Tons of movies to fill your “I forgot how cold and crappy fall could be” hours. Some of these movies are great. Some of them are crap. We are here to help you tell the difference.
Click the film title to link to the full review.
by George Wolf
After Independence Day, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and more, the book on Roland Emmerich is fairly easy to read: expect spectacle over storytelling.
Midway is Emmerich’s latest, and that checks out.
A grand production respectfully dedicated to the American and Japanese forces that fought the legendary battle, the film does have heart in all the right places. But too often, it feels more inspired by war movies than the real thing.
Patrick Wilson is Edwin Layton, whose description as “the best intelligence officer I’ve ever known” gives us an early introduction into screenwriter Wes Tooke’s plan for character development.
“I told you she was a firecracker!”
“He’s the most brilliant man I know.”
“Best pilot in the world!”
“Knock off the cowboy b.s.!”
Layton still feels guilty about the intelligence failures of Pearl Harbor, and he pleads with Admiral Nimitz (Woody Harrelson) to trust his prediction of an upcoming Japanese invasion of Midway Island.
Names such as Nimitz and Halsey (Dennis Quaid) may be the only ones familiar to non history buffs, but no matter, none of the characters feel real anyway. They’re just humans who pose nicely while spouting the dialog of actors explaining things to an audience.
So much for the storytelling, now for the spectacle.
It’s pretty damn thrilling.
When the battles are raging, especially in the air, Midway soars. Constructed with precision and clarity, these extended set pieces allow Emmerich to indulge his showy instincts for maximum payoff.
Director John Ford famously filmed on Midway Island while the battle took shape. Emmerich and Tooke don’t ignore that fact, a not so subtle reminder that this is their movie about war, and they’re going big!
And about half the time, that’s not a bad thing.
When it needs to be big, this film is huge, detailed and epic. But when it needs to be small, and make this history breathe again through intimate authenticity of the souls that lived and died in it, Midway just can’t stop flexing.
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
The Shining was always going to be a hard act to follow, even for Stephen King.
But as soon as King revisited the horror with Doctor Sleep, the bigger challenge instantly fell to whomever was tasked with bringing it to the screen.
That would be writer/director Mike Flanagan, who’s trying on two pairs of pretty big shoes. His vision will not only be judged next to one of the most iconic horror films of all time, but also by the source author who famously doesn’t like that film.
While Doctor Sleep does often feel as if Flanagan is trying to serve two (or more) masters, it ultimately finds enough common ground to become an effective, if only mildly frightening return trip.
After surviving the attempted redrum, adult Dan Torrence (Ewan McGregor) is struggling to stay clean and sober. He’s quietly earning his chips, and is even enjoying a long distance “shine” relationship with the teenaged Abra (Kyliegh Curran).
But Abra and her unusually advanced gifts have also attracted the attention of Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson, sweetly menacing) and her cult of undead travelers. Similarly gifted, Rose and her band seek out young shiners, feeding on their powers to remain immortal.
Flanagan breaks the spooky spell to dive into terror in a truly unnerving sequence between Ferguson’s gang and a shiny little baseball player (Jacob Tremblay). Effectively gritty and hard to shake, it is the one moment the film fully embraces its horror lineage.
Reportedly, Flanagan had to convince King that it is Kubrick’s version of The Shining that reigns in popular culture (as it should), and that their new film should reflect that. Smart move, as is the choice to hit you early with lookalike actors in those famous roles from 1980.
Is it jarring seeing new faces as young Danny, Wendy, Dick Halloran and more? Yes it is, but as the film unfolds you see Flanagan had little choice but to go that route, and better to get comfy with it by the time Dan is back among the ghosts of the Overlook hotel.
King has made it clear he needed more emotional connection to his characters than Kubrick’s film provided. McGregor helps bridge that gap, finding a childlike quality beneath the ugly, protective layers that have kept Danny Torrence from dealing with a horrific past.
Flanagan (Oculus, Hush, Before I Wake, Gerald’s Game) stumbles most when he relies on awkward (and in some cases, needless) exposition to clarify and articulate answers. Kubrick was stingy in that regard, which was one of The Shining‘s great strengths. Questions are scary, answers seldom are.
Whatever the film’s setbacks and faults, it is good fun getting back to the Overlook and catching the many Shining callbacks (including a cameo from Danny Lloyd, the original Danny Torrence). Flanagan’s vision does suffer by comparison, but how could it not? Give him credit for ignoring that fact and diving in, leaving no question that he’s as eager to see what’s around each corner as we are.
Doctor Sleep can’t match the claustrophobic nature or the vision of cold, creeping dread Kubrick developed. This film often tries too hard to please—not a phrase you’d associate with the 1980 film. The result is a movie that never seems to truly find its own voice.
It’s no masterpiece, but check in and you’ll find a satisfying, generally spooky time.
Bunches of movies available for couch watching this week, most of them worthy of exactly that. Here is the scoop.
Click the film title for the full reviews.
Who doesn’t love bonus content? Well, hopefully you do because here it is! We had the chance to talk with Elvira, and we dug into the most vital of topics: How cool is Pee-wee, what’s her go-to Halloween costume, and why did she have to call riot police?
Those answers and more in our special bonus Fright Club!
by George Wolf
I know it’s sounds about as insightful as “feel good movie of the year,” but Dark Fate really is the Terminator sequel we’ve been waiting for. Its fast- paced and thrilling, surprisingly funny, and manages to honor our investment in two classic characters while it carves out a damn fine blueprint for updating a warhorse.
After re-connecting us with T2: Judgment Day via some crazy good de-aging technology that apparently wasn’t shared with Gemini Man, Dark Fate gives us a future savior that must be protected.
