Click HERE to joins us in the Screening Room to break down Detroit, The Dark Tower, Kidnap, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Landline and what’s new in home entertainment!
Tag Archives: movie reviews
Tenacious M
Kidnap
by Hope Madden
Let me admit this from the start – I may have liked Kidnap better than I should have. Why? Well, I saw it immediately after The Dark Tower, and it is Citizen Kane compared to that festering pile.
In this film, Haley Berry plays Liam Neeson. It’s her second time in the role, actually.
Back in ’08, Neeson – with help from the pen of Luc Besson – revolutionized film with the (wildly over-appreciated) genre flick Taken. Mid-budget “I have a particular set of skills” thrillers have littered the cinematic landscape since, wreaking righteous vengeance and prolonging the careers of middle aged actors everywhere.
In 2013, Berry made The Call, which was not a bad B-movie thriller and her first turn as Liam Neeson. Kidnap sees the Oscar winner playing a loving mother whose 6-year-old (a very sweet Sage Correa) is nabbed from a busy park. Mom sees the napper shoving her son into a car, she jumps in her minivan and the pursuit begins.
The film amounts to a 90-minute car chase with one unreasonably attractive mom behind the wheel. Several of the action sequences are interesting and flashy (for a film with this level of budget – do not go into this hoping for Fast and the Furious: Minivans).
Writer Knate Lee can’t really justify the lack of cell phone or police presence, but he does what he can. Meanwhile, director Luis Prieto ably assembles car chases and panicked driver close ups, then competently shifts tone for a final act that toes the line between thriller and horror.
There’s nothing exceptional about Kidnap. Not one thing. You’ll forget it existed as quickly as you forgot The Call was ever made. But for a getting-the-phone-bill-paid flick, it’s not too bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Ht8VRPRvU
“It” Looks Good, though, Right?
The Dark Tower
by Hope Madden
So, there’s this tower, see. And it sits at the center of all the parallel worlds of the universe and as long as it stands, it keeps the monsters away. Why? How did it get there? No time!
Anyhoo, an evildoer (Matthew McConaughey) wants to knock it down, let in the monsters and rule it all. But there’s this kid – you know what, let me not summarize what amounts to little more than a summary in the first place. Suffice it to say, The Dark Tower is not very good.
There are a lot of bad Stephen King movies. But even Dreamcatcher, The Night Flier and Sleepwalkers (three of the worst) offered a sort of B-movie charm. The Dark Tower is not even the fun kind of bad. It’s tedious, lumbering and schmaltzy, visually unappealing, narratively embarrassing and a woeful waste of Idris Elba.
McConaughey, on the other hand, makes the most of his time onscreen as Walter – which is a much funnier name for the prince of darkness than Man in Black. As the antagonist, he brandishes a restrained evil and moves with a little swagger, plus there’s that wig. Glorious! Real Shatner – hell, even Travolta-esque.
But McConaughey and Elba – true talents, no doubt – are hamstrung from the beginning by the production’s meat-cleaver-and-band-aid approach to screenwriting.
Nobody is more convinced than I am that Stephen King uses too damn many words. Too damn many! Succinct he will never be. But to believe you can boil his multi-volume, many-thousand-page Dark Tower series into a coherent 90 minutes is just brazen idiocy. No offense to the team of writers working on the adaptation – some of whom have talent; the other one is Akiva Goldsman.
Director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair– also credited with writing) is zero help, managing to take this Cliff’s Notes version of King’s prose and still produce something bloated and slow.
I remember reviewing the Tom Cruise debacle The Mummy earlier this year and thinking, this isn’t even any fun, it’s just bad. Dark Tower makes The Mummy feel like a rollicking good time.
But, hey, the trailers for It look great, don’t they?
Still Just a Rat in a Cage
Some Freaks
by Christie Robb
High school, amirite? Setting of so many movies: The Breakfast Club, Heathers, Clueless, Mean Girls… and lately, Some Freaks, written and directed by Ian MacAllister McDonald.
