Breaking In—the latest in a line of Liam Neeson movies—sees a desperate parent doing whatever it takes to save their tender offspring.
This time around Gabrielle Union plays Liam Neeson. Well, she plays Shaun, a woman who’s brought her two children with her to her recently-deceased father’s wooded property to get the place ready to sell. Problem is, somebody’s already there.
Shaun suddenly finds herself in the situation of trying to save her children from the men who’ve come to rob her late father’s safe.
The film was penned by Ryan Engle, who’s written two of Neeson’s own Liam Neeson movies (Non-Stop, The Commuter). The man likes a formula.
Union convinces as the family’s level-headed, savvy matriarch.
She’s locked out of her dead father’s tech-dense fortress while her kids are locked in with baddies. The clock is ticking until the cut phone cable brings the cops. Shaun’s indeterminate experiences at her shady father’s secluded property have apparently better prepared her for this event than the villains would have expected.
There could be something here.
Though little more than a mishmash of domestic thriller clichés, still, with a bit of style and a little creativity, it could make for a tense and brisk 90 minutes.
If only the bad guys moved quickly, as if they were working against a timer. Show a little urgency, fellas.
Or if all that tech—the cameras, the motion-sensor lights, the door locks—worked consistently rather than conveniently.
Or if director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) brought any style to the project. Any at all.
Home invasion movies can become pressure cookers of tension and diabolical possibility. Too bad McTeigue has no idea how to exploit any of the tenser elements Engle gives him, nor does he have the skill to draw your attention away from any of the gaping holes littered throughout this plot.
Union’s fighting against more than seedy criminals.
You think your job sucks? Dude, this list of movies will make you thank the lord above for your crappy gig.
5. Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Sure, Nicolas Cage is a whore, a has-been, and his wigs embarrass us all. But back before The Rock (the film that turned him), Cage was always willing to behave in a strangely effeminate manner, and perhaps even eat a bug. He made some great movies that way.
Peter Lowe (pronounced with such relish by Cage) believes he’s been bitten by a vampire (Jennifer Beals) during a one night stand. It turns out, he’s actually just insane. The bite becomes his excuse to indulge his self-obsessed, soulless, predatory nature for the balance of the running time.
Cage gives a masterful comic performance in Vampire’s Kiss as a narcissistic literary editor who descends into madness. The actor is hilarious, demented, his physical performance outstanding. The way he uses his gangly mess of limbs and hulking shoulders inspires darkly, campy comic awe. And the plastic teeth are awesome.
Peter may believe he abuses his wholesome editorial assistant Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) with sinister panache because he’s slowly turning into a demon, but we know better.
4. Mayhem (2017)
You know that nice lady at work who gets bronchitis every time she flies, then she coughs and hacks and spews DNA all over the office?
Let’s say you have issues with that kind of office contamination. And with office politics. And with your boss, her boss, and the way you’ve basically given up everything that makes you feel alive and happy for this stupid job you hate where germs are everywhere…
Wouldn’t it be cathartic to explode, right there, in the middle of everything, righteously and with no repercussions?
The film is an exercise in workplace catharsis, and a pretty fun one. It’s far superior to other recent attempts at office-bound carnage The Belko Experiment and Bloodsucking Bastards, partly because Lynch has a crisp sense of pace and knack for comedy.
Mayhem, the new film from director Joe Lynch, is just that emotional release. It’s fun. Especially if you’ve ever wanted to kill your boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhTDq2t6UpM
3. Severance (2006)
Genuinely funny and exhaustingly brutal, Christopher Smith’s British import Severance offers a mischievous team-building exercise in horror. A handful of would-be execs for global weapons manufacturer Palisade Defense are misled and slaughtered in what they believe to be a mandatory weekend excursion in Hungary to build corporate camaraderie.
Smith and co-writer James Moran’s wickedly insightful script mocks corporate culture as Smith’s direction pays homage to the weirdest assortment of films. The result is an uproarious but no less frightening visit to an area of the world that apparently scares the shit out of us: Eastern Europe. (Think Hostel, The Human Centipede, Borat.)
