Best of round up and a look forward - 2016/2017

For the first time (and probably last) time ever...my top 3 films in one year were a Star Wars, a Godzilla and a Star Trek. That's truly special. Just about the top 3 franchises for me ever.

3. Rogue One: A Star Wars story.



2. Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence)



1. Star Trek: Beyond





And looking forward to 2017...

I can feel your anger...

Wanted to get SOMETHING down last night...that's about all I did...

Abbath likes his coffee BLACK!



WIP shots of Emperor Palpatine. Honestly, it looks more like an old man who didn't get any sleep in his bathrobe...but hey PREC TISS makes perfect right...?















Contrast shot.



Finally, another stellar viewing - Adam Nimoy's For the Love of Spock - a documentary about his Dad and the character he created. Beautiful documentary about family, fandom, and the passing of time. 5/5 KHANS! Must watch for Star Trek fans...currently streaming on Netflix.

Shin..and some Shat

You would think with it getting dark sooner, that I would have MORE time for drawing. You would be wrong. Still...got a little Gojira sketchin' in at least...

Shin GOJIRA!!!



Also...currently streaming on Netflix...A Christmas Horror Story! Great horror anthology centered around the holiday - perfect with a glass of spiked egg nog. Features a versus battle for the ages - Santa vs Krampus!:


But what really sets it apart from most is the narrator throughout. 5/5 Khans!



A Christmas Shatner! HA!!!

"I know your name..." Quickie movie review - The Conjuring 2...and some art

We may be in the middle of another Golden Age for Horror movies...

The Conjuring 2



Without spoiling it, this one blows the doors off the hinges - those same doors that the first film opened up for us nearly 3 years ago. James Wan is master filmmaker, and we should be honored that he chooses the horror genre to showcase his talents. Amazing camera work, jump scares, score, and story telling. And did I mention the demons? Not one, but three are involved in this film! It definitely needs to be seen in a crowded theater - with the lights turned out, and the sound turned up. Sheeezus! Can't wait to see where this one goes next...

4 out of 5 Khans!!!!



So I drew some quickie art from it too...VALAK

Movie Reviews...Closing out Summer 2015...and a look forward...

I have been completely slack with my reviews since July. I'm gonna give a quick run-down of the major releases I've caught and my thoughts on each. Here it comes...



Terminator Genisys

Pros: A welcome return and valid way to get Arnold back to the franchise / inventive plot that recalls much of the first two films without erasing or invalidating their existence / good action and humor / Jason Clarke gives a spirited performance as John Connor

Cons: Some of the casting was off - Kyle Reese was a farce and no real chemistry with Emilia Clarke's Sarah Connah / Many of the major revelations of the movie were spoiled by the trailers which isn't necessarily a fault of the film itself / No Bill Paxton!

I'd like to see where this new "timeline" goes, but I'm not sure it was the megahit it had to be to guarantee another one...it seemed Arnold did this just so he could say he did it and to give the fans one more ride. That isn't a bad thing is it? All in all a sequel that could have been a train wreck, but succeeds by virtue of its bold attempts at something new amid all the familiar. 3.5 out of 5 Khans.

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The Gallows

Pros: When accepted for what it is, a very enjoyable minimal horror film that uses the often maligned found footage formula / some genuine scares and creative use of location

Cons: Not terribly original or well acted, but that really isn't the point of these films

I liked this a lot, glad to catch it in the theater with a booming sound system. 3 out of 5 Khans.

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The Funhouse (1981)

Pros: Classic early 80s horror cheese / Weird rednecks, carnival setting, practical effects, and a great monster / Tobe Hooper directed it

Cons: None. This is early 80s horror at it finest/most outlandish

Caught this on late night IFC at home. One I've always wanted to watch all the way through. Tobe Hooper brings in some of the "country folk" vibe from Texas Chainsaw into this and firmly plants it within a traveling carnival freak show. If you are a fan of the early 80s / Fangoria cover nostalgia, then this is for you.

4 out of 5 Khans.

So that's why he wore a mask...



