The Dead Don't Die

I knew very little about this movie going into it, from what I saw of a couple clips and photos, I was kind of expected a zombie horror maybe akin to Shaun of the Dead coupled with the dry humor that Bill Murray and Adam Driver are good at delivering on. The scenes with those two are absolutely the best thing of this movie because everything else just feels slow paced and drab. You would think given the sizable A-List cast given including Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevigny, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi and Danny Glover to name just a few that this has the makings for something special. The bests parts are with Driver and Murray in their squad car just talking together and the self referential comments they make knowing that they are inside a movie are funny. The rest is very heavy fisted commentary on political and environmental state of the world we are in, it is written & directed by Jim Jarmusch who also wrote and directed Broken Flowers, which also starred Bill Murray, which I enjoyed that film quite a bit and actually have it in my DVD collection. I think Jarmusch let his message over power the story of the film. There is also a very random scene with Tilda Swinton’s character that I was just like um what was that and why did that just happen. I would not spend money going out to theaters on this one it’s definitely streaming rental material and I only give it that for Bill Murray and Adam Driver scenes. D.

How It Ends

An unexplained event has occurred off the Western coast of the United States, seismic tremors ripple across the country, communications are severed and a total blackout of power engulfs the entire country, this is How It Ends. Theo James is flying back from a work trip and visiting with his soon to be in-laws in Chicago when the event occurs stranding him half a country away from his pregnant fiancée in Seattle. Forest Whitaker is a strong willed former Marine and father who would do anything to keep his only daughter safe, including taking Theo James who he has not totally accepted into his daughters life on an apocalyptic road trip to Seattle.

I’m all for end of the world, apocalypse, disaster films until the movie becomes the disaster. We never  fully realize what is happening or causing the effects of destruction in the movie which is fine, is it aliens or an attack or natural, who knows which is great, choose your own adventure in your head. The problem I had with this movie is Theo James and Forest Whitaker both why are they in this they are better than this, it’s what you’d expect from two people on opposite ends of comfort levels being cooped up in a car, but, the script is bad and how many times can one character make the same mistakes and not learn from them. There is a third passenger they pick up played by Grace Dove off an Indian reservation who’s story doesn’t add any real dynamic and doesn’t get much to do besides be a third wheel. I continued watching hoping for some more depth to these characters which never occurs and just keeps the same pace from start to end trapped in a car with two men I could have cared less if they survived their trip. C.

Dark Phoenix

Well, this movie did not do anything for trying to convince me the X-Men movie franchise is a good thing. I used to like the X-Men movies until they did the whole new timeline thing and set things back in time, for the same reason I had problems with Avengers: Infinity War and the Terminator series, when you start going back and messing with timelines it gets messy and confusing. Let’s just focus on Dark Phoenix, it is set in 1992, mutants seems to be generally accepted by the world their is a direct line to Xavier’s desk from the White House and action figures of the X-Men. That phone I just mentioned rings at the beginning of the movie with the president calling on the X-Men to help the space shuttle Endeavor that has been hit with a solar flare, putting the crew at risk of their lives. The X-Jet takes off with its mutant crew and during the evacuation of the shuttle, Jean Gray (Sophie Turner) directly absorbs the solar flare which will give her powers she does not know how to control and putting an alien race on the planet hunting her down to get said power. It will be up to her mutant buddies led by Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) to shower Jean Grey with love and understanding while trying to keep her safe from the baddies.

For me this movie was just a mess, its obvious the franchise is showing its age and majority of these actors have moved on to bigger and better things, coming back some of them even on screen just look like they are thinking, I’m contracted to do another one of these, lets get this over with. Some of the visual effects are also not on par with what has become standard for summer blockbusters. This is definitely a female empowerment movie with Jean getting all this power that is new to her and not knowing how to yield it, there is even a line early on in the movie that goes something like, looks like the women are always saving the men around here lately they should rename us the X-Women. While that’s all well and good and I’m down for some strong female hero’s the problem is Sophie Turner is not the strong one to pull this off, I saw more potential with Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) in this having that ability to command the screen for such a task. Same thing my issue with Captain Marvel, I think there is some great character potential there, I’m just not sold on Brie Larson, she’s an amazing actress I just don’t get this strong persona from her like say Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton who are action women. Pushing aside from the female side of things, their are some laughable moments in the dialogue that are funny for the wrong reasons, at this point in superhero movies it is why are we stooping to dialogue like this. I think what we get here is Simon Kinberg is the director it’s his first feature film directing debut with not much directing experience before, where he has done more producing in his past with hit or miss movies in that filmography. It feels that Fox wanted to make this and went up to him, you like these films right, want to direct? Then it’s a fan making a over cliched superhero movie and making in his mind what a superhero movie should be.

