The Darkness review

Blumhouse Productions has defined their brand by creating low to mid budget haunted house thrillers that essentially combine the same elements from “The Shining,” “The Poltergeist” and “The Exorcist.” James Wan, so far, has embraced this style of pop horror filmmaking most successfully with his “Insidious” pairing and the “The Conjuring.”  Scott Derrickson’s “Sinister” had its moments as well and “The Purge” films seem to have a consistent draw that perplexes me. Most of Blumhouse’s other output has been spotty and it’s become all the more apparent that their formula is rapidly becoming stale. Their latest “Poltergeist” rip off, “The Darkness,” is just as lazy and bland as the title suggests.

Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell play Peter and Bronny Taylor, the parents of a dysfunctional American family—Mitchell is a recovered alcoholic and Bacon once had an affair. Their children consist of a pre-teen boy named Michael (David Mazouz) who lives with a form low-functioning autism and their seventeen-year-old daughter Stephany (Lucy Fry) has body image issues.  Shortly after a trip to the Grand Canyon, where Michael found and secretly brought home some ancient Anasazi artifacts, the family is slowly tormented by a dark presence in their home. Michael’s idiosyncrasies have become more violent and disturbing as everyone else in the house has experienced the psychological terror of strange noises, dirty hand prints, weird smells, barking dogs and self-starting water faucets.  

Forget for a moment that the movie’s handling of Native American culture and the subject of autism is surprisingly regressive, it’s also presented in a way that’s painfully boring and completely without entertainment value. It’s becomes clear that the filmmakers struggled to find any real moments of tension or fear in this lifeless slog and instead tried to make up for its lack of real scares with an annoyingly manipulative score, full of random jolts and ineffective moodiness. Bacon and Mitchell are trying their best to take this insipid, underwritten material seriously and guest star Paul Reiser, as Bacon’s misogynist boss, is trying his hardest to not take it seriously, but even when the character moments occasionally slips into “When a Man Loves a Woman” it’s undercut by the hapless shlock of the rest of the movie and transformed into unintentional Lifetime melodrama.  

Mazous, known by most as young Bruce Wayne on television’s “Gotham,” is given nothing to do here and his performance of a person with a real and complex condition is played with the seriousness of an after-school special. Hell, even the blatant transphobia of the first “Sleepaway Camp,” was at least shocking and audacious, even if a bit dated by today’s standards. Both the story’s autism angle—how are parents supposed to tell the difference between normal-weird and possessed by ancient Native spirts-weird—as well as the production’s Anasazi stylistics are never exploited in way that registers above cliché and tired.

At one point a large dog suddenly attacks the daughter in her bed. That was kind of cool.

It’s hard to say what went wrong here. Director Greg McLean made of my favorite modern horror films with the Aussie serial killer thriller “Wolfe Creek” but none of the style or the simmering tension of that project is transferred into this PG-13, overblown “Goosebumps” book. The shoddy screenplay isn’t helping anyone and the movie’s clear and direct influences loom large in sullen judgement. 

Grade - D

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2016

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Captain America: Civil War review

Whether it’s “Batman v Superman” or Hillary v Bernie or Trump v the eventual democratic nominee, this has been a year of highly publicized, clashing ideologies. Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” is based on a 2008 run of “Avengers” comics about a government plan to register superheroes to end vigilantism. The fictional law split the team down the middle and for six or so issues the heroes fought on different sides of the issue. This film takes the bones of that premise and carries over the “choose your side” marketing hook, playing into the vaguely political, red verses blue temperature of this year’s election cycle. The movie itself, however, isn’t nearly as divisive or as politically minded as even the comic presented said dispute and instead settles into the usual action blockbuster, good guy/ bad guy stuff that easier to tell and, of course, easier to sell.

After the Avengers botched a rescue mission in Africa and one of their own, Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), is held responsible for the failure to psychically contain an explosion, the U.S government presents the group with a new global initiative to have every member contracted with the government. Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) sees the Sokkovia Accords as a possible hindrance to the team’s overall effectiveness and rightfully doesn’t want to The Avengers or any other super-team become militarized. Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) feels guilty about the mass destruction involved in taking down aliens, gods and sentient robots and agrees that it’s better for the team to play ball. They fight. And hey, Marvel has the rights to Spider-Man now, so he fights too.

