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Film Review: Dust Bunny

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Directed by: Bryan Fuller; Runtime: 106 minutes
Grade: B+

The landscape of a child’s imagination continues to be a remarkable place for the fantasy genre to thrive, notably for those stories with bleak tones and symbolic ideas that sweep up children into dark circumstances beyond what would typically be considered appropriate for their age. Explorations of physical trauma and mistreatment, of wartime grief and loss, of drug abuse and deception are often disguised as whimsical journeys and mysteries happening around kids in peril, which can be unsettling yet also beautiful in the hands of artists who appreciate the delicate power of the imagination to combat reality. Pushing Daisies and Hannibal creative force Bryan Fuller has a unique grasp on that line between reality and fantasy that has elevated similar masterworks of this R-rated dark fairy tale subgenre, a grasp both morbid and gorgeous that’s uniquely qualified to bring Dust Bunny into the world, a hyper-stylized action thriller powered by the wishes of a girl for her wrongdoers to be gobbled up by a monster of her creation.

Set close to Chinatown in New York City, the story centers on Aurora (Sophie Sloan), a curious and conscientious 10-year-old who lives in an apartment with her family. Bright lights and fireworks take her onto the streets one evening where she believes to have witnessed the slaying of a dragon by her "Intriguing Neighbor" (Mads Mikkelsen) from a connecting apartment next to hers. What she actually witnesses is the slaying of a disguised gang of targets by the man from 5B, a professional hit man. Swayed by Aurora's side of the story, the mystery neighbor gets enlisted to help in slaying another monster: the dust bunny living under her bed, who doesn’t let anyone nearby touch the floor without being violently consumed ... not even her now-deceased parents. Curious about the nature of her parents’ death, the neighbor in 5B decides to look into it with a new companion by his side, but even he grows surprised by the monstrous dangers that emerge around Aurora.

Those who have seen Valhalla Rising and The Salvation know that Mads Mikkelsen has more than shrewd villains and wrought victims in his character range, as he’s able to summon a smoldering, durable antiheroic warrior into his uniquely dashing camera presence. Here, his assassin character isn’t given much room for the kind of depth one might find in similar roguish companions like Jean Reno’s Leon or Lee Pace’s Masked Bandit, mostly because the enigmas surrounding Aurora have so much dramatic and situational gravity that they swallow up opportunities for further exploration of the “Intriguing Neighbor” in 5B, outside of the palpable guilt that comes from death. Mikkelsen certainly looks and sounds the part, with casual swoops of his silver and dark hair shrouding his face as he maneuvers around explosives and utilizes martial-arts grappling techniques, while his exquisite chemistry with young actress Sophie Sloan captures the expected hesitation and unique suspiciousness built around the girl’s perception of what’ll put him in danger with her monster. You want the Intriguing Neighbor in 5B to exist in as iconic of a spotlight as other cinematic assassins, yet Mikkelsen can’t quite make that happen with the narrative tools at his disposal.

Instead, Dust Bunny adds story richness to the space around the “Intriguing Neighbor” through the people with whom he interacts and the places he visits while discovering more about his companion and her situation, deciphering what we can from untrustworthy allies like Sigourney Weaver’s wryly gleeful Laverne and soaking up the battlegrounds where he runs into brisk, dangerous shootouts and brawls fitting for his profession. Through the lens of cinematographer Nicole Horst Whitaker, Bryan Fuller and his production team build a borderline-surreal world out of their take on Chinatown that relishes being somewhat timeless, archaic and old-world yet modern and polished. Vivid colors and lustrous architectural details can’t help but recall the iconoclastic underworld of John Wick in tea houses, alleyways, and one badass restaurant with a shark tank in it, but there are also more poetic and metaphorical audiovisual touches -- notably in the apartment building -- that form into a maze-like dreaminess reminiscent of the works of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillermo Del Toro in its depiction of Aurora’s troubled mental space.

With time, Dust Bunny grows in confidence and reveals more of the monster at the heart of the story, both figuratively and literally. Throughout the dimly-lit atmosphere of the apartment’s fantastical deep green glow, wood floorboards start to flutter and crack while hungry teeth and hairy spikes emerge in herky-jerky bursts on cue, all which lean into the attitude of a straight-up creature feature with wild visual effects bringing it snarling to life. Somewhat obviously, Dust Bunny begins to thrive on the mystery of the monster’s existence while hit men and government agents converge on this almost-mythical apartment, and the point when the dust bunny becomes this tangible, observable force of nature also marks when Bryan Fuller ramps up thr suspenseful momentum and doesn’t stop. Dark fantastical horror takes over the atmosphere with gunfire and close-quartered combat as mere interruptions, adorned with charismatic faces -- David Dastmalchian as a leader of hitmen out for Aurora; Sheila Atim as his counterpoint, a government caseworker -- that evoke genuine danger and fear amid chaotic sequences of action and destruction through tight spaces.

Figuring out whether the monster’s real or part of Aurora’s headspace turns into both the most intriguing and the most frustrating aspect of Dust Bunny, and it becomes something of a necessary examination once the monster under Aurora’s bed starts taking responsibility for immediate deaths in the situation. Amid a wave of choppy, sensationalized monster-movie attacks and messy outcomes to converging story threads, writer/director Fuller leaves little room for interpretation in a cinematic climax that might’ve actually benefitted from more reading between the lines, more metaphorical playfulness in conveying the nature of the beast and how it translates to Aurora’s trauma and grief. Despite forcing itself to lose meaningful ambiguity as the dust settles, any lack of subtlety or subtext doesn’t take away from the bittersweet impact of the journey’s outcome. Dust Bunny wholeheartedly commits to a contemporary fantasy full of genuine peril and allegorical intent that respects the monstrous rumbling within neglected or mistreated children, and while it doesn’t reach the dramatic heights of other kindred surreal adventures of the subgenre, it sinks its teeth into enough creative, expressive thrills along the way to theive as a different kind of beast.

Film Review: The Bluff

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:49:00 +0000

Directed by: Frank E. Flowers; Runtime: 103 minutes
Grade: B-

Ever since the silent film era started adapting literature’s great swashbuckling novels, embarking on high-seas adventures with legendary pirates has continued to be peak cinematic escapism, be it grandiose battles on fully-manned ships or sweaty, stealthy pursuits for treasure through tropical islands. Recently, the successful but fallen-off Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has left the subgenre mostly quiet in its absence for a decade, and while the eager can revisit the cinema of the past with Errol Flynn’s escapades -- please watch Captain Blood and Sea Hawk -- or discover the historically adjacent action-drama series Black Sails, the thirst has grown for something new from the realm of weatherworn, morally-fluid men and women of the sea. In comes Amazon’s The Bluff, arriving to shore with the ambition that gritty skirmishes, character gravitas and a fistful of contemporary twists will lead it across a familiar map to excitement. There might not be a hidden gem at the end of this straight-to-stream pirate jaunt, but there’s more than enough sentiment and swagger behind the swordplay to revel in the escapade.

The Bluff transports us to the Caribbean in the mid-1800s, to a remote island in the Caymans harboring a small township living in seclusion. A Caribbean native, Ercell (Priyanka Chopra), has cultivated a peaceful life with her sister and handicapped son, awaiting the return of her ship captain husband from a significantly overlong trip. That is, until a cluster of boats carrying intimidating raiders rush up to shore, led by the gristly and graying Captain Connor (Karl Urban). The outfit’s objective becomes clear: an old shipmate of theirs has been hiding valuable cargo, and they’re here to collect by any means necessary. The pirates announce their arrival with violence, and at that point Ercell forces herself to flip a switch and transform into who she once was for the sake of protecting her family. In steps Bloody Mary, once a trained and violent swashbuckler who sailed with Captain Connor, armed with knowledge of combat, explosives, and traps that’ll complicate matters for the invaders.

Written by Joe Ballarini and director Frank E. Flowers with genuine historical texture in mind, the story has an unmistakable air of familiarity to it, fueled by the unretired professional killer movies of the modern era such as Kill Bill or John Wick with homages to modern and classic swashbuckling cinema of lore. When it’s shot on location in the Cayman Islands like this for atmosphere, that familiarity matters far less as the vintage moving parts of the classic pirate’s tale take shape around Chopra’s heroine, and it quickly gets the pulse going in The Bluff. Too often in these stories, women are either relegated to damsels in distress or curated into a passable, shielded member of a pirate’s crew, whereas Ercell’s backstory forms into a credible and bleak origin for her skills as a notorious buccaneer and a willingness to murder in protection of her family. From the jump, Chopra comes ready to be convincing as that dashing hero with a transformative past, and the film’s energy burns brighter once she reveals what she’s been hiding from her family.

What I’m still wrapping my head around with The Bluff is how the primary characters default to dramatic comfort zones for their roguish personas, and whether that’s distracting or the right kind of satisfying for a character-driven outing like this. Chopra channels her passionate, yet wise and mature baseline attitude into a grim, fiery vessel for Emcell without fussing over giving her unique ticks or tells, and for the story being told -- and what Bloody Mary has survived -- that’s justifiable. Karl Urban, on the other side of the coin, has a more complex issue going on: his gravelly British accent, narrow smoldering glances and general coat-slinging swagger work like a salacious twist on Butcher from the popular series The Boys. And y’know, seeing Butcher-Urban slide along the scale of morality while surrounded by only the “superpowers” of learned sword combat and steady-aimed firearms can be inherently entertaining, stock delivery or not. When you combine them with their characters’ long unseen history of piracy together, Urban and Chopra in these identifiable states generate the right energy of fire and fury, allowing charisma to sweep us into the flow of action.

Those expecting prolonged fencing battles with clanging blades and measured footwork will be disappointed with The Bluff, as it eschews that sort of pageantry for shorter, wider sabers and hidden daggers designed for quick work during battle when explosives and pistols don’t do the trick. Mixed with martial-arts maneuvers and some good old dirty brawling, the action begins with blood and grit and doesn’t let up the deeper it goes into the island, choreographed with abrupt violence in mind as it precariously walks the tightrope of realism with what Bloody Mary’s able to do and endure. Fights break out in tight spaces from complex angles, whether it’s arid Caribbean homes or dense jungles and dusty caverns, with the cinematography respecting the little details of their geography when the chaos becomes too much for the space. Bloody Mary’s allowed to kick ass, and I’m here for it, from acrobatic chokes to munitions explosions.

After a ravishing climax that pulls all its strengths together into, yet again, something foreseeable yet rousing for its conclusion, The Bluff reaches an interesting destination: it isn’t the kind of sweeping success that begs for big-screen attention with what it accomplishes, but it’s also executed far, far better than other streaming-only or direct-to-video pics, especially in how it stays focused on to-the-ground swashbuckling during an era of genre regrowth. In the absence of blockbuster scale and stakes, there’s the exhilaration of cheering on Bloody Mary’s maternal instincts as she reaches deeper in her bag of tricks to safeguard her family with the tools that she’s got, and every detonation or takedown or swing of the blade marks another taste of of the genre with purpose. That’s why The Bluff succeeds at being adequate and frequently enjoyable pirate escapism, likely not a journey you’ll revisit but one worth admiring for the gusto in how it revives the genre’s sights and sounds.

Film Review: Return to Silent Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 18:43:00 +0000

Directed by: Christophe Gans; Runtime: 106 minutes
Grade: D

With time, the reputation for Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill has transformed from an iffy-reviewed phantasmagoric horror upon its release to one of the more misunderstood and successfully executed video game adaptations of all time, where viewers like myself have defended the film’s seemingly awkward dialogue delivery and bewildering grotesque imagery as an entirely accurate, absorbing replication of what makes the game series so interesting. Then, a sequel was attempted on a shoestring budget that more directly tells another popular story in the series, that of Silent Hill 3, with the result being the far-less defendable Silent Hill: Revelation, which left fans cherry-picking for mediocre successful elements from a good-intended misfire. From that, the gears of public opinion went into motion the way they do: Revelation wouldn’t have been such a major disappointment had Christophe Gans stuck around to direct it and shape its visual language. Turns out, if Return to Silent Hill is any indication, that may not have been the case after all.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Before any glimpse at trailers or even casting, the combination of Silent Hill's building cult status and the disastrous issues of the sequel in the director’s absence eventually led to one of those exciting moments where everyone might actually get their wish: the announcement came that Gans would be returning will full control over a new Silent Hill film. Hooray! His intention? To take on the most popular story from the series, that of James Sunderland and his melancholy journey into the foggy town of Silent Hill to find his beloved Mary, who has met some mysteriously tragic fate. The stories in these games can be deliberately bizarre and vague, but Silent Hill 2 in particular operates in metaphors and psychosis that can be both fascinating and frustrating, where monsters and the moving parts of the plot both often manifest as extensions of the character’s mental space. If Gans does Silent Hill 2 the way he handled his first crack atvthe world, greatness may await.

Jeremy Irvine of War Horse fame has been tapped to bring life to James, and while the choice sounds fine on paper, his emo-haired, strung-out presentation of an enigmatic “painter” in psychological recovery is uninspired, giving off overcaffeinated hangover vibes instead of those of a spooked, yet curious forlorn lover navigating the hazards of an eerie fog town hiding his wife. As opposed to Radha Mitchell’s fraught behavior amid her search for her daughter in Silent Hill, Irvine’s James seems more like he’s fighting through bad fever dreams and migraines that he doesn’t have the wherewithal to get over, divorcing himself from the setting’s dreamlike conceit. Oddly, the performances around James operate as if Christopher Gans took the notes about his first film’s trippy dialogue a little too strongly, as the dramatic voices here are more harshly overwrought and lack Silent Hill's effective off-kilter tempo. Look, I get that people have heard negative things about Silent Hill dialogue and rolled with it previously, but as someone who’s been on that side before, this is different.

At least Christophe Gans has brought back enough of his signature flair and awareness for the franchise to reconstruct the atmosphere … right? Much as it pains me to say, it’s shocking to see how much Return to Silent Hill veers in the wrong direction with this as well, despite Gans quite obviously knowing and appreciating the source material. Scenes from this movie will jump out as direct, point-‘n-whistle duplications of the game’s iconic visuals: the wide shot of James’s car in the parking lot looking out at Toluca Lake; the bathroom mirror; his initial hike through the forest, cemetery, and outer streets of the town’s outskirts. Other familiar faces, grotesque foes and iconography reveal themselves to the initiated on cue, but the script from Gans, frequent collaborator Sandra Vo-Anh and The Crow reboot scribe William Schneider finds ways to dramatize and distort those details into crude mutations of themselves; any subtext from the game has been shoved into the light for all to see.

Return to Silent Hill also lacks the beautiful stillness and unnerving buildup that hallmarked Christophe Gans’ first trip there, the artful allure of terrors in hallways and streets as they crumble upon themselves, captured by steady-handed pan and tilt shots from striking, disorienting angles by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dan Laustsen. In its absence, Gans reaches for mundane contrivances and computer-generated monstrosities to fill the void, be it with waves of skittering nibblers, writhing fluid-spewing walkers, or aggressive flashes of headache-inducing light all in a burnt-orange glow. Jostled by bobbly camera movement from [REC] cinematographer Pablo Rosso that forces extra chaos and instability where it’s already there, overzealous production decisions and computer wizardry drain any convincing reality from the falling ash on the foggy streets, from the decaying walls and rusted metal in the Otherworld, from the pale twisted flesh of the creatures. And yes, that includes the clunky arrival of iconic villain Pyramid Head, vaguely accurate to his place in the game but more like a stop in a haunted house or theme park than a facet of anyone’s nightmares.

By the end of its turgid, never-ending drag through psychological dead ends, Return to Silent Hill accomplishes something I genuinely didn’t think possible: it ends up being a significantly weaker film, either game adaptation or just straight up genre pic, than the panned, budget-strapped Revelation from years prior. Just on the surface, it’s tough to point out any efforts to scare that actually work in its runtime -- a rolling head here, a hallway of writhing nurses zombies there -- where getting a rise out of the audience lies in rattling metal and cranking up the volume when acid sizzles and radios fizzle, feigning interest in those signature marks of the series while funneling streaks of metaphorical mystery into a consequential twist at the end. Jacob’s Ladder or In the Mouth of Madness, this isn’t; instead, the sirens are going off as it becomes clear that Christophe Gans won’t be rescuing Silent Hill from its cinematic woes.

Sinners, Aliens, and God Complexes: The Best of 2025

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 18:39:00 +0000

Much like the flying sparks and energy surges in Frankenstein’s laboratory as he slaves away at reviving the flesh of freshly decomposing tissue, the part of my brain that worships at the altar of cinema started to regain life in earnest over the past year. A critic will always be a critic and have their opinions, of course, and evidence of my oath to that has continued to exist in a jolt here and a twitch there across social media. Yet, it’s only amid the chaos of 2025, the combination of worldly worries and the tribulations of toddler parenting, that the film criticism muscles started regaining their memory amid a fascinating slate of high-quality pieces of work, arguably one of the best calendar years of releases -- especially for the horror genre -- that we’ve seen in almost a decade, and uniquely timed at theaters and streaming so that a broader audience can stay on top of most or all of it.

