Movie Review ~ A Taste of Hunger

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A power couple within the Danish gourmet scene run the popular restaurant Malus in Copenhagen.  The couple is willing to sacrifice everything to achieve their dream – getting the coveted Michelin star.

Stars: Katrine Greis-Rosenthal, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Charlie Gustafsson, Dag Malmberg, Nicolas Bro, Flora Augusta, August Christian Høyer-Kruse-Vinkel

Director: Christoffer Boe

Rated: NR

Running Length: 104 minutes

TMMM Score: (8/10)

Review:  During the height of the reality TV peak (and, I’ll be honest, a good deal after), my most strict appointment television was Top Chef and its spin-offs and, in my weakest moments, the saltiest of them all, Hell’s Kitchen.  While I eventually had to chuck these weekly commitments due to not being able to keep up with so many, I always appreciate these types of competition shows that were more about output than social popularity.  It didn’t matter how much of a terrible human being you were; if you made a good appetizer that week, you would outlast the nice guy who overbaked the fish course.  As with all reality television, one could easily spot the formula that went into casting these shows and filming and editing them, so they became predictable to plot out at a certain point, and just the same comfort food television as sitcoms are to us ‘80s babies.  Formulas aside, I also got to the point where I couldn’t stand the egos of the featured chefs.  While the tantrums made for good TV, they didn’t do much to show viewers that these were people who deserved substantial cash rewards for their outbursts of rage.

Since these shows have premiered, movies about the culinary industry have taken that celebrity chef character and either made them the villain or the misunderstood mensch on a redemptive arc, to varying degrees of success.  Boiling Point recently used a one-take approach that managed to rise above the gimmick to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at a dinner service that goes wildly off the rails.  Looking over the plot details, I was half expecting the new Dutch film A Taste of Hunger to provide the same experience as similar films that have come before and not much more.  Admittedly, early on, I was nervous that Christoffer Boe’s drama would remain stuck on a low boil, what with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s rising star chef berating an employee in front of the rest of the staff.  Was there ever going to be a movie about the high-pressure restaurant scene that didn’t have a scene like this, or is it de rigueur by now?  Ah…but I just had to get through that first course because Boe was about to serve up a surprisingly compelling and infinitely more satisfying feast.

Told in chapters divided by the combination of elements that go into the conception of the perfect dish, A Taste of Hunger is intrinsically the love story of Carsten (Coster-Waldau, The Silencing) and Maggi (Greis-Rosenthal), the co-owners of Malus, a new gourmet restaurant in Copenhagen.  Hoping to create a signature dish so enticing the experience will earn them a coveted Michelin star, gaining that seal of approval would guarantee a level of success and a future both desire.  Through the flashbacks, Boe chronicles how they first meet during a failed catering event Carsten is responsible for and how Maggi turns the awkward situation into a valuable springboard to his reaching for a higher goal.  This bond establishes power dynamics in the relationship, continuing throughout the film, with Maggi being the driving force behind many big plays. 

Maggi’s determination for Carsten to succeed is the focus of much of the present storytelling in between the flashbacks, and it exposes the weaker parts of an otherwise strong film.  Though detailing the surprising number of sacrifices made to get them where they are makes for captivating viewing, the relentless drive for achievement makes some of the events in the final half-hour (which I won’t reveal) a bit frustrating to navigate.  It’s precisely when the film starts to feel more dictated by norms of moviemaking than real life and when Boe’s characters begin to act like creations instead of humans. 

Not that Greis-Rosenthal or Coster-Waldau can be faulted too much for that questionable ingredient in A Taste of Hunger because both give the kind of chemistry-driven performances (alone and together) that Hollywood can only dream of capturing on film.  Coster-Waldau has always been a “is that Sean Bean?” actor to me, never breaking as big as he likely should have, yet he’s so good in everything he does it’s a wonder he hasn’t graduated to higher-profile roles.  As good as Coster-Waldau is, this is Greis-Rosenthal’s movie, and she’s excellent in a tricky role that requires her to be determined in a way we can relate to but not judge her for it when she takes it a step too far.  There’s a fine line to playing a part in managing scruples like this, especially for a woman, but Greis-Rosenthal finds a way to the heart of it without coming off as apologetic.  Plus, there’s an electric spark between her and Coster-Waldau that is hard to deny; they feel well-matched and believable as this type of power couple. 

Boe fills out his supporting cast with long-time collaborator Nicolas Bro (Riders of Justice) as Carsten’s brother, who holds little faith at the outset his sibling has the discipline to make it in the demanding world of culinary arts. Charlie Gustafsson is also strong as a disciple chef of Carsten’s, who grows up to be a rival for Maggi’s affections.  Coming in late in the game to steal some scenes is Flora Augusta as Maggi and Carsten’s observant daughter, inadvertently impacting the lives of them all when she involves herself in part of the lives of her parents she doesn’t fully understand.  Augusta is asked to play some heavy scenes but does it with extraordinary grace, never let down by Boe or her costars.

A Taste of Hunger is a well-done and effective film that I liked a great deal, and quite different than I thought it would be.  It helped that I went in without any knowledge or expectation, and you should do the same.  My advice would be the skip the trailer entirely because watching it after the fact sadly gives away multiple plot details that I would think the filmmakers would want to keep under wraps and let the audience be surprised.  Once you watch the preview, you already know where things are headed, and that will certainly lessen the impact of Boe’s film and the intense work being done by Greis-Rosenthal and Coster-Waldau. 

Movie Review ~ Clean

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Tormented by a past life, garbage man Clean attempts a life of quiet redemption. But when his good intentions mark him as a target of local crime boss, Clean is forced to reconcile with the violence of his past.

