Camp Cold Brook

Shooting a ghost hunt in an abandoned summer camp where a bunch of campers died? What could go wrong?

(2018) Horror (Shout!) Chad Michael Murray, Danielle Harris, Courtney Gains, Michael Eric Reid, Loren Ledesma, Jason Von Erman, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Candice De Visser, Cate Jones, Mary Fjelstad-Buss, Juliette Kida, Doug Van Liew, Dale Niehaus, Ketrick “Jazz” Copeland, Corbin Tyler, Chloe Blotter, Pamela Bell, Connor Scott Frank, Debbi Tucker, Katie Fairbanks.  Directed by Andy Palmer

 

The paranormal investigation TV show is a staple of entertainment over the last, I don’t know, ten years, let’s say. Setting one in a staple slasher film locale – the abandoned summer camp – would indicate a melding of the two sub-genres, a good idea whose time has come. Unfortunately, that’s not the idea the filmmakers went with.

Jack Wilson (Murray) is the ruggedly handsome host of a cable TV paranormal investigation show that is in the midst of filming its third season when Jack is summoned by a network executive to be told that there won’t be a fourth season. However, Jack convinces him that the group is about to film their biggest show yet, one that will conclusively prove the existence of life after death. Reluctantly, the exec gives them one more episode to air as a summer special. If the ratings warrant it, they can talk about renewing then.

All Jack needs is a killer show, but to date mostly the group has come up snake eyes when it comes to any sort of paranormal activity. They don’t want to film at places every other paranormal investigation show has done to death; they need someplace new and preferably with a gruesome past. Production assistant Emma (De Visser) suggests a summer camp in rural Oklahoma where 20 years earlier 28 young campers drowned. The church that owns the campsite has steadfastly refused to let anyone in since then.

By an amazing coincidence, Jack grew up not far from there (non-spoiler alert: that isn’t the last amazing coincidence the plot will utilize). His mother Esther (Fjelstad-Buss) is less than pleased that her son is going to that place. Same with the least-sheriff-looking sheriff ever (Van Liew) as well as assorted townspeople. You almost expect the Scooby Do gang to show up.

But into the camp they go, Jack and Emma and jaded cameraman Kevin (Reid) and producer Angela (Harris). The cameras are placed, the lights are lit and the four of them hunker down. Soon, it starts – the unexplained noises, the half-glimpsed figures. Then, fires light and extinguish by themselves. Objects move without anyone being there. Then, things start to get real. As it turns out, a local woman whose child was killed by a church transport van, needs the lives of 30 other children to resurrect her own child through witchcraft. 28 kids died that night and the witch disappeared. Now, maybe she’s back to finish the job?

The movie has some things going for it and other things going against it. For one thing, it’s a little light on scares and the plot is on the formulaic side. Most veteran horror fans will see just about every plot point coming, quite possibly including the twist ending which, while nifty enough, wasn’t particularly shocking.

Genre legend Joe Dante was one of the producers on this, and his participation is slyly referred to in a couple of places (for example, one of the show’s tag lines is “We make the illogical logical” which was also a line used by the dad in Gremlins to promote his business. I found those little Easter eggs endearing.

This isn’t a bad horror movie but it could have been better. A little less reliance on formula and a few more legitimate scares would have gone a long way. There is some potential here though and I have high hopes that may of the performers here both on and off camera have better things ahead of them.

REASONS TO SEE: Murray has some real leading man appeal.
REASONS TO AVOID: Somewhat formulaic and a little light on scares.
FAMILY VALUES: There are images of terror, profanity and violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film made the rounds on the horror film festival circuit before getting a simultaneous streaming and limited theatrical release this weekend.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hoopla, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/16/20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Grave Encounters
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Mid90s

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New Releases for the Week of February 14, 2020

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

(Paramount) James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Tika Sumpter, Natascha Rothwell, Neal McDonough, Adam Pally. Directed by Jeff Fowler

