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Movies

It Follows (2014) a (mildly) belated review

In cinema, sex and horror go together like bread and butter or politicians and corruption.

The 2014 horror film It Follows uses this trope very…intimately (ouch) and, for the most part, effectively.

The movie starts with a very distraught young woman running from her home and, eventually, driving away.  She drives until night and finds herself sitting on a secluded beach while the lights of her car shine on her.  She’s on a cell phone talking to her father whom she treated badly before and, between tears, says she never meant to be so mean.  It sounds like a deathbed confession/call for forgiveness and, when daylight comes, we realize all too graphically that’s exactly what it was.

From there we’re introduced to Jay Height (Maika Monroe) a gorgeous young woman who lives in what we assume is a broken home.  She is not the only one.  There is very little parental supervision for seemingly everyone in this neighborhood.  Jay has a devoted younger sister (Lili Sepe) and several friends, including a young man whom she’s known since they were children and who all too obviously pines for her.

Jay heads out on a seemingly innocent date with Hugh (Jake Weary) but dark clouds are hinted at.  After driving to a distant location Jay and her boyfriend have sex.  Afterwards, Jay is knocked unconscious by her boyfriend.  When she comes to, she’s tied to a wheelchair and between apologies Hugh tells her he’s transmitted a strange curse onto Jay by having sex with her.

The curse involves a shape-shifting, and slow moving, creature that only the potential victim(s) see.  The creature follows you after you have sex with another infected person (kinda/sorta like the curse of the werewolf) and, unless you have sex with someone else to pass the curse along, this creature will follow you until it kills you.  Complicating matters, if Jay doesn’t have sex with anyone else and should she be killed by the creature, Hugh says, it will go back to hunting him down.

Of course Jay doesn’t believe him, but then the thing appears in the guise of a nude woman…

In many ways It Follows is like a horror/sexual themed game of “tag”.  You’re it, until you’re killed or you get someone else to be “it”.

It Follows features some genuinely frightening scenes, scenes which had me on the edge of my seat.  The movie accomplishes this without relying on gore (the most gory segment is presented at the start of the film).  Further, the characters -and actors who play them- are all uniformly good.

I would most certainly recommend It Follows to horror fans, but with some caveats.  First up, the film is rather slow moving, especially in the opening acts.  It takes some time for things to get going, and some may not have the patience to put up with such a slow pace.

Secondly, the film’s makers delight in offering vague possibilities of things that may have happened.  The audience is expected to think through what they’ve seen and decide for themselves on things that may have happened, and I suspect there will be those who aren’t happy with many things being up in the air like that (I’ll offer more information after the trailer in a SPOILERS section below).

Finally, as a fan of director John Carpenter, it was all too clear this film used Mr. Carpenter’s original 1978 Halloween as a template.  Depending on your tolerance for homages (or, to put it less kindly, rip offs), you may lose patience at the way this movie cribs from that one.

Regardless, I still recommend It Follows.  It’s a genuinely scary film with some well earned shocks and will leave you with a sense of unease when all is said and done.

SPOILERS FOLLOW BELOW!

SPOILERS!!!

Still here?

You’ve been warned!!!!

Ok, so I mentioned above It Follows presents vague scenarios which the viewer is meant to interpret.  I’ll get into a couple of them and offer my thoughts but, as stated, I do get SPOILERY here.

That was your last warning.

After determining there is indeed some kind of monster coming after her, Jay drives alone very far away from home and falls asleep on her car in some secluded beach area.  When she wakes up, it is daytime and she hears the sounds of men talking.  She walks to the beach and sees a boat off in the near distance with three men in it.  She takes off her pants and, in underwear, walks into the water.  We then cut to her driving back home.  Her hair is wet and we are left to wonder: Did she have sex with the three men to pass off her curse?

My guess is she did not.

The reason being that the creature is after her once again very -indeed too– quickly.  Of course, that isn’t the only interpretation.  Perhaps the three men, after having sex with her, remained together and the creature caught up with them all at once.  This is certainly a possibility, but my interpretation is that Jay very seriously flirted with the idea of passing off her problem but ultimately did not.

Later still in the film Jay and her friends go to an indoor pool they once frequented as children (water and pools are a recurring motif in this film).  The idea is to have Jay go into this very large pool and draw the creature into it.  Once inside, Jay swims out and the gang zap the slow moving creature with any of the numerous electric devices they brought with them and have plugged in and waiting beside the pool.

When the creature arrives, Jay is asked what shape it has (again, the creature is only visible to its victims).  Jay refuses to say and, in the IMDb page, it is revealed the creature took on the shape of “Mr. Height”, ie Jay’s father.  Only those with eagle eyes who notice the family portraits presented earlier in the film will realize this is the final shape of the thing.

Once at the pool area, it is clear the thing does not want to go into the water.  It tries to kill Jay by throwing the various objects the gang left around the pool at her.  Jay and her friends, however, manage to throw the creature into the water and, apparently, kill it.