Despite the gap in time, we’re doing things the way I’ve always done them: below you’ll find a list of ten or so films that really struck a chord with me from the past year, laid out in alphabetical order due to my aversion to ranking creations with such different objectives and complexities. This may not be a comprehensive evaluation of the year's entire output, but I've been lucky enough to see a sizable chunk of the noteworthy cinema to construct an informed list of "the good stuff". Great to be back, hope to be back with a regular vengeance.

Bugonia
In Bugonia, the character played by Emma Stone insists to her conspiracy theorist captor, impeccably realized by Jesse Plemons, that she isn’t an alien, attributing her youthful appearance to anti-aging regiments that are very expensive. She may not be a literal alien in Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark kidnapping thriller, but when she’s a corporate bigwig on that level of importance and freedom, perhaps she might as well be. Those are the sociopolitical ideas tumbling around as the reality of a harrowing abduction plays out, shrewdly photographed with Emma Stone’s uniquely wide, vivid eyes as a centerpiece, her masterful performance launching the character from boilerplate business troubleshooting to darker verbal manipulation and then to fraught speeches that are, frankly, out of this world. A marvel of blunt-force thematic trauma and cloaked metaphors about humanity, population control, and self-destruction, Bugonia might not be the film that gets rewatched as often as the others on this list due to its grim, guttural nature, but I be damned if it doesn’t continue to buzz in the mind long and hard after this smartly-crafted remake unmasks its truths.

Companion
Science fiction has been warning us for a long time about the dangers of artificial intelligence gaining control of our day-to-day lives, yet still we seem to have been slow-walking to a meeting point between technologies -- independent-thinking synthetic intelligence and autonomous robot and drone technology -- that looks suspiciously like all the ingredients needed for the bad stuff to happen, just unassembled. Companion operates best knowing less of the specifics about what’s really going on as possible during a couple’s retreat at a lake house, but going in with the knowledge that it’s set in a near future where we’ve bridged at least some of that gap to “the bad stuff” won’t ruin anything. With Sophie Thatcher at the core as a disarming emotional force in the vessel of an awkward yet devoted girlfriend, writer/director Drew Hancock uses technology, robotics, and the transactional nature of human interactions to create fast, cerebral cat-and-mouse horror that can’t help from urging caution in many of the same way as other pieces of sci-fi have over the years, only on a more prescient and intimate level.

Eddington
There’s a scene in Eddington where Joaquin Phoenix’s small-town sheriff character lumbers through a Democratic fundraiser with a very-Texan stride, goes straight for a sound machine to turn off loud music, then turns and walks away ... only for the exact same song to flip back on with him still there. This is executed with almost laugh-out-loud comedic timing and would effortlessly spark that reaction at other times, but there’s an entire Ari Aster amount of cinematic context that happens before it, where a fictional Texas town becomes the perfect microcosm for COVID-era politics: it’s just big enough for world events to have impact and opinions to matter, but not big enough that people aren’t compelled to ignore inconvenient protocols because they believe the problem won’t reach their city. From rigid distancing policies and conspiracy theories to social-media influence and money tied up in politics, Eddington endures a little of everything in its absorbing war between Democratic mayor Ted Garcia and his power-strapped contender for the office, Sheriff Cross, realizing a comedy of errors in calculated maneuvers that get a little too close to the border of realism for their own good.

Frankenstein
I’ll admit: the first time I heard Guillermo Del Toro say that he’s "not doing a horror movie” for Frankenstein gave me pause. While I understood the gist of what he meant about adapting Mary Shelley’s tale with objectives in mind other than those of classical genre pictures, it was concerning that he might not invoke enough gore and grotesquery for the tale of reanimated flesh and mad-science god complexes. He’s among a select few modern directors who have earned some faith in the mystique of their craftsmanship, and man, does his version of Frankenstein deliver on his promise. From the moment you see Oscar Isaac’s Dr. Frankenstein controls strung-together flesh like a puppet for a lecture about bringing the dead back to life, it becomes clear there’s no absence of horror here. The visuals, full of towering red columns of light amid gothic architecture, are disarming; the practical effects involving slicing up and jolting alive viscera are gruesome yet gorgeous. It’s the tragic, expressive performances that make this Frankenstein, though, and enough positive things can’t be said about the lithe, intimidating presence Jacob Elordi brings to Frankenstein’s Monster.

One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s films usually have a lot going on in them, both in the layers and perspectives of the story and the ideas and themes he’d like for the audience to take away, and One Battle After Another is no exception. With a particularly emotive Leonardo DiCaprio leading the charge as explosives specialist revolutionary Ghetto Pat in love with a fellow fiery independent woman for the cause, the film covers two different eras in the history of resistance fighters: when they’re young and free of restraints, and a decade-and-a-half down the line when a daughter becomes involved. While a timely social tapestry gets woven about fighting for immigrants, government and military interference in gaining control of the message, and powerful men jockeying for further power as others suffer — sometimes, with the suffering being the point — One Battle After Another never takes its sight off the human stakes involved in the fabric of a father-daughter relationship and the obsession of an unhinged supremacist military officer to locate them. Sean Penn’s swoop-haired villain Lockjaw might be the most fascinating in a line of fascinating things here: sterile yet putrid, overconfident yet uncomfortable, vascular yet cripplingly weak.

Sinners
All it takes is a few minutes with Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke and Stack twin characters for Sinners to sink in its teeth and cast its spells, showing how writer/director Ryan Coogler’s desire to take a stab at creating twins onscreen transforms into an absorbing period tale set in Prohibition-era South. This isn’t a comic book, but it does have certain mythical sensibilities that capture just as much invigorating entertainment value as one, offering tastes of backstory about how the criminal brothers lived a potent, profitable, passionate life leading up to this return to their hometown. As they drum up connections and resources to open a spot for music and booze, Sinners offers brisk, beautiful storytelling with a deep musical soul long before any advertised bloodsuckers enter the picture to try and crash the party. Once the vampires do show up, Coogler goes for the throat with action-tilted bloodshed backed by fierce symbolism tied to the cultural history of America, accomplishing so much more than similar split-in-half genre pics like From Dusk Till Dawn could even imagine.

Superman
Any messages delivered by director and DC film architect James Gunn involving Superman as a resident alien are quite clear in this quasi-reboot, and this is certainly a James Gunn movie, through and through. The humor both sticks landings and overstays its welcome, there’s a lot of cool secondary character involvement without fleshing them out as much as we’d like, and it isn’t afraid to go very, very big with existential threats and action set pieces. Ultimately, those aspects become excusable because of how this Superman’s designed to feel like we’re catching the flow of a narrative that’s already been going for a minute, like you’ve grabbed a shiny new copy of a comic off the rack featuring the rebooted universe. This is also a whole new experience watching Corenswet’s Big Blue Boy Scout in bold, grin-inducing acts of heroism: neither Cavill nor Reeve, he plants his flag somewhere between the two with his borderline eyeroll-worthy idealism, a tough trait to hit. This isn’t “Superman Begins”, by design, but it confidently announces that it’s cut from a different cloth than previous versions and embraces the brighter side of messaging about sympathy, goodwill, and humanity in the face of authoritative manipulation (Hoult is a fab Lex Luthor).

Thunderbolts
Thing is, superhero movie burnout is very real, and I reached that point several stages ago before Marvel and DC both brought their developed universes to a head with Avengers Infinity War/Endgame and Justice League. For those who have felt that cynical, curmudgeonly aggravation creep in, Thunderbolts is a breath of fresh air. Adjacent to The Suicide Squad for DC and led by Black Widow heir apparent Florence Pugh as an ex-assassin searching for solace and purpose in a hero’s world, a downtrodden squad of antiheroes embark on a search for political retribution after surviving a mission designed to eliminate them all, running into overwhelming obstacles and getting their hands dirty with the characters’ flaws and doubts about their worth the closer they get to the architect, CIA director De Fontaine. Then, it becomes funny, and then somber, and then it hits a rhythm lobbying back and forth between those tones … and wouldn’t you know it, it feels meaningful. Action does get outlandish and all-powerful at a certain point, which might ring a few alarms for those tired of the rigamarole, but it’s never without purpose or justification and Thunderbolts never stops being a thinking person’s hero film with a different slate of antagonists.

Wake Up Dead Man
An immensely talented cast curated by Rian Johnson fills Wake Up Dead Man as the flock of an isolated New York church helmed by an austere priest, played by Josh Brolin in a way that immediately sparks thoughts of the barnacled pulpit speaker from Moby Dick and his stormy sermon. Yet, it’s the impassioned energy of Josh O’Connor as a newly-arrived assistant priest that grabs the attention in the front end of yet another of the director’s Agatha Christie-like murder mysteries. Here, we have a priest suspected of murdering another, and watching O’Connor wince and squirm in the presence of those distinctly devout characters makes for fascinating build-up to the killing, nonchalantly piling up themes about organized religion while Johnson maneuvers his puzzle pieces. Then, like clockwork, it happens: the doors swing open and in walks a less-flippant yet still playfully verbose Benoit Blanc, conducted by Daniel Craig as the self-professed “proud heretic” of the lot. Once he’s in the mix, Wake Up Dead Man takes shape as an intricate, intimate whodunit with very few bells-‘n-whistles getting in the way that might stretch the credibility of its grand conclusion, sliding it on the shelf near the front of Johnson’s murder-mystery oeuvre.

Weapons
Something weird has happened again: similar to The Prestige vs. The Illusionist or Saving Private Ryan vs. The Thin Red Line, there’s a striking similarity between two of the finer genre films released this year, Zack Cregger’s Weapons and the Philippou Bros.’ Bring Her Back. Two sides of the same coin, they involve the powerful abilities of witchcraft to control the minds of children for selfish purposes, producing fascinating villains with compelling motives. Here’s where the differences come in: Bring Her Back approaches the idea entirely straight and with devastating emotional drama as its intent, whereas Weapons finds a way to mold similar plot designs and themes into pitch-black comedy and brazen, wide-eyed jump scares. Choosing between them is tough, especially with how effective the gorgeous craftsmanship and the haunting performance from Sally Hawkins are in Bring Her Back; however, Weapons has the benefit of tapping into child-disappearance horror and having fun with perspectives in the unspeakable situation, from watching a young cop commit a comedy of errors and a father awkwardly sleuth across town to the bizarre arrival of Amy Madigan’s now iconic Aunt Gladys. Both outstanding, but I know which one will come off the shelf first during spooky season.

Honorable Mentions

Most Disappointing: Jurassic World: Rebirth
Jurassic World: Dominion may have provided shaky ground for the franchise’s ending to stick its landing, but flaws and all, it wrapped up the messy strands from both the Spielberg and Trevorrow eras in a way so this absurdly modified version of Michael Crichton’s universe could move on. Unable to let the roaring money-making machine go extinct, the newest installment, Rebirth, at least seems like it might be able to rediscover cinematic life as a spinoff. With an enthusiastic Scarlett Johansson as the tip of the spear, a covert spec-ops mission picks up a robust support crew -- Sexiest Man Alive Jonathan Bailey; equally as sexy Mahershala Ali -- and washes them up on an adjacent island away from the original franchise’s main events to gather lucrative bio samples from lesser-seen dinosaurs. No genetic freaks, no overblown stakes, no lazy character baggage. Clean slate. Unfortunately, Rebirth squanders the opportunities afforded to it with new unneeded genetic freaks, excessive displays of visual effects, a family of survivors that could be chomped out of the movie without any impact on the plot ... and an unconvincing ScarJo as that kind of mercenary leader. On top of that, things just start off on the wrong foot by once again making dinosaurs seem mundane in the modern era instead of exciting, and it bypasses intriguing suspenseful possibilities in lieu of a been-there, done-that mission flow from dino to dino that smells like one big pile of obligation.

Best Videogame Experience: Oblivion Remastered
Granted, my gaming exposure was incredibly limited this year due to the demands of life and maintaining other extracurriculars, but I was able to experience the full drama of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered “shadow drop”. My love for Oblivion runs in lockstep with my love for sandbox games and RPGs, where exploring the vast, ethereal beauty of Cyrodiil’s secret-riddled landscape pairs with how the game encourages interactions with the characters and pushing the limits of what you can do as a wanderer through its townships. As I’ve discovered over the years, it’s a near-ideal blend of open-world and objective-driven design, more focused than Morrowind and less of a fantasy sim than Skyrim. Odd rumors of Oblivion being remastered have existed since plans and evidence of gameplay showed up within internal documents, but interest dramatically spiked when an insider claimed it was not only ready, but being prepped for a quietly-marketed surprise drop … and wouldn’t ya know it, all the online sleuthing and hyping proved to be true. Dropped the same day as a Bethesda showcase event, Oblivion Remastered is a thing of beauty, a mesmerizing blend of upgraded Unreal graphics and modernized game fluidity -- Fun archery! Sprinting! Leveling improvements! A hell of a character creator! -- with a careful focus on making it look, sound, and feel as it did twenty years prior.

Some Favorite 4K/Blu-ray Releases and Social Posts of 2025

Parting Thoughts
Being away from formal movie writing has been rough but necessary with other life demands, but after a year like 2025 -- both in terms of the brilliant movies released and the chaotic state of the world -- the pull to reintegrate into the critical conversation became too strong to suppress. I'm hoping to rediscover the rhythm from several years back, and while it'll take time to get back to that state, I'm excited to go into the year to come with enthusiasm. All the best, everyone; let's make 2026 a grand return to form.

Film Review: Malignant

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 21:59:00 +0000

Directed by: James Wan; Runtime: 111 minutes
Grade: C

Regardless of how one might feel about the likes of Saw and The Conjuring, it’s hard to dispute that director James Wan has played a crucial role in shaping the modern landscape of horror cinema. One of the reasons why his films have been successful up to this point can be seen in the personal angles found within each: the embittered villain Jigsaw who teaches moral lessons about the value of life; the harrowing scenario of a child’s coma and demonic possession in Insidious; the historical “truths” behind married paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Instead of diving back into the sequel well, James Wan has conjured a new vision of stylized terror with Malignant, which again possesses a deeper undercurrent involving pregnancy struggles and repressed memories. This is also Wan’s most audacious creation to date, and while pushing those boundaries may result in outrageously fun gore and haunted house trappings, Malignant cartwheels into a realm of absurdity that its emotive intents can’t back up.

Not unlike Saw, much of the strength behind watching Malignant lies in the bizarre twists and turn that essentially start with the first scene, so I’m going to evade as many revelatory spoilers as possible while offering some idea about what’s going on. Shortly after pregnant medical worker Madison (Annabelle Wallis) returns to her spooky, shadowy multi-story home after a long shift, she and her abusive boyfriend are assaulted by a blur of an invader, putting her in the hospital. While the police are investigating the murder of another local medical professional, they find evidence suggesting that the victim – and, by extension, the killer -- may have some connection to Madison. In turn, Madison begins to have nightmarish visions that tie to this murder … and murders that either haven’t happened yet or just haven’t been discovered. As more details emerge in the investigations, further info is revealed about Madison’s dark past and how it relates to the eerie, deformed dressed-in-black killer wreaking havoc in the area.

James Wan has frequently injected an elevated tone into the reality of his horror films, yet in his previous works they were anchored by enough grimness in their visual language and rhythm of the dialogue that they could still be processed at face value. From the start, there’s something suspiciously overstated about Malignant that, despite equally grim circumstances at the beginning of the film, make it tough to buy into the cinematic illusion. From the gloomy lighting and eerie angles amplifying the extravagant appearance of Madison’s home to the overdramatic dialogue, performances, and soundtrack – complete with a repetitious cover of “Where is My Mind?” that sounds like warning alarms -- the stylization never stops feeling like the trappings of a haunted house with something unnatural hiding behind every corner. Unfortunately, this undermines the emotive drama built around Madison’s post-trauma stress and history of difficulty having children, let alone that Malignant may not even be supernatural in nature.

As soon as the antagonist brandishes a gnarly golden short sword alongside an enigmatic black trench coat, it becomes clear that director Wan and co-screenwriters Ingrid Bisu and Akela Cooper really want the villain to become a thing, not just a one-and-done villain. Malignant furthers that impression with a handful of vicious kill scenes that merge ‘80s-level bloody lavishness with convincing modern execution, making up for some of the clashing aesthetics with outrageous scenes of brutality once the killer begins to execute their list of victims. It’s here that the flashy midnight-movie vibe works best, cloaking the identity of the killer with heavy shadows, loud radio distortion noises and fizzling lightbulbs, and during those moments it doesn’t really matter whether they’re some Freddy or Jason-like monster or a human whose identity is being concealed with movie magic. Malignant has its most undistracted fun when the killer’s allowed to unleash hell and escape without a care for the story going on around it.

Crafting an iconic villain is great and all, but there’s a horror movie trying to exist around them as well, and it’s a maddeningly ridiculous one that’s treading water until Malignant can pull the curtain back on their identity. It’s the kind of horror movie where a young woman will drive far out to an abandoned hospital alone, pull up to the dilapidated building at night on the edge of a steep cliff, and be completely fine with going in despite there being a murderer on the loose killing people involved with the reason she’s out there. The kind of movie -- not unlike Sucker Punch or The Final Girls -- where ups and downs in genuine character behaviors or outlandish locations could theoretically be clues pointing toward a false reality or cheeky horror homages, or directorial shortcomings and misguided flourishes of style … or both. While a plot twist can sort some of this out by explaining why aspects of this character or the atmosphere of that location seemed off at first glance, it isn’t a universal solvent for all strangeness, and the silly aspects of Malignant end up preventing it from thriving as a competent slice of horror.

