Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Movies

It Comes At Night (2017) a (mildly) belated review

The commercial ends and Alex Trebek smiles to the cameras.  We’re watching the latest episode of Jeopardy.

Alex: E. R. Torre, you’re in a bit of a hole with negative $1,398,032, but you’ve got a little better than five minutes to make it all up. (Offers the camera a “yeah, right” smile and rolls his eyes)  So, what category would you like to start your (suppresses a chuckle) comeback?

E. R. Torre: Let’s take Films That Make You Want To Slit Your Wrists for $200.

Alex: All right, let’s see what–

E. R. Torre: Oh, and Alex?

Alex: (sighs) Yes Mr. Torre?

E. R. Torre: The comeback has officially begun, baby!!!

I recall when the (unfortunately) named It Comes At Night (2017) er… came out.  The critics were ecstatic about it, calling it a dark, nightmarish vision.  Over at Rottentomatoes.com, the film earned an impressive 89% positive among the critics.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

But here’s the thing: While the critics loved the film, audiences weren’t quite as intrigued.

In fact, over at that very same Rottentomatoes.com subsection devoted to this movie, you’ll find that audiences gave it a far less positive approval rating of only 44%.

Ladies and gents, I’m siding with audiences on this one.

It Comes At Night is a post-apocalyptic thriller in the vein of recent zombie features/TV shows except that instead of zombies the very small cast in what I imagine was a very low budget film fights to survive against a disease that has decimated humanity.

When our adventure starts, we’re introduced to a small family consisting of Paul (Joel Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and Sarah’s infected father (David Pendleton).

Father is, for all intents and purposes, gone.  The infection has taken him and he looks like something from a proper horror film.  His eyes are black orbs and blood seeps out of his mouth.  The danger from the infected, we find, lies in the fact that they are contagious rather than a physical threat.  Both Sarah and Paul deal with him while protected by gas masks.  Sarah gives the man some last words before they take him outside, put a bullet in his head, and burn his body.

As you can see, the fun has just begun!

We find these now three survivalists have a very tight regimen for dealing with the dangers of this post-apocalyptic world.  They’ve barricaded their home and have one entrance/exit.

In through that exit comes, one night (it does come at night!), Will (Christopher Abbott).  He’s quickly disarmed, beaten, dragged out of the house, and tied to a tree.  We learn that if a person is infected, they’ll show signs of said infection within 24 hours.  When Will makes it through that time period, Paul talks to him, roughly, and wants to know what his deal is.

Will states he has a wife and child and broke into the house thinking it was empty and while looking for supplies… specifically water.  Though the film doesn’t come right out and state it, one gets the impression that the infection is in the water as Paul and his family are quite diligent in filtering it.

Anyway, Will and Paul make a tenuous peace and head out.  They eventually get Will’s wife (Riley Keough) and child and the two families try to make a go of it before tragedy eventually overtakes them.

I won’t give away everything -though believe it or not these plot developments, meager though they are, have just given you roughly 1/2 of the film- but suffice it to say things don’t end well for the entire group.

The movie mostly follows the sometimes distorted visions of Travis, Paul’s 17 year old son, who is having a tough time dealing with the deaths and horrors of the apocalypse.  He isn’t helped by the fact that his parents try to shield him from these horrors and that only serves to augment them in his mind.

As one may have implied from what I noted above, It Comes At Night, unfortunately, has too little plot and too long a runtime, in my humble opinion.  Had this been a one hour episode of, say, a show like The Walking Dead it might have worked out better as my patience was severely tried as the production dragged along.

When we do eventually reach the film’s end/resolution, I felt there were also too many things up in the air.  I don’t mind a film that leaves a lot of mystery behind, but this one’s mysteries aren’t all that earth shattering and it didn’t feel like a mystery was needed.

Who was ultimately responsible for what happened?  We don’t know.  Yet instead of appreciating the mystery, I found I didn’t care all that much.  Who was infected, who wasn’t?  Again, it didn’t matter all that much.

When so little matters, one can’t help but feel the film has failed in its mission.

The bottom line is that I’ve seen films like this before and while It Comes At Night is stylish and well directed and well acted, works like it –better works, it must be said- are out there and are worth pursuing before giving this movie a try.

Alas, a pass for me.

Movies

Twilight (1998) a (belated) review

To begin, this review concerns the 1998 noir/detective Twilight film which features Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, James Gardner, and (in an early role) Reese Witherspoon.  Here’s the movie’s trailer:

Watching this trailer for the first time since seeing the film yesterday, I’m struck by a couple of things presented in it that didn’t make it to the film itself.  For example, there is a quick shot of what looks like someone firing a gun with a silencer.  Not in the film at all (either that or I’m suffering from some startling memory loss) but I think I know where that scene might have gone, and it involves someone (MILD SPOILERS) Newman’s character visits early on in the movie and finds was shot.

The second thing in the trailer that didn’t appear in the film is what appears to be a funeral.  I think I know what that was about… Paul Newman’s character at one point tells another character that his life fell apart when he lost his daughter (this is not a terribly big spoiler as its more background information regarding his character and doesn’t figure much into the story proper) and that led him to lose his wife and become a drunk, which he’s now cleaned up from.  Either that or the funeral involves another character and may have been part of the film’s ending… but I’ll not give this one away.

I only point these two things out because it indicates to me the film was crafted in the editing stage and, obviously, extraneous material was trimmed back… thought at times this led to choppiness in the story presented.  For example, in the trailer you see one scene where Newman and Hackman’s character are talking by the pool.  This scene, which does appear in the film itself, has Mr. Newman with a white towel around him and appears suddenly in the movie without much explanation as to why these two just happen to suddenly be at the pool and talking about things.

