Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Summertime Blues

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Independence Day: Resurgence

by George Wolf

Have you ever seen a fast food commercial where the burger looks fantastic, then you get there and it’s basically day old dog food on a flattened-out bun?

Say hello to Independence Day: Resurgence, a preposterous, tedious filet of sequel churned out with all the joy of a kid’s meal minus the toy surprise.

It’s been twenty years since the “War of 1996,” and banding together to beat back the alien horde has brought the entire would together in a hand-holding singalong of peace. Things are good, made even better by the advances that came from getting a look at all that high-flying alien technology.

Former President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) isn’t doing as well, suffering persistent dreams and flashbacks about the aliens, even as the big 20th anniversary victory celebration is fast approaching.

His daughter Patricia (Maika Munroe) is engaged to Jake (Liam Hemsworth), a hotshot pilot who lives on the edge! We know this because he’s told “You’re grounded!” barely five minutes in. You think that’s gonna stop Jake when shit gets real? Ha, he laughs in your general direction! Jake and fellow pilot Dylan (Jessie T. Usher) have a serious beef, so it’s a total surprise when they have to put all that aside and crack wise as they fight the next alien invasion.

Hey. it’s summer, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to eat some popcorn and watch aliens explode, but Resurgence is proof than more can definitely be less.

Director/co-writer Roland Emmerich returns from part one, determined to re-create as many scenes as he can and up the ante on ships, aliens, and overall bombast.

Check and triple check.

The script is often groan-inducing, highlighted by lines no more subtle than “You’re the only family I got!” and the appearance of a helpful African warlord who can read the alien alphabet.

Just when you’re thinking (hoping) this might actually be a sequel to Mars Attacks! Whitmore delivers another “We’re going to live on” speech amid the swelling strings and waving flags and you’re right back on planet lazy

Independence Day was no classic, but it was fun, something Resurgence couldn’t spell if it gave an F.

Verdict-1-5-Stars

 

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Shark Sandwich

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The Shallows

by Hope Madden

Is The Shallows – Blake Lively’s new flick about a surfer trying to survive a shark attack – simply a girl power exercise wrapped in a sandy bikini?

Yes.

Still, it gets as much right as it does wrong.

Lively plays Nancy, a med student alone on a secluded, secret beach in Mexico. She’s here to be alone, to mourn, to surf. As the local drops her off on the beach and refuses her offer of cash, he asks how she plans to get back to town.

Excellent question.

There’s a great deal of convenient idiocy in this screenplay, but director Jaume Collet-Serra – who is no comrade of subtlety – actually handles most of these items deftly. After a few middling horror efforts, Collet-Serra made his name with a string of Liam Neeson films, so he knows a little something about a solitary figure fighting deadly odds.

Lively does a fine job in what is essentially a one-surfer-show. Nancy is smart. Not smart enough to avoid surfing alone in an isolated area of a foreign land, but a different kind of smart. MacGyver smart. And it’s with a balance of delicacy and grit that she just about makes you believe the ludicrous.

The Shallows is gorgeously filmed – and not just Lively. Yes, the camera hugs her form more closely than a wet suit, but Collet-Serra treats the surf, sky and sand with as much ardor. A generous reviewer might even say he’s creating a parallel – something about breathtaking beauty that belies serious ferocity. I am not generous enough to buy that theory, but I am generous enough to throw it out there.

For stretches, The Shallows will have you believing you’re watching a tense, thoughtful survival drama. Eventually the shark becomes a vengeful-mythical-beast-warrior-machine-monster, and any hint of credibility is lost at sea. This is the age of Sharknado – maybe Collet-Serra didn’t think he could keep his audience’s attention until the shark tried to scale something with his teeth?

Whatever the case, it’s a wild mashup of efforts: equal parts empowerment and ogling, survival thriller and Sharkasaurus Rex.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

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Swampland Rebellion

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Free State of Jones

by George Wolf

For all the onscreen battles in Free State of Jones, a more persistent one dogs the film throughout, as writer/director Gary Ross struggles to find cohesion for elements that too often conflict. The historical drama at the film’s core is so vast, it feels as though Ross just couldn’t bring himself to restrain any part of it.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, a farmer near Jones County, Mississippi who deserted the Confederate Army during the Civil War. As the numbers of fellow deserters grew, Knight led what came to be known as the Knight Company, a small army of Southerners that battled the Confederacy in an attempt to establish the “Free State of Jones.”

Historians still argue over Knight’s true motivations, but the film is less than nuanced at the outset, clearly drawing Knight as a poor man refusing to die in a rich man’s war, and unable to accept “any man telling another man what he’s got to live for, or what he’s got to die for.”

