Tag Archives: Lionsgate

Movie Review ~ John Wick: Chapter 4

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The Facts:

Synopsis: John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Laurence Fishburne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Lance Reddick, Rina Sawayama, Scott Adkins, Ian McShane
Director: Chad Stahelski
Rated: R
Running Length: 169 minutes
TMMM Score: (8/10)
Review:   Life events got in the way of seeing the previous two installments of the John Wick franchise, which is how I wound up taking a weekend to revisit the three films that lead into John Wick: Chapter 4. This Wick-a-thon allowed me not just to reexamine the original from 2014, which I greatly admired when I first saw it, but to witness then how star Keanu Reeves (Toy Story 4) and director Chad Stahelski (Reeves’s former stunt double) went on to take what began as a simple revenge story and mold it into a true evolving saga. It could have been easy to rinse, wash, repeat, and collect their money, but the star and director harnessed a rare energy that pushed each new sequel into bigger and better territory.

I’ll assume that moving forward, you are enough of a fan that you won’t need much hand-holding to bring you up to speed, or spoilers from the three preceding films won’t bother you. I’ll keep the twists and turns writers Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead) and Michael Finch (The November Man) have cooked up to a low boil, but anyone worth their Wick salt knows to expect the unexpected, and everyone is fair game to become a turncoat or go toe up before the end credits roll. 

When we last left John Wick, he’d been betrayed by New York Continental Hotel manager Winston Scott (Ian McShane, Hellboy) in a seemingly callous attempt to save his neck. Not even being shot and falling from a rooftop could stop our hero, though, and he’s spent the time between chapters making plans to take his vicious revenge on the High Table. His plans are set into motion at the same time Scott and concierge Charon (the late, great Lance Riddick, White House Down) meet up with the High Table’s newest New York big wig, the Marquis Vincent de Gramon (Bill Skarsgård, Barbarian) and get new orders to clean up the mess they’ve left behind.

Not satisfied that one party alone can stop Wick, the Marquis enlists the help of blind assassin Caine (Donnie Yen, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), who is also being forced into service as a consequence of past actions. Caine will get his first crack at Wick in Osaka, where the knuckle-bound one-man army has taken refuge with an old friend (Hiroyuki Sanada, Bullet Train) and his daughter (recording/visual artist Rina Sawayama), both of whom have certain specific duties for the High Table. In Osaka, the film gets its initial surge of adrenaline, pushing it past the first hour as Wick goes up against an endless supply of bad guys/gals. 

In typical franchise fashion, these action sequences aren’t your ordinary kick-punch-punch-and-scene feuds but extended combat (often hand-to-hand) that showcases just how much of the incredible stunt work is being done by the cast. In many films, these battles could feel dragged out and self-indulgent. Still, in the hands of Stahelski and cinematographer Dan Laustsen (not to mention editor Nathan Orloff, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), they become triumphantly tense, brilliantly conceived works of deadly art.

While the series has parted ways with original writer Derek Kolstad, Hatten and Finch carry on the established tone well. We’re in Chapter 4 now, and while I appreciate the consistency in characters from movie to movie, I wish important people introduced from each installment weren’t dropped so wholly with every subsequent film. Several characters from Chapter 3 that proved to be intriguing additions are absent here without much explanation. I get that it’s part of the overall structure of the world of Wick and that some of the fun in these films is to have recognizable actors drift by in surprising cameos – but could at least a few of them come back around now and then?

You may think the film has bitten off more than it can chew at nearly three hours. While it can be argued that Stahelski could make some cuts here and there (an easy way to shave off 5-10 minutes is anytime a camera is following McShane walking anywhere – the man isn’t in a rush to do anything), the overall experience of John Wick: Chapter 4 is so uniformly satisfying that I wouldn’t know what could go that wouldn’t make another piece of the puzzle fall apart. The last hour is the edge-of-your-seat, popcorn-gnoshing stuff of dreams. It’s when Lausten (Nightmare Alley) is given the most freedom to get creative (read: fancy) with his camera work and when Stahelski (Deadpool 2) removes all excess material to reveal a lean, mean machine of a thrill ride.

Until now, this franchise has done well because each film has felt like it arrived at the right time. You can tell Reeves (as monotone as ever) has an affinity for the character and the bonus of doing the stuntwork, but he’s shown up because there’s more story to tell. A spin-off, Ballerina starring Ana de Armas (Blonde) and a few other familiar Wick faces, is currently in production, and it’s rumored the events of that film will serve as a bridge between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Whether or not a Chapter 5 is possible will require deeper discussion because all parties have certainly outdone themselves with this fourth feature. 