Odd stuff.

But let’s back up a moment and address the film itself.

I first heard about Twilight years ago, likely when it was released in 1998.  Though I didn’t see it then, a relative of mine went to see it and we talked about it and, for whatever reason, I recalled the conversation.  She said the film was good but that Mr. Newman looked so old in the role… whenever there were fisticuffs, she feared he’d break his hip.

That image remained with me as did my curiosity to see the film. It came and went in theaters and, truth be told, is mostly forgotten today and yet…

I’ve noted before I’m a fan of Paul Newman’s 1966 film Harper (I reviewed it here) which featured Mr. Newman’s playing private detective Lew Harper.  This movie, which many consider a great updating of the then previous generation’s detective novels by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, was itself based on the excellent Lew Archer novels by Ross MacDonald.  In 1975 Mr. Newman returned to the role of Lew Harper in the belated sequel to that movie entitled The Drowning Pool (here’s my review of that film).

With Twilight, I instinctively thought Mr. Newman was -in a sly way- returning for what would be the last time to a role similar to that of Harper, though this movie was very clearly not based on any Ross MacDonald novels nor featured the “Harper” character.

Ok, enough preamble.  My quick take:

Twilight is a decent enough, if choppy, detective thriller that is never quite as engaging as one hoped it would be and features Paul Newman in a role that, frankly, my relative was right about.  Mr. Newman, who was 72 or 73 years old at the time he made this film, simply looks too old for this role.  Understand: I’m not trying to be ageist here.  There have been elderly actors who have successful played in roles like this.

But Mr. Newman, unfortunately, at that point in his life just did not look spry or strong enough to get into the fist and gunfights he engages in here.  As my relative so correctly pointed out, when he gets knocked over and falls to the ground, your instant reaction is to worry he won’t get back up again.

Curiously, the film might have worked better if Gene Hackman and Paul Newman exchanged roles.  Gene Hackman, who was approximately 68 at the time this film was made (only four or five years younger than Newman), would have looked a lot better in the detective role, with all due apologies to Mr. Newman.

Anyway, without getting into too many spoilers, Twilight features a plot reminiscent in at least one prominent way to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.  In Twilight we have a detective who is given a certain job and slowly sinks into a far deeper pool of shady characters, blackmail, and (this is where The Big Sleep similarity really come in) the fate of a specific person, and how that has led to the present situation for all the actors.

As a non-official conclusion to the “Harper” films, Twilight is OK enough but, alas, the least of the three Newman detective movies.  Still, it isn’t a terrible movie by any stretch but it would have benefited from a sharper script which, in turn, may have led to less work in the editing stage.

If you liked Harper and The Drowning Pool and are curious to see Mr. Newman return to a similar role, then give Twilight a try.  At the very least, your curiosity, like mine, may be sated.

A couple of additional notes:

Twilight features a couple of very odd story points, one which is very brief and the other stretches through much of the film, both of which are completely and utterly unbelievable.

MILD SPOILERS

First up, there comes a point in the movie where Mr. Newman’s character goes to Mr. Gardner’s character’s home.  Mr. Gardner’s home has two levels so Newman heads toward the stairs and is outside the house when he is nearly hit with what turns out to be Mr. Gardner taking a piss outside his balcony.

You read that right.

Mr. Gardner lives in a nice neighborhood and has a nice house and he feels the need to… take a piss outside his balcony and onto the first level of his home?!

It’s possible the movie’s writers intended this to be some kind of symbolic thing.  Perhaps Mr. Gardner was showing contempt toward Newman’s character but there is never an indication given that Mr. Gardner’s character knew he was there.  I suppose it could also show that despite living in such a beautiful environment, he’s still a low level person, but that seems an awful stretch.  Finally, maybe he bought a house without any working bathrooms.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The second thing the movie presents, early on, is that Newman’s character gets shot in the leg.  However, we later find the scuttlebutt by all the people he knows in the police department is that he was shot in the genitals and, therefore, is… uh… penis-less.

Eventually Newman’s character finds out what others think, but this too stretches credulity.  These are people he knows, perhaps not as friends, but you would think that two years later (which is the time between him being shot and the movie’s main story beginning) he’d know what they think and correct their misconceptions.

Weird stuff.

Movies

Kong: Skull Island (2017) a (mildly) belated review

If there’s one thing you have to admire about Kong: Skull Island it is that the film knows what it is and gets right down to the action/adventure and monster mayhem without wasting our time on needless subplots or attempts to create something more “elevated”.

Set (for the most part) at the tail end of the Vietnam War, the film features an interesting cast led by Tom Hiddleston (his character is named James Conrad and you just know they were itching to call him Joseph Conrad), Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly.

The characters these actors play, by and large, don’t have a whole lot of depth but in this film, it doesn’t matter all that much.  Just know that Hiddleston’s character is the intrepid and independent jungle tracker/explorer.  Larson’s character is the journalist and anti-war person, which puts her squarely up against Jackson’s military commander of the ops and, as the movie progresses, more and more deranged Kurtz-like personality.  John Goodman is the brains behind the operation, the one who sets things in motion and carries his own secrets.  Finally, Reilly is the castaway and -perhaps- crazy veteran of WWII who has survived on Skull Island all this time.

Basically, the movie goes like this: The Vietnam War is ending and the U.S. has a tight window of opportunity to explore a mysterious -and unexplored- island that locals in the area have avoided.  A permanent cloud bank/hurricane shields the island from outsiders and, when our assembled group head over there, they find more than (most) of them bargained for.

