Monthly Roundup – January 2018

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

Tags

Adrian Molina, Alexander Payne, Animation, Anthony Gonzalez, Awakening the Zodiac, Chadwick Boseman, Christoph Waltz, Coco, Comedy, Darkest Hour, Downsizing, Drama, Dylan Minnette, Fabrice du Welz, Family Fever, Gael García Bernal, Gary Oldman, Germany, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, History, Home Again, Horror, Jaume Collet-Serra, Joe Wright, Jonathan Wright, Kathrin Waligura, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lee Unkrich, Leslie Bibb, Liam Neeson, Matt Angel, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Message from the King, Mexico, Michael Sheen, Nico Sommer, Peter Trabner, Pixar, Reese Witherspoon, Reviews, Romance, Serial killer, Shane West, Steven Spielberg, Suzanne Coote, The Commuter, The Open House, The Pentagon Papers, The Post, The Washington Post, Thriller, Tom Hanks, True story, Vera Farmiga

Awakening the Zodiac (2017) / D: Jonathan Wright / 100m

Cast: Shane West, Leslie Bibb, Matt Craven, Nicholas Campbell, Kenneth Welsh, Stephen McHattie

Rating: 4/10 – no one knew it at the time but the notorious (and uncaptured) Zodiac killer filmed the murders he committed, something cash-strapped couple Mick and Zoe Branson (West, Bibb) discover when they come into possession of one of the reels, and then find themselves and those around them targeted by the Zodiac killer himself; there’s the germ of a good idea lurking somewhere in Awakening the Zodiac, but thanks to a sloppy script, wayward direction, and an indifferent approach to the Zodiac killer himself (by the end he’s just a generic movie-made serial killer), this never gets out of first gear, and settles for trundling along and signposting each narrative development with all the skill and style of a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Home Again (2017) / D: Hallie Meyers-Shyer / 97m

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitzky, Nat Wolff, Lake Bell

Rating: 7/10 – when middle-aged fledgling interior designer Alice (Witherspoon) splits from her unreliable husband (Sheen), the last thing she expects to do is allow three young men trying to break into the movie business to move into her guest house – and then become romantically involved with one of them (Alexander); it’s hard to criticise Home Again because despite it being almost drama-free and the very definition of innocuous, it also just wants to give audiences a good time, and on that very basic level it succeeds, but it’s still possibly the most lightweight romantic comedy of 2017.

Downsizing (2017) / D: Alexander Payne / 135m

Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Udo Kier, Søren Pilmark, Jason Sudeikis

Rating: 5/10 – the answer to the world’s population crisis is revealed to be shrinking people to the point where they’re five inches tall, something that sad-sack occupational therapist Paul Safranek (Damon) agrees to with alacrity, but being small proves to be no different from being normal-sized, and soon Paul is having to re-think everything he’s ever thought or believed; a closer examination of Downsizing (under a microscope perhaps) reveals a movie that contains too many scenes that pass by without contributing anything to the overall storyline, and a satirical approach to the idea itself that lacks purpose, and sadly for Payne fans, his trademark wit, making it all a dreary, leaden experience that goes on for waaaaaay too long.

Family Fever (2014) / D: Nico Sommer / 71m

Original title: Familien fieber

Cast: Kathrin Waligura, Peter Trabner, Deborah Kaufmann, Jörg Witte, Jan Amazigh Sid, Anais Urban

Rating: 7/10 – when two sets of parents get together for the weekend at the request of their respective children (who are a couple), none of them are able to deal with the fallout that comes with the revelation of a secret that threatens the security of both marriages; a German comedy/drama that doesn’t always go where the viewer might expect it to, Family Fever revels in the awkwardness and frustration felt by its quartet of main characters, and though it sadly runs out of steam in the last fifteen minutes, by then it’s done more than enough to provide plenty of wicked laughs and affecting drama.

Coco (2017) / D: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina / 105m

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau

Rating: 8/10 – Miguel (Gonzalez) is a young boy whose family has rejected any kind of music in order to focus on selling shoes, which leads him into all sorts of trouble in the Underworld on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, trouble that could also mean his never returning to the land of the living; right now you’re never quite sure how a Pixar movie is going to work out, but Coco is a treat, its mix of clever character design, beautifully rendered animation (naturally), heartfelt storylines, and memorable songs making it one to savour time and again… though, be warned, you will be in tears towards the end.