An epically watchable flick, Severance boasts solid performances, well-placed bear traps and landmines, a flamethrower and an excellent balance of black humor and true horror. To say more would be to give too much away, but rest assured that with every scene Smith and crew generate palpable tension. It erupts with equally entertaining measure in either a good, solid laugh or in a horrible, disfiguring dose of horror. How awesome is that?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ4e1558QY0
2. Compliance (2012)
Compliance is an unsettling, frustrating and upsetting film about misdirected and misused obedience. It’s also one of the most impeccably made and provocative films of 2012 – a cautionary tale that’s so unnerving it’s easier just to disbelieve. But don’t.
Writer/director Craig Zobel – who began his career as co-creator of the brilliant comic website Homestar Runner (so good!) – takes a decidedly dark turn with this “based-on-true-events” tale. It’s a busy Friday night at a fast food joint and they’re short staffed. Then the police call and say a cashier has stolen some money from a customer’s purse.
A Milgram’s experiment come to life, the film spirals into nightmare as the alleged thief’s colleagues agree to commit increasingly horrific deeds in the name of complying with authority.
Zobel remains unapologetically but respectfully truthful in his self-assured telling. He doesn’t just replay a tragic story, he expertly crafts a tense and terrifying movie. With the help of an anxious score, confident camera work, and a superb cast, Zobel masterfully recreates a scene that’s not as hard to believe as it is to accept.
1. American Psycho (2000)
A giddy hatchet to the head of the abiding culture of the Eighties, American Psycho represents the sleekest, most confident black comedy – perhaps ever. Director Mary Harron trimmed Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, giving it unerring focus. More importantly, the film soars due to Christian Bale’s utterly astonishing performance as narcissist, psychopath, and Huey Lewis fan Patrick Bateman.
There’s an elegant exaggeration to the satire afoot. Bateman is a slick, sleek Wall Street toady, pompous one minute because of his smart business cards and quick entrance into posh NYC eateries, cowed the next when a colleague whips out better cards and shorter wait times. For all his quest for status and perfection, he is a cog indistinguishable from everyone who surrounds him. The more glamour and flash on the outside, the more pronounced the abyss on the inside. What else can he do but turn to bloody, merciless slaughter? It’s a cry for help, really.
Harron’s send-up of the soulless Reagan era is breathtakingly handled, from the set decoration to the soundtrack, but the film works as well as a horror picture as it does a comedy. Whether it’s Chloe Sevigny’s tenderness as Bateman’s smitten secretary or Cara Seymour’s world-wearied vulnerability, the cast draws a real sense of empathy and dread that complicate the levity. We do not want to see these people harmed, and as hammy as it seems, you may almost call out to them: Look behind you!
As solid as this cast is, and top to bottom it is perfect, every performance is eclipsed by the lunatic genius of Bale’s work. Volatile, soulless, misogynistic and insane, yet somehow he also draws some empathy. It is wild, brilliant work that marked a talent preparing for big things.
Vaughn Stein’s debut as a feature film writer/director, after many years assisting, borrows heavily from the Tarantino explosion of the Nineties and early 2000s. He drops us into a metropolitan underworld where danger intersects with madness and borrowed style tries desperately to draw attention away from lack of substance.
He does have Margot Robbie, though, so that’s a start. Robbie plays the aforementioned femme fatale in a hulking underbelly of a soundstage meant to look like a cross between a wee-hours train terminal, an insane asylum and Wonderland—all with that vacant, neon emptiness of a neo-noir.
Robbie’s Annie is a hitman masquerading as a waitress in the terminals all-night diner. There’s a hidden mastermind, a mysterious cripple, a couple of contract killers and a teacher who needs a little nudge before he’s ready to off himself.
