Released mid-October to avoid competition from the studios' serious Halloween contenders, "Happy Death Day" intends to be a breezy romp through slasher movie tropes, a superficial "Scream" by way of "Groundhog Day" for a generation that grew up with neither.
Read Mike's review of "Happy Death Day" on KCActive.
This sequel to 1982's "Blade Runner," directed by Denis Villeneuve ("Sicario," "Arrival"), is an unqualified visual triumph. Building on the original film's influential vision of 2019 Los Angeles, production designer Dennis Gassner and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins have extrapolated the urban decay of the first film another 30 years into the speculative future. The results are both suitably familiar and breathtakingly revelatory.
Read Mike's review of Blade Runner 2049 on KCActive.
Fourth in the James Wan produced Conjuring film franchise and the second—and yes, second—prequel for what was a mere prop in the first two installments, Annabelle: Creation feels more like a grab bag of horror clichés than a genuine attempt to tell a story or explore the series' admittedly fecund subtexts.
Read Mike's review of "Annabelle Creation" on KCActive.
Fifty years ago, a police raid on an after-hours illegal drinking club, called a “blind pig,” sparked five days of violence in Detroit, resulting in 7,000 arrests, 1,100 injuries and 43 deaths. Three young black men—Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard and Fred Temple—were shot and killed on July 25, the third day of what is referred to, depending on how woke you are, as either the 12th Street riot or the 1967 Detroit rebellion, in the annex of the Algiers Motel.
Other victims, two young white women and seven young black men, described being beaten and tortured in the motel that night by members of the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Police, the Michigan Army National Guard and a private security guard responsible for protecting a grocery store across the street, called to the location after reports of sniper fire coming from the motel. (Evidence of a sniper was never found.)
What is known of the events that led to the deaths of the three young black men during the Algiers Motel Incident is as relevant as ever, and a reckoning is long past due. But the latest collaboration between the Oscar-winning duo of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal (“The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty”), a semi-fictitious imagining of that night, is too shallow to offer indemnity.
Justifiably, Bigelow shoots the initial disorder with the same rapid-fire, shaky camerawork she brought to filming recognized war zones. Embedding the camera in the action, while also seamlessly integrating historical photos and footage, is a progressive, political act. Although the developments are set in the past, their presentation, as well as the systems that brought them to a head, are stubbornly current.
It's when the script turns to those who were trapped in the Algiers that night that the story seems fabricated in its unambiguous oversimplification. Both victims and captors are drawn with broad strokes. English actor Will Poulter plays the fictionalized cop Krauss as a psychopath driven to rabid insanity by racism. There's never any doubt as to the affiliation of black security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), despite his alliance with the police officers.
In fact, Dismukes was the first to be charged, along with three police officers, with felonious assault, conspiracy, murder and conspiracy to commit civil rights abuse, but all were found not guilty. Responding officers claimed to have found Cooper's body on the scene when they arrived. Pollard's and Temple's deaths were attributed to "justifiable homicide" or "self-defense." Yet, Boal's script merely skims over the trials and exonerations. In a film that exists to point fingers, the discharge of due process is an unfortunate lapse.
The opening sequence—the animation of artist Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series—may be the most moving beat in the film. It's an apt history lesson to anyone still on the fence between calling a violent protest an "uprising" or a "riot."
The unfortunate title of Michael Showalter's ("The Baxter") latest film sounds more like the day-after sequel to "The Hangover" or an early Judd Apatow gross-out film (Apatow is one of the producers, after all) than a romantic comedy. But the malady it refers to is not the result of binge drinking the night before; it's adult-onset Still’s disease, a rare inflammatory syndrome that puts one of the leads in an induced coma. Sounds romantic, doesn't it?
The script, written by Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley") and Emily V. Gordon, is based on events from their own budding romance—the two have been married for a decade. Nanjiani plays Kumail, the fictionalized version of himself, while Emily Kazan, frequently cast as a bit simple, takes on the role of Emily, still naïve but with more edge.
