New Releases for the Week of December 3, 2021

WOLF

(Focus) George MacKay, Lily-Rose Depp, Paddy Considine, Eileen Walsh, Senan Jennings, Darragh Shannon, Lola Petticrew. Directed by Jared Bush and Nathalie Biancheri

A man who believes he is a wolf trapped in a human body is eventually committed to a clinic that specializes in those types of disorder. He undergoes increasingly aggressive forms of therapy until he meets a woman who believes she’s a wildcat. As the two fall in love, he must choose between true love and his true self.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Mystery
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: R (for some abusive behavior, sexuality, nudity and language)

Akhanda

(Radha Krishna) Nandamuri Balakrishna, Pragya Jaiswal, Jagapathi Babu, Meka Srikanth. A fierce devotee of Lord Shiva must stand against the unrighteous.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Cinemark Orlando, Regal Pavilion Port Orange, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: NR

Bergman Island

(IFC) Mia Wasikowska, Tim Roth, Vicki Krieps, Anders Danielsen Lie. Two American filmmakers who also are a romantic couple, decide to summer on Farö Island (the place where legendary director Ingmar Bergman lived and shot many of his most celebrated films) in order to find inspiration for their own endeavors, but the magic of the island begins to drive a wedge between the two.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Cinematique Daytona
Rating: R (for some sexual content, nudity and language)

C’mon C’mon

(A24) Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffman, Woody Norman, Scoot McNairy. A radio journalist is thrown together unexpectedly with his young nephew during a cross-country road trip, creating a tenuous but transformational relationship between the two.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Cinemark Orlando, Enzian, Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: R (for language)

Castle Falls

(Shout!) Dolph Lundgren, Scott Adkins, Kevin Wayne, Jim E. Chandler. A derelict hospital is about to be demolished but braving the dynamite are three desperate men – two rival gang leaders and a hospital janitor, looking for a cache of stolen money hidden in the walls. They have exactly 90 minutes to find the loot and get out – or be blown up with the rest of the building.

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

Encounter

(Amazon) Riz Ahmed, Octavia Spencer, Janina Gavankar, Lucian-River Chauhan. A decorated Marine takes his two young sons on a journey to evade a mysterious threat. As the trip grows increasingly dangerous, the two boys will have to grow up much sooner than they might have otherwise.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: CMX Daytona
Rating: R (for language and some violence)

The End of Us

(Saban) Ben Coleman, Ali Vingiano, Derrick Joseph DeBrasis, Gadiel Del Orbe. A couple on the verge of breaking up is forced to continue living together during the COVID lockdown. Petty squabbles between the two – one career-driven, the other a slacker – lead to self-evaluations that may change them and doom their relationship.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Studio Movie Grille Sunset Walk
Rating: R (for language and sexual references)

Home

(Gravitas) Jake McLaughlin, Kathy Bates, Aisling Franciosi, Lil Rel Howery. A man returns to his small town after 20 years in prison to find that forgiveness is in short supply. He is, however, willing to accept the repercussions of his past deeds if it can lead to a better future.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: CMX Grand
Rating: NR

Last Shoot Out

(Lionsgate) Cam Gigandet, Bruce Dern, Brock Harris, Skylar White. When a frontier wife flees her husband after discovering he had her father killed, she is rescued by a gunman who protects her from the wrath of her husband’s wealthy – and well-armed – family.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Western
Now Playing: CMX Grand
Rating: PG-13 (for violence and bloody images)

Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea

(Phars) Mohanial, Sunil Shetty, Arjun Sarja, Manju Warrier. An Indian hero fights the invading Portuguese.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Amstar Lake Mary, Cinemark Orlando
Rating: NR

Silent Night

(RJLE) Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Annabelle Wallis, Lucy Punch. A couple and their son entertain family and friends for an wonderful Christmas dinner in an idyllic country cottage in England. The only thing that keeps it from being perfect: the world is about to end.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Fashion Square Premiere
Rating: R (for language and violence)

The Souvenir: Part II

(A24) Honor Swinton Byrne, Jaygann Ayeh, Tilda Swinton, Richard Ayoade. A young film student who has escaped from an abusive relationship with an older man, tries to untangle her feelings by throwing herself into her graduate project, but soon finds trouble separating reality from fiction.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Cinematique Daytona
Rating: R (for some strong sexuality, and language)

Sword Art Online: Progressive – Aria of a Starless Night

(Aniplex USA) Starring the voices of Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Inori Minase, Bryce Papenbrook, Haruka Tomatsu. A newbie gamer enters the deadly world of Aincrad discovers that she must beat all 100 levels of the game in order to escape back to reality, but dying in the game also means dying in the real world.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Animé
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Avenue 16, AMC Disney Springs, Amstar Lake Mary, Cinemark Lakeland Square, Cinemark Orlando, CMX Daytona, Regal Eagle Ridge Mall, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language and violence)

True to the Game 3

(Faith Media) Erica Peeples, Columbus Short, Starletta DuPois, Omar Gooding. A woman is given 72 hours to return home to let her friends know her plans, before she starts a new life with the handsome, mysterious outlaw that she loves.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Cinemark Orlando, CMX Merritt Square, Fashion Square Premiere
Rating: R (for violence and pervasive language)

Twas the Night

(Vertical) Nicole Pringle, David Steven Perez, Paul Van Scott, Lisa Panagopoulos. An engaged couple are hosting their future in-laws for the holidays, and they want everything to be just right. That’s even harder to do, when you’re trying to hide a body at the same time.

