Blood and Money

The Great White North (almost).

(2020) Thriller (Screen Media) Tom Berenger, Kristen Hager, Paul Ben-Victor, Bates Wilder, Erica McDermott, Mark Sivertsen, Brian Duffy, Melissa McMeekin, Jimmy LeBlanc, Catherine Portu, Gary Tanguay, Ryan Hornchick, Ace Gibson, David J. Curtis, Lisa Lynch. Directed by John Barr

 

We all have actors who we are fans of even as they fly under the radar of everybody else. For me, that’s Tom Berenger, who has been a terrific if underused actor for decades, resonating in films like The Big Chill, Platoon, Major League and Sniper. He’s also been in his share of B-movies, including this indie thriller.

Jim Reed (Berenger) is an ex-marine, living in a dilapidated custom-camper. Once upon a time he had a family, but that all comes to an end when his daughter dies in a drunk driving incident when he was at the wheel. His wife and son were never able to forgive him for that; Hell, he’s never been able to forgive himself for that.

He lives in the North of Maine and its deer hunting season and he’s particularly anxious to bag himself a buck. You see, Jim is vomiting blood and passing out; he knows he’s sick but he’s loathe to do anything about it. He mainly wants to be left alone, coming in to town to load up on supplies and hang out with Debra (Hager), a waitress who reminds him of his late daughter. She’s in a marriage to an alcoholic husband (LeBlanc) and wants to get out.

The talk of the town is a recent violent casino robbery in which five thieves got away with over a million dollars in cash. There’s a manhunt going on for them, but that’s of no mind to Jim, who basically is all about getting back to hunting.

Back out in the wilderness, he thinks he’s bagged his buck but it turns out to be a woman. Jim is absolutely distraught about the situation but when she dies, he flees the scene. He later finds out she as one of the gang that robbed the casino. So, Jim returns to the scene of the shooting and takes the big duffel bag full of money. Of course, it goes without saying that the surviving members of the gang want their ill-gotten gains back.

Berenger will be 71 at the end of the month and while he moves gingerly like a 71-year-old man, he still has the presence he did when he was younger. Berenger plays the silent type as well as anybody, and he gives Jim Reed a world-weary patina that just screams “Get off of my lawn.” He look utterly at home in the snowy wilderness of the north woods of Maine, and the cold temperatures match the cold demeanor of Reed.

Barr, in addition to directing, also co-wrote and shot the film as director of photography, and as a writer he makes a great cinematographer. The snowy vistas are harsh and beautiful, setting the tone for the thriller nicely. However, the plot is pure bargain bin; we’ve seen this movie before and done better, despite the best efforts of Berenger.

All in all, it adds up to a fairly pedestrian thriller that won’t give you any surprises or shocks, but is worth looking into for the beautiful pictures as well as for the performance of the lead.

REASONS TO SEE: Beautiful scenery.
REASONS TO AVOID: Kind of a typical plot.
FAMILY VALUES: There is both violence and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is Barr’s feature-length debut as a director. He’s been a cinematographer on 20 other projects.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/17/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 41% positive reviews, Metacritic: 37/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Cliffhanger
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Up From the Streets: New Orleans: The City of Music

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The Possession of Hannah Grace

The morgue is NOT the ideal place to hide from a demon.

(2018) Horror (Screen Gems) Shay Mitchell, Grey Damon, Kirby Johnson, Nick Thune, Louis Herthum, Stana Katic, Max McNamara, Jacob Ming-Trent, James A. Watson Jr., Marianne Bayard, Adrian Mompoint, Matt Mings, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Guy Clemens, Sean Burns, Andrea Lyman, George Vezina, Melissa McMeekin. Directed by Diederick van Rooijen

 

There is nothing fun or desirable about a trip to the morgue. So when a movie has that as a central premise, you have to hope that they do enough to make it interesting.

The movie starts with an exorcism (where many other horror movies end) that is performed on the luckless Hannah Grace (Johnson). When the ceremony turns into carnage, the girl’s loving father (Herthum) smothers her to death. But, as I said, the movie is only beginning.

Megan (Mitchell), an ex-cop battling alcoholism and inner demons, gets to battle an outer demon now as well. She’s starting a new job as an intake clerk at a hospital morgue which looks like it was designed by the same guys who do urban boutique hotels. Lots of concrete, lots of glass, and incongruously, cross-shaped lights inside the morgue itself. A little obvious, don’t-cha think?

