Tag: Janina Gavankar

Cinema Dispatch: Borderlands

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Borderlands and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate Films

Directed by Eli Roth

Video game adaptations have certainly gotten better in the last few years, but there’s still a wide gulf between genuinely good movies and good-for-a-video-game-adaptation. I had mixed feelings about this when the trailer dropped as it looked like a Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off which worked out well for Dungeons & Dragons, but it’s also directed by the guy whose made some of my least favorite movies of all time. Does Eli Roth finally prove himself to be a competent mainstream director with a fun adaptation of a beloved game franchise, or will he be just another director who couldn’t crack the code on turning games into movies? Let’s find out!!

Welcome to Pandora! The planet that is to late-stage Capitalism what Rapture was to Objectivism! Corporations have stripped the planet bare, everyone is a jerk only out for themselves, and the masses are placated with a false promise of ascending up the social ladder by achieving the Pandorian Dream; in this case, finding a secret vault full of ancient alien treasure. Bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchet) is far too savvy to buy into that nonsense, but she makes her way to the planet anyway in order to rescue Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of an industrialist (Edgar Ramirez) who was taken to Pandora by Roland (Kevin Hart). When she arrives, she finds the foul-mouthed teen bumming around with Roland and Krieg; the latter being a jacked dude with a mask (Florian Munteanu) who’s surprisingly good with kids. Let’s just say that the rescue goes a bit sideways for Lilith, a situation not helped by a bunch of space cops trying to grab her bounty out from under her, and she ends up stuck with this group of misfits who are there to find the vault and prevent Tina’s dad from using it for evil! With the help of a local scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis) who knows more about the vault than anyone else on the planet as well as a robot named Claptrap (Jack Black) who follows Lilith around and seems to be programmed for maximum annoyance, will they be able to find the one thing on the planet that the wealthy can’t get their hands on and use it to make things better for the people of Pandora? Why did Roland need to take Tina in order to do this, and is does Lilith have a connection to all this that she has yet to understand? Perhaps they can also solve the mystery of how her hair is able to look like that without using super glue and spray paint.

“Seriously, do you use a diffuser when blow-drying it, or is all in the hair gel?”     “Can we talk about something else, please?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Blindspotting

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Blindspotting and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate

Directed by Carlos López Estrada

I get the feeling that as long as THE SCROTUS is in power along with his horrible lackeys doing his bidding, we’ll be getting more movies like this that take social issues head on; not that these stories weren’t worth telling in the first place, rather that studios seem to have realized that capitalizing on the political zeitgeist is potentially profitable and may even earn some prestige awards as well.  Capitalism in effect I guess, and while there’s no real excuse for films like this NOT being prominent despite the problems it deals with being real and prescient for so many people, I guess it’s better that we’re NOW getting these movies in much wider releases than not getting them at all.  This by the way can easily swing in the other direction if we don’t turn things around soon and the powers that be try that much harder to silence dissent (#RehireJamesGun), so don’t give me that SUFFERING AND SOCIETAL ILLS MAKES GOOD ART crap; especially when said is often more accessible to those who aren’t suffering.  Anyway, with this movie and Sorry to Bother You coming out so close to each other, will this turn out to be the best time of the year to see thoughtful and brilliant movies about the world around us, or will this turn out to be a far less thoughtful and engaging alternative?  Let’s find out!!

Colin (Daveed Diggs) is just three days away from probation retirement and managed to get through most of it without much complication.  Sure his friend Miles (Rafael Casal) likes to indulge every once in a while with illegal gun sales and fist fights every once in a while, but Colin has managed to keep him from getting TOO out of hand and both of them out of trouble.  Now that we’re down to the wire though, things are starting to get tense with Colin having to figure out where he stands with the people in his life as soon as he’s free, and how much Oakland is changing due to gentrification and an influx of white hipsters; something that’s been setting Miles more and more off as time has gone by.  To top things off, while driving back to the halfway house to make curfew, Colin sees a cop (Ethan Embry) shoot an unarmed black man (Travis Parker) in the back.  Naturally the cop is hailed as a hero in the media, but Colin knows the truth and the world seems to have shifted just a little bit after such a blatant act of unwarranted violence has struck his community.  Can Colin make it to the end of his probation without rocking the boat, or will he be forced to do something and risk his freedom in the process?  Will Miles learn to live with a changing world; especially since he has a wife and kid (Jasmine Cephas Jones and Ziggy Baitinger) who depend on him?  You’d think that if you’re three days away from ANYTHING ending that you’d just lock yourself in your room until it’s over; just to be on the safe side!

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“If anyone asks, just say they’re mine.”     “Even if we try that, they’re STILL gonna shoot us you know!”

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