The classic SEGA videogame comes to the big screen as a strange visitor from another dimension, possessed of unbelievable speed, whose power is sought afte by the nefarious Dr. Robotnik. It will take all of the brash, blue hedgehog’s power to stay out of the scientist’s clutches, but he has help – a new friend he made on Earth.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Family
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for action, some violence, rude humor and brief mild language)

After Midnight

(Cranked Up) Jeremy Gardner, Brea Grant, Henry Zebrowski, Justin Benson. A bartender is dumped by his girlfriend after he stubbornly refuses to consider marriage. After that, he is stalked every night at closing time by a hideous creature. Let that be your Valentine’s Day lesson, boys.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Barnstorm Theater
Rating: NR

Come As You Are

(Goldwyn) Grant Rosenmeyer, Hayden Szeto, Ravi Patel, Gabourey Sidibe. Three young men with disabilities flee their overprotective parents on a road trip to Montreal to a brothel that specializes in special needs clients. They are aided by a traveling nurse in their quest to lose their virginity.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Old Mill Playhouse
Rating: NR

Camp Cold Brook

(SHOUT!) Chad Michael Murray, Danielle Harris, Michael Eric Reid, Courtney Gains The producer of a paranormal investigative show, desperate to stave off cancellation and financial ruin, decides ti film at the notorious Camp Cold Brook where years earlier a tragedy led to the drowning of several campers. When they arrive at the deserted camp, however, the production team gets much more than it bargained for.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Barnstorm Theater
Rating: NR

Downhill

(Searchlight) Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Will Ferrell, Miranda Otto, Zach Woods. A family ski trip turns into disaster when the father apparently deserts his family when threatened by an avalanche. This leads to the crack in their marriage to be forced much wider. This is an English-language remake of the 2014 Swedish film Force Majeure.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language and some sexual material)

Fantasy Island

(Columbia) Michael Peña, Lucy Hale, Maggie Q, Portia Doubleday. This isn’t your mommy and daddy’s Fantasy Island, the 70s television show with Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize. Here, a much darker Mr. Roark turns vacationer’s fantasies into living nightmares.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some violence, terror, drug content, suggestive material and brief strong language)

First Lady

(ArtAffects) Burgess Jenkins, Corbin Bernsen, Jenn Gordon Chandler, Nancy Stafford. When a President dies in office, his widow agrees to help the bachelor Vice-President run for the Presidency by agreeing to be his First Lady in order to keep the ditzy wife of his opponent from ruining the dignity of the office. However, when a better offer comes along, can she walk away from the White House?

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Epic Theaters of Clermont, Epic Theaters of West Volusia, Old Mill Playhouse, Regal The Loop, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: PG (for some thematic elements)

The Kindness of Strangers

(Vertical) Zoe Kazan, Andrea Riseborough, Caleb Landry Jones, Bill Nighy. Six ordinary people in New York City in search of hope and maybe even love find their lives intersecting and that their dreams could lie in one another’s hands.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grill Sunset Walk
Rating: NR

Les Misérables

(Amazon) Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, Djebril Zonga, Issa Perica. A trio of police officers in a rough part of Paris find themselves overrun by an angry mob during the course of an arrest. As events unfold, a drone captures their every move on camera. This was a finalist for the Best Foreign Language Film at last weekend’s Oscars.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Cinematique Daytona Beach
Rating: R (for language throughout, some disturbing/violent content, and sexual references)

Love Aaj Kal

(Reliance) Kartik Aaryan, Sara Ali Khan, Randeep Hooda, Arushi Sharma. Two souls journey through life and love during various reincarnations.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks, Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Touchstar Southchase
Rating: NR

The Photograph

(Universal) Issa Rae, LaKeith Stanfield, Lil Rel Howley, Courtney B. Vance. The death of her renowned photographer mother leaves a young African-American with mixed feelings, but a photograph found hidden in a safe deposit box sends the estranged daughter on a journey through her mother’s early years, where she finds an unexpected romance with a young journalist.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sexuality and brief strong language)

Spy Intervention

(Cinedigm) Drew van Acker, Poppy Delevingne, Blake Anderson, Brittany Furlan. When the world’s greatest spy finds the woman of his dreams, he elects to retire from international espionage and settle down for a suburban life. When the world comes under threat, however, his colleagues stage an intervention to get him back into the game – which, it turns out, he’s all too eager to do.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Spy Comedy
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grill Sunset Walk
Rating: NR