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

COMING TO VIRTUAL CINEMA/VOD:

A Clusterfunke Christmas (Saturday)
Benedetta
Cobalt Blue
Deadlock
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Fatal Distraction (Tuesday)
The Forever Prisoner (Monday)
The Great Balloon Bomb Invasion (Thursday)
Listening to Kenny G (Thursday)
Love and Fury
Missing and Alone
Mixtape
Red Stone
The Reenactment (Tuesday)
Single All the Way (Thursday)
The Slow Hustle (Tuesday)
This Game’s Called Murder
The Wishing Tree (Tuesday)

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Encounter
The Great Balloon Bomb Invasion
Mixtape
The Wishing Tree
Wolf

Aquaman

Under the sea, a princess waits.

(2018) Superhero (Warner Brothers) Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison, Ludi Lin, Michael Beach, Randall Park, Graham McTavish, Leigh Whannell, Julie Andrews (voice), Djimon Hounsou, (voice), John Rhys-Davies (voice), Andrew Crawford, Sophia Forrest, Natalia Safran. Directed by James Wan

 

It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has far out-stripped the DC Extended Universe for box office supremacy. There are a lot of reasons for that; regardless, the fact of the matter is that DC has a lot of catching up to do, and here’s where they start.

Arthur Curry (Momoa) a.k.a. Aquaman (although he is rarely referred to by that term) is the son of Polynesian lighthouse keeper (Morrison) and Atlanna (Kidman), a princess of Atlantis. Bullied as a young boy, he learns that due to his half-Atlantean lineage he can communicate with sea animals, control water and swim faster than a dolphin. He can also breathe underwater as well as on land. He is tutored by Vulko (Dafoe), an advisor to the king of Atlantis, Arthur soon becomes a kind of superhero, although he prefers very much to be left alone to drink beer and brood, mainly over the disappearance of his mother and his father’s sad faith that she will return to him someday.

However, the arrival of new princess Mera (Heard) tells Arthur of a power struggle going on in the deep. Orm (Wilson), his half-brother, has claimed the throne, although Arthur apparently has a better claim. Orm means to declare war on the surface dwellers and who could blame him, given all the pollution and damage we have inflicted on the oceans. Arthur and Mera will need to go on a quest to find Neptune’s trident, the most powerful weapon in Atlantis that has been lost for generations, if they are to challenge Orm and save the human race.

Wan is an accomplished director who has launched two major movie franchises – Saw and The Conjuring – and looks to give DC a badly needed infusion of fun. It’s no accident that Jason Momoa’s Aquaman resembles Chris Hemsworth’s Thor in many respects; the roguish demeanor, the royal bloodline, the affection for humans and the wisecracks; Wan’s no fool, and that lighter sort of superhero sells better in today’s market than the brooding, dark heroes of DC’s recent past.

Other than that, this is pretty standard superhero movie stuff; big battles, lavish special effects, the existence of the human race on the line. Aquaman is at its best, oddly enough, when Momoa’s charm is allowed to shine through; the big special effects are almost too busy with too much going on so that the end result is not eye candy but vertigo.

Heard delivers the best performance of her career as the agile Mera, and Kidman lends needed gravitas as Atlanna. There is also a subplot involving regular Aquaman nemesis Black Manta who is played by the underutilized Mateen, who is due a superhero character of his own one of these days. The wow factor is definitely here, but the movie is a little too long, a little too overwhelming. Still, where it shines, it really shines and Momoa is certainly an action star for the new decade.

REASONS TO SEE: Best DC film since Wonder Woman. Momoa was born to play a superhero.
REASONS TO AVOID: Gets a little too artsy for its own good.
FAMILY VALUES: The special effects are on the busy side.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: According to director James Wan, the octopus playing drums during the duel between Orm and Arthur is Topo, Aquaman’s sidekick during the 50s and 60s. Wan figured that if Mad Max: Fury Road could have flame-throwing guitars, he could have an octo-drummer.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, HBO Now, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/26/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 65% positive reviews, Metacritic: 55/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Waterworld
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Capital in the 21st Century

Creed II

The obligatory staredown.

(2018) Sports Drama (MGM/Warner Brothers) Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Florian Munteanu, Dolph Lundgren, Phylicia Rashad, Russell Hornsby, Wood Harris, Milo Ventimiglia, Robbie Johns, Andre Ward, Brigitte Nelson, Patrice Harris, Jacob “Stitch” Duran, Ana Gerena, Christopher Mann, Robert Douglas, Zack Beyer, Chrisdine King. Directed by Steven Caple Jr.

