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My Big Fat Italian Rebound

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Solo Mio

by George Wolf

Where’s Jane Fonda? Sally Field? Michael Douglas? Morgan Freeman?

Nowhere to be found.

Ditto Lily Tomlin, Bette Midler, Andy Garcia or any of the more veteran stars we’ve seen in the formula that Solo Mio executes with some charming success.

Kevin James stars as Matt Taylor, an elementary school art teacher who is left at the altar by fiancée Heather (Julie Ann Emery) during a lavish excursion wedding in Italy (Heather must be making the big bucks.) The tours, packages and perks are all paid for, so Matt falls in with a travel group that quickly takes the lonesome loser under its wing.

Julian and Meghan (Kim Coates/Alyson Hannigan), Neil and Donna (Jonathan Roumie/Julee Cerda), a supportive concierge and various Italian children keep tabs on Matt during his picturesque cobblestone road to rebound.

The lovely Gia (Nicole Grimaudo) owns the local cafe, and it isn’t long before she becomes Matt’s “plus one” on the tour group outings, and his mood gradually perks up.

But can he really forget Heather so quickly? And what about that handsome Vincenzo (Gaincarlo Bartolomei), Gia’s former flame who keeps popping by the cafe?

James has this sad likable sack act down cold, Grimaudo is sweetly understated and the Coates/Hannigan pairing pays comedic dividends. Directors Charles and Daniel Kinnane take the script from their brothers John and Patrick (with help from James himself) and start checking off boxes that have become so familiar to their elders over the last several years.

Constant travel, no worries about jobs or money, and the chance at late-stage romance. It’s right out of the AARP fantasy film playbook, but this time we get the younger James (a spry 60!) who is cavorting through various hijinks at gorgeous locales, rubbing elbows with surprise celebrities and finding the spark to try love again.

And then just as your eyes are ready to roll, the film pulls out a cheeky twist that stops just short of being Nicolas Sparks-worthy. Instead of shameless, the late turn lands as more heartfelt and actually logical, helping Solo Mio leave you with satisfying aftertaste as the credits start to roll.

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Lips Together and Blow

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Whistle

by Hope Madden

Wish Upon. Polaroid. Talk to Me. Ouija. Choose or Die. The “gang of youngsters stumble across a cursed object to everyone’s peril” subgenre is alive and thriving.

But hey, Talk to Me was good.

Corin Hardy’s Whistle isn’t particularly good. It is incredibly formulaic, with mainly one-dimensional characters forever making unlikely choices because the plot requires that they do. It’s shot quite well, though.

Dafne Keen (Logan) just moved in with her cousin after some terrible mishaps. Her first day in the new high school, she opens her locker—vacated by a basketball star who inexplicably died recently—and finds some kind of creepy, ancient looking skull whistle.

Any number of ridiculous contrivances later, and a group of high school cliches—the burnout (Keen), the smart girl (Sophie Nélisse), the drunken asshole jock (Jhaleil Swaby), his hot girlfriend (Ali Skovbye), and the comic book nerd (Sky Yang)—have to battle death as conjured by that creepy whistle.

Yes, writer Owen Egerton mashes some Final Destination whatnot in with the other familiar beats. Don’t expect that franchise’s Rube Goldberg style kills, but Hardy does bring some blood and gore, as promised by that R rating.

The curse itself does feel somewhat fresh. The death stalking each victim is their own natural death, just come early. Why their own death would want to creep around, chasing and terrifying their still-alive selves for days beforehand is a bit of a mystery.

Percy Hynes White stands out as a new twist on the neighborhood drug dealer, and Nick Frost is fun as a teacher who likes to hand out detentions. Truthfully, most of the cast does solid work, impressive given the uninspired script. James is particularly hamstrung with the most boilerplate character among them.

Keen struggles, too, delivering a one-note melancholy character that never feels authentic.

There is fun to be had here and there, especially at the Harvest Festival. One basketball player goes in costume as Teen Wolf without mention, and another unnamed werewolf character is a treat. The whole festival setting is filmed beautifully and reminds you that Hardy has some skill.