Vaughn immediately brings Sin City to mind with his splashy comic book noirisms. It’s hard for that to feel fresh at this stage in filmdom, and his tired hodge-podging of hyper-dramatic tropes doesn’t breathe any new life into the story.
In fact, the story is the problem. It’s an awful lot of nothing, truth be told, with nary a surprise and loads of letdowns.
There is a bit in the diner that’s worth a watch. An excellent Simon Pegg waits for a train and chit chats with a borderline insane waitress (Robbie). Their chemistry is odd and welcome, and Pegg’s delivery is particularly impeccable. In these scenes, Vaughn’s writing suddenly feels engaging and unpredictable.
The core story about two killers Annie is playing against each other peters out blandly, and though the answer to any other surprise has long ago been telegraphed in, still we sit through an intolerable backstory.
Robbie does what she can, though she leans a bit too heavily on her Harley Quinn character to sell Annie’s mental state. She’s mad as a hatter, you see. We know that because she told us so in an opening voiceover narration.
The film isn’t awful, but it isn’t good. Mainly, there is just nothing new to see here.
More than 30 years ago, Garry Marshall directed one of those Eighties films: good-heartedly hateful and contrived in that colorfully rom-com way, Overboard.
It is the ridiculous story of comeuppance wherein a small-town carpenter (Kurt Russell), cheated out of payment by a scantily clad, uppity billionaire (Goldie Hawn), concocts a plan to get the money he is due when she washes ashore with amnesia.
Flash forward several decades and director Rob Greenberg makes his feature debut after a lifetime of sitcoms, revisiting Leslie Dixon’s 1987 screenplay.
His update sees Kate (Anna Faris) as a single mom just trying to pass that damn nursing exam so she can quit her two jobs (pizza delivery, carpet cleaner) and offer a better life for her three daughters.
She’s sent to sop up the champagne spillage on a yacht, meets spoiled heir Leonardo (Eugenio Derbez), argues and ends up in far worse financial trouble than she’d been in a day before.
Now she’ll never get that nurse’s license!
When the billionaire washes up back in Elk Cove, Kate’s pizza place boss (Eva Longoria) figures the least he owes Kate is some some day labor (so she doesn’t have to replace that job he lost for her), and enough chores to give Kate the time to study.
Only until the exam—then we’ll tell him.
The premise is no fresher or more believable this time around, though they do update in a couple of interesting ways. Leonardo is a Mexican heir; the day laborers only speak Spanish and most of the pizza crew is bilingual Mexican American, so about fifty percent of the film is subtitled.
This is an interesting choice, since the point of both versions of Overboard is to point out the hideous gap in work ethic and morality you can find between the rich and poor. Choosing not to “Roseanne” that image of the American working poor was a solid decision. Not that it can help this movie.
This is simply not a premise that has the strength to stand the test of time. The original was a success on the charm and natural (and obviously abiding) charisma of its stars. Why was it successful? Goldie Hawn was a comic genius, Kurt Russell was gorgeous, and it was the Eighties. That is it.
The remake has none of those things going for it. Greenberg, updating Dixon’s script with Bob Fisher (Wedding Crashers), can’t write his way out of the contrivance. Though Faris is certainly a talent, she lacks the charisma to carry a film.
Perhaps most damaging is the utter absence of chemistry between the leads, making every inch toward romance feel unnatural and, honestly, almost creepy.
There is something very clever about the way Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead’s movies sneak up on you. Always creepy, still they defy genre expectations even as they play with them.
Camp Arcadia offers the rustic backdrop for their latest, The Endless. A clever bit of SciFi misdirection, the film follows two brothers as they return to the cult they’d escaped a decade earlier.
Just to visit.
Do you ever have those dreams where you find yourself back in your hometown and no matter how hard you try, you can’t leave? No? You must not be from Tiffin, Ohio.
Benson and Moorehead capture that particular panicked feeling, each slow-moving moment generating a louder and louder echo in your head, yelling: Why are you still here? Go already!