Stars: Adrien Brody, Glenn Fleshler, Mykelti Williamson, RZA, John Bianco, Michelle Wilson, Richie Merritt, Chandler Ari DuPont

Director: Paul Solet

Rated: NR

Running Length: 94 minutes

TMMM Score: (3/10)

Review:  For a while, it seemed that after winning an Oscar for Best Actress, women who tucked the award away on their mantle would suffer from some curse for some time after. Their following projects would tank, and they would struggle to regain the credibility that an Academy Award would bring them. For recent examples, I’d offer you Halle Berry as Exhibit A, and Hilary Swank as Exhibit B.  Swank even had to go back and win a second Oscar to get things back in order, only to return to making lesser-than efforts. My point to all of this is that no one seems to look at the Best Actor winners, many of whom walked the same path but, unsurprisingly, aren’t held to that same standard.

For the review of Clean, let’s look at Adrien Brody. To some, his win for The Pianist in 2002 came as a surprise, but one need only watch the film to know why Brody easily bested his competition that year. Since that time, Brody hasn’t exactly set the box office on fire and often plays third or fourth banana in ensemble projects (like 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel) or even takes the backseat entirely to special effects bonanzas (as in Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong). Still, it’s not like Brody doesn’t seem aware of that. It’s probably why he’s generating his own work and curating projects that speak to him. However, if Clean is what he’s leaning toward, I’d rather see him in an update of 1986’s King Kong Lives.

Serving as the producer, co-writer, composer (!), and star, Clean is Brody’s take on the gritty dramas made famous in the ‘70s by unlikely stars such as Charles Bronson and his Death Wish series. The familiar tale of a man with a past (or, better yet, no past) who becomes the beacon of hope for a person (or family, or neighborhood, or city) in danger from violent thugs is well-worn enough to be threadbare but it isn’t without its merit and charm. When done right. There’s something kind of dirty about the entirety of Clean, which tends to have a grime that rubs off like a grease and makes it hard to wipe away when the film concludes. Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad effect, per se, for a film to have on an audience. Still, I couldn’t get over feeling like director/co-writer Paul Solet (Tales of Halloween) and Brody’s persistent focus on the deep dark made any grasp at redemptive light nearly impossible to see.

Loner garbage man Clean (Brody) quietly works the night shift hauling away trash from decaying neighborhoods in a city that offers him little comfort. Plagued with nightmares from a horrific trauma he’ll never get over, he tries to distance himself from emotion by staying busy with work and repairing small appliances he finds on his route. With no family of his own, teen Diandra (Chandler DuPoint) is someone he can be a pseudo-father figure to, even if her mother Ethel (Michelle Wilson, Premature) has suspicions about the overly kind man that says he’s just watching out for her child. The enormity of violence and gangs creeping into the streets where Clean and Diandra live require constantly staying alert, and when Diandra begins to fall in with the wrong crowd (almost out of necessity for survival) and Clean intercedes, it puts him and those he wants to protect in the path of Michael, a most dangerous criminal.

Usually, the villain of a movie like this gets a scene here or there to illustrate the extent of their wickedness, and Solet/Brody don’t skimp on opportunities to show just how evil and manipulative Michael (Glenn Fleshler, Joker) is. He runs two long-standing family businesses in tandem. One is fish, the other foul (drugs), and recently paroled son Mikey (Richie Merritt) wants nothing to do with either one of them. The discord between father and son is another familiar device used to create a tension that boils over and leads to their paths crossing with Clean and the bloody repercussions of their actions.

As is often the case with these types of genre-specific films, the payoff for wading through some thick yuck in abhorrent violence by the bad guys in the first two acts of the movie is the reward of watching the good guys (and gals) take them down with extreme prejudice in the final salvo. The problem with Clean is that by the time we arrive at Brody strapping himself into tactical gear and literally pulling out the big guns, none of the “good” characters have won us over to give us reason to actively root for them. Sure, they’re far better than the vile alternative (Fleshler and specifically Merritt make it way too easy for you to want them exterminated), but we’re so little invested in the characters that Clean could have ended in multiple ways, and it wouldn’t have made much difference.

Movie Review ~ Sundown (2022)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Neil and Alice Bennett are the core of a wealthy family on vacation in Mexico until a distant emergency cuts their trip short. When one relative disrupts the family’s tight-knit order, simmering tensions rise to the fore.

Stars: Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan, Samuel Bottomley

Director: Michel Franco

Rated: R

Running Length: 83 minutes

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review:  Perhaps it was the subzero temperatures plaguing the Midwest these past weeks, but the opening moments of the curiously hard to classify new film Sundown truly worked some magic spell on me. A family is on vacation in some unnamed tropical locale (later learned to be Acapulco) and not doing much of anything save for moving from one high-end deck chair near their private pool to another on the beach close to the ocean. Their luxury resort staff brings them drinks to sip, but they don’t seem to be savoring anything. It looks to the viewer that this is less a vacation and more of an obligation; what some of us would consider a significant expense is simply another posh stay in paradise.

It’s the quiet prelude to director Michel Franco’s introduction of the Bennett’s. They’re the ultra-rich barons of an empire built on an industry that deals in converting flesh to food, which explains why world-weary Neil (Tim Roth, The Hateful Eight) gradually starts seeing more hogs haunting him as the film progresses. It’s one of the very few insights I can offer you at the outset because Franco has constructed his story to be a puzzle with pieces that can fit together in many ways and I’m not about to tell you where to begin. As you may imagine, that approach can really start to provoke a frustrating response while you’re there in the moment and involved with these brittle characters for 75-ish minutes.

The Acapulco tranquility doesn’t last long, and soon Alice Bennett (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Samba) has boarded a plane with children Colin (Samuel Bottomley, Get Duked!) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan), and Neil stays behind to find his passport. Of course, Neil knows precisely where his passport is, but he’s taken this opportunity to break free of his family and take his type of vacation. Ditching the five-star service of his accommodations for an oceanside tourist trap, he takes up with a local woman (Iazua Larios, Apocalypto) and finds himself in the company of a group who show him a different side of his destination, one with unexpected dangers and lasting repercussions in his family.

I spent a good half of the film thinking it was a story heading in one direction, only to realize that it’s the opposite with one slight adjustment in information from Franco. Reframing a movie as aloof as Sundown when you’re nearly 2/3 of the way through requires some moxie. Still, Franco, Roth, and especially Gainsbourg (always interesting, always game to play) use that surge of energy via a quite breathtaking and breathless bit of filmmaking to propel the film into its final act. Sadly, I think the movie winds up losing its forward momentum again by the time it concludes. However, that it gets so close to the finish line without evaporating under its oppressive heft of Purpose (yes, that’s with a capital “P”) speaks volumes to its performances more than anything. 

