Spectral (2016) Movie Review

Hi all, last nights movie was a Netflix exclusive called Spectral.  This is a movie set an undefined amount of time into the future in what is left of a war-torn European city.  The only clue was it is sometime after world war 3.  An elite special ops team is dealing with a new enemy - one that can't be seen by the naked eye.  If you like war films, thriller films, supernatural films or edge of your seat films you will like this movie.

Let's dive in with the story.  Overall the premise of the movie is quite interesting.  We go most of the movie not knowing what this new enemy is and trying to find a way to see it and kill it.  Soldiers and civilians are dying left and right and we know nothing about this new enemy.  The elite special ops team joins up with an engineer to develop how to see and kill this new enemy.  For the most part the story flows relatively smoothly and makes pretty good sense.  There were a few times that things got extremely technical and it seemed they played pretty loose with the interpretations.  One was talking about a state of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate.  I did some research on this and while they did a good job explaining what it really is, and they had reasoning for what the did with it, it really seemed to be a stretch based upon the articles I read.  Next was near the end the engineer is making advanced weaponry in a safe house made from random parts found.  He ends up making enough for roughly 20 soldiers out of junk found in the safe house and random military cases.  This was probably the most far fetched part of the movie in my mind.  Story ends up with 1/2 a star due to these few issues.




Directing is next.  With a Netflix exclusive film and a director I have never heard of I was not sure what to expect.  Overall I thought he did a pretty good job.  There were some fantastic scenes that utilized slow motion and slow audio to create hyper-realistic situations.  The sets were fantastic, the costumes were really cool and the war action seemed on par with major motion picture war films.  The vehicles and weapons were futuristic, but not unbelievable and they had a logical explanation for pretty much everything in the film.  The only tick against directing that I came up with was as we neared the end of the film the enemy that is not able to be seen by the naked eye is visible in quite a few scenes where I don't feel they should have been so visible.  This leads me to give 1/2 a star for directing as well.

Next up is casting and acting.  On the casting side of it there really weren't any big names in the film.  The biggest name I think most people would recognize is Bruce Greenwood.  Quite a few movies are made better by having recognizable people in them, but in this case I would say it didn't really hurt the final product at all.  Acting was quite good.  I think we have to give some credit back to the last category of directing, but the whole acting cast did a very solid job.  War scenes were realistic, reactions to different stimuli seemed authentic, interactions felt real, fatigue seemed genuine and it all results in an enjoyable movie.  Casting and acting gets a star.




Editing is next, and I wasn't sure whether to blame the tick against directing for the visibility of the invisible enemy against it or here under editing.  I chose directing because that seems like it was a choice of flow to have them visible by the director.  I do think it makes sense what he chose to do in order for the movie to be more understandable, but it violated the rule of the enemy being invisible to the human eye.  Anyway, back to editing.  The use of slow motion, the fantastic sets and the visuals and movements of the invisible enemy were all fantastic. I was very surprised for a Netflix exclusive with a director I am not familiar with.  Editing gets a star.




Last up we have enjoyability.  Like normal you can infer from my review thus far that this move is really fun to watch.  If you go in without the critics eye the movie flows very well and is very enjoyable.  I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes war films, scy-fi films, supernatural films, action, suspense...and so on.  It really should be a likeable film by most viewers.  Enjoyability gets a star as well.




Here we are at the end of another review.  Netflix's Spectral receives a 4 star review from me, and if you are a Netflix member you should check it out!  Ciao for now and see you for the next review!

Jungle Book (2016) Movie Review

This afternoon's movie was Disney's new real action remake of the Jungle Book.  Such a beloved classic, we were unsure what to expect as we went in.  Quite a few cartoons or animated films have been redone in real action lately and some are quite good so we were going in with high hopes.

A review on my rating system; each star has a unique category to fill.  Story and writing is the first star, directing the second, casting and acting the third, editing the fourth and pure enjoyability the fifth and final star available.  Keep in mind these can be half stars in each category.


So lets get the ball rolling with story and writing.  While this is based upon a book and this has been put into film version quite a few times in the past, there is room for new interpretation with each iteration.  This time around being real action had limitations and advantages I feel.  Overall the story line was fairly true to the original animated film, but there were a lot of small differences along the way.  Most of the characters Mowgli visits in previous versions were included in this film.  There were a few things I didn't like fully but story gets a star.

Directing this time is Jon Favreau, whom most of you should know him from Marvel's Iron Man and Avengers series.  Fun fact, he is also lined up for a real action Lion King, and a sequel to this film.  I think Jon's experience thus far really played in good with the Jungle Book, but I was surprised to see him as the director.  Pleasantly surprised.  Jon did a great job and thus we have another full star.

Casting and Acting; this is one of those times I look to see if I could imagine any other person playing a certain role.  If the answer is 'no' then we get a full star almost by default.  In this case while a majority of the casting was done very well I did have a few I was not in love with.  Bill Murray as Baloo was damn near perfect, but how can you watch the Jungle Book and not think of John Goodman?  I was not able to say Christopher Walken as King Louie was the only choice.  Did he do well?  Yes, he did just fine.  Scarlett Johansson as Kaa was a real surprise.  Kaa was only in one scene, despite more than that being filmed.  Perhaps if she would have been in more scenes we would have been able to get more used to a female Kaa, but this stray from the original was too much for me to accept without mentioning.

Continuing with casting and acting I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to pick out the names of most of the actors quite quickly.  I will leave the last few names out to see if you can pick them up as well.  I was also extremely happy with the real acting mixing with the CGI placement.  I did not notice any glaring errors.  Casting and acting gets half a star.


Editing and post production comes up next, and in a film like this it can easily make the entire movie unwatchable.  In Jungle Book's case the film version of the animals was surreal.  The only way you can really tell the animals are not real and really acting in the film is to watch the mouths.  It looks odd because of course animals don't talk.  That being said it was not bad at all, they did a fantastic job even with the mouths.  I can not think of a movie off the top of my head that the animal CGI was this fantastic.  Oh yes, there are lots of movies with great robot and alien CGI but I'm talking jungle animals here.  Editing and post production gets another full star.  Fun fact, the budget for this film was 175 MILLION dollars and you can see where it went.  A big name cast and fantastic editing.  The film recouped over 100 million on opening weekend alone.



Last but not least is enjoyability.  As you can probably guess this film is pretty fun to watch.  The CGI, the acting and casting, the directing and the story all come together very nicely.  My quarrel with this last category is the little differences thrown in from the original.  Some of them were enjoyable, but some of them really did not hit me.  Also, just personal preference, I did not like Christopher Walken in this role.  Enjoyability gets half a star, and this was the hardest of the 5 categories to rate.


Overall is this movie worth it?  YES!  I do like the trend of real motion films that is coming out lately, and this is a very good addition to that category.  You defiantly should watch this film.  The Jungle Book (2016) comes in at a very solid 4 star rating.