Movie Review ~ Jesus Revolution

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The Facts:

Synopsis: In the 1970s, young Greg Laurie is searching for all the right things in all the wrong places: until he meets Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic hippie street preacher. Together with Pastor Chuck Smith, they open the doors of Smith’s languishing church to an unexpected revival of radical and newfound love.
Stars: Joel Courtney, Anna Grace Barlow, Jonathan Roumie, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Kelsey Grammer
Director: Jon Erwin, Brent McCorkle
Rated: NR
Running Length: 120 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: Some movies can act as Trojan horses, bringing in messages you weren’t expecting or unplanned feelings. I’ve started several films assuming one experience but receiving the opposite. Thankfully usually a pleasant surprise, these movies make me edge a little further up in my seat, wondering what could happen next. However, some films work against the good tidings they offer, becoming problematic as you delve deeper into their origins.

I’m skirting around my issue with Jesus Revolution, and not very elegantly. I’ve been attempting to write my review for a few weeks but wasn’t sure how to approach it. I suppose we should start with the good, and that’s to say that directors Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle have turned into a far more agreeable and entertaining film than I had guessed after watching the initial trailer. After I saw an old-school billboard advertising it (when was the last time I saw a billboard advertising a movie?  In MN?) I was intrigued enough to give it a spin, and I turned off the TV two hours later with a little more knowledge about a piece of history than before going in.

Something bothered me about it, though, and I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what. It wasn’t the performances, as earnest and eager-to-please as they all were. High-schooler Greg Laurie is desperate to find his place in the world, and Joel Courtney (The Empty Man) makes Laurie an engaging presence. Watching his journey from lost soul to identifying his purpose is one many can embrace and, I think, relate to. I didn’t even mind Kelsey Grammar (The God Committee) playing Chuck Smith, a pastor that teams with a hitchhiking hippie named Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie) to form a movement that would revitalize not just his failing church but make religion more welcoming to a younger generation that felt alienated during a time of war and crisis.

Eventually, I found out what was gnawing at me. The film wasn’t telling the full facts of the story that was allegedly about finding the truth. 

I have to take a deep breath and move past some obvious personal (and fundamental) issues I have supporting a film about a church that evangelizes against certain minority groups and look away from the actors that participated in making the film. (Or should we? Maybe we shouldn’t.)  Personal issues aside, to keep it professional, let’s point out that Erwin’s script is based on Laurie’s novel and omits essential details about the life (and death) of Lonnie Frisbee that could change how audiences (particularly the target audience for these faith-based films) viewed one of the first leaders of this revolutionary movement. By hiding these essential facts, the result is a skewed picture scrubbed clean of what the church deems dirty when Laurie and Smith both became enormously successful, even with the unfortunate downfall of Frisbee.

Look, I know these religion-positive films do big business at the box office (made for $15 million, Jesus Revolution has, as of this writing, grossed $41.5). Still, there’s something to be said about presenting the facts and letting intelligent audiences decide if the material suits them. Sanitizing history doesn’t change anything; it only hides it in some shady spot when time has shown it’s best to come clean from the start. Jesus Revolution isn’t a poorly made film, just an ill-advised one hiding under the guise of truth.   

Movie Review ~ Alice, Darling

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The Facts:

Synopsis: While on vacation with two close girlfriends, Alice rediscovers the essence of herself and gains some much-needed perspective. Slowly, she starts to fray the cords of codependency that bind her.
Stars: Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Charlie Carrick, Wunmi Mosaku
Director: Mary Nighy
Rated: NR
Running Length: 89 minutes
TMMM Score: (7.5/10)
Review:  From the comfort of a cushioned theater seat (or our well-worn couch), we will watch Alice, Darling and judge the lead character. We’ll see her unhealthy relationship and wonder why she can’t see it herself. Eventually, we will side with her two friends that watch, aghast, as their once-independent companion becomes incapable of separating herself from a controlling lover who may not physically harm her but inflicts psychological turmoil with far more profound consequences. As she pulls her hair out and rolls it into little tumbleweeds that she lets drift slowly to the ground, this coping mechanism will instead seem like barbarous torture to us. All the while, we’ll think we know better.

