Tag: Kick Gurry

Hooray! Another fifty reviews later, I am ready to introduce my next Milstone Review: number 1150 for my website!

Holy crap. If I thought 1050 was a shitty milestone, 1150 has to be way worse. But hey, fun reviews are fun.

Today I decided to look at Speed Racer, which I didn’t see when it came out six years ago due to all the hate I heard about it. I didn’t have the means or willpower to watch every movie six years ago, so I let the internet decide for me.

I also never really watched the Speed Racer cartoon growing up. I knew of the references, and by golly, I knew how to make fun of the anime style when it came up in conversations, but that is all I had going for me. So in a way, this is probably good, as I won’t have anything to compare it to.

I really only know one thing about the movie: COLOR!

This is the level of celebration I demand for hitting milestone 1150.

America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.

So it is pretty obvious that Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) would grow up wanting to race. Also because of his name. Also because of the family business. The dad Pops (John Goodman) runs a small auto shop to make race cars, and his older brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter) is a professional racer!

He also has a mom (Susan Sarandon) and a younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and the Chim Chim the monkey.

This is a clear example where nurture trumps nature.

The unfortunate thing is that Rex decided to leave home and join another company and not support his family anymore. And soon after, despite being one of the best, he started being a really dirty player, causing other players to get pushed off the tracks and maybe even…cheating! But then he died in a crash before charges could be pushed on him, bringing dishonor to the racer family.

Well, speed? Speed wants to win that honor. And boy howdy, can he fly. He almost beats his brother’s record on a local track, but holds off at the end to honor his brother. He knows he wasn’t a cheater. Now he is getting job offers, but he knows he wants to stay with his family and race on his own terms.

Where will you be when the Speed [Racer] kicks in?

Enter Mr. Royalton (Roger Allam)! Owner of a super large mega corporation, he has more money than there exists more or less, and he also likes to sponsor racers. His ideas are simple. Keep what works working, team chemistry, pit crews, whatever. He just wants to help out, help train and give lots of money.

Well, it turns out that Speed, after thinking about it, would rather stay with his family. He doesn’t want to hurt them like they were hurt before. He wants to do it the right way. On his own, with his Pops.

Mr. Royalton doesn’t like being turned down. Not by some punk asshat with the last name of Racer. The racing leagues in this world have been controlled by corporate interests for many decades now. Every race is fixed. Every race. Even that one. And that one. Speed doesn’t believe it, won’t believe it. Royalton tells Speed he will have his car crashed on the next race, and family sued for infringement. False claims, but bad news travels fast, so his families business will be in ruins.

They might have to eat the fatty with the monkey to get by.

Well shit, what is a Speed to do? Try to take down the mega-corporations? Sure!

Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann), head of the corporate crimes division. Racer Taejo Togokahn (Rain) has evidence to bring down Royalton, but needs help racing in a team event soon. He has enlisted the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) also unassigned, and they need a third. If they can help them win, they can get out of Royalton’s hold and he’d help put a stop to the shenanigans.

Speed decides to not tell his family about it either. Just his girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci), so she can be the entire pit crew and help them out with helicopter support.

Yeah. That’s the reason to bring her. Sure.

The multi nation race takes several days, so of course his family finds out and shows up for support. Which is great, because people are now getting sent to literally just kill him off the tracks, in his hotel room, elsewhere, they just want him dead. But now Speed has people to protect him! Hell, even Sparky (Kick Gurry) is there, the main pit crew guy who works for his dad, and the guy that has taken me this long to find a place to casually fit his mention in this review.

Needless to say, the good guys don’t get stabbed or shot, and the three win the race! Now they can take down the Royalton Corp!

Hah, just fucking kidding you there too. Taejo was just playing them too. Now that his corp won this big race, their stock is super high, and that is all they cared about. They didn’t have illegal information on Royalton. Suck it, Speed and X!

This of course pisses Speed off and he even takes it out on X who he thinks is his brother in disguise. Nope, just that guy from Lost. Shit.

“We’ve got to go back!…to the finish line! Because that’s how races work!”

Thankfully not everyone in the Togokahn family/corporation is a complete dick. Taejo’s sister Horuko (Nan Yu) steals the invitation to the Grand Prix from her brother and gives it to Speed. With it, can still enter the best of the best races. If he takes first, he will ruin Royalton financially and prove that they can beat the system where racing is supposedly fixed. It would be sweet if they could also some how prove that Royalton cheats. But let’s not get too crazy.

Somehow his family is able to make a new car from scratch in about 32 hours before the race, and Speed is then able to go and drive! Yay!

Well, lot of people come at him, he avoids a lot of them. Royalton cheats, he is able to break free from the cheat and also expose the cheat to the public at the same time.

Speed wins the race, and everyone goes home happy or to jail sad. Wooo, EAT IT CORPORATIONS!