Inspired by the real-life romance of the real-life Nanjiani and Gordon, the relationship, showcased in the first 30 minutes or so of the movie, is a delight to watch as it builds momentum. The two meet when Emily heckles Kumail's act, and after the initial hookup keep up the pretense that neither wants to be in a relationship, all while they continue to contrive reasons to get together. In what might be the funniest gag in the movie, featured in the trailer, of course, Emily tries to escape spending more time with Kumail by requesting an Uber, but it turns out that Kumail is her driver.
Once we're introduced to Emily's parents, played by the ever-formidable Holly Hunter and a sympathetic Ray Romano, we realize there's no mystery behind Emily's likable charm. Having flown from North Carolina to Chicago to be at the bedside of their comatose daughter, the two pick up the baton of romance, allowing the sharp edges of their worry and frustration to ricochet off each other and those around them.
Less poignant are the scenes that feature Kumail's parents (Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff) and their repeated attempts to interest their son in an arranged marriage. Now that consenting adults can have sex in their on-screen relationships, the romantic comedy has suffered from a lack of barriers to getting together. Recently, cultural differences have provided good break-up material, but as we witnessed in this year's breakout horror film, "Get Out," their more effective use is when they can cause bodily harm.
The joke that is the procession of young Muslim woman invited to drop in during family dinner isn't as funny as it's played to be when you consider the situation from their point of view. The talented actor Vella Lovell is particularly endearing as someone willing to settle for the slightest twinge of chemistry so she can stop participating in the process, revealing a maturity beyond her years. That's something that Kumail, who retreats from the truth in all his relationships, just doesn't possess.
Writer/director Brett Haley's ("I’ll See You in My Dreams") latest feature finds mostly forgotten cowboy actor Lee Hayden (Sam Elliott) in the midst of an existential crisis. Literally, Lee will cease to exist in a matter of months if he declines treatment for his cancer. And why go through the bother of treatment? Lee doesn't figure in the lives of his ex-wife (Katharine Ross) and daughter (Krysten Ritter), probably as a result of ghosting them years before. It seems as if the only person who might notice if Lee disappeared altogether is his drug dealer friend (Nick Offerman).
It's at the drug dealer's Malibu pad that Lee meets Charlotte (Laura Prepon), the type of cat-eyel-eyeliner-lidded, tattooed Gen X hipster who wears a uniform of bemused cynicism like some women wear Chanel No. 5—the base layer isn't musk; it's irony. (It's the same character Prepon has essentially been playing since she returned to contemporary times after her television breakthrough in "That '70s Show.") Of course, she and Lee hit it off immediately.
On their first date, Lee invites Charlotte to a chintzy ceremony held by a small but earnest group Western fans. He's there to accept a lifetime achievement award based on a movie in which he played an anonymous cowboy referred to only as The Hero, but not before Charlotte spikes their champagne with the psychoactive drug MDMA. Bolstered by the euphoria caused by the drug, Lee invites one of the fans up on stage with him, a moment which instantly goes viral, giving him new cachet in Hollywood.
Although it was filmed more than 50 years ago, Lee still dreams about embodying The Hero. And it's those scenes, shot in earthy colors in beautiful widescreen by director of photography Rob C. Givens, that provide a visual poetry for the film. But despite hinting at understanding the relationship between dreams and movies, Haley, along with co-writer Marc Basch, do most of the heavy lifting in the temporal narrative, preferring punchlines over emotional wallops. Real hits to the gut, such as when Charlotte uses the details of Lee's ageing body for her standup routine, are quickly smoothed over in the dash toward a tidy and happy ending.
After working with Elliott on his previous feature, Haley wrote this specifically for the sonorous basso, who has made a career late in his life out of little more than an iconic mustache and the cultural bias that bestows authority on the lines he delivers in that unmistakable laid-back and folksy manner. From The Stranger in The Big Lebowski to the voice of the beef lobby that tells us what's for dinner, the character actor has been playing the guru of plain talk for decades. Still, despite the film's failings, it's a relief to finally see Elliott in a role in which he has more questions than answers.
Like its titular creature, "Okja," the latest film (streaming on Netflix) from South Korean co-writer/director Bong Joon Ho ("The Host," "Snowpiercer"), is a mash-up of peculiar parts, which never convincingly fit.