While James Wan’s latest creation essentially overwhelms the audience with twist after twist, there’s ultimately one seismic revelation at the core of Malignant, and the effectiveness of it will likely depend on who’s watching it: someone who needs twists to obey the rules previously established by the film, or someone who enjoys being shocked by outlandishness regardless of whether it makes sense. I’ll be honest, the way the antagonist “transforms” after this reveal – and the visuals that Wan twists into existence in response to it – almost had me feeling like the second type for a minute, relishing the inventive grotesquery despite what caused it. That said, Malignant tears open too many holes in the story and breaks too many rules of the world it established for the ultimate reveal of the killer’s identity to be taken with any kind of seriousness, where even those with fondness for the likes of David Cronenberg and Dario Argento will find it all a bit of a stretch.

Photos: Warner Bros.

Film Review: Zack Snyder's Justice League

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 21:31:00 +0000

Directed by: Zack Snyder; Runtime: 242 minutes
Grade: C+

The story behind the original theatrical release of Justice League almost overpowered the execution of the film itself, yet that’s arguably even more of the case with this long-awaited, almost mythical unveiling of the “Snyder Cut”. Confirmed to exist by the likes of Jason Momoa, it quickly gained a reputation for being a much-longer and tonally different iteration than Joss Whedon’s serviceably lukewarm reshoots, rewrites, and recuts, and by default was assumed to be the superior version by fans of the movie universe. As a direct result of an aggressive internet campaign and with the introduction of HBO’s new streaming service, HBO Max, the suits at the top and original director Zack Snyder -- who, for those in the dark, also directed Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice -- came to an agreement that would bring him back to salvage his original vision of Justice League for the new streaming service. Well, after tons of money dumped into it and a long wait, it’s finally here … and? Again, while it certainly does improve upon what came before it in ways, a good 4-hour movie that doesn’t make.

If you’re after a rough synopsis of this story’s founding of the Justice League, the presence of the main villain Steppenwolf, and the need for Superman after his death, check out previous reviews of the theatrical cut -- like mine! -- for that. With that out of the way, the comments that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is literally the same movie as the one from 2017, only longer, should be put to rest: this is not quite the same thing as a slightly tweaked “extended edition”. Motivations have been adjusted. Characters have more substance. Some unpopular quirks from the previous cut have been removed. The visual effects have been extensively reworked, from the design of the main villain to the landscape. To cap it off, this new cut places a stronger emphasis on one of DC’s most significant villains, Darkseid, as the primary impetus for not-so-big bad Steppenwolf coming to Earth. There are noteworthy alterations, and Snyder should be commended for having the bravado to go back into this project with a dark history and realizing his vision.

In another sense, this Snyder Cut of Justice League is absolutely “the same movie”. Some things simply cannot be altered without rewriting the script, chiefly that it’s all about chasing down the trio of magic supercomputer “Mother Boxes” that restructure and annihilate life when they’re synced because the script says they do. This new Snyder Cut offers a modified explanation as to why the boxes were abandoned on Earth in the first place, and the answer isn’t convincing, pushing the narrative even more into the shallow, logic-deficient spectrum than it already was. There’s also a clash of ideas in Justice League, in which Batman / Bruce Wayne scrambles to gather together these superheroes to combat a powerful other-worldly villain all on the backbone of them being able to overcome anything if they’re united … yet completely acknowledges that they’re screwed without bringing Superman back from the dead. The Justice League can do it, so long as the near-impervious and overpowered Man of Steel is around.

So no, the Snyder Cut is neither a pointless extension of the theatrical version of Justice League nor a transformation into the hidden masterpiece that the project’s most stalwart supporters hoped it would be. What Zack Snyder’s Justice League ends up being, however, is an improvement with drawbacks: a project that takes fewer steps back than it takes forward, and a project that makes one understand why parts might’ve been restructured in the first place. Perhaps the most high-profile aspect of this whole thing would be the character of the mechanized super hacker Cyborg, the center of controversy regarding Joss Whedon and how he streamlined Ray Fisher’s role in the narrative. The breadth of his character has been restored, and it’s pretty easy to chalk it up as one of the noteworthy successes in this experiment with rejuvenating the original content. Cyborg does harness more of the “heart and soul” of Justice League here through a bleaker, more affective story; Ray Fisher has some justification behind being disappointed, though I believe the magnitude of his content being reinstated has been oversold.

The antagonist Steppenwolf remains a mess, though, and he isn’t helped by the added larger role for the presumed future DCEU supervillain, his boss and relative Darkseid. Plenty of digital work went into transforming how he looks, and the outcome tends to be a mixed bag of eye candy and dull continuity. The theatrical cut’s design may’ve been bland, but it still captured some of the original character’s vaguely humanoid appearance, whereas this restored “original design” looks like the craggy defeated villain from Batman vs. Superman -- an awkward realization of Doomsday -- glued a bunch of knives all over his body and came back for Round 2. Coupled with the presence of Darkseid, it starts to seem like the rest of the DC villains worth putting onscreen are stony-skinned, broad-faced goons with endless swaths of winged faceless underlings at their disposal. While it’s understandable that Steppenwolf might’ve been remolded to look more like he’s from the same bloodline as Darkseid, this also reveals a lack of inspiration behind the antagonist forces up against the League, regardless of whether they're drawn from the source material.

Perhaps the most noteworthy and substantive change to Zack Snyder’s Justice League might be both its most reverential to the comics and, oddly enough, its most detrimental to the film as its own entity. Fans will get a charge out of it, but the restoration of supervillain Darkseid's heavier presence in the story also makes the film itself more cluttered, also introducing a secondary method of widely eliminating planets and lifeforms. Look, I understand the jolt of excitement that’ll come over fans when hearing certain things being name-dropped in a Justice League movie, but the inclusion of a more interesting “side plan” or “Plan B” that the real villain will execute later diminishes the impact of what’s going on here and now with Steppenwolf, which already struggles with 3 awkwardly volatile MacGuffin-like boxes being hunted down by a second-rate lackey (that still requires Superman to beat). This is one of the instances where any changes in the theatrical cut make some sense: in a movie already filled with a slew of new characters and hokey plot devices, it’d be best to leave the actual reveal of Darkseid and his bigger ambitions for a later date, if it comes.

Even though it was a rushed two hours, the original version of Justice League still does a fine enough job of giving the characters breathing room to be introduced and develop as beings, from the penniless and sarcastic youngster Flash to the gristly, boozy cynicism of Aquaman. Goes without saying at this point, but Affleck's Batman and Gadot's Wonder Woman are standouts regardless of the version. The Snyder Cut may add to certain aspects of their characters -- and, by undoing some of Whedon’s modifications, subdues them -- but for the most part, they feel roughly the same and not overhauled like Cyborg. Something else about this film as a whole remains true: there are too many new character concepts packed into too tight of a window, in which Snyder tries to force into existence something akin to the Marvel cinematic universe in a fraction of the time. An extra hour doesn’t help this, especially when it’s these additional character moments where the movie also indulges in more of Snyder’s slow-motion music video level of content. Pacing is certainly an issue with this lengthy cut of Justice League, and these elongated stretches feel like where the tightening or removal of content would be most justified.

Quick admission: I’m not much of a fan of Superman, but the charm and poise of Henry Cavill makes it very difficult not to embrace his rendition of the character on at least some level. To that end, the quest to resurrect Superman -- regardless of how exasperating the character’s endless powers may be -- remains an effective aspect of Justice League, amplified in Zack Snyder’s cut by delivering pure, unadulterated fan service. The most mocked aspect of Whedon’s Justice League, the awkward Superman intro where his mustache has been digitally replaced with an entirely new lower part of his face, has obviously been removed entirely. In its place, Snyder returns to the more successfully emotional aspects of Man of Steel in how he revives the Son of Krypton, both physically and emotionally, and yeah, there’s a black and silver suit involved. Whether this expanded glimpse into his comeback is any good or not, whether this and that make enough sense, becomes less relevant when Kal-El reemerges in those threads ... albeit, much, much later in the film. Between Cavill, the music and the spike in cinematic energy, it’s worth it.

Zack Snyder’s grand finale still has the same rough framework as the theatrical cut, but it feels very different in both tone and visual design. A frequent complaint with Snyder’s films have always been how dark and grim they are, and it’s pretty clear that creative decisions were made to “brighten up” the ending for theaters, from lighting up the sky with an apocalyptic orange hue to making dialogue quippier and emphasizing that the superheroes cared for civilians in the surrounding area of the final battle. For better and for worse, Snyder reverses these adjustments to craft a final act more aligned with his insistently gloomy sensibilities, shrouding everything in near-grayscale darkness and making it so the heroes are concerned with nothing else but their primary mission. It’s also more violent, leaning into its R-rated possibilities with the caliber of bloodshed. Those who were adamant about the theatrical cut’s inferiority will automatically see these changes in a positive light, but those changes also result in a leaden, nonsensical conclusion that misperceives decapitations and time travel as quality.

Opinions and attitudes about the Snyder Cut have run hot over the past year, with one side fully on the bandwagon with championing the continued potential of the Snyderverse and the other side arguing that his Justice League would follow suit with the rest of his subpar-reviewed superhero work. Regardless of where one falls on this spectrum, either side or in the middle, there should be at least one takeaway after finally seeing Zack Snyder’s Justice League: this is the cut that matters. There’s talk about which version will be the “canonical” choice for DC’s cinematic universe, but it’s a discussion that really doesn’t carry much weight, as they both essentially reach the same destination once it’s all said and done. One just takes the longer, preferred route with more interesting things to look at and has an ending that hits differently; either way, if they’re ready for Justice League 2, it’ll be easy to write a follow-up that essentially branches off from both. Thing is, even with a bizarre 4x3 aspect ratio, nobody’s going to want to go on Joss Whedon’s bumpy ride anymore after seeing this Snyder Cut.

Photos: WB/HBO

Film Review: Tom and Jerry (2021)

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 06:07:00 +0000

Directed by: Tim Story; Runtime: 101 minutes
Grade: D

Despite a rich history that includes the likes of Mary Poppins and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, there’s always the urge to remind Hollywood that combining real-life actors with hand-drawn animated characters from the past rarely turns out well in the modern era. Yet, for every Garfield or Smurfs or most recently Woody Woodpecker, all tonally jumbled and awkwardly unfunny pieces of work, there’s a Sonic the Hedgehog that comes along to prove that, sure, it’s possible to get the balance between realities and styles of humor right. Which brings us to Tom and Jerry, the latest of these hybrid endeavors from Barbershop and Fantastic Four director Tim Story, a project that had been kicked around in development for over a decade prior to it finally being filmed shortly before the pandemic brought Hollywood to a standstill. It’s a decade-long tale that comes to a thud of a conclusion, resulting in yet another outrageously unamusing live-action cartoon that loses its grip on a relative sense of reality.

Perhaps even less than other classic cartoons, there isn’t a lot to the story of Tom and Jerry, just a string of other recurring characters who complicate the endless chase between the titular house cat and a mouse that's just a step or two ahead of him. For the most part, the cartoons take place in a run-of-the-mill American home, filled with obstacles and makeshift weapons -- matches, fireplace pokers, drills, clothes irons, you name it -- that provide the two adversaries plenty of ways to thwart one another. Sometimes they go on boats and to train stations, but these were unique excursions. This live-action film can be seen as one of those excursions, sort of: both Tom and Jerry are trying to find a way to live inside of a high-profile hotel, during the period where a ritzy wedding will be taking place. A newly-hired employee at the hotel, Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz), has been tasked with managing their presence in the building and keeping the mouse specifically away from the wedding proceedings. Jerry, and to a lesser extent Tom, have other plans.

Look, I’m not really interested in getting into the debate about violence in older cartoons, but it’s worth noting that the personalities of Tom and Jerry are particularly at the mercy of the zany whack-a-mouse antics between ‘em. Even though they live in a weirdly crossbred world where animals can at the very least talk amongst themselves, the two of them never speak, which forces their brutal chasing after one another to be the extent of their characters; Tom’s reasonably smart but reckless, Jerry’s a smarter troublemaker, and that’s about it. This live-action movie shoulders the challenge of being truthful to this lineage while also being careful with modern family-friendly sensibilities, so we’ve got a cat and mouse that never speak despite other dogs, cats, birds, elephants, etc. around them being chatty, and where the slapstick comedy carefully tiptoes around point-blank violence with obvious weapons. Amid mixed signals about what sort of reality we’re working with, one where a hotel apparently built in a mouse hole at one time that slides along a wall, there’s a void here in the shape of why it’s worth suspending this much disbelief.

Those who wrote Tom and Jerry understand the conundrum, and that’s where the rest of the film’s hotel setup comes from, providing a place where the homeless (?) cat and mouse desperately want to stay. Enter Chloe Grace Moretz, who plays a seemingly sharp hustler of a millennial and serves as a way for the audience to, in some form, connect with the animated characters as she tries to keep them out. Moretz seems to be at her best when portraying a character with a somber backstory or a heavy sarcastic streak, and she’s working with half of that equation with the vivacious yet deceptive Kayla, a fairly typical yet annoyingly featureless twentysomething who laments her lack of experience and qualifying skills. How she finds herself in a position of authority at a prestigious hotel is the stuff of, well, cartoons: the flippant rhythm of Chloe Grace Moretz’s delivery ensures that little will be taken seriously as she “fakes it until she makes it”, or in how she interacts with the overly stiff hotel managers played by wasted comic-relief potentials Rob Delaney and Michael Pena.

There’s this massive, important wedding at the center of Tom and Jerry that’s filled with the extravagance of elephants, drone cameras, and the fawning adoration of social-media “influencers”, and, frankly, it seems like it’s just more trouble than it’s worth. Don’t ask any questions about why Kayla’s hired to help oversee this event or why her resume isn’t looked at with suspicion, because that’s a dead end; however, the growing rom-com sappiness at the heart it all can’t help but make one question why it needs to be there in the first place. Sure, it’s there because the event itself creates more of a collision course with the film’s animated stars, but it also presents a glaring and unnecessary reason why Kayla wouldn’t be hired on the spot and why the hotel wouldn’t take any chances with not hiring pros to get rid of freeloading critters. While, yes, this could be viewed as nitpicking at what’s essentially a cartoon in motion, it’s also the aspect responsible for holding the focus of slightly more adult-minded audiences, and there's little care for any sort of internal logic.

Brief moments are still there when Tom and Jerry captures the live-action cartoon goals of the production, specifically a scene where the two characters completely ransack a hotel room chasing after one another, marrying clever flowing camerawork with their whirlwind movements. Stuff breaks everywhere, debris flies in every which direction, and the animation and production design come rather close to selling the illusion not unlike how Who Frame Roger Rabbit? does at its most energetic points. These exists in bursts, shorter than cartoons but about the same length as the “action” bits in an episode, which should appease both the youngest of audiences and the nostalgic for however fleeting those moments end up being. Even if there’s some enjoyment to be had in those slapstick antics in Tom and Jerry, there’s over an hour and a half of ineffectual rom-com and soul-searching workplace dramedy padding it all out, time that’d be better spent revisiting the beautifully-drawn classic cartoons of a bygone era.

Photos: Warner Bros.

Film Review: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 19:01:00 +0000

Directed by: Josh Greenbaum; Runtime: 107 minutes
Grade: C-

Bridesmaids came out nearly a decade and a half ago, and the comedy within the script by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo still works as well as it does because of how authentic and identifiable they made the characters involved in preparations of a wedding. From underemployed, single creatives amid the economic collapse to overly perfect -- and overly wealthy -- friends and exhausted middle-aged parents, there’s a little something for everybody within its sharply executed laughs and deadpan scenarios … and even the things that aren’t “for you” could be identified with. With a decade-plus under their belts, it stands to reason that a new script from Wiig and Mumolo, about two isolated midwestern women in the late-40s going on a life-affirming vacation to paradise, could land on some of the same substance even when surrounded by ridiculousness. That isn’t what Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is about, though, instead an outrageously persistent and shallow hodgepodge of surrealism, showtunes, and culottes.

Adorned with semi-short, feathered hair straight out of a decades-old style mag, we’re introduced to Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) as they chat at their place of employment, a sparse little furniture shop in Nebraska. After a life event gives them some free time and an excuse to ponder the direction that their lives have taken, they decide to visit the magical locale of Vista Del Mar, a resort town on the western side of Florida. After they get settled in their hotel, the two make an effort to soak up the local flavor and see the sights, including spending an evening partying with a much younger man, Edgar (Jamie Dornan). What seems like a typical midlife-crisis travel setup gets interrupted by the nefarious plans of an almost Bond-level villain, a starkly pale-skinned woman with an aggressively angular black hairstyle and an eye for vengeance upon the city of Vista Del Mar. As Barb and Star figure themselves out, their vacation intersects with the villain’s evil plans.

