New Releases for the Week of September 18, 2020

THE NEST

(IFC) Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Anne Reid, Charlie Shotwell, Adeel Akhtar, Tattiawna Jones, Oona Roche, Michael Culkin, James Nelson-Joyce. Directed by Sean Durkin

An English entrepreneur in the 1980s who has found some success in the United States, moves his family back home to a country manor. His American wife is unconvinced this is the right move, but her husband is adamant. Soon, things begin to turn dark and twisted as the family begins to unravel.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for some sexuality/nudity, language throughout and teen partying)

A Chef’s Voyage

(First Run) David Kinch, Jean-André Charial, Glenn Viel, Alain Soliveres. An American chef with a three-Michelin starred restaurant and his team head to France to work with three extraordinary chefs in their restaurants in Provence, Paris and Marseilles.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian On-Demand
Rating: NR

Alone

(Magnet) Jules Wilcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald, Jonathan Rosenthal. A widow is captured by a serial killer and kept in his cabin in the Pacific Northwest. When she escapes, a deadly hunt through the dense forest ensues.

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

Blackbird

(Screen Media) Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, Mia Wasikowska, Sam Neill. A family gathers at the beach house of an aging couple to say goodbye to their mother, who is going to commit suicide as her battle with ALS is hitting its final stages. However, unresolved issues between her daughters threaten to turn her final goodbye into a free-for-all.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Cinematique Theater Daytona Beach
Rating: R (for brief sexual material, some drug use and language)

Infidel

(Cloudburst/American Cinema International) Jim Caviezel, Claudia Karvan, Hal Ozsan, Stello Savante. After her husband is kidnapped and put on trial for espionage in Iran, a desperate woman goes to every length she can to save him.

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

No Escape

(Vertical) Keegan Allen, Holland Roden, Denzel Whitaker, Ronen Rubenstein. A social media influencer and his friends enter a personalized escape room in Moscow, only to realize that the fun and games may turn out to be deadly for them.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Enzian On-Demand
Rating: R (for pervasive language, bloody violence, grisly images, brief drug use and some graphic nudity)

Red, White and Wasted

(Dark Star) Sam B. Jones, Andrei Bowden Schwartz. A group of mudding enthusiasts (the sport of driving four-wheel drive vehicles through muddy terrain) from Orlando find themselves at loose ends when their favorite venue is bought by a private investor. However, as good country folk do, they refuse to give up without a fight.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian On-Demand
Rating: NR

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Blackbird

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New Releases for the Week of March 23, 2018

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING

(Universal/Legendary) John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Burn Gorman, Cailee Spaeny, Charlie Day, Tian Jing, Max Zhang, Adria Arjona, Rinko Kikuchi. Directed by Steven S. DeKnight

The son of heroic Stacker Pentecost from the first film unites with survivors of the original Kaiju attack to take on a new peril from the gigantic enigmatic creatures. This time they are bigger and badder than ever and they mean to wipe out everything that isn’t Kaiju. Only a few good men (and women) can stop the threat.

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, DBOX, DBOX-3D, Dolby Atmos, IMAX, IMAX 3D, RPX, RPX-3D, XD, XD-3D
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language)

The Death of Stalin

(IFC) Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Michael Palin, Jeffrey Tambor. In 1953, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died suddenly, leaving a power vacuum at the top. Commissars and politicians scrambled amidst the chaos to avoid being shot and to grab what power they could in the brave new world. Armando Iannucci, mastermind behind such powerful satires as Veep and In the Loop takes an irreverent look at this pivotal moment in Russian history based on the graphic novel of the same name.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy/Satire
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: R (for language throughout, violence and some sexual references)

Getting Grace

(Hannover House) Daniel Roebuck, Madelyn Dundon, Dana Ashbrook, Duane Whitaker. A teenage girl who is dying of cancer is curious as to what will happen to her body once she’s passed on. To find out more about it, she befriends the local funeral home director, a shy and retiring man who has spent his life with the dead to the point where he’s forgotten how to live. These two wildly different personalities may just be what they each needed in this film co-written and directed by Roebuck.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando
Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements and some suggestive material)

Midnight Sun

(Open Road) Bella Thorne, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Rob Riggle, Quinn Shephard. A young teenage girl, stricken by a disease that makes her violently allergic to sunlight, lives in a world of perpetual darkness until she meets a sweet young teen boy who falls in love with her – and she with him. This is apparent teenage girl with a serious illness week at the movies.

See the trailer, clips and interviews here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Teen Romance
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some teen partying and sensuality)

Paul, Apostle of Christ

(Columbia) James Faulkner, Jim Caviezel, Olivier Martinez, Joanne Whalley. Paul, the apostle of Christ, awaits his death sentence in a dank Roman prison. As he recalls the events of his life – the years of persecuting those who followed Jesus, his conversion to the cause, the letters that unbeknownst to him would inspire billions over more than two millennia – he wonders if his life has been a worthwhile one. I’m guessing the answer will be “yes.”