The other thing the directing pair creates with uneasy authenticity is that spotty forgiving and unforgiving bond between siblings.
The directors themselves play those siblings. Though Moorehead and Benson have had cameos in their previous films Spring and Resolution, as well as a handful of other horror flicks, The Endless, penned by Benson, is the first film they anchor.
Their acting chops are mainly solid, although perhaps not lead-worthy. Moorehead’s innocence and whining sometimes feel forced. Meanwhile, Benson’s character’s motivation is at times suspect, and he’s unconvincing as a sheltered, shell-shocked, co-dependent.
Though the lead performances sometimes undermine the agile storytelling, the turns the directors draw from their ensemble are strong across the board. Welcome familiar faces in a third-act surprise prove the filmmakers’ nimble skill with a fantasy storyline that could easily collapse on itself but never does.
It is this story and the pair’s storytelling skill that continues to impress. Their looping timelines provide fertile ground for clever turns that fans of the filmmakers will find delightful, but the uninitiated will appreciate as well.
Just the one big one to talk through—with no spoilers! Maybe a little bit about superhero crushes, though. So, it’s Avengers: Infinity War as well as what’s new in home entertainment. Check out the full podcast HERE.
There are some great films that spare you the exposition, dropping you instead into the center of the action and leaving you there, breathless, until the final credits. Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, for instance, exists in this Act 2-only universe.
When it’s done well, it can be a breathless, sometimes blistering ride.
Unfortunately, Downrange doesn’t do it well.
Director Ryûhei Kitamura (Midnight Meat Train) strands you with six motorists—just good looking kids ride-sharing their way with strangers across a deserted highway toward whatever.
One blown tire brings the carpool to a screeching halt, but it isn’t a stray pothole to blame (they’re obviously not driving through Columbus right now). No, it’s a well-aimed bullet, and these travelers have unwittingly volunteered to become target practice for some lone gunman (don’t call him a terrorist!) hiding in the tree line.
It’s not a bad set up, really, if a little clichéd and convenient: out of the way (read: no cell reception), car full of strangers (read: character development will unfold by way of action), escalating tension and drama.
How does the roadkill stew Kitamura makes from these ingredients wind up so bland? Once he puts these ducks on this pond, he can’t find anything imaginative to do with them.
The story is thin, yes—it’s a scene, really, stretched for 90 minutes. But it can be done. Greg McLean did it in 2007 with a raft full of tourists and a big gator in Rogue, but he had Radha Mitchell, Stephen Curry, John Jarratt and Mia Wasikowska—actors whose names you may not know but whose talent you would recognize. Downrange doesn’t have that.
To be fair, the cast struggles with more than just limited ability. They quickly lose the opportunity to feel authentic under an abundance of heavy breathing, high tension close-ups as each ducks and contorts to avoid the spray of bullets and body fluids.
The film isn’t terrible, it’s just tedious. Its nihilism feels undeserved, more like a lack of imagination than a cynical choice. A situation both so precise and so familiar requires some surprise—either in style or in narrative decision—to compel attention. Kitamura can muster neither.
Downrange is a Shudder exclusive, debuting April 28.
Let’s say you recently penned Captain America: Civil War, an exceedingly successful comic book franchise effort weighed down by the mushrooming of heroes. So. Many. Heroes.
And let’s say it went so well that you are now tasked with the new Avengers movie—the film that takes very nearly every hero from your last effort and tacks on, say, 7 or 8 more. You would almost have to immediately think about thinning the herd, right?
Yes.
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who’ve penned all three Captain America films) weave a Marvel Universe-spanning tale that asks whether or not things would work out better if we had about half as many people to deal with. That seems like writerly self-reflection right there.
Thanos (Josh Brolin, who villains it up for Deadpool 2 next) believes in balance. He’s been collecting Infinity Stones across all the different Marvel movies so he can create this Justice Friends adventure and rid the universe of half its inhabitants.