Final thoughts, it’s a mess of a movie, I love many of these actors: Sophie Turner, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hault, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain (notice I didn’t even touch on her alien role in this; its bad). I mean look at that list and its just a few of the names in this and I see many movies and know they are all much better than what this script and movie gave them to work with. Loyal fans of the franchise will of course go see it, anyone else wait until DVD release to rent it. For me the franchise just needs to stop now and give some time to pass. With Disney holding the rights to the X-Men who knows what we will begin to see now will we see a reboot of things, for me I’m not a comic follower by any means, but, I feel there are more individual mutant characters that we can focus on. I would not mind seeing some standalone character films, just don’t do like the MCU and try to tie them all together, get some good standalone superhero one and done films. C.

The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin looks at the final days of the life of Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) the Soviet leader and the clambering of power and control by his successors. Only this is all done through a dark comedy format which I truly enjoyed from start to finish. The beginning of the movie starts at a concerto being hosted by Radio Moscow and after the performance is finished a request from Stalin for a recording of the concerto that was not made, then Paddy Considine has to try to get all the musicians and audience to stay and do the concerto again to make the recording, showing the power and fear Stalin had over the population. But, then he dies soon after and the battle for power begins as the weak successor by the rules is George Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) who doesn’t like to make decisions and easily persuaded by others. Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale) is the head of the NKVD and wants to have full police state power over the country, where Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) wants a little more reform within the government. This is not a movie for everyone as it is a political satire masquerading as a dark comedy, it is a movie that you have to invest in and not just casually watch to keep up with who is plotting what and each persons role in the events happening. While the movie tackles a very serious time in Russian history and horrid events that took place within the span the movie is presenting it delivers the history with humor while making sure the impact of the events is still prevalent. Going into the end of the second act I was getting a little fidgety as it started lagging a little as it becomes obvious where things are going, once the final act gets underway it started clipping along again. This is one that like myself I watched it alone late night when I didn’t have anything else to do and once it started going I was having fun with it. C.

The Perfection

Allison Williams is a young cellist that has tremendous skill and is taught by Steven Weber and his wife, Alaina Huffman, who run the foremost school for the cello in the world. That is until Allison William's character has to drop out of school to careful her ailing mother, when she passes away Allison reaches out to her teachers and finds they have taken a new young protégé under their wings, Logan Browning. Allison flies to Tokyo to meet up with the staff and what she sees as her replacement where the two form a bond and on the fly relationship. Leaving the next day to travel the world together before Logan has to head back to school, on the bus ride Logan develops symptoms of a horrific virus that leaves the two in the middle of nowhere, did she catch this from travelling to another country recently where there was an outbreak or is there something more going on?

This movie takes a lot of twists and turns and executes them fairly decently, using time warps to go back and explain things that if you didn't catch it makes you kind of smack your head. I enjoyed the first half of this movie, towards the end when they get back stateside everything involving Steven Weber inside the school it kind of went way farther than I thought this was taking it. It's an okay movie to turn on if your bored one night and want something a little darker to watch. I wouldn't go our of my way to watch this one, I did like Allison Williams in this quite a lot, she is one I would like to see do some more work and broaden her abilities. C.

Brightburn

In 2006 the skies over Brightburn, Kansas lit up red as an object fell from space and impacted the small town in what would be a large way. With this object falling from the heavens came bringing joy to a couple who wanted a child more than anything, also possibly the most dangerous thing known to this world. As seen in the trailers there’s something no quite normal about Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn).

David Denman and Elizabeth Banks play a couple that have struggled with infertility for years and both have a strong desire to be parents, lighting up the sky and landing in their backyard is a mysterious glowing object with a baby onboard. We then time jump to middle school where their son, Brandon, is starting to notice changes to himself as many kids do at this time in their lives except instead of puberty he’s developing powers. When mysterious gruesome deaths start happening in the small town the accidental death theories start to get replaced with thoughts that perhaps there is a serial killer in their midst possibly a particular boy, what they don’t know is that Brandon has more planned than just a few kills that are close to him. Jackson A. Dunn does a decent job at playing this troubled teen while being able to switch it back into the mommy’s boy who feels innocent and confused about who he is during this change in his life.