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biblical Biography
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some violent content and disturbing images)

Sherlock Gnomes

(MGM/Paramount) Starring the voices of James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Johnny Depp, Chiwetel Ejiofor. When their fellow garden ornaments start disappearing mysteriously, Gnomeo and Juliet recruit renowned detective Sherlock Gnomes to investigate the mystery and return the missing to their home. This isn’t going to be easy but with music by Elton John you can’t really go wrong now can you.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard, 3D
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for some rude and suggestive humor)

Unsane

(Bleecker Street) Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Amy Irving, Jay Pharoah. A young woman goes to a mental health clinic to talk about the stalking incident that haunts her. When she is tricked into signing papers that result in her being committed to the hospital against her will, she discovers to her horror that her stalker is working there as a nurse – or is he just a part of her delusion?

See the trailer, clips and a video featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for disturbing behavior, violence, language and sex references)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

MLA
My Perfect You
Rajaratham
Shifting Gears

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Claire’s Camera
Followers
Foxtrot
Hichki
I Kill Giants
Itzhak
The Last Suit
Loveless
MLA
Needhi Naadhi Oke Katha
On the Beach at Night Alone
Rajaratham
Souvenir

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Hichki
Isle of Dogs
Itzhak
Poomaram
Rajaratham
Shifting Gears

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

None

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

The Death of Stalin
Isle of Dogs
Pacific Rim: Uprising
Sherlock Gnomes
Unsane

Transit (2012)

Diora Baird can run but she can’t hide.

(2012) Action (After Dark) Jim Caviezel, Diora Baird, James Frain, Elizabeth Röhm, Sterling Knight, Harold Perrineau, Jake Cherry, Ryan Donowho, Robbie Jones, Griff Furst, Douglas M. Griffin, Monica Acosta, Don Yesso, Rob Boltin, Beau Brasso, Ashley Braud (voice), John T. Wilson Jr., J.D. Evermore. Directed by Antonio Negret

In the 80s, when Arnold, Sly, Seagal, Van Damme and Snipes ruled the roost in Hollywood, action movies had kind of a unrealistic quality to them; indestructible heroes went up against whole platoons of villains who shot enough ammo to supply the Russian army for a decade without once hitting the hero anywhere vital. In the 90s, things got more gritty and a bit more realistic. Since then, action movies have more or less fallen out of favor at least to the extent of their popularity back in those days as the action stars grew longer in the tooth. We still see action movies today like the various Expendables films but by and large they are different with far more CGI in the mix.

This is more like a throwback to the 90s. Family man Nate Seedwell (Caviezel) is driving his family to a camping trip in Louisiana. Nate is fresh off an 18 month stay in Club Penitentiary for real estate fraud. He’s lost the trust his wife Robyn (Röhm) and the respect of his teenage sons Shane (Knight) and Kenny (Cherry) who would rather be anywhere else.

That wish is only going to grow more intensified. It turns out that a quartet of sullen criminals – Marek (Frain), Losada (Perrineau), Arielle (Baird) and Evers (Donowho) have just robbed an armored car of $4 million, executing the guards in the process. The police are after them and it’s only a matter of time before they catch up. In order to safely make it past police checkpoints, they stash their loot in a tent bag on top of a Land Rover in a truck stop parking lot. You’ll never guess who the Land Rover belongs to.

Once the bad guys get past the police checkpoint (the Seedwells sail through with no problems) they put on the afterburners to catch up with the unsuspecting family, and catch up they do. What follows is a series of action sequences punctuated by people doing dumb things that nobody in their right mind with more than two brain cells rubbing together in their brain would do.

This is a movie of lost opportunities. They set the movie in the swamp lands of Louisiana’s Cajun country, but for the most part this could have been set anywhere as they don’t really utilize the setting to its best advantage. There’s also a part of the movie when Robyn finds the money and assumes that Nate stole it and that the robbers were ex-partners of his trying to retrieve the money that Nate took. They really don’t do anything with this either, other than having Robyn drive off leaving Nate stranded at the side of the road literally holding the bag. That seems to be the end of her disbelief though, as the boys plead with her to go back and get their dad, pleas which fall on deaf ears.

And that leads me to my next problem with this movie. There are so many logical holes here and so many instances of people acting in ways no sane people act. Nobody whose family has been attacked multiple times would drive off and leave their spouse to face the music alone, no matter how mad they got. The instinct to survive and protect one’s children is too strong and when in a situation like that, you’re going to need all hands on deck, or in this case, on dock.

The saving grace for this movie other than the game performances by Caviezel and Röhm is the action sequences. Negret, who worked with After Dark previously on one of their horror films, has a good sense of pacing for action sequences and delivers some terrific fight sequences and some strong car chases. He realizes that he doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel here; he just has to keep the action moving. Far more experienced directors have not done so well in that department, so kudos to him for that point.

It’s a shame this wasn’t better written because the idea is sound and I like that they’re doing an action picture of the style that is much out of favor these days. The movie received only an excuse-me theatrical release before heading to home video and cable, where you can occasionally catch it from time to time. I don’t know that I can recommend this – too many script problems spoil this broth – but I wouldn’t mind seeing what Negret goes on to do in the business.