Barb and Star cannot get past its opening scene without revealing the big issue that’ll follow it until the credits roll: it’s tough to relate to it through the ultra-absurdity, projecting an attitude more like an extended Saturday Night Live skit than the Wiig-Mumolo duo’s other screenwriting effort. The chatter between Barb and Star as they sit on a floor-model couch and ignore customers may offer some amusement with the dry humor, but these are caricatures poking fun at stereotypes instead of semi-authentic mid-40s single women needing a break from their midwestern rut. From their participation in a weirdly authoritarian “talking club” to their matching obsessions with a specific name for a woman, it’s clear that Wiig and Mumolo have written way above elevated reality instead of, y’know, something boosted just a few steps above normal. Closer to Night at the Roxbury and Superstar than other modern SNL-ish spoofs, this is about shallow cartoon versions of people that the world surrounding them treats as entirely normal, a playground for how outrageous Wiig and Mumolo can get.

This is all before Barb and Star even take their first steps into the Palm Vista Hotel, which tosses those watching into a sea of ‘80s pastels, seaside decor and choreographed musical numbers, making it abundantly clear that enjoying this comedy will depend on one’s threshold for vibrant embellishments. The ladies get into the types of antics expected of a vacation-style comedy, from hooking up with strangers to trying stereotypical tourist activities, and the humor follows suit with overstatements of this dynamic duo’s fish-outta-water goofiness and need for a, uh, cleansing of the spirit. Wiig and Mumolo are clearly committed to having fun with it, doing a suitable job of essentially acting like high-pitch accented clones of one another, but they’re too enamored with the oversized characters they’ve created to keep tabs on whether their material makes its own laughs. It’s like soberly watching someone else getting lost in their own colorful hallucinations, complete with talking animals and spontaneous songs.

What’s odd about Barb and Star is that its most outlandish aspect, the amplified supervillain (also played by Wiig) who seems lifted straight from an abandoned Austin Powers sequel, ends up being its most successful invention. While the Nebraskan ladies are busy getting their groove back in Florida, the embittered albino baddie conjures up a dastardly plot for revenge against the small coastal tourist trap that destroyed her life, and the sequence of events forming her backstory and murderous plot are delightfully satirical. She’s only really there to give Barb and Star something exciting to do in the third act -- that’s how quickly vacation hijinks lose interest -- but her arrival in a white jumpsuit, sharp black bangs and ocean blue goggles turns into a breath of fresh air from the increasingly stale, mawkish absurdities around our two heroines. Her manipulation of Jamie Dornan’s solemn, smitten and entirely down-to-earth Edgar might not be convincing, but her visibly icky discomfort while doing so makes up for it.

Maybe this villainess works as well as she does in Barb and Star because she’s the most fully formed and plot essential idea in the script, whereas the rest of the material written by Wiig and Mumolo comes across like a wave of self-gratifying brainstorms that the pair have decided to crash into their audience. Some may find enjoyment in this unashamed vacation from reality, and the value of pure absurdity shouldn’t be overlooked, but there’s a degree of focus and control that makes similar out-there comedies work based on the filmmakers’ grasp on what they want to achieve. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar wants to try so many things and cram in so much tongue-in-cheek goofiness -- from midlife awakenings and doomsday plots to extraneous plays on words and the baffling “magic” helping out the ladies -- that the point of watching it for any other reason fades away in the Florida sun. No matter how much it wishes to be so, the mythical power of culottes isn’t enough to save the day here.

Photos: Lionsgate

Film Review: Shadow in the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Sat, 06 Feb 2021 01:01:00 +0000

Directed by: Roseanne Liang; Runtime: 82 minutes
Grade: D

About a decade ago, the claustrophobic one-room or one-location suspense subgenre shot up in popularity, producing an award-nominated film -- and another high-quality contender -- that led to many copycapts. While there were plenty of on-a-clock survival films like it beforehand, the unique tension of such a tight area offers an appealing audiovisual and emotive sensation of sharing the tension with the “trapped” person, whether it’s in a coffin, an elevator, or even a car on a long trip somewhere important. Shortly after, the concept evolved from a relatively simple premise to seeing exactly how crazy a movie can get within those limitations, getting bolder with time periods and locations while including including supernatural elements on the horror side of things that can throw off the intimacy of such a tense human situation. Shadow in the Cloud could perhaps be viewed as the dead end of that development, throwing ridiculousness at the wall in a WWII bomber plane without any of it sticking.

In the middle of World War II, flight officer Maude Garrett has been tasked with the covert mission of transporting a sensitive package from New Zealand to Samoa. As the young, attractive girl climbs aboard the B-17 flying fortress, named the “Fool’s Errand”, she’s met with abrasively sexist and aggressive comments from most of the flight crew, to which she’s mandatorily quartered to the ball turret part of the plane and her package separated from her to keep it safe. Locked in the windowed bubble and dealing with the rest of the crew verbally harassing her over the airwaves, she spots a suspicious shape amid the clouds. Naturally, boys will be boys, so they treat her comments with skepticism and derision as she’s left in the gun turret watching the threat manifests by herself with knowledge of the importance of her package. When the threats of an air conflict start to become more credible, Maude must take matters into her own hands, revealing that there’s more to her than she let on to the flight crew.

Look, it’s understandable that soldiers separated from their families and from members of the opposite sex might’ve be rowdy with a woman brought onto their plane during WWII, but that doesn’t make the beginning of Shadow in the Cloud any more palatable or less prone to shock value. To get to anything even remotely resembling entertainment value, you’ve got to deal with our heroine getting hounded both in person and, more significantly, over the airwaves as she’s locked in the belly of the plane, the soldier’s exaggerated snarls and grins flashing on the screen bathed in red and green lighting. The circumstances that trap her down here, along with the circumstances that separate her from the top-secret package, are preposterous; they seem even more so once the true contents of the bag are revealed. It doesn’t help that Chloe Grace Moretz’s forced, unconvincing regional accent gives the woman an austere and unconvincing presence as she’s fielding the unctuous commentary from her traveling companions above her, whether there’s an air of truth to it or not.

Once Maude’s trapped in the turret, Shadow in the Cloud embraces its most attention-grabbing element, forcing her to stay enclosed in a windowed bubble and clearly under mental duress as she spots things lurking in the darkness outside the plane. At this point, the film suggests that it’d like to be another genre of movie entirely: with the appearance of a fanged, taloned bat-like creature it has a name that I won’t reveal due to potential spoilers -- it starts to act like a B-grade monster movie. Honestly, the visual effects aren't too shabby, and the rendering of these tactile flying critters sinks its teeth into the illusion of it all. Unfortunately, this also starts to blur with the overwhelming chauvinistic angle present in the film, in which her warnings are drowned out by the soldiers’ heckling. This botched meeting point, between the real-world concerns about this woman’s mistreatment or dismissal and the new presence of unrealistic bat-creatures that she’s warning about, undermines whatever symbolism or commentary is intended by writer/director Roseanne Liang and Chronicle/American Ultra writer Max Landis.

As a cross between historical battle-of-the-sexes tension and creature feature, Shadow in the Cloud tends to be uneven and muddled enough, yet it doesn’t stop there by pivoting once again into an all-out action thriller with Chloe Grace Moretz as the badass heroine. She’s got a lot of potential as a unique genre actress, and she’s delivered better-than-expected performances post-Hitgirl in the likes of Let Me In and Suspiria, but she gets lost in the outlandishness surrounding her in this high-elevation blockbuster. There’s a brief moment, when she ditches her accent and grabs the handles of the turret, where it’s possible to see her as a fiery Valkyrie of sorts who's full of fury and struggle as she unloads upon threats to the B-17. Her winces and discomfort while she’s locked away in there are capable of drawing one into her mental space in a similar vein to Ryan Reynolds in Buried or Tom Hardy in Locke; however, there’s also inconsistency to her performance, coasting between dour realism to scream queen exaggeration to invincible bravado, leaving one baffled at sorting out what to take seriously and not.

Shadow in the Cloud is already gliding on fumes getting to its destination with three different subgenres crammed into the space of a one-location thriller, and then it reveals what’s inside the secret government box that Maude’s transporting to Samoa, which begins the film’s inevitable nosedive. Of the countless things that could’ve been securely stored in that large leather case, this is easily one of the most poorly thought-out, orchestrated with good intentions yet reckless abandonment of any hint of believability. Revealing what’s inside should’ve probably been the moment when the film decides that it doesn’t give a damn about realism, but instead it’s the most forthright attempt at salvaging a dramatic point to everything that’s going on, and it’s still followed by perfectly-timed explosions, goofy air physics, and … a fistfight with an oversized, vicious bat-thing that doesn’t immediately end in death? Shadow in the Cloud desperately wants to reach its destination as a grindhouse flick with a soul and a purpose, but it changes course so many times that it has nowhere to go but crashing down.

Film Review: The Craft: Legacy

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 23:38:00 +0000

Directed by: Zoe Lister-Jones; Runtime: 97 minutes
Grade: D-

Something worth discussing before digging too far into the pseudo-sequel/remake The Craft: Legacy: my relationship with the original film, spanning nearly a quarter-century now, has had its ups and downs. When revisiting it a little over ten years ago for the first time since the late-‘90s, the tale of a foursome of young women forming into a powerful coven seemed like an overly straightforward and dated occult thriller, merely supported by the strength of the actresses and how they embody the individual witches. After a more recent screening during the Halloween season, those impressions remain intact, but the examination of these characters’ internal motivations for being drawn to magic and the incremental build towards their synergy as a coven speak much louder than they once did. If anything, The Craft: Legacy only strengthens those new positive impressions and makes the original look far, far better in comparison, as any criticisms aimed at superficial characteristics or rushed friendships and understandings of witchcraft are vastly more fitting here, and that’s just the start of the issues.

The Craft: Legacy exists in a very strange middle-ground between whether it’s a remake or not, as it follows many of the same plot points as the original but with entirely new characters and circumstances. It begins with a family moving into a new house, where a teenage girl -- this time, named Lily (Cailee Spaeny) -- exhibits powers that they don’t fully understand, and kicks into gear with her first day at a new school. Unsuccessful at integrating with the other “regular” students, this new girl finds her way into the good graces of a threesome of outcasts (Zoey Luna, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone) who have been practicing witchcraft for some time with meager, underpowered success. The reason they’re not able to harness more power is because they need a fourth member to coordinate with the four elements and cardinal directions, and due to the circumstances of their meetings, this incomplete coven rushes to invite the new girl into their circle. Thing is, they might not be fully prepared to wield the magical prowess that they’ve just discovered.

Lily’s a compelling protagonist as a melancholy and ethereal young girl, and Cailee Spaeny serves as a spitting half-image of her mother -- played by Michelle Monaghan -- looking just enough like her to sell the illusion and differently enough to consider what her absent father might’ve been like. Combined with how she and her mother are moving in with a new father figure (David Duchovny) and his three adolescent sons, it’s all just enough to get The Craft: Legacy to her first day of school and the point where she meets the other witches. Then, the perfectly-timed circumstances emerge in which Lily becomes an instant pariah on her first day of school, and the film starts unraveling very, very quickly, all because the script forces things to happen and refuses to allow them happen organically. Where the coven of witches in the original The Craft develop their bond and work up to bigger powers with time, these girls are making significant magic happen by the second day of meeting one another. Who knew it was that easy to develop telepathy, freeze time, and completely alter another person’s personality?

The big problem with The Craft: Legacy? There’s nothing to the three other witches, at all, prioritizing woke culture representation instead of fleshing them out as individuals caught up in said issues. None of them have layers, only external traits that, frankly, do a horrible job of emphasizing how or why they’re social outcasts. While the original Craft deals in issues of poverty, racism, body deformation, suicide, even rape and abuse, it also uses them as a means of giving the four witches a deeper sense of personality in how they’re impacted by those things and are drawn to their coven. Legacy forces the viewer to glean what characterization they can from the comic-relief sarcastic lingo of one girl and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to another’s transgenderism, and that’s it, with zero interest in exploring and empowering these women by showing legitimate interest in them. Instead, the film’s more interested in having the witches confront and conquer a single issue: toxic masculinity, how it shows up in schools and lords over the home. Yep, it’s all about the boys.

At the point where this new “villain” becomes known -- David Duchovny was so close to making this work -- The Craft: Legacy veers away from being a wishy-washy remake and into brand new story territory, driven by mystical and physical twists alike and the repercussions branching from them. With these wild departures from its source material, the hope is that it’d at least provide additional imagination and excitement with a spellslinging conclusion, yet writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones has conjured something even more unremarkably conventional than the original’s power-play dramatics. One could cast any number of criticisms at how the witches’ powers appear way too competent for their experience level, how anguished conflicts within their coven rings false, or how it plays out like a superhero origin akin to X-Men or Power Rangers, but really, it boils down to none of it feeling earned. The Craft: Legacy desperately wants to be this generation’s witchcraft drama, yet from the borrowed phrases and diminished themes to a shoehorned cameo at the end, it just makes the original look even more magical.

Film Review: Fatman

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 01:20:00 +0000

Directed by: The Nelms Brothers; Runtime: 100 minutes
Grade: B-

The mythology built around modern-sat Santa Clause suggests that he’s an entity with intimate knowledge of a lot of ways in which the world works, most curiously in how he knows whether all children have been good or bad during the year … and why they fit into either group. There are a bunch of other practical questions also surrounding jolly St. Nick that usually get dismissed by magic, like: “How does he run a large toy operation on zero income?” and “How is it that global governments have no idea about his existence?”, and Fatman sees those enigmas as an opportunity to explore a more human, interesting side of Chris Cringle. Wrapped in a well-paced thriller with a darkly comedic bow on top and a grizzled Mel Gibson delivering it with force, this gritty indie from the Nelms Brothers has a good time with the idea of Santa’s moral decision-making and filling the mythical gaps of his challenges posed to his everyday operations. It’s odd, for sure, and cherry-picks where to add realism and what’s best left a secret, but it strikes a novel balance between dreariness and reviving the weatherworn holiday spirit.

Gibson has been in the news recently for getting in impressive physical shape for a man in his mid-60s, and that story merely adds to the juxtaposition between the “fictionalized” Santa and the “realistic” Cris Cringle in Fatman. He’s bearded and has a deep, jolly laugh, but this guy’s far more aligned with the disposition of a blue-collar workingman: putting along in a ruby red pickup, checking a PO box, and stopping off at the local bar in a small snow-covered town. His talent for literally knowing everybody comes in handy, but the old coal-vs.-presents thing understandably leads to some dissatisfied little kids out there, like wealthy science prodigy Billy and his inclination for forcing others to give him what he wants. When Christmas doesn’t treat him right, he hires a professional hitman (Walter Goggins) to go after Santa Claus himself, which plays into his longstanding obsession with the “fat man”. Of course, Chris Cringle isn’t the same tubby, foolish guy either imagines him to be.

Not too long into Fatman, it becomes clear how the story’s strategy will play out, split in half to showcase what the “real” Santa’s and his workshop are all about and what the guy’s like that actively wants to murder the embodiment of Christmas and accepts hitjobs from a wealthy kid. The chief reason to check out the Nelms Brothers’ film obviously comes in how they’re going to overhaul the “big guy” into something real, and it’s impressive how they’re able to both methodically check off points of interest -- how he affords his workshop (or doesn't), what a genuinely understanding Mrs. Claus (delightfully played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste) would be like, how the elves are involved -- while also sticking to conventional dramatic thriller techniques. As we learn about this struggling, slightly boozy version of St. Nick and how his ties to the US government preserve his operations, the glittery mystique of the character slowly falls off and gets replaced by a more practical, yet still supernatural interpretation of his knowledge and longevity, portrayed just about perfectly by Gibson with charming gruffness and low-key formidability.

What’s interesting about Fatman is that the Nelms Brothers understand how big and brassy the Santa aspect of the film might appear, so they’ve somewhat understated and grounded that side of the story to amplify the utterly quixotic and intimidating presence of Walter Goggins’ hitman. The actor’s experience with bleakly comedic bad guys does wonders for the stone-faced killer, though one could argue that he’s even less humorous here with his training, preparations, and travels than in the roles he’s played for Tarantino or Shane Black. There’s also some unique layers to Goggins’ hitman, which extends to his young employer, Billy: the concept of people who ended up getting overlooked by Santa Claus and the entitled, confused anger they felt. Just watching Goggins blast his way through gun-range obstacle courses and coax info out of people about Santa’s location pulls you into the momentum toward reaching his target, brimming with excitement in seeing how he’s capable of matching up to the big guy. Goggins elevates the hitman’s stony, mustache-twirling villainy into something with pathos.

Fatman succeeds when it overhauls expectations and archetypes, and it’s clear that the Nelms Brothers have their fingers crossed that raw novelty and spirited execution will be enough to make those watching ignore the mundane aspects moving it forward. The only reason the plot’s intriguing is because of Santa Claus; without that added context, the setup’s little more than milquetoast veteran-vs.-upcomer suspense. The film rarely succeeds in hiding its predictable moving parts, with the amusement factor being an effective distraction only about half of the time, and there are ample logic issues whenever a realistic twist gets added to Santa Claus and neglects several others. It doesn’t help that the mastermind pulling all the strings, prep-school “little shit” Billy, ultimately makes for an obnoxious and petty villain who’s unlikely to suffer any real comeuppance. Without investment in the novelty of Fatman, which isn’t guaranteed even for those interested, everything else might just be frustrating.