VHYes

(Oscilloscope) Kerri Kenney, Thomas Lennon, Charlyne Yi, Tim Robbins. Shot entirely on VHS cameras, this retro comedy shows what happens when a precocious 12-year-old records over important family memories with a collection of his favorite late night shows and homemade videos.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: NR

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Varane Aavashyamandu
World Famous Lover

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE/KEY WEST:

Citizen K
The House on Wannsee Street
Jose
Julieta
The Last Thing He Wanted
Varane Aavashyamandu
World Famous Lover

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG/SARASOTA:

India vs. England
Varane Aavashyamandu
World Famous Lover

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Varane Aavashyamandu
World Famous Lover

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Camp Cold Brook
Downhill
Fantasy Island
Sonic the Hedgehog

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Cinema Verde International Environmental Film Festival, Gainesville FL
Love Your Shorts Festival, Sanford FL
Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival, Palmetto Bay FL

Home of the Brave (2006)

A sadly far-too-common sight during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

(2006) War Drama (MGM) Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, Christina Ricci, Brian Presley, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Chad Michael Murray, Victoria Rowell, Jeff Nordling, Vyto Ruginis, Sam Jones III, James MacDonald, Sandra Nelson, Ginger Ewing, Jack Serino, Brendan Wayne, Mohamed Zinathiah, Richard De Mayo, Kiara Johnson, Joyce M. Cameron. Directed by Irwin Winkler

For three soldiers serving in Iraq, the word has come down; they’re shipping back home in two weeks. When in Hollywood, that’s a sure sign that something Bad is about to happen.

And so it does. Dr. Will Marsh (Jackson), Vanessa Price (Biel), Tommy Yates (Presley) and Jamal Aiken (50 Cent) are part of an Army National Guard humanitarian convoy bringing medical supplies and personnel to a small Iraqi village when they are ambushed by insurgents. The firefight is sudden and brutal, with the soldiers taking on well-armed adversaries. None of them get out without some kind of wound; Vanessa loses her hand in a roadside bomb explosion, Jamal accidentally shoots an unarmed civilian, Tommy takes a minor wound to his leg and as a result is unable to help when his best friend is killed. As for Marsh, he’s supposed to stitch them all together.

Once they recover from their physical wounds, they’re all shipped home and essentially left to fend for themselves. The VA bureaucracy is bewildering for some, while others fail to take advantage of the programs that are available to help them cope. Vanessa is having problems dealing with her mutilation; not only is she having physical problems adjusting to the prosthetic, her emotional issues are threatening to overwhelm her and alienate her from her family. Jamal is angry and frustrated; his former girlfriend Keisha (Ewing) refuses to have anything to do with him and he can’t seem to navigate the paperwork that will help him get the treatment he needs for his injured back. Tommy is aimless and drifting, unable to handle the guilt of failing his friend; on top of that, he finds himself attracted to his dead buddy’s girlfriend (Ricci), but neither of them seem able to help the other cope with their grief.

Dr. Marsh seems to have the most complex issues. His teenage son (Jones) is angry (what teenage son isn’t?) and takes it out on his father, who struggles to understand him. His wife (Rowell) in turn wants to help him with his pain, but can’t find any sort of common ground to begin with, even if he was willing to let her in which he isn’t. Instead, he turns to the bottle to ease his suffering, with predictable results.

The turmoil of soldiers placed into extremely stressful situations returning into a normal life is daunting. Not many go through the process unscathed but which of these returning vets will break and which, if any, will overcome?

Outside of Jackson, Biel and Ricci, few of the cast were really name actors at the time this was made. Jackson is, as always, terrific as the tormented medic while Ricci has only a couple of scenes in which to display her grief, which to her credit doesn’t seem to be a product of Acting Out Grief 101. Most of the rest of the cast is solid, although 50 Cent at times has difficulty enunciating in one of his first screen roles – his third, to be exact. As for the rest of the cast, most resist the urge to denigrate drama into melodrama but some succumb to the temptation.

