Capsule Summary (minimal spoilers):

Rampage is yet another video game turned into a movie. Human beings are mutated into giant monsters – an Ape, a Lizard, and a Wolf, to be precise. The object of the game was to smash all the buildings and stay alive while the humans attack. Pretty straightforward, no?

Well, this movie has a premise, and if you accept how ludicrous it all is, actually works. Animals mutate into giant monsters, and go on a rampage. The storyline is pretty linear, it made some sense, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. That balance is hard to get right, but in this case, they have. This movie has a lot of special effects ,and they don’t overwhelm you.

This is a fun movie, and I recommend it, if you go to it with no expectations.

Note that it’s PG-13, and there’s a lot of human-monster violence, and vice versa, as well as some animal-animal violence. Some is graphic and over the top, so if that makes you uncomfortable, you should skip this film.

Main Review:

Someone is doing experiments up on the International Space Station. The movie starts after things have gone wrong, and the astronauts are trying to escape. Naturally, it gets worse before it gets better, and of course, the cause gets loose, because otherwise, you wouldn’t have a movie, would you?

There’s a chemical agent that makes its way back to Earth. It falls to different locations, including a zoo in San Diego, into the gorilla section. A rare albino gorilla named George is exposed, and starts to experience unusual growth. His main caretaker, Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) is alarmed, but very concerned for George’s welfare. In fact, they communicate with sign language, but George is losing control of his behavior. He busts out of the zoo, and that’s when the fun begins.

In typical fashion, the government gets involved, in the form of an unnamed agency, led by agent Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). He and his people ignore Davis and Dr Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris), an employee of Energyne, a company who does genetic research. Fortunately, this doesn’t turn into a totally ham-fisted portrayal of an ignorant government agency, so that was a bit refreshing.

The main villain in the film is Energyne.  It’s run by siblings Clear and Brett Wyden (Malin Akerman and Jake Lacey), who are definitely in it for the Potential profit, no matter how they get there. Roger Ebert used to say how a movie like this is only as good as the villain is bad, but fortunately, the spectacle of this situation is enough to counter the weaknesses of them. Malin Akerman does a passable job here.

Overall, the CGI does not overwhelm the movie. It fits and enhances the experience. George is rendered reasonably well, and his “realistic” movement was accomplished by motion capture. The destruction caused by the monsters is not as frenetic as the Transformers movies, where the camera’s always in motion and disorienting. They’ve found a good balance in this movie.

This film would’ve been a reasonable summer blockbuster, if it had been released then. It’s one where you can turn your brain off, and forget your troubles for an hour and 47 minutes. I didn’t see it in 3D, and I could see where the 3D moments were interjected, but you can safely see this in 2D and still have fun.

Capsule Summary (minimal spoilers):

Ready Player One is a movie based on the book by Ernest Cline.  It takes place in the near future, where overcrowding and poverty have a stranglehold on much of the population. Years ago, a brilliant team of programmers created The OASIS, a virtual world that’s mostly video game-based, but has aspects of online social communities, virtual worlds, like Second Life,  as well as many other possibilities.  The creator of the OASIS passed away a few years ago, and set a challenge to everyone who enters OASIS – be the first to solve three challenges inside, and the you win ownership of the OASIS.

The film focuses on Percival, aka Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a regular young guy who’s trying to solve the challenges. With his friends, they’re all after the same thing, while a company called IOI is using thousands of its employees to do the same thing.  The chase is on!

This movie is full of hundreds of references to the ’80s and ’90s. It’s visually exciting, and fun to watch. It is directed by Steven Spielberg, so you know it’s already one level above your standard movie. You will have to watch the movie multiple times to spot all the references, some of which are a bit obscure.

It’s a very entertaining film with a relatively unknown cast, and gives it a fresh appeal that is rare to find these days. Highly recommended!

Main Review:

Percival has studied up everything there is to know about OASIS’ creator, Halliday (Mark Rylance). He believes it’ll give him an edge up on the competition, which isn’t faring much better. Halliday’s co-creator Morrow (Simon Pegg) isn’t really involved in the OASIS much, but is still around. It’s been 5 years since Halliday offered up the challenges, and not a single person’s figured out how to win the first one of the three. He’s teamed up with Aech (name redacted), so they can work on them together. Neither has done the standard thing of joining a clan to pool resources. Along comes Art3mis (name redacted), another loner who has done online tutorials and is a pretty decent player herself. She is a strong enough competitor to spur Percival and Aech to work harder at a solution. Meanwhile, the IOI Coporation is trying to gain control of it all, because, after it all, this is a company worth $500 Billion!

It’s amazing how many references just pass by. Halliday’s coffin was a photon torpedo casing that they used to bury Spock in The Wrath of Khan. Art3mis rides the motorcycle from the anime film Akira.  You see plenty of things from science fiction movies and characters from video games. They litter the landscape. Someone spent a lot of time and got a lot of permission to reproduce these things in the film.

I must confess that I haven’t read the book, but I did get a copy and held off until the film was released. I’m sure purists  will not be entirely happy with what they see on screen, and I can definitely see things skipped in the storyline to reduce it to fit the 2 hour, 20 minute runtime of the film. Let’s just say that by itself, the story makes a lot of sense if you know video games, but it’s not entirely necessary to know that to enjoy the film.

I wholeheartedly recommend this film, if it’s the sort of thing you would enjoy, I suggest seeing it in the theaters, because there is so much imagery that you really need to see it big.