Darkest Hour (2017) / D: Joe Wright / 125m

Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West

Rating: 8/10 – it’s 1940 and Great Britain is faced with a challenge: who is to lead them against the fast-approaching menace of the Nazis, and if it has to be Winston Churchill (Oldman), then what can be done to undermine him and his authority?; the answer is quite a bit – for the most part – but history is firm on Churchill’s success, and so Darkest Hour, while featuring a superb performance from Oldman, has no choice but to succumb to retelling events that have already been retold numerous times before, and in doing so doesn’t offer the viewer anything new except for a number of very good performances and assured, and surprisingly sinewy direction from Wright.

Message from the King (2016) / D: Fabrice du Welz / 102m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, Arthur Darbinyan, Lucan Melkonian, Diego Josef, Tom Felton, Chris Mulkey, Jake Weary

Rating: 5/10 – when his younger sister dies in suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles, South African cab driver Jacob King (Boseman) travels there to find out who caused her death and why – and exact revenge; a throwback to the kind of blaxploitation movies made in the Seventies, Message from the King at least refers to King as an angry brother in the traditional sense, but the movie’s plot is hollow, and the likes of Evans and Molina are wasted in roles that might have seemed fresh (again) in the Seventies, but here feel like caricatures for the movie to focus on in between bouts of King exacting his violent revenge.

The Commuter (2018) / D: Jaume Collet-Serra / 105m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Killian Scott, Shazad Latif, Andy Nyman, Clara Lago, Roland Møller, Florence Pugh

Rating: 4/10 – ex-cop turned insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Neeson) is approached by a mysterious woman (Farmiga) on his train home and tasked with finding a complete stranger who’s also on the train – what could possibly go wrong?; everything as it turns out, with The Commuter going off the rails soon after, and never getting back on track, something confirmed (if there was any doubt before then) when the script throws in an “I’m Spartacus/I’m Brian” moment (take your pick), as well as reminding everyone that Neeson really is too old for this kind of thing.

The Post (2017) / D: Steven Spielberg / 116m

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy

Rating: 9/10 – the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the level of deceit the US government had perpetrated on its citizens about its involvement in Vietnam, is explored through the days leading up to the Washington Times‘ courageous decision to publish despite the threat of imprisonment for treason that the White House was prepared to enforce; Streep is publisher Kay Graham, Hanks is legendary editor Ben Bradlee, and Spielberg is on excellent form, giving The Post a sense of immediacy and potency that other historical dramas can only dream of (and the relevance to today’s US political scene doesn’t even need to be made obvious).

The Open House (2018) / D: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote / 94m

Cast: Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune, Sharif Atkins, Aaron Abrams, Edward Olson, Katie Walder

Rating: 3/10 – a recent widow (Dalton) and her mopey son (Minnette) get away from their grief and their problems at a house that’s up for sale – and find strange things going on there right from the start; an awful thriller that just refuses to make any sense or make either of its two main characters sympathetic, The Open House does everything it can to make you look away… and not in a good way.

Don Verdean (2015)

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Al Qaeda, Amy Ryan, Archaeology, Comedy, Danny McBride, Goliath, Israel, Jared Hess, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Bibb, Lot's Wife, Religion, Review, Sam Rockwell, Satire

D: Jared Hess / 96m

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Jemaine Clement, Will Forte, Danny McBride, Leslie Bibb, Steve Park, Sky Elobar

Now and then a motion picture comes along that rocks the very foundation of accepted Christian belief, a movie that lifts the lid on the precepts of religious beliefs and exposes them to the light of clever satire. And for its first twelve minutes, Don Verdean looks like it might be that movie. But once those twelve minutes are over, and Don (Rockwell) commits to working with born-again preacher Tony Lazarus (McBride), any hopes of something special are dashed by the introduction of Boaz (Clement), an Israeli jack-of-all-trades who brings the movie down to earth with a resounding thud.

It’s not so much that Boaz is a manipulative, shady, stupid, sexist, arrogant, deceiving, lying opportunist, nor that he comes close to being one of the most offensive racial characters seen in recent years, but purely because he becomes the driving force behind a plot that doesn’t need him. Boaz is a character who belongs in another movie entirely, and one that hasn’t got the kind of ambition that Don Verdean has. But he’s there, he’s an idiot, and we’re stuck with him. (Even Clement, an actor whose comedy chops aren’t to be overlooked, can’t do much with him; and if he can’t, how’s the viewer meant to cope?)