Joe and Anthony Russo, the same team who brought us the considerably better “Captain America: Winter Soldier,” presents superhero material with a certain amount of gravitas and grit that lacks in most of the other Marvel films. Through the first half of the movie, while they set up their chess pieces on their narrative board, the seeds of an interesting and emotionally satisfying political-ish thriller are promised. Bucky Barns/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) may or may not have turned back to the dark side, T’Challa/Black Panther is looking for retribution after losing his father during the movie’s inciting incident, and the other team members, such as Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Vision (Paul Bettany) all have interesting and compelling reasons for choosing the sides they fight for. That’s why it’s all the more deflating when the movie forgets to pay off or conclude any of the previous threads of this grounded Boun-esque thriller and slides comfortably into blockbuster auto-pilot for the final third, when the Russos grab their action figures and clack them together in a big, silly fight. Whatever resolution we do get is merely there to set up a future sequel and the battle of ideologies presented in the initial Civil War concept is somewhat easily resolved.

Reservation’s aside, before the story reveals all its cards and before the narrative tension is eased, this movie is pretty damn satisfying and is still somewhat sophisticated for the genre. As with any Avengers team-up flick—and make no mistake, this is an Avengers film through and through— there’s a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of plates to keep spinning, and in that regard “Captain America: Civil War,” while less consistent, is substantially better than the previous Avengers adventures. The plot gives up two thirds in, and Spider-Man is shoe-horned in for pandering, fan-baiting reasons (full disclosure: I took the bait and it tastes pretty good) but it can’t be ignored that this installment contains some of Marvel’s most impactful action scenes and strongest performances yet.

Grade: B-

Originally written for The Idaho State Journal/May-2016

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Keanu review

Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele have been responsible for a smart and topical breed of socially aware comedy since their days as cast members on the now-defunct sketch comedy show Mad TV. Later, on their eponymously named Comedy Central sketch show “Key and Peele,” they were given the means and freedom to bring their ideas about race, identity, and class to the forefront, with a poignancy that elevated their knack for quotable line-delivery, over-the-top characters and impressive production values.  Now, with their first movie as a duo, “Keanu,” they’ve ported over a lot of the qualities that people expect and appreciate from their brand of humor but not without some noticeable growing-pains as they transition into feature filmmaking.

“Keanu” straddles the line between incisive satire and stoner zaniness and sometimes loses itself in the mediation of both attempts. In what’s the pretty basic framework of a plot—dorky suburban cousins have to pretend to be tough to get a kitten back from a neighboring Los Angeles gang—this premise allows for the duo to further explore their interest in themes such as racial identity, code-switching and the pressure African Americans have to perform masculinity in certain ways.  In the opening of the film we see Jordan Peele’s Rell as a sad-sack lay-about photographer who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend. Posters of famous gangster flicks such as “Heat” and “New Jack City” line his apartment walls. His cousin Clarence (Key) is an uptight corporate team builder and is currently being pressured by his wife to toughen up and break a few rules, as his carefulness is an apparent turn-off. It’s these character traits that are subverted through the film as the characters encounter a real gang leader named Cheddar (Method Man) and infiltrate his group of hard killers, taking to the streets to sling a new party drug.  

Did I also mention the movie’s MacGuffin is an adorable tabby kitten, who, at one point, wears an adorable gold chain and a tiny, adorable do-rag? The kitten is in stark contrast to the hyper-masculine world these gangsters inhabit, as well as the film’s many Jon Woo inspired shoot-outs.  These sorts juxtapositions makeup the screenplay’s comedic engine. Another version of this inversion is the George Michael soundtrack and the many jokes surrounding Clarence’s unabashed love of the famously-out-gay, pop-star of the ‘80s. In a one of the more successful comedy set-pieces, Clarence convinces his new gangster brethren that George Michael is a light-skinned thug who offed his former Wham! partner before embarking on his solo-career. This is crosscut between a downright nerve-racking scene where Rell is caught in a sleazy Hollywood hotel room where drug-deal just gone horribly wrong. This back and forth between the world of the white and the world of black and what is seen as acceptable masculinity and what as seen as weakness is at the heart of what makes this comedy mostly work. Where things fall apart is in the vagueness of the characters as they’re written.