She’s Dani (Natalia Reyes from Birds of Passage), a Mexico City factory worker being hunted by the latest and greatest Terminator, the Rev 9 (Gabriel Luna). But Dani has Grace (Tully‘s Mackenzie Davis, terrific), an “augmented” human from the year 2042 to protect her, plus a new friend with a long history of battling Terminators.
With the most badass entrance since Ripley wore the loader, Linda Hamilton is back as Sarah Connor, instantly giving Dark Fate enough juice to send all the sequels without her to a time of wind and ghosts.
But director Tim Miller is just getting started. The action-filled set pieces keep coming, each one surpassing the last and bursting with the stylized energy he brought to Deadpool.
Need to catch your breath? Oh, look it’s Arnold.
We knew he’d be back, but we didn’t expect him as a T-800 model living a quiet family life as “Carl,” and selling high quality draperies at rock-bottom prices. He’s a stone-faced hoot, and when Carl and Sarah get back in their guns blazing, side by side saddles, just try to keep the nostalgic smile off your face.
But even with all this surface level fun, the film’s secret weapon is a script from David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray that’s heady enough to wonder if they got an early look at Rambo: Last Blood and thought a 2019 franchise revival that wasn’t offensively tone deaf might be nice. Each character has an arc to anchor it, and while the film is always mindful of how the future can be rewritten, the topical nods to border security and valuing women as more than birthing vessels are unmistakable.
OK, fine, there are a few clunky spots, some lower-grade CGI on the hyper-jumps and an (understandable) overconfidence in how much we want this to work.
But we do, and damn near all of it does, enough to make you hope they won’t be back.
by Hope Madden and George Wolf
We’ve said it many times, but since there may still be people who haven’t heard, we’ll say it again. If Joon-ho Bong makes a film, you should see it.
Today, make it Parasite.
The film’s opening act introduces the Kim family, folding pizza boxes in a squalid basement apartment in Seoul and scrambling from room to room in search of free WiFi after the neighboring business locked theirs down with a password.
In a single scene the film appears to articulate its title and define its central characters, but the Kims are not who you think they are. In fact, every time you think you’ve pinned this film down—who’s doing what to whom, who is or is not a parasite—you learn it was an impeccably executed sleight of hand.
Longtime Bong collaborator Kang-ho Song (Memory of a Murder, The Host, Snowpiercer) anchors the film with an endearing and slippery performance. Kim patriarch, he is simultaneously beloved head of the household and family stooge. Watching Song manipulate his character’s slide from bottom to top to bottom again without ever losing his humanity—or the flaws that go along with humanity—is amazing. It’s a stunningly subtle and powerful performance.
He’s nearly matched by Yeo-jeong Jo as the righteously oblivious Mrs. Park, who spends her days in constant search for an empty validation that comes from every new indulgence for her children.
When young Kim Ki-woo ( Woo-sik Choi from Train to Busan and Bong’s last film, Okja) is able to convince Mrs. Park he’s a suitable English tutor for her daughter Da-hye (Ji-so Jung), the Kim and Park families become connected in one of the few ways afforded by the social order: master and servant.
Methodically, the rest of the Kim clan gains employment from Mr. Park (Sun-kyun Lee) through the systematic feeding of the Parks’ ego and privilege. And then just when you think Bong’s metaphoric title is merely surface deep, a succession of delicious power shifts begins to emerge.
Think the simmering rage of Joker with a completely new set of face paint.
As the Kims insinuate themselves into the daily lives of the very wealthy Parks, Bong expands and deepens a story full of surprising tenderness, consistent laughter and wise commentary on not only the capitalist economy, but the infecting nature of money.
Bong, as both director and co-writer, dangles multiple narrative threads, weaving them so skillfully throughout the film’s various layers that even when you can guess where they’ll intersect, the effect is no less enlightening.
Filming in an ultra-wide aspect ratio allows Bong to give his characters and themes a solid visual anchor. In single frames, he’s able to embrace the complexities of a large family dynamic while also articulating the detailed contrasts evident in the worlds of the haves and have nots.
Parasite tells us to make no plans, as a plan can only go wrong.
Ignore that, and make plans to see this brilliantly mischievous, head-swimmingly satisfying dive down the rabbit hole of space between the classes.
by George Wolf
Two married couples are paired off beside each other, everyone smooching their respective spouse. They all sport gleaming braces and garish pastel-on-steroids outfits, swapping emotionless saliva until a voice breaks the moment.
“Wait a second, wrong husbands!”
Welcome to the so-wrong world of Greener Grass, the feature length adaptation of Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s award-winning short from 2015. DeBoer and Luebbe return as screenwriters and stars, plus this time add directing duties to ensure complete realization of the absurdist suburban hellscape they imagine.
Jill (DeBoer – so good in Thunder Road last year) and Lisa (Luebbe) are soccer mom besties whose sun-drenched days of gossip, golf carts and competition are thrown into upheaval when Jill gives Lisa her new baby, only to have the nerve to ask for the baby back when Jill’s young son Julian turns into a dog!
This is a late night sketch stretched to the point of no return, played with a desert-dry commitment by the game ensemble (which, appropriately enough, includes SNL’s Beck Bennett).
The end result is an over-the-top John Waters visual pastiche that’s constantly running headlong into a cheek defiantly dismissing its tongue as fake news. When DeBoer and Luebbe do bullseye their targets – with their vigil for a dead neighbor or a TV show called “Kids With Knives” – the laughs are uproarious, but the time between these winners can sometimes get lengthy.
For most people, the same joke five times is tiresome. But for some, that same joke fifteen times can become an absurd delight, and that is the space where this film plants roots that can only become deeper with time.
Because sometime in the near future, a parent will refer to their child’s teacher as “Miss Human,” and Greener Grass will have arrived. A smartly silly expose on the shallowest end of the suburban pool, this is a cult classic just waiting to happen.