Kong: Skull Island isn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey or Citizen Kane.  Neither is it the best “monster” movie I’ve ever seen (that distinction would probably go to the original King Kong and Godzilla).  While it doesn’t necessarily deliver the best monster movie evah, it delivers on the thrills and gives us engaging characters to both root for and boo.   It is, in the end, a supremely competently done Americanized version of the old Toho monster movies and, as such, hits its target well.

If you do catch the film, make sure to stay through to the end credits.  Like the Marvel films, there’s a very amusing end sequence that hints at the direction future movies set in this “monsterverse” may go.

I’ll give the movie’s makers this much: They really want to pursue those old Toho features!

Recommended… especially to fans of monster movie mayhem.

Movies

Baby Driver (2017) a (mildly) belated review

When the list of 2017 summer movie releases was made, I listed the ones I found interesting and possibly worth checking out (you can read the full list here).

One of the films that was most certainly on my radar was the Edgar Wright written/directed Baby Driver.  Of the movie I said this:

I’m a sucker for well done car chase movies and this film, directed by fan favorite Edgar Wright, looks interesting… though I really don’t like the “main character has to listen to music to get into the zone” thing.

Even with the caveat regarding needing to listen to music to get into his “zone” (something which was, by the way, used before by Jessica Biel’s character when she “got into a zone” to fight in the 2004 movie Blade: Trinity… yes, my head is just chock full of useless trivia!), I was interested in catching the film.  I have generally enjoyed the films of Mr. Wright and feel he’s always trying hard to give audiences something unique and good.

When the movie was finally released to theaters, I unfortunately never found the time to go see it.  But my interest in the film grew stronger as the reviews were almost uniformly positive.  To this date and over on Rottentomatoes.com, the film has a pretty spectacularly high 93% positive among critics and an equally impressive 88% positive among audiences.

I was certainly interested enough -and figured this was such a no-brainer- that I pre-purchased the film through VUDU figuring this would be a film worth owning.  It was only the second time I’ve ever pre-purchased a film (the previous one being Batman v Superman which blah blah you already know how much I like it blah blah).

Last night and along with my wife we put it on, fully expecting a night of enjoyment and fun.

Ho boy.

To say I was disappointed with this film is a gross understatement.

Mr. Wright undeniably continues to show great skill as a director, but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Wright, the movie’s writer, let down Mr. Wright, the movie’s director.

Big time.

Baby Driver doesn’t need all that much explaining: It is a crime film cum musical which features Ansel Elgort as “Baby”, escape driver supreme with a severe case of tinnitus which he got as a result of a bad car accident which left him an orphan, who has to do jobs for Doc (Kevin Spacey) who he owes while having to deal with low lifes like Buddy (Jon Hamm, quite good here), his psycho girlfriend Darling (Eliza Gonzalez), and the deranged Bats (Jamie Foxx, also quite good).

Baby longs for paying his debt to Doc and, when he finally does, things look bright for him as he meets the love of his life, Debora (Lily James) and looks forward to a straight life.

This is not to be because Doc knows he has a great driver in Baby, and the last job turns out not to be so final and Baby is forced into another job, one that could upend his life as well as Debora’s.

Watching Baby Driver I felt it was as if Mr. Wright was combining two Walter Hill films, the 1978 film The Driver (not to be confused with the Ryan Gosling film with the similar name) and 1984’s Streets of Fire.  The former is about a driver (duh) who is just like Baby and ferrets criminals out of their heists and eventually having to deal with the consequences.  The later was a criminally underperforming rock n’ roll “fable” that featured some gruff characters and a very young, and absolutely stunning, Diane Lane in a musical milieu.

Both films, IMHO, are much, much better than Baby Driver, even if one could argue that technically (i.e. The way Mr. Wright mixes sound and visuals) is on a level of its own.

The problem, as I stated before, is that while the film exhibits technical brilliance, the movie’s story is ultimately weak.  To begin with, why have the revolving cast of bad guys Baby has to drive?  Why not stick with the consistent cast, then have the jobs turn more and more deadly and present the moral quandary to Baby that things are slowly, inevitably, getting out of hand?  This would work better than what we’re given as it would allow us to feel some sympathy for Doc… he’s the brains behind everything but he’s becoming powerless to stop the bloodbaths and, when (MILD SPOILERS) he finally sides with Baby, it would make a hell of lot more sense than the “I was in love once” absolute  -pardon my French-  bullshit we’re given.

Also, had Mr. Wright used the same group of thugs, he could can have more organically shown the progression of Buddy from what appears to be a “decent” criminal into a violent, blood-lusting creep he eventually became.

But there’s so much more.  How convenient the group happen to drive by and decide to go to the diner Debora is working at.  Really!?  There were no other diners in all of Atlanta?  Also, why exactly did the thugs leave Joseph alive?  These “hardened” thugs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  Finally, at one point toward the film’s climax Buddy becomes Jason and/or Freddy Kruger all rolled up in one and that, to me, became silly rather than a genuine threat to Baby and Debora.

Finally, given all the carnage, are we really to believe the movie’s ultimate resolution regarding Baby?  Wouldn’t he merit pretty stiff punishment as an accessory to multiple murders and untold property damage?  How can we sympathize with him by the movie’s end?

When the movie was over and I looked over at my wife, she wasn’t happy to have wasted her time on this film.  Yet she, like me, couldn’t help but acknowledged the direction was quite great and there are some extended sequences, especially one toward the movie’s beginning, that are eye-popping.