The big question is: Do they?

The film ends with Jay giving in to her childhood friend.  Their relationship, however, is entirely loveless.  Though she sleeps with him, whatever “heat” the boy felt for her is dissipated by the sobering reality of the monster that may still hunt them.

Her new/old boyfriend is seen driving by a pair of (all too obvious) prostitutes after they sleep together and we’re again left to wonder if the curse, now passed on to him, he intends to pass off to them.  However, we see him drive on and are left to wonder if he gave in or, like Jay, maybe decided to take responsibility for his actions…if the creature is still alive.  (I like to think he, like Jay, realizes it is tempting to pass off the deadly “problem” but decides not to…which is my own subjective view.  Again, the movie leaves us without a clear answer)

The movie ends with the pair walking down a sidewalk, hand in hand, while someone walks a ways behind them.

Is it the creature?

We’ll never know…

…Or do we?

Once again the film leaves us to interpret what we see rather than give us straight answers.  In this case I suspect the movie’s beginning offers a clue to what happens at the movie’s end.

As I stated before, we start with a young woman running away to a beach and eventually calling her father on her cellphone before becoming, we assume, the first victim movie-goers see of this creature.

If you paid attention you will notice this young woman drives a modern car and talks to her father on a cell-phone.

HOWEVER, the rest of the film presents a time period which very much looks like it belongs in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s.  All the TVs during the bulk of the movie are the old “glass” panel type.  The cars on the streets are older models.  None of the characters, except for the one in the opening of the film who drives a modern car, have cell phones.  Other than a strange “Kindle” type reading device one of the characters carries, every bit of technology we see is at least thirty years old or more (I have to wonder about that device.  It’s stands out as being really out of that era -and ours!- yet was clearly included for some reason in the film.  I can’t guess as to why).

If we are to assume the opening act of the film takes place in a our present and the rest of the movie in the past, then we have our answer regarding what happened to Jay and her boyfriend, right?

And it is as downbeat as you think.

Anyway, just some of my own personal thoughts.  Yours may well be different.

Movies

Suicide Squad Extended Cut (2016) a (right on time!) review

If the 2016 Summer Movie season is remembered for anything, it likely will be for the way internet comments/critiques fueled interest and/or hate toward certain films.  Example “a” of this is, of course, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.  This film was positively crucified well before its release.  And when it did make it to the theaters, things got even more saucy.  There was a virtual war of words between professional critics (who for the most part hated the film) and audiences, who liked it considerably more.

I’ve made my opinions regarding that film well known.  I liked the theatrical cut fine even as I found the “Director’s Cut” even better.  I’m also of the opinion that over time this movie will be re-evaluated and people will come to view it as one of the better superhero films made.  Regardless of that, BvS found a strong audience and, despite attempts by those who hated the film to minimize its accomplishments, it pulled in great numbers and was a success.  At least financially.

BvS, however, was only the first of two DC Comics films released this past summer.  The second, Suicide Squad, followed almost exactly in BvS’s footsteps.  There was early word/rumors Warner Brothers execs were unhappy with the final product and had therefore ordered re-shoots (re-shoots were indeed filmed, though the reason for them was never publicly revealed).  As the movie neared its release, a new rumor emerged that the movie’s director created a darker version of the film and Warner Brothers had the people behind the amusing trailers create their version of the film.  With two versions created, the studios decided to merge the “best” of both versions and that was supposedly what was released to theaters.

Upon the movie’s release, the critics slaughtered it but, as with BvS, audiences were far kinder.  The film proved a huge financial success.

What did I think of it?

I found Suicide Squad an oddity of a film.  I thought the story it was telling was a mess but there was an undeniable energy to the proceedings which was contagious.  Further, the actors were so damn game and fun to watch going through their paces.  My reaction to Suicide Squad was an odd one, for sure: I liked the film despite the fact that it should have been an easy pass.

And as with BvS I was curious to see the other version(s) of the film.  Would Warner Brothers release both the director’s cut and the trailer maker’s cut?  So far, they have not but with the release of the digital version of the film this past week, we’ve been given an “Extended Cut” of Suicide Squad.

I picked it up, watched it, and…

…my opinion of the film remains roughly the same.

Unlike BvS, the Extended Edition of Suicide Squad doesn’t add all that much to the film.  Perhaps the single biggest add on is an all new sequence featuring Dr. Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) as she quite literally pursues an exasperated Joker down on a motorbike.  We also have a little more of the bad guys planning to bolt at the start of their mission and get a little more of Katana, including her taking off her mask, but the extra scenes don’t change the film for the noticeably better as the extra scenes did for BvS.

Still, if you haven’t done so already and are interested in seeing Suicide Squad, you should see the Extended Cut.  At the very least you can’t go wrong with more of Harley and the Joker.