Not enough to elevate this script to something worth watching, though.

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Bloodless

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Dracula

by Hope Madden

There are those who would call Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula a masterpiece. The score is undeniable, the costuming and set design glorious, the use of shadow, the creature design, the pulsing sensuality, Gary Oldman—all of it is exquisite. The entire balance of the ensemble? Terrible. There, I said it.

Still, it’s a memorable take—for many, a beloved all-timer—on Stoker’s vampire classic. I will assume that French filmmaker Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) is a fan. While his Dracula delivers much in the way of new ideas, the source material for his script is less Stoker’s novel than Coppola’s film.

He’s not hiding it. He even borrows—homages—bits and pieces of Wojciech Kilar’s score.

Caleb Landry Jones is Vlad the Second, Count Dracul. He loves his wife, Elizabeta (Zoë Bleu). He fights the Crusades to eradicate Muslims for God. But God does not protect his Elizabeta, so he curses God and searches the endless centuries, hoping for his loves return.

This storyline is 100% Coppola, not in the novel at all. Landry Jones is a talented actor, and versatile. See Nitram. But his performances tend to be somewhat interior, and you cannot help but compare his anguish over Elisabeta with Oldman’s in the ’92 film. Landry Jones comes up short.

And though Besson manages one pretty impressive wide shot of the Vlad armies, the earth burning behind them, nothing can compare to the macabre puppet masterpiece Coppola brought to the same scene.

But, after Act 1, the film settles into some new territory. France! No Renfield, no Van Helsing, no fight for Lucy’s hand, no Demeter. Christoph Waltz (a little bit autopilot here) is a priest whose order has been tracking vampires for 400 years. With this storyline, Besson, who wrote the script, forges some new ideas. Newish. And Matilda De Angelis is a particular joy as Dracula’s helper.  

Fresh ideas aside, Besson doesn’t bring much Besson to the film. There’s too little action here, and most of it is carried out by little CGI gargoyles, more comedic than thrilling. One scene doesn’t naturally lead to the next, characters feel disconnected to the plot, and, worst of all, it’s very talky and a bit dull. I’d call it a fanciful period piece before I called it horror.

It’s OK to borrow. What’s hard is to come up with anything original, because no fictional character has been on screen more often in the history of film than Dracula. Even Jesus hasn’t been depicted as often in film. So, it’s fine to borrow as long as you can do something new to merit another go. Besson just about accomplishes that. Just about.

Outtakes

Role Reversal

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Untitled Home Invasion Romance

by Hope Madden

Jason Statham is doing what Jason Statham does in a new thriller hitting screens this week. But did you know that Jason Biggs, known mainly for being a likeable dork who makes bad decisions, is doing just that as well this week?

Actually, with his latest film Untitled Home Invasion Romance, Biggs does stretch a new muscle. The American Pie star directs. It’s his first go behind the camera and, much thanks to a game cast and a surprisingly dark script from Joshua Paul Johnson and Jamie Napoli, he delivers an unexpected delight.

Biggs plays Kevin, an actor known best for his role in erectile dysfunction treatment ads. But Mr. Softy has decided to play rough. Just play, though. In an attempt to win back his wife (Meaghan Rath), he’s planned a weekend getaway where another actor (Arturo Castro) will pretend to break into the house, giving Kevin the opportunity to play the hero and win back Suzie’s love.

It backfires, obviously. And indeed, the set-up is so obvious you may be tempted to give up on Untitled Home Invasion Romance. I was. But stick it out, because not only does the film get zanier by the minute, but Biggs manages an impressive feat of tone, humor, and sly feminism.

Rath delivers nuanced comedy with a restrained but important physical performance. The action in the film is big and showy, but the comedy is a bit more low key. Micro, even, like the micro-aggressions both Suzie and police chief Heather (Anna Konkle) tolerate from the men around them who insist on taking care of things.

At a certain point, the underlying comedy of sexual politics takes over the larger-than-life home invasion plotline, but Biggs and cast have done such a wonderful job of charming and alarming that it feels both wildly out of place and exactly necessary.