In any case, it isn’t long before Hannah Grace’s corpse is deposited and we begin our “not-quite-dead-yet” shenanigans, although she is most decidedly dead, dead enough to inspire a Munchkin song. That’s bad news for the few workers who are present on the (appropriately) graveyard shift, including Megan’s pal Lisa (Katic) and AA sponsor who figures out too late that she’s not imagining things. Hannah’s got a hankering to rejoin the living and she’ll need some freshly dead folks to do that. Demons; can’t die with them, can’t die without ’em.

Essentially this is a standard haunted house flick set in a morgue and despite the title, there really isn’t much in the way of Satanic ritual other than in the opening minutes, so the truth in advertising thing is out the window. There isn’t a lot to the film that’s highly original, other than having the exorcism at the beginning. Van Rooijen doesn’t do a whole lot to work the tone, inserting a lot of jump scares and utilizing a whole lot of icky images of dead, rotting flesh. The mostly young, not-well-known cast (Mitchell is best known from Pretty Little Liars) does about how you’d expect given the limitations of the script.

It’s not surprising that the movie opened in the no-man’s land of the week after Thanksgiving. Not much was expected of it and it basically delivers on the “not much” department. It’s decent looking and the walking corpse effects are pretty good, although nothing particularly new, so this is a tepid recommendation at best. If you’re in the mood to be scared, there are so many better options to choose from.

REASONS TO SEE: The corpse effects are pretty good.
REASONS TO AVOID: A fairly standard haunted house-type film with many lapses in logic and lost scare opportunities.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of terror and some gruesome images throughout.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The exterior of the hospital is actually Boston City Hall.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Redbox, Sling TV, Starz, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/15/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 19% positive reviews, Metacritic: 37/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Autopsy of Jane Doe
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Bias

Small Crimes

I was just starting to look up to Nicolaj Coster-Waldau.

(2017) Crime Drama (Netflix) Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Robert Forster, Jacki Weaver, Molly Parker, Gary Cole, Macon Blair, Michael Kinney, Daniela Sandiford, Shawn Lawrence, Pat Healy, Eddie Holland, Jasson Finney, Anatoly Zinoviev, Glen Bowser, Larry Fessenden, Tara Yelland, Derek Barnes, Tyrone Benskin, Frank Schorpion, Alex Stines, Stéphane Julien, Julia Dawi. Directed by E.L. Katz

 

There are those who say they make their own luck and I suppose there is some truth to that. Some people absolutely refuse to let themselves get down; they do whatever it takes to succeed. Conversely there are also people who always seem to be on the losing end of life; they self-sabotage through bad decision making. They truly seem born to lose.

Joe Denton (Coster-Waldau) is one such sort. Recently released from prison after a six year stint, he was once a police officer in a rural Midwestern town who was convicted of conspiracy of trying to murder the district attorney Phil Coakley (Kinney). Corrupt and a raging alcoholic as a law enforcement officer, he has found sobriety in the joint and emerges hoping to turn his life around.

He moves back in with his parents Joe Sr. (Forster) and Irma (Weaver). Ma Denton in particular is suspicious of her son; she doesn’t really believe he’s truly capable of change. Joe is looking to reconnect with his ex-wife and resume being a father again but a single telephone call is sufficient for Joe to back off after a half-hearted attempt.

His ex-partner Lt. Pleasant (Cole) has some worries of his own; not so much about Joe who kept quiet about his involvement even in the face of a prison sentence, but against local crime boss Manny Vassey (Lawrence) who is dying of cancer and has found Jesus; Pleasant is concerned that Vassey might decide to unburden his soul before departing this green earth and in the process incriminate Pleasant.

Joe makes a bee line for the nearest bar and before you know it has fallen off the wagon. He begins to sink into old habits, alarming his mother and a botched attempt to kill Manny brings Joe under the watchful psychotic eye of the mobster’s son Junior (Healy). The lone bright spot in Joe’s life is his budding romance with hospice nurse Charlotte Boyd (Parker) who has baggage of her own, but even this potential game-changer may not be what it appears to be; Charlotte’s only client is Manny Vassey. And so things are beginning to spiral down towards a confrontation as Joe struggles to figure out how to get out of this rapidly deteriorating situation. Knowing Joe, things won’t end well for anybody.