Interestingly, I watched the film with my wife and, unlike me, she’s far from a fan of comic book films.  In fact, before I put the movie on she told me she was about to head to the bedroom to rest.  She caught the first few minutes of the film and asked me:

“Is this a Batman film?”

I told her it wasn’t and that his appearance was only a cameo.  After telling her this I expected her to grab her tablet and head out but she stuck around.  She laughed at the movie’s jokes (especially Captain Boomerang’s bar scene) and watched the whole thing.  When it was done, told me she enjoyed the film.

“Did the critics like it?” she asked, dimly aware of the critical drubbing the film received.

“No.”

“They didn’t like it?”

“That’s putting it kindly,” I told her.

She shrugged and said:

“I thought it was good.”

What more is there to add?

Movies

Star Trek Beyond (2016) a (mildly) belated review

2016 was supposed to be a very big year for the Star Trek franchise.  Fifty years before, in 1966, the original series premiered.  Since the first appearance of that series, which limped to three seasons yet somehow, miraculously, found life after death in syndication, we’ve had numerous movies, TV shows, and still more movies, this time featuring the Next Generation cast before reverting to the original series but with a twist.

The twist was that the “original series” and her characters existed in an alternate time.  While you still had Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy, their “universe” was altered in time and this allowed for a new, young cast to take over for the original cast and try to chart their own path in the franchise.

I didn’t like the first movie featuring this new cast, 2009’s Star Trek, though I give everyone involved in the project an “A” for effort.  The new cast were remarkably good taking over the very familiar roles but the story…it just didn’t do it for me.  There were simply too many echoes to 1982’s magnificent Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

Still, I was impressed with this new young cast and hoped that despite my reservations, this new version of Star Trek would work.

In 2013 Star Trek Into Darkness, the second feature starring this new cast, was released.  While watching the film I enjoyed myself and thought it was far better than the first film but the good feelings turned out to be transitory.  The moment the movie was over and I started to think about what I just saw, plot holes and silly elements became only too obvious.  Star Trek Into Darkness, like Skyfall, proved to be one of those experiences you enjoy while watching the movie for the first time but if you spend even a second thinking about it afterwards your enjoyment rapidly sours.

Fast forward three years and we’re in 2016 and the third Star Trek film featuring the new cast, Star Trek Beyond, was announced and then…

…nothing.  Not even, it seemed, a peep.

The summer movie season was taken up with internet arguments regarding DC movies and Marvel movies and the silliness tied into the new Ghostbusters film.  All the while, Star Trek Beyond became a ghost.  An abandoned work.

Some people openly wondered if the film was a disaster and Paramount Studios realized it and was trying to bury the film.

It certainly seemed so.

And then, a trailer was released and actor/co-writer Simon Pegg expressed his disappointment of it and urged fans to “hang in there”, that the film was much better than this trailer made it out to be.  Incredibly, Paramount would subsequently release a trailer that proved even worse as it gave away a key plot element of the movie’s plot.  Once more Simon Pegg was forced to express his feelings about the movie’s trailer, this time urging them not to see it or any trailers that should follow.

I can only imagine how unhappy Mr. Pegg must have been with this, the third film in the franchise and the first to feature his actual (co)writing and the way Paramount seemed determined to botch the whole damn thing.

Star Trek Beyond was released on July 22, 2016 and while it did decent enough business, it appeared not to recoup its budget, never a good sign.  While the film received positive reviews and good word of mouth, the Keystone Cops routine Paramount engaged in before the movie’s release appeared to have dampened the excitement the film should have had.  Conversely, it is possible people were never all that attached to this new iteration of Star Trek and maybe this particular franchise was suffering from diminishing gains.

Regardless, as a Star Trek fan I wanted to see the film.  Unfortunately for me, the movie was in and out of theaters in a flash and became yet another of those films I’d have to wait to see when it reached home theaters and video.

That day finally came and yesterday I got the chance to watch it.

I’ll be blunt: Star Trek Beyond is easily the best of the “new” Star Trek movies and also the one that most captures the original series.  There is plenty of plot here and the excitement builds as the movie moves along before reaching a very exciting climax.

What more could you ask for?

Well, there are a few nits to pick…

A big part of the reason I’ve had a hard time warming up to the new Star Trek is that I’ve found the new actors, as good as they are, never “gel” into the extended family we had with the original actors.  Despite plenty of behind the scenes rumors/gossip of how little the actors of the original Star Trek got along with certain other actors in the cast (most of these rumors boil down to William Shatner being an incredibly difficult person to work with), the fact of the matter was that those original actors were spectacularly good at rising above whatever tensions existed behind the scenes and creating a genuine sense of being an extended family.

When (SPOILERS!) Spock dies at the end of The Wrath of Khan, the acting of everyone, particularly William Shatner, drilled home the agony of loss and, in an abrupt -and dare I say logical- gear shift, the hope for the future.  Spock’s death, as sad as it was to the characters, meant they would live.  His death was a noble sacrifice and the crew/actors conveyed their conflicting emotions incredibly well.