But good -hell, great– direction takes you only so far.  There is a great deal of talent on display in Baby Driver.  I just wish the story was as good as the rest of it.

Sadly, a pass for me.

Movies

Alien: Covenant (2017) a (mildly) belated review…

One of my biggest fears as a writer is that whatever I spend my time, blood, sweat, and tears on is no good… and because I’m so close to the product I won’t even know it.

Understand, my novels/stories are my babies.  I devote so much energy to them and love them to death while, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, try to look at them with as harsh an eye as I can to make sure that when they are eventually released, they’re the absolute best thing I could have done.

I also recognize opinions on entertainment are just that, and what to you may “rock your world” to some others might be a complete dud (I’ve pointed it out many times before that I loved Batman v Superman while so many savaged it and I found the original Guardians of the Galaxy complete crap, while so many loved it!)

Thus, I know that if someone doesn’t like any of my works (while, hopefully, a whole bunch of others do!), I can rest easy in the knowledge that I did the best I could at the time I wrote my latest work.  I scrutinized every chapter, paragraph, sentence, and word.  I checked and re-checked the plot and the delivery of the story.  If it didn’t work for you, it simply wasn’t meant to be.

But going back to my biggest fear: Because I’m so intimately involved in my stories/novels, there is the danger that I might miss something.  There might be this big plot whole right there which I’ve somehow missed, being so focused on a tree and not seeing the forest around me.  Or, worse, the story simply isn’t all that good, and I should probably let it go and do something else.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the latest Ridley Scott directed Alien film, Alien: Covenant.

Mr. Scott created an incredible stir, and elevated himself into the pantheon of “A” list directors, with his original Alien film, released in 1979.  He would follow that up with Blade Runner, a not at all bad one-two combination for a then up-and-coming director.

Had Mr. Scott not released another film after those two, his legend would be set.  He continued though, amassing a mind-boggling amount of produced and directed works.  Some haven’t been terribly good while others have been outstanding (Blackhawk Down and Thelma and Louise are two which, IMHO, are among his better works).

Recently, Mr. Scott returned to the world he created in Alien, first with the 2012 film Prometheus, and now in 2017 with Alien: Covenant.

And I really, really wish he hadn’t bothered.

Prometheus was a gorgeous film.  It featured a powerhouse cast and scenes that you could stare at for hours.  It also featured a lackluster story, characters doing mind-bogglingly stupid things, and an ending that promised a far better story than the one delivered in this film.

Walking out of the theater when I saw that film, the writer in me thought Prometheus was little more than a prologue, something done away with in maybe half an hour and that the film proper should have started afterwards, when Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw headed out to the stars, to find out what those pesky aliens were up to with their weird genetic works.

With Alien: Covenant, whatever story was supposed to happen afterwards with Shaw was almost totally jettisoned, which proves if nothing else how almost completely irrelevant the whole endeavor was.

Alien: Covenant plays out like three films smashed into one.  Given the lukewarm response to Prometheus, perhaps Mr. Scott realized his original grand vision of, who knows, five to six Alien films which would form a long saga had to be wrapped up much quicker and therefore we get a film that is chock full of story…

…which, unfortunately, is not very good.

Mr. Scott does away with Elizabeth Shaw’s character (don’t believe IMDB’s statement that she’s in the film… if she is actually in the film it was cut out of the theatrical version) and her search for answers in flashback and sticks us with yet another bunch of victims and potential victims on their way to colonizing a world but, after your by now cliched emergency, are re-routed to another, tantalizing world from which a mysterious signal is coming.

On this world they find David (Michael Fassbender), the android from Prometheus.  The crew has their own android, Walter (also played by Mr. Fassbender), which -how can I put this delicately?- only makes sense given where the story goes in the end.

It seems logical that if you’re going to create automatons that look eerily like people, you might want them to look different from each other, no?  I mean, your David is my Walter or Jim or Charlie.  Wouldn’t that just open things right up to a lot of confusion?

See where I’m going here?

Tell you who didn’t: The survivors of this wretched film.

So the crew of the Covenant (that’s the name of their ship) heads to the weird planet and is amazed at how it looks so good but you know things will go sideways soon… and of course they do.  But, like Prometheus, as an audience you’re once again marveling (if I could use that word) at the sheer stupidity of their actions.  They encounter David and ignore all the many megawatt neon lit “DANGER” signs flashing all over him and allow themselves to simply follow along where he takes them, then split up (idiots) to then be picked off one by one, leading to the “exciting” climax back on the ship with that one last alien you just knew would somehow mysteriously (and without explanation) get on board their ship.

I didn’t like Prometheus much.  I thought it was a misfire from a story standpoint but could admire the fact that Mr. Scott was trying, though ultimately failing, to do something new and different within the Alien universe.  With Alien: Covenant, my patience with the story he’s determined to follow (Let’s just call it what it is: David’s story) was at its end.  The now two part story is silly when its not cliched and the villain of this piece (who I suppose was becoming the villain in the first) is all the more annoying because we simply can’t root for the people around him… they’re so dumb you can be forgiven for hoping they get what they deserve.

And then there’s the odd casting choices, which make me wonder just how serious Mr. Scott was when making the film.

Why exactly was James Franco here?  I know he was given some actual “present day” dialogue in the “prologue” stuff that was released to the internet before the film’s debut but here he literally says nothing -except in a video- and his role maybe lasts like a minute, if that.