This film had a solid debut at South by Southwest last year followed up with a fairly inconspicuous release on Netflix. The streaming giant has been a big player on the film festival circuit, snagging some prestige properties for their service while showing off some of their own original content. This one, while purchased at SXSW falls more in the mold of filler.

Coster-Waldau is best known as Jamie Lannister on the HBO hit series Game of Thrones and has enormous upside. He plays both hero and villain well which makes sense as Jamie is a little bit of both. He’s had a few high-profile roles but none have really put him over that cinematic hump yet. Here the best moments belong to Forster who is absolutely marvelous. Joe Sr. hopes against hope that his son will turn the corner but the guarded look in his eyes tells us that he doesn’t really expect him to.

I was heartened to find out this was written by Macon Blair, who directed the marvelous Blue Ruin and has written a number of highly regarded gritty indie films. Based on a David Zeltserman novel of the same name, the movie is unrelentingly downbeat. Blair has almost no exposition in the movie whatsoever other than some desultory pillow talk late in the movie; mysterious events are referred to and characters pop in and out of the movie that Joe apparently has some sort of previous relationship with but we are never informed about the nature of those events or the relationships with these people.

Blair is outstanding when it comes to writing male-oriented tough guy material but there is a little too much testosterone flowing for my own personal tastes, a little bit too much macho preening. At the end of the day this is a fairly typical “ex-con struggles to get his life back together despite enormous obstacles and a past that won’t let him go” type of film and although there are a few interesting twists and turns here, eventually when all is said and done Small Crimes adds nothing to the genre. The characters across the board are all unlikable and despite Coster-Waldau’s native charm, he isn’t able to make the character rise above his own flaws and be relatable. By the end of the movie most viewers will pretty much have written off Joe much as his parents have, much as everyone else around him has. Some people, this movie seems to opine, are genetically pre-disposed to fail and that’s such a bleak outlook on people that I find it hard to support a movie that believes that.

REASONS TO GO: Coster-Waldau is always engaging and the rest of the cast does exemplary work. The filmmakers pull no punches.
REASONS TO STAY: There’s a little too much testosterone flowing for my own taste. The film is very much a downer.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity, violence, drug use and some sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the novel that the film is based on, Phil Coakley and his daughter are both white; in the film, they’re African-Americans.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/17/18: Rotten Tomatoes: 62% positive reviews. Metacritic: 60/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: The Justice League

The Girl on the Train (2016)

Emily Blunt realizes she’s on the express train to Hell.

(2016) Thriller (DreamWorks/Universal) Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Rebecca Ferguson, Edgar Ramirez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Lisa Kudrow, Lana Young, Gregory Motley, Mac Tavares, John Norris, Peter Mayer-Klepchick, Darren Goldstein, Nathan Shapiro, Cleta E. Ellington, Tamiel Paynes, Fernando Medina, Rachel Christopher. Directed by Tate Taylor

 

Perception is a tricky thing. Memory is unreliable; we may think we see something but did we really? Was it something that our minds embellished, either because of altered perception or our own prejudices? Was it something important? Ask ten people about something they saw fleetingly from a moving vehicle and you’ll get ten different answers as to what they saw.

Rachel Watson (Blunt) takes the Long Island Railroad train from the Island into the City twice a day. She’s been through a lot lately; a divorce following the revelation that her husband Tom (Theroux) had been cheating on her with their real estate agent Anna (Ferguson) – and had worse still married Anna and had a beautiful baby daughter with her, after efforts for Rachel to get pregnant had turned out fruitless. She already had a problem with alcohol when they were married; now that problem has become full-blown alcoholism.

From the train she sees a house not far from the one she used to live in and where Tom still lives with her new wife. In the house live a beautiful blonde and her husband, the perfect couple to Rachel’s mind, who have everything she ever wanted but cannot have. It comforts her somehow that this perfect union exists. Then one morning she sees the wife in the arms of another man and this sends her into a tailspin. She gets blackout drunk and ends up in a field not far from her old house and the one that the not-quite-perfect couple live in.

Then comes the news that the woman is missing; her name is Megan Hipwell (Bennett) and husband Scott (Evans) is frantic. As Rachel was spotted in the area, she is questioned by Detective Riley (Janney) about the situation. Rachel tells the Detective what she knows but Rachel isn’t exactly the most reliable witness.

