New Releases for the Week of September 7, 2018

THE NUN

(New Line) Demián Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons, Ingrid Bisu, Charlotte Hope, Sandra Teles, August Maturo, Jack Falk, Lynnette Gaza. Directed by Corin Hardy

A young novitiate and a priest with a disturbing past are sent to investigate the mysterious death of a nun in a remote abbey in Romania. There they discover a malevolent force that threatens not only their lives but their souls. Realizing that there is more at stake than just themselves, they rely on their crumbling faith to do battle with the damned in this latest installment in the Conjuring series.

See the trailer and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard, DBOX, Dolby, IMAX, RPX, XD
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for terror, violence and disturbing/bloody images)

God Bless the Broken Road

(Freestyle) Lindsay Pulsipher, Jordin Sparks, LaDamian Tomlinson, Robin Givens. While grieving for her husband who was lost in Afghanistan, a young mother meets a race car driver who restores both her hope and her faith. This is loosely based on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band song of the same name.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Faith-Based Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, AMC Lake Square, Barnstorm Theater,  Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Regal Oviedo Mall, Regal Pavilion Port Orange, Regal The Loop, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG (for thematic elements and some combat action)

Madeline’s Madeline

(Oscilloscope) Helena Howard, Miranda July, Molly Parker, Sunita Mani. A theater director gets a whole lot more than they bargained for when the lead actress in their latest project takes her role a bit too seriously. Reality and fantasy begin to blur as a fierce tug of war takes place between the director, her young star and the actress’ mother.

See the trailer and a video featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Mystery
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: NR

Peppermint

(STX) Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz, Method Man. When a woman’s family is killed by members of a drug cartel, she finds no justice in a corrupt system in which judges, cops and politicians are all bought and paid for by the cartel. Realizing that she’s a target, she goes underground for five years. When she returns she goes on a revenge spree that would make Stallone proud.

See the trailer, interviews, clips and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for strong violence and language throughout)

The Wife

(Sony Classics) Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Elizabeth McGovern. The wife of an acclaimed author accompanies him to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. There, her years of being taken for granted, her own writing skills appropriated and her life a shadow of what she imagined it to be come to the surface.

See the trailer, clips and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: R (for language and some sexual content)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Alright Now
C/O Kancharapalem
The Hows of Us
Manu
Nancy
Slipaway

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Age of Summer
C/O Kancharapalem
Destination Wedding
Get My Gun
The Hows of Us
Manu
No Date, No Signature
Silly Fellows
Support the Girls

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

The Favorite
The Hows of Us
Manu
Stilly Fellows

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

C/O Kancharapalem
The Hows of Us
Manu
Summer of ‘84

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

The Nun
Peppermint
Support the Girls
Summer of ‘84

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Bullet to the Head

Rambo and Conan get their axe together.

(2012) Action (Warner Brothers) Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Jason Momoa, Sarah Shahi, Adwale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christian Slater, Jon Seda, Holt McCallany, Brian Van Holt, Weronika Rosati, Dane Rhodes, Marcus Lyle Brown, Dominique DuVernay, Andrea Frankle. Directed by Walter Hill

Vengeance can make strange bedfellows of us all. Those who are wronged by the same party can become allies, regardless of their outlook on life. People who would never be friends are suddenly thrust together by circumstance, made close by common cause.

Jimmy “Bobo” Bonomo (Stallone), not mindful that his nickname in some quarters is slang for the derriere,  is a New Orleans hitman on a routine job to execute some high rolling lowlife (McCallany). The job is done but Jimmy spares a hooker (Rosati) who has a tattoo of a panther that seems to be reasonably significant. His partner Louis Blanchard (Seda) chides him for his softness. They go to a bar to meet Ronnie Earl (Van Holt) who is their contact but instead, Louis meets his maker and Jimmy barely escapes.

Of course something like this gives Jimmy a mad on. He knows that Ronnie alone knows who hired him and he needs to know who the man is and why he and Louis were set up. In the meantime Taylor Kwan (Kang), a detective for the Washington DC police force arrives in town to investigate the death of the high rolling lowlife who turns out to have been his ex-partner, drummed out of the DCPD in disgrace. Detective Kwan meets up with Lt. Lebreton (Rhodes) and Detective Towne (Brown) of the New Orleans Police and they investigate Greely’s body at the morgue. There they discover Blanchard’s body as well and Kwan deduces that Blanchard and his partner Bobo were responsible for the death of his former partner.