There’s also Danny McBride.  Known for mostly playing stoners and/or in your face morons (likable or not), I think he’s a good comedic actor and he certainly isn’t terrible in this film and in this more serious role but, like all the rest of the Covenant crew, he is a walking piece of cardboard and not a fully fleshed being.  Thus his role, like James Franco’s, screams stunt casting.  I could never quite remove myself from him being just a second away from lighting up and/or doing something silly.

Finally, there’s an opening scene involving Fassbender’s David and Guy Pearce’s Peter Weyland that, like was ultimately done in Prometheus, probably should have been left on the cutting room floor, even if it was visually striking.

Supposedly Mr. Scott plans to make a third, concluding chapter to his Alien prologue films.  Perhaps that one will finally be good, because the first two, in my opinion, haven’t been.

Yeah, count on that.

A pass.  A hard pass.

Movies

Free Fire (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Cult director co/writer Ben Wheatley and his co/writer (and spouse) Amy Jump are the brains behind 2016’s Free Fire, a dark comedy/action film that features a very impressive cast… and a sadly underdeveloped story.

I’m going to be blunt here: I was hoping for much more in this film than what I got.

The story goes like this: Back in 1978 (why set the film in this year?  Easy, because it was before the advent of cell phones.  If the film were set in the present and cell phones existed, this story would be done very quickly) a group of individuals get together in an abandoned factory for a gun sale.  Things go sideways quick and the various members of the cast are soon engaged in an extended gunfight which plays out for perhaps 3/4ths of the film.

I’ll get into SPOILERS in a moment but here are the things I liked about the film:

Armie Hammer, an actor whose appearances I’ve found not all that memorable (my general experience is, and I don’t claim to have seen all his various roles, he’s been cast too many times as the big, quiet -and boring- type), is quite good as the somewhat arrogant, pot smoking intermediary who gives off vibes of being quite dangerous beneath it all.  But is he?

Sharlto Copley is an actor who can be somewhat… overwhelming… at times but here his arrogance and silliness serve him well.

Cillian Murphy, another actor with a very long list of roles, is obstensibly the hero of the piece, an IRA man who is interested in purchasing weapons and who has an eye for…

Brie Larson, Oscar winning actress plays a woman of mystery here, an intermediary for the IRA fellows who gets caught in the resulting crossfire.  Or does she?

These are the four roles I found most intriguing in this film but, truthfully, just about everyone is good -or, more properly, bad– in their individual roles but the biggest problem this feature has is that after everything is set up, there just isn’t all that much of a second act.  The characters attack and counterattack and after a while it feels repetitious and we’re dealing with diminishing returns.

Based on that, I can’t recommend Free Fire.  If you’re curious, here’s the movie’s trailer and, afterwards, I’m going to get into a more SPOILERY focus on one of the film’s elements leading to its conclusion…

As mentioned, we’re now going to get into…

SPOILERS!!!!

Still here?  You’ve been warned!

As a writer, I’m always interested in all things story and Free Fire was no exception.

If there was something that kept me going on with it, even after feeling the film was running out of steam, was where it was going.  The fact is that while I ultimately can’t recommend the film, I could see that the people behind it were certainly trying to do something interesting.

The film isn’t “just” a silly shoot out.  It’s an attempt at making a black comedy with the action elements.  Sadly, in the end there wasn’t enough “there” there for me to like it, but I was still intrigued as to where it was going.

Which is where, from a writer’s standpoint, the film somewhat misfired because the movie’s conclusion was set up only minutes from the movie’s actual conclusion.

Let me explain: I kinda knew the film would feature the slow deaths of the many characters within it.  I wondered who would survive to the end and, when we got to the “last three”, two of the characters got together and one of them states something to the effect of: “Let’s go, the police will be here in fifteen minutes”.

Then, the final of the three characters emerges, takes out the other two, and tries to get away with the money intended to pay for the guns.  However, as this person is heading to the exit, the lights from police cars is seen pouring from under the door of the factory.  The final survivor is caught.

Allow me to humbly point out: THIS IS STUPID.

Why, suddenly, are the police an issue… other than to provide closure to the film?

Free Fire starts with the various characters going into the abandoned factory and, because this is a gun purchase, they have to check the merchandise.  Therefore, before any monies are exchanged, the buyer gets to try out one of the weapons he’s interested in buying.

I assumed at that point in the film they chose this abandoned factory for the purchase because any gunfire -specifically the gunfire from the buyer examining the merchandise- would be muffled and therefore the police would not be called to the area.

What the movie needed was AT THIS POINT IN TIME to explain the situation with the police.

Have one of the characters say: “Look, take your shots quick.  We’re pretty muffled for sound here but you never know if someone out there might hear them and call the cops.”

THAT’S IT!

With that single line and, even more importantly, at that point in time, the film’s makers don’t have to put the awkward bit of dialogue at the tail end of the film -and moments before its actual ending- to clue us in on how the film will end.  Instead of the character suddenly pointing out the police will be there in 15 minutes, this same character would then say something to the effect of: “We really need to go.  This place muffles plenty of sound but with this much gunfire someone out there must have heard something.   It would be a miracle if the cops weren’t on their way right now.”

I know, I know.  A silly little peeve but its there, nonetheless, for me.

Now that I’ve mentioned this writerly peeve, let me give the film some love:  I really like how they subtly laid down information regarding Brie Larson’s character.  There are at least two bits of dialogue, both given by her and one of which is included in the above trailer, that hint to what she’s all about.

I enjoyed that!

Movies

Logan Lucky (2017) a (how about that?!) on time review

When I saw the first trailers for the new Steven Soderbergh directed film (his first after declaring he was retiring from direction several years before) Logan Lucky, I was intrigued.