The battle sequences are pulse-pounding and realistic, although it reminded me a little bit of the ambush sequence in Clear and Present Danger. Winkler is a veteran director and does a solid job of moving the story along. While the script is extremely flawed in terms of its characterization of the emotional state of the majority of our veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the elements that work do so extremely well.

I’ll pretty much see Samuel L. Jackson in just about anything. Yeah, he can be over-the-top but he’s never boring. Winkler manages to make each soldier’s story gripping and you wind up caring about the characters and being interested in their individual journeys but the movie doesn’t really add anything to the overall conversation. In a lot of ways, the topic is and has been better explored in documentaries about the subject. I was disappointed that the script portrayed all of the returning veterans as psychotic, which is not true of the majority of returning war veterans. Yes, there are plenty of Iraq War vets who have problems returning to normal life, but there are plenty who are able to adjust without falling apart.  I’m not saying that they all come through unscathed and adjust easily to civilian life, but most don’t have the extreme reactions these vets did. I would have hoped for more realistic portrayals of vets adjusting to their return to normal life. In short, this is no Best Days of Our Lives.

While this seems to be a modern take on The Best Years of Our Lives, there is at least enough about it that give it some resonance. However, the 1946 movie about returning WWII vets is still the best movie ever produced on the subject and let’s face it, Jessica Biel is no Harold Russell. There is some resonance here however, particularly given the recent VA scandal and the difficulties veterans are encountering getting the assistance they need. Overall I have to say that I found myself interested in the lives of these soldiers and if you get me to that point, that’s half the battle.

WHY RENT THIS: Jackson is always interesting. Opening ambush sequence very powerful.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Heavy-handed. Doesn’t really cover any new ground.
FAMILY MATTERS: The subject matter is difficult for less mature audience members to latch onto, and the ambush sequence is fairly realistic, particularly when the roadside bomb does its work. The language is salty throughout; definitely not for younger and more sensitive types.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The closing credits song, “Try Not to Remember” performed by Sheryl Crow was nominated for a Golden Globe.
NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: There is a trivia track on the Blu-Ray edition; the DVD edition has the usual audio commentary and deleted scene.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $499,620 on a $12M production budget.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix (DVD/Blu-Ray rental only), Amazon (buy/rent), Vudu (buy/rent),  iTunes (buy/rent), Flixster (unavailable), Target Ticket (unavailable)
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Stop-Loss
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Deli Man

New Releases for the Week of October 3, 2014

GONE GIRL

(20th Century Fox) Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit, Missi Pyle, Sela Ward, Boyd Holbrook. Directed by David Fincher

Nick and Amy have the perfect marriage. They love each other madly, support each other completely and are in the initial stages of building a long and fruitful life together. Or so it seems. On the evening of their fifth wedding anniversary Amy turns up missing. As the facade of the perfect marriage begins to crumble, the spotlight turns on Nick who it seems is far from the perfect husband. Did Nick murder his wife? Or is something far more different going on?

See the trailer, clips and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Thriller

Rating: R (for a scene of bloody violence, some strong sexual content/nudity, and language)

Annabelle

(New Line) Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Alfre Woodard, Tony Amendola. From last year’s hit The Conjuring comes this spin-off, set before the events of that film. Here we find out how the doll Annabelle became so deadly as a cult of vicious Satanists who attack a pregnant wife and her husband. Although they manage to survive the tack, the cultists do not but their blood and horrible memories are not all they leave behind; they had conjured up a demonic entity that has attached itself to the doll, a gift from the husband to his wife. That gift is going to be the kind that keeps on giving, you can be sure of that!