Consumed by the case, Rachel sets out to find out who the mysterious man was and to find out what happened to Megan. Slowly, as she stumbles drunkenly from one clue to another, she begins to get closer to the truth about what happened to Megan – and discovers to her shock that the answer is closer to her than she could ever know.

This is based on the runaway bestselling novel by Paula Hawkins and is quite frankly a hot mess. Director Tate Taylor (The Help) has a history of deftly weaving multiple tales of different women together into cohesive films but that doesn’t happen here. The focus is largely on Rachel but Megan and Anna are both heavily in the mix and we do get their points of view as well.

Blunt has gotten some strong praise for her performance as Rachel, even critics calling for Oscar attention but I don’t see it. Frankly, this is one of her weaker performances that I can remember. She is unconvincing when asked to do scenes of drunkenness; quite frankly I’ve spent a lot of time among the inebriated and this is more of a caricature than anything else. Blunt tends to be more successful here when we get glimpses of her underlying torment. Rachel is definitely not a happy woman and when Blunt gets to let glimpses of that out, the performance works.

She isn’t helped much by the other cast members. Their performances are mainly unmemorable, but that isn’t necessarily the fault of the actors. They are given preposterous dialogue to say and characters who have little or no development to work with. It’s like the filmmakers decided to do something Hitchcock-esque (which this is) but instead of writing actual characters they used stereotypes from other films to fill in the blanks. While Rachel’s alcoholism is a nifty idea, it’s used more as a gimmick than as a real interesting plot point.

I haven’t read the novel this is based on but I’m told it’s very well-written by people whose judgment I trust on such matters. I can’t believe though that the story is identical; it’s too pat, too been there-done that. The twists are telegraphed and let’s face it, if you can’t tell who the criminal is in the first twenty minutes you’ve been asleep.

Bailey as Megan shows some promise (she’s also in the much better Magnificent Seven remake) doing her best Margot Robbie impression and ironically enough Robbie was originally considered for the role. Ramirez incomprehensibly has a Spanish accent for a character who’s supposed to be Arabic and Janney is unbelievable as a tough Detective Sergeant. I mean, think about it; these are all competent actors who are known for their consistently strong performances. Why are they all doing subpar work here all at the same time? One can only blame the filmmakers. The only actor who really makes an impression is Lisa Kudrow in a brief but important role who gets to utter the immortal line “Rachel! I haven’t seen you in a million years!” which may or may not be a conscious reference to Friends.

I’ve read some decent reviews for this thing and can’t for the life of me which movie those critics saw. Most of the reviews have been, like this one, on the negative side. The houses don’t look lived in, the lives don’t feel real. It’s like watching a movie in which Barbie and Ken dolls are used as surrogates. Blunt shows flashes of her normal brilliance but that is tempered with her portrayal of drunkenness as more of a lampoon than anything remotely approaching realism and that is symbolic of the movie’s issues as a whole; at the end of the day, this feels empty and without a connection to anything like real life. Why spend money on a movie that feels divorced from reality when you can watch a presidential debate for free?

REASONS TO GO: The alcoholism makes for an interesting plot point.
REASONS TO STAY: The plot twists and the whodunit are incredibly predictable. The acting is surprisingly blah.
FAMILY VALUES:  There is violence, sexual content, profanity and a bit of nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  This is the first film Taylor has made that hasn’t had Octavia Spencer in it.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/8/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 44% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Vertigo
FINAL RATING: 4/10
NEXT: The Handmaiden

People Like Us (2012)

Down but not out.

(2012) Drama (DreamWorks) Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Hall D’Addario, Michelle Pfeiffer, Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass, Sara Mornell, Philip Baker Hall, Dean Chekvala, Barbara Eve Harris, David Burrus, Joseph Wise, Devin Brochu, Gabriela Milia, Abhi Sinha, Jon Favreau, Rob Brownstein, Christiann Castellanos, Pippa Hinchley. Directed by Alex Kurtzman

It is said that money changes everything. Sometimes for the better, in fact but there are in truth things more important than money. Family, for one thing – even family you never even knew you had.

Sam (Pine) is having a truly awful day. A truly gifted salesman, the deal which was to save his financial bacon has collapsed. His shenanigans and wheeler-dealer moves have brought a federal investigator turning a suspicious eye towards him. His job is essentially being taken from him. And he discovers that his father has passed away.