Compare that to Star Trek Into Darkness which was a thinly veiled remake of The Wrath of Khan.  There, surprise!, Captain Kirk “dies” and it is Spock who grieves for his death but the emotions feel hollow.  In these actors I never got a sense of them being a family and therefore whatever sadness was expressed felt…phony.

This is rectified to a great degree in Star Trek Beyond, which pushes the characters front and center and them interact to a greater degree with each other than they did in the previous two movies.  Every one of them shines and therefore we feel more engaged with not only them but the story, even if they still have a long way to go to give us the same sense of family the original cast offered.

Regardless, it is a big step forward.

As good as that was, however, the plot of the film could have used some tightening.  The main villain and his plan are presented in a rather sloppy way.  Further, after a big action sequence that winds up separating all the characters, they seem to bump into each other awfully quickly after being stranded on a large and rocky planet.  It was like they landed within two or three miles from each other.

Still, this is nitpicking.

The film builds up the tension and stakes and makes us care for the characters and their fate.  While the villain winds up not being as well defined as I would have hoped, his plan is truly evil and he has to be stopped.

As I said before, the film builds up the excitement and shines brightest in its climax.  Had someone explained the climax to me beforehand -and mentioned the music dragged in from the first movie as a key piece of that climax- I would have rolled my eyes into my head so fast they would have caught fire…yet in the movie it works exactly as it should, being both hilarious and thrilling at the same time.

Despite Paramount’s best/most inept efforts and some nits I have to pick, Star Trek Beyond, as I stated before, is easily the best of the three “new” Star Trek films.  If you’re a fan of the original or new Star Trek series yet haven’t seen this film yet, by all means give it a look.

Recommended.

Movies

Green Room (2015) a (mildly) belated review

I like “siege” films.  In fact, one of my all time favorite films is John Carpenter’s very low budget 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13 (avoid the 2005 remake)…

So when I heard about the plot of the 2015 film Green Room, I was intrigued.  Especially considering the director and writer of the film, Jeremy Saulnier, was also responsible for the intriguing 2013 movie Blue Ruin.

Like Blue Ruin, Green Room is a tense, though low budget thriller which involves a down on their luck punk rock band that barely scrapes by between low-attendance gigs.  They travel some 90 miles out of their way under the promise of a concert only to find the venue is now closed to the man who offered them the job.  To make up for it, the man offers them another gig at a relative’s place but warns them the venue is made up of neo-Nazis.  As long as they do the gig and not get political, he tells them, they’ll be fine.

Hard up for the cash, the band heads to the venue and performs.  But, after the performance, a cell phone left behind in the venue’s green room (the place where the band prepared for the concert) winds up causing them to witness a murder.  From there, the band and an unlikely ally are forced to fight for their lives to get out of this closed-in place.

Green Room, as mentioned before, is a “siege” film.  What that means is that you have the main character(s) locked in a small area while bad-guys mercilessly assault them from without.  In the very best siege films, the characters are inevitably outnumbered and outgunned and have to rely on their wits, rather than strength, to survive.

In the case of Green Room, the characters presented aren’t the sharpest and are likely more than a little buzzed after the concert but do realize quickly, though not quickly enough, the extent of their predicament.  Like the best of the siege films, not everyone survives and likeable -as well as unlikeable- characters meet their fate in brutal ways.

The movie’s cast is solid, with the late Anton Yelchin playing Pat, the band’s leader.  Alia Shawkat, often a more familiar face in comedic roles, is also very good as Sam, another band member and confidant of Pat.

But clearly the biggest, splashiest -and surprising- role is that of neo-Nazi leader Darcy, played by Patrick Stewart.  Unfortunately, this bit of “big” casting, to me, didn’t work quite as well as I hoped it would.

Taking a very well known -and for the most part beloved- actor and sticking him/her into a nasty role has been done before and sometimes to very good effect.  Henry Fonda, for instance, had a decades long reputation for playing salt of the earth types…people who were genuinely good inside and looked out for others.  This made his role of Frank, the cold-blooded killer in Once Upon A Time In The West, all the more shocking.

In Green Room, unfortunately, Darcy’s role is presented as one of cold expediency.  He is evil, yes, but in a cold, methodological way.  In other words: When presented with problem “a”, he logically figures out the steps needed to clean it up.  The evil presented here is -purposely, I suspect- like the Nazi collaborators of World War II.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for a particularly gripping bad guy.  Worse, unlike seeing the evil Henry Fonda’s character was capable in Once Upon A Time In The West, Darcy’s evil is done by surrogates and therefore he’s always above the fray and doesn’t become the hissable villain we really needed to have.

