You know a fun way to pass the time during a boring holiday weekend? With Star Wars movies. Lucky for us, the latest drops for home entertainment this week. Piss off your Fox News watching uncle and your most self-indulgent of white male nerd friends with the strong female lead and natural character arc of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
For a full review, click the movie title.
Join us in the Screening Room this week to talk through the pros and cons of Pacific Rim: Uprising, Unsane, Death of Stalin, Loveless and all that’s new in home entertainment.
Listen to the podcast HERE.
by George Wolf
I like to think it went down this way…
After hours, in a dimly lit Hollywood bar, the makers of Pacific Rim: Uprising met up with Michael Bay and his crew (let’s call them the Bay-o-nettes) for a good old-fashioned excess-off. As the final challenge was accepted, Uprising director/co-writer Steven S. DeKnight had agreed to break the record for use of the phrase “save the world,” AND include a bit of the “Trololo” viral video guy.
Done and done. And there’s some Transformer-type robot fighting.
This unnecessary sequel to Guillermo Del Toro’s lackluster original picks up 10 years after the invading kaiju were defeated by giant Jaeger robots and their skilled pilots. Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) died cancelling that apocalypse and now Stacker’s son Jake (John Boyega) and his frenemy Nate (Scott Eastwood) must whip a rag-tag bunch of new recruits into shape just in time to battle a brand new threat and …pause for close up and crescendo…save the world (ding!)
After a number of TV projects, Uprising marks DeKnight’s feature debut, and it shows. Most every frame succumbs to an invasion of empty dialogue and the cliche of least resistance. The actors pose more than they move, and even the cheapest of attempts at emotional manipulation seem too much for this film to handle.
But hey, who cares, we’re here for the robot throwdown, amirite?
Probably, but even that, minus Del Toro’s stylish pizzazz, becomes a confusing and repetitious snooze. Seriously, the guy down the row from me at the screening was snoring (which was confusing at first and then repetitive).
Too bad, he totally missed the part when Pikachu showed up and slaughtered everybody.
Okay, that didn’t happen.
Dammit.
by George Wolf
Opening with a madcap “musical emergency” and closing with a blood-stained political coup, The Death of Stalin infuses its factual base with coal back humor of the most delicious and absurd variety.
The film cements director/co-writer Armando Iannucci (Veep, In the Loop) as a premier satirist, as it plays so giddily with history while constantly poking you with a timeliness that should be shocking but sadly is not.
So many feels are here, none better than the sheer joy of watching this film unfold.
It is Moscow in the 1950s and we meet Josef Stalin and his ruling committee, with nary an actor even attempting a Russian accent. Those British and American dialects set a wonderfully off-kilter vibe.
Iannucci has a confident grip on his vision, and the impeccable cast to see it through,
Who else would play Nikita Khrushchev but Steve Busemi? Then there’s Jeffrey Tambor and Simon Russell Beale as committee members jockeying for power after Stalin’s death, Andrea Riseborough and Rupert Friend as Stalin’s manically desperate kids, and Jason Isaacs arriving late to nearly steal the whole show as the uber-manly head of the Russian army.
As enemies lists are updated (“new list!”) and constant assassinations whirl, the hilarious barbs keep coming in dizzying succession, each delivered with bullseye precision by lead actors and walk-ons alike. Monty Python vet Michael Palin is a fitting face in the ensemble, with Iannucci structuring a few bits (like Buscemi and Tambor trying to slyly switch places at Stalin’s funeral-classic) that recall some of the finest Python zaniness.
It all flows so fast and furiously funny, it’s easy to forget how hard it is to pull off such effective satire. We end up laughing through a dark and brutal time in history, while Iannuci speaks truth to those currently in power with a sharp and savage brand of mockery.
Stalin is still dead.
Long live The Death of Stalin!
You know the best cure for a St. Patrick’s Day hangover? The Rock. That’s what he told me, anyway, and who am I to argue? His better-than-expected Jumanji comes out this week, as does the better-than-you-heard Downsizing and the worse-the-third-time Pitch Perfect 3. Let us help you choose.
Click the film title for a full review.
This week in the Screening Room we hash out the good and the bac: Tomb Raider, Love, Simon, 7 Days in Entebbe plus everything out this week in home entertainment.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
It’s Oscar week, people. Not the week of the Oscars, but the week the Oscar winners and nominees come home to us. All told, five Oscar nominees (including the best picture winner) are available for home entertainment. And, if you prefer bad movies, Justice League is also out. Choice!
Click the film title for a full review.
So many movies to talk about this week! Let us help you decide where to devote your energy: A Wrinkle in Time, The Hurricane Heist, Thoroughbreds or The Strangers: Prey at Night. We also run through the scads of new releases in home entertainment.
Listen HERE.
by George Wolf
If your local TV weatherperson has a bit more swagger this week, there’s a good chance they’ve seen The Hurricane Heist and it’s heroic, badass meteorologist.
But it’s not just weatherman Will (Toby Kebbel) saving the day, there’s also ATF agent Casey (Columbus’ own Maggie Grace, repping home with an OSU cap), Will’s brother Breeze (Ryan Kwanten) and one ferocious weather system.
A thieving crew led by the scowling Perkins (Ralph Ineson from The VVitch) launches the latest big screen attempt to rob the treasury, but can you guess what makes this heist a little different?
There’s a hurricane!
What follows is big, dumb, and more fun than it oughta be.
Credit director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) with making the most of what he’s got, gunning for B-movie glory instead of overreaching. Let’s be honest, this setup is just south of Sharknado, but the pace is snappy, the effects are effective, and the adventure occasionally thrilling.
The writing team gives us easily identifiable characters that lean on cliche without being defined by them. Casey and Will are both damaged souls, natch, and heroic teamwork just might be their ticket to redemption. Perkins and his team of evil doers, clearly inspired by Hans Gruber’s iconic thieves in Die Hard, chew plenty of scenery while making it easy to cheer their eventual comeuppance.
The Hurricane Heist won’t tax you your brain, but it doesn’t want to. It just wants you to have fun.
You will, “weather” you expect to or not.
Catch phrase!
by George Wolf
Gringo roll call: Theron! Edgerton! Oyelowo! Seyfried! Copley! Newton! Even M.J.’s daughter, Paris (better call her Miss Jackson, in case we get nasty).
The point is, there’s talent a ‘plenty here. The question is why?
Director Nash Edgerton (Joel’s brother) never fully commits to either madcap romp or suspenseful manhunt, settling for black comedy that’s never really dark or funny, and a tired, “wrong man” adventure propped up by tired cliches.
David Oyelowo gives it is all as Harold, a pharmaceutical exec who accompanies his bosses (Joel Edgerton and Charlize Theron) on a business trip south of the border. The deal, like most everyone around Harold, is shady, and quickly dissolves into mistaken identities, multiple kidnappings, and one drug lord who will kill you for bad mouthing the Beatles.
That drug lord goes by the name “Black Panther,” a minor point that only reinforces how forgettable this film is. The script, from Anthony Tambakis (Warrior) and Matthew Stone (Intolerable Cruelty) offers scattershot bits of promise, but nothing that provides any solid clue to why all these people signed on.
Maybe they all had a good time. Great, but Gringo runs in many directions without ending up anywhere worthwhile, and you’re left wondering just what the point was anyway.