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Supernatural Horror

Rating: R (for intense sequences of disturbing violence and terror)

Bang Bang

(Fox Star) Katrina Kaif, Hrithik Roshan, Jimmy Shergill, Preity Uupala. A mousy bank employee falls into international intrigue when a mysterious stranger comes into his life, claiming to be a spy on a secret mission to save the world. Can she trust the word of this charming stranger? Is he what he says he is? Or is he delusional and leading her into the kind of trouble that she can’t dig her way out of? A remake of the recent Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Bollywood Action

Rating: NR

The Good Lie

(Warner Brothers) Reese Witherspoon, Corey Stoll, Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany. Sudanese refugees travel 1500 miles on foot to reach a refugee camp where they have a shot at getting the golden ticket to America where they can star their lives over in freedom. Four young brothers have been through incredible trauma making it to America but their sister is left behind for a later flight. However when 9-11 halts refugee activity, a social worker is moved to help these boys reunite their family even though the odds are stacked against them.

See the trailer and premiere footage here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: True Life Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements, some violence, brief strong language and drug use)

Govindudu Andarivadele

(Parameswara Arts) Ram Charan, Srikanth, Kajal Aggarwal, Kamalinee Mukherjee. A young agriculture student visits his grandfather’s house in an effort to reconcile the old man with his father. As he does so he discovers the story behind their estrangement and his grandfather learns why the student has come to mend fences at that specific time.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood Family

Rating: NR

Haider

(UTV) Shahid Kapoor, Tabu, Narendra Jha, Irrfan Khan. A modern version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set in India, this is the third in a Shakespearean trilogy by director Vishal Bhardwaj.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood Drama

Rating: NR

Hector and the Search for Happiness

(Relativity) Simon Pegg, Christopher Plummer, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgard. A psychiatrist who has fallen into a rut, decides he is no longer qualified to advise his patients on how to have a better, more fulfilling life if he hasn’t lived one himself yet. He goes out therefore on an adventure throughout the world trying to find what happiness is.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: R  (for language and some brief nudity)

Left Behind

(Stoney Lake) Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Lea Thompson, Cassi Thomson. When the Rapture takes place and the righteous ascend to heaven, those that remain on Earth discover that there’s a reason why going to heaven was a much better idea.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Faith-Based Adventure

Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic elements, violence/peril and brief drug content)

The Liberator

(Cohen Media Group) Edgar Ramirez, Danny Huston, Maria Valverde, Gary Lewis. The story of Simon Bolivar, who led a revolt of the South American indigenous peoples against the colonial might of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. He was instrumental in freeing millions of people to self-govern and is regarded as one of the most beloved heroes in the region.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Biographical Drama

Rating: NR

New Releases for the Week of December 13, 2013

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG       

(New Line) Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Evangeline Lilly, Benedict Cumberbatch. Directed by Peter Jackson

Continuing on their journey to reclaim the Lost Kingdom of Erebor, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and thirteen stout and true dwarves must navigate the gloomy Mirkwood, take on swarms of giant spiders and Beorn the skin changer and the dangerous Wood Elves before coming face to face with the most fearsome foe they could imagine – the dragon Smaug. It will take all their courage and camaraderie to survive these obstacles.

See the trailer, clips and promos here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: PG-13 (for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images)

Nebraska

(Paramount) Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacey Keach. A man decides to humor his cantankerous old dad and accompany him to Nebraska to claim a sweepstakes prize the man suspects is a sham. Along the route he will see his father through different eyes – and maybe become a better man in the process. Acclaimed director Alexander Payne shot this in beautiful black and white.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for some language)

Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas

(Lionsgate) Tyler Perry, Kathy Najimy, Chad Michael Murray, Tika Sumpter. Madea reluctantly helps a friend make a surprise visit to her daughter in the country during the holidays. When they get there, things aren’t at all what they expect and in typical Madea fashion she must give out massive doses of her own brand of Christmas spirit or kick some serious booty – sometimes both.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opening Thursday)

Genre: Holiday Comedy

Rating: PG-13 (for sexual references, crude humor and language)  

Fruitvale Station

A precursor to tragedy.