Movie Review ~ The King’s Daughter

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The Facts:

Synopsis: King Louis XIV’s quest for immortality leads him to capture and steal a mermaid’s life force, a move that is further complicated by his illegitimate daughter’s discovery of the creature.

Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Kaya Scodelario, Benjamin Walker, Rachel Griffiths, Fan Bingbing, William Hurt, Julie Andrews, Pablo Schreiber, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Crystal Clarke

Director: Sean McNamara

Rated: PG

Running Length: 97 minutes

TMMM Score: (4.5/10)

Review: It’s always a question for me of how much I want to research a movie I’m reviewing before I screen in because once you’ve learned a factoid or read about some behind-the-scenes drama, you can’t unknow it. I’ve been good lately at going in sight unseen to most of the films I’m fortunate enough to see, and that was the case with The King’s Daughter – which turned out to be a perfect thing. Only after it ended, and I began to get this write-up pulled together, did I start to find out more about just how old the movie was and the troubled traveling it had to do to be released at all. In some ways, it helps explain a few of the fantasy flick’s more…unique quirks. Still, in others, it just confirms that perhaps, like the well-worn, gilded storybook that opens at the beginning of the film for an Oscar-winner to narrate, this may have sat on the shelf too long and expired before audiences could enjoy it.

Based on The Moon and the Sun, a 1997 novel by Vonda N McIntyre, the film was completed way back in 2014, almost a decade ago now, and has been bounced around release schedules and studios ever since. Featuring a not-unimpressive cast filming on location at the Palace of Versailles and Australia and eventually re-titled The King’s Daughter, director Sean McNamara has managed to direct a whopping twelve movies since wrapping the picture. Heck, it wasn’t until mid-June 2020 that Julie Andrews (Aquaman) was announced as the film’s narrator, hinting it was more than just completion of the special effects that delayed the movie all this time. Once you see the finished film, the end product of much-suspected tinkering and long hours of labor in the editing bay, you’ll agree.

It’s hard to argue with any entertainment that opens with Andrews’s melodic voice narrating the history of the cast of characters populating our story. While it sounds like Andrews may have recorded this during a lunch break from recording her audiobook, her brief presence gives the film the necessary opening energy to help it start on the right foot. Pretty soon, the tale of a vain King (Pierce Brosnan, Cinderella) injured in battle who approves his physician (Pablo Schrieber, The Devil Has a Name) to locate a mermaid from Atlantis and perform an ancient ceremony, involving vivisection of the mythical creature, gets dragged down by overdramatic performances and bewildering thematic tone shifts. Added into the mix is the King’s illegitimate daughter (Kaya Scodelario, Crawl), who has been brought to court but not told who her father is. Wouldn’t you know, she finds a friend in the mermaid and doesn’t like it when the King she’s grown to respect turns out to be less than noble when it comes to her new fishy pal.

Halfway through the movie, I was in deep despair because the acting was all over the map, and some terrific actors were delivering (more like hurling at the screen) performances that make you wonder if the job was taken as broad acting experience more than anything. Even the usually dry William Hurt (Winter’s Tale), as a priest and confidant to the raucous King, comes off as downright boisterous. It was at the middle mark when I realized that The King’s Daughter wasn’t for most audiences at all; it was for younger kids wanting to bridge the gap between animated films and more mature PG-13 content. Arriving in safe PG territory, the movie is ‘just so’ about everything, with nothing too extreme (aside from the overly zealous performances and Brosnan’s unruly wig), so parents could easily treat this one as a special event for their growing youngster. 

Aside from that, I’m not sure how many adults would go for this often ludicrous fantasy which is filmed and costumed to look like an Estée Lauder ad from 1996. Nothing about it seems quite fitting, much less the way the elite would have been adorned at court in Versailles. We all know the palace in France was the place to see and be seen, but the attire on display here is a trivial interpretation that often comes off as laughable. Take Scodelario’s big reveal dress, for instance. She’s meant to be wearing a gorgeous gown everyone is drooling over, but it looks like a frock you’d find the night before prom…and don’t even get me started on the shoes. Thankfully, Scodelario is acting the hell out of the role and bringing alone husband Benjamin Walker (The Choice, a dead-ringer for Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace). The chemistry they have is, understandably, believable. Though the effects often hide her, Fan Bingbing (The 355) manages to get some emotion through as the mermaid everyone is out to either save or, gulp, eat.

I’m sure many people involved with The King’s Daughter are just glad it’s finally surfacing after all this time. Fans of the book may not be thrilled because it sounds like the film diverts quite significantly from the original text, but the adaptation from Barry Berman and James Schamus makes it far more family-friendly. That’s what this one is targeted to and should be marketed for, anyway. If you meet the demographic that would enjoy this sometimes sloppy, often soggy fairytale, then I would say giving it a shot might be worth your time. Swim right by if the material doesn’t speak to you from the advertising alone. There’s plenty of fish in the sea.

Movie Review ~ Parallel Mothers

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, middle-aged, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

Stars: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Rossy de Palma, Julieta Serrano

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Rated: R

Running Length: 123 minutes

TMMM Score: (9/10)

Review: In film history, there have been fine examples of actors and filmmakers who have become known for their strong working relationships with a particular actor. Scorcese and DeNiro (and DiCaprio), Allen and Keaton, Tarantino and Jackson, Hitchcock and Grant, Kurosawa and Mifune. All-stars and their directors with at least one film are mentioned in boldface whenever their bio is listed. After working on seven films together since 1997, you’d have to add Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar to that list as well. With the release of Parallel Mothers, the deck is reshuffled as to which project you’d put into the top position as the crown jewel of their working relationship. 

It all started with Live Flesh precisely 25 years ago, the same year she appeared in Abre los ojos, remade four years later as Vanilla Sky, where she’d recreate her work and begin her relationship with Tom Cruise. It was followed in 2002 by Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning All About My Mother before they re-teamed for Cruz’s first brush with an Oscar nomination in 2006’s Volver.