It’s not giving too much away in explaining that the perimeter surrounding Santa’s workshop has transformed into a heavily fortified area, which will make it even tougher for Goggins’ hitman to reach and kill his target for the predictable clash in Fatman. Naturally, this sets up the final act of the film to be a violent game of cat and mouse, and the execution of the stealth, the explosiveness, and the fanfare leading into the inevitable square-off makes for a rousing climax, filled with military-style tactics and bravado. At this stage, perhaps strategically, the Nelms Brothers decide that it’s the right time to shake up expectations and cash in on a careful build-up of hints throughout Fatman, which results in an ending that manages to be both a cheap escape from consequence and a justified, uniquely inspiring embodiment of the mythos of Santa Claus. Seeing this bloodied, rough-and-tumble version of St. Nick sacrificing and surviving to preserve the spirit of generosity turns out to be more genuinely inspiring than many -- most? -- other Christmas movies out there, flawed as it may be.

Film Review: Locked Down (2021)

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:54:00 +0000

Directed by: Doug Liman; Runtime: 118 minutes
Grade: D+

We’re just about at the one-year point of the world having to get adjusted to a global pandemic, ranging from subtle food/delivery inconvenience and getting used to new ways of doing business to constantly avoid being infected with “essential” environments like grocery stores or hospitals. Then, there’s the concept of social distancing and the need for lockdowns, to which the isolation and claustrophobia can wreak havoc on the psyche of most people given enough time. These are significant themes worth exploring in popular culture, and clearly the prompt at the core of Locked Down, written by Steven Knight of Locke and Serenity fame and directed by indie/espionage guru Doug Liman. Forcing themselves to make the film happen in outrageously short order and under strict circumstances, the creative process reads more like following through with a challenge than an organic bottling-up of novel, timely ideas, and the hollow and forced execution of Locked Down show the symptoms of that.

The film begins honestly enough, capturing two sides of the lockdown in the United Kingdom through a couple in very different stages of their lives and different employment situations. Paxton (Chiewtel Ejiofor) is an ex-con driver who wallows in the grimness of his situation, feeling inherently cursed and having no qualms telling others about it either in-person or over video chat. Linda (Anne Hathaway), an expat, has climbed up the management ladder in a merchandising business and, as a result, gets repeatedly stuck on unpleasant Zoom calls, leading her into a stressed and substance-dependent state. Amid the lockdown, the two have decided to separate and move on with their lives just as soon as the restrictions are eased, but not before their circumstances align for one last rendezvous: the opportunity to steal something incredibly valuable that will perfectly set up their post-relationship lives.

Like the diversity of the scenarios that he’s previously written, the quality of Steven Knight’s scripts ranges from the intimately-scaled and poignant to the overly conceptual and artificial. His work in the single-car “thriller” Locke and the avant-garde desperation of Dirty Pretty Things bode well for pandemic isolation drama, but what happens in Locked Down, regardless of the best of intentions, never gets to authenticity. Sure, people will relate to Paxton’s delivery bag-snatching, poetry recitals in his neighborhood streets and the sleepless tension of being in a replaceable job, or with Linda’s prettied-up digital meetings -- where she copes with being the one who fires people -- and boozy dance sessions. The dialogue coming from the characters doesn’t read like genuine people dealing with these problems, though, but like high-profile actors in a stage play trying to empathize with an audience over the plights of everyday post-COVID citizens, especially the unprovoked Shakespearean lamentations of Paxton.

It would feel better to be able to say that Chiwetel Ejiofor and Anne Hathaway overcome the misgivings with their characters in Locked Down, that their natural dramatic poise still presents them as relatable personalities, but it doesn’t end up working that way. Hathaway borrows from her fierce, yet composed Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises for Linda, yet her frustration and rebelliousness don’t match up with how she got into this vague executive job in the first place, distracting from the film’s compelling overtone of managing human resources during the pandemic. Ejiofor’s burdened anxiety takes one back to his brilliant turn as a compromised illegal immigrant in Dirty Pretty Things, yet all his solemn speeches have a preachy calculation to them that weakens his presence as a neglected human being in the social spectrum. Substantive cameos surround them in the form of Zoom calls -- Ben Stiller, Mindy Kaling, Ben Kingsley, Stephen Merchant -- and their recognizability tends to be a double-edged sword, as they’re both dramatic support for the difficult voice-call medium and celebs literally phoning in their status quo.

These are all qualities that would reduce Locked Down from being a reputable, timely piece of work to being a flawed, yet acceptable melodrama with the best of intentions, but it’s the transition from those stagy dramatics into a pseudo-heist that ultimately leads to disappointment. The level of contrivance at work here cannot be understated, effortlessly bringing together the couple’s professions into a opportunity dropped in their laps at the perfect time, fueled by suspicious conditions that almost use the pandemic as a crutch whenever things become too unbelievable. Every aspect of what draws Paxton and Linda in the position of becoming criminals is rushed and negligent, with a nonstop chain of reckless phenomena and shameless holes, from the ratio of people who’d recognize the name Edgar Allen Poe to how likely someone’s going to check the authenticity of a multi-million-dollar acquisition upon receipt. Telling the audience that they won’t doesn’t automatically mean they’ll believe it.

Don’t expect either Ocean’s 11-style theatrics or something akin to Doug Liman’s more action-oriented momentum once the “heist” begins (Edge of Tomorrow is "an utterly absorbing blockbuster"; Bourne Identity is still a classic), and frankly, it isn’t clear whether Locked Down would be a better film with more of that included at the end. While the commitment to Paxton and Linda as grounded individuals may be commendable, the pandemic-themed glimpses at their lives aren’t considerable enough to make one care enough about their livelihoods to roll with this uninteresting, questionable excuse of a planned caper. As such, there’s little genre entertainment value in this climax to their story, driven only by the marginal tension of the close calls whenever one of many obvious peculiarities are close to being discovered. As it rides through its conclusion with blinders up to practical repercussions, Locked Down gets stuck in the limbo between remaining semi-realistic and allowing itself to do things like normal, and in the process misses the chance to shine in either area.

Film Review: Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84)

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 22:28:00 +0000

Directed by: Patty Jenkins; Runtime: 161 minutes
Grade: C-

Gal Gadot surprised a lot of people in her first appearance as Wonder Woman, somehow managing to be the bright spot in a big-screen portrayal of the momentous battle between Batman and Superman. Those who considered it a fluke, who still thought that she might not have what it takes to embody the legendary comic book heroine, were soon proven wrong by the resonance of the historical origin story in her standalone film, Wonder Woman, which brings together her past as a demi-goddess with how she fought to put an end to World War 1. In short order, she has turned into one of the few strong, reliable aspects of DC’s floundering cinematic universe … but Gadot’s strength in the role is no longer surprising, no longer an element ready to triumph over expectations. Wonder Woman 1984 charges into the hellscape of 2020 with the weight of those expectations strapped to its back, which ends up being too much for a stereotypically over-the-top, flashy and ridiculous superhero sequel to hold up.

As the title suggests, WW84 jumps ahead roughly seven decades to the wacky, vibrant era of the ‘80s, finding the semi-immortal Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) reemerging in her Wonder Woman persona to do a few superheroic good deeds. Once a great Amazonian warrior who must hide that from the public to conceal her immortality, she finds herself sheltered and lonely as she quietly heads an archaeology department at the Smithsonian in DC, distancing herself from friends and lovers alike after the death of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). A unique discovery passes through the department, an ancient relic which supposedly holds the power to grant a wish to the holder, that draws attention from all manner of people: a mousy new research hire at the Smithsonian named Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig); a TV businessman and huckster named Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal); and Diana herself. They soon discover that the relic’s magical properties are real, yet they come at a steep price for the person who uses them.

While superhero movies inherently have some degree of outlandish whimsy to them, the idea of wishes being granted, not unlike rubbing a genie’s lamp, immediately enters hard-to-believe territory plagued by second guesses and skepticism. Would that person wish for that, why wouldn’t that character wish for that, and so on. This also makes it incredibly easy for any devious, greedy human to ask for whatever they want and position themselves in a role of mythical power, relying on very little screenwriting cleverness to make it happen. Wonder Woman 1984 immediately suffers from the pitfalls of this concept, going further to strain credibility in how the relic – those with knowledge of the comics will recognize the “Dreamstone” – effortlessly falls into the wrong hands. Director Patty Jenkins and DC mastermind Geoff Johns have dreamed up a script that’s all sloppy, overblown conceptualization and shows little regard for credibility. Pedro Pascal’s slimy, villainously disingenuous portrayal of snake-oil salesman Max Lord doesn’t help matters.

Occasionally, ideas like this can be worth the rough execution if genuine substance comes out of it, and WW84 hopes to make this happen with the reemergence of Steve Trevor in Diana’s life. Under very creepy circumstances that I’m really not sure that Diana would be okay with, her beloved from the WW1 era of the first film comes back to life, which naturally opens the door for the sequel to repeat the comedic “fish-outta-water” scenario with an early-1900s pilot experiencing ‘80s advancements in culture and technology. The chemistry between Gal Gadot and Chris Pine was an unexpected highlight in the previous film, but here it’s a rehash of what audiences already know about how well they play off one another, going through the motions of a time-jumped guy seeing breakdancers, experiencing fanny packs, and observing – and interacting with – jets both large and small. Yes, the DC universe does need more levity like this, but here it all feels uninspiringly borrowed from other, better time-travel cinema.

This marks the fourth (4th) time seeing Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, once in her own wildly successful standalone movie and two other times where she stood out as one of the best aspects of otherwise clunky, dull superhero excursions. Sure, there’s a rush in seeing her show up for the first time in the shiny red-and-blue armor, exquisite ass-kicking boots and multi-purpose metallic bracers and headband, reminding us of her adeptness as a heroine and how she transitions that sturdy persona in her street clothes as Diana Prince. In WW84, this sense of wonder is very short-lived, both due to the sensitization of the audience and by the design of the screenwriting from Jenkins and Johns that attempts the well-worn method of weakening and revitalizing Wonder Woman’s powers as a hero. Gadot turns in a performance that’s subtly wiser and more wistful than what she mustered as a Diana torn apart by human warfare, yet here she’s unable to bring something new to the table even when she’s posed with the capacity to have a selfish wish granted.

WW84 may have been sculpted around grand villainous wish-making and the resurrection of Wonder Woman’s one true love, but it seems like it was designed with Cheetah in mind, if not outright for her. Kristen Wiig’s Barbara coexists with the main storylines as a bespectacled, mildly funny yet reserved and neglected woman who undergoes a transformation alongside her admiration for Diana’s looks, demeanor, and resilience. Her aspirations slowly lead her through a metamorphosis into a formidable rival to Wonder Woman, and Wiig’s performance through each stage of the transformation into Cheetah does wonders for the film’s intentions about the hazards of desire and the significance of individuality. It’s almost worth going so far as to say that with smart modifications to the story, WW84 could’ve removed Max Lord as a villain entirely and had it focus entirely on the conflict between Wonder Woman and Cheetah, and it would’ve been a much stronger – and mercifully shorter – movie for it. Like this, it just leaves one impatiently waiting for each new glimpse at the next step in Barbara’s minxy evolution.

By design, the action remains underpowered in Wonder Woman 1984 until a point where it absolutely cannot be so anymore, resulting in marginally gripping set pieces that do everything they can to subdue Diana’s full capabilities in service of protecting a very human, very easily overcome main villain. Whatever interest one can glean from the intentions of the plotting here quickly disappears as the writing grows lazier and more careless, descending into a vague commentary on demagogues and their undeserved methods of power and persuasion, more interested in making a (good intended) point than making sense. Through all this, one can only look forward to an inevitable brawl between Wonder Woman and her storied nemesis Cheetah, and even that transpires in moonlit darkness that shrouds much of the CG-heavy fisticuffs. WW84 doesn’t suffer from being too grim, or not being comic-booky enough, or from an unseasoned heroine: it suffers from being yet another unremarkable, subpar comic-book hodgepodge from the studio machine, and we’ve come to expect more from this Wonder Woman.

Photos: Warner Bros.

Film Review: Replicas

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 04:32:00 +0000

Directed by: Jeffrey Nachmanoff; Runtime: 107 minutes
Grade: D

Largely due to the success of John Wick, we're in the midst of something of a Keanu Reeves revival, and I couldn't be more excited about that. In the right roles, which are often stoic or deliberately composed with doses of genuine, fiery emotion coming out of his character, he can deliver rather absorbing performances that hit just the right tones for certain styles of plotting. Worth remembering, though, during this time of celebrated revival, that he can just as easily be cast in the wrong parts that stretch his talents too thin and leave him feeling like an awkward presence … and that all his past films aren't immediately transformed into gems, like The Day the Earth Stood Still and 47 Ronin. Unfortunately, his latest attempt at science-fiction with Replicas goes down the rabbit hole and into the latter category: despite a few noble ideas involving the creation of artificial life and the willingness to incorporate dark humor, they get lost in this ideologically messy, tonally confused and logistically harebrained piece of work from Traitor director Jeffrey Nachmanoff that misuses Reeves' capabilities.

Dr. Will Foster (Reeves) heads a research initiative for the Bionyne Corporation based in Puerto Rico, in which he and his team concentrate on duplicating a person's consciousness and transmitting it into an autonomous robot body. Despite the groundbreaking advances they've made, Foster's team are coming up short in bringing the entire project fruition and are close to losing the company's financial support, if they can't deliver on its entire spectrum. After returning home to reflect on his project and spend some time with his family, an accident causes his wife (Alice Eve) and three kids to abruptly die. Working as a man of science and taking risks, Foster decides to take matters into his own hands and try to create Replicas of his family … yet, since his robotic technology isn't working properly, he attempts to test the furthest fringes of science by duplicating their consciousnesses and transferring them into real bodies. When the results aren't entirely spot-on, he copes with the consequences.

Replicas begins as a soft sci-fi exploration of how a person's thoughts, feelings, and all-around being could be channeled from their physical body into a mechanical one, tapping into an interesting spectrum of ideas when the consciousness may or may not handle its new, synthetic vessel. At the beginning, that's where the script makes one think they're headed, but the film shifts gears so quickly that it nearly gave me whiplash: to the cloning of human tissue, then shifting again into the rapid gestation of bodies, and then yet again by bridging those together with consciousness transferring. It takes some adjustment to roll with how far Foster has come with consciousness transference -- yet still a distance away from realizing it -- to suddenly embracing the full-on successful cloning of bodies. The science in Replicas ends up being too much crammed into one story and unable to be taken seriously, but it's also frustratingly contrived to be advanced at just the right levels for Foster's neuroscientific plans to come to life … and falter whenever the story needs tension or drama.

Long before Replicas haphazardly merges futuristic sciences, it strikes an odd chord in an unexpected area: with its dark humor. Now, I'm a firm believer that genre movies shouldn't take themselves too seriously, and that including moments of levity can elevate thrills or suspenseful drama by opening a figurative pressure valve, releasing some of the tension, and then letting the heaviness build up again. The humor needs to fit the circumstances, though, and the circumstances we're working with here are the deaths of a scientist's entire family, whom he cared for immensely; it might've been a different situation had he been a callous narcissist or something like that. When Foster jokes around with Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch on the same night that his family died in a pretty horrific and traumatizing way, it sends some mixed and unsatisfying signals about how these characters should be deciphered. The comedic timing between Reeves and Middleditch works fine enough as the more solemn, spread-too-thin research scientist and his edgier subordinate co-researcher, but the material simply comes across as out of place.

Through the boundless magic of science-fiction where the end could justify the narrative means, Replicas finds a way of getting Dr. Foster's family back on their feet … well, most of ‘em. At a certain point, the film essentially transforms into one long chain of gray moral dilemmas, engineered by the writers' self-imposed limitations on the plot and the preposterous advancements -- and success rate -- of the research being done at Bionyne Corporation. The dilemmas, and the suspense that branches off their repercussions, fail to rationalize the fantastical whirlwind of technobabble that got us to this point, introducing question after question about the general timeline, the stability of this advanced tech under less-than-ideal circumstances, and some exceptionally poor decision-making that has immediate consequences. These stumbles in practicality turn into critical distractions from the thought exercises brainstormed by the writers responsible for Replicas, and no, despite how good it is too see him again so soon, the bearded yet reticent attitude of Keanu Reeves isn't enough to salvage how it all happens.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: Destroyer

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 04:18:00 +0000

Directed by: Karyn Kusama; Runtime: 121 minutes
Grade: C+

If the measure of quality one uses to evaluate a film's strength is whether it made the individual feel something, regardless of what that feeling might be, then Destroyer could be seen as a roaring success. The latest film from The Invitation director Karyn Kusama takes great strides to make those watching get involved with the harrowing life of a gaunt, ramshackle police detective -- and mother -- whose past encounters while undercover continue to impact and, in ways, curse her life some decades later. The psychological and physical hits that she takes, the fear and guilt that she exudes, and the absence of an ability for her to lead a real life come together into an expressive portrait in Destroyer. Despite the raw emotions and weighted suspense, however, the film's intentions as a character study stop short of conveying a deeper understanding of what she endured and how she fully got to where she's at today, resulting in a dramatic onslaught -- fueled by an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman -- that suffers from not bridging the right gaps from who she was and who she's become.

