New Releases for the Week of December 2, 2016

INCARNATE

(High Top) Carice van Houten, Aaron Eckhart, David Mazouz, Emjay Anthony, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Keir O’Donnell, Tomas Arana. Directed by Brad Peyton

An exorcist with the ability to enter the subconscious of his patients is assigned a tormented young boy with a particularly nasty demon inside. Fighting off the powers of this demon is no easy task, but the exorcist will also have to fight the demons of his past if he is to save the boy – and himself.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of horror violence, terror, disturbing images, brief strong language, sensuality and thematic elements)

Believe

(Freestyle Releasing) Ryan O’Quinn, Shawnee Smith, Danielle Nicolet, Kevin Sizemore. A businessman in a small town finds himself fighting the weak economy as Christmas approaches. Normally a sponsor of the town Christmas pageant, he finds himself forced to cancel the event. The friendship of a young boy whose faith is nearly boundless convinces him that he made the wrong decision and he turns to trying to save the pageant against all odds.

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 West Oaks, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Epic Lee Vista, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal The Loop, UA Seminole Towne Center
Rating: PG (for some violence, thematic elements and brief mild language)

Christine

(The Orchard) Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts, Maria Dizzia. Christine Chubbuck is a local newscaster in the Sarasota area in the 1970s. She’s smart, beautiful and ambitious, but suffers from depression in the face of personal and professional frustrations. What she does is shocking and makes broadcast news history.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Regal Oviedo Marketplace
Rating: R (for a scene of disturbing violence and for language including some sexual references)

Man Down

(Lionsgate) Shia LaBeouf, Jai Courtney, Gary Oldman, Kate Mara. A U.S. Marine returns home from Afghanistan and finds it to be a far different place than where he left it. His estranged wife and son have disappeared and as he searches a landscape little different than the one he left, he is accompanied by a battle-hardened comrade who is more likely to shoot first than to ask questions later.

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, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for some disturbing violence and language throughout)

The Monster

(A24) Zoe Kazan, Ella Ballentine, Scott Speedman, Aaron Douglas. A divorced mother and her headstrong daughter are driving late at night on a lonely road in the woods to take the girl to see her father. They get into an accident when a wolf runs out in front of them. They manage to call 911 and get a tow truck out but it soon becomes clear that they are being hunted  by something malevolent and strong.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs
Rating: R (for language and some violence/terror)

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Bad Moms

Party girls never die; they just put on mom jeans.

(2016) Comedy (STX) Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate, Jada Pinkett Smith, Annie Mumolo, Oona Laurence, Emjay Anthony, David Walton, Clark Duke, Jay Hernandez, Wendell Pierce, Leah McKendrick, Megan Ferguson, Lyle Brocato, Wanda Sykes, Cade Cooksey, J.J. Watt, Ann Mahoney, Samantha Beaulieu, Kelly Lind. Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

 

Motherhood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be these days. The expectations that are put on the shoulders of moms are simply unrealistic. Not only do they have to keep their kids days filled with various activities, they have to balance a career, the needs of their husband, working out, bake sales and PTA meetings with the needs of their parents and siblings as well. Something has got to give in these cases and it’s usually the women trying to be all things to all people.

Amy Mitchell (Kunis) has about reached her breaking point. First of all, she’s caught her husband Mike (Walton) having an online affair. Her marriage has essentially been an empty shell for years so he doesn’t complain too much when she kicks his ass out. Now, however, she has to go the single mom route which is no easy task for a woman who is perpetually late to everything.

Her daughter Jane (Laurence) is stressing herself out trying to make the soccer team which looks good on the transcripts when applying to the Ivy League schools Jane so desperately wants to attend. The Queen Bee of the PTA and poster child for perfect moms, Gwendolyn (Applegate) gives her askance looks, directing passive aggressive taunts her way. And she can’t get any respect at work.

So Amy has a meltdown. Right in the middle of a PTA meeting, no less. After receiving an extensive list of things not to bring to the upcoming bake sale, Amy just loses it. She is done trying to be a good mom. It’s time to be a bad mom for once. She goes to a bar and is surprised to find a couple of her fellow moms there; single mom Carla (Hahn) who seems to be potentially coming on to anything male, and breathless put-upon Kiki (Bell) who is sweet but overwhelmed with a husband who treats her like a house cleaner. The three ladies bond and begin a campaign of their own.