Coming away from the film, I was left with other questions as well.  One of the big ones involved the injury sustained to one of the band members very early in the film and when they realized, without a shadow of doubt, that their lives were in mortal danger.  The injury presented (I won’t go into spoilers here) is gruesome and chilling and kudos to the special effects department for the way it was presented.

However, such an injury would clearly be life threatening to the character that received it.  This injury must have severed many, many blood vessels and arteries and yet the character continues on doesn’t bleed out.

Further, after a while I couldn’t help but wonder why Darcy and his crew didn’t just rush the damn green room and blast everyone away.  Granted, the script tried to explain this but…I dunno.  Again, I don’t want to go into spoilers but it just seemed the bad guys were holding back more than they needed to…and ultimately that was to the benefit of the “good guys” and the resolution of the film.

Despite all that, I still think Green Room is a decent, tense siege thriller.  If you don’t think to hard about certain elements of the film (as I did), you will find this an enjoyable nail-bitter.  It is also a film not for the squeamish!

Movies

The Accountant (2016) a (right on time!) review

Let me state the following up front: The Accountant is an incredibly silly film.  Even stupid, if you think about it.

Yet it’s also a very effective throwback of the meaty thrillers of yesteryear and is presented in a clear and concise manner, an incredible accomplishment considering all the characters and story points addressed, all the while being entertaining as hell.

First, let’s talk negatives: The movie expects you to accept there is this “super” accountant out there who works for all kinds of super-evil groups (think big time terrorists, drug dealers, etc.) and also happens to be a super efficient killing machine…who happens to be a high functioning autistic man…who…

I don’t want to get into spoilers (there’s plenty more about the character revealed in the course of the movie) but, come on.  None of this is even remotely possible.

So if you’re going to scrutinize all the plot elements laid out in the film, you may not like what you see.

However, if you roll with the film and accept it for what it is, as I did, you’re in for a damn good time.

Ben Affleck is good in the central role, playing the mysterious “Christian Wolff” (a pseudonym), the super-Accountant who’s worked for some very shady characters.  When the movie begins, we’re not entirely certain of his morality, though his first actions presented involve helping a elder, simple farmer couple out from under a heavy tax burden.

Meanwhile, Treasury Agent Ray King (J. K. Simmons offering another very solid character work) essentially blackmails Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), a up-and-coming analyst, into investigating this mysterious “Accountant” and. presumably, bring him to justice.

Added to the mix, the Accountant’s mysterious female contact (essentially a “voice” on the phone, not unlike the voice which sends our heroes in motion in every episode of Mission: Impossible), sends him to check on the books of a major robotic company, one which may be hiding very dark secrets.  There, our Accountant meets up with Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick, another solid turn), that company’s accountant, and eventually all hell breaks loose.

While watching The Accountant I couldn’t help but feel it fit in with some of the better thrillers of yesteryear, either the breathless pulp fiction works you used to find on those bookstore (remember them?) racks or in films such as Three Days of the Condor.

We are presented with a strong cast of characters and a meaty story which, as I stated above, is very well presented.  This is not a small thing, either.  The Accountant gives us a lot of plot and a lot of characters yet manages bring all of these elements together in a clear, exciting manner, something any number of big films have botched.

So yes, The Accountant’s premise borders on, and gleefully slips on over, into preposterous but if you can get around that, you’re in for a surprisingly entertaining thriller which pleasantly evokes the better thrillers, both literary and film, of yesteryear.

Recommended.

Movies

The Nice Guys (2016) a (mildly) belated review

When the 2016 Summer Movies started coming out, like all movie fans I checked up on them to see which ones I would catch, whether it be in theaters (given my limited spare time, a hard thing to accomplish) or on home video.

Many of the films released in the summertime and by the studios tend to be big budgeted, effects heavy works aimed at almost all audiences.  It isn’t often a “big” summer release has anything more than a PG-13 rating.

Anyway, while looking over the upcoming films, the R-rated The Nice Guys got my attention.  First and foremost, the film was directed and co-written by Shane Black, the man who wrote many of the better action/buddy comedies of recent memory, including the original Lethal Weapon, and The Long Kiss Goodnight and who returned to the genre with the excellent Kiss  Kiss Bang Bang (2005) before more recently directing Iron Man 3.

Naturally I was intrigued.  When I saw the red band trailer (NSFW!) for the film, I was downright fascinated…

Which makes what I have to say next so agonizing: The movie turned out to be a disappointment.

Don’t get me wrong: There are plenty of laughs to be had, though the biggest ones are already spoiled by the above trailer.

Going beyond that, the movie had several problems which kept me from grading it much more than just a little above average.

To start with, the mystery the characters are trying to solve is never all that engaging.  When all is said and done, it proves to be rather silly, as it involves a porn film that exposes dirty dealings in the car industry (!).

The next big problem, again to me, was that the film skewed too far in the direction of comedy.  Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight worked because despite their comedic elements -more of which were present in the former than the later- there was always a sense that our heroes were in danger.  This is never the case in The Nice Guys.  While people are shot and killed, I never felt our heroes faced any real danger.  Add to that the fact that the villains presented are mostly bland henchmen, and not particularly fearsome ones at that, and any sustained suspense is dissipated.