McDonald’s perspective on high school is bleak, lonely. The other kids whisper about you behind your back, when not being physically menacing. The adults are absent. And even your closest friends are kind of douchey, sensing your weak spots and needling them under the guise of jokes.
The action starts with a one-eyed dude named Matt (Thomas Mann), who is stalked by classmates desperate to see what’s under the eyepatch. And maybe capture a photo of the gaping hole to upload to the internet.
He’s partnered up with the new girl, Jill (Lily Mae Harrington), to dissect a fetal pig in biology. Turns out she’s related to his only friend Elmo (Ely Henry), a fast-talking wannabe popular kid who monologues about getting into his jock crush’s gym shorts, but is quick to lash out at anyone but Matt who seems clued into his sexuality.
After school, Matt and Elmo chat while playing video games on Elmo’s couch, sharing some misogynistic fat girl jokes. Then Jill walks in.
She’s living with Elmo’s family for a while. She’s fat – and the clear butt of the jokes. But she just lets it slide. Jill has clearly been putting up with this bullshit for years and has a fairly thick skin when it comes to sexism and body shaming.
With this auspicious beginning, Jill and Matt stumble into the sort of romantic relationship you have when your main reason for being there is to put a temporary patch on the gaping wound of your own loneliness and poor self-esteem.
Jill flies across country to college, but Jill and Matt take their relationship long distance with Jill sending Matt provocative selfies.
After six months, Matt flies out, step one in his plan to move in with Jill permanently. She’s lost 50 pounds, changed her formerly green hair to a sunny blonde, and traded in her punk gear for a more boho vibe. All the photos she’d sent him were taken before her transformation. He hates it.
Unwilling to let Jill change, Matt attempts to regain the status quo. A quo in which Matt was the only man who could find her attractive (besides “elderly degenerates”), and thus, had no competition. No reason to think about how he measures up to other guys.
Contrary to movies like John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club, the coming together of these teenage misfits doesn’t do much to bond them and bolster their self-esteem. Instead, each of the central characters remains isolated with their own damage, even if sometimes physically close. Their very proximity gives them increased ability to wound each other.
The climax of the film, in which each character attends a party that provides a setting for them to confront their greatest insecurities, seems a little contrived. Some characters are underwritten, making their motivations in these moments a bit confusing.
However, the film is well acted. Each member of the cast does a decent job of portraying their character as a mixture of victim and aggressor. Harrington stands out, providing emotional depth behind her wariness and verbal armor, undergoing an impressive physical transformation for the role.
Some Freaks does not provide a cheery John Hughes ending, but may be a more authentic representation of the high school experience for some.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFtR28a6Qf8
I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of August 1
Damn, a lot of stuff is coming out for home enjoyment this week – much of it is not at all enjoyable, though, so there’s that. What should you watch? Let us help you make that call.
Click the title for a full review. And as always, please use this information for good, not evil.
The Lovers
Colossal
Wakefield
Sleight
The Circle
Going in Style
The Ottoman Lieutenant
Don’t Knock Twice
The Screening Room Podcast: Spies and Spirits
Click HERE to joins us in the Screening Room to break down Atomic Blonde, A Ghost Story, The Emoji Movie, It Stains the Sands Red and what’s new in home entertainment!
Missed Connections
Landline
by Hope Madden
Jenny Slate is the perfect mix of raunchy and sweet to anchor an indie dramedy. Co-writer/director Gillian Robespierre tested that theory in 2014 with the character study and edgy rom/com Obvious Child.
Following on those proven results, Robespierre re-tests her theory with the 1995 family saga Landline.
Slate plays Dana, the older, almost-married sister in an upscale Manhattan family. But she and her ever-since-college beau Ben (Jay Duplass) are maybe not everything Dana hoped they’d be.
Her own entanglements with infidelity happen to exactly coincide with a discovery younger sister Ali (Abby Quinn) makes of their father’s (John Turturro) erotic poetry, written for someone who is definitely not their mother (Edie Falco).