The latter is, as far as Sam is concerned, the least troubling of the lot. He and his dad have been estranged for years which has in turn kept Sam apart from his mother. When Sam deliberately misses a plane which would have gotten him home in time to make his dad’s funeral, his mother – knowing that the dick move was done on purpose – greets him with a slap to the face and an icy “the linens are in the upstairs closet.”

At lunch the next day with old family friend and lawyer Ike Rafferty (Hall), Sam discovers that his dad has left about $150,000 in an old shaving kit – but not for Sam. Instead, he’s supposed to give it to a bartender named Frankie who turns out to be a hottie who looks a lot like Elizabeth Banks. Not knowing who she is or what her relationship to his father was, Sam supposes that she was some floozy that dear old dad cheated on his mother with. Sam couldn’t be more wrong about that and therein lies the crux of the film’s drama, which is spoiled in the movie’s trailer.

If ever there was a film that was ineptly marketed, it’s this one. Despite being from the Kurtzman/Orci team that had been responsible for writing some of the biggest movies in Hollywood over the previous five years (a collaboration which has since split up), the studios completely botched the directorial debut of Kurtzman starting with the forgettable title for the movie and running through the marketing that gives away the film’s central plot twist.

Pine and Banks try gamely here, and they are so naturally charismatic that they nearly pull it off. It doesn’t hurt that they are supported by Wilde, who has quietly become one of the most reliable actresses in Hollywood, and Pfeiffer who has been not just one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood but one of her ablest performers as well.

There are hints of incestuous feelings between at least two of the characters which is a bit off-putting, although it never becomes an overt issue so in that sense they don’t have the courage of their own convictions.  Even more annoying, there is Frankie’s son Josh (D’Addario) who is wounded, extremely precocious and de rigueur for this kind of Hollywood production. Nothing against D’Addario but Josh really serves no useful purpose in the story and could have easily have been left off the script entirely.

As I said earlier, the movie’s marketing campaign was staggeringly unsuccessful; DreamWorks even chose to release it roughly during the same period as summer blockbusters like Magic Mike, Ted, Brave and The Amazing Spider-Man, leaving virtually no screens for People Like Us. As you can see from the box office numbers, it never resonated with the movie-going audience and hasn’t found one in home video either.

While I’ve delineated many of the movie’s faults, there still is a charm to it thanks mainly to the three leads, particularly Pfeiffer who brings a lot of dignity and pathos to her role as Sam’s mom and widow to a man who couldn’t have been easy to live with. However, be warned that this is a very flawed movie and that it is something like a bad-tempered Golden Retriever; hard to love but some may well find it worth the effort.

WHY RENT THIS: Pine and Banks are engaging leads. Pfeiffer dazzles.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Super-creepy incestuous references. Requisite precocious child that captivates leading man.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s a fair amount of cussing, some sensuality and brief drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Pfeiffer was extremely uncomfortable with a scene in which she slaps her son across the face, feeling that it would alienate her from the audience but despite her objections the scene remained in the film.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There is a gag reel and footage of Pine and Banks improvising with one another in an attempt to define the relationship between their characters.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $12.4M on a $16M production budget.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix (DVD/Blu-Ray rental), Amazon (rent/buy), Vudu (rent/buy),  iTunes (rent/buy), Flixster (unavailable), Target Ticket (unavailable)
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Millionaire
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Wild Tales

A Walk Among the Tombstones

No more cracks about being too old for this.

(2014) Mystery (Universal) Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, David Harbour, Boyd Holbrook, Adam David Thompson, Brian “Astro” Bradley, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Sebastian Roche, Danielle Rose Russell, Natia Dune, David Anzuelo, Whitney Able, Maurice Compte, Laura Birn, Razane Jammal, Eric Nelsen, Frank De Julio, Mark Consuelos, Marielle Heller, Novella Nelson. Directed by Scott Frank

They don’t make ’em like Sam Spade anymore. Or Lew Archer. Or Philip Marlowe. Or Humphrey Bogart for that matter. Noir detectives – hard bitten, hard drinking tough guys who were often knights in tarnished armor, strong men with stronger codes. Life has kicked the crap out of them – it’s a dog eat dog world after all – but if the weak or the helpless are threatened, well, get ready for a fight.