(2013) True Life Drama (Weinstein) Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ariana Neal, Ahna O’Reilly, Keenan Coogler, Trestin George, Joey Oglesby, Michael James, Marjorie Shears, Destiny Ekwueme, Bianca Rodriguez III, Julian Keyes, Kenny Grimm, Thomas Wright, Alejandra Nolasco. Directed by Ryan Coogler

On December 31, 2008 a young man and his girlfriend left their daughter at a relative’s house and took a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train to San Francisco to celebrate the new year. After a few hours of revelry, they returned home on the same train. A fight was said to have broken out, so the train was stopped at the Fruitvale Station so that the transit police could investigate. Four young African-American men were pulled off the train and detained, including the young father. When he rose up to protest, he was forced to the ground with an officer’s knee in his face. While he was down, another officer shot him in the back. He would die the next morning from his wounds.

The young man’s name was Oscar Grant III and his death provoked massive protests and outcry particularly on the West Coast. In the wake of the recent Trayvon Martin decision, his story is more relevant than ever.

The movie opens with actual footage of the incident (many passengers on the train captured it on their cell phones, as did surveillance cameras on the station platform) and then flashes back 24 hours as we see Oscar (Jordan) in the last 24 hours of his life. This young man was no saint – he had a temper and had been incarcerated for selling drugs. He’d recently lost his job in a grocery store for being late to work too often and had recently cheated on his girlfriend Sophina (Diaz).

Still, he clearly loved his daughter Tatiana (Neal) and was trying his best to be a good father to her. Despite his indiscretion, he wanted nothing more than a more permanent relationship with Sophina. And he adored his mother Wanda (Spencer) and looked up to her as a role model. He, Sophina and Tatiana spent the evening having dinner with Wanda and celebrating her birthday. Worried that traffic in and out of the city would be bad and that with all the drunk people on the road it might be dangerous, Wanda urges Oscar to take the train which he and his buddies (along with Sophina and another girl) elect to do, a train that will take Oscar to his final moments.

This will undoubtedly go down as one of the best films of 2013 and will certainly merit some awards consideration (I wouldn’t be surprised to see Weinstein do a brief theatrical re-release right around Christmas to remind Academy voters how good this movie is). I won’t lie and say this is a completely objective movie, but neither is it unrealistic – Oscar Grant had some issues in his short life and his family would undoubtedly be the first to say so. He’s not portrayed as some kind of saint here, but as a real guy struggling to better his life and the lives of his family. Most of us are no different in that regard.

Jordan delivers a real star turn here. He has the best onscreen smile since Tom Cruise and shows amazing screen presence and charisma here. He transforms Oscar Grant from a name on newscasts into flesh and blood. I don’t know how close he was to capturing the personality of the real Oscar Grant (although friend of the family Jack Bryson indicated that it was) but Jordan makes the impending tragedy hanging over the bulk of this movie like a Sword of Damocles all the more poignant because while he was far from perfect, Oscar Grant was a good man.

Octavia Spencer has already won an Oscar and she might just get another one as Oscar’s tough loving mom. She demands – and receives – respect from her son, and is the kind of mom that everyone loves and whose respect and approval everyone craves. Spencer gives Wanda inner strength (which the real Wanda possesses in abundance) and her grief for her son in the movie’s closing scenes is hard to watch.

The movie is highly fictionalized, portraying an incident in which Oscar watches a dog get hit by a car after which it dies in his arm (portending his own fate) and a shopper at the grocery store (O’Reilly) trying to get a recipe for a fish fry whom he connects with his grandma (Shears). In fact, Oscar is constantly on his phone, a conceit that is used throughout the movie by projecting the phone screen onscreen to show us the texts he’s receiving. It’s very effective.

There are those who will grouse that the movie is manipulative, but that’s bull. It’s impossible not to be emotionally affected by the events that transpire onscreen. It’s hard not to like Oscar Grant and wish he was still around to take care of his family. But it’s harder still to avoid the conversation that should and does ensue – that even now, 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, we as a nation still treat our African-American citizens with suspicion and prejudice. While I can’t say it’s entirely unjustified to be wary of young African-American, they still deserve better than to be profiled and shot like animals. That we’re still having this conversation in 2013 is perhaps the biggest tragedy of all.

REASONS TO GO: Powerful and moving. Career-defining work by Jordan. Possible Oscar consideration for Spencer and Diaz.