WHY RENT THIS: Delivers the goods in the action department.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Huge lapses in logic. A few too many cliches.
FAMILY MATTERS: There’s plenty of foul language and violence, scenes of terror and brief teen drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Caviezel and Frain both previously appeared together in the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Röhm and Perrineau both worked on the TV show Lost.
NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: None listed.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix (DVD Rental and Streaming), Amazon, iTunes, Vudu
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Stash House
FINAL RATING: 4/10
NEXT: Sneakerheadz

When the Game Stands Tall

Success breeds cool sunglasses.

(2014) True Sports Drama (Tri-Star) Jim Caviezel, Michael Chiklis, Laura Dern, Alexander Ludwig, Clancy Brown, Ser’Darius Blain, Stephan James, Matthew Daddario, Joe Massingill, Jessie Usher, Matthew Frias, LaJessie Smith, Richard Kohnke, Chase Boltin, Gavin Cassalegno, Adella Gautier, Terence Rosemore, Deneen Tyler, Anna Margaret.. Directed by Thomas Carter

Football is truly a metaphor for America, or at least America’s ideal image of itself. Individual achievement is admired and encouraged, but it is teamwork that eventually wins games.

De La Salle High School in Concord, California, is the most dominant high school football program in the nation in 2003. They have won 151 straight games – a decade without a loss – the longest streak in any sport at any level in history.  Coach Bob Ladouceur (Caviezel) has just won yet another state title. Offers to coach for NCAA Division 1 college teams are coming in by the bucket load but he has no interest in moving up to the next level. He tells his wife Bev (Dern) that he can do more good for the young men at this age than he can for college-age kids.

The stress though is getting to Ladouceur although only his wife and his best friend and assistant coach Terry Eidson (Chiklis) seem to notice. Pretty soon though Coach Ladouceur notices big time – a major heart attack lands him in the hospital where his no-nonsense cardiologist tells him in no uncertain terms that he has to take it easy for awhile – no spring football.

The senior class is already looking ahead, with star running back Terrance “T.K.” Kelly (James) urging his best friend Cam Colvin (Blain) to come up with him to the University of Oregon like they always had planned, although Colvin is devastated by his mom’s illness and death. The junior class is getting ready to take the reins of the next De La Salle team, with tailback Chris Ryan (Ludwig) gunning for a state scoring record and the coach’s son Danny (Daddario) finally getting a chance to shine as a starter at wide receiver, although the talented and arrogant Tayshon Lanear (Usher) derides him as getting an opportunity only because of who his father is.

A body blow is dealt to the team when Kelly is senseless murdered the day before he is to drive up to Oregon to start summer practice. Ladouceur, speaking at the young man’s funeral, admits to being lost.

He’s not the only one. The team isn’t practicing with the same purpose that they did, and that had been going on even before Kelly’s murder. The program is being accused of cherry-picking players (an accusation that has dogged De La Salle even before the film takes place) and some schools refuse to play De La Salle, so for their first game of the 2004 season they travel to Bellevue, Washington to take on Bellevue High School, the Washington State champions the previous seasons. The team loses and the streak, a big part of De La Salle’s identity, is over.

The devastation of their coach’s illness, the death of a teammate and the loss of the streak threatens to overwhelm the team. Ryan, who is playing well, is driven by his overbearing dad (Brown) to achieve the scoring record no matter how it affects the team. There is bickering and doubt. Suddenly, Ladouceur understands that this isn’t about a game anymore.

One of the most cliche-ridden genres in the movies, perhaps second only to romantic comedies, is the true sports drama. When the Game Stands Tall is not immune to those cliches and that hurts the movie overall. Certainly it has led to critics to savage the movie (see the Rotten Tomatoes rating below) and the criticism hasn’t been entirely undeserved.

Caviezel is a soft-spoken actor who rarely seems to raise his voice in any film or TV show he’s ever done. He plays Ladouceur as an even-keel sort who rather than chew out his players a la Herb Brooks in Miracle and Tony D’Amato in Any Given Sunday instead gives them disappointed looks which seem to affect them more deeply than physical blows. Chiklis is delightful as Eidson, more of a rah-rah sort and a great yang to Caviezel’s yin.

One of the things I object to most in this movie is the addition of the Chris Ryan character who is a complete fabrication. He is there essentially to add a subplot with a sideline dad who is borderline abusive, pushing his son to break a state record not for his son’s benefit but so he can play out his own vicarious fantasies through his son. The real Ladouceur would have never tolerated that sort of behavior and the characters are overbearing cliches that add a jarring note to the film, which could have done better without them, even though Brown and Ludwig do fine jobs in their respective roles.

The football sequences are pretty nicely done, although there are a couple of individual moves that look patently phony. There is also a really good sequence set at the Veterans Hospital where the athletes are introduced to wounded warriors back from the Middle East who are trying to overcome lost limbs and other devastating injuries. That sequence is maybe the most inspiring in the film.

I do applaud the filmmakers for taking a decidedly not underdog team and making them sympathetic. It’s hard to feel a lot of sympathy for a team that had known that much success, but sometimes it’s how adversity is dealt with rather than success that is the true measure of a person – or a team. I liked the concept, but perhaps I’ve just seen too many true sports stories in the last several years. In any case, it’s a likable enough film but certainly one that doesn’t need to be on the top of your must-see list.