There’s a frank openness to Alice, Darling that can feel too raw, too invasive. While we may recognize at the outset that it stars an Oscar-winning actress and is purposefully constructed as a barebones examination of a toxic relationship, the deeper it pulls us underneath to gasp for air with our leading lady, the more uncomfortable it starts to feel. It’s easy to believe that we’ve all known an Alice or been an Alice at some point because relating to the preyed upon is natural. What about when the film stealthily, almost wickedly, makes us wonder if we’ve ever been the predator?

Anna Kendrick stars as Alice, and if the actress gets alarmingly under the skin of this character down to the marrow, it’s because she’s self-reported that she was in a relationship with striking similarities. So she knows what the emotional spiral feels/looks like. Alice (Kendrick, Into the Woods) is so tangled up with her artist boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick) that she has to lie to him about going out of town for work instead of telling him she’s off for a weekend at the cabin with her two girlfriends to celebrate the birthday of Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn, Possessor). 

Tess and Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku, His House) already have suspicions about the toxicity brewing between Alice and Simon but want to respect boundaries. Still, Sophie’s bad vibes about Simon began when she met him at an opening of his exhibition, and she recognized tell-tale signs there was something off about the couple when they were together. The weekend’s focus is fun, although a simmering tension between Tess and Alice grows stronger when Tess can’t help but question how Alice has changed since the beginning of her relationship with Simon. Eventually cutting off her lifeline (i.e., Alice’s cellphone) to Simon has the desired effect of freeing up their friend to be present in the moment with them…but it only creates desperation in Simon to find out where Alice has gone.

Director Mary Nighy (daughter of Living’s Bill Nighy) keeps the film as simple as possible, quickly getting out of the Toronto city tension and letting the tranquility of lake life wrap up the three women. The threat of Simon infiltrating this peace hangs over the action because we know it will happen. This isn’t a spoiler; it’s in all the trailers and other marketing. While waiting for him to arrive and what that might bring, Kendrick and the other two actresses explore what it might look like for friends to have that carefully considered conversation/intervention. The script by Alanna Francis is straightforward but respectful, less concerned with wild dramatics than it is with tiny victories in Sophie and Tess helping Alice to open her eyes wider.

The small cast handles the material with a confident hand, led by Kendrick’s revealing portrayal of a woman struggling under the weight of emotions she may not be ready to deal with. It wouldn’t have worked to play the role bigger or even a hair smaller than what she’s doing. That it’s pitched perfectly demonstrates again Kendrick is an actress capable of creating a complex character from the ground up. Alice, Darling likely isn’t loud enough to attract much attention immediately, but word of mouth can help this one get in front of the Alices and Simons that need to see it and understand its significance.

ALICE, DARLING will be exclusively in AMC Theatres

Nationwide January 20, 2023.

31 Days to Scare ~ The Inhabitant

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A teenage descendant of Lizzie Borden is caught between paranoid visions and festering schizophrenia amid a series of small-town murders.
Stars: Odessa A’zion, Leslie Bibb, Dermot Mulroney, Lizzie Broadway, Ryan Francis
Director: Jerren Lauder
Rated: NR
Running Length: 100 minutes
TMMM Score: (6/10)
Review: Not for nothing, but it does seem like Lizzie Andrew Borden from Fall River, Massachusetts, has had her 15 minutes of fame.  It’s been a whopping 132 years since she was accused of giving those famous whacks to her family members, and Hollywood can’t seem to let her legend rest.  Though Borden was acquitted of the crime, the salacious gossip and media frenzy surrounding the murders drove the public interest sky-high, leading to multiple retellings of her story throughout history.

Memorable movies positing various “what if” scenarios have come and gone. I still remember the one with Elizabeth Montgomery from 1975, not to mention the films like 1964’s Strait-Jacket starring Joan Crawford, which took its inspiration from the brutal slayings.  In recent years, celebrated stars such as Chloë Sevigny and Christina Ricci have played Borden in film and television to decent notices, and now along comes The Inhabitant, which takes the historical fact of the cast and mashes it up with the slasher film formula. 

I expected The Inhabitant to be as cheesy as the opening crawl suggested with its solemn recounting of the crime and how the Borden lineage was thought to be cursed ever after, specifically the women.  As it goes, those in Fall River know strange things occur to the women with Borden blood in their veins every October, so it was only a matter of time until the next one snapped.  Not the most promising set-ups, but fitting for a straight-to-streaming release timed for the Halloween season.  Surprisingly, while it’s nothing to add to your annual watch list, director Jerren Lauder’s low-boil affair is an easy watch thanks to its star performance and supporting players, not to mention a “who’s the crazy Borden?” mystery to solve.