Ross (The Hunger Games, Seabiscuit, Pleasantville) does find more subtlety as the film progresses, but Newton’s heroically righteous nature, albeit delivered through a committed and moving performance from McConaughey, feels manufactured. Ditto the minimal racial tensions present in a unit mixing runaway slaves and AWOL Confederates.

Conversely, amid this idealism, the film is effectively brutal in its depiction of war and the deep, ugly roots of racism. But even here, the pendulum eventually swings back to manipulation, as Ross’s aim seems to be less about learning from history and more about being proud of how badly we feel.

Sparring tones continue, most specifically when the Knight Company uprising is woven through details of a decades-later jury trial involving one of Knight’s descendants from his marriage to a former slave (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Bridges between each thread are built with dry, history-lecture sequences that are equal parts salient info and narrative distraction.

Ross’s passion is understandable. This truly is an incredible piece of America’s history, but one so expansive that an approach this broad is hampered from the start. Free State of Jones leaves fine performances and effectively-crafted sequences strewn across the battlefield, but the emotional connection needed to bind them remains just over that next hill.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

 

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Collision Course

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From Afar

by Hope Madden

Welcome to the fringes of Caracas, where a life barely lived collides with vibrant and violent passions in From Afar, the confident feature debut from director Lorenzo Vigas.

Veteran Chilean actor Alfredo Castro plays Armando, a solitary figure who stokes what little longing he still has by paying street kids for company.

Castro’s masterful performance mirrors Vigas’s detached style, but there’s more to this character than meets the eye. Vigas, who also wrote, shares only as many details as needed, encouraging the viewer to fill in the missing pieces. Meanwhile, Castro’s resigned, closed-off performance still roils at times with passion that threatens to break through his carefully protected surface.

Vigas’s deliberate use of focus and carefully observational approach keeps the audience at arm’s length, but this remote tone is frequently punctuated by the brute ferocity of young Luis Silva’s performance.

In a blistering screen debut as Elder, the 17-year-old punk who captures Armando’s interest, Silva is a shock to the system. Primal, urgent and impulsive, he bursts through the screen as well as Armando’s emotional walls.

The tension between Armando and Elder and the damage each may be doing to his own life and the other’s cause nerve-wracking tension as the relationship blooms, and yet Silva takes the narrative in directions that are simultaneously inevitable and heartbreakingly surprising.

Though the film sometimes feels overly crafted, and perhaps Vigas allows style to dictate more than it should, there is no denying the lead performances. Committed and natural, sympathetic yet repellant, the two actors unveil characters that are as similar and as dissimilar as people can be.

Vigas understands the power in silence. His film explains very little and yet exposes much – about yearning, class divides, human nature, and survival. He and his remarkable cast invite you into lives you couldn’t possibly know to tell a story with no judgment, and the truth in it is devastating.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PsCR8kHqmA

 

 

 

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Crouching Tiger

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Dheepan

by Cat McAlpine

When you recommend this film, do not lead with “French, subtitled.” Though an accurate description on both counts, the association of moody cigarette smoking would do little to represent the raw heart of Dheepan.

Dheepan is a Tamil freedom fighter (called Tigers) who flees as the war begins its bloody close. Having lost his own wife and daughters, he must travel with Yalini (26) and Illayaal (9), posing as family to secure asylum in France.

These three strangers become dependent on one another for the facade that protects them. Unfortunately, fleeing Sri Lanka makes only minor improvements in their livelihoods, and the makeshift family discovers that war comes in sizes great and small.

Writer/director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) is hyper-aware of light, using both color and shape to carve out living, breathing moments. Dheepan battles his monsters in a red-lit basement room. An elephant sways slowly in the dappled light of the forest. Yalini leaves the door open while she showers, and the blue light from the bathroom flickers teasingly.

This is the vision that truly guides the narrative, finding those quiet moments in-between the gruesome truths of war, gangs, poverty, immigrants, and trying to love someone you do not know.

The camera work, too, defines these moments. The close-up seems to be a favorite of Audiard, but it is not misused in context. The camera betrays when Dheepan’s world feels small and when it feels large. The watcher often feels like they are peering into rooms where they were not invited.

Jesuthasan Antonythasan’s Dheepan is stoic, contemplative, and yearning. You can feel his need for anything simple and real. His violence is believable and earned. Kalieaswari Srinivasan as Yalini builds a curious fear of the world and people around her. She is rarely likable, but always enthralling. That’s the humanity in Audiard’s characters, they are more real because they are less likeable, but this can make Dheepan harder to watch.