At first it’s all fun and games; Amy goes out and begins to have a life again. She forces her kids to make their own breakfasts and do their own homework rather than doing it for them. She goes to movies and to brunches with her friends. She starts to see a hunky widower (Hernandez) that all the women in school are lusting after. She quits her job and it isn’t long before her boss (Duke) is begging her to come back.

But Gwendolyn and her Gwendo-lettes (Smith, Mumolo) take this as an affront, a challenge to Gwendolyn’s authority and absolute rule of the PTA. Gwendolyn begins to attack and she targets Amy’s daughter, who is high strung enough as it is. Mama bears don’t take kindly to having their cubs threatened and Amy decides to take on Gwendolyn where it would hurt the most; she runs against her for the PTA presidency.

This is a raunchy comedy from the folks that brought us The Hangover and its sequels. And yes, in some ways it’s a distaff version of that series but rather than male bonding which has been done to death and even female bonding, which has also had its share of movies made about it, this one is about the expectations piled onto the modern mom and there is certainly room for a movie on that subject. I do think we pile unreasonable demands on mothers these days and while this film focuses on upper middle class helicopter moms, similar demands are made on women from less comfortable economic strata.

For this movie to work, it needs to have some chemistry between the leads and to be honest, it isn’t quite as consistent as I would have liked. Hahn is a force of nature and absolutely dominates the movie; Kunis is an excellent actress but in a lot of ways she’s overwhelmed by Hahn’s personality. Bell is almost under the radar, her character too mousy and too innocuous to really make much of an impression.

At times the movie doesn’t really seem to address real life. For example, most of the moms that are in the film are stay at home moms and that just doesn’t jive with current stats; most moms are also in the workforce. It’s freakin’ expensive to raise a family and most families can’t do that on a single salary unless that salary is six figures or more. The helicopter mom phenomenon isn’t one solely limited to the upper classes.

By the same token, I don’t think it’s of particular shock value that women can be just as dirty in their behavior as men. Women, after all, do like and crave sex as well as men. Why this should be a shocking fact in 2016 is beyond me. There are those complaining that the movie doesn’t have to be raunchy, that woman can be funny without it. This is quite true but the same goes for men as well and serves to indicate that there is a double standard on both sides of the gender equation. Men and woman can both be raunchy or not; it makes no difference what the gender is. What matters is if you find the movie funny, or not. In my case, I found it funny enough to recommend as one of the better comedies this summer which frankly isn’t saying much, but hopefully this will also spawn a franchise. Lord knows that the ladies deserve one.

REASONS TO GO: The film addresses some real issues.  It’s really funny in a lot of different ways.
REASONS TO STAY: The movie isn’t as revolutionary as the filmmakers think it is. In some ways, it’s not very realistic.
FAMILY VALUES:  There’s a whole lot of profanity and sexuality, some full frontal nudity, as well as drug and alcohol content.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The closing credits feature the main actresses having conversations about motherhood with their real life moms. All of those actresses are moms themselves.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/28/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 61% positive reviews. Metacritic: 60/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Daddy Day Care
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Suicide Squad

Krampus

Krampus asks Krista Stadler if she knows a good manicurist.

(2015) Horror Comedy (Universal/Legendary) Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Emjay Anthony, Stefania LaVie Owen, Maverick Flack, Luke Hawker, Gideon Emery (voice), Lolo Owen, Queenie Samuel, Leith Towers, Mark Atkin, Gareth Ruck, Trevor Bau, Felicity Hamill, Kelly Lily Marie, Ivy George, Sophie Gannon. Directed by Michael Dougherty

Christmas is a time for family which can be a double-edge sword. Most of us love nearly all of our families, but there’s always that one uncle or cousin or aunt that drive us straight to the liquor cabinet. Sometimes, we’re the ones that drive our families there.