Much of the movie only works as a premise, much like sketch. We know Clarence is a corporate dork and his wife wants him to act stronger only because we are told so in a few bits of brief dialogue before the plot quickly progresses beyond that. Likewise, Rell’s fascination with gangster movies and hard-life as a fantasy is also never explicitly defined. Because their characters are more archetypal their arcs within the story are sometimes difficult to track and the jokes often rely on easy visual gags to make up for the lack of specificity within the script. As the movie stomps through its plot the action-film parody aspect begins to swallow-up the tone, resulting in long stretches of screen time were things become more manic than funny.

While “Keanu” is a commendable effort and entertaining on a base-level, it’s overall impression is slight when stacked against its thematic goals. Key and Peele’s comedic chemistry and the film’s few comedic eccentricities help to keep things light and bouncy and the movie serves as a satisfying distraction, but I can’t help but see through to the smarter, edgier satire that’s begging to break through.    

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2016

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Jungle Book review

Disney’s reboot/remake of their 1967 classic animated film “The Jungle Book” is a rare achievement, in that it pays lip-service to the most iconic beats of the original feature, while still finding a way of presenting the material without becoming all-together tired and superfluous. Jon Favreau, the character actor turned director of such blockbusters as Marvel’s “Iron Man” and the Christmas comedy “Elf,” has taken on the task of putting this digital IKEA piece together, working within an almost entirely animated environment and using hardly any live-action sets or actors.  This working method of course demands a lot of trust with his crew and the post-production effects team to ensure that his vision, whatever it may be, is represented accurately, and with a multi-million-dollar budget and a small army collaborating to make it work, any number of things can snag on the process. Luckily, things seem to have gone well enough here to bring what is essentially a safe and non-offensive retelling of a slightly better movie.

Neel Sethi gives the only live performance as Mowgli, an orphaned human child who was saved at birth by a black panther named Bagheera (Ben Kingsley). The cat then leaves the boy with a pack of wolves to raise as one of their own cubs, which upsets a tyrannical Tiger names Shere Kahn (Idris Elba) who fears the child might serve as a danger to the Jungle and its current political landscape. It becomes apparent that Mowgli is drawing too much unwanted attention to the pack from Kahn and he offers to leave the forest to be with his own kind in a nearby village. On the way, he is separated from his panther chaperone and falls into the easy life with a lazy bear named Baloo (Bill Murray), nearly escapes a slithering soothsayer named Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) and is trapped by a massive orangutan mobster named King Loui (Christopher Walken).  

There aren’t enough risks taken with this project to be proud of its sustainability as a story, but there’s just enough love and passion put into the production effort to accept its purely corporate purpose for existing. The animal animation is convincing and the CGI jungle environments are beautifully rendered. The team involved did a wonderful job creating a digitally sculpted world that has weight and tactility and Sethi is able to interact with it seamlessly. The celebrity voice cast is given updated dialogue to work with and they all fit their parts well. Murray’s Baloo is warm and inviting and Elba’s Kahn is genuinely intimidating—in an age appropriate, Disney sort of way.

The plot is familiar but it’s comfortable in its own skin and moves naturally. Though largely inspired by the 60s animated feature, the few divergences it takes seem to be cued directly from Disney’s other jungle adventure, The Lion King, and the two stories share enough structural similarities to mix without complications. Sometimes the movie is confused as to whether or not it should include the iconic musical sequences of its predecessor, and most of the it doesn’t, which only makes it all the more awkward when a song or two is attempted without the musical foundation to lay them on. Outside of that hang-up “The Jungle Book” plays like a good time a community theater production of your favorite play – it’s doesn’t have the zest or originality of its reference point, but it’s an acceptable and faithful recreation.

Grade - B- 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

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Midnight Special review

Jeff Nichols is a filmmaker whose work often reflects the lives of working class Middle-Americans. He’s also interested in contrasting the realistic, and often hard world of U.S. laborers within the genre trappings of their own populist cinema. In the case of “Midnight Special,” a title that suggest a certain type of boilerplate, pulp storytelling, Nichols has captured the uncanny sense of otherworldly danger and childlike wonder that Amblin-era Steven Spielberg branded in the late 1970s and early 80s, but does so while retaining his own sense of minimalist thriller direction.