The Rocky franchise may be the ultimate American movie franchise; it has tackled everything from the triumph of the underdog to Cold War politics to father-son alienation over the years. With the 70-something Stallone more than long in the tooth to get back in the ring, it was decided (after a misfire featuring Milo Ventimiglia as Rocky’s son, who also cameos here in the same role) to pass the torch to Michael B. Jordan as Adonis, son of Apollo Creed and in the 2015 movie Creed director Ryan Coogler managed to put together a movie that garnered a lot of awards season attention.

With a new director, the writers (including Stallone) looked back at the storied history of the franchise, remembering that Daddy Creed died in the ring at the hands of Ivan Drago (Lundgren). Now, with Viktor Drago (Munteanu) having turned into an unstoppable behemoth like his old man, Adonis wants payback and despite the concerns of Rocky (Stallone), Adonis’ wife Bianca (Thompson) who is losing her hearing, and mom Mary Anne (Rashad), Adonis looks to show Drago and Son who really is The Man. Of course, things don’t go as planned, a rematch is set and nobody thinks Adonis can win.

The plot takes almost all of its cues from Rocky IV nearly note for note; if you haven’t seen that film (some say the best in the franchise), you’re basically watching it here. The newer Creed misses the sure hand of Coogler at the helm but Caple does a pretty capable job in the relief role. While this film doesn’t measure up well to Creed (or Rocky IV for that matter) it has enough going for it to make it worth your while looking it up; it’s pretty much available everywhere at the moment so it’s not that hard to find. Just like Stallone.

REASONS TO SEE: Jordan is one of the best actors working today.
REASONS TO AVOID: Formulaic throughout.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of boxing violence, some profanity and a scene of sensuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The two turtles, Cuff and Link, are appearing for the fifth time in the franchise. They are also Stallone’s real-life pets and they have been with him for more than 50 years at the time of filming.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Epix, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hulu, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/6/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 84% positive reviews, Metacritic: 66/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Rocky IV
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind

New Releases for the Week of December 21, 2018

AQUAMAN

(Warner Brothers) Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temeura Morrison. Directed by James Wan

Arthur Curry, the son of a lighthouse keeper, discovers that he is heir to the throne to Atlantis. There are forces aligned against him, however, that want him to stay on land – and who also wish to wage war against the land-dwellers.

See the trailer, clips and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, DBOX, DBOX 3D, DTSX, IMAX, IMAX 3D, RPX, RPX 3D, ScreenX, XD, XD 3D
Genre: Superhero
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language)

Ben is Back

(Roadside Attractions) Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges, Courtney B. Vance, Kathryn Newton. When her drug addicted teen son from a first marriage returns unexpectedly on Christmas Eve, a mother is at first delighted but cautious. As the evening goes on it becomes apparent that things are not as they seem with him and soon she is dragged unwillingly into his world with the rest of her family dragged in behind her. Look for the review on Cinema365 tomorrow.

See the trailer and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Barnstorm Theater, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language throughout and some drug use)

Bumblebee

(Paramount) Hailee Steinfeld, Dylan O’Brien (voice), John Cena, Megyn Price. In 1987 a young girl finds the battle-scarred and broken Transformer Bumblebee in the junkyard of a small California town. She soon finds herself in the middle of an interstellar conflict which threatens the very existence of planet Earth itself.

See the trailer clips, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, 4DX, Dolby, RPX, XD, XD 3D
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi action violence)

Mary Queen of Scots

(Focus) Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce, David Tennant. The story of the half-sister of Queen Elizabeth I the two of whom were once close but turned into bitter rivals and eventually, deadly foes.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: R (for some violence and sexuality)

Mary Poppins Returns

(Disney) Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer. The Banks children, one of the beneficiaries of the legendary Mary Poppins, have all grown up and have children of their own. Now Mary returns to save the Banks family once more with her heartwarming brand of magic.

See the trailer, interviews and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard, DBOX, Dolby, RPX
Genre: Family
Now Playing: Wide Release (opened Wednesday)
Rating: PG (for some mild thematic elements and brief action)

Second Act

(STX) Jennifer Lopez, Leah Remini, Vanessa Hudgens, Treat Williams. An ambitious big box retail clerk reinvents her job history and biography and ends up with a golden opportunity to show the Wall Street boys club what a street smart Puerto Rican woman can do.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a video featurette and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some crude sexual references, and language)

Welcome to Marwen

(Universal/DreamWorks) Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, Janelle Monáe. A man who was the victim of a brutal beating that cost him his memory, tries to rebuild his shattered life through a make-believe town that he constructs where he can be heroic and strong. This is based on an actual incident.

See the trailer, clips and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of fantasy violence, some disturbing images, brief suggestive content, thematic material and language)

Zero

(Yash Raj) Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Karina Kaif, Salman Khan. A young man born to wealth and privilege and was content in his life. Then he meets two women who broaden his outlook and give him a purpose he never knew he needed.