The way in which Boaz overwhelms both the narrative and the other characters is unfortunate for several reasons. The movie sets out its comedic stall from the start with an infomercial detailing Don’s successes finding holy artefacts in Israel, items such as his greatest find: iron shears dating back over 3000 years (and possibly the very shears used to rob Samson of his hair – yes?). The narration is portentous and deadly serious, and it’s this seriousness that is carried forward as we see Don field questions about the validity of his finds at a small church group. Don responds to these doubts with calm sincerity, and even though the viewer will know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s as naive in his own way as the people that believe in him, he’s also determined to provide reassurance for those whose faith might be wavering.

With Don’s unwavering naïvete matched by the public’s erstwhile gullibility, he joins forces with Lazarus and Lazarus’s ex-prostitute wife Joylinda (Bibb) to bring even more religious artefacts back from the Holy Land (even if the whole idea is both illegal and preposterous). Lazarus wants to put these items on display at his church, both as a display of his unwavering faith, and as a way of undermining a rival ministry run by ex-Satanist-turned preacher Pastor Fontaine (Forte). Don has a lead on the remains of Lot’s Wife – actually a rock formation that looks like it has breasts – and contacts Boaz to arrange to have them shipped to the States, but the Israeli sends a different “statue”. Lazarus retains his faith in Don and asks if there is a particular antiquity he’d like to track down. Don’s answer? The skull of Goliath.

However, setbacks in Israel lead Don to make an awful decision, and he fakes finding the skull. When Boaz discovers the deception, he blackmails Don into bringing him to the US. And the script, by Hess and his wife Jerusha, quickly runs out of comedic steam as it brings Boaz’ selfish demands and childish behaviour to the fore, and sidelines Don’s attempts to weather the storm of his professional duplicity. It’s still a funny movie, but by now it’s lost the subtlety and the poise applied by a cast who know to play things completely straight, even when they’re called upon to behave ridiculously or say something absurd (even McBride, an actor not exactly known for the subtlety of his performances, reigns in the urge to put in a larger than life performance, and his tirade against sea monkeys is a highlight).

With the focus now on Boaz and his increasingly ludicrous machinations, the script brings in an unlikely scam: the finding of the Holy Grail (on an Indian reservation no less). It’s an idea that’s ripe for comic exploitation, but again, Hess misjudges the strength of the material, and the movie labours under the weight of that misjudgment, and struggles to recover. A twist in the tale proves laboured and is awkwardly revealed, and the subplot involving Don’s lovelorn assistant Carol (Ryan) is wrapped up with undue haste. And the less said about Pastor Fontaine and his efforts to see Lazarus’s church shut down the better.

This is very much a movie with a core idea – the need for religious proof of events mentioned in the Bible in an increasingly secular world – that is downplayed and eventually discarded in favour of a succession of betrayals and implausible story turns that eradicate the good work done in the movie’s first half hour. Rockwell is laidback as Don, playing him with a delicate sense of irony that makes the character immensely likeable and sympathetic, even when he responds to Carol’s dismay that he’s never asked her about her personal life by saying he hasn’t because he didn’t think she had one. Ryan struggles to make Carol anything more than an amiable stereotype, while Forte comes close to sabotaging his own performance by substituting mugging for acting. And Clement… well…

By the end, most viewers will be feeling a mixture of disappointment and ennui, as the script tries to wind things up with one last flourish, but it’s an effort that comes too late, and reminds the viewer of what might have been if the script had been more focused on the world of Biblical archaeology and its desperate-to-believe supporters. Instead, Hess’s latest fails to make the most of its central idea, and never fully gets to grips with its inherent notions of faith and honesty.

Rating: 5/10 – with a script that strays further and further away from its initial set up with each successive minute, Don Verdean lacks coherence and conviction once the search for Goliath’s skull is begun; Rockwell is good value as usual, but those expecting a more concerted, consistently humorous movie will be sorely disappointed thanks to some very poor storyline choices.

Mini-Review: No Good Deed (2014)

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Absent husband, Action, Drama, Escaped convict, Home invasion, Idris Elba, Leslie Bibb, Psychopath, Review, Sam Miller, Taraji P. Henson, Thriller

D: Sam Miller / 84m

Cast: Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson, Leslie Bibb, Kate del Castillo, Henry Simmons, Mirage Moonschein

Denied parole after serving five years for manslaughter, Colin Evans (Elba) makes his escape from a prison transport vehicle, killing a guard and the driver in the process.