The French do it better is the lesson writer/director Eleanor Coppla wants viewers to take away from her feature debut. However, what exactly they're supposed to do better is the question. Enjoying life, I suppose, is what the octogenarian and wife of director Francis Ford Coppola is positing. Dressing, eating, touring are other possible answers. But in the 90 minutes Coppola offers as evidence, it seems as if the true skills for a Frenchman are bellyaching, mansplaining and slobbering unsolicited over Diane Lane.
When Lane was 18, she costarred in “Rumble Fish” and “The Outsiders” for Coppola’s husband. Now in her 50s, she's every bit as lively and thoughtful but seems to be experiencing the same trouble finding good roles as most actors of a certain age and gender combination. And it's rare the film that can showcase Lane's darker side, which makes B-fare such as “Every Secret Thing” or “Unfaithful” so watchable.
Keeping in mind Lane's magnetism, it's understandable that Coppola would have wanted to create a vehicle for her. But even more so it seems Coppola may have desired to finally plunder the depths of her own experience and feelings. After all, Lane portrays Anne, the wife of a famous movie producer and neglectful husband (Alec Baldwin). This could explain why Lane's embodiment of the character doesn't feel as unwavering as usual. She stammers through her dialog as if she doesn't quite believe what she's saying.
But all biographical speculation aside, this disconnect could also be the result of the contradictions in Anne's character. For a slick producer's wife, she's pathetically provincial. The problem may be that Coppola herself doesn't know the character, either. Anne's claim toward the end of the movie that she and her husband spend time in their friend's apartment in Paris conflicts with the entirety of the performance that just came before, in which Anne, reluctantly obliging, is tutored in the French way of life by Jacques (Arnaud Viard), her husband's business partner and an absolute boor.
Having pretended to be chivalrous by offering the ailing and exhausted Anne a ride from Cannes to Paris, Jacques alternates between wining and dining and chiding and insulting her. It's as if he desires to winkle his way into Anne's most private thoughts and insecurities with that tiny pointed escargot fork of his just so he can manipulate her into sleeping with him. Anne endures the prodding, as well as the frequent stops and side trips with gritted teeth, eventually even suggests a few off-path destinations of her own. But make no mistake, this isn't romance. It's kidnapping.
Among cinema's many lessons—carried over from film's highbrow relatives literature and theater—is one newly revived: beware of seemingly kind women serving tea and sympathy. In Get Out, a masterpiece of subversion, Jordan Peele used the feminine trope, most likely a remnant from accusations of witchcraft, for both mood and means. But the drink itself is irrelevant for Catherine Keener's soporific hypnotist, whose insidious intent is fulfilled by the mere clinking of cutlery on china.
This isn't the case for Rachel, played with her signature wide-eyed flatness by namesake Rachel Weisz, who, in writer-director Roger Michell's (“Notting Hill,” “Le Week-End”) adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s 1951 novel, is obsessed with creating herbal tinctures, which she refers to as tizana (not to be confused with the ubiquitous tea shop Teavana), to eradicate what ails those around her.
And for whom does Rachel brew her potions? This English-Italian enchantress first puts her cousin Ambrose (Sam Claflin), sent to Italy to bake a tumor out of his brain, under her spell. After Ambrose’s suspicious death, Rachel then visits his ward and nephew Philip, also played by Sam Claflin, on Ambrose’s estate near the cliffs of Cornwall.
Despite Philip’s intentions to treat Rachel cruelly as payback for his uncle’s tortured death and warnings about her unnaturally libidinous nature, he too is quickly and easily charmed by her. After much effort to safeguard his uncle’s estate, Philip ends up signing it over to her without much of an investigation into the unsavory leads about her past. But then immediately regrets it.
If Philip’s motives seem contradictory and erratic, it’s because they are. Du Maurier terrorizes not with narrative but with mood and atmosphere. Doubt and paranoia are her favorite weapons, and under the direction of Hitchcock (Rebecca, The Birds) and Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now), her stories have become the source of nightmares, if not recognized phobias.
However, Michell hasn’t cast enough suspicion on Rachel to create the necessary doubt to maintain the sense of Gothic suspense. For all the black veils, musty rooms and eroding cliffs, the emotion here has been limited to Philip’s anger after he’s rebuffed by Rachel. Even the girl next door (Holliday Grainger), purposely set up to be the opposite of Rachel and to want her to be the villain, understands that Philip is acting from selfish lust. This makes Philip just another nice guy mad that he hasn’t gotten what he’s owed after making the grand gesture. And it’s that, and not Rachel’s tea, that will leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
With "It Comes at Night," writer-director Trey Shults masterfully manipulates darkness and light, silence and sound, stillness and action to unnerving effect as he portrays a family swallowed by loss and grief.
