Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

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Rhymes with a Female Body Part

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Hello, My Name is Doris

by George Wolf

As we grow older, do we dare expect more out of life than “attending lectures at the YWCA and stealing cheese?”

Doris (Sally Field) doesn’t, but then she meets the charming and much younger John (Max Greenfield) in a crowded elevator, steals a pencil out of his backpack, and starts dreaming of something more.

Turns out they’re on the same elevator because they work at the same New York office. John is the new art director at a firm where Doris has done data entry for eons, and once he shows her a little kindness, we see Doris’s fantasies play out in hilarious fashion.

Doris is still reeling from the recent death of the mother she cared for, which prompts battles with her family (Stephen Root, Wendy McLendon-Covey) and her therapist (Elizabeth Reaser) over hoarding habits and a refusal to sell the family home. Meanwhile, Doris’s longtime best friend (Tyne Daly) worries about  her foolish infatuation with someone “barely old enough to vote.”

Field’s return to a leading role is a total joy, and she elevates the film at every turn, making director Michael Showalter’s shaky focus much more palatable.

Showalter (lead writer on the Wet Hot franchise) adapts Laura Terruso’s short film Doris & the Intern with a a script assist from Terruso herself, but he can’t hide the seams from the two different approaches he is stitching together. In keeping the emphasis on Doris’s kooky nature and an ever-present feel good vibe, the moments of budding poignancy about aging and emotional trauma seem misplaced and seriously undercut.

Just enjoy the fun of Doris wading into the hipster pool, learning about social media and finding her way in a world often oblivious to those her age.  It’s the type of character we’re used to laughing at, but Field makes it easy to laugh with her.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to France

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Road Games

by Hope Madden

Writer/director Abner Pastoll takes his cues from existing genre efforts, but the tale he weaves with Road Games is more than fresh and intriguing enough to stand on its own.

The film opens with unnervingly effective sound editing, as we witness the disposal of a body, pulled from a car trunk on its way in pieces to the overgrown countryside. Cut to Jack (Andrew Simpson) standing roadside, his thumb proudly announcing his purpose. He stands directly in front of a roadway sign warning in French: Danger! Do not pick up hitchhikers.

We’ll soon realize that Jack doesn’t speak French.

Pastoll continually uses this type of clever shorthand to utilize language barriers and heighten Jack’s helplessness – a state Jack himself is blissfully unaware of.

Unsurprisingly, Jack’s having no luck on the road, but soon he comes to the aid of a young woman – a fellow traveler – whose ride has become belligerent. Veronique (Josephine de la Baum) and Jack make the most of the time they have to kill on the sun dappled countryside until a kindly if odd man offers both a ride to his home for the night, with the promise of a lift to the ferry in the morning. Weird things get weirder in a film with an equal volume of red herrings and road kill.

Pastoll develops atmospheric dread reminiscent of that 1970 doomed road trip through the French countryside, And Soon the Darkness. In both films, there’s plenty you don’t know, language barriers heighten tensions, and pastoral isolation amplifies the danger.

But Pastoll inverses the narrative. And Soon the Darkness asked you to participate in the unraveling of a mystery. In Road Games, you can’t quite figure out what the mystery is.

The film has its share of problems. It too often feels contrived, it relies a bit heavily on stock genre images for shock value, and its slow pace sometimes feels leaden rather than languid. But in the end, the film succeeds due to Pastoll’s slyly layered writing combined with committed, idiosyncratic performances – especially from genre favorite Barbara Crampton and French character actor Federic Pierrot, as the couple who puts up the travelers for the night.

<Verdict-3-0-Stars

New In Theaters

Extra Credit Necessary

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The Final Project

by Hope Madden

A university class at a Louisiana college decides to document a presumably haunted plantation for some extra credit. It will be their The Final Project.

Their footage is made public by a man whose voice and image are hidden. He wants us to know what really happened that night. Why we need to sit through an excruciating amount of “Oh, is the camera on?” footage during study sessions, classroom antics, and the van trip to the plantation is anybody’s guess.

The film itself feels like a student project, but not necessarily in the way it’s meant to. Clearly made on next to nothing, The Final Project is a fair if amateurish effort, the cast and crew doing what they can with no budget for blood or effects. An awful lot is left to the imagination. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t bring the suspense, the sense of foreboding, or the visual panache to keep your attention long enough to engage your imagination.

Like The Blair Witch Project and far too many other found footage films since, The Final Project pulls you through the seemingly innocent hours before the catastrophic end of an attempted documentary. Aside from the very rare window apparition or an underdeveloped plotline involving a portrait on the plantation, the film offers precious little in terms of scares or suspense.