Destroyer takes place across two different timelines: the current era where Erin Bell is a very rough-around-the-edges detective working homicide cases, and in the past before the events that'd ultimately change her as a person. The two timelines are linked by a semi-psychotic criminal named Silas, positioned as an almost mythical arch-villain as he announces his continued existence to Erin through cryptic means. In the past, Erin's association with Silas (Toby Kebbel) and his drug-abusing criminal network showcase some of the lengths to which undercover agents will go to embed deeper into an outfit, the moral boundaries they're willing to bend or cross to maintain appearances. During the present, her attitude reveals what can happen when traumatic life events take their toll as she uses her methods to seek out Silas, before he reaches her. As the chronology jumps around, it paints a picture of her relationship with fellow undercover agent Chris (Sebastian Stan), as well as with her somewhat estranged daughter, Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn).

As someone who usually isn't persuaded by Nicole Kidman's ability to transform into another character, instead usually just seeming like she's just slight tweaks of herself in every role, I was absolutely blown away at how deep she goes into Erin Bell and how unrecognizable she is for the entirety of Destroyer. Unkempt, scraggly, and inhumanely gaunt, her portrayal of Bell exists in that space of performances where you have to actively convince yourself that you're looking at a specific actor, elevating the transformative exhaustion and remorse that she's endured over the years. She's callous, but it's the kind of callous that indicates that there's heart and compassion underneath the harsh exterior, a testament to Kidman's thousand-yard stare glances and depleted body language as she procedurally lumbers between important contacts. She's a brave, talented detective whose disposition causes her to throw herself into harm's way with no care for her well-being, making for a compellingly unpredictable hero.

There's another side to Erin Bell, though, the one that exists in the past and made the mistakes that brought her to this point in the current era, and that's where Destroyer stumbles. As more gets revealed about how the younger Bell became entrenched with Silas' organized crime syndicate and built a relationship with fellow undercover agent Chris, the script from Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi attempts to explore how she balances the self-sacrificial side of herself with a desire to embrace and appreciate life from a somewhat selfish perspective. It creates a unique dichotomy as she cements relationships, witnesses unsettling and manipulative behavior from the leader, and makes judgment calls about what she should ignore … and possibly participate in. The chronology grows screwy and disorienting, though, jumping between different steps in the past and the present to emphasize what's important to the thriller narrative at the time and conceal what's really important about the events surrounding Silas, with a twist at the end that's more of a fakeout than a deeper revelation.

Like The Invitation, director Kusama reaches her comfort zone in Destroyer with the bleakness of the human condition, the extent to which people will go for what they want/need and how that spreads out to the people around ‘em. Erin's methods, where she's willing to take herself to get the info she needs, lead to this being an uncomfortable button-pushing experience in certain aspects that exists to witness the absence of her boundaries, yet little more beyond that. A gap needs to be bridged here, to genuinely showcase how the earlier, more optimistic and ambitious version of Kidman's character morphs into the downtrodden one from the current era, and while some details lend themselves to interpretation about how she might've gotten there, they still seem like disparate entities. More needs to be known about that time in its middle, after tragedy and up till now, for Destroyer to come full circle the way it attempts to do in its final scene. Once the screen goes white at the end, though, the two Erin Bells seem like different people that have lots of time separating them for events to further shape ‘em , as Kusama's film hits those discomforting chords in her experiences without forming into a cohesive evolution.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: Serenity (2019)

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 04:09:00 +0000

Directed by: Steven Knight; Runtime: 106 minutes
Grade: D+

Plot twists have the ability to change the entire context of how a movie plays out, to such a degree that it makes discussing it nearly impossible without revealing what's involved with it. Here's the thing about twists, though: the film should succeed as its own experience without relying on a big revelation later down the line to justify why certain things may have seemed out of place, whether it's relationships between the characters or the tempo of the thrills. Serenity -- the latest thriller from the shrewd suspense writer of Locke and Dirty Pretty Things, Steven Knight -- feels like many things are off with its realism as soon as it embarks, where celebrated actors come across as embellished caricatures within an unexplainably false seaside town, leaving one confused by its repetitions and oddities. Once the twist gets involved and explains why things are the way they are, the damage has been done to the film's rhythm, failing to anchor what remains of the story with a misguided, cumbersome shift in perception.

Matthew McConaughey plays our intrepid hero, Baker Dill, a washed-up yet still talented fisherman who has been caught up in catching his "white whale" of a fish, Justice, for quite some time. Along with his wise first mate (Djimon Hounsou), they barely scrape by with the odd charter fishing trip for wealthy vacationers … and when they don't, Baker Dill uses his physical attractiveness to earn a little money with the local women, notably an attractive, caring woman close to his age named Constance (Diane Lane). Amid a rougher patch in his business, Baker Dill receives an unexpected visit from a mysterious woman (Anne Hathaway), someone with whom he had a vague romantic past. She arrives with a proposition: for him to do a dark deed involving her new husband (Jason Clarke) that would provide Baker Dill enough money to stop worrying about an influx of cash. Along the way, he's constantly bothered by a slim accountant type in glasses (Jeremy Strong), someone who seems to know way more about Baker Dill's everyday activities than he should.

None of the main four characters in Serenity are portrayed by actors without an Academy Award nomination, which makes the awkwardness of the performances here more than a little frustrating. McConaughey works with little more than brutish, obsessive traits as Baker Dill, reducing the Captain Ahab archetype to straightforward mania with a slight amount of military veteran distance in his temperament. Anne Hathaway saunters in as a prototypical femme fatale, a seductress with movie-star blonde hair and whispery, sultry vocal tones. Hounsou is a quasi-religious sage personified, and Diane Lane's little more than a concerned sugar momma who enjoys peering out at her boy toy from swung-open windows. In the beginning, with no grasp on the nature of the setting, they all come across as robotic archetypes of their necessary characters, as if a less-experienced writer has put into action the purpose-driven shells of their personalities without giving them the added depth of people.

Because of this, the idyllic seaside setting in Serenity never feels like much more than a mirage as Steven Knight attempts to build tension around Baker Dill, complimented by quirky visual transitions and odd sound choices that'll only make sense in the moment upon a second viewing. On its face, the front end of the story lacks purpose either as an examination of these characters or as an effective thriller, instead existing purely as the placement of moving parts leading up to a substantive reveal. Therefore, the open waters and coastal folks of the town aren't a convincing mirage, instead coming across like a knockoff version of a Christopher Nolan film, one that's actually guilty of the criticisms -- characters as devices; concept above narrative -- that he's been targeted for over the years. Therefore, the compulsion in Serenity is to simply wait for it to make sense, and in the process the suspense empties from what's happening around Baker Dill until Knight lands on the right time to pull back the curtain.

Yes, there's a real whopper of a revelation being reeled in by Serenity that I'm going to try my best to avoid … and luckily, it's the kind of twist that comes to the surface around the halfway point, so that the film can wrap around and respond to its high concept. Steven Knight uses the opportunity for certain characters to dive into existential thoughts, especially Baker Dill's reflections on his purpose on the island: whether he's destined to go through with murder, what forces brought him to the area in the first place, why he gives a damn about "Justice". This could be a probing mind-bender in theory and it does adequately decode the weirdness that occurs beforehand, but very few secondary layers of Knight's execution hold up to the scrutiny of a second thought, even going so far as to flip the uncertainty about the shallowness of the characters to being suspicious about them being as autonomous as they are. Simple questions are answered about the repetitiveness of prior events and the stiff, direct nature of the characters, but not in any way that deepens the island's inhabitants. Reality begins to dissipate, and caring about that becomes a struggle.

That isn't to say that Serenity doesn't attempt to give purpose to the twist, though. In fact, how and why events play out the way they do around Baker Dill hinges entirely on somber emotional purposes, centered on the absence of a parent from their child's life and the extent to which people will delve into artificial escapes from their worries. The headspace where Steven Knight was at while constructing this film had to have been an intriguing one, not unlike those responsible for the likes of Abre Los Ojos/Vanilla Sky, Total Recall, or even The Truman Show. What sets those apart from Serenity lies in the initial experience in absorbing what's going on, because the mounting tension and emotional fabric of those other works are independently engaging as they approach their revelations and choices made by the main characters. Serenity's clumsy neo-noir beginnings must be explained away to squeeze any drops of fulfillment out of the mental gymnastics that follow, and that's where those on the hook with Steven Knight's concept get away.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: The Vault

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 04:01:00 +0000

Directed by: Dan Bush; Runtime: 91 minutes
Grade: D-

Plot twists can be a lot of fun to witness unfold, but they're far less enjoyable when there seems to be no purpose behind their place in the grander cinematic story. When details are revealed about the seeing of ghosts in The Sixth Sense, they're backed by the personal strife endured by the characters throughout; when the true nature of Nicole Kidman and her childrens' conditions are revealed in The Others, they're supported and deepened by her mother character's neuroses and obsessions. The most intriguing thing about The Vault, a hybrid of a bank heist caper and supernatural horror, lies in one of such twists near the very end of the film, telegraphed with similarly presumptuous grandeur in its reveal to that of its predecessors. What results is a mishmash of purposes that lacks proper tension or serious thrills, building to a reveal that doesn't have the necessary potency in its implications to support what happens beforehand.

The Vault begins as a standard bank robbery movie, with a plot orchestrated by sisters Vee (Taryn Manning) and Leah (Francesca Eastwood) to steal roughly a half-million dollars from an old local branch. Coupled with distractions down the street to keep the city's resources occupied, their plan goes off without much of a hitch, leading them toward the money contained within. When the continued safety of the banks' employees and customers comes under fire during the heist, a mustachioed bank employee (James Franco) indicates that there's another vault burrowed deeper in the bank, and he'll help the robbers access it if they double-down on a promise not to harm the others. They agree, but what isn't fully revealed to them is that the bank has a dark history, and supernatural dangers lurk deeper down in its bowels.

The Vault essentially plays out as two different movies with a clear separation point between ‘em: everything that happens before supernatural elements are introduced, and everything that happens after that ever-present variable shifts gears of the entire scenario. Vee and Leah's grand plan has several unnecessary moving parts that don't make a lot of sense, from Taryn Manning blowing up at a bank teller similar to how she conducts her maniacal character in Orange is the New Black to how Leah uses a job interview as a long con for occupying the manager-on-duty. Generic pulsating music adds the necessary amount of tension to the atmosphere as the thieves gain the upper hand against the people within, and everything plays out as if it's following a template of every other heist movie. While I can understand that the movie wants to get to the more intriguing paranormal aspects, the setup comes across as tedious and drains the film of effective buildup before the eeriness take shape.

With a largely stoic James Franco sporting a ‘stache as he pulls back the curtains on the bank's history, The Vault descends into paranormal suspense as the thieves brave the building's corridors in pursuit of a bigger payday. The script tries to lure the audience into caring about the rationale behind Vee and Leah's robbery -- Taryn Manning's brusqueness makes it impossible to, in any way, empathize with her character's irritation with her sister's flightiness; Francesca Eastwood's shrewder and world-weary presence comes closer, but lacks tangibility -- but it doesn't do enough to make those watching care about whether they survive, are captured, or get away with the money. Thus, once specters start to whittle away at their crew through both direct and indirect methods, the suspense falls flat with each splatter of blood or scream of terror; some industrious production design and camerawork deserves to be commended, so at least there's something visceral to grasp onto with the horror aspects of the story.

But yes, there's a twist in The Vault -- two, really, though one's mostly just an elongated carry-over of the other -- which recontextualizes what the viewer has observed since the beginning and attempts to give the story a little heft. It's the kind of "gotcha" revelation that works better as the punchline to a brief and creepy campfire tale, though, instead of the feature-length culmination of either the heist suspense or the growing supernatural tension. That the revelation is unoriginal isn't the biggest problem with what happens, as numerous other supernatural mysteries have effectively landed on highly similar twists involving the mortality of significant individuals. Instead, The Vault keeps whatever potential it had locked up because it tries to succeed at being two different stories, one right after the other, while placing emphasis on the wrong elements for deeper impact, resulting in a monotonous and muddled indie whose lack of care for structure makes one disinterested in the secrets it wants to tell.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: Dark River

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 03:56:00 +0000

Directed by: Clio Barnard; Runtime: 90 minutes
Grade: D+

Most people who like to watch movies have a small collection of titles that they have waiting for when they're "in the mood", ones that are of a deliberately bleak, harsh nature that aren't exactly ideal for popping in and enjoying on a whim. Had Dark River achieved in what it sets out to do, I would've recommended lumping it into that category, largely because of how the material ventures into the territory of physical abuse and unrestrained sibling rivalry. Emotionally-charged performances and gritty visual composition against a decaying farmhouse landscape lend rawness to this tale of sibling rivalry and guilt, but the content's so heavy -- and heavy-handed -- that it yields an unpleasant drama without rewards or virtues to counterbalance it, relying on the intensity of its coarseness for substance.

Upon learning about the death of her father, Alice makes the trip back to her childhood village after staying away for a decade and a half, during which she's become an adept caregiver and shearer of sheep; guess she'd be considered something of a shepherd. The home from her youth sits on the edge of a prototypical British farm, not exactly beautiful under bucolic standards but appealing in its own right. There, she plans on asserting her claim for tenancy of the farm, claiming what she believes rightfully belongs to her, but she's met with resistance by her rough-hewn brother, Joe, whose skill and knowledge with the farm are clearly lacking. As they await a verdict from the higher-ups, the pair butt heads in more ways than one, while Alice copes with haunting memories of how her father treated her.

The pluckiness of Ruth Wilson's portrayal of Alice gives one hope at the beginning of Dark River, depicting her as a self-sufficient and determined woman in a heavily male industry, which sets her up to be a powerful force leading into discussions about whether she'll be taking over her father's farm. That isn't exactly the intention of the film, though, as the story quickly throws her into situations that she cannot feasibly cope with due to the circumstances, hinged on the bullish nature of her brother and the machinations of the agencies responsible for deciding the farm's fate. It becomes more of a display of her suffering than her willpower against tough situations, especially once the darkness of her abused past starts to factor into her mental state. Compelling elements of family turmoil and psychological damage are wrangled into the narrative, but it's not interested in Alice conquering them.

Instead, Dark River pushes further with the dramatics of the situation, escalating the grimness as legal scheming and threats of violence make the story, an adaptation of a novel by Rose Tremain, more unpleasant and infuriating to watch than enriching. With Sean Bean in the role as a father in flashbacks -- he's already a "dead" character before he even appears! -- the film cuts from current-era complications of cattle disagreements and sibling hostility to the escalating toxicity of Alice's home life when she was a young teen or pre-teen, back and forth. Clio Barnard's navigation of the themes involved with what's being depicted are both uncomfortable and, for the most part, lacking the purpose necessary to justify that kind of viewing discomfort. Sympathizing with Alice isn't difficult; however, understanding why we're being subjected to it doesn't come across so easily.

Dark River exasperates far before its ending, but the harrowing final act really makes it tough to take much of worth away from what happens around Alice. That's partly because of the muddied structure of its ideas, but it's mostly due to it being hard to believe that certain administrative decisions would be allowed to progress in light of the circumstances, revealing the story's agenda of going to as dark of a place as it can regardless of practicality. The boundaries built up by parables about grief, guilt, and -- most importantly -- redemption get tested here, and those who've created this one don't realize that they've pushed further than what they can withstand before starting to reconcile the emotive issues. Dark River doesn't have enough redeeming value to be worth the effort needed to watch it in any mood.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 03:44:00 +0000

Directed by: Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy, Christopher Bevins; Runtime: 90 minutes
Grade: D

While this may not be as prevalent in other parts of the United States, the concept of living the "mermaid life" has turned into something of a cutesy mantra for some people who live near the ocean (or wish they did). Rejuvenated interests in the half-human, half-fish mythical creatures has risen to such a degree that we've dropped anchor during a time when movies about them are prevalent … and some of ‘em, surprisingly, are quite good, from an effervescent comedic fantasy directed by Kung Fu Hustle's Stephen Chow to a very dark, bloody quasi-musical from Poland, of all places. The rules about mermaids change between all of ‘em, yet there are a few constants that inherently grab one's attention with the premise, notably the presence of a fish's tail as the lower half of their body. Within Russian folklore, the concept of "rusalka" -- a fearsome nature spirit that often dwells near water -- overlaps with the mythology of classical mermaids, which is why some might be confused by Mermaid: Lake of the Dead if they were hoping for a mermaid horror movie. Hoping for an effective horror movie is something else altogether.

In Mermaid: Lake of the Dead, the "monster" better resembles a siren than a mermaid: the lingering spirit of a young woman who resides near a dock and occasionally lures people into her sphere with entrancing magic. Once within the proximity of her voice and spells, the person struggles to do anything but proclaim their love and adoration for the spirit, whose desires shift erratically depending on its malicious or tormented mood. Early-20s swimmer Roma gets drawn into the magic of this one on the eve of his spontaneous bachelor party, leaving an internal mark on his being that impacts both his physical and mental health. Clues point towards the previous identity of this spirit, which leads to Roman and his fiancé, Marina, to investigate and hopefully find a way to appease her. The "mermaid" is a bitter entity, though, and will consume them if they don't figure out a solution sooner rather than later.