For the anniversary of D-Day, you could go to a showing of this ticking-clock thriller that is only suspenseful to those who haven't an inkling of the events that transpired seventy-three years ago on June 6. Director Jonathan Teplitzky ("The Railway Man") and writer Alex von Tunzelmann manufacture needless suspense for this historical drama when true events would more than suffice.
A nearly unrecognizable Brian Cox ("The Bourne Identity") is pitted against the indomitable Miranda Richardson ("The Crying Game," "Tom & Viv"), and the two labor to invigorate this waxen cadaver. John Slattery shows up as a willowy and platitude-reliant Eisenhower, who mistakes Churchill's concerns for the safety of his young countrymen as mere anxious snarls of the aging British Bulldog. With friends like that, who needs Hitler?
Photography by David Higgs ("RocknRolla") is beautiful but overworked, as are the politics—repeated warnings against the surge yet disconcertingly pro unmanned drone.
Yes, it's another origin story. And yes, it pits super heroine against super villain in a super battle of superpowers, the finale of which is laboriously protracted. Yet, with a woman behind and in front of the camera, Wonder Woman surprises and elates by tapping into something that has been missing from its DC predecessors: heart.
Like its four increasingly tiresome predecessors, there are pirates a plenty, sword fights galore, naval battles, a hidden MacGuffin with super powers, a larger-than-life villain, and gazillion-dollar CGI effects. Yet rarely has so much frantic motion felt so leaden, so pointless, so dead.
True to Scott's original dark vision, accomplished sequences abound. Crewmembers cross a Forum-like clearing, threading their way among hundreds of charred humanoid figures frozen in their death throes like victims in Pompeii. And the well-orchestrated, tightly edited xenomorph encounters are gruesomely effective. Still, one can't shake the air of familiarity that lingers over the proceedings.
In his early films writer/director Guy Ritchie (“Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch”), who dropped out of school at 15, revealed an instinctive talent for storytelling. In fact, the way in which the story lines in those films develop was so fresh and innovative it seemed as if Ritchie were inventing a new language for film: a deconstruction in which a cheeky narrator explains non-linear intersecting plot threads, leaving audiences pleasantly gobsmacked.
As the budgets for Ritchie's subsequent films have ballooned so has his storytelling. No longer interested in the fast and dirty life of petty criminals, Ritchie has taken on some of the most recognizable characters, including Sherlock Holmes, the most-portrayed literary figure in movies and television.
Ritchie’s latest stars Charlie Hunnam—a Brit known in this country for playing California outlaw biker Jax Teller on “Sons of Anarchy”—as the mythical folk hero, largely based on Arthurian legend, but with other recognizable details from the lives of other icons, such as Moses, Jesus, Robin Hood and even a little Oliver Twist, thrown in for good measure. This could be “the greatest stories ever told” if it weren’t told so badly.
Written by Ritchie in conjunction with Lionel Wigram and Joby Harold, the screenplay covers a long narrative arc, following young Arthur as he grows up on the streets of the fictional Londinium to his reclaiming the throne, with the discovery of his ownership of the sword in between. Early scenes almost recapture the style and spirit of Ritchie’s early films but for their being rushed through in montage; enough only to pique the desire for some fast-talking storytelling but not sate it. And Hunnam’s native accent isn’t nearly as entertaining as Brad Pitt’s ersatz “caravan talk” in “Snatch.”
And so Arthur, unaware of his royal heritage, has no driving purpose, and even after his success at removing the sword from the stone, remains in no great hurry to make a plan to get started on fulfilling his destiny. Or even learning how to use the sword, which comes not from hours of practice wielding its heft but from merely recalling a repressed memory, which then sets off a whirlwind of CGI effects.
As a result, the final showdown between evil uncle Vortigern, played adequately but not gleefully by Jude Law, and Arthur looks more like a video game than the turning point of a civilization.