But between all that plot was about five minutes straight of color and color on color.

Did Speed Racer GoGoGo? Maybe, in a way.

The CGI style was very hectic and it everything was constantly changing or talking. Characters flying across the screen, many transistions, and many many colors.

I am glad I watched it in Blu-Ray, but I wish there was a good 3D component as well to go with it. I feel like everything would have popped. It would have been like 135 minutes on LCD, I have been told.

A bit surprised by the complicatedness of the plot and the time they dedicate to setting up events in this film, given its PG nature. It seems like it would be very hard for kids to follow. Mostly because it was hard for myself to follow.

In terms of entertainment purposes, the biggest problem might be the large and complicated plot. It seems like the movie is trying to be two things, a big entertaining race spectacle that is colorful and full of wonder, and a corporate serious drama film. What I am left with is a long movie that goes to lengths to include both sides and I get a bit of a confusing mess. It isn’t that it is hard to keep up with, but in its already unique and eye popping style, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

Also better acting could have helped.

I don’t know if this is the movie Speed Racer fans deserved, but it is probably the film they needed right now. It is overall okay, but one I would rather watch 90 minutes of instead of 135 minutes.

But they did announce that Speed Racer would appear in Fast & Furious 7, so that should be fun shenanigan wise.

2 out of 4.

Live. Die. Repeat. That is the slogan of Edge of Tomorrow, which people were quickly to point out that it looks like Groundhog Day, but more sci-fi/action and a lot less Bill Murray.

The title is kind of strange, but way better than its original title of All You Need Is Kill, the title of the story that the film is based on. I mean. Just seriously, what the hell does that mean? The time traveling element allows Edge of Tomorrow to make some sense. But All You Need Is Kill? I can’t even begin to unawkwardize it.

Tomorrow? Tom, you might first have to worry about the edge of your face, first.

In Future Earth, Aliens have invaded, landing in the middle of Europe, and kind of just fucking up everything. Things are going bad. These “mimics”, as they seem to adapt to military strategy pretty well, are just destroying and taking out battalions, always knowing what is going to go down. Until we design awesome battle suits, and they seem to crush the mimics. Special Forces soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) is able to kill 100 mimics by herself in a battle, helping turn the tide of war. So now they are going to organize a massive attack from different flanks, thousands of soldiers in battle suits, to help turn the tide of war!

And Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is being asked to join them. Storm the beach with a media crew, to show the good tidings and have them give hope to the world. Cage isn’t a real soldier, he is just in media, doesn’t even know how to fight. So of course he refuses, but well, higher ups demanded it and now he found himself waking up a day before the invasion at an airforce base, with papers saying he is a private and a deserter. Oh, poor Major.

Needless to say, the invasion fails, and after getting covered in alien blood goop, the Major dies and wakes up…back at the airforce base! This can’t be! But you know this part of the plot. It appears the Major is now stuck in some sort of time loop causing him to relive this day over and over. That could drive a man mad. But maybe it can help them save the day?

Bill Paxton plays Master Sergeant Farrell Bartolome, Brendan Gleeson as General Brigham, and Noah Taylor as a alien biology scientist. Of course he also got soldier friends in his unit, but I don’t remember them individually enough to type out character names (Tony Way, Kick Gurry, Franz Drameh, Charlotte Riley, Jonas Armstrong, Dragomir Mrsic).

In a world of do-overs, there is rarely a need for emergency kits.

As an additional note about this movie, I got to see this one in IMAX 3D, my first time watching a film this way, and oh boy were the fight scenes something else. Spectacular, pretty, explosion heavy. So much going on. Without sounding cliche, I was often near the edge of my seat because it was so exciting to watch it all.

Exciting and amusing. They didn’t drown us in the same scene over and over, just a few minor ones to get the point. On his first repeat day, we didn’t have to see Cage freaking out the entire length of his first travel time. They knew how to keep it short when needed. When it was short, we often got blasted with different ways he died as he tried new things to make it further during the war. Sometimes it was hilarious, but when it was frustrating, they knew how to play that card as well.

So these are good first steps! Good action, good comedy, a nice sci-fi element. But how about the plot? That surprisingly was well done too. How the alien armies worked, the secret to taking them down, why Cage was stuck in a loop, all of it was given a nice rationale and well thought out to make it believable in that universe.

Literally, I don’t know how they could have made the movie better either. You get to see so much and it is a thrill ride, but it doesn’t feel like a 4 out of 4 film to me, which is sometimes all it takes to lower the rating I guess. A very exciting movie, despite what I went in thinking, and a nice notch to add to a list of recent well done sci-fi movies. I think it is going to bomb financially this weekend too, as audiences apparently don’t like Tom Cruise anymore, which is a shame, because it is strong showing still pretty early in this summer.

3 out of 4.