More than anything, Mermaid: Lake of the Dead gives off vibes very similar to those found in the American remake of The Ring, for several different reasons. For starters, to the filmmakers' credit, the film's visuals carry a lot of haunting beauty in each frame, luring those watching into an eerie, disquieting atmosphere very much in the same vein as Gore Verbinski's heavily stylized, and frequently damp; ghost story; some might see a bit of the Japan's Dark Water in there, too. On top of that, the story revolves around a lingering curse that passes from those who experience the mermaid -- not unlike watching that spooky video, complete with seeing warped visions -- and the process of escaping and removing said curse before time runs out. Those aren't inherently bad things, revolving around familiar emotional supernatural tropes and tapping into recognizable imagery of wet, stringy-hair spirits and their teal-coated surroundings. Expecting a mermaid and getting what's essentially an overpowered Samara isn't satisfying, but the film's engagement of the senses yearns to make up for that.

Boy, there isn't anything under the surface of Lake of the Dead, though, and the entrancement of the watery aesthetics wears off quick. It's hard to think of a more generic supernatural narrative than this one, going through the motions with its tale of doomed romance as the origin of the rusalka's spite, as if it's the last exhausted laps of a swimming session. The victims are youthful and absorbing to watch as their torment and investigation proceeds -- actress Viktoriya Agalakova could eventually become a force to be reckoned with -- but the absence of clarity about the spirit's powers and limitations translate into an uncommitted and mechanical wash of supernatural tension. The script doesn't lack for opportunities to develop the characters, either: the pacing intentionally wades along in hopes of building up the pressure of the suspense, yet that time gets devoted to the supernatural villain's rehash of a backstory instead of shaping the imminent victims into layered people. Thus, Mermaid stagnates. Quick.

Mermaid: Lake of the Dead raises the intensity level by splashing around with a few traditional jump scares that reemphasize that the villain isn't much of a "mermaid" at all, instead some kind of hypnotic water spirit that can extend or retract its influence however the plot deems necessary. While it's interesting to see a car some distance from a body of water -- and from the villain -- fill up with dank fluid and attempt to drown the people within, the introduction of this as a possibility opens up a can of worms about how much watery chaos and wrath the spirit could realistically conjure up from far away. Those are the types of considerations that get pardoned when the mythology's interesting or you care about the people drawn into the conflict; The Ring, after all, could be accused of similar (milder) issues. By the end, instead of casting a spell with its unique twist on such a water-dwelling mythical creature, Mermaid: Lake of the Dead mostly just made me wish they had slapped some scales and a fin on her, turned her into a killing machine, and made these unexciting people regret living the Mermaid Life™.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 18:41:00 +0000

Directed by: David Yates; Runtime: 134 minutes
Grade: C-

It's tough to be a fan of the Harry Potter franchise and not be as into its Fantastic Beasts prequel spinoff, especially considering the participation of author J.K. Rowling as screenwriter. For all its charmingly rendered creatures, ‘20s-era appearance, and nudge-wink references to the story proper, David Yates' next foray in the wildly-popular universe carries over the awkwardly heavy tones and stilted, erratic characterization from his later, less cinematically successful entries. Much like the protracted two-parter Deathly Hallows, Fantastic Beasts also feels every bit like it's obligated to continuation instead of genuinely inspired. While similar observations apply to the sequel, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, they are relatively secondary to the film's more pressing missteps: Yates and Rowling have confused ostentation with beastly wonder, overestimated the draw power of the characters' depths, and ultimately assumed more Wizarding World meant they could overextend a plot where little actually evolves leading into a third film. The result is, quite easily, the worst Potter film yet.

Some spoilers for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will naturally follow from hereon out, the most notable being that evil mastermind Grindelwald, whom was unmasked at the end of Fantastic Beasts to reveal a graying Johnny Depp, has been imprisoned by America's wizard law enforcement. While being transferred from the max security facility there to London to be tried for his crimes -- always a brilliant move; especially so for an immensely powerful dark wizard -- Grindelwald breaks loose from their control and, naturally, begins to rally the troops. As the Ministry of Magic seeks the whereabouts of Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), the gray-area villain from the first film, and as Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) attempts to return to his normal traveler's life as a beast wrangler, Grindelwald's influence spreads and draws in those who might be considered allies to the Ministry. Much of their hope lies in the hands of a familiar name whose past once intersected with Grindelwald: Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), who is at this point the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

One of the complaints thrown out at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was that it felt overly stretched-out, that the novel's narrative had been prolonged so the plot could be split into two money-making blockbusters, and that, by itself, it came across as buildup without significant development or payoff. The Crimes of Grindelwald does just about the same, but without the guarantee of a second half to resolve any cliffhangers or justifying the plot's lack of advancement. Now, let's not kid ourselves: there'll be another Fantastic Beasts film; however, the substance of this one suffers from the same presumptuousness as its Harry Potter counterpart, using this gap-filling "middle" entry to extend the story longer than it should. When you look at the state of the Fantastic Beasts plotline at the beginning and at the end of The Crimes of Grindelwald, it's hard not to come away from it without thinking that … well, not much has really happened, and that's over two hours of things not happening. This feels like buying time until more interesting things happen, which can also be viewed as wasting time.

There's a difference between things not happening and things not changing, and that's where The Crimes of Grindelwald hopes to make up for its lack of forward movement in the story, by exploring how the characters change in response to things learned about themselves, others, and the Wizarding World. J.K. Rowling had a challenge ahead of her: devotees to the Harry Potter franchise have a loose grasp on where the events of this prequel -- and the next -- will ultimately end up, while more casual fans can be fickle in their interest levels behind seeing what's already happened in past events in the Harry Potter universe. With an emphasis on Grindelwald and a brewing war between noble wizards and those who practice the dark arts, one can't help but ultimately think to themselves that, yeah, everything's going to turn out fine from all this; however, the interest falls on how certain "good guys" would be persuaded into cooperating with Grindelwald's agenda. The answers, widespread as they may be, aren't very creative, taking cues from X-Men and the Underworld series in the villain's appeals to superiority. For being the series' second most powerful dark wizard, Grindelwald and Johnny Depp's performance within it are unfathomably bland, leading one to miss Colin Farrell.

Sure, there's more going on in The Crimes of Grindelwald than exploring its lackluster villain. Rowling also reveals more about the recurring heroes in her Fantastic Beasts prequel universe; however, their reentry reeks of sequel shenanigans. Newt Scamander remains something of a tourist throughout the events of this film, with just enough of a personal connection through his brother -- Theseus, an auror with Britain's Ministry of Magic investigating the whereabouts of Credence -- to ensure that he appears relevant to what's going on. Other characters from Fantastic Beasts return through mechanical or, at times, nonsensical methods, bringing back quirky mood relievers Queenie (Alison Sudol) and Jacob (Dan Fogler) in a way that undercuts where they ended up in the first, while also working Newt's half-romantic interest Tina (Katherine Waterston), an American auror, into the fray. New characters Theseus and the familiarly-named Lita Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) add echoes of depth to the film's dramatic endeavors, yet neither are strong enough as standalone presences to latch onto them, merely servicing the backstory that's disguised as a plot here.

David Yates and his team of both practical and digital wizards certainly know how to generate a visually gripping universe, from the precision of costumes to ornate, weathered set craftsmanship and the digital rendering of beasts from one's imagination. Boy, does it feel shallow in The Crimes of Grindelwald, though, as if they're parlor tricks designed to hold one's fleeting attention span instead of to lock one's captivation with a world being created. Scenes with new beasts are lengthy and majestic, holding little purpose beyond reemphasizing Newt's preference for them above humans. There's a point where key characters navigate the shifting pillars of a magic archive that taps into into a sense of awe not unlike seeing Gringotts or the Ministry of Magic for the first time, though that gets weakened by the arrival of questionably rendered -- though, admittedly, still slick and intimidating -- CG antagonists. And yes, in a continuation of sequel desperation, The Crimes of Grindelwald departs to Hogwarts so it can interact with a dashing young Albus Dumbledore, impeccably played by Jude Law, though the sight of its architecture, levitating candles and such actually set the stage for numerous inconsistencies and oddities in the plot, from confusing backstories and arbitrary plot constraints to outright holes.

For all its grandeur and deep interest in the setting's history, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald struggles to, frankly, have much of a point. Seemingly big things occur near its end -- from a dazzling and persistent onslaught of magical blue infernos to a key reveal about the lineage of the mysterious Credence Barebone -- yet after the flames die out and the shock value wears off, the ramifications of what's transpired lack the sort of concrete substance or immediacy that makes one want to know what comes out of it. Rowling has a great time exploring these events that ultimately build into her world that's enchanted so many people across the globe, but she's done so within the space of a story that lacks momentum and excitement until the script decides that it's reached a point where it's necessary. The pacing suffers, the focus suffers, and the anticipation suffers upon its pseudo-cliffhanger of a conclusion, which left me feeling how nobody should feel at the end of a prequel: it's pretty obvious what's going to happen next, and not even outright wizarding warfare can conjure up enthusiasm for it.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: Mortal Engines

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 18:21:00 +0000

Directed by: Christian Rivers; Runtime: 128 minutes
Grade: C-

There are four installments that make up Philip Reeve's quartet of "Mortal Engines" novels, built around the popularized steampunk brand of post-apocalyptic atmosphere that came about following a manmade collapse of society. A wide array of characters from across the spectrum of morality comprise the people who inhabit Reeve's world: a rebellious orphan with a physical abnormality, a promising intellectual limited by their obligations, the conflicted daughter of an authoritarian, and so on. In short, no shortage of potential for a new cinematic franchise cranks-‘n-spurts at the core of "Mortal Engines", potential that Lord of the Rings mastermind Peter Jackson has been trying to bring into reality for over a decade since he bought the adaptation rights. Much like the fantasy director's return to Middle-earth, however, the big-screen Mortal Engines exhibits the symptoms of wanting to recapture the magic of other franchises instead of a pure desire to realize a new world, and the product merely clunks along out of necessity instead of inspiration.

While Jackson may not have directed the film himself, his creative presence can still be felt in his position as co-writer and producer, while his longstanding art and visuals manager Christian Rivers makes his feature-length debut as director. They throttle the audience into the realm of a not-so-distant future version of Great Britain and Europe ravaged by an event called the Sixty Minute War, which left a wasteland in its wake where giant moving mechanical cities engage in battles between one another. Typically, smaller cities are "consumed" by larger ones, its citizens assimilated and resources dispersed. With older technology valued the relics of an ancient and revered civilization, the citizens of the cities engage in post-apocalyptic forms of ambition within these mechanized cities. Some -- like aspiring historian Tom (Robert Sheehan) -- operate under the lordship of authoritarians like Magnus Crome (Patrick Malahide) and Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), the leaders of London and its persistent drive to consume other cities; others, like the masked rogue Hester (Hera Hilmar), scrape along in smaller pacifistic cities and plot how to dethrone those capitalistic entities.

Fast-forwarding the global state to a point where entire cities are not only rolling around by machinery, but also engaging in combat with one another is a tall order, demanding lots of groundwork to be laid. There's no shortage of this in Mortal Engines: beginning with another deep voiceover in the vein of Galadriel's from LOTR, the film starts to explain how the world arrived at this state … and then, transitioning into frequent conversations with obvious exposition intentions, keeps explaining and explaining, instead of showing and allowing one to experience it. The screenplay from Jackson and his frequent co-writers Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh understands that an audience can't be haphazardly thrown into this environment without numerous moving parts making some degree of sense, but their efforts are bogged down by the obligation -- and rush -- to do so and how that takes away from the writers' enthusiasm in creating a new cinematic world. The process of running down a checklist to cover the story's bases gets confused with world-building; fortunately, this doesn't weigh down the film's pacing amid the chatter, remaining brisk regardless.

The purpose-driven nature of those conversations in Mortal Engines also detracts from the depth of the characters populating the mobile cities, to which there's no shortage of ‘em to introduce and flesh out in a short amount of time. What happens, as a result, is that they come across as shadows -- often forgettable ones -- of personalities in similar sci-fi and dystopian young-adult franchises, chief among them being its numerous "borrowed" elements from Star Wars and Harry Potter. Lead characters Hester and Tom function like an amalgamation of Luke Skywalker and The Boy Who Lived that's been split off, reassembled and packaged as different personalities, and the absence of onscreen chemistry between ‘em leaves the unremarkable, yet altogether tolerable performances from Hera Hilmar and Robert Sheehan to work with only those remnants of their influences as substance. There are standouts, such as Hugo Weaving's intensity as the not-so-morally gray villain Valentine and Jihae as the slick, magnetic scoundrel Anna Fang, but they're shiny parts knocking around in a dated, rickety vehicle.

That doesn't mean that, in all its weathered and rapid glory, Mortal Engines isn't attractive. Naturally, the legendary WETA Workship throws down the gauntlet for this adaptation that Peter Jackson has been waiting to realize for over a decade: enormous mechanical cities full of steam, gears, and citizens do battle in a dazzling early fusion of CG effects and set design; mythical flying ships effortlessly glide through the sky in convincing digital gusts; a green-eyed mechanical golem slowly yet menacingly stomps forward and interacts with humans. From a technical and aesthetic standpoint, this team has constructed a marvel that keeps the eyes engaged with both intricate production design and digital wizardry from start to finish, and, as previously mentioned, it doesn't waste any time in getting the heroes from place to place in as stimulating of ways as possible. Whether it taps into the premise's potential or not is another story, as the initial brawl between cities -- celebrated in the trailers -- ends up being one of very few scenes like this in the film, while WETA gets overly confident in the immersive threshold of their fully digital effects.

Despite the technical achievements, Mortal Engines continues to suffer from trying too hard to establish itself as "the" new franchise to fill the void left by the absence of The Hunger Games and Lord of the Rings, instead of concentrating on making sure that this entry's a fine-tuned machine on its own. Themes of sacrifice, cooperation, and whether the ends justify the means hit expected notes in an appropriately explosive and objectively tense finale, which certainly sets the stage for several sequel adaptations of Philip Reeve's novels to follow. Nothing's surprising in the ending, though, outside of how brazenly this filmed version of the story copies -- quite specifically -- from another franchise in the tone and machinations of a key reveal, which seems like an inconsequential addendum here. Mortal Engines ends up feeling like a hurried diversion instead of another captivating transportation to another world from Peter Jackson and company, one that's preoccupied with the years to come instead of what it should be seizing here and now. Going by this, there may not be another adventure in its future.

Though, an Anna Fang spinoff might just take flight ...

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Film Review: Jonathan

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 18:12:00 +0000

Directed by: Bill Oliver; Runtime: 95 minutes
Grade: C

The psychology and logistics involved with someone having dual personalities has made for absorbing cinema over the years, from the philosophical rebellion of Fight Club to numerous more direct, outlandish thrillers that'll remain unmentioned out of respect to their twists. Jonathan, the feature-length debut from Bill Oliver, differs from those films in two important ways: the duality of the main character is revealed right at the beginning, instead of near the end for shock value or existential significance; and the duality is literal in nature, in that two brothers occupy one body and evenly split the time of day between them. While the dramatic nature of Oliver's thriller might directly tap into the unique problems and considerations of how one person could live entirely different lives in the same body, the oddities and inconsistencies are also more pronounced, which isn't helped by the requirement for the actor to portray overly dissimilar versions of the character to get the point across.

Baby Driver's Ansel Elgort plays the two halves of Jonathan, who couldn't be further apart if they tried. One half, which would be considered the main character in the film, is a well-mannered and reclusive person whose ambitions of becoming an architect are limited by the time constraints of their condition. Jonathan takes the morning and mid-afternoon shift of their existence, while the other half, John, takes on the nighttime and the pleasures that it brings. They have specific rules about how to conduct themselves, from the amount of time they both sleep to ensuring that they exercise and eat right without overdoing it, which get relayed through video logs that they record for each other. Perhaps the most important and complicated rule comes in their agreement to not engage in a romantic relationship -- sex is okay, but girlfriends aren't -- and a rift emerges when Jonathan discovers that his brother hasn't held up his side of that agreement. The film explores what happens when the balance is thrown off.

When an actor must play two versions of the same person, the audience needs to be able to identify which one's onscreen at a given time, and that often leads to exaggerated personality traits to hammer it home. Elgort's two versions of Jonathan are no exception, and the stark differences between the two distract from whatever genuineness could be developed within the idea. He's played something of an introvert with charisma in Baby Driver, so it's disappointing to see that absent from his stereotypical bottled-up portrayal of an introverted architect. Conversely, his loose attitude as the "wild" brother goes too far into the spectrum of a lout, kind of like what you'd imagine if someone introverted were trying to act laid back and cool. There's too wide of a discrepancy between the two Jonathans to take ‘em seriously -- more Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than they should be -- and the film's purposes would've benefited from allowing each to exhibit just few of one another's traits.

Jonathan revolves around the psychological drama involved when one half of their functioning puzzle starts to go off the rails: when one of the brothers starts to encroach on the other's existence by living it up at night, taking up more of the other's time, and breaking their rule of not having a romantic partner. In its raw form, the concept can be intriguing, hinged on the somewhat science-fiction thought exercise behind what it'd be like if the two halves of one person stopped cooperating with one another. The frustrations of the responsible one interacts with the devil-may-care exuberance of the other, and Jonathan does try to sustain a balanced portrayal of the brothers, not allowing the daytime architect to be purely the good guy nor for the nighttime reveler to be nothing but a villainous entity. Coupled with a sharp, absorbing performance from Suki Waterhouse as the tender, genuine, if indistinct girlfriend caught between ‘em, the dramatic suspense still makes one want to learn how Jonathan will react next.