In Atlanta, Terri Granger (Henson) is coping with the demands of a baby and young daughter Ryan (Moonschein). When her husband, Jeffrey (Simmons), comes home early from work and announces he has to leave right away to visit his father, Terri worries about the way he’s behaving (even though he reassures her that he loves her). Her friend, Meg (Bibb), suggests they have a girls night, to which she agrees. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Atlanta, Evans is stalking the woman who was his fiancée, Alexis (del Castillo), before he went to prison. He confronts her at her home with evidence that she’s seeing someone else; when she admits to it, Evans kills her.

With a violent storm raging, Evans crashes his car and seeks help at Terri’s house. He’s respectful and agreeable but when he calls for a tow truck and is told he could have a long wait due to the storm, Terri invites him in and gives him some dry clothes to change into. He mentions that his fiancée has been cheating on him; Terri is sympathetic (if a little unnerved by his telling her this so quickly). Meg arrives with wine and is clearly attracted to Terri’s guest. During a shared smoke break, Evans tries to get Meg to question Terri’s honesty, but when she doesn’t he kills her too. Evans tells Terri that Meg has left but Terri sees Meg’s umbrella is still there; she also discovers that the phone line has been cut. Realising that Evans is dangerous she attempts to leave with her children, but the escaped convict has other ideas.

A movie that all involved clearly took part in for the pay cheques, No Good Deed should be rechristened No Good Movie. Turgid and lacking in genuine excitement, the movie is a home invasion thriller that defies belief from the moment Evans is referred to as a “malignant narcissist” to one of the final scenes where multiple injuries leave Terri without a mark on her. It’s dull, it’s unimaginative, it’s repetitive, and a complete waste of its stars’ time and efforts. In fact, it’s so bad that a nadir of sorts is reached when Henson has to show fear and desperation to a police officer and succeeds only in looking as if she’s desperate for the toilet.

With Terri alternating between victim and victor (and sometimes in the same scene), and with Elba showing very little sign of the acting talent we know he has, the movie sputters its way through to one of those “Hollywood” showdowns where the attacks keep coming despite painful blows, stabbings, and the kind of injuries that would have ordinary people calling for an ambulance before the first flush of pain fully registered. It’s also a drab movie to watch, and is directed with an eye for awkward framing by Miller who probably got the job off the back of directing Elba in several episodes of the BBC series Luther. But here his lack of moviemaking experience shows and he fails to make much out of Aimee Lagos’s awful, awful script.

Rating: 3/10 – unsurprisingly pushed back for theatrical release on three occasions, No Good Deed squanders any good will by continually insulting the audience’s intelligence; poorly executed and lacking in energy, the movie seems content to undermine itself at every turn.

Mini-Review: 7500 (2014)

27 Saturday Dec 2014

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Amy Smart, Drama, Flight 7500, Horror, Jamie Chung, Leslie Bibb, Review, Ryan Kwanten, Takashi Shimizu, Thriller

D: Takashi Shimizu / 97m

Cast: Leslie Bibb, Jamie Chung, Ryan Kwanten, Amy Smart, Jerry Ferrara, Scout Taylor-Compton, Nicky Whelan, Alex Frost, Christian Serratos, Rick Kelly, Johnathan Schaech

Vista Pacific Flight 7500 is an overnight flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. While the take off is routine, a bout of severe turbulence leads to a passenger (Kelly) having a seizure; despite the best efforts of travelling paramedic Brad (Kwanten) and stewardesses Laura (Bibb) and Suzy (Chung), he dies. With no immediate reason to turn back, the flight continues on but the passengers and crew encounter ever stranger events, including a life-threatening cabin depressurisation, the disappearance of the dead passenger’s body, and the lack of radio contact with Tokyo air control. As a supernatural explanation for things seems to be the most likely, Brad, his wife Pia (Smart), Laura, Suzy, and newlyweds Rick (Ferrara) and Liz (Whelan), with occasional help from fellow passenger Jacinta (Taylor-Compton), come to believe it’s all connected to the dead man, and look through his belongings for an answer. But what they find is even stranger still…

At first glance, this latest offering from the director of The Grudge movies (Japanese and American) has all the hallmarks of an intriguing mystery thriller, with its characters trapped in a confined space, supernatural elements, strange occurrences, and growing sense of menace. But as so often happens with this type of movie, the script is unable to support its own premise and soon gets bogged down in one unexplained phenomena after another, making several attempts to increase the tension and heighten the dread the passengers and crew are experiencing, but falling short each time.