Several more films have been together, even after Cruz took home the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2008 for Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona. Still, while Almodóvar has always given the star some choice roles, it’s been a minute since she’s carried the film almost entirely on her own. After making his most personal film to date with 2019’s Pain and Glory and featuring Cruz as a proxy for his mother, Almodóvar is back with a vehicle tailor-made for the terrific talents of his international star. It’s taken me a while to completely hop on the Cruz train, stopping several times over the years to hop off and reconsider my travel plans, but with Parallel Mothers, I’m ready to jump on for the complete voyage. Representing the very best of what Cruz and Almodóvar do well both separately and together, this melodrama from Spain snags you right the start with a breathtaking image. It leaves you with another that will haunt you long after it ends.

That first shot is of Janis (Cruz, Murder on the Orient Express), a sought-after photographer in the middle of a shoot with, of all things, an equally famous archaeologist (Israel Elejalde). The obvious sparks are flying between the two. The chemistry on display eventually leads initially to Janis asking Arturo if he’d be willing to help her with a project close to her heart, that of finding answers to the mass burial of her relatives and others from her home village during the Spanish Civil War. Perhaps not the most romantic of propositions, but it leads to Janis becoming pregnant and finding herself a likely single mother giving birth alone and staying in the same hospital room as Ana (Milena Smit, Cross the Line), a teenager staring down her own unique set of entanglements. As the two women give birth almost simultaneously, they lean on each other for support, promise to keep in touch, then go their separate ways.

To say what happens next would maybe reveal a bit more than Almodóvar would like you to know going in. And really, it’s best to know as little as you possibly can because while I wouldn’t exactly describe the plot of Parallel Mothers as serpentine, it twists in on itself just when you think you’ve gotten comfortable. Plot developments allow Cruz and Smit to explore intriguing areas of what it means to be a mother and the striking questions when the unpredictability of life and human behavior get in the way of best-laid plans. The through-line of the piece is always the advocacy Cruz undertakes for the sake of honoring the memory of her grandfather and men of his village, and Almodóvar has put that political slant into this piece to call out the atrocities of war buried over time. The women were left to pick up the fragments of lives/love left behind, and as Almodóvar shows through images both easily explained and up for interpretation (like that aforementioned last shot) the toll this took over time.

Many actresses (and actors) in Hollywood will watch Parallel Mothers and wish all directors would turn a lens on them as Almodóvar does for Cruz. Capturing her impossible beauty is one thing, but allowing her charm and character flaws to come through is a bold choice, and it only makes the character more deeply felt and realistic. The film trades on some melodrama in style and overall tone around the middle section, but it’s a rhythm only someone that’s worked with Almodóvar could balance so evenly, and Cruz nails it. I think it’s the best performance by an actress of 2021 without question and indeed a kind of apex of Cruz’s career up until now. She’s matched nicely with the intriguing Smit, vulnerable at the outset only to return later as a creation more maturely mysterious. As usual, in addition to having fantastic taste in the look of his production design and costuming, Almodóvar brings in a dynamic supporting cast. As Ana’s mother dreams of stage stardom, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón gives the audience a third category of a mother who views the role quite differently than the Cruz or Smit characters do. Then there’s Almodóvar favorite Rossy de Palma, not quite as vibrant as she has been in past films but contributing the same strength to each scene.

At this point, it’s still up in the air if Parallel Mothers will play well enough to land Cruz an Oscar nomination this year. I think if she gets in, she’s winning it (though Nicole Kidman in Being the Ricardos is closing in on a lock) but being left out of a few key races doesn’t look promising. Here’s hoping she’s recognized for this shattering work and that Almodóvar gets a spotlight shoutout somewhere along the way as well. The movies he makes, even a short one like 2020’s The Human Voice, are so far above the norm; they should be more of an event when they arrive.

Movie Review ~ Hotel Transylvania: Transformania

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The Facts:

Synopsis: When Van Helsing’s mysterious invention, the “Monsterfication Ray,” goes haywire, Drac and his monster pals are all transformed into humans, and Johnny becomes a monster.

Stars: Brian Hull, Jim Gaffigan, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Fran Drescher, Brad Abrell, Asher Blinkoff

Director: Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska

Rated: PG

Running Length: 88 minutes

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review:  Now that we’re in the second decade of this site, I find that I’ve had more opportunities to go back and revisit some of the reviews I did in that first year and aside from noticing that my love for run-on sentences hasn’t changed, I’ve also seen that my taste in specific genres has.  Maybe it was the younger me that wasn’t quite as hard to entertain but back then I derived a lot more thrill from an upcoming animated release, especially one that spoke to my style of dark humor.  That’s why I developed such a fondness for darker kids fare like Coraline and ParaNorman (still do) and also why each time a new Hotel Transylvania film was released I was eager to book a stay.  If anything was going to resurrect nostalgia that had been buried up to its neck by dreck, this was the franchise to do it.

The first Hotel Transylvania in 2012 was a dynamic, if not overly inspired, PG comedy that brought together a number of famous monster characters and made them family friendly.  Dracula was now a single-dad running a hotel catering only to creature clientele with his friends Frankenstein, the Wolf Man (Steve Buscemi, The Dead Don’t Die), the Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key, Tomorrowland), and the Invisible Man (David Spade, Tommy Boy) also pitching in.  When Dracula’s daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez, Dolittle) falls in love with human Johnny (Andy Samberg, Palm Springs), who waltzes in not knowing that his kind is not so much catered to as served by the caterer, it forces Dracula to reevaluate his protection of his daughter.  The 2015 sequel branched out the story nicely by including the in-laws, Johnny’s parents and Dracula’s dad, both of whom come into play after the birth of Dracula’s first grandson.  I didn’t do a formal review of the last film from 2018 but the colorful vacation cruise storyline gave Dracula his own love interest in the form of a Van Helsing relative.