Why?

Two words: Daniel Craig.

Seeing Daniel Craig, who for far too many years acts in films -like the James Bond films, natch- that required him to be so serious and dour, acting in this …unhinged… looking manner had my complete attention.

So this weekend, when my wife and I found ourselves with –gasp!– some free time after a far too grueling month of moving our kids into their apartments, decided to head out to the theater and watch a film.

But, what to see?

The choices boiled down to The Hitman’s Bodyguard and Logan Lucky.  The Hitman’s Bodyguard, alas, has been taking a beating from critics and, to be very honest, after that grueling month I’ve been through, I didn’t want to waste my time and Logan Lucky was certainly getting a lot of critical love.

So Logan Lucky it was.

The film’s story is pretty clearly laid out in the above trailer.  The Logans, Jimmy (Channing Tatum), Clyde (Adam Driver), and Mellie (Riley Keough) join forces with the hilarious Joe Bang (Daniel Craig, natch) and his redneck brothers to pull off a heist at the Nascar raceway.

Why?

The spark, apparently, for the action was Jimmy a) being fired from his job because of a knee injury sustained when fighting for the army and b) finding out his ex-wife Bobbie Jo Chapman (Katie Holmes in what amounts to a cameo) and her current husband are going to move to another state and, therefore, take their daughter with her.

So Jimmy wants/needs cash (perhaps… I’ll say no more), and he presents his plan to his brother, then together they visit Joe Bang in prison and we’re off and running.

Logan Lucky is far from a perfect film.  In fact, the first act, before the arrival of Daniel Craig’s Joe Bang, is kinda dull.

But once the actors are in their place and we’ve moved on to the actual heist, things get fun -and funny- and we’re having ourselves a good time.

It helps, by the way, that almost all the characters presented are decent people.  The only big exception is Seth MacFarlane’s Max Chilblain, a shallow Nascar promoter who is a narcissist and may wind up being the proverbial fly in the ointment when it comes to the heist going as planned.

Even Katie Homes’ Bobbie Jo and her silly new husband, who could have been presented as far more antagonistic, are instead shown to be caring parents in their own way, even if their means far outstrip Jimmy Logan’s.

So, if you can patiently wait a few minutes for the film to find its legs, you’ll have fun with Logan Lucky.  It may not be one of the most scintillating comedies or heist films ever made, but its a fun piece of work and, if nothing else, its worth seeing for Daniel Craig’s hilarious turn as Joe Bang.

Recommended.

Movies

The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) a (mildly) belated review

Directed and written by Oz Perkins, son of actor Anthony Perkins who is best known today for the role of Norman Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock directed Psycho, The Blackcoat’s Daughter sure does play out like a Hitchcockian horror film.

Here’s its trailer:

I found it humorous to see, after the fact, a couple of videos also on YouTube “explaining” the film and, in my opinion, the explanations are sometimes quite off.

Which leads us to The Blackcoat’s Daughter’s (BD from here on) biggest problem: It presents a story in a very non-linear manner (nothing wrong about that) but fails to be clear enough about what we’re seeing and, worse, getting us to care enough about it.

Which is not to say BD is a total bust.

Mr. Perkins has clearly sucked in Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre and if nothing else this film reflects his love for that thrill master’s work.  BD is elegant, measured, and when it gets bloody it certainly reminded me of the film Psycho.

However, the story presented simply doesn’t take you in as it should and while the final reveal (another Psycho inspired element?) is made, you must have seen it coming from a long way away.

In a nutshell, BD goes like this:

At an upscale Catholic boarding school Freshman Kat (Kiernan Shipka) awaken from a nightmare where she walks through a snowy parking lot and sees a crashed vehicle which clearly has some victims within it.  That day in late February (which, by the way, was the original name of the film), the school goes on break and parents are supposed to pick up all the kids for a week off.

Kat is clearly disturbed by this vision and somehow appears to know that her parents will not come to pick her up.  Even more eerily, she has a strange attachment to the school’s headmaster and is bothered that he won’t be around for her piano recital given on the date of the parental pickups.

Meanwhile, fellow, but older, student Rose (Lucy Boynton) is a more rebellious student who fears she is pregnant.

When the parents show up to pick up the kids in the boarding school, neither Kat nor Rose’s parents show up.  Kat, who had the premonition of his parent’s death, is very disturbed they haven’t shown up.  Rose, on the other hand, played her parents and told them the pickup date was later that week.  This was done so she could talk with her boyfriend and tell him of her possible pregnancy.

Meanwhile (part deux), a mysterious young woman named Joan (Emma Roberts) is taking a bus to a mysterious destination.  After arriving at her destination, she sits on a bench in the winter cold and a kindly man named Bill (James Remar), realizes she looks lost and cold and offers her a ride.

Bill and his wife Linda (Lauren Holly) take Joan in and, it turns out, they are on a very sad journey.

I don’t want to get into too many more details here (though I will after the SPOILER ALERT), but suffice to say these five characters and their stories will intersect before we reach the film’s end.

BD is, as I stated before, an elegant, well acted and well filmed movie which presents an admittedly fresh story… but, sadly, when all is said and done the film fails to sufficiently draw in this viewer (at least) and while I appreciate the care and thought behind the movie, it simply doesn’t present enough -and present it clearly enough- to get me to care.

Still, there is meat here and while I may feel this film is ultimately a whiff, Mr. Perkins shows considerable talent behind the camera, even if he’s a little better a director than a writer (again, IMHO).