Wait, Thanos is a Guardians of the Galaxy villain, right? Does that mean Starlord’s entire rag-tag crew will join the Avengers (and Dr. Strange and Black Panther and Spiderman and on and on)? So, Chris Pratt, Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth?
Correct.
All we need to defeat Thanos is Chris Pine. No way six Infinity Stones can outshine the wattage of all the Chrisses!
The screenplay offers smart comic moments that suit individual characters (Drax! Teenaged Groot!) and never undermine the drama, of which there is plenty. And balance is clearly on the minds of the writers as well as directors Anthony and Joe Russo (who helmed the last two Captain American films and love Cleveland). The storyline divides up nicely to allow the plethora of personalities to shine, each in their own way.
Though the film runs a full 2 ½ hours with the end-of-credits stinger, it never drags. Plenty happens, all of it rooted in character and held together by Brolin, who gives the film a layered epicenter through his memorable CGI/voice performance.
The Thanos facial effects rank somewhere between Planet of the Apes and Superman’s mustache, while the outlying worlds and creatures sport satisfactory shine.
But we cannot get behind what they’re doing with Hulk. Not digging it.
The very best films in the Marvel universe excel in nuanced big thinking (Black Panther, Winter Soldier) or bullseye tonality (Spider-Man: Homecoming). Infinity War gets close on both battlegrounds, but lays up to bet on its own long game.
True, that sounds like cliched word salad, but we’re steering clear of planet spoiler.
Infinity War tackles some big ideas and makes some brave choices that may cause you to reassess the entire Marvel franchise.
Not everyone will be pleased.
But props to Markus, McFeely and the Russos, for being unmoved by the Last Jedi fanboy uproar and following an ambitious vision. And their film does entertain. There’s not a minute of bloat and there is plenty of thought-provoking story likely to make this a movie earning more respect through time and space.
Join us in the Screening Room where we discuss I Feel Pretty, Super Troopers 2, Traffik, You Were Never Really Here and everything fit to watch on home entertainment.
A mid-budget action thriller sees a handsome couple alone in an isolated home suddenly at the mercy of a biker gang.
Well, hell, this could be just about any mid-to-low budget thriller from the Seventies. Writer/director Deon Taylor borrows some of the ideas and themes from Seventies exploitation, updating it with a more contemporary style, slicker editing, modern problems and Paula Patton.
That last one might be the real trouble.
Patton plays Brea, a Seattle journalist who may have just lost her job because she’s too interested in telling the whole story. She’s just not one to turn a piece around quickly enough for today’s 24/7 news cycle.
She takes her mind off things with the surprise trip her boyfriend (Omar Epps) planned.
Traffik builds slowly with overly familiar tension, and Taylor makes a handful of interesting choices. These bikers aren’t just racist and bloodthirsty (although they are that). They are the goons of an international human trafficking organization and Brea, her boyfriend and this pointless second couple are in for some real trouble.
The women in Taylor’s film get every opportunity to make a difference, participate in the action and make reasonable decisions—definitely not a staple of Seventies exploitation. Problematically, Paula Patton cannot act.
A lot of action stars can’t, that’s true, but the film really depends upon Patton’s emotional journey and the woman cannot emote.
Taylor makes up for that by simply ogling her body with his camera for 90 minutes. I have never in my life seen a film more preoccupied by one performer’s nipples than Traffik. It would be problematic anywhere, but in a movie where the heroine hopes to save women from sex slavery, it feels wildly wrong-headed.
Given a couple of turns in the script and the film’s overall Seventies vibe, you wonder whether Taylor sees Patton as the new Pam Grier.
She is not.
The film is not terrible. Dawn Olivieri’s turn as a truck stop druggie will haunt you, and even though you basically know what’s coming, Taylor’s game direction keeps you interested nonetheless. There are a couple of decent action sequences—nothing to write home about—and the pace is quick.
Take Paula Patton (and Taylor’s leering filming of her) out of the movie and it’s not a bad little piece of throwback exploitation.