For Tom (Scott) and Sarah Engel (Collette), there are plenty of cabinets for that bus ride. The two are having a bit of a tough go; Tom is a workaholic dad who has been drifting away from his wife, who is a bit tightly wound to put it charitably. Neither one seem to notice that their son Max (Anthony) is having a hard time with believing in the Big Fat Man. Only Omi Engel (Stadler), Tom’s mother who speaks mostly German, seems to have bonded with the young boy. Teen daughter Beth (S.L. Owen) is more focused on her boyfriend Derek (Towers).

Making the mix even more volatile is the arrival of Sarah’s sister Linda (Tolman) and her Tea Party/NRA husband Howard (Koechner) and his bullying brood of Stevie (L. Owen) and Jordan (Samuel) as well as overeating Howard Jr. (Flack) and worst of all, abrasive Aunt Dorothy (Ferrell) whom Sarah would most fervently wish back to Oz.

After a dinner in which the tension around the table boils over, Max has had enough. He tears up his letter to Santa, which brings a strange and extreme weather front to town, snowing everyone in. However, that’s not the worst of it; the family is being stalked by Krampus (Hawker, voiced by Emery), a German folk tale who is a little more real than you might think. He’s after the naughty and the nice, and he has a bunch of minions, ranging from a serpentine Jack-in-the-Box monster to maniacal gingerbread men to a vicious angel and homicidal toys, to do his dirty work. A lump of coal simply won’t do when you’re Krampus.

This is a fun mix of terror and laughter which since the studio didn’t do press screenings and most of the press it has received is mostly negative actually surprised me. Of course, Dougherty directed the much underrated Trick ‘r Treat and that should have alerted me to the fact that this was a lot more than a cookie cutter holiday horror flick. Krampus is certainly far from that.

Part of what makes this better is that Scott and Collette make very relatable characters; in particular Scott is likable as all get out. You get the sense that he’s trying to be a great father and a good husband, but the responsibilities are just weighing him down. Similarly, Collette’s Sarah is going all out to make it a memorable Christmas, but is met with either indifference or intense criticism and she’s at her breaking point. Few actresses in Hollywood can play high-strung without getting shrill, but Collette manages that, skirting Bette Davis territory without entering it.

Most of the other characters are holiday comedy tropes; the drunken aunt with the foul mouth who essentially doesn’t give a fart about the kids, the horndog boyfriend, the naive daughter who doesn’t get that the boyfriend only wants to get into her panties, the overbearing oafish uncle, the henpecked aunt, the nightmarish cousins who could every one of them use a good kick in the most painful of places. Koechner, Ferrell and Tolman all do credible job but have little to hang their craft on.

Dougherty does a real good job balancing the humor and the gore – in fact, the gore is kept to a minimum, relying more on the creatures (mostly CGI) for the scares. Krampus himself is a woodcut come to life, looking terrifying and had I seen something of that as a child, my bladder control would have been shot for life. However, not all of the creatures fare as well, some being resolutely non-scary and others are too obviously CGI. The snake-like Jack-in-the-Box was the one that was the least successful, but the gingerbread men are absolutely non-threatening.

It must be said that the ending was a little bit convoluted and while I give Dougherty props for at least going a bit out of the box for it, I did find it unsatisfying and disappointing compare to the rest of the film, taking the rating down a notch in the process. Still in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this as entertainment and while this is no Bad Santa, it is definitely solid filmmaking that re-confirms Dougherty as a talented filmmaker who has bigger and better things in store for the moviegoing public. Certainly he’s the most promising horror film auteur you’ve never heard of, which is something of a shame because I find his movies as entertaining as anything else that is coming out in the genre over the past five years or so. Hopefully that will change after this one.

REASONS TO GO: Funny and/or scary when it needs to be. Scott and Collette are solid.
REASONS TO STAY: The ending’s a disappointment. Some of the creatures miss the mark.
FAMILY VALUES: Some disturbing images, horror violence, foul language and brief drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The bell ornaments that Krampus hands out say Gruss vom Krampus which translated means “Greetings from Krampus.”
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/23/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 65% positive reviews. Metacritic: 49/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Holly and the Quill continues!