A comedy this likeable and smiley, that’s simultaneously twisted and dark is tough to come by. Because a lot of people meet grisly ends, and most of them are actually pretty nice. Not the lawyer, though. Screw that guy.

Credit Biggs for stretching. Not the performance—Kevin is, to the letter, your garden variety Jason Biggs character. But the director knows how to wring a little something different out of his work.

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Off the Gridlock

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Shelter

by George Wolf

Just how many off-the-books groups of elite assassins are there? And does Jason Statham have expired membership cards from all of them?

Apparently, quite a few. And yes.

In Shelter, the secret group is called Black Kite, and Michael Mason (Statham) has been exiled and on the run since he broke a golden rule ten years ago. While hiding out at a lighthouse in the Scottish Isles, Mason’s rescue of a drowning girl named Jesse (Hamnet‘s talented Bodhi Rae Breathnach) gets them both spotted by MI-6’s new high tech surveillance system.

So now Michael’s been made, Jesse’s an orphan and they’re both on the top secret hit list.

This time out, Naomi Ackie gets to be the director barking orders in front of video feeds, while Bill Nighy is the oily spymaster who crossed Statham years ago. Much like the chess pieces Mason likes to play with, director Ric Roman Waugh is just moving new pieces around the same formulaic playground.

Screenwriter Ward Parry adds on the trusty child-in-danger trope, along with no shortage of cliched dialog.

“You really think we can outrun what we are?”

“Maybe I’m becoming like you…”

“You don’t want this life.”

It’s more plug-and-play action on the way to a requisite showdown, but Statham and Breathnach share decent chemistry, Waugh (the Greenland films, Angel Has Fallen) orchestrates some effective hand-to-hand combat sequences, and he’s able to build the film with a bit more nuance than Statham’s usual fare.

It ain’t Hamnet, but at least our righteous killing machine isn’t lathering up with a tube of shark repellant.

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Rainbow Connection

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Arco

by Hope Madden

A child who can’t wait to grow up goes against his parents’ wishes and stumbles head long into a dangerous adventure. Between the family-film formula for its plot and the hand-drawn animation, Ugo Bienvenu and Gilles Cazaux’s Oscar nominated Arco feels like it comes from another time. And that’s a lot of its charm, because the retro-futuristic vibe balances a delightful vintage SciFi quality with a disconcerting reality.

Arco (voice in English by Juliano Valdo, in French by Oscar Tresanini) is a boy from the distant future who, sort of accidentally, travels back in time to 2075 where he crash lands in the life of a lonely little girl named Iris (Romy Fay/Margot Ringard Oldra).

With her parents working in the city, joining by hologram for dinners and bedtime, Iris spends most of her time with a nanny robot named Mikki, and a toddler brother named Peter. But Arco shakes up her world, offering connection and companionship she’s been missing. Together, they’ll figure out how to get him back to his time before it’s too late.

Again, the premise itself is not that unusual. It’s essentially E.T.   

Bienvenu, writing with Félix de Givry, livens up the story with the loony humor of a bumbling threesome bent on finding the rainbow boy. They’d seen a boy just like him as children, and nobody believed them. Now they want proof.

The bowl cuts and rainbow sunglasses mark the characters—voiced in English by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea—as harmless goofballs, but they serve more purpose than simply comic relief.

The miracle the filmmakers conjure with Arco is that the childlike wonder of the characters, the wholesome storyline, and the beautiful animation belie the absolute bleakness of the film’s context. The world around Iris is literally on fire, a danger that Bienvenu illustrates with lush ferocity and amplifies with a daring, feverishly paced third act.

Those two worlds—hopeful wonder and bleak reality—inevitably collide, and though Act 3 resolves as you likely expect it to, it taps into the bittersweet emotion and timeless hope that marks all great family films.