The film begins with Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton as two men who’re armed and on the run from the police with a child named Alton (Jaiden Leiberher), who’s stowed away in the back of their pickup, reading comic books with a flashlight under a sheet. Shannon plays the boy’s biological father who has captured Alton from an unusual foster home situation, ran by a religious zealot/cult-leader who believes the child in question is part of a holy prophecy. This might not the most outrageous theory, as the government has their own interests in Alton because his psychic ramblings have been linked to important U.S. intelligence, making him and his father suspects of treason. Shannon believes that that they have to take Alton to a set mysterious coordinates before the boy’s strange, and dangerous abilities weaken him to point of certain death.

Like Spielberg’s 1977 classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”—of which, alongside “E.T.”, this owes much of its structure and aesthetic—Nichols’ allows this science-fiction thriller to reveal itself slowly, working from its realistic exterior to its fantastic core as the story blossoms, uncovering more popcorn-bait with every piece of new information the script lays out. The stakes are immediately apparent which drives the story forward. A seductively dark sense of mystery shrouds the picture, taking place on the deserted desert roads of twilight Texas. Though Nichols’ employs more special-effects here than in his previous films, they are used sparingly and usually to good effect. In one scene we are shown what looks to be meteorites falling from the sky, first as small twinkling lights in the distance and then huge fireballs that violently and convincingly annihilates the rural gas station our characters are stopped at. We later find out this was a satellite that Alton managed to telekinetically crash through our atmosphere.

Scenes like this are captivating in an uneasy way and provides gravitas to the movie’s pulpier elements. That’s why it’s all the more disappointing when the director shows us too much his hand and robs us of the film’s mounting tension by delving further into its sci-fi world-building, with an ending that registers far sillier than the concealed intrigue teased before that point.

Despite its clanging and on-the-nose conclusion “Midnight Special” is a compelling dark fantasy, full of eerie set-ups, an economically written screenplay and a host of great performances, including Adam Driver as a curious NSA agent who’s in over his head. Nichols again proves himself to be an exciting talent who fully understands the unconscious effect classic Hollywood genre filmmaking has had on lives of rural America.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

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Everybody Wants Some review

Director Richard Linklater has never been known as a plot-driving storyteller. His movies generally focus on his characters and the conversations they have on camera. The settings and time also play a big part in informing these conversations, which, in the case of “Before Sunrise,” “Slacker” and even last year’s Oscar-nominated “Boyhood,” tend to highlight the natural cadence of the mundane, the comic and the self-gratifying ah-ha moments of armchair philosophy. His latest comedy “Everybody Wants Some” reunites Linklater with one of his favorite age-groups, the recently enlightened college student, as he explores the dreams and desires of a group of baseball players who’re meeting each other for the first time.

Based loosely on the director’s own life-experience, the film takes place at the Texas university in 1980, the weekend before class is set to begin for our characters. Blake Jenner plays our point of view Jake, a confident freshman who has to learn quickly what the masculine hierarchy is within the off-campus house he and his fellow ball-players will spend the semester. There he meets a diverse range of All-American, corn-fed athletes that include McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin), the hot-headed rooster of the house, Finnegan (Glenn Powell), the wise-cracker who has a theory about everything, and Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), the stoner shaman who seems wise beyond his years. Jake has to carve out his own role and function within the long-standing traditions of this established group while they go out, dance the disco, and crash theater parties, looking to meet chicks and get loaded.

This has been marketed as Linklater’s ‘spiritual sequel’ to his 1993 cult-comedy “Dazed and Confused,” and because of the retro period, because it’s ensemble piece featuring a young, mostly unknown cast and because of the lackadaisical way the director decides to structure the events of the story, it’s a comfortable comparison to make. Of course the classic rock and roll soundtrack and the many scenes of peer-group hazing also helps. After the end of high school exhalation of Dazed, this film picks up with the sense of self-discovery and freedom that comes with the early college experience. Keep in mind, these guys were all the favored jocks of their High Schools, so the coming of age portrayed here is paved for more of a successful transition than many leaving home for the first time.