REASONS TO GO: Restrained work from Caviezel and Chiklis.
REASONS TO STAY: Ryan invented from whole cloth and exists only to add false dramatic tension. A few too many sports film cliches.
FAMILY VALUES:  There is a scene of violence plus the violence that is inherent in football, a little bit of mild swearing and – horrors! – smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: De La Salle is a private high school and costs as of this year $16,000 per year to attend although it was considerably less when this film took place.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/12/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 17% positive reviews. Metacritic: 41/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: We Are Marshall
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: As Above, So Below

New Releases for the Week of August 22, 2014

FRANK MILLER’S SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR

(Dimension) Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Rosario Dawson. Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller

In Sin City, the corrupt rule and it takes a hard-bitten sort just to make it from day to day. At the center of the spider’s web is the gleefully wicked Senator Roark as a group of disparate citizens, all wronged in one way or another by the Senator, plot their vengeance in this collection of tales from the graphic novel series filmed in a highly stylized manner. Miller has written two vignettes especially for the film.

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

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Action Noir

Rating: R (for strong brutalized violence throughout, sexual content, nudity and brief drug use)

Are You Here

(Millennium) Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler, Edward Herrmann. A womanizing weatherman determines to help his off-the-grid and somewhat not-altogether-there buddy inherit a fortune from his estranged father, a decision that is being challenged by his overbearing sister. This is the feature film debut from the creator of the hit TV series Mad Men.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Rating: R (for language, drug use and some sexual content/nudity)

Calvary

(Fox Searchlight) Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen. A Catholic priest in Ireland does his best to minister to his flock and take care of his daughter (from before he was a priest). However during confession with a mysterious man, he is informed that the man is going to murder him to make a statement about the Catholic church, knowing that killing a good priest will be far more effective than killing a bad one. However, the father isn’t going to take this lying down. From the director of one of Gleeson’s better performances in The Guard.

See the trailer, a clip and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: R (for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use)

If I Stay

(Warner Brothers/MGM) Chloe Grace Moretz, Jamie Blackley, Joshua Leonard, Mireille Enos. A young woman looks to have a bright future; a potential scholarship to Julliard, a loving family and a boy she’s crazy about and who’s crazy about her right back. In a single instant, everything changes and her world is torn apart. Hovering between life and death, the girl must make the nearly unbearable choice whether to fight and live with the boy she loves, or pass on and join her loved ones.

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

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements and some sexual material)

Island of Lemurs: Madagascar

(Warner Brothers) Morgan Freeman, Patricia Wright, Hantanirina Rasamimanana. Journey to the real island of Madagascar, one of the largest in the world and home to an amazing array of creatures, some found nowhere else. Follow a dedicated scientist working to save the ancient lemurs of Madagascar from extinction.

See the trailer, an interview, a clip and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: IMAX 3D

Genre: Nature Documentary

Rating: G

Mardaani

(Yash Raj) Rani Mukerji, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Sanjay Taneja, Jisshu Sengupta. A female police officer is faced with a crisis when her teenage niece is kidnapped by a crime lord and human trafficker. The young kingpin and the cop play a game of deadly cat and mouse with the teen’s life hanging in the balance.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Crime

Rating: NR

When the Game Stands Tall

(TriStar) Jim Caviezel, Laura Dern, Michael Chiklis, Alexander Ludwig. The inspiring story of Coach Bob Ladouceur and the De La Salle High School Spartans who at one time were riding the longest winning streak in the history of sports. In a matter of weeks the streak ended, the beloved coach suffered a massive heart attack and one of their most popular players was shot to death. The team and the community will face adversity of the sort they’ve never seen before – a true test of champions.

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

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: True Sports Drama

Rating: PG (for thematic material, a scene of violence and brief smoking)

Escape Plan

AARP action movie stars.

(2013) Action (Summit) Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Faran Tahir, Amy Ryan, Sam Neill, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vinnie Jones, Matt Gerald, 50 Cent, Caitriona Balfe, David Joseph Martinez, Alec Rayme, Christian Stokes, Graham Beckel, Rodney Feaster, David Leitch, Eric R. Salas, Brian Oerly, Jeff Chase, Lydia Hull. Directed by Mikael Hafstrom

There is a certain comfort in movies that recollect past eras. The action films of the 80s were one such. It can be said justifiably that the 80s were the golden age of the action film as stars like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, van Damme and a fairly large contingent from Hong Kong plied their trade in multiplexes across the country. Most of these actors are largely in their 60s now and while guys like Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson have picked up the slack, they haven’t equaled the popularity of those other men in their prime.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) breaks out of prisons for a living. He is a security specialist, finding the weak points in institutional security and pointing them out to their clients so that those weak points can be shored up. It’s a fairly lucrative business with Ray being the brains and his partner Lester Clark (D’Onofrio) the money man.

They get an unusual request from a representative from the CIA to see if a new Supermax facility, one which will hold people the government wants to see go away and never be found again – terrorists, domestic and foreign, that sort of thing. While Ray’s computer genius Hush (50 Cent) and his handler Abigail (Ryan) have misgivings, Ray thinks that the unusually high payday is worth the risk.