What also hurt the movie’s overall sense of suspense was the fact that Ryan Gosling’s character had a daughter, played by Angourie Rice, who winds up being one of those young children who are far too wise for their own good and, more importantly, gets put into the middle of the investigation and thrown into the movie’s bigger actions scenes which further dissipate the danger our heroes face.

Why is that?  Because I just knew Mr. Shane -and I’m certain the studios/investors- didn’t have the guts to put a 13 year old character in danger of getting hurt, much less killed.  So when she’s in the movie’s biggest action sequences, I never felt the characters, and her, were in any danger and that dulled whatever excitement Mr. Black was trying to present.

Having said all that, I again will reiterate: The film made me laugh at various points and I’d be lying if I said it was a complete bust.  As I noted before, the film was a little above average and, if I were to rate it based on 1 to 4 stars, I’d give it 2 and 1/2 stars.

The NIce Guys was watchable, certainly, and at times very amusing.  I just wish it had excited me much more.

Movies

Phantasm Remastered (1979/2016) a (early!) review

On Friday I discovered my VUDU digital version of the 1979 cult horror film Phantasm was replaced with the new, J. J. Abrams’ Bad Robot “remastered” version for free.  Further, because I already owned the film, I also had access to this remastered version four full days (at least up to the point I discovered the upgrade!) before the movie’s official remastered release on October 4th and two days from now.

Yesterday I wrote about my find and promised to see the film and give it a review.  Last night I did just that and here you go…

To begin, the movie looks great.  I’m reminded of when I picked up the BluRay release of John Carpenter’s The Fog and was blown away by how clear it looked versus the (ahem) foggy version I was used to seeing.

While not quite on that level of visual brilliance, the remastered Phantasm nonetheless does look damn sharp and the trailer for the remastered version cleverly points out how we old timers first experienced the film versus what it looks like now…

So for those like me who like the film and remember being absolutely terrified by it when it was released back in 1979 (I think I first saw it in 1980), getting and seeing the remastered version is an absolute no-brainer.

However…

While watching Phantasm today versus 1979 (or 1980), it is clear the passage of time has dulled the terrifying shocks I felt while watching the film back in the era it was originally released.

It’s so damn difficult today, nearly 40 years later and after thousands upon thousands of horror films and TV shows having been released which depict all manner of “creative” gory death, for something this small scale to shock us like it did back then.  For today’s viewer’s, I suspect the movie’s most shocking scene, the death by Silver Ball, will elicit at best a shrug while I distinctly remember trembling after seeing that scene way back then.

And with those shocks not resonating quite as well as they did back in 1979, we’re left with an obviously very low budget film with a for the most part meandering story and so-so acting.

Well, with the notable exception of Angus Scrimm as the movie’s villain, the Tall Man.  Clearly he’s having an absolute (ahem) ball with his villainous turn.  In fact, Mr. Scrimm’s very first appearance in the movie looked like it was cut just as he went a little overboard in his facial expressions.

I strongly suspect the Tall Man’s character was a modernized version of Max Schreck’s Nosferatu, the very first film version of Dracula which was released in 1922. In that movie, Nosferatu was presented as tall and shadowy and scary as all get-out…

Like Nosferatu, Phantasm gives us the Tall Man in very small doses.  In Nosferatu,  the villainous Count appeared for only 9 some minutes in total in the film and in Phantasm I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tall Man appears for even less.  Yet it works.  It leaves us wanting so much more.

Having said all that, Nosferatu remains, even after nearly 100 years since its release, a genuinely creepy film while Phantasm, unfortunately, is a far more muted affair, at least IMHO.  In fact, the pleasures I derived from it had more to do with the way it depicted life circa 1979, when I was roughly the age of the movie’s protagonist.

I’ll always treasure the scares the film gave me back when I originally saw it and will also treasure this new, crisp and beautiful remastering.

However, I must also be honest and say that while Phantasm delights me for its nostalgic pull which includes the pleasant and scary memories it offers me, I genuinely feel modern audiences may not take to it like I do.  While the film still works as a mad living nightmare, to some it might be a little too slow to bother with.

Sadly, this happens to the best of ’em.

Movies

London Has Fallen (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Back in 2013 a curious thing happened, though certainly not for the first time:  Two movies were released within a three month period of time that were, from a plot standpoint, essentially the same.

I’m referring to Olympus Has Fallen, which appeared in theaters in late March of 2013…

…and White House Down, which showed up in June of 2013…

As can be seen in the trailers, the plots of these films was essentially the same: The President is targeted by terrorists and attacked while in the White House.  A “renegade” Secret Service agent, in both cases, is there to try to save the President and mow down the villains.