The biggest problem with the film revolves around how we're dropped in on this scenario as if it's just become a conflict within Jonathan's life, even if some backstory confirms otherwise. Despite quick references to the past and the presence of Patricia Clarkson as a research doctor-slash-therapist, the story operates under the pretenses that certain everyday issues haven't turned into problems for the pair of mid-twenties young men until now, especially the confusion that occurs when one version of Jonathan bumps into an acquaintance of the other version. Once the idea gets introduced that one half of Jonathan can become destructive and outright claim time from the other, the concept unravels and loses control of the boundaries that kept it resembling a reputable character study. There's a desire to embrace the intensity of their clashes over sovereignty of their human vessel, but in the process writer/director Oliver introduces more conundrums and logic gaps than the drama can withstand.

The motivations and insecurities built around John's wilder and more (self-)destructive persona remain barely interesting enough to continue following Jonathan toward its conclusion, hinged on how the two personalities will -- or if they can -- resolve their existential differences. Alas, following a major revelation about their history of juggling personalities, Bill Oliver's conclusion leans into vague interpretation over what exactly has happened within the character's mind, fumbling with abrupt editing and Elgort's increasingly murky performance in an attempt to engage the audience's perceptions and interpretations over what they're seeing unfold. Transforming this plot into a puzzle-box at the end doesn't work, where a scramble of fear and guilt between the conflicting twins generates suspense that leads to an untethered resolution, intentional or not. Nothing's left standing at the end of Jonathan to suggest that the twins should've done anything but follow their own rules, and that's unsatisfying.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

'Happy Death Day 2U' Explains More Than Scares in 2nd Loop

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 07:57:00 +0000

Directed by: Christopher Landon; Runtime: 100 minutes
Grade: C-

Less than a year and a half ago, Happy Death Day jolted the Halloween season awake with its unexpectedly entertaining and genuinely suspenseful twist on Groundhog Day, where a sorority girl continuously lives out the same day in which she's stalked and killed by someone wearing a baby mask. The amusement factor runs high due to both the time-based humor and the brutal methods in which she keeps dying at the hand of this Ghostface-inspired predator, yet the ways in which the original ties into her birthday, family, and personal growth also give it a meaningful streak. And like the Bill Murray vehicle that so clearly inspired it, no explanation was given or needed for how she got caught in the time loop; in fact, the seemingly mystical enigmas of her predicament played into the emotional tempo. The sequel, Happy Death Day 2U, doesn't appreciate this: it's a sequel that relies on tearing down mysteries in order to hijack characters and recreate the cyclical suspense, making both lesser films when viewed together.

Fans of Happy Death Day should have fond memories of Phi Vu's character: the bleached-blonde Asian guy whose vulgar statement gets repeated over and over, getting all sorts of reactions and interruptions from Tree (Jessica Rothe), our focal sorority girl, as he stumbles into a shared dorm room. The sequel begins from his perspective as he's awakened while sleeping in his car (which really does look like it smells like Hot Pockets and feet), after which he has an eventful day of accidents, surprises, and the delivery of tough news about his scientific research project. Later, he gets stabbed by someone dressed in a familiar baby mask and black clothes, which leads to him reliving the same day over again. Wandering into his dorm room as Tree and her now-boyfriend-ish Carter (Israel Broussard) are making out, he divulges to them the nature of this weirdness, which naturally puts Tree -- who just recently escaped from her own time loop -- on edge. By helping him and discovering the source of the loops, Tree again gets drawn into a chronological nightmare.

Now, I'm not usually in favor of storytelling elements being chalked up to "magic", but doing so really worked to Happy Death Day's advantage, even on a deeper, semi-philosophical level. As soon as quantum physics and an experimental reality-warping device enter the picture in Happy Death Day 2U, these facets are systematically stripped away by co-writers Christopher Landon and Scott Lobdell from the universe they've created, in a misguided effort to pull Tree back into the chronological chaos and … heavy sigh … to realistically describe how and why it all happened in the first place. Just on the surface, this frontloads the sequel with passable supporting characters, a messy attempt to set up the notion of multiple universes/dimensions, and, quite frankly, some feeble attempts at mounting suspense around the Babyface Killer's return. In the original, Tree sought out -- by violent trial and error -- the right chain of events that stop her killer, whereas this sequel chases a fix to the scientific cause of it all. Blah.

There are less complicated, more viscerally suspenseful ways in which Tree could've been forced back into the loop(s) for a sequel, and the sloppiness of how it's established here -- a villainous and fickle dean of students (Steve Zissis) who abruptly endangers the research project; an inconsistent alt-reality version of sorority queen Danielle (Rachel Matthews); lots of monotonous equations -- drain the suspense from Happy Death Day 2U. As soon as Jessica Rothe recaptures the camera's focus, however, it's as if a switch gets flipped that immediately refocuses one's attention back onto the dizzying world extending from the original, with her character bravely charging into obstacles as the weatherworn, charismatic heroine she's become. It's easy to hate on how Tree gets pulled back into this mess, but the vivacity in how Rothe's character mentally and emotionally processes the differences between timelines almost justifies it, even when she goes through with some questionable trial-and-error plans.

Most of the missteps in Happy Death Day 2U boil down to a lack of understanding of how to be a horror movie alongside its other objectives, drawing too much inspiration from Back to the Future -- yes, it's referenced by name -- without remembering to directly unsettle the audience every once in a while. By presenting the idea that Tree could exist in multiple universes, the screenplay also creates the possibility that the killer from the first movie isn't necessarily the killer in the sequel, which does introduce the opportunity for Christopher Landon and Scott Lobdell to create new suspects, fates for the various characters, and a few red herrings. They get so caught up in the "multiverse" and narrowing down these variables that they neglect the buildup of suspense over revealing who's behind the mask this time. While it's a trip to see stuff like Tree lifting middle fingers in a bikini while falling and splatting to her fate, and then promptly getting resurrected, the context lacks suspense and smacks of obligation to repeat strategies that work in the original.

From recognizable camera angles and referential dialogue to the emotional choice at the heart of the story, Happy Death Day 2U can't be accused of avoiding the first film or attempting to stand alone, relishing all the ways it recalls details both large and small from Tree's first encounter with "the loop". It's worth applauding how Landon and Lobdell have written around the character's internal turmoil -- both physical and psychological -- and how that bleeds into this sequel, because the scenario surrounding our heroine certainly wants to rationalize the technobabble used to explain away what was once perceived as a divine occurrence, a la Groundhog Day, in the first film. Much like what happens to Tree throughout this new franchise, however, too much abuse gets unleashed upon the concept for Happy Death Day 2U to remain standing by its end, and it's due to Landon and Lobdell making the fundamental mistake of trying to explain what's best left unexplained.

Classic Musings: Blood and Black Lace (1964)

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 07:40:00 +0000

Mario Bava is a master of extracting substance from within his style, where the moving parts of emotions and motivations oftentimes lead to deeper horror experiences than one might expect. Whether he's lurking in the heavy shadows of black-and-white gothic tales or operating with vivid pools of colored lights from across the spectrum, his direction -- and influence over the camerawork -- conscientiously focuses upon the characters in such a way that even some of the smallest, seemingly inconsequential characters have a little something else going on beneath the surface. In a murder mystery like Blood and Black Lace, this feeds into credible uncertainty as to who's responsible for killings. Taking place mostly within a modeling-slash-burlesque "fashion house", Bava's lavish prismatic shades and sequence of gruesome death take shape as one of the earliest and most influential manifestations of the Italian giallo horror subgenre, clutching firmly onto the traits of those who come in and out of the house for its emphatic whodunit suspense.

Dressed in a jacket, hat, and stretchy face wrap to conceal their identity, someone lurking on the grounds of the fashion house viciously murders one of the many models who resides there. An investigation into the murder begins, and with the inspection into the motivations of those close to the victim also comes the discovery of a wide array of other wrongdoings from the residents, largely contained within a specific diary. While the recently widowed manager of the company, Christina (Eva Bartok), attempts to maintain the status quo and keep the fashion business moving, the location of the diary becomes its own mystery as the killer remains at large, eventually claiming other victims with ties to the fashion house … and to that secret diary. Suspects are narrowed and motivations come and go, but the threat of the killer continues to loom throughout, with many of the personalities that pass through the fashion house becoming more and more distinct.

Immediately, the bright colors and moody shadows of Maria Bava's craftsmanship take control in Blood and Black Lace, almost as if looking at the fashion house through a kaleidoscope while he slyly introduces the actors, all draped in various hues while Ubaldo Terzano's camerawork flows from one to the next. Crimson mannequins with shiny black hair also peek out from the darkness, elevating Bava's setting into something bordering on the surreal as models finalize their garments and bodies are discovered in hiding places. This is a display of artifice, sure, but what's on the surface ties together with the orchestration of the fashion shows themselves, as well as to those who participate in them. Searching for symbolism in every shade of color in Blood and Black Lace may be futile, but it's hard to dispute the calculation involved with how Bava selected the right ones to create specific moods, emboldening his purposeful use of colored lights that seem unnaturally emergent in the house. Things that'd come across as ostentatious elsewhere feel at home and meaningful in this palace of superficiality.

It doesn't take long for Blood and Black Lace to demonstrate that there's more going on here than just a bunch of pretty women being killed off by a random stranger. From the deaths emerge suspicions and gossip, which introduce all sorts of indiscretions committed by both the models and those that manage them, spanning from hedonistic behavior to more serious offenses like secretive abortions and blackmail. That's where the giallo mechanisms kick into gear, in which the ominous killer gets overshadowed by the wide range of people who could feasible lurk under the mask, and the motivations behind their killing. While these characters wouldn't be classified as profound, exactly -- this isn't a rich moral examination or anything -- almost all of them have a compelling underlying layer that hinges on some deeper human flaw, which makes going the guesswork on who's responsible for the murders an interesting experience in observation. The intersection of details going on about who's wrapped up in what drama, and where the tell-all diary might've ended up, continuously raises the tension throughout.

While the likes of Black Christmas and Halloween shaped the slasher-movie framework into the machine for tension that we've come to relish, Blood and Black Lace telegraphs a similarly methodical, thematic sequence of deaths, aptly earning a reputation for being a precursor for conventional bodycount horror. The deaths can be grueling, hinged on the tortures of impalement and scorched flesh, but they're designed less for the suspense of seeing whether someone's going to die and more on expanding the mystery behind who's responsible. Bava skillfully ties together the process of eliminating suspects from a list of possibilities with stylized, unrestrained kills full of the spirit of Italian horror, with set design choices that amplify the mood just enough to draw attention to the intensity of their demise. Attention has also been paid to the manner in which everyone's been killed by the masked murderer, creating a situation where almost anyone -- male or female, strong or borderline weak -- could feasibly be underneath the disguise, motivated by any number of potential revelations about their wrongdoings.

The reveal of who's behind the mask and the reasons for their killing spree isn't terribly surprising in Blood and Black Lace, but that's more of a testament to the foreshadowing and setup devised by Bava and screenwriter Marcello Fondato than an absence of shock value or potency. It could be argued that the framing of certain clues and dialogue early on might've been a little too suggestive for their own good, building to a predictable finish; however, when it comes to the revelations about the victims and how they factor into the masked murderer's reasons for their villainy, these pieces fit together into an outcome that simply make sense in its operatic grandness. While it isn't as gruesome as Black Sunday or as intent on building to visceral scares as Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace drops into a devious middle-ground between the two while remaining focused on credibility with its murder-mystery rationale, stitching together equal measures of Bava's emphasis on style as substance and straightforward, yet sharply-written pulpy thrills.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Movies I Love: Trick 'r Treat

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Spurlin) — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 07:23:00 +0000

Over the course of a decade since its limited theatrical showings and surge of popularity on home video, Trick 'r Treat has developed a reputation for being a quintessential film to watch over Halloween … or Samhain, or All Hallow's Eve; take your pick. It's tough to imagine a film capturing the many facets of the holiday's spirit quite so thoroughly, from the spooked-out observations of kids braving the dangers of the night for their candy to the adults pursuing other kinds of, uh, more mature "treats" while donning their own costumes. Closer in purpose to A Christmas Story than the likes of Halloween or Hocus Pocus, Michael Dougherty's freshman feature ties inextricably to the holiday's customs, atmosphere, urban legends and other moving parts, to such a degree that it makes it difficult to imagine watching Trick 'r Treat at other times of the year. As a mood-setter, you're not likely to find one that's more immersive and character-focused while conjuring the season's spirit; however, when looked at as a straight horror anthology outside the season, it's not exactly the most frightening of the pack.

Trick 'r Treat spins campfire tales centered on several loosely connected people throughout a small American town on Halloween, one that's decked out for the holiday season and puts on a parade-slash-party in its main downtown area. For the most part, the stories don't intersect with one another until the plot designs for them to do so, which gives the individual portions their own standalone "short story" properties. In some instances, Trick 'r Treat sticks to practical, real world horror impacted by urban legends; in others, the writing delves into the supernatural world of transforming beasts and creatures risen from the dead for the stage that it's setting. A uniting element comes in the presence of a young child wearing a burlap sack and orange jumpsuit who observes many of the activities going on throughout the evening, and it's no surprise that this kid, named "Sam", has become an iconic character among fans of the film, wielding one very dangerous sucker in his own pursuit of tricks and treats.

From tampered-with candy and the ritual of leaving lights on throughout the night to the possibility of real vampires and ghosts lurking underneath the costumes of both youngsters and adults, Trick 'r Treat clearly gets and adores the dark mixture of danger, merriment, and folklore that hallmarks Halloween. The world Michael Dougherty constructed acts like a crossroads between John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper movies: a small-town meeting place where both reality and the supernatural can coexist for an evening, which is pretty much what makes the holiday such a blast. By tilting it toward an R-rating, Dougherty can also spill a bit of blood and let the natural language of teens and young adults flow freely without catering to that broad "family-friendly" audience, arriving at that mildly macabre, vulgar point that's just taboo enough to ward of youngsters but not so gratuitous that older-leaning families can't enjoy the grossness and crassness involved. The atmosphere in Trick 'r Treat, photographed by Glen MacPherson with the orange blow of jack-o-lanterns in mind, feels the way that Halloween should.

Each of the five segments are structured like spooky stories that'd be told over a flashlight or campfire, too. Part of the enjoyment factor with Trick 'r Treat comes in seeing how the tales spring their surprises upon the audience with what true dangers lie underneath whatever story's being told, a dynamic that has both rewarding and adverse effects on the film's general pacing. The anticipation of arriving at each one's climax generates enough grin-inducing suspense to stay wrapped up in what's going on, yet Dougherty's efforts to conceal details and preserve the "scares" for the very end of the episodic tales -- especially in the segment featuring Dylan Baker as a murderous school principal and single father -- results in moody, comical, somewhat macabre leadups that are mostly devoid of genuine shocks. Dougherty has a great time with lightheartedness, double meanings and fakeouts that make this a morbidly satisfying viewing experience, and clever practical and digital effects keep Trick 'r Treat firmly locked into a horror atmosphere … but, up until the endings, they telegraph chills and gross-outs instead of genuine fright.

Does Trick 'r Treat need to be that scary, though? After all, there's strength in Dougherty's characterization of both the town and its inhabitants; living vicariously through them as they experience the eerie idiosyncrasies of the holiday transforms into its own novel experience, one propelled by the almost comic-book caliber vividness of them all. Through his connection with the filmmakers involved with the X-Men franchise, Dougherty roped in some bigger-than-expected names to embody key characters: Anna Paquin brings her familiarly reserved, yet passionate demeanor to her role as a college-aged virgin hunting for "the one" to get it out of her system; Brian Cox wheezes his way through a depressed, Jack Russell-owning drunkard who torments trick-or-treaters. Most of the child actors do a bang-up job of representing the pranksters, tagalongs, and victims of the evening, all of whom get involved in how the film lashes out, almost in karmic fashion, at those who disrespect the intentions and balance of the holiday. Their reactions to the night's surprises fill the void left by the absence of traditional scares.

While the stories may be separate from one another, the execution of the setting and the transitions between the segments result in Trick 'r Treat having the appearance of a cohesive narrative, which adds impact whenever those stories manage to bump into one another during the evening's activities. Dougherty doesn't try to shoehorn links between them all in some attempt at greater importance, leaving them as tangential connections and novelties that only serve to elevate the impact of Halloween itself, all overseen by the ominous yet nondescript Sam as an avatar and keeper, of sorts. Bits-‘n-pieces of the film could feasibly work outside the confines of the Halloween setting -- notably, the segment featuring the escapades of Anna Paquin's Red Riding Hood-dressed virgin and whom ends up pursuing her -- but so much of Trick 'r Treat relies on inextricable ties to holiday that those who aren't big fans of those specific rituals and customs might not have enough horror substance into which they can sink their teeth. Dougherty lets his ode to Halloween be itself, though, and that's why it's such a treat.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]