See the trailer, promos and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks, Cinemark Universal Citywalk, Touchstar Southchase
Rating: NR

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

American Renegades
Antariksham
Burning
KGF Chapter 1
Padi Padi Leche Manasu

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Antariksham
KGF Chapter 1
Padi Padi Leche Manasu
Shoah: Four Sisters
Swimming with Men

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Antariksham
KGF Chapter 1
Padi Padi Leche Manasu

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

KGF Chapter 1

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Aquaman
Ben is Back
Bumblebee
Mary Queen of Scots
Mary Poppins Returns
Swimming with Men
Welcome to Marwen

New Releases for the Week of April 14, 2017

THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS

(Universal) Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges. Directed by F. Gary Gray

After the events of Furious 7, the team has been exonerated from their crimes and have settled down for more or less normal lives. However Dom Toretto just can’t seem to stay away from trouble and he hooks up with a cyberterrorist who has plans to unleash chaos on the world, betraying his team – his family – in the process. Now they will have to take down the woman who seemingly has Dom under her thumb and in order to do that they’ll be adding someone new to the team – a former adversary who almost took them all out.

See the trailer, clips, promos and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, IMAX
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for prolonged scenes of violence and destruction, suggestive content, and language)

Altitude

(Lionsgate) Denise Richards, Dolph Lundgren, Jonathan Lipnicki, Greer Grammer. When an airplane is hijacked, the FBI agent who happens to be aboard is content to wait things out and not endanger any lives. But when she discovers that the ulterior motive for the hijacking was the presence of a thief who offers her millions to protect him – well, who could resist that?

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: AMC Loew’s Universal Cineplex
Rating: R (for language and some violence)

Frantz

(Music Box) Pierre Niney, Paula Beer, Ernst Stötzner, Marie Gruber. An elderly German doctor and his wife grieve for their son who had died during World War I which had recently ended. His fiancée is living with them, bringing them comfort. One day she sees a mysterious man laying flowers on her beloved’s grave and strikes up a friendship with him. It turns out that he and her fiancée were friends before the war. Soon he has become part of all their lives but he hides a secret that could turn out to be devastating to all concerned.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Romantic Drama
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements including brief war violence)

Gifted

(Fox Searchlight) Chris Evans, McKenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Octavia Spencer. A single man is given the responsibility of raising his niece when his sister passes away. As it turns out, she’s a math prodigy with infinite potential but rather than sending her to a specialized school where her talent can be developed at the expense of her childhood, he chooses to keep her in a normal school where she can have a normal childhood as her mother wished her to have. However, her grandmother won’t hear of it and sues for custody of the child, threatening to tear the two of them – who have formed a strong bond by now – apart.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements, language and some suggestive material)

Spark: A Space Tail

(Open Road) Starring the voices of Jessica Biel, Susan Sarandon, Patrick Stewart, Hilary Swank. On a distant planet a young boy is forced into hiding after his family is massacred by a power-hungry General. He and his friends discover that the General is about to unleash a fearsome weapon that may destroy the universe – and only they can stop him.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, Regal Oviedo Marketplace
Rating: PG (for some action and rude humor)

Tommy’s Honour

(Roadside Attractions) Jack Lowden, Peter Mullan, Ophelia Lovibond, Sam Neill. This is the story of father and son, both titanic figures in the beginnings of the modern game of golf. Old Tom Morris is the groundskeeper at St. Andrew’s, the most prestigious golf club in Scotland; it is he who standardized the game at 18 holes and founded the first Open Championship. However, his son Tommy, a young and handsome lad, threatens to outshine his father as the first touring pro. Tom seems content with that but when Tommy marries beneath his station by Old Tom’s way of thinking, the two are on a collision course that leads to severe consequences – and leads Old Tom on a quest to honor his son.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Sports Biography
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, AMC Loew’s Universal Cineplex, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG (for thematic elements, some suggestive material, language and smoking)

Don’t Kill It

Dolph Lundgren casually gets ready for some non-lethal shooting.

(2016) Horror Comedy (Archstone) Dolph Lundgren, Kristina Klebe, Michael Alan Milligan, Billy Slaughter, Aaron McPherson, Miles Doleac, Elissa Dowling, Sam Furman, Jasi Cotton Lanier, Tony Bentley, James Chalke, Michelle West, Tony Messenger, Toby Bronson, Randy Austin, Chaton Anderson, Milorad Djomlija, Thomas Owen, Kristin Samuelson. Directed by Mike Mendez

 

Demons are notoriously hard to kill. Oftentimes people don’t even believe they exist until it’s much too late and then the demon hunting shmoe sent out to kill the thing gets to say “I told you so.” Among the hardest demons to kill are those that jump from body to body however.

A small, picturesque town in Mississippi is battered by three triple homicides in less than a week. This kind of violent crime spike gets the attention of the FBI who sends Agent Evelyn Pierce (Klebe) who is from the area and was known locally as “Evil-Lyn” which is not a term she’s particularly fond of.

But also attracted to the carnage is Jebediah Woodley (Lundgren) who is – ahem – a demon hunter. Of course, announcing a profession like that meets with a lot of sniggers and of course a lot of incredulity but as the demon continues to pile up the body count, those who are possessed display pitch black eyes and a demonic scream that is unmistakably supernatural. Soon Pierce and the local police Chief Dunham (Bentley) are believers but Pastor Erikson (Chalke) thinks that the only thing demonic are the out-of-towners Woodley and Evelyn, who he has always distrusted.