Teen Tara (Odessa A’zion, Hellraiser) is going through the usual growing pains of being frustrated with everything in her life.  Her boyfriend is going far away to college, there’s a girl in school that has it out for her, her dad Ben (Dermot Mulroney, Gone in the Night), doesn’t fully trust her after past issues with depression, and her mom Emily (Leslie Bibb, Tag) is wary to let Tara too close to her newborn.  While she won’t say it directly, Emily fears her daughter may have inherited the same illness that affected her sister, a patient committed to the local psychiatric ward for murdering her infant child.  Letting Tara too close to the baby only creates terrible scenarios in her head, even though she knows deep down that Tara would never hurt her sibling.

Well…

As it turns out, Tara has been experiencing some strange thoughts lately.  With her birthday drawing near, she’s starting to see the apparition of a black-eyed blond woman calling to her and whispering terrible suggestions into her ear.  Nightmares of axes and murder follow, blurring the line between reality and dreams to the point that when people close to the family start to die gruesomely, it’s an obvious solution that Tara has snapped and has picked up where her relative (allegedly) left off.

Now, I’m not going to tell you if Tara is the one that starts to butcher friends, family, and foes but Lauder and screenwriter Kevin Bachar do a superior job of keeping the energy of The Inhabitant up longer than I thought was possible.  The solution isn’t that hard to figure out, but enough red herrings are tossed into the mix that you begin to doubt the most straightforward answer.  The cast, bless them, are willing to play the game as seriously as you are. While some take the task a bit too seriously (Lizzie Broadway, as Tara’s friend, delivers emotional lines as if she’s playing Greek tragedy), the core cast (A’zion, Mulroney, and Bibb) strike the right balance.  If anything, Mary Buss (Agnes), in a small but pivotal role as Emily’s institutionalized sister, finds the best balance and represents the tone for which Lauder is going.

The Inhabitant is one of those random horror movies you throw on, hoping for the best, and come out the other side no worse off.  You can see some of the shaky production values here and there, but by and large, it’s a slick effort and functions as a harmless distraction.  Depending on how successful Hulu’s Hellraiser is, I can see fans of its star A’zion tracking back into her filmography and finding this one, claiming it as another decent watch. 

Movie Review ~ Devil’s Workshop

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A struggling actor spends a weekend with a female demonologist to prepare for an audition.
Stars: Radha Mitchell, Timothy Granaderos, Emile Hirsch
Director: Chris von Hoffmann
Rated: R
Running Length: 86 minutes
TMMM Score: (6.5/10)
Review:  With the onslaught of content thrown at us 24/7, the more a movie can stand out from the crowd, the better.  It’s not so terrible to be bad, but it’s truly the worst to be forgettable.  That’s why how a studio plans to market a film is critical to its success.  You’ve heard me gripe enough about trailers that give too much away, so now let me get on my sturdy soapbox to bend your ear about boring posters.  What your advertising looks like visually is as essential to me as the movie itself, so don’t give me a cheap-o photoshop cover or key art that is crudely cobbled together.

Had I not been enticed by a preview that drew me in, I might have declined to review Devil’s Workshop solely on the poor quality of its poster.  Let it be known (spoiler or not) that the image you see above doesn’t factor into the completed film…and that turns out to be a good thing.  If you were to glance at this marketing, you might think Devil’s Workshop involves some half-naked ginger possessed by something rotten.  Instead, writer/director Chris von Hoffman has delivered a film aiming higher and often hitting its target, boosted by energized performances and a script that doesn’t show its hand right off the bat.

Struggling actor Clayton (Timothy Granaderos, We Are Your Friends) has been trying to make it as an actor in Los Angeles for the past 15 years.  Still waiting for his big break, he endures calls from home congratulating him on his cut roles in the latest episode of NCIS and watching while his peers go on to the kind of career he wants.  He’s wildly jealous of Donald (Emile Hirsch, Midnight in the Switchgrass), a d-bag who lucked out early and has followed that initial success to consistent work.  Similar in type, the two are always competing for the same roles and Donald, being the more recognizable face, often gets the job and a nice paycheck.

When both are up for the same role in an upcoming paranormal thriller, Clayton decides to look outside his acting class (and I would too, after witnessing eye-rolling scenes of pretentious never-beens theater-gaming themselves silly) for help in preparing for the role.  He places an ad on the web for instruction on demonology and gets a hit from Eliza soon after.  Driving to her isolated home far outside the city, Clayton isn’t sure how this will benefit him, but he knows he needs to do something to change his current path.