Matt Scudder (Neeson) is a throwback to those kinds of guys. He used to be a hard-bitten hard-drinking tough guy on the NYPD until a particularly bad day at the office. These days – which happen to be 1999 – he’s an unlicensed private investigator which he describes as “Sometimes I do people favors. Sometimes they give me gifts.”

He’s not too picky about his clientele. When Peter Kristo (Holbrook), who attends AA meetings with Matt, approaches him on behalf of his brother Kenny (Stevens), Matt is wary at first. Kenny is a drug dealer whose wife Carrie (Jammal) was kidnapped. Finding her isn’t the problem – Kenny’s already found her. In pieces. After he paid the ransom.

This doesn’t sit well with him. He wants the guys who did it found and brought to him, preferably alive. Matt doesn’t want any part of a revenge killing – until he hears the audio tape the killers left for Kenny. Once he hears that he’s all in.

As he investigates he discovers that Carrie Kristo wasn’t the first victim and she’s probably not going to be the last. His investigations take him to a graveyard groundskeeper (Olafsson) who found the first body and to the seamy side of New York. He is assisted by TJ (Bradley), a tough-talking African-American street kid who wants to be a P.I. just like in the books he’s read at the public library where he essentially hangs out all the time. However, the killers (Harbour, Thompson) have selected another victim and this time she’s a true innocent. Time is running out.

The movie is based on the tenth in a series of 17 (and counting) books by crime author Lawrence Block. The fifth, 8 Million Ways to Die, was brought to the silver screen back in 1986 with Jeff Bridges taking on the Scudder role. I haven’t seen that one in ages (it used to be in regular rotation on cable) but I do appreciate Neeson’s take on the role better; he conveys the inner darkness of the character much better.

Frank, who exhibited a good deal of potential in the thriller genre with the Joseph Gordon-Levitt film The Lookout continues to impress at his ability to deliver that dark, noir-ish mood while keeping the movie essentially modern despite its setting of 15 years ago. The Y2K undercurrent seems a bit quaint these days – and boy does it bring back memories.

This is definitely Neeson’s film and he carries it with both dignity and toughness. He’s the kind of guy who will punch a guy through a glass window but will buy a street urchin pancakes. He’s made some awful, awful choices in his life and other people have paid for some of his mistakes. He’s trying the straight and narrow but he seems to exist mostly in the grey area between there and the dark and lawless. Neeson is the perfect choice for Scudder.

Now about TJ. Let me first give full disclosure by asserting that I haven’t read any of the books in the series. The character of TJ is introduced in the ninth book in the series. I have read elsewhere that he doesn’t appear in this particular installment. Quite frankly, I found his presence unnecessary and distracting. During the climax of the movie, the character commits the cardinal kid sin by going exactly to the wrong place at the wrong time to be in the most peril. It derailed the movie for me and made me want to find the nearest wall and bang my head against it. Sorry guys, but this cliche is older than the original noir pics and it was just as unwelcome back then. The young actor that plays TJ is engaging – but again, it seems kind of gimmicky and unnecessary to have him in the movie.

There are some really great moments in the movie – sadly several of them are on display in the trailer. There would have been some franchise potential here although the box office numbers sadly don’t seem to justify it so chances are this is the last of Matt Scudder we’re going to see for awhile. I have to say I’m glad to see that noir films are making a bit of a comeback with this and the much better Cold in July both hitting the multiplex this year. Now if we could only get screwball comedies to make a comeback.

REASONS TO GO: Neeson perfect as the brooding action anti-hero. Grim and gritty.
REASONS TO STAY: The TJ character completely unnecessary and gets in the way.
FAMILY VALUES:  Some pretty intense violence, themes and images, sexuality and brief nudity and a fair amount of foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Ruth Wilson was cast as Matt Scudder’s partner Joe Durkin (male in the book) but director Scott Frank felt that the character was essentially a loner and a partner would only confuse things, so the role was eliminated and all the scenes filmed with Wilson were cut.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/8/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 66% positive reviews. Metacritic: 57/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Se7en
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: The Maze Runner

Bridesmaids

For losing the bet, Wiig has to give Rudolph a manicure with her teeth.