I saw somewhere the best analogy for this, if Superman was evil, it’s the same thing it truly is couple finds baby in space craft and raise it as their own, except Smallville it is Brightburn. This movie is a kind of horror/superhero film that will appeal to those that want a darker origin superhero story and those wanting some horror thrill, there is also some graphic attacks/deaths that those wanting some gruesome gore will be excited to see. This is good alternative programming right now for those that want an escape from the feel good heroes of Marvel, away from the family film area of Aladdin and those not phased about a giant lizard spurting fire against other big creatures. It is just over an hour and a half which feels right for it and Elizabeth Banks entering the scream queen arena worked for me, was this one of my better picks for the years, no, was I committed watching it through out, yes. The biggest downfall this movie has is there is not a lot to the character of Brandon they don’t explore this inner conflict we see of good/bad, I would have liked to have his character given more depth. Sadly I might have had a little bit of my Final Destination and Saw guilty pleasure of waiting to see the next graphic way that Brandon was going to hurt someone. C.

Overlord

Taking place during World War II on the eve of D-Day an army squad is being flown in with the mission to blow up a communication tower that is installed at a church in a small German occupied French town. Their plane is shot down and what few men are left will have to carry out the mission to severe the German communication to assist the beach landings. It will be up to the small group comprised of actors Wyatt Russell, Jovan Adepo, John Magaro, Ian De Caestecker and Dominic Applewhite to proceed forward under Corporal Ford’s (Wyatt Russell) command. Jovan Adepo plays Private Boyce our tether through this operation as we are with him from his jump to ground landing, being his first mission his is green and has empathy towards those being killed or whom he must kill. Soon after the jumpers find each other they encounter a girl in the woods named Chloe (Mathilde Olivier) who shows the way to the town and hides them in her home, explaining that the Germans constantly raid the homes and take the residents to the church where they don’t come back the same. Private Boyce is infuriated when a German officer who frequents Chloe’s home has come back to take advantage of her to protect her younger brother, Boyce’s feelings get the better of him leading to a change of plans when the officer is taken hostage. This will lead to Boyce having to retrieve two of his buddies who went out to a rendezvous point to see if any other soldiers made it, except things happen and Boyce ends up within the church itself and sees that there is a German doctor carrying out supernatural experiments, for Ford the mission is still blow up the tower and get out while Private Boyce wants to bury what he has seen being done.

This movie started out pretty well for me with the American ships and planes flying into France and the attack on the plane. Once on the ground I was sold on this war story having this small group of men who each one has a very distinctive personality all trying to survive together. Even once in the town the tension grows as Germans lurk around the corners and come knocking on doors. When the movie starts going full blown supernatural it started losing me, with Boyd lurking around the church having been accidentally taken inside and slowly uncovering secrets that was interesting. It was an okay war film with this subtle supernatural/science-fiction plot, then when we get the first super soldier I was like okay they went there why and then it becomes a monsters smash fest. I could have done with everything before that German decides to become a Hulk like monster, just the there’s something mysterious and unsettling about what they are doing that we need to blow this up before and they even acknowledge that Americans would want to know what they were doing and the atrocities that were going on no one needed to carry out the experiments. While it was enjoyable and I think a little higher than the talk I heard from others, I think if it would have kept more of a war feel through to the end with keeping the supernatural a little subtler I would have enjoyed more. This reminds me of another J.J. Abrams produced movie 10 Cloverfield Lane where the ending took away from the rest of the movie, for me I loved everything until she got out of the shelter and the aliens appeared before that it was a well built thriller and then it just went off the rails with the alien. Overlord it’s meh, I am glad I didn’t see it in theaters I think this worked well for my Netflix Blu-Ray rental, I think it deserves a little more recognition than streaming service. C.

Booksmart

Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein are long time best friends, Amy and Molly (respectively), who are on the eve of graduating high school together when they realize maybe they did high school all wrong. When they discover their peers that they saw as party people and goof-offs have also gotten into respected colleges as well, Amy and Molly question whether they wasted their time in libraries and studying instead of having fun too. They decide before they graduate to basically cram four nights or partying into one night to make up for lost time by attending the biggest graduation party being thrown. The only problem is they don’t know where the party is which sets them out on a one crazy night type movie adventure encountering different characters and situations until they can finally get to party the way they envision.