---



Let There Be Light (1946)

Pros: A glimpse into the past of our boys coming home from the horrors of war / outstanding vintage footage

Cons: None unless you cannot stomach watching soldiers suffering from PTSD

Banned by the US Government until 1981, this film is an amazing look at what some of our soldiers endured upon returning home. Most of the practices seen here might be outdated but it is a very interesting look into that time period. I can only imagine the stuff they didn't film.

5 out of 5 Khans

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It Follows

Pros: Atmospheric, gorgeously shot horror film / well thought out and multi layered story / Great soundtrack

Cons: None. One of the best horror films to come out recently that stands along with The Babadook

Loved this. Reminded me of what a contemporary version of Halloween might be like if made today. Perfect use of minimal gore, pounding music, and cinematography to achieve a film full of allegory and terror. Requires multiple viewings to appreciate everything going on in the background. 4.5 out of 5 Khans.

What the...?



The annual 30 in 30 looms and I have a ton of ideas and films to include! Can't wait to get THAT started. Soon...

The Mission is a Man...A (Retro) Movie Review...

I don't often do this, especially with older films I have seen many times. But today I feel compelled since yesterday was Memorial Day and I took in a viewing of perhaps the best war movie of a generation.

Saving Private Ryan.

For those who have seen it, and let's be honest, you should have by now - it begins with one of the most harrowing scenes in motion picture history. The morning landings at Normandy - June 6, 1944. I know of veterans who chose to leave the theater during this because it was so authentic - they simply could not handle its realism. It's a testament to Spielberg that he chose to portray it in this manner. War is not glamorous, nor is it a thing to be sought out. It is a terrible, awful thing that unfortunately at this point in history - was a necessary thing.



The cast is perfect. Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Giovanni Ribisi, and Jeremy Davies are all brilliant. Every single one.

This is a war film where several combat engagements occur, but what makes this a near perfect film are the "in between" scenes that carry as much weight as any bullet or bomb.

A few of these I will discuss below...

A slow overhead zoom in shot of the beach post assault as it closes in on the name - Ryan, S. - on a backpack of a dead soldier on the beach. We go to a typists office where the death notices are being prepared for the families of the deceased. A close-up of a woman's face as she gasps momentarily. We discover here that all of the Ryan brothers have been killed and this is brought to the attention of George Marshall. When prompted to forget the 'foolhardy' mission of sending a team to find Private Ryan, Marshall reads an eloquent letter of condolence to a Mrs. Bixby of Boston, after which he calmly states:

"That boy is alive. We are gonna send somebody to find him. And we are gonna get him the Hell... outta there."

An early scene that emphasizes Marshall's feelings on the matter is when Ryan's mother notices the Army car coming down her driveway back home. She looks up and knows this isn't good. When she sees the pastor from her porch, it absolutely nails me every time.



So off they go...



The next scene, much later after the loss of one of their own and with Miller's soldiers threatening to leave the mission, he reveals to them that he is a school teacher. One particular speech sticks with me:

"You know if going to Rumelle and finding him so that he can go home. If that earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that's my mission. You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right. I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel."

No one leaves.

Much later as Captain Miller asks Ryan about his brothers, Ryan tells him of the last night they were all together before the oldest shipped off to training. Upon finishing, Ryan asks Miller to tell him about "his wife back home and those rose bushes" alluding to Miller's "something specific" when he attempts to think of home. But Miller refuses, simply stating...

"No, no that one I save just for me."

The fourth and final scene is at the very end. Old Ryan stands among the gravestones at Normandy, directly in front of Captain Miller's final resting place. To it, he says:

"My family is with me today. They wanted to come with me. To be honest with you, I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I've earned what all of you have done for me."

He stands and salutes. It is one of the most heart wrenching scenes in any movie of my lifetime.



John Williams conducts a beautiful, subtle score as the American Flag waves in the afternoon sunlight. Perfection.



5 out of 5 Khans. The best war movie ever made.

Mad Max Fury Road...A Movie Review...

Well that sure kicked my ass! Obvious spoilers follow...

Summer started early this year and this one will be hard to top. Fury Road is balls out, straight forward action set in a post apocalyptic wasteland of a future Earth. The story is pretty straight forward - our "hero" Max gets mixed up in a "family dispute" between a female general named Furiosa (Charlize Theron doing her best Sigourney Weaver impersonation) and Overlord Immortan Joe - a Darth Vader-esque villain complete with flowing white mane and clunky breathing apparatus.



