A good mixtape has well-defined arcs, with transition songs the true mark of quality. The well-constructed mixtape pays special attention to songs that demand repeated listens. Not simply because they’re catchy, but because they are elastic. Familiar songs with enough depth to recast themselves as first kisses and heartbreak alike. Mixtapes of notable quality are a durable good. Their manufactured heartiness notwithstanding, mixtapes endure because they are a handcrafted labor of love. Guardians of the Galaxy, the triumph of summer 2014, is one damn good mixtape.

Ugh, I hate being so gushy. And I’ll be damned if I don’t try and purge nostalgia at every turn, but Guardians of the Galaxy had me figured from the get go. A mixtape as a framing device? Imbued with profound emotional resonance? Featuring songs so far outside Marvel’s key demo kids won’t believe ‘Redbone’ and ‘10cc’ were even a thing? Knock me over with a 5-pack of 90 minute TDKs. Add the irrepressible Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, the mighty, never human colored Zoe Saldana as Gamora, and outer space hi-jinks…well, I’m sure I can manufacture some bias to give the picture a fair treatment. But if you wanna bail on the next few hundred words, my recommendation is unequivocal: go see it.

From a big picture standpoint, Guardians is a much-needed shot in the arm for Marvel Studios. Yes, Marvel is making money hand over fist, but we are careening towards an inevitable cape and cowl exhaustion. Guardians of the Galaxy is not a superhero picture. I wouldn't call it Sci-Fi either, though it is space-ish. For lack of a better descriptor, it’s fantasy. No matter what you need to call it, it’s unique enough—and good enough—to shatter the greying structure Marvel was beginning to erect around its properties.

This isn't to say Guardians avoids the anticipated Marvel/Hollywood nuts and bolts here. The first act is devoted to getting the band together. There is an object of awesome power in the balance, and its necessary add-on, a bad guy in the form of Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser. There’s action, comedy, pop culture references, and sexual tension. Yet, in defiance of all the well-worn familiarity, the film has savvy enough to excel beyond something routine.

The object of power is less a trope and more a notion. An implement of profound destruction and its invariable collision with ego’s fallibility. Our villain and his singular vision possess zealotry enough to cast a dark shadow.  In a rare turn, the band of misfits unwittingly brought together are swarthy enough to rekindle even our most repressed inner misfit.

Much to the film’s credit, Guardians’ cast is a tight assemblage of talent. When Vin Diesel’s one day of ADR produces Groot, the character who induces some serious choked-up hot-face, you know you’ve got a gem on your hands. Michael Rooker is Yondu, and his agent must be like, “Look, when you pay for Michael Rooker you get Michael effin’ Rooker.” And he’s awesome. You know, because he’s Michael Rooker. Dave Batista is a work in progress, but his WWE chops suit the appropriate rigidity of Drax the Destroyer.

And how much more praise can I throw at the ongoing ascendance of Chris Pratt? I’ll spare you those embarrassing adverbs, but he has been in the two most surprising, satisfying, and (soon) to be highest grossing films of 2014. (The other is Lego Movie, and don’t even get me started. My editor—who probably shouldn't let me write reviews anyway—will dread the day I beg to post, “Everything is Awesome: Interlocking Plastic Bricks, Monoculture, and the War against Exceptionalism.” (Editor's Note: Bring it on.)

A harp script is always a benefit, and James Gunn clearly helmed a production where cast and crew could do what they do best, but the music... Part character, part storyteller, the soundtrack is woven into the story with a deft, exciting touch. Maybe I’m simple, but I like when music in a movie comes from somewhere. And as Star-Lord’s mixtape plays out in layers throughout the film, these super sounds of the '70s evolve well beyond pop hits. The way songs we love score the montage we wish our lives could be, the soundtrack becomes its own gravity, the force anchoring everything in place.

Guardians of the Galaxy‘s story isn't profound. The characters exist within a certain comfort zone. Even the songs selected aren't the deepest cuts in the catalog. Although, “Moonage Daydream,” on a mixtape for an eight-year-old kid? Best gift ever. But none of the above need to be a sterling individual effort. Guardians of the Galaxy is the sum of its perfectly machined parts. Track by track, a persona larger than the singular pieces begins to emerge. An identity malleable enough to launch thrilling action pieces and tender enough to foster a slow dance, Guardians becomes a feeling. The feeling finds a way to cement together memory, experience, and if you’re willing, a bit of pure, unfettered joy. The feeling becomes so powerful, you’d believe it could defend the entire galaxy. Because a good mixtape isn't the songs, it’s the space between the songs.   