Then he is kidnapped off the streets of New Orleans and taken to a strange facility with glass cells and a massive central hub known as Babylon – all of which is clearly indoors but Ray has no idea where. He quickly realizes that things are awry when his contact doesn’t seem to exist and his evacuation code doesn’t work. Instead, he has the soft-spoken Warden Hobbes (Caviezel), a sadistic sort whose right hand man Drake (Jones) has plenty of muscle to enforce Hobbes’ wishes.

Ray gets an ally inside the prison in Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger) who appears to be the middle man for a financial terrorist who targets corporations. Hobbes wants to know where the terrorist is in the worst way and Emil so far isn’t talking. Ray realizes that he’s been set up and betrayed and he is not supposed to escape – ever. What happens when you have a prison that’s truly escape proof? Do you settle in and accept your fate or die trying to get your freedom?

This definitely harkens back to the golden age of action films I referred to earlier in tone and layout. The plot and writing aren’t going to be confused with Henrik Ibsen nor are Schwarzenegger and Stallone going to be confused with Barrymore and Olivier. However, both of the former have become iconic screen personalities and they don’t really need to act. They just need to show up and react.

This is definitely Stallone’s movie with Schwarzenegger playing little more than comic relief, although he gets his testosterone moment when he lifts a huge machine gun out of a helicopter and opens fire on the baddies. It’s as preposterous as any moment in the film yet one of the most gratifying. In fact, all those who grew up with the movies of the heyday of these two men will find this comfort food of the highest order, cinematically speaking.

The sets of the massive prison are pretty impressive, as are the black-masked prison guards. While Arnold and Sly do what they do so well, Caviezel – generally the Eastwood-ian hero of Person of Interest on CBS and quite possibly the softest-spoken actor in Hollywood – makes his character silky smooth and with all the delicious evil of a serpent. He makes for an excellent antagonist and given the Bond-like set and soldiers, might make for a Blofeld-like bad guy for the venerable British spy series if they’re looking for a villain to go up against Daniel Craig in the next movie.

While the leads labor through some of their action sequences (after all, they are both well past AARP age) and remind us that their prime has come and gone, they nonetheless have the experience and wisdom to simply rely on the images they’ve both carefully crafted over the years and use them to help push them over the top. Sure, there’s nothing here that is going to essentially stand out above other action movies in the year of our lord 2013 but this isn’t a disgrace either. It’s fine, mindless entertainment for a nation that desperately needs the same. Still though, you’d be better off renting Predator, Rambo, The Running Man and Cobra if you want to see the best work of these gentlemen.

REASONS TO GO: Nice set design and pacing. Caviezel makes an intimidating villain.

REASONS TO STAY: No surprises. The stars show just how long in the tooth they have become.

FAMILY VALUES:  A fair amount of action violence and bad language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Stallone’s eldest son Sage passed away during filming, causing a brief break in shooting while he attended to family matters.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/3/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 49% positive reviews. Metacritic: 49/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Escape From Alcatraz

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

NEXT: The Counselor

New Releases for the Week of October 18, 2013

CARRIE

(Screen Gems) Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Alex Russell, Gabriella Wilde, Ansel Elgort, Barry Shabaka Henley. Directed by Kimberly Pierce

A young picked-upon girl, the daughter of an obsessively devout mother, develops telekinetic powers among other things. Some bitchy cheerleader sorts decide to play a prank on her at the prom – not a very good idea. A remake of the classic 1976 film with Sissy Spacek and itself based on one of Stephen King’s earliest novels.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday night)

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for bloody violence, disturbing images, language and some sexual content)

A.C.O.D.

(The Film Arcade) Adam Scott, Richard Jenkins, Catherine O’Hara, Jane Lynch. The adult son of a divorced couple whose acrimonious divorce scarred him to the point of needing therapy needs to get his bickering parents to make peace so that they can attend his brother’s wedding. He also discovers the therapy he underwent to get through the pain of the divorce was actually a project by a writer to chronicle the effects of divorce on children which led to a bestseller on her part but exposing all of
his most painful secrets. When he finally gets his parents together, his life goes spinning off into directions he couldn’t have imagined. This played the Sundance Across America series at the Enzian earlier this year and my review can be found here.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R (for language and brief sexual content)

Boss

(Viacom 18) Akshay Kumar, Shiv Pandit, Mithun Chakraborty, Ronit Roy. A petty criminal takes the fall for his father when he accidentally and unknowingly kills a teenager. After serving his time, he relocates to another city, only to discover that his younger brother has gotten into a conflict with the bullying son of a home minister. He will have to return home to defend his family – a home that doesn’t want him back.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Escape Plan

(Summit) Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Vincent D’Onofrio. An expert on structural security who makes a lucrative living exposing the defects in prisons and other correctional institutions takes on a brand new high-tech state-of-the-art Supermax prison. Unbeknownst to him, someone wants him to disappear from the grid – permanently. To survive he is going to have to make an alliance with a brutal inmate and assuming he survives long enough to put his plan into action, find out who put him there…and make whoever it is pay!