There is an entire world created in this film, one of albino "war boys" who serve the overlord by running his kingdom of dirty dregs and driving his assault vehicles. Nicholas Hoult is a standout who begins the film using Max as a "blood bag" - essentially stringing him up as a hood ornament with a lifeline of plasma providing him with precious body replenishment. His story comes full circle as Max eventually escapes and Hoult's character tags along. Turns out Furiosa is running with Joe's "wives" - a set of females used for breeding as Max and Nux (Hoult) join their mission.





The film is highlighted by huge chase scenes, each occurring in different environments and circumstances - a gigantic sand storm, a bog, and a rocky terrain filled with murderous biker gangs. The vehicles and the mutants who inhabit them are spectacular, the chase and the explosions / car wrecks are even better! Harpoons fly, knives and chainsaws tear through metal and flesh, and grenade tipped staffs are used with reckless abandon. It is glorious and utter chaos. And then this guy just plays his literal "heavy metal" guitar adorning one of Joe's tanks, announcing the fleet's arrival with foreboding malice - a sort of macabre drummer boy if you will...



Awesome.

There is an endgame to the whole ordeal and a satisfying final act that sees mostly everyone in a new place with a new destiny. And yes there are a few exceptional nods to the previous Max films - little trinkets or instances that will make long time fans smile when they spot them. I won't spoil them here. My only nitpicks would be that we don't get as much backstory in some scenes - a truly exceptional swamp bog scene is relegated to about a minute of screen time! - but it's a minor thing. When something is this well-made I want as much as I can get!



All in all, this is an awesome throwback to not only the Mad Max originals, but to action movies in general. Nearly 90% of the effects, vehicles are all REAL...no CGI crap here acting as a crutch. I hope we get more Max movies in this day and age - not bad for a 70 year old director bringing back a 36 year old franchise!

4 out of 5 Khans!!!



^ Now that's a movie poster! ^

A Movie Review...Avengers: Age of Ultron...

...or as I like to call it, the beginning of the end...



This movie was a true disappointment to me. There, I said it, it won't be a popular sentiment nor will it be shared by the general public, but that's my opinion. AoU is too big for its own britches. Gone are the tightly woven character threads coming together to form a cohesive fighting unit, the compelling villain with the power to go up against Earth's mightest, and any sense of focus among all of these elements. The closest analogy I can come up with is that Joss Whedon had an immense checklist and went one by one down said list as he threw in the next item, regardless of its implications to the story or any impetus for its inclusion. I'll just list a few things...



The visions / mind control / inclusion of the twins - Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver: So from Tony Stark's vision of a defeated/dead Avengers team by an unseen foe, he totally disregards every prior warning from the previous Iron Man film (granted I have not seen it) and goes behind his team's back and creates the Ultron program. Not very smart, Tony. At least CONSULT the others first, or study and augment the program before unleashing it. Every villain uses mind control to thwart the Avengers - really? The twins just seem to be there, with no real reason for having them...they could have substituted 15 other superhero/mutants and it wouldn't have made any difference. And that was a TERRIBLE accent, Elizabeth Olsen.



Ultron - much like last year's letdown, Godzilla, if you're going to have a superior actor (voice talent) USE THEM for God's sake. Spader is perfect for this role, and when he is showcased, he is clearly magnificent. There just isn't enough of him in this film. One minute he is a hammy, joke cracking sentinel...the next he is supposed to be the ultimate in AI evil, existing everywhere on the planet and in cyberspace. Pick one or the other. And we get it, after the tenth time saying it during the film, there are no strings on you...and for a bad guy to be so powerful, he repeatedly gets his metal ass handed to him by whatever Avenger he's fighting in a given scene.