Detective Kwan is, like Bobo, more interested in who hired him and set him up then in taking Bobo down. The two men meet but Bobo is extremely distrustful of cops and refuses to work with him. However when Kwan is attacked by a pair of corrupt cops outside the bar, Bobo rescues him. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

Detective Kwan is shot in the attack and Bobo takes him to his daughter Lisa’s (Shahi) tattoo parlor where she fixes him up. The two know they need to find Ronnie Earl, and a visit to a massage parlor locates him. Earl tells him that he worked through Marcus Baptiste (Slater), a sleazy lawyer. The two crash a costume party and kidnap him, taking him to a boat house on the bayou that serves as Bobo’s safe house. They are tracked by Keegan (Momoa), the thug who murdered Blanchard and a team of mercenaries. Baptiste confesses that the man behind all this is Robert Nkomo Morel (Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a deposed African warlord who aims to build condos in a low-income area. Just then Keegan’s mercenaries interrupt the party but Bobo and Kwan escape with Bobo blowing up the boathouse with the men in it. Only Keegan escapes and now he wants Bobo’s head on a stick in front of the Superdome if necessary.

This is based on a French graphic novel that has been transplanted to American soil which I suppose is appropriate enough. Certainly the gritty tone of the original works well in an American setting, although I can’t help but wonder how this would have fared in the capable hands of a Luc Besson or a Louis Letterier or even an Olivier Megaton, capable action directors all.

Stallone, closer to 70 than he is to 60, is terribly miscast here. The role is really meant for a lithe hand-to-hand combat expert. Someone along the lines of a Jet Li or a Jean-Claude van Damme would have been more suitable; Stallone is much more believable in a thug-like role, at least for me. However, he gets an excellent foil in Momoa who is clearly an emerging action star. His performance in the first season of Game of Thrones was incandescent and here that same charisma surfaces. I would love to see more of Momoa better films. Hey Sly, got room for him in your next Expendables flick?

Hill, one of the most respected action directors in Hollywood history (48 Hrs., Hard Times, Streets of Fire) , knows how to create a rough-edged mood, perfect for framing an action film. This is not going to stand among the best of his career; this doesn’t have the smooth flow or the chemistry of his previous pictures. Kang and Stallone are awkward together. Kang’s earnest by-the-book Taylor Kwan has no real charisma; he feels more like an archetype than a real person. I never got emotionally invested in him.

Stallone fares slightly better but as I said earlier the role is all wrong for him. That’s not to say that Stallone is a terrible actor; it’s just his physical fighting skills lend themselves more to someone a little more along the lines of a Mafiosi thug than a lethal assassin. Still, at least I wound up having an interest in the character.

2013 has started out with a rash of mediocre action movies, none of which has really stood out as especially memorable. Most of them have had brief theatrical runs and have disappeared into bomb status, no doubt to resurface quickly on home video and cable. With a particularly full schedule of action flicks scheduled for this year, it’s an inauspicious start. Hopefully we’ll get some better ones as the year goes on.

REASONS TO GO: Momoa is an excellent villain. Some of the fight sequences are nicely staged (but not all). Shahi makes excellent eye candy.

REASONS TO STAY: Stallone miscast. Lacks chemistry.

FAMILY VALUES:  There is plenty of violence, a fair amount of bad language, an even more fair amount of bare breasts and a little drug use.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Walter Hill’s first feature film in ten years, and Slater’s first theatrically released feature film in eight.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/16/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 49% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100. The reviews are about as mixed as you can get.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Expendables

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Identity Thief

New Releases for the Week of February 1, 2013

WARM BODIES

(Summit) Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, John Malkovich, Analeigh Tipton, Dave Franco, Cory Hardrict. Directed by Jonathan Levine

The zombie apocalypse has come and life is no picnic. Hordes of shuffling monsters rule the streets and skeletal monsters, called Bonies, are even worse. In the mix a young man named R, turned zombie, is able to develop feelings for a beautiful young girl named Juliet (yes, R and Juliet – get it?) and that love may change the world, assuming they don’t get shot or eaten or both.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Romantic Horror

Rating: PG-13 (for zombie violence and some language)

Bullet to the Head

(Warner Brothers) Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Christian Slater, Jason Momoa. A New Orleans hitman is force to join forces with a police officer from Washington DC when they discover that they are chasing the same person – the one responsible for murdering both of their partners. Their alliance is an uneasy one but necessary if they’re going to make it through this gauntlet alive. Based on a graphic novel.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: R (for strong violence, bloody images, language, some nudity and brief drug use)

Stand Up Guys

(Roadside Attractions) Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin, Julianna Margulies. After serving 28 years, a retired gangster is picked up by his best friend, also a retired gangster and the two join forces with yet another retired gangster. The three go out to celebrate but one of them has a secret – they are to kill one of the others on the orders of their boss in order to make sure he doesn’t talk.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Crime Comedy

Rating: R (for language, sexual content, violence and brief drug use)