It was clear White House Down was meant to be the more “prestige” feature.  It had the bigger stars and bigger budget and yet, when all was said and done, though both films are hardly considered “classics” of action/adventure, most might give the slight edge to the lower budget, lower star-powered Olympus Has Fallen.

The proof?

White House Down was ridiculed by its star Channing Tatum in 22 Jump Street while, earlier this year, Olympus Has Fallen had itself a sequel, London Has Fallen.

Going into watching this film, I tried to ignore the negative noise critics and audiences heaped upon it.  Several people, more than one would expect, labeled the film loud and, provocatively, racist.  One critic in particular called this the cinematic equivalent of Donald Trump.

Yikes.

So I plopped the film into my player and it started and…

It wasn’t that bad.

Like its predecessor, Gerard Butler is Mike Banning, Secret Service agent/protector to Benjamin Asher, the President of the United States, again played by Aaron Eckhart.  As the movie starts, we witness a party in some distant, Arabian home.  The participants are clearly rich and, based on conversation, the father of the group is a stern, “eye for an eye” type.  It is heavily implied they are a family of terrorists.

Not too surprisingly, we find one of the people in the party text a message that the father is present.  He departs before a drone stike shatters the home and we’re instantly transported to two years later.

Turns out the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has passed and all the major leaders of all the major countries, including President Asher and Secret Service Agent Banning, head to the funeral.

Bad idea, as can be seen in the trailer below…

Turns out the funeral, though a very real thing, was a creation by the aggrieved terrorist to bring all those world leaders to London and, while they are all there, the terrorist attack mercilessly, killing all the world leaders but one.

Once again Agent Manning is forced to shield his charge while a gang of highly trained and well armed terrorists hunt him down, intent on getting revenge for that drone stike.

The premise is quite simple and the action begins very quickly.  If action is what you crave, London Has Fallen delivers and appeared, at least to my eyes, like a better budgeted throwback to the old Chuck Norris film Invasion U.S.A. (you can read my review of that movie here).

Like Invasion U.S.A., the villains are indeed caricatures and therefore the charge of racism is not a inconsequential one.  In Invasion U.S.A., the evil Russian/Cuban commies were unrepentant heathens who committed heinous acts of violence on decent, God fearin’ ‘Muricans and it was up to good ol’ boy Chuck Norris to send their scum suckin’ asses back to hell.

In London Has Fallen, there is a similar tone deafness regarding Arabs.  All Arab people in this film are presented as evil, unrepentant terrorists and the fact that the U.S. and other world leaders started this carnage with their drone strike -again, it was against a party that likely featured much innocent collateral damage- is quickly swept under the proverbial rug.

Still, if you can get past the distasteful “Murica!” rah-rahing, you have a decent enough action film that features some good effects -along with some that aren’t quite so good- and a decent pace that only flags toward the film’s end.  I really don’t get why these actions films insist on having our hero go “solo” against a vast army of villains, especially when in this film he actually has backup and there’s no reason to do so!

As with Olympus Has Fallen, this film is hardly a watershed new high in action/adventure filmmaking and, quite frankly, falls closer to average than anything else.

For that reason, as well as the tone deaf presentation of Arab characters, I can’t outright recommend the movie yet I’d be lying if I said it was a total bust.  Yeah, its loud and strident and does indeed feel like seeing Donald Trump in film form, yet there’s a retro quality to it that I, as a young man in the 1980’s, found familiar…and strangely -bizarrely- nostalgic.

Take of that what you will.

Movies

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) a (mildly) belated review

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know my feels regarding Star Wars (the 1977 film) and the phenomena that is Star Wars and its many iterations (you can read some of my thoughts here and here).

In short: I was 11 years old when the original Star Wars was released, I went to the theaters eager to see it and within the first few days (if not week) of its release, was surrounded by an army of fellow very young boys and girls who yelped and screamed and clapped and loved every second of the film…

…yet the movie left me curiously unmoved.

Understand, I didn’t hate what I saw, I just couldn’t get into it.  At all.

So unmoved was I that I didn’t see Empire Strikes Back when it was originally released and didn’t catch it until it aired on TV a few years later (I thought it, like Star Wars, was “ok”).  I did catch Return of the Jedi when it was originally released and had a more positive reaction, most likely due to the cycle race through the forest, which I thought was exciting as hell.

I caught the “prequel” films after they reached home video and, like most, didn’t think all that much about them.  Some great effects but a muddled (and, in my opinion, unnecessary) story told over too many films.

As should be obvious, I don’t go out of my way looking for Star Wars material but, being a fan of sci-fi in general, knew I’d one day see Star Wars: The Force Awakens (it was originally touted as Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens but slimmed down and, to save on typing, I’ll refer to it as SWTFA from now on) and that day came yesterday.

Reviewing the film, at this point, feels almost pointless.  Everyone (but me until yesterday) has seen the film by now and have opinions about it.  The movie is generally well-regarded, though there are those who question certain aspects of it, which I’ll get into below.