As it turns out, the demon has a special attraction to Evelyn and the stakes get just a little bit higher but the FBI comes in at just the wrong moment and even worse, the vengeful and decidedly un-Christian Pastor has plans for Woodley and Evelyn that have nothing to do with charity.

This is actually not a bad little horror comedy. The sense of humor here is actually not so broad or over the top as to be cloying. Instead, it is almost subversive and while there is a whole lot of gore and not a whole lot of restraint, there is enough humor to lighten the mood without making the movie silly.

Now pushing 60, Lundgren has come a long way since Ivan Drago. He rarely gets a lot of dialogue (and he even quipped that he has more dialogue in this film than he has spoken over the past five years) and this is a performance that should change that perception that directors have of the man; I’ve actually begun to look forward to his appearances which I never would have thought would be a sentence that I’d actually utter considering some of the truly excruciating performances he’s given in some truly excruciating movies back in the 90s.

I mentioned gore and there’s plenty of it – none of it really groundbreaking but all of it perfectly placed to serve the story. Some might find some of it to be excessive but when you put it up against the horror films of the 70s and 80s it might even be considered a little tame. Sometimes it’s used for humorous effect but for the most part as I said it serves the story.

The story follows a fairly clichéd path but the conceit in which how the demon travels from body to body is clever and makes for a good story so you can overlook the clichés. Lundgren is engaging and funny and while the supporting cast is largely unknown, the performances are at least solid and never detract from the movie. I can understand why some might be reluctant to see this – horror comedies have a tendency to be too much one or the other and rarely are appealing as a complete film. This one is.

REASONS TO GO: The film possesses a subversive sense of humor. Dolph Lundgren has become a welcome addition to a film and whoever thought that would ever be a sentence? There are some nifty gore effects.
REASONS TO STAY: The story follows a cliché kind of path. The ending is a bit over-the-top.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of violence, profanity, some fairly gruesome gore, sexuality and a bit of nudity. There is also excessive vaping.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Once the production got the final green light, there were only 12 days of prep time before shooting started.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/1/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Shocker
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Love and Taxes

The Expendables 3

Jason Statham and Wesley Snipes decide to settle who has the bigger blade.

(2014) Action (Lionsgate) Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham, Harrison Ford, Kellan Lutz, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Antonio Banderas, Dolph Lundgren, Wesley Snipes, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Ronda Rousey, Kelsey Grammer, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Robert Davi, Ivan Kostadinov, Slavi Slavov, Natalie Burn, Sarai Givaty. Directed by Patrick Hughes

Back in 2010, action fans eagerly awaited the debut of The Expendables which united action heroes from days gone by Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Lundgren, Bruce Willis and of more recent vintage Li and Statham. The novelty factor alone made the movie a big hit but a single soliloquy by Mickey Rourke made the movie more memorable than the average action film.

Then came The Expendables 2 which added Jean-Claude van Damme and Chuck Norris (as well as more recent action star Liam Hemsworth) which was still entertaining in its own way but the novelty was beginning to wear off. Would the pattern continue?

Yeah, it does. While this is the most star-studded of the series, it is also the least fulfilling. I use that term advisedly – The Expendables 3 has a massive dose of testosterone that will grow hair on the chest of a Disney princess, and is surprisingly entertaining but not necessarily in a good way. You can sit back and watch this and take it for what it is, but if what it is doesn’t thrill you so much, you’re in for a long evening.

The team – leader Barney Ross (Stallone), right hand man Lee Christmas (Statham), surly Gunnar Jensen (Lundgren), just as surly Toll Road (Couture) and abs-tastic Hale Caesar (Crews) board a prison train carrying a single prisoner – former Expendable Dr. Death (Snipes). As usual, lots of people get shot and stuff blows up but Team Ex wins out in the end.

But it turns out that the prison break was kind of a side trip on the way to something else. They’ve to head out and intercept a shipment of bombs from an arms dealer, who turns out to be Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson) who just happened to co-found the Expendables before turning rogue and going out on his own. That job turns out to be something of a cluster frump and gets one of the team shot and in critical condition. Shaken up, Barney decides to retire the team and find a new one.

He needs one because their CIA contact Drummer (Ford) wants Stonebanks picked up alive and taken to the Hague to answer for his crimes. That’s easier said than done however and while Barney’s new team – including tech wizard Thorn (Powell), chatterbox Spanish killing machine Galgo (Banderas), team muscle Mars (Ortiz), beautiful but deadly Luna (Rousey) and anti-authoritarian potential team leader Smilee (Lutz) has more of a modern edge to them, they don’t do any better than the first team and things go sideways in a hurry. It will take the old team to rescue the new team and a final mano a mano brawl between Stonebanks and Barney to settle this once and for all.

Da Queen, being a pragmatic sort (and a bit of a masochist) decided to count up the ludicrous scenes in the movie when something that simply was too much of a stretch of the imagination to ignore; the end figure was in double digits. I can take a certain suspension of disbelief; after all, I used to love those ’80s action epics as much as the next guy. However, there comes a point where you’re inner brain starts to say “come on, you can’t be serious” to your testicles (or the female approximation of same) and the action fix begins to clash with your inner need for some sort of logic. How much you like the movie will depend on how bad you need an action fix.