The set-up is more like that of a slasher: six unpleasant yet attractive young people head to a disastrous location to be picked off one by one. The characters are underdeveloped, with performances ranging from mediocre to poor. The actors are not helped at all by the routinely unrealistic dialog.

The Final Project is a first effort from director Taylor Ri’chard, who also co-wrote the script, produced, and handled the visual FX. Kudos to him for handling so much and for actually producing a film, which is, in itself, a victory. Also, better luck next time.

Verdict-1-5-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sM4xzU6urA

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Mommy, I’m Home!

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The Other Side of the Door

by Craig Hunter

As a horror lover I more often than not find myself disappointed by what the mainstream side of the genre has to offer. What’s usually served up, when it eventually arrives undeservedly on the big-screen (despite so many smaller projects delivering stellar results direct to VOD/DVD), is found-footage dreck or a ghastly sequel/remake that’s never in the slightest bit scary.

It’s to my surprise that The Other Side of the Door feels like a throwback to the days when The Omen and Don’t Look Now delivered chills in spades. There is an obvious and eerie atmosphere evident very early on in writer/director Johannes Roberts’ film, and it’s to his and the small cast’s credit that we immediately care about the characters. Granted, much of the frights are of the cheap and loud “jump scare” variety, but rarely does horror show its heart. Even if it is a dark one at that.

The reason The Other Side of the Door feels like a success is because its tragic premise will likely resonate with every single moviegoer. We’ve all lost loved ones at some point in our lives, and who wouldn’t want to the opportunity to say one last goodbye. That’s the prospect faced by grieving mother Maria (Callies), who’s seriously struggling in the wake of her young son’s death.

Set entirely in Mumbai, India, gives the film a certain authentic flavour when Maria learns of a ritual that will allow that last goodbye. Unfortunately, it’s all too much for her, and when disobeying the only rule she had to follow – “No matter how much he cries or begs, DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR!” – the balance in the afterlife is upset when little Oliver wants to stick around and play dead!

Admittedly, the strong emotional opening gives Callies and Sisto a rare chance to shine, and two appear to share genuine chemistry in the face of such tragedy. The conclusion too feels fitting for a horror film, and works overall even if it feels familiar. However, it’s the lull in the middle where the door creaks a little too much and we, the audience, will ultimately stumble as it falls into cliché.

That said, The Other Side of the Door has real emotive depth few others of the genre can say the same. Affecting, unsettling, even brave at times, close the door on this one at your peril. You’ll never view Tom Hanks’s Big in the same way again!

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

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Falling Hard

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London Has Fallen

by Hope Madden

If Antoine Fuqua’s 2013 “Die Hard in the White House” effort Olympus Has Fallen felt too PC, too artistic, too restrained, too competent for you, you are in luck! The cinematic dumpster fire of a sequel that is London Has Fallen has arrived.

Gone are the ludicrous but gorgeously choreographed set pieces Fuqua is known for, replaced by generically brown villains, incompetently choreographed action, and jarringly stock footage stitched together with badly mismatched sound stage shots.

But Gerard Butler and his super convincing bad ass act are back!

Butler’s secret service agent Mike Banning – torn between the dangerous job he loves and the unborn baby he wants to spend more time with – must travel to London with BFF/President Benjamin Asher (granite jawed Aaron Eckhart) for a state funeral.

But wait! Some poorly explained, amazingly convenient, ridiculously performed terrorist attack kills the world’s heads of state while decimating props that almost look just like the stock footage of London landmarks we were seeing moments ago!

Jesus, this film is incompetently made. Set aside, for a moment, the irredeemable bloodlust and jingoism at the heart of the screenplay. Forgive, if you will, the heinous dialog spilling from the mouths of talented actors like Angela Basset, Melisa Leo, and Morgan Freeman. Let’s focus, for a laugh, on the wild lack of directorial skill behind this action epic.

London Has Fallen looks like something you’d see on SyFy network on any given Saturday afternoon. Director Babak Najafi’s one set piece really meant to wow – a single-take shoot out in a London alley – has the feel of a video game recreated by high school kids on a gym auditorium set made of paper mache.

But maybe that’s OK with you. Maybe you’re in it for the knife fights. Hope you’re OK with all talk and no blood, though. For all of Banning’s overtly racist sadism with that big ol’ knife, the wounding itself is always conveniently out of frame.

But at least you’ll never get lost trying to follow the story because, luckily, every so often Najafi cuts back to a group of far-too-talented actors sitting in a room together, watching the action on a screen and explaining the entire plot to each other. Whew!

You have to give Butler credit, though. It is hard to put out two films in back to back weekends that are so memorably awful. Between Gods of Egypt and London has Fallen, he’s made quite a mark.

Bravo, sir.