— Monte Monreal

You know what I want? I want an 18,000 word think piece on the culture of Planes: Fire and Rescue. In this universe there aren’t just planes, but cars and trains and various earth moving machines. Some appear to be the “humans” of their society. Others appear to be beasts of burden. Even lesser creatures are simple machines made of wood. Yet they’re all motor vehicles. I want to know about their physiology. I want to know about their evolution as there are allusions to the “ancients” of their race. Why did they build their infrastructure as though humans are operating them? Planes and cars can cohabitate? They’re the same species? Does oil make them…drunk? Who manufactures their parts? Who stops manufacturing certain parts? Is this some stupefying allegory for intelligent design? Who is the ghost in this elegant machine?

But I digress, this is about the movie Planes: Fire and Rescue and perhaps my meanderings indicate just how engaging this film really is. The makers of kid’s films generally sense how to make an overall pleasing product. Clichés, lackluster writing, stock characters, they’re all given a pass of sorts. This is true from the heights of Pixar down to the dregs of DreamWorks. The package is easier to digest. Not because an audience of children are unsophisticated, but because kids are still mostly feral animals. You have to socialize them in broad strokes. Within this generous latitude there are exceptional animated films (Lego Movie) and terrible ones (Rio 2). Planes: Fire and Rescue drops with a thud just below that desirable meaty middle.

To begin with the good, Planes deserves high accolades for the animation. Absolutely gob-smacking, drenched in rich detail, perfectly rendered for the 3D format, the visuals alone are worth the price of admission. Yes, the story is basic. Hero established, hero forced out of comfort zone, hero learns valuable lesson. In this case, our hero Dusty is displaced into Piston Peak National Park where he joins the titular fire and rescue crew. Battling wildfires and self-indulgent bureaucrats, can Dusty deliver when it matters most? I’ll let you draw your own foregone conclusion.

The main character, crop duster (why do they grow crops?) turned racer extraordinaire Dusty Crophopper, is voiced by Dane Cook. Cook, who’s hardly convincing with his own material, is completely tone-deaf executing someone else’s work. Without his demonstrative physical gestures, his voice is rendered near powerless. Ed Harris glowers right in line with his character Blade Ranger’s boilerplate design. Julie Bowen brings her easy vivacity to delightful Dusty devotee Lil’ Dipper. And John Michael Higgins brings his unmistakable energy to the aptly named park superintendent Cad.

Tedious in most facets of storytelling and characterization, the film finds other feisty ways to be subversive. In one very hip turn, a central characters is revealed to be a long since faded pop-culture reference, iconic in the ironic. There is an oblique nod to drinking games. There’s even a brilliantly psychotic line delivered by Lil’ Dipper near the end. My belly laugh was nothing short of a guffaw. The rest of the jokes are terrible car puns and sight gags. Oh, and jokes about tootin’ because…kids. Planes: Fire and Rescue is a classic example of a film’s handlers playing it safe in all the wrong ways. They played it so safe they deferred to the false assumption kids are dumb. Thank goodness for teams of punch-up writers and their incendiary underground transmissions.

All told, there are some passable morals on the well paved road from beginning to end. A few of the set pieces are thrilling, the animation is top of the mark, and any movie offering up a sequence worthy of, “Thunderstruck,” is okay in my book. But alas, Planes’ leaves a lot on the table.

Distilled into a moment, the film’s wasted potential manifests in a quick, forgettable joke. At the grand opening of the villainous Cad’s precious lodge, guests are invited to take a picture with Mr. Park Superintendent himself. As the guests saunter up to a full color Cad smiling wide, they grin, and “Cad” tips over. Their coveted photo-op is with nothing more than a cardboard mockup of the real thing. Planes: Fire and Rescue is an expertly fashioned cardboard cutout of a superior animated film, and it falls flat just as easy. Ultimately the film will be enjoyed for what it is. Enough to insert itself into a new generation’s pop-culture incubator, its eventual postmortem by the children who lived it will reveal a film as manufactured as its planes, good, bad, absurd, and sublime.