Stallone, clean-shaven for the first time in the trilogy, looks every bit an AARP member at this point. There are several close-ups on his trademark sneer and as his righteous anger leeks out from his upper lip and into his eyeballs, you can tell he’s going to go all Rambo on somebody’s ass. Statham, not so nearly long in the tooth, merely looks uncomfortable most of the way through – perhaps that’s because he was involved in a near-fatal truck crash when the brakes on the truck he was driving in the movie failed and he was forced to abandon truck before it crashed into the sea.

I will say that the much-maligned Gibson fares the best here, channeling his Martin Riggs from back in the day and if Riggs were a villain in the Lethal Weapon series this is how he’d have turned out. He’s actually pretty fun to watch although I imagine that those who still haven’t gotten over his anti-Semitic drunken rant to the cops will be less sanguine about his performance. Snipes, recently released from prison, reminds us why he was such a great action star in the first place. I thought at one time he had the potential to be as big as Will Smith, although a series of bad roles and poor life choices derailed that. It still might happen though – he could use his performance here as an audition tape for any action movie in the offing and get serious consideration. He also has the best line in the movie; when asked by Toll Road what he was in prison for. I won’t tell you what he responds because the surprise is half the fun.

There is some CGI here and they must have done it on somebody’s Commodore VIC-20 because it is absolutely miserable, some of the worst I’ve ever seen. For example, for the scene near the movie’s end where he is hanging from a winch cable on a helicopter as the chopper pulls away from the camera, I’d much rather have stopped the scene with him dangling underneath it asking his snarky teammates to winch him up now right at that point instead of seeing a clearly CGI silhouette of the copter with the distant semi-humanoid figure and cable being sucked into the helicopter like a strand of spaghetti. I don’t like my action reality messed with.

This is a series whose novelty has run its course and needs to survive simply on the success of its action sequences and the quirkiness of its characters. For one thing, too many characters get virtually no screen time (Li shows up near the end and gets three or four lines and no fighting sequences which is a complete waste of his talents) and while the cast members are pretty able individually, the whole isn’t equal to the sum of its parts.

REASONS TO GO: Definite testosterone overload.

REASONS TO STAY: Super predictable and super brainless. Some of the worst CGI ever. Novelty has worn off.

FAMILY VALUES:  Oh yes, all sorts of violence with guns, blades, you name it – mayhem deluxe. There’s also a fair amount of language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first Expendables film not to be rated R.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/21/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 35% positive reviews. Metacritic: 35/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Commando

FINAL RATING: 4/10

NEXT: Code Name: The Cleaner

The Expendables 2

Chuck Norris jut made that car burst into flames with the power of his steely-eyed glare.

(2012) Action (Lionsgate) Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Nan Yu, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude van Damme, Chuck Norris, Scott Adkins, Charisma Carpenter, Amanda Ooms, Nikolette Noel. Directed by Simon West

 

Back in the 70s and 80s, action movies were at their pinnacle. Movies like The Terminator, Rambo, Die Hard, Timecop and Missing in Action were box office bonanzas. As time went on and the men who played those heroes aged, the popularity of these sorts of movies began to wane. Although new heroes like Jet Li and Jason Statham took those action spots, action heroes were as likely to star in family movies geared towards kids as they were in old fashioned shoot ’em ups.

In 2010, Sylvester Stallone wrote and directed The Expendables, an ensemble action movie uniting some of the biggest action heroes of the last 30 years, including Stallone, Statham, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Li, Mickey Rourke and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Just getting those names onto the big screen together was a feat in and of itself and it ignited the imaginations of fanboys all over the world. Schwarzenegger was still Governor of California at the time and hadn’t been in a movie for six years.

The movie was a big hit and of course plans for a sequel rolled around. Rourke dropped out, van Damme and Norris signed up (as did Liam Hemsworth) and Stallone relinquished the director’s chair to veteran action director West, who has Con-Air to his credit among others – the Stallion wanted to concentrate on writing – and here we go again.

This time, the Expendables – led by Barney Ross (Stallone) and his right hand man Lee Christmas (Statham)  are on a mission to rescue a Chinese billionaire and gets an extra added bonus attraction. Shortly thereafter, Ross has a meeting with Church (Willis) to whom Ross owes a favor – and Church aims to collect. He wants Barney’s team to head to Bulgaria to find a downed plane which was carrying a safe. The contents of the safe are something Church wants very much. He sends computer expert Maggie (Yu) along to help open the safe.

But things go south. They are intercepted by Vilain (van Damme) who also wants the contents of the safe. One of the Expendables doesn’t make it out of the encounter alive. Barney and the boys don’t take too kindly to it. They want that which is stolen from them but also they want payback. And we all know what payback is.

One of the problems with movies like this is that so many characters is that many of them get short shrift in screen time. That was also the complaint with the first movie in which Willis and Schwarzenegger only appeared in one scene. They have considerably more time onscreen this time out and get to do what we all wanted them to do in the first movie – shoot stuff up. But what the filmmakers giveth the filmmakers taketh away – Jet Li literally parachutes out of the movie after a single scene.