REASONS TO STAY: May be too disturbing for some.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s a whole lot of foul language, a bit of drug use and some violence and sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Won the Grand Jury Prize and U.S. Dramatic Film Audience Award at Sundance, and Best First Film at Cannes.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/31/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 93% positive reviews. Metacritic: 85/100; the critics love it.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Boyz ‘N the Hood

FINAL RATING: 9.5/10

NEXT: Red 2

New Releases for the Week of July 26, 2013

THE WOLVERINE

(20th Century Fox) Hugh Jackman, Will Yun Lee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rila Fukushima, Famke Janssen, Brian Tee. Directed by James Mangold

The Wolverine is summoned to Japan by a super wealthy industrialist whose life he had saved years before. Now, the favor is to be returned – by removing Wolverine’s mutant healing ability, making him mortal for the first time. However, it also makes him a target in a game that he doesn’t know the rules to and may well be out of his depth. Now more than ever he’ll have to rely on his courage to get through this.

See the trailer, clips, a promo and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D (Opens Thursday)

Genre: Superhero

Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some sexuality and language)

Bajatey Raho

(Eros International) Tusshar Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Vishakha Singh. A pair of conmen who have been wronged have just 15 days to pull off the heist of their lives and get sweet revenge. They’ll need their entire family to pull it off.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Fruitvale Station

(Weinstein) Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Melonie Diaz, Chad Michael Murray. On New Year’s Eve 2008, a young black man in Oakland who was trying to get his life back together for his young daughter, his girlfriend and his mom decided to celebrate the New Year in San Francisco. What happened on his way back home shocked the region and became a national news story. A major hit at Sundance, this could well be a major Oscar contender next year.

See the trailer and featurettes here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: True-Life Drama

Rating: R (for some violence, language throughout and some drug use)

I’m So Excited!

(Sony Classics) Carlos Areces, Raul Arevalo, Javier Camara, Lola Duenas. Passengers aboard a flight to Mexico City find out that their plane has suffered a mechanical malfunction that threatens all their lives. As the crew and ground control attempt to find a way to fix the problem, the passengers and stewards try to find ways to take their minds off of their predicament. Since this is directed by the great Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, you know this won’t be anything like you expect it will be.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R (for strong sexual content including crude references, and drug use)

The To-Do List

(CBS) Aubrey Plaza, Bill Hader, Alia Shawkat, Christopher Mintz-Plasse. A young valedictorian preparing to enter college realizes that she’s experienced little social and sexual activity during high school. Concerned she won’t fit in, she decides to experience all the things she missed in a frantic summer before going to the next level in her education. Somewhat loosely (we hope) based on the experiences of the writer/director of the movie, Maggie Carey.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Coming-of-Age Teen Sex Comedy

Rating: R (for pervasive strong crude and sexual content including graphic dialogue, drug and alcohol use, and language – all involving teens)  

Renee

Not your typical fairy godmother.

(2009) True Life Drama (Two Streets) Kat Dennings, Chad Michael Murray, Rupert Friend, Mark Saul, Juliana Harkavy, Corbin Bleu, William Peltz, Brian Patrick Clark, Rus Blackwell, J. LaRose, Ylian Alfaro Snyder, Kristi Engelmann, Brad Benedict, Rachael Yamagata. Directed by Nathan Frankowski

 

Drug addiction, self-mutilation, sexual predators, clueless parents – all of these things are issues our teenage girls face in the war that growing up has become. Fortunately, they don’t have to necessarily go out into battle alone.

However, that’s exactly what Renee Yohe (Dennings) did. An independently-minded teen from a comfortably middle class family in suburban Orlando, she and her inseparable mates Dylan (Saul), a budding musician and her BFF Jessie (Harkavy) navigate the party scene with the courage and innocence that comes with being a teen.

Renee has always had a thing for fairy tales, seeing beautiful gardens when life got messy. No garden can save her however when she falls in among the wrong crowd. She is hooked on drugs and abandons her friends and family, living in a drug culture cared for only by downtown pedi-cab driver Mackey (Bleu) who can’t protect her from a sinister looking druggie who has designs on her body.