The film could lose 20 or 30 minutes, or at least appropriate it to the more aggressive scenes. Beautiful and real though it is, there are long periods where not much happens. Its pinnacle violence is gruesome and triumphant, leaving you wanting more. But a lust for violence is precisely what Dheepan and his family have been running from.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

New In Theaters

Send ’em In

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Clown

by Hope Madden

Sympathetic, surprising, and often very uncomfortable, Jon Watts’s horror flick, though far from perfect, does an excellent job of morphing that lovable party favorite into the red-nosed freak from your nightmares.

Because clowns are terrifying.

Kent (a pitiful Andy Powers) stumbles across a vintage clown outfit in an estate property he’s fitting for resale. Perfect timing – his son’s birthday party is in an hour. What a surprise this will be, unless the suit is cursed in some way and will slowly turn Kent into a child-eating demon.

It does! Hooray!!!

Watts, who co-wrote with the talented Christopher Ford, weaves a fantasy of Nordic folklore turned modern nightmare. There are moments of grotesque brilliance and edgy horror as poor Andy slowly, painfully morphs into a monster who feeds on children.

Because of the victim pool, the film is likely to upset a lot of people, so keep that in mind as you going in. For those who are prepared for this, though, there is a Chuck E. Cheese scene that is pretty vintage.

Most of the balance of the cast is comparatively weak, but a weird-as-ever supporting turn from Peter Stormare helps the film overcome other acting let-downs.

Watts fails to maintain consistent tension or momentum, but gets credit for taking the horror places you might not expect, and for squeezing as much sympathy as possible before that last swing of the ax.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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YouTube Royalty

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Presenting Princess Shaw

by Hope Madden

Raw talent is a rare find. Ophir Kutiel, or Kutiman as he’s known, realizes this. That may be why he spends countless hours scouring YouTube, pulling this guitar solo and that piano concerto to mash into one of his globally admired compositions.

With Samantha Montgomery he found more than the usual diamond in the rough. Her YouTube feed oscillates between confessional monologues and heartfelt, powerful acapella songwriting. What she posts as Princess Shaw to her small online audience is vulnerable and emotionally fearless, her story of artistic and emotional struggle becoming both timeless and utterly of this moment.

Following the two artists as their work collides is Ido Haar’s documentary Presenting Princess Shaw. It’s a refreshingly unadorned look at the lonely life of an artist.

The core story contains everything that makes a documentary wonderful. There are things here you probably did not know existed – like Kutiman’s truly wonderful art, for instance, a form of composition that is fascinating to watch being made.

There is also the secret admirer angle, the underdog tale, the story of an artist being discovered, all of which are themes that can be easily manipulated into a compelling film regardless of form.

And so Haar is to be congratulated for his craftsmanship, utilizing all the themes available to him to compel the audience’s attention while simultaneously creating a raw aesthetic that matches Princess Shaw’s own material.

How authentic is his film? It’s hard to know how Haar ended up filming the songstress at the exact moment she learns of Kutiman’s intervention, but if her emotional response is faked, she’s as strong an actor as she is a songwriter.

As impossible as it is to watch this film without rooting for success and riches to find Princess Shaw, the film itself is more of a celebration of artistry as its own often painful, internal, and emotional reward – catharsis or therapy, even. It’s also a beautiful tribute to artistic camaraderie.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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Class Clowns

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Central Intelligence

by Rachel Willis

What harm could come from accepting a Facebook friend request from a person you don’t recognize? For Calvin Joyner, that answer is a lot.

Calvin, portrayed by the talented Kevin Hart, is a forensic accountant who has recently been passed up for a promotion and isn’t eager to attend his twenty year high school reunion with his high school sweetheart, now wife, Maggie (Danielle Nicolet). The reunion is just a reminder for Calvin that his life has not turned out the way he thought it would when he was voted Most Likely to Succeed his senior year of high school.

Into Calvin’s mundane existence comes Bob Stone (Dwayne Johnson). Bob is a former classmate of Calvin’s who finds him on Facebook and quickly inserts himself into Calvin’s life. When Calvin meets Bob for a drink to reconnect, he is stunned to see Bob has transformed himself from an overweight, bullied loser into a well-muscled, attractive man who likes guns and unicorns.

Hart and Johnson have a natural chemistry and they play well off each other, with Hart frequently playing the straight man to Johnson’s nerdy, overly eager Bob. Hart plays Calvin as a good-natured guy who recognizes that Bob needs a friend, even if he is frequently confused by Bob’s geeky references to Sixteen Candles and 90’s pop culture.