For the opening of the fourth chapter, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, the Hotel has gone through some renovations and like the Holiday Inn near my grandparent’s house that removed the jacuzzi between our Thanksgiving and Christmas stay in 1991, it hasn’t been for the better.  Gone are original voices of Dracula and Frankenstein, Adam Sandler and Kevin James, replaced with Brian Hull and Brad Abrell (only Hull makes an attempt to recreate Sandler’s sound) and Genndy Tartakovsky, the director who spearheaded the previous three entries is only credited with the story on this stay.  New directors Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska come from the land of SpongeBob SquarePants, a factoid I read up on after the movie concluded but which makes total sense when you consider how the story develops and the strangely bright tone it takes.  Not only is it the weakest entry, wisely skipping a theatrical release and heading straight for a debut on Amazon Prime, it feels far removed from the trilogy it is following.  If this is the direction the Hotel Transylvania industry is headed, I think I’ll look for a different place to visit in the future.

On the eve of Hotel Transylvania’s 125th birthday, Dracula is planning to retire with wife Ericka Van Helsing (Kathryn Hahn, Bad Moms), leaving the business to his daughter and her husband.  During a conversation with the free-spirited Johnny, Dracula balks after hearing his planned ‘improvements’ to the hotel and instead tells him it’s impossible to give the hotel to a non-monster, causing a despondent Johnny to turn to wacky Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan, Them That Follow) for help.  It just so happens the mad scientist has a tool that can change humans into monsters…and vice versa.  Using the “Monsterfication Ray”, the goofy Johnny is transformed into an equally goofy dragon. When Dracula finds out what he innocently misled Johnny to do and then accidently changes himself into an ordinary human, breaking the ray in the process, the two will need to work together and travel across the globe for a solution…before their wives find out.

Generally, unless you’re working with an exemplary example of skilled writing and creative storytelling, an animated film can start to feel stale after it’s introduced the characters and settled into finding the way toward a happy ending.  Almost from the start, Transformania gets gummy and can’t shake some sense of exhaustion.  It doesn’t help that taking Dracula and Johnny out of their environment and putting them into a South American one feels more like it’s a comfort to its directors than the core audience and fans of the series.  The most exciting scenes remain those featuring the darker, more spooky creations of the computer animation wizards at Sony Animation Studios and there are some nice comic bits after Dracula’s friends turn themselves into humans.  Who knew Frankenstein was such a hunk? 

If you or your kids are fans of the series, by all means fire Hotel Transylvania: Transformania up on Amazon Prime and continue your adventures with the gang.  It’s worth the watch more for the B plot involving the side characters reacting to their transformation than anything going on in the A plot.  There’s just nothing new to the father/son-in-law bonding story audiences (yes, even kids) haven’t been exposed to and better through other films.  I’m sure this is a franchise that could go on longer, yet there is a sweet finality to the movie where it could end here and it would feel right.  Money will always win out…but here’s hoping the keys get turned in and the lights shut off soon. 

Movie Review ~ Shattered (2022)

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The Facts:

Synopsis: After a lonely tech millionaire encounters a charming and sexy woman, passion grows between them – and when he’s injured, she quickly steps in as his nurse. But her odd behavior makes him suspect she has more sinister intentions, especially when her roommate is found dead from mysterious causes.

Stars: Cameron Monaghan, Lilly Krug, John Malkovich, Sasha Luss, Frank Grillo

Director: Luis Prieto

Rated: NR

Running Length: 92 minutes

TMMM Score: (1/10)

Review: All we heard in the latter half of 2021 and now into 2022 was how movies were returning to normal.  It took a while for theaters to get back up to speed and while there is still a long way to go to get people to venture out to films that aren’t proven franchises (RIP West Side Story…you shoulda been a blockbuster…), the tide is turning slowly.  The at-home market feels like it’s regaining its footing at a more rapid pace. It surely is welcoming its fair share of stink-bombs at around the same volume it was before the pandemic hit. 

The latest must-miss is Shattered, another Lionsgate effort and oh, how it pains me to say it.  This is the studio that had such a great run with the Saw franchise and launched a trove of worthy indie titles back in the day (Gods and Monsters! Eve’s Bayou!).  Yet recently I’ve seen a good amount of less than impressive titles coming out through their banner.  I know they can do better, and they can certainly do far better than the dreadful Shattered which I watched on a day off over the Christmas holiday and felt like I got a lump of coal for my efforts.  Directed with some attempt at style by Luis Prieto and working from David Loughery slimy script, I actually think Shattered had the potential to be something better than it was.  It’s just that the cast assembled is so unfathomably bad.

Describing the plot of Shattered is sort of like looking at a whole shelf of mystery thrillers in the video store, starting at the top left and then randomly assembling the synopsis using snippets from each film.  There’s little originality to the set-up featuring a wealthy divorcee (Cameron Monaghan, Vampire Academy) living in a secluded home who meets a random woman (Lilly Krug, Every Breath You Take) at the grocery store, detects she may be in trouble in her current living situation, offers to take her away for the evening to avoid a strung out roommate and skeevy landlord (John Malkovich, Jennifer 8), sleeps with her, falls for her, meets up with her again, then spends the rest of the movie suffering the consequences when she turns out to be a lunatic. Loughery (who also wrote the campy 2009 thriller Obsessed starring Beyoncé, Passenger 57 featuring Wesley Snipes, and the 2020 Hilary Swank vehicle Fatale) tries to differentiate his screenplay by giving the mystery woman a backstory which comes back to haunt her (and us), but if you don’t have actors that can sell it convincingly, then what’s the point?  That leaves us to spend the next hour or so with bad actors attempting to play dramatics far beyond their reach.         

It pained me to do it, but at the end of Shattered I went back and took a look at the IMDb page for John Malkovich.  It’s here if you want to look for yourself.  There was a time when that name called forth a certain image, at least to me, of elevated acting and a commitment to the craft which meant that when his name popped up in the credits you should take note of his involvement.  Now, when I see Malkovich listed, I have to decide if I even want to bother to read the plot description or watch the trailer.  Making movies that are so far removed from titles like 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons, 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, 1999’s Being John Malkovich, or his Oscar-nominated roles in 1984’s Places in the Heart or 1993’s In the Line of Fire, it almost feels like the actor has been taken hostage and is being forced to make bottom of the barrel scuzz.

