to point to any individual thing in the movie and think that fixing it would have resulted in a better product.  Dakota Johnson conveys the naiveté of Anastasia believably, and while Jamie Dornan as the movie’s titular Grey character comes off as a bit of a cold fish, one could argue that might have been appropriate for the character. The dreary, rainy Seattle and other Washington State settings (locations all duplicated in the Hollywood-North that Vancouver, British Columbia has become) fit into the “gray” tone of the film, as with two hundred days of rain per year, I imagine there’s not much else for people up there to do besides stay indoors and beat on one another with whips and chains.  I even found director Sam(antha) Taylor-Johnson’s choices of where to place the rare instance of brighter color pretty impressive, the occasional red or blue punctuating some particular emotion in a given scene.  Even the “money” shots of the bondage/domination practices that everyone came to see are done as tastefully as they possibly could be, avoiding the NC-17 rating that would result if such a story were told in any realistic fashion.

The point where Fifty Shades of Grey fails can be placed before production even started - the story itself is a load of crap.  Let’s face it - it’s an open secret that the source material for this tale began its life as Twilight fan-fiction, and even after being reworked by its author into an original work, it still appeals to the same crowd as drugstore romance novels once did.  As such, when turned into something visual, its inadequacies are laid out for all to see. The poor-innocent-girl-meets-maddeningly-handsome-rich-gentleman story is as old as time, and there isn’t much variation on the theme here, with the possible exception of the addition of a ball-gag and dog collar or two… or three.  Waking up in opulent hotel rooms, having drivers whisk you off in black limousines to meet Mr. Handsome, who will fly you away in his helicopter… all of the stereotypical Cinderella-story tropes are here, and all details period-appropriate for the early 21st Century in the Tech Capital of the Pacific Northwest. 

The movie follows these two primary characters along what is supposed to be an evolution for both of them, but they are both such cardboard-cutouts that I couldn’t invest myself in them emotionally.  I believe the word “telecommunications” was uttered once at the beginning of the film to explain how this young hipster has more money than Bill Gates at the ripened, experienced age of twenty-seven, but that’s as far as we go in learning about how this young pup has all this “success” before most men have made it out of their first cubicle.  We got a little more explanation about Anastasia’s roots than Christian’s, but what little we learned about him was of how he is now, not his past.  We did learn he was adopted, but not much else after that.  

This is the point where I begin to hear all the readers out there screaming “you learn all that from what they say in the second book!” Fine and dandy, but I’m talking about this movie, not some book I’ll never read, and this movie didn’t tell me enough to make me care about these people, and if this dialogue was brought over from those books, then it should’ve been dumped for more life-like speech.  Lines which may work on the printed page of best-selling novels are sometimes cringe-worthy when actually heard spoken aloud (as Harrison Ford claims he once said to George Lucas on the set of Return of the Jedi, “you can write this shit, George, but you sure can’t SAY it!)

Taylor-Johnson only has one previous feature film to her directorial credit, 2009’s Nowhere Boy, a speculative-type study of the early life of John Lennon.  I have not seen this film, but I see on IMdB that it received widely-varied reviews, further evidence for me that Fifty Shades’ failings may not all be her fault.  As I mentioned earlier, I thought she did as good a job as she possibly could have with what she was assigned to do, although I wonder if she had the filmmaking wisdom to realize this material needed lots of reworking before any frame should have been shot, or was she so grateful for the job that she didn’t want to rock the boat and suggest changes to something that was already so wildly successful in another medium.  Alas, I may never know.

There possibly could be a very interesting story about the emotional damage that would lead someone into such deviant sexual habits, and how those personality shortcomings could destroy any potential for a fulfilling, healthy relationship… Oh, wait, there has been - it was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris.  THAT’S the movie this flick wishes it could be.