See the trailer, promos and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday night)

Genre: Action

Rating: R (for violence and language throughout)

The Fifth Estate

(Touchstone/DreamWorks) Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, Anthony Mackie, Laura Linney. Idealists Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-berg, disgusted and disillusioned by all the chicanery going on in secret, decide to found a website where whistle-blowers can expose the corruption and crime going on in the political and corporate worlds. However their idealism will be put to the test when a cache of top secret documents from the U.S. Military is leaked and leads to a fundamental dilemma – is the freedom of accessible information more important than the potential loss of human life?

See the trailer and featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: True Life Drama

Rating: R (for language and some violence) 

The Hunt

(Magnolia) Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Lasse Fogelstrom. A substitute teacher in a small Danish town in the midst of a bitter divorce and custody battle is unexpectedly accused of molesting the daughter of his best friend. Despite his protestations of innocence and a lack of any evidence, nobody believes him and he is ostracized from nearly everyone in the town. As events escalate and grow uglier, he will have to find a way to convince the town – and his friend – that he is an innocent man. One of the best films to come out of this year’s Florida Film Festival, you can read my review here.

See the trailer, a clip and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for sexual content including a graphic image, violence and language)

I’m in Love with a Church Girl

(High Top) Ja Rule, Adrienne Bailon, Stephen Baldwin, Michael Madsen. A young man who has made his fortune as a drug trafficker attempts to get out of the business and go straight although the DEA is skeptical of his intentions. When he meets a beautiful but devout woman, he falls for her despite the difference in their lifestyles. Both of them will be sorely tested in their faith if their love is to overcome the long odds that it faces.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Faith Drama (opens Thursday)

Rating: PG (for thematic elements, a scene of violence, some suggestive content and brief language) 

Paradise

(Image/RLJ) Julianne Hough, Russell Brand, Octavia Spencer, Holly Hunter. A young woman who has led a sheltered life in a small Montana town is nearly killed in an accident, causing her to take stock of her situation and her mainly unlived life. Deciding to see for herself what the other side has to offer, she takes her insurance settlement to Las Vegas and falls in with some fellow wounded souls and finds something a little more lasting than sin.

See the trailer, clips and a link to stream the full move at Amazon here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: PG-13 (for sexual material, substance abuse, some language and thematic elements)

The Snitch Cartel

(BN) Manolo Cardona, Tom Sizemore, Juana Acosta, Kuno Becker. Based on the life of Andreas Lopez-Lopez, a young boy from a poor background tries to win the heart of the girl he’s had a crush on since he was very young but doesn’t have the money to catch her eye. He joins one of the more vicious drug cartels in Colombia and works his way up the ladder but in doing so catches the eye of the DEA as well.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Crime Drama

Rating: R (for strong violence, language, drug content and sexuality/nudity)

Outlander

Where's the spam? Bloody Vikings!

(2008) Science Fiction (Third Rail) Jim Caviezel, John Hurt, Ron Perlman, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, Cliff Saunders, Patrick Stevenson, Aidan Devine, Bailey Maughan, John E. Nelles, James Rogers, Scott Owen, Petra Prazak. Directed by Howard McCain

Here, there be dragons and they often show up in the most unlikely of places. Dragons can be creatures of great power but they can also be the demons that gnaw at us from the inside, piece by piece.

Kainan (Caviezel) is a humanoid who has crash-landed his space vehicle on Earth – eighth century Norway to be exact. He is escaping a massacre at his space colony by a species called Moorwen. One of them stowed away aboard his spacecraft, causing it to crash on what is called by the ship computer “an abandoned seed colony.”  This implies that our planet was originally colonized by out-of-towners. Darwin might be amused.

Anyway, the Moorwen has crashed the ship and killed Kainan’s co-pilot.  The Moorwen is loose on a planet woefully unequipped to deal with him. Kainan goes on the hunt but gets captured by Vikings. This particular group is ruled by King Hrothgar (Hurt), an aging but wise king whose feisty daughter Freya (Myles) is promised to Wulfric (Huston), a hot-headed warrior who’s poised to take over leadership of the clan once Hrothgar makes his inevitably unscheduled trip to Valhalla.

Hrothgar has other fish to fry other than this Outlander. His men are disappearing in the woods, which at first is blamed on the Outlander but then on a rival clan led by King Gunnar (Perlman). Soon, Kainan convinces them that what is after them is a monster unlike any they’ve ever encountered and killing it will be no easy feat. But kill it they must, or it will kill them all and eventually, wiping out the human race.

This is a bit of an amalgam of the Viking epic and sci-fi horror. It is one of those movies that suffers from having a budget smaller than its ambitions. Filmed in Canada, the cinematography is gorgeous. Where the movie lets us down a bit is in the special effects. While the spaceship is at least satisfactory, the creature – the Moorwen – is poorly lit, despite its bioluminescence. It has a Giger-esque quality to it, but it remains frustratingly elusive. I just wish we could have seen it better.

Caviezel, whose career stalled after his appearance as the Messiah in The Passion of the Christ, does little to revive it here. He’s humorless and his face shows little emotion. With a little more animation and emotion, this could have been a memorable role. Unfortunately by the time the film ends, Kainan is largely forgotten.