The stakes are low and the drama isn’t immediately apparent, but the film hints at a broader message about defining yourself as an independent person. Jake’s peer group is like-minded and single-minded when it comes to their tireless search for alcohol and sexual conquest, but underneath all the party-time Linklater exposes a coded form of existential subtext about going your own way and the seeds of individuality that are planted by the happenstance moments of our lives. Jakes budding relationship with a theater geek named Beverly (Zoey Deutch) explicates this theme as her art world contrasts with that the house’s beer-soaked, competitive masculinity. I probably would have liked to see a bit more between these actors than we got, as Deutch is the only substantive female role in the picture, but its minor inclusion is saved for significant narrative impact.

Though the film is never begging to be loved and Linklater’s natural comedy breathes far more than then what we’re used to these days, there’s a lot to appreciate about “Everybody Wants Some.” It’s an entertaining hang-out flick full of great performances and memorable characters. The period sets and consume are varied and authentic and the movie both pokes fun at the era while portraying it with warm nostalgia. I find myself wanting more as the film only hints at its most compelling beats before drifting off into yet another scene of “Animal House” styled debauchery, but after I found locked in step with the movie’s rhythm I became fully immersed in this virile jock world and was curious to see where these guys would end up by the end of the school year.  

Grade: B 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

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The Bronze review

The earnestness of the traditional sports drama has always been ripe for parody. The clichés of the genre (aspiring youngster, grumpy coach, training montage, mean rival, final showdown) are so well ingrained in our cultural consciousness that it provides a perfect structure to hang some jokes on. “The Bronze,” written by and starring Melissa Rauch of “The Big Bang Theory,” is a filthy sports movie send-up with a committed central performance and a lot of funny ideas. This dark comedy aspires to the small-town satire of films like “Waiting for Guffman” and the subversive shock of films like Alexander Payne’s “Election” but the Rauch’s natural humor is too often tampered by director Bryan Buckley’s mismatched, somber tone.

The film is set in everyone-known-everyone Amherst Ohio, where former Olympic gymnast Hope Greggory (Rauch) struts as the town’s queen bee. Even though she was only able to compete once before injuring herself and taking home a bronze metal and a broken ankle, she still’s able to get away with treating everyone like dirt while getting a free slice of pizza from her local mall’s Sbarro. Though Hope seems to lack ambition and has become bitterly beholden to her faded glory days, she is thrown back into coaching a new young athlete named Maggie (Haley Lu Richardson) when she learns that her former coach has passed away and will only release her 500,000 inheritance when and if she can make Maggie a star.

The movie hinges on Rauch’s performance and seeing as she co-wrote the part for herself, she convincingly transforms into this hilariously pathetic, monster of a human being and her raunchy, profanity-laden dialogue, delivered in a thick Midwestern accent, never fails to shock or earn a chuckle. Side performances by Thomas Middleditch as Rauch’s twitchy assistant and Gary Cole as her put-upon mailman father serve to balance Hope’s unrelenting contemptibility and gives the audience a comfortable way into her world.

This comedy contains many quotable lines laced throughout the screenplay and like the film’s tonal reference points, such as “Heathers” and the aforementioned “Election,” the movie revels in its un-PC meanness.  It’s a shame then that two thirds into the story, the film loses its nerve and slides comfortably back into the inspiring sports movie framework, undercutting the subversive edge of its unsympathetic main character.

Director Bryan Buckley lets too many scenes fall flat with simple, hand-held camera techniques and a distractingly mournful piano score that suggest a Sundance seriousness that the movie never really fulfills—nor needs to fulfill. Despite the smaller budget and the specificity of its topic and location, at its heart this is an absurdist comedy with an oafish lead character, not unlike the average Will Ferrell vehicle, and it should have been pitched just as broadly. The choice to present the material with an indie-friendly, dramedy aesthetic is more often than not a huge disservice to the final product.

 “The Bronze” may not be the instant comedy classic it wants to be and many things about its filmic execution leaves a something to be desired, but Rauch shines through as a bold comedic voice and the movie's more outrageous moments, such as a full-frontal gymnastic sex scene and the jaw-dropping opening sequence, should earn the satisfaction of some cult audiences.

Grade: B - 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

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