This is a pretty damn near perfect movie for the debut of Olivia Wilde as a director. The casting is spot on, everything is lighted well, the shots work, it is well paced and a solid script. This is already at the top of my favorites of the year list, will it stay at the top? Probably not but I see this staying in the top five I am pretty positive about that. I had more fun in this movie than I have had in a long time I found myself laughing consistently throughout to reoccurring gags that pay off there are setups and with follow throughs that work. Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein have tremendous onscreen chemistry together and the high school world we are presented feels lived in and alive. With having a high school teacher for a wife, I can definitely imagine her saying I have a kid just like each of the ones presented in this movie. The supporting cast all feel like well developed fleshed out characters and some come close to even stealing the scenes they are in. It is a little bit The Breakfast Club, a dash of Superbad and some Clueless all rolled into one. This is one that I would highly suggest seeing in theaters with an audience, I got to see this on opening night and the large audience helped to create an air of electricity in the room that heightened the overall experience. A truly wonderful debut from Olivia Wilde after the credits rolled I was reminded why I love movies the way Ido, that amidst
the remakes, sequels and franchises there is still amazing original stories that can find their way to the silver screen. A.

Wine Country

Wine Country is the directorial debut of Amy Poehler who also stars in the movie along with six other women (Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Tina Frey, Paula Pell, Emily Spivey) who are all connected via Saturday Night Live. The movie is about six older women who all come together to go on a wine country trip for their friend (Rachel Dratch) who is turning fifty years old. With this much talent from a comedy show like SNL you would expect it to be a pretty darn funny road tripesque journey through Napa. Nope, it’s about six women all going through some sort of depression or crisis and them trying to play it off until they all reach their breaking points. There are a couple of funny moments in the movie, but not anything laugh out loud funny and some I was probably laughing for the wrong reasons. Jason Schwartzman is this kinda house keeper / tour guide that comes with the house they rented who has nothing to do with anything really, he pops in here and there drives the bus and just feels there to give a little break up from the group of women, there’s a rolling gag involving him making a paella that you think its going to go somewhere and it doesn’t. Tina Fey plays the woman who is renting out her house to this group and is over doing it with the performance, feels out of place.With this much talent it falls short on the laughs and doesn’t let the dramatic parts expand, the other problem I had was there are some oddly framed shots in this especially when two people are talking that to me shows that Amy Poehler still has some practice to do directing before hitting the big leagues, I say skip Wine Country and revisit or discover Sideways. D.

John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum

Keanu Reeves is back in action as assassin John Wick who has just been marked Ex Communicado after the killing inside The Continental in Chapter two. He is now on the run and defense as every assassin is hunting him down for a chance at the very lucrative reward for his death. The tag line for the movie is its the world versus John Wick and its right there are a lot of assassins in this world as you saw at the end of Chapter 2. The movie is everythingyou would want from a John Wick movie by now a little bit of storyline and a whole bunch of wide shot fights. There are knife fights, fist fights, gun fights, fights on horse back and even dogs get in on the action this time. It’s very easy to tell Director Chad Stahelski has come from a stunt back ground as the sequences in this are well choreographed and he knows to pull back letting you see the action. What I enjoy more than anything in this trilogy has been the world building and characters we get a couple new ones that I enjoyed, one being Halle Berry’s character, Sofia, she brings the hits that can compete with Keanu, from what I understand one of the condition in taking a part in a John Wick film is doing your own stunt work. The other character I quite liked is The Adjudicator played by Asia Kate Dillon who has the perfect look and voice for this character who is kind of like the voice for the High Table of assassins, I would love to see Asia get more roles there’s a lot to their ability and I think this is the first chance to see the potential. I agree with what I have read from a lot of other critics that compare this to say a Fast and the furious or Mission: Impossible film that it’s more of an event that a story driven film, that you are going to this to see what crazy fight scene is going to go down. I did enjoy this installment more than Chapter 2, for me the first one is still my favorite. Is this movie for everyone of course not, there are going to be those that are opposed to the amount of violence that Wick carries out, then there are those that will come for the event focused on those acts of violence and then there’s me that likes being fed more of this world and how everything operates. B.

Also if your like me and have no clue what Parabellum stood for, I will save you the google search.
Parabellum ; noun ; a type of semiautomatic pistol or machine gun.

The Wandering Earth

The future, our sun is on the verge of dying and with that it will expand extinguishing all life on Earth. How will we preserve the future of Humanity? By building 10,000 Earth engines that will propel the planet on a 2,500 year journey through the universe to a new home. A space station will be built that will travel in front of the Earth providing communications, navigation and a plan B should The Wandering Earth project fail. Bringing everyone in the world together to build these giant engines and beneath underground cities that will shield people from the extreme surface temperature as the Earth wanders through the solar system. 