Until this point, von Hoffman’s film has been a traditional look at the same story facing many actors arriving in Hollywood with stars in their eyes.  The business is tricky, jobs are scarce, and if you are friends with people in the industry, they will likely make it, and you won’t.  We must leave the city behind for von Hoffman to shift Devil’s Workshop into a different gear.  Coincidentally, that’s when Radha Mitchell (Olympus Has Fallen) shows up as Eliza. 

Playing a free spirit that’s perhaps a little too welcoming, Mitchell is an absolute revelation as this mysterious character.  She gives Clayton a reason to keep his guard up with the single woman living alone in a large California country house.  Eliza promises the next few days will help Clayton prepare for the role, offering her experience as a demonologist to help inform his acting choices.  First, they’ll need to get to know one another and prepare him for the ritual she’ll be taking him through.  Thus begins a weekend of strange experiences for Clayton where Eliza’ll challenge him on more than just an acting level.  Secrets from his past will affect the present, and Eliza’s history will also factor in. 

Had this been the through line of Devil’s Workshop, I may have added another point to my total.  Unfortunately, we still have to keep Donald on our mind, and von Hoffman intercuts Eliza and Clayton’s time together with Donald’s druggie/chill night with two female friends.  As is often true, Hirsch is fun to watch; yet these scenes drag the picture into territory that feels more self-indulgent the longer they stretch on.  I just wanted to go back to the A storyline and ditch the B plot once and for all. 

I’m not entirely sure Devil’s Workshop finds a satisfactory way to end the film; I thought it would surely tack on another scene after the finale that better ties things off.  From a filmmaking standpoint, it’s edited quite nicely, with impressive make-up and gore effects throughout.  For a film involving demonic possession and ritual sacrifice, the final 1/3 of the film isn’t as wild or unrelenting as it could have been and for that steady hand, I was grateful.  It’s another sign that von Hoffman had a clear vision of what he wanted. 

Movie Review ~ The Good House

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A wry New England realtor’s compartmentalized life begins to unravel as she rekindles a romance with her old high-school flame and becomes dangerously entwined in one person’s reckless behavior.
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney
Director: Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky
Rated: R
Running Length: 103 minutes
TMMM Score: (4.5/10)
Review:  Sigourney Weaver is one of our great actresses and undoubtedly one that should have an Oscar on her mantle by now. For her blistering work in Aliens, the 1986 sequel to her 1979 career-changing breakout Alien, she received the first of her Best Actress nominations for taking her lone survivor part up another level, pairing a fully-realized dramatic role with an action heroine. Two years later, her next nomination for Gorillas in the Mist gave viewers the opportunity to get to know the work of a primatologist who wasn’t afraid to be disliked for conserving the mountain gorillas she felt compelled to protect. That same year, she easily could have walked away with Best Supporting Actress for her wicked turn as the boss from hell in Working Girl. She might have taken it if she had not been nominated for Best Actress. 

Throughout her career, Weaver has been a dependable presence and, more importantly, a game contributor to whatever project she signs onto. That’s allowed her to work in multiple genres with many directors that have used her well. She’s even at the point of making cameo appearances and receiving the rapturous reception that indicates the level of appreciation the movie-going public has for her. When the time is right, and the role is just so, you get the feeling that her awards run will be a swift victory.

I’m not sure how much The Good House was intended to be positioned to get Weaver into the race, but this will not get her over the finish line. Based on Ann Leary’s 2013 bestseller, the film was initially set up to star Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro. I remember this announcement well because I tracked down the book and had it on my bookshelf for a few years until Streep dropped out and the project fell silent. With Weaver recruited to star alongside her previous two-time co-star Kevin Kline, the New England seriocomedy fell into the hands of directors Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, who had directed films separately before but never together.

That individuality of style becomes skittishly apparent after a breezy opening suggesting The Good House might be a charming bit of matinee fun, especially for fans of Weaver and Kline. The setting is picturesque, the script by Thomas Bezucha (Let Him Go) and the directors has a crackle to it, and the faint suggestion of the supernatural is enough to draw you in quickly. Weaver is Hildy Good, the top real estate agent in her little hamlet, providing for herself, often supporting her two adult children, and staying abreast of all the goings on (i.e., gossip) in town. If someone is moving out, she knows why and she has the scoop on any newcomers seeking the perfect place to call home.