She escapes from the drug house that she was in and calls Dylan. He is working as an (unpaid) intern for an agent for musicians, David McKenna (Friend) who is a former addict himself and does motivational speeches at churches and schools throughout Central Florida. He agrees to help her get into a rehab program but the director tells him that since Renee still has drugs in her system, they can’t accept her since they don’t have the facilities to help her through detox. She’s going to have to wait five days for her system to cleanse itself of the drugs before she’ll be allowed in.

After a fruitless attempt to convince her parents to let her crash at home, McKenna reluctantly decides to take her in where Jessie and Dylan can keep an eye on her. This is news to his roommate Jamie Tworkowski (Murray) who is impressed by Renee’s straightforward nature and her courage to tackle sobriety. It’s no easy thing for Renee to get sober, particularly with all the temptations around her including a downtown music festival, ghosts from the past and David’s own fragile sobriety.

While Renee finally makes the recovery clinic, Jamie is inspired to write Renee’s story. This leads to him founding a non-profit organization to help kids like Renee. That organization is To Write Love on Her Arms, which would become a respected and acclaimed agency  that helps kids get the treatment they need to get through their drug addiction.

This is based on the true story of Renee and the agency that she helped inspire. Frankowski nicely accents the gritty realistic tone of the film with flights of fancy, many depicting the fairy tale quality of Renee’s imagination. That makes for a lovely juxtaposition which offers some relief from what would be a grim fairy tale indeed.

Dennings, known more for comic roles, shines here. Renee isn’t always the most reliable of people and she doesn’t do the right thing all the time. She can be far from sympathetic in her actions until you remember what she’s been through and as you watch the story unfold as a child from an essentially loving environment makes such horribly self-destructive choices. It’s heart-breaking at times and yet Renee isn’t one to apologize or feel sorry for herself. Those qualities shine through in Dennings’ portrayal of her and creates an unforgettable character who’ll stay with you long after the movie is over. I don’t know if the real Renee Yohe is anything like how Dennings portrays her but if she is, she’s someone I wouldn’t mind meeting someday.

Denning has some pretty good support here too. Friend brings out the torment in McKenna’s soul, making him a stand-up guy who is a lot less strong than he appears to be. It’s a spot-on perfect of a recovering addict that Dr. Drew would no doubt approve of.

In fact, there’s a lot about this movie that Dr. Drew might praise. For one, Renee’s release from rehab isn’t the end of her journey but more like the beginning. She realizes, even if those around her don’t, that she is far from recovered and is very much at risk. She also knows that this will be a lifelong fight for her. I don’t know if the real Renee has remained clean and sober – I’d like to think she has – but realistically speaking the odds are far greater that she’s relapsed at some time. This is true for any addict, not just her – kicking drugs isn’t the kind of thing that can be really covered in a 90 minute movie adequately. You don’t get the sense of how it is an insidious disease that rears its ugly head whenever it isn’t wanted or needed.

The power of this movie is very evident. The local Orlando filmmaking community can take a lot of pride that a movie of this quality has come out of it and hopefully it will pave the way for more movies this accomplished. As for Renee, you will leave as I did rooting for her to make it and find that elusive happiness that is hard enough to find when we’re sober. You would also do well to remember – as I’m sure she’d be the first to tell you – that she is just one of many such stories, and there are probably some being written a lot closer to you than you might think.

REASONS TO GO: Enormously emotional with some excellent performances from Dennings and Friend. Realistic and “non-Hollywood” view at addiction.

REASONS TO STAY: Choppy pacing at times. Rape scenes may be too intense for sensitive souls or survivors of the crime.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some graphic depictions of drug use, plenty of foul language, a little bit of violence and sexuality including rape.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Much of the crew came from the primary film schools in Central Florida – the University of Central Florida, Full Sail University and Valencia College.

CRITICAL MASS: Not available.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Crutch

ORLANDO LOVERS: The movie was shot around downtown Orlando and features the parts of the city that people who just visit the theme parks never see.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

TOMORROW: Eye of the Hurricane