Further problems arise from the characters themselves, with perfunctory back stories for all that resist any depth being added, and wallow in cliché: the stewardesses with relationship problems (are there any stewardesses in the movies that don’t have relationship problems?), the couple splitting up who re-commit through being put in peril, the “wild child” who just happens to have the explanation for what’s happening, and the new wife whose OCD traits are jettisoned at the first opportunity. With so little to work with, the more than capable cast are left adrift, with Shimizu opting to focus on poorly lit visuals and less than satisfying “scares”.

By the movie’s end, 7500 has descended into a collection of disjointed and there-for-the-sake-of-it scenes that fracture the narrative beyond any possibility of recovery, and it concludes with a scene so derivative and redundant it beggars belief. (It shouldn’t be surprising then that the movie was filmed back in 2012 and has only now found a release via home video.)

Rating: 3/10 – with its cast doing just enough to achieve lacklustre performances, and Shimizu matching them with his direction, 7500 soon plummets into mediocrity; this is definitely one flight that can be missed in favour of the next one.

Miss Nobody (2010)

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Adam Goldberg, Barry Bostwick, Black comedy, Brandon Routh, Comedy, Kathy Baker, Leslie Bibb, Murder, Office politics, Review, Vivica A. Fox

D: T. Abram Cox / 92m

Cast: Leslie Bibb, Adam Goldberg, Kathy Baker, Barry Bostwick, Geoffrey Lewis, Vivica A. Fox, Eddie Jemison, Patrick Fischler, Paula Marshall, Sam McMurray, Richard Riehle, Missi Pyle, Brandon Routh

When the position of Junior Executive becomes available at Judge Pharmaceuticals, bored secretary Sarah Jane McKinney (Bibb) decides to go for the job. To her surprise she gets it but when she arrives at her new office to begin her “new life”, she finds another executive, Milo Beeber (Routh), has been given the post instead and she is to be his new assistant. After a working dinner one evening, she and Milo end up at his place and when he makes a move on her, Milo ends up dead, albeit accidentally. This one event sets in motion a series of murders, blackmail attempts, career progressions, and the romantic attentions of a homicide detective, Bill Malloy (Goldberg). Through it all, Sarah Jane has to keep her cool and stave off the cutthroat machinations of her colleagues, the growing suspicions of Malloy, and stay “three steps ahead” of everyone else as she ascends the corporate ladder. “Helping” her is her patron saint, St George, who Sarah Jane believes has been guiding and intervening for her since childhood (she also has a bust of St George that she prays to).

Miss Nobody is a deftly handled black comedy that benefits from a witty, not entirely unpredictable script, and succeeds thanks to a cast that expertly plays out the twists and turns of the plot. The underrated Bibb is terrific, blending gauche innocence with increasing steeliness in her efforts to get – and stay – ahead. (She also gets the best line in the movie, a perfect rug-pull of the audience’s assumption about her character, and delivered to perfection.)

The supporting cast fares just as well, from the ever-reliable Baker as Sarah Jane’s mother, to Bostwick as a slightly dodgy priest, and Lewis as the McKinney’s sole, dementia-suffering boarder. The various executives in Sarah Jane’s way to the top are all sly, manipulative creeps but they have their various quirks that help distinguish them from each other, and provide the raison d’être for Sarah Jane’s “dealing” with them (how she despatches Patrick Fischler’s arrogant, vile Pierre Jejeune is a particular highlight).

The movie zips along at a good pace, and the various deaths are well set up and executed (so to speak). Doug Steinberg’s script artfully mixes broad comedy, pathos and black humour, and Cox’s direction matches the spirit and genial absurdity of the script’s basic premise. As already noted, there are twists and turns – loads of them – some delightful exchanges between Sarah Jane and Bill as he tries to unravel the puzzle of so many deaths at one company, and there’s a final cliffhanger that will either annoy you, or – hopefully – make you smile at how appropriate it is.

Rating: 7/10 – charming and entertaining, Miss Nobody is a great way to spend ninety-two minutes, helped immeasurably by Bibb’s wonderful performance, and a very confident script.