The barrel gets scraped down to the rivets with Shattered, truly the most embarrassing role of Malkovich’s celebrated career which finds the actor playing a minor role as a majorly disgusting motel owner that gets mixed up with a femme fatale and her latest target.  If you can believe it, Malkovich isn’t even the worst performance in the movie, or the second.  Those two key positions are held by stars Monaghan and Krug, as charmless a duo as you could ever want in a psycho-sexual thriller built around a seduction that turns dangerous and eventually deadly.  Monaghan is a whiny wimp that somehow has a beautiful ex-wife (Sasha Luss) and child and now has nabbed Krug’s crazeballs chick that turns the tables on him in short order. How or why Frank Grillo (Boss Level) shows up is almost beside the point, by the time the usually dependable supporting player appears when there’s a little more than thirty minutes left, viewers will either have turned the TV off or checked out to the point where they won’t even recognize another character has entered the action.

Even though Shattered is assuredly bad, I wound up giving it a pass for my Worst of 2021 list because it could have technically shown up there…and ranked high in the process.  Being a rule follower, I also couldn’t put it on my Worst of 2022 list because I didn’t actually see it this year.  So Shattered will slip through my grasp as a call-out after this review concludes…and should slip from your mind just as quickly.

Movie Review ~ The Legend of La Llorona

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The Facts:

Synopsis: While vacationing in Mexico, a couple discovers their son’s disappearance is tied to a supernatural curse.

Stars: Autumn Reeser, Antonio Cupo, Zamia Fandiño, Danny Trejo, Angélica Lara, Edgar Wuotto, Nicolas Madrazo

Director: Patricia Harris Seeley

Rated: R

Running Length: 98 minutes

TMMM Score: (1/10)

Review: When a film comes out that’s as bad as The Legend of La Llorona (and let’s not beat around the mulberry bush, this is very, very, bad), I try to look for one positive takeaway that will make the experience seem like not a complete wash.  It helps in the overall reflection when looking back at a later date and also assists in the writing of the subsequent review.  The honest truth is that I almost made it to the end of this extremely cheap horror cash-in without finding that small sliver of silver lining I could bring back to you but, thanks to Danny “I Never Say No” Trejo, I nabbed it pretty close to the end.  Are you ready? Here it is: When in doubt, you can shoot a ghost with a shotgun.  I didn’t say it was logical…just a takeaway I wasn’t aware of before the film began.

Apparently filmed in Canada as well as Mexico City where the action takes place, The Legend of La Llorona often looks like the actors are running around a botanical garden that needs a good watering instead of the dark brush where a local legend is said to be hungry for children.  An opening prologue (which oddly lists the production company credits twice) finds a brother and sister being separated from their mother in said botanical garden as they attempt to escape Mexico to the United States but are thwarted by a ghostly apparition of La Llorona, appearing first as extremely questionable CGI vapor and then as a white bedsheet dragged through a shallow body of water.  The bedsheet is pretty tangled up and dirty and from a laundry perspective, that’s terrifying.

Jumping over to numb American couple Carly and Andrew Candlewood (the name is at least one of the more creative decisions in the film) arriving in town to escape their continued grief over the recent loss of their child, they have their other son Danny in tow.  Poor young actor Nicolas Madrazo spends this opening introduction with his head halfway in a barf bag as taxi driver Trejo (Anaconda) cluelessly rambles off a list of stomach-churning local delicacies while the carsick boy upchucks loudly in the backseat.  Not that his parents are paying much attention. Carly (Autumn Reeser, Sully) can only think about the child she lost while Andrew (Antonio Cupo) just wants to know when Carly will be ready to make another baby.  Clearly, this couple needs a vacation to mend what is broken in their relationship, but they’ve chosen the wrong destination to start that process. (Once Madrazo starts acting for real you realize maybe sticking to the vomit pouch is better for him.)

Arriving at a gargantuan estate tended to by Veronica (Angélica Lara, acting circles around the rest of the cast), no one even unpacks before Danny has been lured into the back pond by the ghost of a woman that lived there long ago.  There’s a story to go along with her tragic end but why spoil Lara’s pivotal scene, the only believably conveyed dramatics in the entire picture?  Before long, Danny is missing, having been taken by La Llorona and Carly has to find the strength to take on the lady ghost if she wants her son back.  There’s several unnecessary side plots involving thugs and gangs roaming around which interfere with the core action, only padding what is already too long and too recycled a storyline.

What The Legend of La Llorona struggles with the most is an overall sense of clumsiness and an impression that no one involved, least of all director Patricia Harris Seeley, really believed in the horror film they were making.   Reeser and Cupo are veterans of Canadian-produced holiday films for Hallmark and similarly themed pictures, and it shows in the scenes where they are called to do anything other than cast misty-eyed looks at one another.  Some of the Mexican characters are painted with a broad brush, leaving Trejo to get locked and loaded with shifting allegiances that lead to his aforementioned target practice with La Llorona.  This scene is fairly hysterical because it just looks like we’re watching Trejo play a video game, every time he “hits” the “ghost” the specter gives a ghoulish grimace and disappears.  I kept expecting to see +100 appear in the sky somewhere.

Ever since the success of The Conjuring spin-off The Curse of La Llorona and then the 2019 film La Llorona from Guatemala which very nearly landed an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, cheap-o productions featuring the figure from Latin American folklore have been popping left and right.  All are aiming for the easy scare with nothing to back them up from an emotional storytelling point of view and The Legend of La Llorona is no different.  Brandishing the kind of fake-out marketing which will most likely trick a number of viewers into a watch, it’s a shame this one didn’t have more performances like Lara as the housekeeper.  It’s not a perfectly formed creation but it’s filled out with the right amount of paranoia that would accompany a town haunted by a legend that couldn’t be real…or could it?

Movie Review ~ Brazen

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A prominent mystery writer and crime expert hurries back to her family home when her sister is killed and her double life as a webcam performer is revealed, ignoring the warnings of cool-headed detective and getting involved in the case.