It’s because of his good nature that Calvin finds out exactly when can happen when you reconnect with an old classmate. Bob asks Calvin for a favor, and that favor leads Calvin into a world of espionage, shootouts with CIA agents, and an adventure he didn’t expect or want.

The supporting cast, particularly Amy Ryan and Danielle Nicolet, are able to play off the odd couple duo of Hart and Johnson with skill. Ryan Hansen provides a number of jokes as Calvin’s inappropriately raunchy co-worker. The only actor who seems slightly out of his league is Aaron Paul. Though Paul is a skilled actor, he can’t quite seem to hold his own against Hart or Johnson.

Even with a runtime of almost two hours, the film never drags and the comedy is strong throughout. Though the ending feels contrived and the film follows a fairly standard formula, on the whole, it works as a mismatched, buddy comedy.

The strength that Johnson and Hart bring to the screen elevates the film to a level above your standard, forgettable comedy fare.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

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Pixar Just Keeps Swimming

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Finding Dory

by Christie Robb

Thirteen years later and Finding Nemo has a sequel. Finding Dory takes place a year after father and son triumphantly reunite with the aid of memory-challenged Dory. Now Dory is feeling restless, gnawed at by flashes of the family she lost. She’s ready to take an apprehensive Marlin and an enthusiastic Nemo on a quest to find her parents that sends them across the Pacific Ocean to the Marine Life Institute—an aquarium specializing in the rehabilitation and release of a wide variety of adorable sea creatures.

Like Nemo, Dory is voiced by an incredible cast of actors: Ellen DeGeneres (Dory), Albert Brooks (Marlin), Ed O’Neill (Hank the curmudgeonly octopus), Kaitlin Olson (Destiny the nearsighted whale shark), Ty Burrell (Bailey, the beluga with confidence issues), Diane Keaton, and Eugene Levy (Dory’s parents). Other celebs provide cameos, including an amazing effort by Sigourney Weaver.

The movie is predictably beautiful, frenetic in pace, and often hilarious, but is also emotionally devastating. It hooks you right in the heartstrings from the moment child Dory asks her parents, “What if I forget you? What if you forget me?” This is followed by a montage of a lost, lonely baby asking strangers if they’ve seen her parents.

(As a mom of a 2-year-old too young to attend the screening, I had to claw my seat to avoid speeding home to envelop her in a bear hug.)

Having a few more ominous scenes than Finding Nemo, and a PG rating, take your little ones’ sensitivity to heart before heading into the theatre for this one.  But if you can handle the assault on the feels, rest assured that Pixar has, once again, delivered a whale of a tale. (And the preceding short, “Piper”, ain’t no slouch either.)

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

 

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Shoddy Gamesmanship

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Warcraft

by Hope Madden

Video game movies rarely if ever work. Has the problem been lack of talent? Assassin’s Creed will feature Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, and Splinter Cell will star Tom Hardy. Maybe leveraging honest to god talent will be enough to meld these seemingly similar art forms? Or is the impending onslaught of high profile gamer flicks just an opportunity to waste some of cinema’s greatest working artists?

Warcraft, directed by one of our most exciting new filmmakers, Duncan Jones, is not the harbinger we were hoping for.

It’s a medieval fantasy with Orcs, dwarves, elves, bearded magicians – basically it’s a movie based on a series of video games that amount to little more than Lord of the Rings fan fiction. But if anyone can turn this into a worthwhile cinematic experience, it’s Jones. Moon (2009) and Source Code (2011) proved his mettle with fantasy and action, and showed him to be an inventive craftsman.

Though Warcraft proved too great a task, even for him.

Gaudy CGI and caricatured performances rob the film of any chance to pull the viewer in – the video game itself looks about as realistic. Weak writing by Jones and Charles Leavitt (who’s never written anything worth seeing) doesn’t help matters. When solid actors, including Ben Foster (who needs to fire his agent), look ridiculous delivering this faux-archaic dialog, what chance does a hack like Paula Patton have?

Patton plays Garona, halfbreed slave to the magic-wielding Orc Gul’Dan. When she’s captured by the humans, will she betray them, or has she finally found her clan? And will she be wooed by Travis Fimmell’s bizarre Paul Rudd impression as the knight Lothar?

The plotting itself just makes you sad – so much time is wasted setting up sequels that will never, ever happen. Worse, the visuals are clumsy, particularly compared to cinema’s history of onscreen Orcs.

Warcraft makes it impossible not to draw comparisons to Peter Jackson’s trip to Middle Earth. To say Jones’s effort pales by comparison is like saying American politics has taken an odd turn.

No, no. It’s gone horribly, hideously wrong.

Verdict-1-0-Star