(2011) Comedy (Universal) Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, Jill Clayburgh, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Franklyn Ajaye, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, Jon Hamm, Richard Riehle, Mitch Silpa. Directed by Paul Feig

There’s something in the female hormone that just goes ballistic when it comes to weddings. Smart, capable, logical women turn into absolute emotional maniacs when confronted with the nuptials of a friend. Gather together an entire bridal party and you have enough cattiness and one-upsmanship to fill up thirty seasons of “Project: Runway.”

Annie (Wiig) and Lillian (Rudolph) have been the best of friends since childhood. Annie’s going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment. Her bakery, co-owned with her then-boyfriend has gone belly-up and her ex walked out out on her, leaving Annie holding the bag. Deeply in debt, she works at a jewelry store owned by a friend of her mom and rooms with a pair of English siblings, Gil (Lucas) and Brynn (Wilson) who would make Ellen DeGeneres homicidal. Annie is the regular booty call of Ted (Hamm), an egotistical jerk who wants no part of Annie other than to get his rocks off and Annie is more or less accepting of this relationship.

Things are looking up for Lillian however. She is engaged to her sweetie Doug and she wants Annie to be her maid of honor. Annie is only too happy to do it, not realizing the expense and frustration that goes hand-in-hand with the job. The bridal party includes Megan (McCarthy), Doug’s big-boned sister who shoots from the hip and has a somewhat skewed view of life; Rita (McLendon-Covey), Lillian’s cousin who is married with three kids and is horny as all get out; Becca (Kemper) who’s a newlywed and blissfully in love and finally Helen (Byrne), the wife of Doug’s boss and one of those rich people who thinks the world not only should revolve around them but in fact does.

Of course, Annie tries to keep costs under control but that’s simply not possible with Helen around. Annie and Helen regard each other with wary distrust, each vying for Lillian’s affection and to be top dog in the pack. As Annie initiates disaster after disaster (a pre-dress fitting meal causes a very nasty case of food poisoning which leads to a scene that isn’t for the squeamish and a drunken incident on a plane to Vegas for the bachelorette party which results in Annie not only making a fool of herself but for the plane not to reach its destination) the strain grows in her relationship with Lillian. Not even reconnecting with her mom (Clayburgh) and connecting with a sympathetic Irish cop named Rhodes (O’Dowd) can help Annie in her downward spiral towards an inevitable rock bottom.

This was produced by Judd Apatow and early indications that this is going to be another big box office hit for him. Like most Apatow movies, there is a good deal of vulgarity and a tendency to not skimp on sex or cussing which is the kind of thing that some folks are going to shy away from.

There are some genuine laughs here, and Da Queen pointed out that any woman who’s ever been involved with a wedding – their own or someone else’s – is going to find a lot of common ground here from the bridal party back biting to the absolute disasters that befall any wedding.

This is Wiig’s first leading role and the SNL veteran shows that she has the ability to be a charming and sympathetic romantic comedy heroine. Not only is she sexy and beautiful, she’s got great comic timing and she gets the audience squarely behind her for the most part, even when she’s sabotaging her own best friend in a fit of self-pity.

McCarthy often steals the show here and could wind up being the Zach Galifianakis of this little posse. Plus-sized women get the shortest of shrifts from Hollywood and it would be a shame for someone this talented and this funny to not turn a performance like this into a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Byrne plays the tightly wound Helen note-perfect and while I haven’t seen much of her in comedic roles (she’s best known for the cable hit “Damages”) she has a future in comedy as well as drama. O’Dowd has also been receiving raves for his role and could well wind up as a leading man somewhere down the road although he seems better suited to comedy than drama.

The movie overuses the awkward situation as laugh template, leaving me feeling uncomfortable more than anything else. However, thankfully, there’s enough genuine humor here and coupled with the genuine chemistry between Wiig and Rudolph (honed by years of working together on SNL) makes for a movie that hits the right notes most of the time. It’s good to see a movie that primarily focuses on the female point of view that can be enjoyed by both sexes equally – that’s a fairly rare bird in the Hollywood aviary.

REASONS TO GO: Enough laughs to keep things moving along. Good chemistry between Wiig and Rudolph.

REASONS TO STAY: Some of the bits go on too long. A few too many awkward moments masquerading as laughs.

FAMILY VALUES: A whole lot of bad language and tons of sex, not to mention a few disgusting images.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This was Jill Clayburgh’s final film before she passed away from leukemia last November.

HOME OR THEATER: No need for a big screen on this one.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Fish Tank