Sharing office space with a therapist (Rob Delaney, Home Sweet Home Alone) who is considering switching gears to a busier metropolis, Hildy has a prospective new listing to focus on and a potential new friend in an unhappily married housewife (Morena Baccarin, Last Looks) who has only recently arrived. Then there’s Frank Getchell (Kline, The Starling), a jack-of-all-trades handyman and former flame who lives close by and might still hold the same brand of blazing torch Hildy has been secretly keeping for him. Plus, Hildy has a gift for mind-reading, a talent she’s happy to oblige when asked to bring out at dinner parties.

All of this presentation of normalcy is a glazed veneer for what’s underneath the surface of Hildy’s carefully structured life, and it’s peeking below this shell where audiences should find the good stuff in The Good House. Instead, it’s where the most significant weaknesses lie. That’s when we notice Weaver working furiously to drum up cohesion with the actors assigned to play her ex-husband and two daughters. There’s no interplay to suggest any of these people have ever met, let alone were married or were a parent to the actresses assigned as their children. 

This large discrepancy becomes key when more of the plot is revealed, including Hildy’s alcoholism. The film shifts from Hildy trying to keep her life in line to Hildy literally trying to say within the lines of the road. While Sigourney Weaver (Copycat) has perhaps one of the cinema’s most fantastic takes to the camera during an intervention that becomes more about the people intervening than anything, the shift in tone is so jarring and breaks the tranquil spell we were under that the movie never recovers. Not even with the sweet romance between Hildy and Frank and certainly not in the film’s latter half when infidelity, blackout drinking, and townspeople with moods that change on dime start to overwhelm Weaver’s strong performance.

Unfortunately, Forbes and Wolodarsky couldn’t tighten all this up more; there are about five extraneous characters for every one we want to invest time in. There’s genuinely something living in The Good House at the beginning I wanted to see more of. Weaver is always worth the effort, and it’s never a bad day at the movies when Kline is playing it free and easy. Their scenes together are by far the best, even though the script has Weaver hysterically (embarrassingly?) telling a pot-smoking Kline to “put down that jazz cabbage.” At least we won’t have to wait long for more Weaver; she’ll be seen soon in Avatar: The Way of Water and Call Jane.

 

Movie Review ~ Fall

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Fear reaches new heights as two best friends find themselves at the top of a 2,000-foot radio tower
Stars: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Director: Scott Mann
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 107 minutes
TMMM Score: (6.5/10)
Review:  Why is it that when we’re young and don’t know any better, we dash headfirst into adrenaline-rich experiences and seek out high-up views, but once we reach a certain age, a hesitant develops? Some never get that momentary pause of caution that tells them to look before they leap or take a breath before they ascend. A swirling rollercoaster is a welcome challenge, and a sheer glass surface on a double-digit floor of skyscrapers in the clouds is a great place to stand and stare down. I used to be a person who could handle all that and wasn’t bothered by those thrills. Over time I’ve found it more difficult to step to the edge of a balcony, queue up for a speeding cyclone amusement park ride, or, lately, even watch movies that center on those walking the razor’s edge of extreme sports.

The set-up of Fall is marvelous. I’m sure when the director and co-writer Scott Mann pitched the movie to Lionsgate alongside fellow screenwriter Jonathan Frank, he barely had to finish the first sentence before a deal was on the table. Filmed during the pandemic with a minuscule cast from the producer of the (very) similar 47 Meters Down, Lionsgate invested in a ringer. Amid a moderate rise in the popularity of free climbing (no doubt due to the Oscar-winning doc Free Solo), the film would ostensibly put two women on top of an abandoned radio tower and then let them find their way down. 

I could describe the plot of Fall almost entirely by throwing out titles of other films instead. That might spoil it for you, but it illustrates how much it manages to lift directly from other movies. A quickie opening establishes the trauma that leaves Becky (Grace Caroline Currey, Annabelle: Creation), a young widow, and her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner, 2018’s Halloween) dealing with her pain by publicly pushing herself to often-dangerous physical limits. Unable to be comforted by her father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Rampage, filming his scenes with a double for Fulton), Becky spends 51 weeks (yes, the movie makes it that specific) wallowing in grief before Hunter arrives to snap her out of it.