Things begin to fall apart. Ali’s lived-in resentment toward her overbearing mother is tested and turned instead toward her sweet, laid back father. Meanwhile Dana embraces recklessness and begins hanging out with her boundary-pushing teenage sister, drinking during the day and sneaking away for clandestine sexual encounters with Nate (pitch-perfect Finn Wittrock).
So, crumbling family dynamics in a well-to-do Manhattan family. Not exactly as edgy as a romantic comedy written around an abortion.
Still, between its loving nostalgia for the pre-cellphone days of the mid-Nineties and its truly game cast, Landline keeps you interested and entertained.
Falco and Turturro are unfortunately underused. Both are spectacular talents, and their well-worn relationship offers each the opportunity to create moments of sudden, honest, everyday heartbreak.
The characteristically effervescent Slate charms, and her off kilter chemistry with Quinn serves the film well. They’re irritated and protective, bitching and admiring all in the same breath. They often feel unsure of their own feelings toward each other, which reads as very authentic.
Quinn is the real heartbeat of the film. Equally vulnerable and mean, she’s less the cinematic equivalent of a conflicted adolescent than she is a conflicted adolescent, and the film takes on a sharp focus whenever she’s onscreen.
Unfortunately, that’s not all the time, and Robespierre – writing again with Elisabeth Holm – loses focus too easily. Landline, for all its insightful moments and clever lines, feels a bit unwieldy and murky.
Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blonde in Me
Atomic Blonde
by Hope Madden
Charlize Theron is a convincing badass. (You saw Fury Road, right?) She cuts an imposing figure and gives (and takes) a beating with panache.
Director David Leitch understands action, having cut his teeth as a stunt double before moving on to choreographing and coordinating action for the last decade. With the help of a wicked soundtrack and about a million costume changes, he also makes 1989 seem cool – which is a real feat.
Together, Theron and Leitch take on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart’s graphic novel The Coldest City, under the far more rockin’ title Atomic Blonde.
It’s Berlin in ’89. The wall’s about to come down, the Cold War’s coming to an end, but there’s this pesky double agent issue to contend with, and a list of coverts that has fallen into the wrong hands. MI6 sends in one lethal operative, Lorraine Broughton (Theron), to check in with their embedded agent Percival (James McAvoy) and work things out.
What to expect: intrigue, Bowie songs, boots – so many boots! – and a great deal of Charlize Theron beating up on people. Mayhem of the coolest sort.
From the opening car crash through half a dozen other expertly choreographed set pieces to the action pièce de résistance, Theron and Leitch make magic happen. Each sequence outshines the one before, leading up to a lengthy, multi-villain escapade shot as if in one extremely lengthy take. (It isn’t, but the look is convincing and the execution thrilling.)
Theron delivers. Reliable as ever, McAvoy is once again that guy you don’t know whether to love or hate – probably because he always looks like he’s smiling and crying simultaneously. He makes for a wild and dicey counterpoint to Theron’s sleek, ultra cool presence.
Precise and percussive, the action propels this film. Leitch’s cadence outside these sequences sometimes stalls, and not every casting choice works out.
Sofia Boutella, saddled with an underdeveloped character who makes idiotic choices, suffers badly in the role. Other supporting characters, though – including the always welcome Toby Jones and John Goodman – take better advantage of their limited time onscreen.
The storyline itself is equal parts convoluted and obvious, with far too many conveniences to hold up as a real spy thriller. But unplug, soak up that Berlin vibe and appreciate the action and you’ll do fine.
I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of July 25
It is too damn hot to leave the house. You got your Cheetos or Pop Tarts and your beverage of choice – what to watch? Brand-spankin’ zombie movie? Captain America melting hearts? ScarJo’s conflicted cyborg? Glen Baby Glen Ross? We have the answers!
Click the title for a full review. And as always, please use this information for good, not evil.
Gifted
Ghost in the Shell
It Stains the Sands Red
The Boss Baby
The Screening Room Podcast: Air, Land and Sea
Click HERE and join us in The Screening Room this week to break down Dunkirk, Valerian, Fist Kill, The Little Hours, Killing Ground and what’s new on home video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3uNlE7ejO0