Perlman has some fun with a sadly brief appearance and Hurt lends the movie some much-needed gravitas. Myles shines here as the daughter who serves as the love interest, creating a triangle between Wulfric and Kainan. She’s both feisty and capable, the femme fatale and the damsel in distress. She can hold her own with the boys but is still easy on the eyes. Good work. Huston, from one of the movies’ most revered families, has the thankless role as the suspicious warrior who ends up being Kainan’s friend. It’s a cliche part but at least Huston performs it well.

Movies like this can be massively entertaining. While this falls short of the massive adjective, it certainly is entertaining enough. Unfortunately, it got almost no distribution in the US at all, another case of a studio picking up a property they didn’t really know what to do with and then giving it a nominal release with almost zero publicity support. While this was never going to be a blockbuster, it deserved a little more push than it got. Still, it’s worth looking out for on the action-adventure shelf if you’re looking for something a little new and a little different.

WHY RENT THIS: Caviezel is a capable action hero. Movie is beautifully photographed for the most part. 

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: CGI Moorwen isn’t up to snuff.

FAMILY VALUES: There is considerable violence and some disturbing creature images.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first film in history in which Old Norse, an ancestor language of Icelandic and several other Scandinavian languages, is spoken onscreen.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: While there is nothing unusual here in terms of features, the deleted scenes add up to nearly 40 minutes of additional footage, unusually high for a movie like this.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $7M on a $50M production budget; the movie was a flop.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: The Double Hour (La doppia ora)

Nature’s Grave (Long Weekend)

Jim Caviezel, this time with a legitimate reason to take off his shirt.

 

 (Arclight) Jim Caviezel, Claudia Karvan. Directed by Jamie Blanks

 

The old saying goes “Don’t fool with Mother Nature” with the implied “because she’s a real bitch who will carve out your innards if you do” as well. More to the point that like any mother, Mother Nature will fight back if you disrespect her long enough.

 

Peter (Caviezel) and Carla (Karvan) is a couple who have been married too long. The love has long since disappeared and their relationship has disintegrated into a series of battles that nobody really wins. They decide – well, at least Peter did – that to make a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage they should take a vacation.

 

That would normally be a good idea, but even that turns out badly. You see, whereas Carla’s idea of a vacation is five-star hotels, massages and lush resorts, Peter prefers a tent, a secluded bit of beach and a gun. A gun which he fires in the general direction of his wife as a joke when they first arrive at the beach…at least, they think it’s the beach. The truth is that Peter got hopelessly lost on his way there and they really have no idea where they are.

 

At first it seems idyllic. Not far from the beach, a secluded forest with plenty of wildlife for shooting and only a few neighbors far away. However, things are rapidly deteriorating between Carla and Peter. It’s not a case of one being a jerk and the other a martyr…they’re both pretty much jerks. Peter is an alpha male whose testosterone drives him to do stupid, moronic things. Carla is a world-class nag and an all-Aussie bitch.

 

There are some other troubling things. One of Peter’s mates and his girlfriend was supposed to be meeting them, but they never showed. There are strange sounds in the night. Animals, plants and insects are acting unusually aggressive. A chicken rots in a cooler without explanation.

 

In the meantime, Peter and Carla act recklessly and thoughtlessly, Carla running over a kangaroo in the night, Peter shooting anything that moves (and several things that don’t). One wonders when the tipping point will be reached.

 

This is a remake of a 1978 eco-thriller called Long Weekend (which was the title this was released under in Australia where it was made) directed by the late Colin Eggleston. Although I never saw the original, I’m led to understand the remake is fairly faithful to it.

 

Caviezel is an actor I’ve always been fond of although he has been less visible on the big screen as of late. He is versatile enough to play the heavy (as he has in several movies) as well as the divine (as he did in The Passion of the Christ) and here, he plays a bit in between. Peter is a macho asshole (there’s really no other way to say it) but he isn’t rotten through and through; occasionally a bit of softness shows through.

 

I like the way the marriage between Carla and Peter is portrayed here. The two commit acts of petty cruelty in a slow dance of one-upsmanship whilst twisting the knife. As the song says, there’s a thin line between love and hate and that line is blurring here. Their pain has become so ingrained in them that every move is a series of reactions and counter-reactions to the slights, perceived and otherwise, delivered by the other. In that sense this is as fascinating a portrayal of a marriage in its death throes as any I’ve ever seen.

 

However, this is ostensibly a horror movie and while there are a few shocks, quite frankly this is one of those less-is-more type of horror movies that is more of a character study in which the scares come from left field. Veteran gorehounds will probably cringe while watching this, but it is better approached as a psychological thriller despite the supernatural aspect.

 

Because the lead characters are so cruel to one another, it’s very difficult to really root for them even when things are really going to hell in a handcart. After all, this is the bed they made, so lying in it comes with the territory. That said, it should be noted that the Aussies are often underrated when it comes to delivering delicious horror movies; quite a few good shock flicks have come from Down Under over the past thirty years, and some of them are as enviably good as any to come out of Japan, Korea, Spain, England or of course the U.S. This might be more than a little difficult to locate but it’s well worth the effort; while it doesn’t set any genres on fire, the train wreck aspect of watching the relationship deteriorate is equally a horror to the gory scenes of nature’s devastations.