What better way to exorcise her past demons than by literally and figuratively climbing out of her despair? Hunter has challenged herself and extends an invite to Becky to scale a decommissioned TV tower in the California desert. The structure stands 2,000 feet in the air and is well-worn but has held together, and Hunter wants Becky to conquer it with her to prove to herself that this pain will pass and life will go on. Reluctantly, Becky agrees, and before you know it, the two have made the tense ascent up to the top and selfied themselves at the pinnacle. The climb has loosened the rusty ladder from its screws, though, and one wrong step sets off a chain of catastrophic events that trap the women on their sky-high perch. With their route down impossible, it eventually becomes a life-or-death struggle for survival where they’ll have to innovate to survive the elements and make it back to solid ground.

While Mann and Frank’s conception of Fall is a gleeful doozy of high-stakes survival, the execution hits some rough patches. Anyone who saw the almost entirely CGI-generated original teaser trailer can attest that if you ask the audience to sit on the edge of their seats, they must believe what they see—at least a little bit. The best actors and screenplay aren’t going to save lousy everything else. What tends to weigh the Fall production down more than anything are computer-generated backgrounds that look like off-brand Windows 95 screensavers. An opening scene on a large rock face features many distance drone shots circling the mass, but you can barely spot the actors on it because they either a) weren’t there to begin with or b) are on a smaller mountain, and the effects team filled the rest of the rock in later. The scene played strangely on my large screen at home; I can’t imagine how it would look in a theater – maybe better?

Budgetary and filming restrictions necessitated the filmmakers to get inventive in how they shot the actors, and kudos to them for coming up with ways to rely on the CGI as little as possible. These unobstructed shots come off the best and give you those beads of brow sweat the rest of the film is missing. Often in movies like this, viewers can become active participants by shouting at the characters making unwise choices. Still, for Fall, the screenplay doesn’t play Becky and Hunter as foolish, aside from climbing up a structure they shouldn’t and not telling anyone where they were going. Once they are stuck, the women show themselves to be quick thinking and resourceful, not blanking on the best idea we all know they should be undertaking until the final act. I do wish a late-in-the-game plot twist wasn’t outright stolen from a similar film, though. Viewers with a keen eye (well, ear) will catch on quickly if they miss any earlier clues. 

Like that CGI teaser and frequent use of computer-generated backgrounds, Fall feels like a film engineered for an audience rather than made. Even the dialogue has been changed after the movie was shot, with over 30 expletives replaced with PG-13 friendly words by AI company Flawless and the TrueSync technology. Wouldn’t you know that the director is the co-CEO of that company? That’s why you’ll hear heavy use of the word “freaking” throughout. It’s all part of the algorithm the film fits into, which makes it feel less like an organic bit of energetic entertainment and more like a calculated effort to hit as many target audiences as possible in one swoop.

Here’s the truth, though. While parts of Fall are hokey and could be refined or outright tossed, it delivers on its mission. For all my talks about engineering to target audiences, it accomplished that with this viewer. I absolutely found myself covering my eyes as one or both women were hanging by their fingernails under the blazing Mojave sun. Whether avoiding menacing vultures that smell blood or risking a deadly drop to access necessary supplies, I was on the edge of my seat while in the moment. I can nitpick all I want after, but that’s not fair to the overall movie experience or the filmmakers that did their job. Once we get past some iffy opening drama and bypass the unnecessary strife between the ladies later on when the focus is survival, Fall rises to the occasion.

Movie Review ~ Moonfall

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it.

Stars: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Pena, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Eme Ikwuakor, Carolina Bartczak, Donald Sutherland

Director: Roland Emmerich

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 130 minutes

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review:  Just this past New Year’s Eve, while much of the globe was out celebrating kicking 2021 to the curb, my partner and I decided to ring in 2022 the correct way: with pizza delivery and a viewing of the 1972 peril-at-sea classic, The Poseidon Adventure.  Why?  I’m a sucker for a disaster film and the Oscar-nominated blockbuster, conveniently set on December 31 and chock full of memorable scenes and performances, fit the bill perfectly.  I can’t quite help myself when presented with a gargantuan film that is hell-bent on pulverizing boats, small towns, big cities, planets, and the like with giant tidal waves, volcanoes, asteroids, earthquakes, or a Geostorm.  Though I almost leaned into the Sharknado craze, I realized I had to draw the line somewhere.

That should give you an idea of why I didn’t sweat some of the early bad buzz I heard about legendarily schlocky director Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall.  Despite directing the uncharacteristically strong Midway in 2019, Emmerich is back in his safety zone for this big-screen megaton world decimator presenting audiences with a so-bad-it’s-good-for-you cheesy meal that’s light on science but heavy on conspiracy theories and underbaked performances.  Throw in special effects that alternate between the polished with the barely finished, and you have yourself a new release that’s ready to divide audiences into two camps.  The first will turn their nose up at a project that never sets its sights higher than what it was created to be, which is precisely the kind of movie the second group will gobble up with glee.