Verdict-1-0-Star
 

New In Theaters

Cracks in the Armor

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A War

by George Wolf

What separates A War (Krigan) from films of similar mindset isn’t the way it balances the strains of both battlefield and home front, but rather how it bravely attacks the very sympathies it so admirably creates.

Writer/director Tobias Lindholm takes a gritty, verite approach to the daily workings of a Danish military platoon stationed in Afghanistan. Commander Claus Pederson (Pilou Asbaek) guides his unit through the pressures of war, while back in Denmark, Claus’s wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) deals with the strain of an absent husband and father.

In between firefights, Claus tries to calm the fears of Afghan civilians threatened by the Taliban, one of whom rebuts his assurances by telling Claus, “Your children live in a safe place.” As Lindholm (A Hijacking, The Hunt) alternates between the viewpoints of Claus and Maria, he creates a contrast that is well constructed and compelling, regardless of its familiarity.

A recent Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, A War finds a more unique voice when Claus is charged with bombing a civilian target and then sent back to Denmark to stand trial.

Suddenly, we’re forced to question how we feel about two very sympathetic characters. As Claus meets with his lawyer and relives the event in question, Asbaek’s moving performance lets us glimpse the internal war at work. In a gripping private conversation, Maria implores Claus to remember that regardless of whatever tragedies may have occurred, his children are still alive and need him to come home.

Utilizing sharp dialogue, tense closeups and a letter perfect cast, Lindholm turns the screws slowly, achieving a natural authenticity that permeates the film and transcends the setting. Innocent people have died, and as sides are drawn and stories dissected, it isn’t hard to imagine grand jury testimony after another tragic police shooting in the States.

It’s Lindholm’s sensitivity that ultimately gives A War its stark power, and a soldier’s story resonates as an aching reflection on choice and consequence.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

 

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Animal Logic

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Zootopia

by Hope Madden

By approaching the love relationship central to Frozen as one between sisters, Disney made some strides toward rectifying the beauty-wealth-marriage focus of its long history of princess movies. Sure, they were still princesses, still impossibly beautiful, thin, wealthy, and white. But, you know, why rock the boat too hard?

Well, with Zootopia, Disney – not Pixar, not Dreamworks, but Disney proper – spins an amazingly relevant and of-the-moment political tale with real merit, and they do it with a frenetically paced, visually dazzling, perfectly cast movie.

When small town idealist Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes the first bunny cop in the big city of Zootopia, she finds the “you can be anything you want to be” motto a bit tough to realize. Her Chief, an imposing buffalo voiced to gruff perfection by Idris Elba, balks at this token recruit, assigning her to meter maid duties. But Hopps is determined to crack the case of the missing predators, even if it means compelling the reluctant assistance of wily con man fox Nick Wild (Jason Bateman – outstanding).

The casting is downright dreamy. Goodwin and Bateman have chemistry to spare, but every character is cast impeccably, boasting the spot-on talent of JK Simmons, Jenny Slate, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, and Shakira, among others.

In this astoundingly detailed, brilliantly conceived, and visually glorious urban mecca, prey and predator have long since given up their archaic, bloodthirsty ways in favor of peaceful coexistence. And while the adventure that follows is a vibrantly animated buddy cop mystery – smartly told and filled with laughs – the boldly expressed themes of diversity, prejudice, and empowerment are even more jaw dropping than the spectacular set pieces.

Co-directors Byron Howard (Tangled), Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph), and Jared Bush, working with a team of writers, pull of a truly amazing caper of their own. Are you looking for adorable anthropomorphic friends?

Zootopia is teeming with them.

Stunning 3D animation? Yep!

Characters with actual arcs, voiced by genuine talent? Oh my, yes.

Smart – like really, really, smart – writing that shares as many emotional moments as true laughs? Also yes.

What about a story that vividly articulates our own personal biases, those we may not realize we have until confronted with them? How about a story where the bad guys (Breaking Bad fans rejoice, by the way) are using the media to create a culture of fear specifically to oppress a minority population so they can remain comfortably on top?

Is this Disney, or a Republican primary?

If you worry that Zootopia is a preachy liberal finger-wagger, fear not. It is simply the most relevant Disney film to come along in at least a generation.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

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Dark and Darker

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Triple 9

by George Wolf

Shifting alliances, desperate men, deadly double-crosses, dirty cops and sacks of cash…Triple 9 doesn’t pretend it’s doing anything new, but it often finds effective ways to repackage the old hits.

Borrowing from a host of other cop thrillers from Heat to The Town, Triple 9 give us characters of varied shadiness taking orders from the Russian mob. Michael (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a former Blackwater operative working with a crew that includes two Atlanta detectives (Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins, Jr.) to pull a brazen heist that will help get a Russian crime boss out of Putin’s gulag.