The action is furious and over-CGI'd to the point where the mega battles become - dare I say it - BORING. There is no dramatic end game to it all, it's just boss fight after boss fight as they change scenery from one to the next. Vision gets created three quarters of the way through, and basically sets up another new plot thread for the next set of movies. Banner, Black Widow and Hawkeye get some appreciable character building, but it is at the expense of momentum halting plot lines that are jarring and serve no purpose other than to take you completely out of the frantic action pieces. Again, the problem of lost focus rears its ugly head here. We even get a secondary character death during the climax that is so out of left field. It screams of "well we need to kill one of these guys" and off they went. We want to see Ultron and his minions wrecking havoc and becoming an ultimate cyber-enemy like those trailers promised, instead we get everything and the kitchen sink, including a Hulk love affair and Thor taking a bath...WTF?!



I'm being incredibly harsh, but I hate to see so much wasted potential. The cast is still fine and have their moments, only most of those result in cheeky one-liners repeatedly thrown in for comedic effect. Whedon established a great world and tone in the first one, now it's all over the place. An age old proverb came to mind:

Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean that you must do that thing.

The shine on the Marvel universe is definitely off for me. I loved The Winter Soldier last year, but this is just a mess of gargantuan proportions. Perhaps Cap: Civil War will be better and save the Marvel franchise from completely falling off the cliff? Reign it in, folks.

1.5 out of 5 Khans.

CHAPPiE - A Movie Review...

"I'm consciousness. I'm alive. I'm Chappie."



Neill Blomkamp, you are on the clock.

With the announcement that he would helm the new Alien movie featuring Sigourney Weaver, all my hopes were (somewhat unfairly) placed on how he brought CHAPPiE to life. The initial negative reviews scared me to death, but I chose to largely ignore them. Frankly, I'm glad that I did. CHAPPiE is, for lack of a better term, a return to form for Blomkamp. He has crafted a more relevant tale here than in any of his previous two movies, and his most memorable character to date.

CHAPPiE occurs in South Africa in 2016 as robotic "scouts" have taken over public law enforcement to the delight of their parent company Tetravaal. The creator of the scouts, Deon, breaks the code for AI conscienceness and begs his boss, played by Sigourney Weaver, to let him try it on a slagged scout unit. Of course she says no, Deon does it anyway and CHAPPiE (voiced by Sharlto Copley) is born much to the chagrin of military hound Hugh Jackman. His mobile tank police unit (MOOSE - quite the ED-209 nod) has been sidelined in favor of Deon's scout project and he searches for any way to remove Deon and his bastard creations.



Enter a group of South African gangsters fronted by real-life South African rap group Die Antwoord. I'm not much on any movie that casts RAPPERS as main characters. But for some reason, they are weird / authentic enough to lend a credibility to their roles as underworld hooligans.



They kidnap Deon and discover CHAPPiE can be their avenue to money and big time heists. Instead of learning what Deon would have him learn - the arts and scholarly things, Ninja and Yolandi teach him how to "be cool" and wear bling bling. CHAPPiE grows from an infant encased in titanium alloy to an opinionated teenager over the course of his interactions with his human companions.





As CHAPPiE himself grows, so does the movie in its consequences. Blomkamp structures his narrative to further envelope the viewer as CHAPPiE's conscience learns and becomes more aware of his world. There are some hard questions left out in the open here, most left to the viewer to decipher from his or her own point of view. Can a machine become a living thing? When do we defer to A.I. and quit living ourselves? These are things our world and our technology are dangerously close to confronting.

CHAPPiE himself becomes the focus of the movie, which is Blomkamp's likely idea from the beginning. He is funny, curious, and capable. Copley is far better than he has any right to be here. He is the modern day C-3PO. Only C-3PO didn't have graffiti and carry an assortment of assault weapons...heh.



One note on Blomkamp's practice as a filmmaker is important here...I would like to see a bit of shake up as he approaches his next project, Alien notwithstanding. It is obvious he enjoys his native South Africa, as well as the talents of several familiar faces, especially Copley. You know what you are gonna get with established talent, but I want to see a more original approach. Weaver and Jackman were nice additions here, but mostly as background. At times, CHAPPiE looks like a companion piece to District 9 and I think Blomkamp is more than capable of crafting different worlds for different films. Not a detriment to CHAPPiE per se, but could become a hindrance in Blomkamp's future. Not that he cares what I have to say.

With that being said, I hope that Blomkamp returns us to the world of CHAPPiE one day. I enjoyed getting to know him

An easy 4 out of 5 Khans!