 

WHY RENT THIS: Realistic portrait of a marriage that has completely come apart. It’s the relationship between Peter and Carla that make this movie.

 

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Maybe a little too subtle for the average horror film. Some might think Caviezel spends way too much time without his shirt on. There is a good deal of marital ugliness that might hit a little too close to home.

 

FAMILY VALUES: There are some images that are definitely not for the squeamish, a few big scares, lots of rough language and some drinking and drug use.  

 

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Screenwriter Everett De Roche also penned the 1978 original.  

 

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.  

 

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Day 3 of Six Days of Darkness.

Deja Vu

In the aftermath of a disaster, Denzel Washington works the evidence.

(Touchstone) Denzel Washington, Jim Caviezel, Val Kilmer, Bruce Greenwood, Matt Craven, Paula Patton, Adam Goldberg, Donna Scott, Elle Fanning, Elden Henson, Erika Alexander. Directed by Tony Scott

Have you ever gotten the feeling that you’ve seen a movie before, even as you’re watching it for the first time? It’s not necessarily something a filmmaker wants their audience to feel, but sometimes there’s no help for it.

It’s Fat Tuesday in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the Algiers ferry bound for the Crescent City is full of sailors and partygoers bound and determined to have a great time. Not too far into the voyage, a car on the ferry explodes, setting off a chain reaction and a second, more damaging explosion and the Ferry goes down to the bottom of Lake Ponchatrain. The catastrophe kills men, women and children in a city which is already reeling from a hurricane that has all but destroyed it.

ATF investigator Doug Carlin (Washington) is called to the scene to determine whether the explosion was a deliberate act. While the FBI, local police and other agencies are squabbling, Carlin – possessed of a cat-quick mind and the ability to instantly see the compelling evidence – quickly determines that the cause of the explosion was, in fact, a bomb, making it a deliberate act of terrorism.

Carlin’s style irritates some of his colleagues, although FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Kilmer) finds him amusing and impressive. Pryzwarra’s boss (Greenwood) agrees and when a burned body washes up onshore in an area that would put it in the water a full two hours before the Ferry disaster, the FBI and Carlin realize that the key to solving this mystery lies with finding out what happened to the beautiful woman (Patton) lying on the coroner’s table. To do this, Carlin is brought into a highly sensitive experiment that may allow a quick-thinking investigator like Carlin a second chance at seeing what really happened, but also change his life forever.

Scott and Washington are reunited for the first time since the two made Crimson Tide and the stylish Scott knows how to use his leading man ably, even though Denzel is getting a little bit long in the tooth for these kinds of roles. The premise of by observing the past being able to affect it is one not new to science fiction literature or movies (heck, “The Twilight Zone” basically made a living on just that kind of conundrum) and in all honesty, Déjà Vu doesn’t add anything new to the dance.

However, Tony Scott is an adept action director and he doesn’t disappoint here, with a chase scene that has the two cars in different time periods, with Washington unable to see the car he is chasing and being guided along by his team back at the appropriately grungy looking lab. The climactic scenes pitting Washington and his love interest against the bad guy (a very un-Christlike Jim Caviezel) are played with appropriate tension. A lot of directors could take lessons from Scott in that regard – it’s not as easy a skill as it seems.

Scott is blessed with a very talented cast, including the criminally under-used Matt Craven as Carlin’s partner – this is an actor who deserves meatier roles – and also reunites Washington with Greenwood, both of whom got their starts on the “St. Elsewhere” television show so many years ago.

To the bad is the one bugaboo that plagues these kinds of time-tripping sci-fi actioners – the tendency for the plot to get muddled and confusing. Scott trumps this by making his characters real and then casts interesting actors to play them – Goldberg is particularly nifty as a science geek, and Patton makes a gorgeous corpse, but also a mighty fine love interest. The resolution seems a bit forced, but then if you think about these things too hard you can get migraines.

I kind of regret missing this in the multiplex, although it looked just fine on our medium-sized bedroom TV screen. To be fair, this isn’t a movie that’s really out to break new ground. It just wants its audience to have a good time, and at that, it’s successful. If you’re looking for something to rent that satisfies your Jones for action, you could do worse than this.

WHY RENT THIS: Some nice action sequences highlighted by some very big booms – gotta love things that blow up real good. The cast is top-notch. The climactic scenes ratchet up the tension.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The plot can be hard to follow. While tense, the resolution seems a bit forced and contrived.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a good deal of violence and some sensuality but otherwise okay for most audiences.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: While the movie was in pre-production, New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, forcing the producers to make a decision to shoot elsewhere, a move that director Tony Scott resisted. In the time that it took to reboot the production, New Orleans had recovered sufficiently to allow shooting there and pre-production resumed, allowing Deja Vu the distinction of being the first movie to film in New Orleans post-Katrina.

NOTABLE DVD FEATURES: The Surveillance Window feature allows the director commentary to be fleshed out with video sequences that may also be viewed separately.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Everybody’s Fine