But Irina, that boss’s wife (Kate Winslet) has one last job in mind for Michael and his boys, and she’s not shy about getting nasty to make sure they comply. Delivering will take a bigger diversion than usual, and a cop going down (a “triple 9”) would give them just the time they need.

Slowly, a new face on the force (Casey Affleck) and his seasoned-cop uncle (Woody Harrelson, sporting some unsettling dentures) start sniffing out the plan, and the countdown to a final confrontation is on.

Matt Cook’s script is plenty familiar, with thin spots in the narrative and character choices that don’t always ring true , but director John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition) is adept at making brutal worlds engaging. There is precious little light anywhere in Triple 9, but Hillcoat leans on his veteran ensemble and delivers enough stylized tension to keep you interested, even if you’re rarely guessing.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

 

 

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Aussie Cujos

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The Pack

by Hope Madden

There are not a lot of Australian horror movies I would pass up. Whether it’s the relentless, grisly terror of Wolf Creek, the shattering metaphorical horror of The Babadook, or one of the trademark muscular, bloody comedies like Wyrmwood or 100 Bloody Acres, somehow Aussie genre output satisfies more often than not.

Nick Robertson’s The Pack offers a slight premise, but mines it for all it’s worth as an isolated farmhouse family must survive the night once a pack of flesh-hungry dogs surrounds their property.

There’s precious little story outside the nightlong attack. Carla (Anna Lise Phillips) is a vet who tends to the pets and farm animals in the surrounding countryside, a job that’s meager wage pays most of the bills now that something’s been killing so much of her family’s livestock. Her husband Adam (Jack Campbell) refuses to sell the property to the creepy banker; their son (Hamish Phillips) wants to stay while their teenaged daughter (Katie Moore) would rather live in town.

And then dogs come.

The wild isolation of the outback has provided the backbone for most of the country’s horror output – as it does again here. Rather than filming the vast, surrounding woods and wilderness as a menace, cinematographer Benjamin Shirley’s camera captures the elegance and beauty of it. You don’t wonder what makes this family want to stay. It’s an interesting cinematic choice, because you aren’t given the sense that their separation from the larger society is necessarily dangerous, rather that this abundance of beauty somehow betrays them.

Same with the dogs. These are not your sinewy, feral beasts slinking through the woods. They’re gorgeous – fluffy, even. And yet, when enough of them spread out through the trees just beyond the edge of the property, their heads lowered, their eyes catching the fading light, it’s all you can do not to yell to Adam to run.

The problem with The Pack is that the whisper thin plot doesn’t allow for much of a climax or denouement. The final scene in this film leaves more questions than answers, and not in an exciting, ambiguous way.

It’s a quick and finely acted rush, but like the sugar from this box of Thin Mints next to me, it’s not a rush that sticks around.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Keep Digging

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The Treasure

by Hope Madden

Corneliu Porumboiu’s new film The Treasure is just that, if you have the patience to wait for it.

The Romanian director is a master of the deadpan comedy of manners, setting his films firmly in the conflicting values and strapped economy of post-Communist Romania. Dry, that’s what I’m saying, but no less than wonderful.

In The Treasure, he is once again braiding historical ideas with workaday sensibilities to create the driest kind of treasure hunt.

The ripe ground for this comical examination is a chance to escape the paycheck-driven world. The stage is set when Costi (Toma Cuzin), an office worker with a bland if contented life, is offered a sketchy opportunity to find riches buried in a neighbor’s crumbling family property.

Like Porumboiu’s excellent 2009 film Police, Adjective, The Treasure uses its low key approach to turn the minutia of daily existence – administrative red tape, day to day boredom, bill paying – into understated yet absurd comedy.

Cuzin’s performance – much of it simply the expression on his face – offers so much with so little. As boringly adult as his life has become, there is a childlike quality to the character that gives his every choice a sweetness. Is he naïve, even ignorant, to buy into this clearly desperate scheme?

His quietly likeable good guy is perfectly counterbalanced by his griping neighbor, Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu). Adrian’s sense of entitlement and bitterness come out most strongly and most humorously when a third treasure hunter – just an interested party with a metal detector (Corneliu Cozmei – a non-actor and actual metal detector technician) enters the picture.

The banter as the three men tediously sweep the property, gain and lose hope, bicker over the situation, exposes the social commentary about Romania’s political landscape in a way that is familiar, believable, and uncomfortably funny.

Porumboiu’s consistent use of stationary, wide shots exacerbates the film’s sense of inertia, which is used to generate the tension that fuels the comedy.

It can feel like a long set up for a surprisingly lovely climax, followed by the most inspired use of music. When the final, surprising but fitting image rolls against the death metal band Laibach’s cover of the 80s pop hit Live is Life, the absurd clash of reality and fairy tale is complete.

Verdict-3-5-Stars