In brief, the movie was for me an enjoyable enough romp with charismatic actors in the lead and a story which…well…wasn’t all that good.

The movie features a story that is consciously “inspired” by the original Star Wars and, to many, this is the movie’s primary problem.  I can’t disagree.  While the original Star Wars was indeed a pastiche of other movies, SWTFA was obviously an echo of that original film featuring both old and new castmembers.

Of the new characters presented, I was very impressed with Daisy Ridley as Rey, the sorta-kinda Luke Skywalker-esq character whose background is hinted at but ultimately never fully revealed, though it is implied she has a familiar lineage which may go back to Luke Skywalker himself.

The movie’s first half hour or so was, to my mind, the best part of the film.  We’re introduced to all the main new characters (including John Boyega as Finn, a Stormtrooper deserter, Adam Driver as the Darth Vader-esq Kylo Ren, and Oscar Isaac as the hotshot rebel pilot Poe Dameron).

When Rey and Finn get together and are forced to run away from the First Order (the name of the remnants of the Empire), it was a genuine thrill, even to this non-Star Wars fan, to see on what they made it out of the planet.

Unfortunately, their escape, the high point of the film IMHO, was followed by a wave of coincidences/family relations that stretch the story to its breaking point.

Immediately after Rey and Finn’s escape, Han Solo (Harrison Ford returning to the famous role and not looking all that bad, though his story arc proved disappointing in the end) shows up like really quickly.  His too-quick appearance suggests a universe that is very small indeed.

Later we find Kylo Ren, the movie’s main villain/Darth Vader surrogate, is Han Solo/Princess Leia’s son.  Rey, it is strongly hinted later on, may be part of the Skywalker bloodline which makes her coincidental ties into the story hard to swallow.

I grant you some of these same coincidences worked their way into the original Star Wars films, but many of those coincidences came after the fact (I strongly suspect Darth Vader was considered Luke’s father only when Empire Strikes Back was made and, based on the original cut of Star Wars, Luke clearly had the hots for Leia and the brother/sister relationship was also a later add-on).

Anyway, getting back to SWTFA, tying the various characters together is -stop me if you heard this before- a droid with important information (a map, as it turns out) hidden within it.

Oh, and there’s another “death star” out there, this one bigger than the one in Star Wars and Return of the Jedi and our heroes have to take it out.

Yeah, not the most original of story-lines.

While the original Star Wars is considered by many a “classic” (though it remains perhaps the only high profile film out there we cannot legally see the original theatrical cut of), I suspect SWTFA will never quite reach that lofty level.

At best, the film is a pleasant diversion that works as long as you don’t take too critical an eye on its all-too familiar (and at times preposterous, given the coincidences) story.  The characters, old and new, are likeable and director J. J. Abrams does a good job emulating George Lucas’ style even as returning screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan et al decided to simply cut and paste story ideas.

In the end, I recommend the film, most especially to those who, unlike me, really really love Star Wars.  To the rest, your enjoyment will depend on how bothered you are by the story presented.

One last point: How in the world could they spend big bucks on making this film and bringing back the original cast yet couldn’t figure out a way to have at least one scene where Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia were in the same frame?!

Incredible wasted opportunity.

Movies

Blue Ruin (2014) a (moderately) belated review

There comes a time when you see a film and, on an intellectual level, you acknowledge everything about it is quite good.  The acting, the directing, the story, the cinematography.

You acknowledge the film is a fine work, especially given the fact that it has an obviously very low budget and yet…

…and yet, on an emotional level the film simply fails to engage you.

So it is with Blue Ruin, a 2013 release written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier and featuring Macon Blair as Dwight, a man who at the start of the film appears a homeless, aimless derelict.  This all changes when a kindly police officer picks him up and tells him someone is about to be released from prison.

The someone turns out to be Wade Cleland Jr., and over the course of the movie’s opening minutes we realize this individual was sent to jail for killing Dwight’s father and mother.  But things aren’t quite what they seem and Dwight’s act of revenge leads to further revelations…and repercussions.

Again, this film is clearly a skilled piece of work yet for whatever reason I never felt fully engaged with what I was seeing.  In fact, after the first half hour or so I even considered turning the movie off yet stuck with it.

I’m glad I did because the later half of the film proved stronger than the first half and the ultimate resolution had echoes to famous Greek tragedies (which, I have to imagine, the writer/director of the film was clearly aiming for).

But…

I still can’t say the film “grabbed me”.

In the end, I suppose you have to take Blue Ruin for what it is: A good first attempt, on a shoe-string budget, of creating a suspense film.  While I can’t outright recommend the film based on my own reaction to it, I would be lying if I weren’t interested in seeing writer/director Saulnier’s follow up film, Green Room.

I think there’s certainly talent and skill on display within the movie.  I just wish the presentation had grabbed me more.