El Camino Christmas (2017)

A Christmas movie with a fairly impressive cast of well-known names that attempts to do something different. Sounds good, right? But let's not beat around the bush here. It isn't.

Luke Grimes stars as a young man, named Eric Roth, who wanders into the town of El Camino, looking for his estranged father. A series of unfortunate coincidences lead to him being put in the cells for a night, then being freed by one officer before being aggressively pursued by another, and this leads to him ending up in a liquor store that is surrounded by police, who all believe him to be a dangerous criminal holding others hostage.

Here's the cast involved in El Camino Christmas - Grimes, Tim Allen, Kurtwood Smith, Dax Shepard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michelle Mylett, and Kimberly Quinn. There are some other people onscreen, but that covers the core names I wanted to mention. Because that isn't a bad cast list at all, particularly when it comes to a non-theatrical Christmas movie. It's also worth saying at this point, lest I forget, that none of the cast actually do a bad job. Seriously. They're all good in the roles that they're given.

Which makes it obvious that the problems stem from the talent behind the camera. Director David E. Talbert also wrote and directed the poor Almost Christmas so I already know that he's not my go to guy for festive fare. But blaming him alone wouldn't be fair. In fact, blaming him for being unable to elevate the horribly hackneyed script isn't fair at all, despite my disappointment with his previous Christmas movie.

Writers Theodore Melfi and Christopher Wehner should share the blame. The latter has nothing else to his credit at the moment, but Melfi started this cinematic year so well with his work on Hidden Figures. Which means I have to make this unusual statement. If I was a teacher, viewing a final project that Melfi and Wehner had worked on together, I would be forced to give that project a low mark and then keep the pair separated for the rest of the year, allowing me to see how much better each one can do without the influence of the other. Someone obviously thought this was a cool idea, a Christmas movie that has all of the characters and a dash of the spirit of the season with the minimal of festive trimmings. They were wrong.

There's no rule saying that a Christmas movie has to have all of the familiar elements in place to succeed. It just takes more work to make that happen. More than just a script that seems to be winking at viewers and assuring them that something is coming along in time for the finale that will make everything preceding it worthwhile. Which would be okay IF something did come along to make it all worthwhile.

Technical competence and that solid cast explain my fairly generous rating. Not one to make a high priority, even throughout December.

4/10

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Sci-Fi September: Zathura (2005)

A sci-fi journey through ground already covered by Jumanji (which isn't surprising, they're both adapted from books by the same author), Zathura is, I think it's fair to say nowadays, the better of the two films. The fact that it's often forgotten about, or even dismissed, is a great shame, and I hope that maybe this review will spur one or two people to revisit it.

The book of Zathura may have been a direct sequel to the book of Jumanji, but don't worry if you haven't seen the latter before checking this out. The movies both work on their own, even if people who have seen both can observe the obvious similarities.

Let me get to the plot. Two brothers (Walter, the older sibling, played by Josh Hutcherson, and Danny, played by Jonah Bobo) are forced to spend some time together, waiting for their mother to come and pick them up from their father's house. Dad has to head off for something work-related, so he leaves the older sister (Kristen Stewart) in charge. Danny ends up finding a board game, Zathura, and starts playing it. He wants his brother to join in, which becomes pretty essential when it becomes clear that the board game isn't your usual piece of kit. Everything that happens in the game also happens in reality, making for some hair-raising moments.

Directed by Jon Favreau, which makes this a perfect transition between the family fun of Elf and sci-fi/superhero action of Iron Man, this is everything that you want from a family sci-fi movie. It's got a great concept, a wonderful mix of impressive practical FX work and impressive CGI, some nice lessons that are illustrated in an obvious, although non-irritating, way, and Kristen Stewart being cryogenically frozen for a few scenes (allowing viewers to make jokes about her being more lifelike and expressive than usual).

Hutcherson and Bobo both do well as the young brothers trying to survive the game. Stewart is, joking aside, just fine in her role, even if she's the least of the main characters onscreen, and Dax Shepard comes in at just the right time, playing a stranded astronaut rescued by the kids as part of the game. Even the father, a character moved out of the picture for the majority of the runtime, is played by Tim Robbins, making his few scenes all the better, thanks to him being Tim Robbins.

The script by David Koepp and John Kamps really helps to keep things ticking over nicely. Yes, this is a film in which some kids face up to one or two main issues, but it's not the kind of film to drag everything to a screeching halt while that happens. That's not to say that anything feels rushed. On the contrary, this is pitched perfectly towards the children and parents who make up the target audience demographic. The retro stylings of the sci-fi elements will certainly appeal to anyone who has fond memories of classics from the '50s and '60s, for example, while younger viewers will always enjoy the idea of a board game that leads to very real consequences.

Whether more people end up agreeing with me or not, this will always be the best movie about a dangerous board game causing real-life consequences as far as I'm concerned. I hope more people either check it out, or give it a rewatch at some point.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Zathura-Special-Josh-Hutcherson/dp/B000DBHX4M/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1409729884&sr=1-2&keywords=zathura

Idiocracy (2006)

Another comedy written (with a helping hand from Etan Cohen) and directed by Mike Judge, Idiocracy is another out and out winner that once again shows how Judge seems to easily and unnervingly get to the heart of what elements in our society are so soul-sapping and painful that laughing AT them is the only way to stay sane.

This time around he's looking at the dumbing down of our culture and the whole world. In fact, the downward spiral of the world's IQ is put forward with horribly believable rationale and Idiocracy scores major points by mixing the absurd and hilarious with the prescient and scarily believable.

Luke Wilson stars as Joe Bauers, a completely "average Joe". He's in the military, coasting along, and happy with his lot in life. Everything changes when he's chosen for an experiment that will see him frozen in hibernation for some time and then reanimated. His fellow test subject is Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute, and the two are nervous as the hibernation tanks close around them. 500 years later, after being forgotten about and left under rubbish and rubble, a freak accident releases the sleeping duo and they wander around to find themselves on a planet that can barely spell IQ. Joe is now the smartest man on Earth but that doesn't mean that he'll avoid getting himself in trouble.

Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph are great fun in the lead roles while Dax Shepard, Terry Crews, Sara Rue, Stephen Root and Thomas Haden Church are among the cast members having a ball acting dumber than a bag of hammers.

The script is very funny, very funny indeed - mixing the superdumb with the subversive and clever - and great scene follows great scene. However, the main premise keeps the movie down ever so slightly. Call me a naive optimist but I like to think that the human race wouldn't become quite THAT stupid, even if the evidence seems to pile up every day to try and prove me wrong. The movie is a farce, albeit a superb farce full of numerous, individual, laugh out loud moments.

Mike Judge is one of the best comedy directors in modern cinema. He's smart, very observant and, most importantly (of course), damn funny. If you haven't found that out for yourself yet then I urge you to check out any of his movies as soon as possible.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Idiocracy-DVD-Luke-Wilson/dp/B000N3T2CQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343571965&sr=8-1