And there’s a whole lot of that. And if that’s all that you’re after, you’ve found nirvana here. The story is pretty….well, non-descript. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before and no way you’re not going to figure out what’s going to happen next at every turn. And let’s face it – none of these guys are known for being amazing actors. But that’s not why you’d go and see a movie like this.

But still in all, the last movie had Mickey Rourke to elevate it. He gave a soliloquy during the first movie that still gives me the shivers it’s so good. There’s nothing like that here. I will admit that watching Chuck Norris save the day (as he does twice) put a huge smile on my face. There’s even a Chuck Norris fact for your cinematic enjoyment – it’s the one about the cobra, for those who are up on such things.

I have to admit that the thrill of seeing these guys together was kind of lost the second time out. It was nice and all but this is essentially a generic by-the-numbers action movie with a high-priced cast. It’s a novelty, but not much more. Sadly, I’m less eager to see The Expendables 3 than I was to see The Expendables 2.

REASONS TO GO: Seeing these old war horses in action again is a hoot.

REASONS TO STAY: Overreliance on catchphrase and cliché. A bit too predictable.

FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of violence and foul language, a little bit of sensuality too (but not much).

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The character of Gunnar Jensen has a degree in chemical engineering. So does the actor who plays him, Dolph Lundgren.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/25/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 66% positive reviews. Metacritic: 51/100. The reviews are mixed but trending towards the positive.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Losers

CATCHPHRASE LOVERS: Iconic catchphrases from action movies, like “I’ll be back” and “Yippie Ki Yay” are all uttered although generally not by the actors who first said them.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Cinema Paradiso

New Releases for the Week of August 17, 2012

THE EXPENDABLES 2

(Lionsgate) Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude van Damme. Directed by Simon West

After one of their own is killed, the team of badass mercenaries known as The Expendables set out to kick ass, take names and sip chamomile tea, and they’re all out of tea. So, they decide to rid the world of a whacko who wants to shift the balance of power by stealing weapons grade plutonium. No, not the president of Iran – some other nut job.

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

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: R (for strong violence, language and brief sexuality)

2016: Obama’s America

(Rocky Mountain) Dinesh D’souza, Shelby Steele, Paul Vitz, Alice Dewey. From the conservative author of the book The Roots of Obama’s Rage and the producer of the intelligent design promoting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed comes this anti-Obama documentary which is, essentially, a series of Fox News talking heads explaining why the president sucks, how his policies will turn America into a barren wasteland and why the people who voted for him did so to prove that they aren’t racist. Michael Moore, you may respond.

See the trailer, promos and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: R (for thematic elements, brief language and smoking images)

The Odd Life of Timothy Green

(Disney) Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Garner, CJ Adams, Rosemarie DeWitt. A childless couple desperate to have a family but unable to, dream up the perfect child and put all their wishes into a box that they bury in the backyard. When a magical storm takes their powerful wish and deposits a child onto their doorstep, their lives – and the lives of those who live in their hometown – are transformed.

See the trailer and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Family

Rating: PG (for mild thematic elements and brief language)

ParaNorman

(Focus) Starring the voices of Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kodi Smit-McPhee. A boy who can see ghosts is the laughing stock of his town. But when a witch’s curse raises the dead, his gift may be the only thing separating his town from utter calamity. This from the people who brought you Coraline.  

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

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: PG (for scary action and images, thematic elements, some rude humor and language)

The Queen of Versailles

(Magnolia) Virginia Nebab, David Siegal, Jackie Siegal. Timeshare billionaires decide to build themselves a mansion which turns out to be the largest house in the United States. Their plans are threatened by the economic crash of 2008. The 1% begin to discover life on the other side.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: PG (for thematic elements and language)

Sparkle

(Tri-Star) Jordin Sparks, Whitney Houston, Derek Luke, Mike Epps. The youngest of three sisters has big musical dreams and the talent to back it up. Not only that, she happens to be in one of the musical meccas of all time – Detroit in the 1960s. Struggling to become a star is hard enough but there are issues besetting her family that threaten to tear it apart.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Musical

Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic content involving domestic abuse and drug material, and for some violence, language and smoking)

Just Go With It

Venus, arising from the waves.

(2011) Comedy (Columbia) Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker, Nicole Kidman, Nick Swardson, Bailee Madison, Griffin Gluck, Dave Matthews, Kevin Nealon, Rachel Dratch, Allen Covert, Dan Patrick, Minka Kelly, Heidi Montag, Andy Roddick. Directed by Dennis Dugan

My wife was fond of telling our son that the truth will find you out, and it inevitably does. Sooner or later, whatever transgressions you think you might be getting away with will see the light of day.

Danny Maccabee (Sandler) inherited the prominent bulbous nose of his parents but managed to get a woman to agree to marry him. She’s mostly interested in the fact that he’s about to graduate from medical school and can give her a life into which she’s been accustomed, or would like to be. That hasn’t stopped her from fooling around on Danny nor will it after they get married. Unfortunately, Danny overhears all this and calls things off.

Despondent, he goes to a bar to drown his sorrows and finds there a gorgeous woman who seeing his wedding ring, assumes he’s married. Because she seems willing to talk to him, he plays along and winds up having a wedding night after all – only without no wedding, no commitment, no honeymoon.