So I can’t recommend BD even as I can commend Mr. Perkins for giving us something relatively new and interesting, even if it fails in the end to this viewer.

Now, on to…

 

SPOILER ALERTS!!!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

 

Still there?

You have been warned!

BD presents, in the end a very non-linear story.  It offers us scenes and then returns to them later in the film from a different character’s viewpoint which reveals to the audience just what was going on.

For example, Kat has a strange relationship with the heat furnace in the school’s basement, which is called back to later in the film.

But the one biggest reveal, which as I said before falls into Psycho territory, is that we find that “Joan” is not really who she says she is.  It turns out this woman strangled a woman in a bathroom and took her ID, which was indeed “Joan”.

For this “Joan” is Kat, nine years later.

Kat, it turns out, at the time her parents didn’t show up to get her all those years before, descended into some kind of a breakdown or -and this is where the film kinda lost me- was possessed by a demon.

Kat in time goes on a killing spree and takes out the two headmistresses/nuns living just outside the school before killing Rose who, moments before and in the bathroom had a period -again, something implied more than “shown” although in this case I’m OK with that!- and realized she wasn’t pregnant after all.

So nine years later Kat has managed to escape the insane asylum and is making her way back to the boarding school.  The people who picked her up, ironically enough, turn out to be Rose’s parents.  They are still in deep grief and are headed in that general direction to pay tribute to their lost daughter, unaware they have just picked up her daughter’s killer and will soon become victims of her just as their daughter was.

And Kat’s ultimate goal?

In the concluding moments of the film it is revealed that shortly after Kat was subdued a priest performed an exorcism on Kat and banished the demon that possessed her.

But Kat didn’t want it to go!

So she’s returning to the now boarded up school with her fresh victims (her first while “on her own”) and when she gets to the school and returns to the furnace where she first encountered the demon directly, she finds… nothing.

The furnace where she worshiped her personal demon is long cold.

The demon is long gone, banished forever.

And the disturbed Kat wandered back out to the road and cries.

Fin.

When watching the videos “explaining” what the movie is about, both I watched miss completely the fact that Rose finds out she’s not pregnant.  One of them seems to think that Kat and the school knew her parents were dead already (they most certainly did not) and missed the fact that when the headmaster and police officer come to the school later in the film, they’re obviously doing so to tell Kat her parents are dead, only to find Kat has gone on her bloody rampage.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter all that much. Indeed, the whole subplot involving Rose and her pregnancy/non-pregnancy are, in the end, not really all that important to the story, which makes me wonder if maybe this is yet another tribute to Psycho (Janet Leigh’s character’s story, which initially draw the viewer in, winds up being something of a red herring in the end).

So there you have it folks, a decent and potentially intriguing film that just missed for me.

Movies

The Drowning Pool (1975) a (very) belated review

A while back I caught -for maybe the fourth time- the 1966 Paul Newman detective film Harper (you can read my full review of the film here).  Based on the Lew Archer detective stories by writer Ross Macdonald, Harper is considered a great second generation version of the old hard-boiled detective movie genre.

Ross Macdonald, to me, was a great writer who wrote many great novels and his Lew Archer books are high up there on my list of re-readable works.  Having said that, it is also clear Mr. Macdonald (actually a pen name for Kenneth Millar), was very much mimicking the Raymond Chandler detective novels, even as he was doing a magnificent job at it.  I can see where some might find it difficult to admire Mr. Macdonald’s work because it owes so much to Raymond Chandler, but, again, his works are so damn good it eventually doesn’t matter.

One of the more interesting bits of casting in the movie Harper was having Lauren Bacall in it as the matriarch of the screwed up family Harper (Paul Newman, reportedly, wanted the Archer name changed because in the 1960’s he was on a roll with movies featuring characters whose name began with an “H”.  I’m not kidding) is investigating.  This bit of casting was especially satisfying as one of her classic roles had her co-star, with husband Humphrey Bogart, in the Raymond Chandler novel adaptation The Big Sleep (1946), which as I stated above was mimicked so well by Ross Macdonald in his novels.

Harper, to me, is a damn good movie thought I don’t feel it quite reaches the level of The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon or Murder, My Sweet.  It feels over-long and, sadly, the near cameo role played by Janet Leigh (who is quite good in the film, nonetheless), could have been clipped without affecting the movie much at all.

Nearly ten years later and in 1975 a sequel to Harper was released entitled The Drowning Pool.  Returning to the role of Lew Harper was Paul Newman.

I’d seen the film a while back and didn’t think all that much about it.  In general, most critics felt this film was an inferior production, though like Harper it was based on, and adhered to, the Ross Macdonald novel.

A few days back I noticed it was being played on a cable channel (TCM?) and decided to give it another look.  I set the DVR and, a couple of days afterwards, sat down and gave the film a look.

And I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

Don’t get me wrong, The Drowning Pool is not as good a film as Harper.  The plot kinda rolls along and there’s plenty of talk but not a whole heck of a lot of action.

Yet the movie intrigued me and -I won’t lie- I found myself immersed in it.

Paul Newman, as noted, returns to the role of Lew Harper.  When the movie opens, he’s flown into New Orleans and meets up with Iris Devereaux (played by Paul Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward).  Mrs. Devereaux, it turns out, was an old flame of Harper’s and is now married and living in an old Plantation house.  She was, and its implied still is, something of a wild child and has apparently had a fling or two on the side.  A recently fired chauffeur, it appears, is sending blackmail notes to her demanding money or her affair(s) will be revealed.