The plan to save Earth seems to be a success until the planet is scheduled to pass Jupiter. Off course the Earth is dangerously close to Jupiter’s gravitational pull, it has caused massive seismic activity on the Earth’s surface causing many engines to fail. Can the Earth escape from Jupiter’s grasp and continue wandering toward its new home. Below the planet surface are two young adults, a boy and girl the children of an astronaut flying ahead of the Earth on the space station. Wanting to see the view from the surface they have donned counterfeit thermal suits and stolen their uncles work ID to venture topside where they use their grandfathers ID to take a transport vehicle for a spin. These are large vehicles that haul excavated Earth to the engines where it is burned for fuel. While on the surface they are caught for stealing a transporter and their grandfather who tries to get them out of trouble is also arrested for not securing his ID. While in jail the earthquakes begin forcing them to the surface where they become part of a rescue team who have an ignitor cube that is needed to restart one of the failed engines. It’s a race to save all humanity of the surface of the planet while a HAL like computer on the space station forces their astronaut father to stop the computer from executing Plan B and abandoning the Earth.

If it sounds absolutely bonkers it is, the concept it pretty incredible, I would have liked a little less action, action, action and a little more in the beginning of how all this was built and the whole project of the Wandering Earth. This was the first major science fiction movie produced out of China and for a first it’s a little epic with a bit Armageddon and a little bit Europa Report in Mandarin.   Science Fiction fans will enjoy the look and feel of this, it lacks interesting characters and chunks of plot. Its  a large step into foreign science fiction though and for a first time sci-fi director it’s not half.C.

Touch of Evil

I am a member of the TCM Wine Club (www.tcmwineclub.com) which is a partnership between Turner Classic Movies and Laithewaites Wines. Every few months, a time frame that you specify, they send you a case of wine with some that are crafted specifically for film and some regular ones as well. You get a pairing card that talks about the wine, the region the wine is from, food that is recommended pairing and of course a movie to watch with the wine.

This month’s pairing was the “Borgo di Marte Appassimento 2016” with the 1958 crime noir classic Touch of Evil. The recommended food pairing with this wine was pork, stews or spicy sausage as some of the selections. I made what I called Touch of Spice Mac & Cheese which was Kraft White American with Bacon Mac & Cheese, I then added a top layer of Pepper Jack cheese, some Conecuh sausage, some caramelized French fried onions and lastly some red pepper flakes. This came out quite well and complimented well with the wine which also went very well with the movie, I have come to find red blends do very will with Noir films.

The film Touch of Evil stars Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh as a recently married couple that are honeymooning on the US/Mexico border she is from stateside and he is from Mexico giving them the best of both worlds basically. Enjoying the night together on the way to get a chocolate shake their honeymoon is abruptly ended when a car explodes putting Heston’s Detective Vargas into the investigation which is led by Police Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles). Vargas is a narcotics detective who before his honeymoon was on the trail of a drug kingpin that takes advantage of this honeymoon with Vargas’ wife in town and attempts to scare her into calling her husband off the trail. While this is happening to Janet Leigh, Vargas is growing more and more concerned with the tactics of Captain Quinlan that maybe this cop has gotten to where he is not by the cleanest of methods. When the Captain who needs to solve this bomb case steeps to trying to pin a drug and murder charge on Heston’s wife it will lead to an undercover operation for the truth.

Directed by Orson Welles you can see the mastery that Welles had for setting a shot. The opening tracking shot I was astonished by and later learned this was one of the earliest tracking shots and lengthiest ones at three and a half minutes. There was a disclaimer that came up as the DVD started that said the studio (Universal) had cut this film themselves and upon viewing it Welles was not happy and sent a rather lengthy memo to the studio asking for them to make certain edits to the film before releasing. Well it turns out after the film was wrapped and shortly into the editing process, Orson took off to Mexico to film another movie forcing the studio to cut the movie themselves. Janet Leigh also needed to stay away from motels she had an unfortunate stay at the Bate’s Motel and in the one she experiences a scare tactic from the Mexican drug family that had me a little unnerved and tense as we see her terrified on the bed.

I am not a large fan of Noir films, this one though I quite enjoyed and not just cause I had a few glasses of wine in me. Sometimes I have found that Noir movies had this habit of trying to over complicate the crimes and stories making it difficult to follow where this one is pretty straight forward and simple. Heston, Leigh and Welles all give terrific performances that had me wanting to watch if not for what happened to them, but just for their scenes which show why each of them was a Hollywood legend in their own right. I definitely recommend a late night watch of Touch of Evil to me Noir feels right when its late and the lights are out with just the movie playing. B.