Flash forward 20 years. Danny has amputated his nose (all right, made it normal looking) and continues to use his old wedding band to cruise for chicks in bars. It seems to work on an amazingly consistent basis, much to the bemusement of his assistant Katherine (Aniston), who is Danny’s best female friend who is a single mother of two kids and who is constantly putting up with the advances of Eddie (Swardson), Danny’s best friend from days gone by.

Of course, inevitably, Danny finally meets someone who he thinks he would like to be with permanently – beautiful Palmer (Decker), who is apparently a bikini model turned schoolteacher. She and Danny hit it off, complete with romantic sex on the beach. Love is apparently in bloom – until she finds the ring in his pocket.

Danny is desperate to explain the situation to her and at pal Katherine’s urging, tells Palmer that he’s in the process of a divorce from a bitter, mean hag – a divorce that was in the process before she met Danny. Being a suspicious sort (and justifiably so, it seems) she demands to meet the ex. Danny enlists Katherine’s help and she does it for a makeover and wardrobe enhancement on Rodeo Drive. She shows up looking hot and sexy and things are going marvelously – until Katherine takes a call from her kids, leading Palmer to believe that their marriage had issue. Now Palmer wants to meet them too and Danny is forced to recruit Maggie (Madison), an aspiring actress who loves to deliver horrible Liza Doolittle accents and Michael (Gluck), a budding con artist who will be governor of Wisconsin someday.

The trip to a Chuck E. Cheese-like pizza parlor is parlayed by the ambitious Michael into a trip to Hawaii (all on Danny’s dime) which Eddie, masquerading as Katherine’s “fiancée” Dolph Lundgren (not that one, the Austrian sheep trader) tags along. While there, they run into Devlin (Kidman), Katherine’s nemesis from college who is married to the inventor of the iPod (Matthews) and in order to appear better in Devlin’s eyes, professes to being married to Danny although why she wants to impress someone whose name has become a personal euphemism for doo-doo I can’t really explain.

In fact, there are a lot of things I can’t explain about the movie so let’s start with the things I can. It’s loosely based on the French play which became a Broadway play which became the 1969 Oscar winning comedy Cactus Flower. I don’t recall there being as many bikinis going on as there are here, although to be fair the Jennifer Aniston role was played by Ingrid Bergman in 1969, so draw your own conclusions.

Sandler is one of those comedians who seem to have created a brand name for himself by doing the same type of movie on a regular basis. He’s likable enough, but he seems to do better when he stretches himself a little – as in Funny People. Here, he’s not stretching much. There are some nice bits of physical comedy having to do with his profession as a plastic surgeon (such as the woman with the eyebrow that’s halfway up her forehead, or the woman with the mismatched breasts) but by and large the humor is mostly of the lowest common denominator variety.

Decker, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, acquits herself pretty nicely as the love interest. It doesn’t hurt that she looks absolutely spectacular in a bathing suit (as does Aniston, who gets into a hot bod-off with Decker during one segment which was enough to have one fellow in the front of the theater sitting with his legs splayed wide open making sounds best left to your imagination). She has a pretty sweet nature and you get the feeling out of everyone in the movie, she’s the one who winds up getting screwed. Kidman, in a very brief role, goes over the top in a way that is both appropriate and appreciated. She’s memorable, even though she’s reduced to having a hula contest with Aniston.

Now, I don’t have a problem with kids in movies if there’s A), a reason for them to be there and B), the kids can act. The kids serve to be more of a distraction than anything and while Madison has done some good work on Bridge to Terabithia but here she’s just too much of a kid actor. The performance is stilted and unnatural, like a kid pretending to be a kid instead of just being a kid – and the same holds true for Gluck here as well. That’s the pitfall with child actors and the best ones are the ones who simply are themselves. Too-cute child actor syndrome often turns a movie from decent to annoying.

Speaking of annoying, what’s up with Nick Swardson here? He’s usually a pretty funny guy but when he morphs into Dolph Lundgren (the sheep trader not the actor) the movie grinds to a halt – Swardson is spectacularly unfunny. Even the bit of him giving a sheep the Heimlich maneuver doesn’t work, partially because the sheep is so patently made of rubber.

To the good, Aniston and Sandler actually work pretty well together and it makes you wonder why they haven’t paired up before now. They have a natural chemistry that makes the movie worth seeing, but only slightly. There are enough moments that torpedo their best intentions, however, that audiences should be cautioned to go in with low expectations.

REASONS TO GO: There are some very funny moments. Sandler and Aniston work nicely together and Aniston, Decker and Kidman are awfully easy on the eyes.

REASONS TO STAY: Too-cute kid syndrome cuts into the overall enjoyment of the film. Swardson’s “Dolph” character stops the movie dead in its tracks.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some sexual content, a little bit of crude language and some drug references.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: While this is their first film together, Sandler and Aniston have been off-screen friends for more than 20 years (before either of them became famous). In fact, as a tribute to his friend, Sandler had the movie released on her birthday.

HOME OR THEATER: Unless you really need to have girls in bikinis take up your entire field of vision, home is just dandy for this one.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Gnomeo and Juliet