Because Mrs. Devereaux lives under the steel thumb of Olivia Devereaux, the mother of her husband and a woman who supposedly keeps everyone in the household in line, she fears that if this information is revealed she’ll be cut off from the family and its fortune and sent packing.  Worth noting is the implication her husband, the barely seen in the movie James Devereaux, is heavily implied to be a closeted homosexual whose marriage to Iris is a sham and therefore her fears are very real.

So Iris Devereaux calls on Harper to find the chauffeur and make him stop sending the notes and Harper agrees to do so while getting involved in the machinations of the Devereaux family and people who know them.

He soon encounters Iris’ daughter, the angry and even wilder-child Schuyler (Melanie Griffith in one of her first movie roles) as well as the chief of police Broussard (Anthony Franciosa) and his very hot tempered deputy, Franks (Richard Jaeckel).  In time, Harper will also bump into J. J. Kilbourne (Murray Hamilton), who may be pulling several strings behind the scenes.

Interestingly, much as I liked the movie Harper and still feel it is a superior movie, I came away feeling The Drowning Pool more effectively captured the tone of the Ross Macdonald novels, and for that I have to give the film a huge plus.

Again, The Drowning Pool may not be a superb film but it is a pretty damn good one and like Mr. Macdonald’s novels it unravels in a slow yet satisfying way, giving you time to sink your teeth into almost every character and realize how it is they interact with -and against!- each other.

Ross Macdonald’s Archer novels tended to feature complex -and very screwed up- family interactions and this movie gives it to us in spades.  The ending is shocking, sad, and leaves us wondering what could have been, another familiar theme present in the Archer novels.

In conclusion, its nice to revisit a film you didn’t think all that much of and find it a better experience than you thought.  While today’s ADD audiences might find the movie too slow to sit through, I enjoyed soaking up the ambiance and characters present in The Drowning Pool.

The embedded trailer below, alas, cuts off some 1:15 seconds in.  No matter, its not a terribly good trailer for the film and makes everything look more tongue in cheek than it was…

Movies

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017), a (mildly) belated review

The other day I reviewed John Wick 2, the sequel to (duh) John Wick (if you’re curious, click here for that review).  Long story short: Though I enjoyed the original film, I hated the sequel… even though the Rottentomatoes.com score among critics and audiences was quite high, I found the movie monotonous, repetitious, and ultimately incredibly boring for something that was purported to be an “action” film.

Today, I review another sequel, actually the third film in a series but second to feature Vin Diesel in the title role (I’ll explain in a moment), xXx: Return of Xander Cage.

The original 2002 film xXx was, to me anyway, an enjoyable “modern” take on the James Bond superspy.  Back then, the X-Games were becoming a big thing and it seemed everyone was into doing “adrenaline” pumping stunts.  Bungee jumping, extreme skiing/snowboarding, parasailing, etc. etc. etc.

Into that setting came xXx, a film that, if memory serves, opened cleverly with a pseudo-James Bondian type spy trying to infiltrate a party filled with these young adrenaline junkies.  He’s sniffed out almost immediately and then snuffed out almost as quickly.

We then are introduced to Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) who realizes that the “old” superspy won’t get the job done.  That what is needed is someone young, someone who is comfortable in the adrenaline junkie world.

Enter Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage.

As far as superspy films go, I thought xXx was a decent piece of entertainment which had its tongue sufficiently in cheek to work.  Vin Diesel, not quite yet the big star of the Fast and Furious films as he is now (at that point, only the very first Fast and Furious film had been released and the second of the franchise, the one not featuring Vin Diesel at all, would be released the following year).

Like Fast and Furious, Vin Diesel would skip this movie’s sequel, the 2005 xXx: State of the Union, which would hint that his character was killed and have Ice Cube come in as the “new” xXx agent, Darius Stone.

I never saw that film but from the reviews, it would appear I didn’t miss all that much.

It appeared the franchise was essentially dead after that point but, because of the box office rise of one Vin Diesel, one must never count out any of his previous projects.

So, twelve years after the release of xXx: State of the Union appears xXx: Return of Xander Cage and it features (you wouldn’t guess in a million years) the return of Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage!

…and…

…its not all that bad.

The film stuck to what made the first one a decent bit of entertainment, even though the whole “X-Games” and “adrenaline junkie” thing isn’t as big a thing as it was when the original film was made.

Further, Vin Diesel no longer looks like the young new guy and, perhaps fittingly, there is no attempt to have him blend in with the “young” crowds like was done in the first film.

The plot of xXx 3 (let’s just abbreviate it to this from now on, OK?) involves a computer device capable of bringing down satellites onto Earth and, thus, using them as a tool for assassination.

I know what you’re thinking: Aren’t there like, a zillion easier ways to assassinate people than to bring down satellites on them?

Of course there are but in this case, if you’re willing to accept this whooper of an absurdity and let the film go, you’ll have a reasonably fun time with it, though I grant you when its all over xXx 3 is nothing more (and for some/many I’m sure a lot less) than a mindless time killer.

Add an all star-action cast, a fun/surprising cameo appearance at the movie’s end, and delightful turns by Toni Collette (almost every scene she’s in she steals the show) and Nina Dobrev (who plays a somewhat ditzy xXx version of Q) and you have a decent time killer and not much else.

(A sidenote: This is the third film this year that’s had Ruby Rose in a smallish role in it, the first two being Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and the film I reviewed before this one, John Wick 2… she’s had a hell of a year appearing in these “B” action films!)

Look, this movie ain’t no Citizen Kane but, if you have a free afternoon and want to park your mind on “Neutral” and let things go, you could do far worse than see what’s up with Xander Cage.