Maybe then I’ll get my think piece.

— Monte Monreal

Let’s not belabor the point here, Tammy is beastly, unfunny, and misguided. Above all else, Tammy is the champion of the greatest lesson adhered to by the willfully ignorant who exert influence over all aspects of our culture. That critical lesson? Never learn anything.

Tammy, a vehicle with Melissa McCarthy’s finger prints all over it as writer, star, and wife of the director, begins as dull as it finishes. Tammy is booted from her job, discovers her husband is having an affair, and she’s forced to move back in with her mother. From all outward appearances, Tammy should be the sympathetic figure at the heart of this maelstrom. Instead, she’s simply a dolt who dictated these circumstances, but feels these consequences are unfair. Despite her inability to accomplish anything for herself, life owes her something.

From here, the story unfolds like poorly cut paper dolls replicating meaningless scene after meaningless scene, each as two dimensional as the last. Tammy and her hard drinking grandma—played by the woefully misused Susan Sarandon—go on a road trip to Niagara Falls. And just when it seems like the brain trust behind Tammy couldn't buy a less imaginative needle point kit from the Hobby Lobby stable, they add in a man. There are few scenes more painful than the interactions between Mark Duplass (The League, Creep) and Melissa McCarthy. Their dialogue is stilted and any growing warmth between the two is merely a byproduct of said warmth being the next plot point.

There is no arc more painful than the seemingly good woman who is just, heck, so in love with her special man child. When you switch the gender roles, it’s just as maddening. Herein lies the deeper problems of Tammy. Where it’d be easy to cite the clunky pacing, the overly long sequences, the tone deaf slapstick comedy, the film’s biggest problem is it has no sense of itself. It wants to be some kind of light satire, but it doesn't have the guts to even be an accidental satire a la white trash epic Joe Dirt. The film wants to feature these despicable misfits just trying to find their way, but is insistent these characters remain redeemable. Yes, I’m saying the movie would have been better if the characters were shittier.

There are two scenes which really define Tammy, one I’ll recount here, the other I’ll save for my big finish when I’m really stomping on that soapbox as the ivory tower wobbles beneath me. At some point Tammy and her grandmother have to seek refuge with Kathy Bates, Grandma’s cousin. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh—like two road flares thrown into a black hole—are a well-to-do lesbian couple gearing up for their annual Fourth of July soiree. After a night of drinking, boob flashing, and giving a jet ski a Viking funeral (so much cringe), this pot of crap stew finally boils over. What happens? It doesn't matter, but alcohol causes the problem until Tammy is given a verbal kick in the ass from Bates…over beers of course.

Around here, after a nonsensical jump through time, the creators begin to mercifully draw the affair to a close. You could probably guess what happens as you've seen this flip-book of narrative stick figures thousands of times before, but Tammy gets her redemption. How? The film glosses over that, because salvation comes not from hard work and meaningful change, but getting what we want.

All of this, this everything Tammy, is distilled into a single moment. Near the beginning of the film, Tammy and her grandmother make a roadside stop and talk about, of all things, the Allman Brothers. Sitting on a stretch of two lane American asphalt, trying to pick out the harmonies in, “Midnight Rider,” the camera eye moves behind them and reveals they are sitting at the foot of grotesque wood carved statue, a bald eagle enshrined by an American flag. Like a moment drawn direct from the idealized America handbook, the sunlight dapples their faces, the outlaw lyrics warble from their throats, and they rest comfortably in the shadow of the eagle, erect and unbroken. It should be easy to know, but all I could think was, “I’m not sure if they are trying to get me to love America, or hate it.”

Tammy is not a love song to the socioeconomic downtrodden, poorly educated, unhealthy Middle American, it is a grim outgrowth of a culture desperate for this sort of icon. Relatable, misinformed on everything from politics to gender, divorced from the reality of actions and consequences, our hero remains swaddled in the protective blanket of ‘happy ending’. Not in any way earned, but simply because she’s entitled to it. 

— Monte Monreal