Ten years ago, a disaster in space left astronaut Brian Harper (a bland name to match Patrick Wilson’s typically bland performance) cast out from NASA for claiming the catastrophe, which cost a colleague their life, was the result of an attack by a non-human life form.  Of course, the only other person up there that could back him up is Jocinda “Jo” Fowler (now there’s a name for you, and Halle Berry makes it count), but she was knocked unconscious when things went haywire.  A decade later, Fowler is part of the top brass at NASA while Harper’s life has gone further downhill after a divorce and being ostracized from his troubled child, Sonny (Charlie Plummer, All the Money in the World), who has just been tossed in the slammer for leading police on a high-speed highway chase.

When discredited pseudo-scientist (read: conspiracy theorist) and president of The Megastructurist Club K.C. Houseman (John Bradley, Anna Karenina) begins to confirm his long-held theory the Earth is headed for disaster courtesy of the alien-built Moon, he manages to convince the boozy Harper who in turn teams up with Fowler for a Hail Mary mission to save the planet.  While the race is on up in the stars, down on terra firma Emmerich and screenwriters Spenser Cohen and Harald Kloser (who also co-composed the score) can’t help but insert completely unnecessary family drama with Sonny speeding Fowler’s child and nanny to the safety of a Colorado bunker while pieces of the Moon and “gravity waves” are wreaking havoc around them. 

Anyone going into Moonfall and expecting a high-stakes sci-fi stunner is going to feel let down long before Wilson and Berry achieve liftoff in a decommissioned space shuttle amidst a humungous wall of water threatening to consume the tiny-in-comparison craft.  Emmerich always walked a fine line between overselling spectacle and underserving storyline, even at his peak output, and that’s no different here.  We can only be thankful that with the pandemic still plaguing the country, the studio heads at Lionsgate likely saw fit to request this come in at a (for Emmerich) trim 130 minutes and not a bloated running time that would keep audiences in the theater any longer than necessary.  Of course, that comes at the expense of character development and often tying one complete thought to another. Still, the majority of Moonfall moves at the kind of breakneck speed that almost wills you not to overthink its lack of logic.

Another bit of advantage working in Moonfall’s favor is Wilson’s (Insidious) workmanlike performance as a disgraced astronaut brought back into service at an unlikely juncture.  I’ve seen Wilson onstage, and he’s a magnetic performer, but I’ve never found that presence translated to screen in the same way, and that’s certainly true here.  Still, that complete lack of personality winds up being a benefit because audiences can divest themselves from getting too attached to anyone…not that Emmerich or his co-screenwriters have put much of anything there to move us to care either way.  I lament that Berry (Bruised) continues to be underserved in these types of roles, stuck as the strong female playing second fiddle to males that yield power to her only when they chicken out and can’t take the heat.  She’s got a dull ex (Eme Ikwuakor, Concussion, spending the entire film wincing like he has a rock in one of his shoes) and a kid that says, “I love you, mommy,” and doesn’t really seem to mean it. 

While researching the movie before writing the review, I had to chuckle that so many searches for Hardy and Moonfall brought up Josh Gad.  Hardy’s part feels like a role written with Gad in mind, only to have the actor wind up declining or not be available at the last minute.  While he’s far more tolerable than Gad, even his mild engagement can’t create an entirely root-able character for Hardy.  Poor Michael Peña (End of Watch) gets the shortest stick of them all, as the new husband of Harper’s ex, a nice guy whose biggest fault seems to be having too much money and resources.  Guess what happens to him?  The less said about Donald Sutherland’s (Backdraft) pee and you missed it cameo as a shadowy government figure bound to a wheelchair who gives Berry’s character just enough cryptic info before rolling off into the darkness, the better.

I expect a modest amount of success for Emmerich’s terribly silly but mostly harmless outer space jaunt, if only for lack of similar content currently or recently in theaters.  If it doesn’t deal with a virus sweeping through the country, audiences tend to go for these types of global world-enders, and for a good reason.  They’re escapist in-flight entertainment where you can check your brain at the door and pick it up on your way back to your car.  Moonfall absolutely requires this and, like all those in charge of upholding regulations on commercial airlines, please don’t hate it for doing its job.

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.