Stars: Alyssa Milano, Sam Page, Malachi Weir, Emilie Ullerup, Matthew Finlan, Colleen Wheeler, Lossen Chambers

Director: Monika Mitchell

Rated: NR

Running Length: 96 minutes

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review: We’re ever so slightly into January but I can’t quite shake the cozy comfort of one of my favorite seasons of the year…and it’s not Christmas.  No, it’s the cycle of holiday movies produced en masse for television by a growing number of networks and streaming services, aiming to pummel their target audiences with enough easy to digest 90-minute treats to fill a Santa-size stocking.  Like a greedy kid in a small-town candy store about to go under but saved at the last minute by a hard-working single gal from the big city, I always go a little overboard in gathering my selections each year, finding that my time is more limited than I would like to get through them all.  So, it’s around now when I start to gradually remove myself from these holiday affairs and get back to the reality of films where icicles can be used as weapons, not decorations.

Luckily, every now and then a movie like Brazen comes along and it’s a nice blending of both worlds that helps me ease my way back into the swing of things.  There’s a feeling of familiar efficiency to suggest this adaptation of a popular Nora Roberts mystery novel from 1988 was produced quickly, with experienced director Monika Mitchell (The Knight Before Christmas) casting dependable actors well-versed in the one take turnaround to guarantee deadlines are met.  It also hits the right notes in being just scandalous enough to make a younger viewer wish it went further but keep watching to see if it does and an older viewer to think it goes as far as necessary but secretly wanting just a small flash of flesh. 

Celebrated mystery writer Grace Miller is riding high on the success of her latest novel when her estranged sister (Emilie Ullerup) calls, asking that she visit.  Dropping everything and expecting to find her sister in serious trouble, she instead finds her younger sibling holding down a job as a schoolteacher at a prominent school and attempting to get her son back from her well-connected and wealthy ex.  Within days, however, her sister is found slain and her double life as a webcam model is exposed, sending Grace into a tailspin as she works with the detective living next door (Sam Page) to find the killer…a killer that continues to strike.

I was surprised to find that the novel Brazen is based off of was nearly 34 years old because it’s made it to the screen without much alteration if I’m reading the synopsis correctly.  Yes, it often comes off as a lengthier and better produced episode of a crime drama you’d see on network TV, but at the same time that’s selling short the work that Milano and Page are doing with the material.  It’s standard-fare mystery-solving, with a number of red herrings and the typical fingers pointed at the most obvious (read: slovenly or repulsively creepy) characters, but the two leads believe in the material enough that you can’t help but take them as seriously as they are taking it.  How Grace manages to make her way into the investigation is a stretch by any tinkering of plot mechanics, but the way Milano pitches it, I might have been convinced to let her take over the case as well.

For a film that largely has to do with webcam modeling, it’s quite chaste…like so many movies that take place at strip clubs where all the dancers are wearing bras and underwear.  It’s just another way the film simply wants to remain neutral.  Not aiming to upset anyone (save for the more conservative Roberts fans that bristled at the casting of the dependably outspoken Milano in a leading role), Brazen is a harmless 96-minute weeknight watch that leaves the door open for a sequel.  While I can’t find any info that Roberts herself continued this character in future novels, I’d imagine the team of writers who brought Brazen to Netflix could come up with another case to solve that would check the same boxes.  There’s a real lack of this kind of entertainment on the streaming site and if they were all made with such awareness of who they are all showing up for, why not throw some money at them and make a few more?

Movie Review ~ Scream (2022)

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Just when you thought it was safe to stop #Scream -ing…

The Facts:

Synopsis: Twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.

Stars: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Sonia Ammar, Marley Shelton, Kyle Gallner, Reggie Conquest, Chester Tam, Roger L. Jackson

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett

Rated: R

Running Length: 114 minutes

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review: “What’s your favorite scary movie?” may now be a cultural touchstone phrase forever related to the classic film Scream, but it’s always been a litmus test to see where the person being asked falls on the scale of horror fandom.  If the answer is a deep cut, something from the Italian Giallo master Dario Argento or French cult vampire director Jean Rollin, you know you’re dealing with someone that has ventured further than the confines of their neighborhood video store.  Answering with a more commercially minded offering like a Friday the 13th or a Halloween tells you you’re in the presence of a person that doesn’t mind some blood, gore, and jump scares.  Get a response from a Frankenstein fraidy-cat and you may want to reconsider suggesting anything stronger than a black and white Universal classic.

For many, the answer to the question posed by the killer to Drew Barrymore’s doomed character in 1996 is, in fact, the very movie that asked it to begin with.  Scream opened to soft business in Christmas only to grow into a word-of-mouth hit, so much so that by the time the enjoyable sequel was released in 1997 both films had the distinction of being 1997’s top earners.  Fans of the franchise are legion, and after two more sequels (one in 2000 and the last one in 2011) it has amassed a devoted base that can and have spent much time arguing over the official order of quality, though you’d be hard pressed to find a list that doesn’t put the one that started it all in the prime spot. For the record, I’m a 1, 2, 4, 3.

Though the title lived on in television under the guise of an MTV scripted series with no ties to the original cast or setting, the first two seasons attempted to tell a continuing tale before killing off much of its YA cast.  I didn’t even bother with the third, standalone season, and from what I’ve heard that was for the best.  After the success of the continuation of Halloween in 2018, it still was a surprise when it was announced in March 2020 that Radio Silence, a filmmaking collective which found success in indie horror before making a snazzy showing in 2019]’s impressive Ready or Not, would direct and executive produce a fifth Scream movie incorporating original cast members with a new group of teens stalked by a vengeance-seeking killer.  As a dedicated fan of the films and the franchise in general (not to mention a number of the previous films Radio Silence has produced), I was thrilled for another gathering of my favorite cast members and a return to the whodunit slasher film that I have a true fondness for. 

