Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Year: 2014
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy/Sci-Fi Action
Directed: Jonathan Liebesman
Stars: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Tony Shalhoub, Whoopi Goldberg
Production: Paramount Pictures

I wish I was a fly on the wall the day Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was conceptualized. Better yet I wish I was there when it was pitched as a comic-book and cartoon franchise. Despite being completely absurd, the franchise as a whole has some serious legs chugging along through multiple re-imaginings and mediums. Yet this reincarnation of the boyhood staple, helmed by Jon Leibesman and produced by king of panem et circenses Michael Bay is just listless, characterless and crude. Bay’s trick with Transformers (2007-Present) has been baiting its audience for years in the hopes that with each inferior sequel maybe one day they’ll be one that brings it back to the heights of the first. But with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles there’s no such bait.

Welcome back mindless T&A

April O’Neil (Megan Fox) is a tough and resourceful news report…no scratch that, she’s just a news reporter who stumbles onto a plot by the infamous crime syndicate the Footmen. Before she can get the scoop on their plan, a clandestine group of assassins appear out the night and foil the Footmen’s plot, whatever that initially was. Now April is on the hunt for the mystery men in the night with the help of her trusty…no tenacious…smarmy…that’s the word, smarmy cameraman Vernon (Will Arnett).

I suppose there’s not much point in the mystery; the assassins are in fact the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There’s Donatello the smart one (you can tell because he wears glasses), Rafael the hot head (you can tell cause he’s always pissed), Michelangelo the funny one (you can tell cause he cracks wise), and Leonardo the leader (you can tell because he’s all leader-like). Not only that but the turtles and their master Splinter have a very special and unlikely connection to April, a connection that may lead to their ruination.

Not that any of this matters since the turtles, their history, their preoccupation with the Footmen, their shadowy leader Shredder and Shredder’s plan to create destruction and mayhem are all prerequisites that are seemly tossed in like yesterday’s late homework. No this movie isn't about character development and plotting; it’s about explosions, car chases, fistfights and lots, and lots of shaky-cam. Through Megan Fox’s at times questionable choices, we as the audience tour through set piece after set piece with everything moving too fast to be recognizable. It’s like being drunk at a carnival rushing through the rides five minutes before closing time; its jarring, its dizzying and nothing sticks other than half-ingested popcorn to the ground.

This just isn't gonna end well...

Jonathan Liebesman wishes he had Michael Bay’s visual flair which might have actually been the perfect for TMNT (I seriously mean that without any sense of sarcasm). Alas instead of Bay’s telephoto lens pans, his optical zooms and his grand-scale explosions, we’re faced with Liebesman’s shaky-cam which fit in Battle: Los Angeles (2011) but not here, no not here. Seriously is this guy the Herod of tripods? Does he walk around studios and decapitates them all until one there finally appears a special tripod and absolves him from the sin of deflating a movie franchise?

Little known fact: JC actually a tripod

I guess this movie was popular enough in the Cineplexes to warrant a sequel which in spite of this mess, I’m rooting for. But unless the creators can give there actors and amphibians more than one broadly rendered trait, beef up the story to meet the action and actually show said action in an entertaining way I’m afraid we’re going to have TMNT 2: Secret of the Ooff!

Guys...this has been done before

Final Grade: F

The Zero Theorem

Year: 2013
Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy/Sci-Fi Fantasy
Directed: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Chritoph Waltz, Melanie Thierry, David Thewlis, Lucas Hedges, Matt Damonm Tilda Swinton
Production: Voltage Pictures


Depending on whom you ask there are two types of films coming out of the independent film movement of today. There are the character pieces which are usually small budgeted and encompassing a wide range of raw human emotion. There are some which are absolutely stellar like Frances Ha (2013), Palo Alto (2014) and The Skeleton Twins (2014). But while these chamber pieces are interesting and often poignant they do have the tendency to be vanity projects for the Hollywood elite.

Then again, his visions have always been outlandish.

The Zero Theorem (2014) however belongs to a later category; one which includes such heady fair as The Tree of Life (2011), Cloud Atlas (2012) and The Fountain (2006). It’s a film which tries to encompass complex intellectual concepts like the meaning of life, theological precepts and theoretical physics. Director Terry Gilliam who has never shied away from such big ideas since being a member of Monty Python bites off quite a lot and largely succeeds in having the audience swallow his outlandish vision.

Christoph Waltz plays a much more severe version of Sam (Jonathan Pryce) from Brazil (1985) as Qohen Leth (spelled “Q” no “U” “OHEN”). So intent is he to understand the purpose of his life that he has waited by his phone for years waiting for a voice he once heard to tell him the answer he would have heard had he not dropped the receiver. When not waiting he shuffles off to work at an omnipotent and oppressive corporation as a “figure”-cruncher and has tried repeatedly to arrange to work at home claiming disability. Finally after weeks of pleading, he gets his wish granted directly from the Ariel-like Management (Matt Damon) on the condition that he works on a hush-hush project called the Zero Theorem.

One of the major themes embedded in the story is a philosophical one; what is real, what is make-believe and does it matter? While Qohen toils on what appears to be a giant iphone with the most complicated game of Jenga on it ever, he’s seduced by a nymph named Bainsley (Melanie Thierry). Qohen initially has no interest in human contact yet through Bainsley’s prodding he connects on an intimate level via virtual reality suit. The Utopia they program in cyberspace becomes his one vestige from the Theorem that has become his obsession and the company that has become his slave-driver. Just like in Brazil, the romance becomes the prime motivator to the main character and ultimately brings him out of his pensive, near-solitary state.

Paradoxes abound in Zero Theorem starting with the fact that Qohen waits for a phone call that may never come to give him meaning. The irony is that he’s so afraid to miss the fabled ring that his life has become a meaningless purgatory situated in the decaying edifice of a hollowed out monastery. To make matters worse, Management has set him out to prove mathematically through the Zero Theorem *spoiler alert* that life itself is meaningless. Then there’s the parlance trick of having Qohen refer to himself as “we” instead of “I” which not only gives a nod to Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” but creates yet another paradox.

Of course Zero Theorem cannot be a Terry Gilliam film without his trademark visual pageantry and bug-eyed, cartoon-like cinematography. The future world surrounding Qohen, Bainsley and the rest of the cast is brightly colored if plastic and fake. Ads pop out of everything shilling time shares and sharing the Book of Batman while every man, woman and machine is on the move. Instead of a future where everything with a computer chip is pocket-sized, the world has become an amalgam of hulking apparatuses, wires and liquid vials. The only solace from such bedlam is in dreams which if you’re Qohen is no solace at all.

All hail St. Terry!

Bent on pondering the big theological questions and clocking in at 107 minutes, Zero Theorem is clearly not for everyone. Yet those who have already seen Gilliam’s work and/or those who have seriously considered the big picture will be rewarded by a film so simultaneously meditative and brassy. Instead of a movie, Terry Gilliam has provided a homily; a life-altering experience that may just shake you to your core. Failing that, it’s still a cool movie to gawk at.

Final Grade: A-