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Survivor: Boss Level

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Send Help

by George Wolf

As much as Send Help feels like the Sam Raimi film that it is, the writing credits seem a bit unfinished. With a premise taken more from Triangle of Sadness than Castaway, and two pivotal plot points lifted from films I won’t mention for fear of spoilers, you’d expect at least an inspired by or story elements citation of the previous works.

No? Alrighty then. Raimi works from a script by the team of Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Baywatch, 2009’s Friday the 13th, Freddy vs. Jason), providing the requisite dark humor, blood splatter and body fluids for a fun, root-for-the-underdog romp.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is that underdog. Linda puts in long, committed hours in the strategy and planning department of a big firm. She’d been promised a major promotion from the founder (nice Bruce Campbell portrait on the wall!), but now he’s passed on and the d-bag son Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) has taken over.

And Bradley’s gonna give Linda’s promotion to his frat buddy instead.

Linda sticks up for herself, so Bradley gives her the chance to prove her worth at a big merger meeting in Bangkok. But when their plane crashes, Linda and Bradley end up as the only ones left alive on a deserted island. And right away, Linda’s skills are very valuable indeed.

Turns out, she’s a survivalist junkie who has auditioned for Survivor. Linda knows her way around the dangers of an uninhabited locale, while Bradley doesn’t know much beyond silver spoon-fed privilege. So Linda will not take kindly to being ordered around like the under-appreciated underling she was back in the office.

Bradley eventually becomes contrite, but can he be trusted? Linda appears ever helpful, but can she be trusted? Their castaway days become an increasingly bloody game of cat, mouse and wild boar, with some wonderfully competitive chemistry between McAdams and O’Brien.

She makes Linda’s transition to alpha female a crowd-pleasing hoot, and he crafts Bradley with a perfectly obnoxious mix of misguided mansplainer and smug elitist.

Yes, it’s over the top, just like you expect a Sam Raimi deserted island playground to be. What an unspoiled canvas for some blood spray, projectile vomiting, and a little survival of the deadliest. Game on!

Send Help delivers the R-rated fun, and it’s instantly relatable to the countless souls who’ve secretly dreamed of doing bodily harm to an insufferable boss. But it’s a comeuppance fantasy that still remains easily forgettable…unless you’ve seen the couple films it repeatedly recalls.

Then we’ll have something to talk about.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Mercy, Return to Silent Hill, The Testament of Ann Lee & More

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On this week’s Screening Room podcast, Hope & George review Mercy, Return to Silent Hill, The Testament of Ann Lee, H Is for Hawk, Magellan, and Mother of Flies.

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Point of No Return

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Return to Silent Hill

by Hope Madden

When I used to pick my son up from his dorm, invariably there was a video game on whether anyone was playing or not. Mainly it was badly articulated characters delivering stilted, unrealistic but wildly dramatic dialog on an endless loop because, with no one playing, there was no action.

I could also be describing Christophe Gans’s twenty-years-in-the-making sequel, Return to Silent Hill.

I did not care for the filmmaker’s 2006 Silent Hill, a film that followed a mother into a supernatural town to save her adopted daughter. The sequel, also based on the incredibly popular video game of the same name, follows a distraught man (James Sunderland) who returns to a supernatural town to save his girlfriend (Hannah Emily Anderson).

Gans’s original at least boasted Radha Mitchell, who can, in fact, act. Gans didn’t give her much opportunity, but she tried. Do not look for that here. Though it doesn’t seem that acting is what Gans is after. He lights and frames actors specifically to make them seem less fleshy, less human. Their movement is stiff and unnatural, their dialog stilted and dumb. You truly feel like you’re watching a video game you’re not playing. Nobody’s playing.

You would hope that in the 20 years between projects, the creature design would have improved. Not the case. You rarely get a good eyeball on any of the creatures—and the video game does have a slew of creepy beasties to choose from—and when you do see them, they’re bland and they do nothing.

Because nothing happens in this movie. The entire film feels like being trapped in the between action set ups of a video game that nobody is playing. Nothing happens. There is no action.

Somebody thought the storyline, sans shootouts, without monster carnage, just the storyline of a video game was interesting enough to make a movie out of. They were incorrect.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?