Needless to say, as we move forward into the meat of the movie, this is a spoiler-free zone.  Aside from watching the first trailer for the movie the day it was released, I haven’t watched any other marketing for the film so can’t say what may be in the previews that could be a potential spoiler…but I won’t be giving away anything that could ruin your experience.

Well…maybe one thing.  And that’s my feeling toward the finished movie.  Surprising myself, I left the theater after my screening of Scream (which, it should be strongly stated, is Scream 5, no matter how the filmmakers and studio try to spin it) sort of aghast at how much against it I felt.  The more I heard how many people did like it, the more I was wondering if I just saw something different or my tastes had changed…but this was almost directly after gleefully binge-watching the previous four films.  Delivering on the “goods” if you will (read: killings, blood, and guts) but shortchanging fans that know their Woodsboro ins and outs with a number of discrepancies and head scratching choices, the screenplay from James Vanderbilt (White House Down) and Guy Busick attempts to make connections to the past at the outset but abandons its own efforts by the messy end.  Worse, the film suffers from a strong case of the unlikeables, characters and cast members that either don’t appear long enough to create much of an impression before they’re sliced or grate on the nerves to the point where you feel like paging Ghostface stat to get on with the show.

It’s been twenty-five years since the original murder spree changed the sleepy town of Woodsboro forever.  The survivors of the attack a generation ago have encountered several copycat slayings over the subsequent years but for the last decade there has been a peaceful silence which has allowed lives to be led without much fear.  Then Tara (Jenna Ortega, Insidious: Chapter 2) gets a phone call while alone in her house and hears a voice familiar to us but unfamiliar to her.  Remember, Stab (the movie within Scream 2 based off of the events in Scream 1) came out over two decades before and its sequels have long since fizzled out.  Poor Tara should have stayed up to date on her old-school horror trivia because things don’t go well for her when quizzed on her knowledge of Stab and Woodsboro’s sordid history.

Hearing the news about her sister from a town far outside of Woodsboro, Sam (Melissa Barrera, In the Heights) returns with her boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid, Rampage) just as secrets from her family’s past and a clever killer targeting those with ties to the 1996 murder spree emerge from the shadows.  Teaming up with Tara’s friends, among them Amber (Mikey Madison, It Takes Three), twins Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sound of Violence) and Chad (Mason Gooding, Booksmart) and Wes (Dylan Minnette, Prisoners), Sam and Richie eventually realize they’ll need the help of the remaining few who’ve experienced this before if they have any hope of surviving the game plan of a killer (or killers?) always several steps ahead of them.  Enter Dewey, Gale, and Sidney.

To say the film feels lighter the moment even one of the legacy cast members is on screen is an understatement.  Originally meant to be killed off in the first film and then set to die in the sequel, original director of the first four films Wes Craven and his producing partners had such a strong reaction to David Arquette’s (You Cannot Kill David Arquette) portrayal of Deputy Dewey Riley (not to mention his popularity with fans) that they made sure to shoot endings where he lived.  And you’ll be especially glad he did because his presence in this entry is so useful, bringing not only that trademark goofiness to the role but an emotional sweetness that has always defined the role and made it unmistakably his.  Noticeably absent for much of the film are Courtney Cox (Masters of the Universe) and Neve Campbell (Skyscraper), but they’re like that time Madonna made all of us at her concert wait two hours after the opening act before she went on.  By the time she showed up, we were more than antsy but when she did…it was completely worth it.  Same goes here and not only do Cox and Campbell fit right back into their characters like no time has passed, they highlight the biggest problem with the movie for me.  The acting.

I’m not sure what’s up with this cast but I think each and every one of them I’ve seen and liked far better in other projects.  Here, it’s like no one was acting in the same movie or playing off of one another to any winning effect.  It’s never more evident than with Barrera who has some of the strangest line readings, coming off as emotionless when the scene calls for drama and often absent as strong support for those she is acting opposite. I felt for Ortega who is acting her face off, performing the role like it’s the last thing she’ll ever do.  I wish the performance (which, to be clear, is solid) was in a different movie she was headlining.  Brown is another standout, finding herself a nice match for the dialogue which has some hints at original scribe Kevin Williamson’s quick meta banter but never reaches that same smirking bar which made Williamson’s screenplays, for lack of a better word, iconic.

Which brings me to another low-ish point.  Vanderbilt and Busick don’t have Williamson’s knack for snappy phrasing, relying much more on accessing the characters F-Bomb portal than having them volley back-and-forth.  While Brown gets those nice moments to explain the rules surrounding a ‘requel’, too many references are made to fifth entries not living up to their potential, being ill-advised, not being titled correctly, etc…. basically heading off all the naysayers at the pass and beating the critics to their punches.  In that way, the script starts to feel like it’s apologizing for itself instead of creating its own playing field. A few missed opportunities along the way exist, making you wonder if there wasn’t more to the story that was left on the cutting room floor or if the screenwriters are saving something for potential sequel routes. 

Perhaps you can tie some of it back to that Wes Craven touch which guided those first four films.  Dying of brain cancer in 2015, Craven was never going to be a part of this new film and while no one is claiming the previous sequels to be flawless (let’s face it, as fun as Scream 3 was, it was also silly and falling apart at the seams) or that Craven was a can’t miss director, he set the look and feel of the franchise from the start…down to Marco Beltrami’s score which I was also sad to see wasn’t back. Yet…you just can’t divest yourself from feeling that if directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett were attempting to honor Craven they would have displayed some of his knack for spotting acting talent on the cusp of greatness. Going into more details is definitely tipping the scale toward spoilers…but we can chat after you’ve seen it and I can explain more.

I’m disappointed for myself that I didn’t like the movie a little more than I did.  This isn’t about living in any kind of past because onward we must travel, especially if we want the things we hold dear to continue to thrive.  Personally, I hope this Scream makes huge bucks (all signs point to a big YES in that department) and more films in a similar vein are made.  I would ask, please, that the same kind of focus is put on the key pieces that elevate a movie to classic status though.  The original cast and script of 1996’s Scream simply can’t be beat, even all these years later.  I can’t say the same for this continuation…but trust me, I wanted to. 

Now…I’m a 1, 2, 4, 5, 3 person.