Infinite

Mark Wahlberg threatens to get all samurai on your ass.

(2021) Science Fiction (Paramount) Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson, Jason Mantzoukas, Rupert Friend, Toby Jones, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Liz Carr, Kae Alexander, Tom Hughes, Joana Ribeiro, Wallis Day, Alicia Charles, Mark Fleischmann, Lloyd Griffith, Jack Roth, Leon Annor, Nabil Elouahabi, Jumayn Hunter, Melissa Neal. Directed by Antoine Fuqua

The movie industry has for a very long time now been franchise-oriented. That’s the bread and butter of the major studios; that’s where they sink the bulk of their investments. The negative aspect is that franchises often can be overly repetitive, and so the need to add new, fresh franchises becomes paramount (no pun intended). The problem with that is that franchises rely on a first film that not only sets the stage for future films, but kicks butt at the box office or ratings.

The makers of Infinite (based on a novel by D. Eric Maikranz) were dealt bad cards from the beginning. The pandemic took what was envisioned to be a summer blockbuster and left it to debut on the Paramount Plus network, which was at the time freshly re-christened from CBS All-Access and had yet to make Netflix-like subscriber numbers (it still hasn’t). I think they were hoping to use the film as an enticement to get subscribers, but it didn’t really happen in the kind of numbers I think they were hoping for. Part of the problem is because not many knew much about the film.

The film (and book) posits that there are a group of people who are reincarnated retaining all the knowledge and skills from their past lives; these are called Infinites. The Infinites are at war; the bad guys, the Nihilists led by Bathurst (Ejiofor) want nothing more than to die and be at peace. Since dying only means they’ll get reincarnated once again, the only way to ensure that they’ll Rest in Peace is to wipe out all life on Earth, which seems a little extreme. Opposing them are the Believers who are led by Garrick (Carr), a wheelchair-bound strategist.

The Nihilists had developed a device called the Egg that would destroy all life on Earth, which seems to be redundant since the McRib is capable of doing the very same thing. An agent of the Believers named Treadway (O’Brien) has managed to steal the Egg and hide it away, but he is killed before he can reveal the location to his fellow Believers.

Years later, Evan (Wahlberg) has been diagnosed with schizophrenia due to the voices he hears. He often has vivid dreams that when he wakes up, leave him with a skill he didn’t know he had – like forging samurai swords, for example. The Believers think he might be the reincarnation of Treadway; so, unfortunately, does Bathurst (Treadway and Bathurst sounds like it should be the name of a legal firm that represents corporate polluters), and both want Evan very badly because locked in his memory is the location of the Egg One of the Believers, Nora (Cookson), has a very personal connection to Evan; she believes that the Egg can restore Treadway, who was her lover.

The movie reunites Wahlberg and Fuqua, who was his director on The Shooter. Fuqua has helmed some very good films, including Training Day. This, sadly, won’t be remembered as one of his best. While the original concept is pretty compelling, the execution here is faulty, largely because of the convoluted plot and minimal character development. Like many action films that have many working parts, the characters here are given short shrift, often reduced to a single personality trait (one has a bad temper, one is confined to a wheelchair, one is a smart alec and so on and so forth).

I get the sense that much of the backstory was left for future installments and indeed there is a lot of world building going on here. I would have preferred a smaller team with fewer characters, but better developed ones. There is a lot of CGI as you might expect – for the most part it is better than average, although there are a few exceptions. The fight scenes and action set pieces are uneven; some are absolutely mind-blowing, while others are merely okay.

Wahlberg, at fifty, is a bit long in the tooth to be starting a potential franchise like this, but then again that would leave the door open for a surprise death and reincarnation, much like Doctor Who. He is in spectacular shape (and gets shirtless to let us know just how spectacular that is) and I like his casting here; he is very much a working class Joe and reacts to things as a working class Joe.

This is a movie that got a lot of bad breaks. The pandemic led to multiple delays which eventually led to it not getting a shot at a theatrical release. It became a tentpole release for the fledgling Paramount Plus network, but didn’t generate the kind of response that got people enthusiastic about subscribing, nor is there any enthusiasm for a potential sequel. It’s just another would-be franchise film that didn’t connect with a wide audience.

REASONS TO SEE: Better-than-average SFX and action sequences.
REASONS TO AVOID: Really pushes believability in places.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, violence (occasionally bloody and disturbing) and some drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Evan gets the same reincarnation test that is given the Dalai Llama.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Paramount Plus
CRITICAL MASS: As of 01/01/22: Rotten Tomatoes: 16% positive reviews; Metacritic: 28/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Old Guard
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Off the Rails

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Wonder Park

Welcome to Jurassic – I mean, Wonder – Park.

(2019) Animated Feature (Paramount) Starring the voices of Brianna Denski, Jennifer Garner, Ken Hudson Campbell, Kenan Thompson, Mila Kunis, John Oliver, Ken Jeong, Norbert Leo Butz, Matthew Broderick, Sofia Mali, Oev Michael Urbas, Kate McGregor-Stewart, Kevin Chamberlin, Kath Soucie. Directed by Dylan Brown, Clare Kilner, Robert Iscove and David Feiss

A nice concept is torpedoed by weak execution in this troubled production that comes to us via Paramount’s subsidy Nickelodeon Films. June (Denski) is a wildly creative and smart 10-year-old who for years has along with her mother (Garner) worked on creating a fantastic theme park with improbable rides and stuffed animals come to life running the place. Then, mom gets a serious illness and has to go away for treatment, while Dad (Broderick) ships her off to math camp. Worried that her Dad won’t be able to fend for himself, June runs away from camp and finds in the surrounding woods an overgrown, derelict version of the park she and her mom created. The animals – now life-sized and able to talk – are trying to fend off a horde of zombie stuffed animal monkeys and a mysterious storm that threatens to destroy the park completely. June will need to find a way to prevent that.

The design of the park, with delightful Rube Goldberg-esque rides, is actually mesmerizing and the bright colors make for some serious eye candy. Unfortunately, the attempts to bring in serious subjects – in particular dealing with the potential loss of a parent – aren’t handled very well and end up being disconnected with the issues facing the park. Add to this one-dimensional characters who aren’t given a whole lot to do and you end up with a truly disappointing kid’s film that could have been so much more.

REASONS TO SEE: The design of the park itself is splendiferous.
REASONS TO AVOID: A cliché plot with no memorable characters to rescue it.
FAMILY VALUES There are some mild thematic elements that might be too much for the smaller set.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Brown was removed as director following accusations of sexual misconduct near the end of production. Although uncredited, Kilner, Iscove and Feiss oversaw the remainder of the production. None of the directors are given screen credit, something that the Directors Guild of America almost never allows.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/28/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 34% positive reviews; Metacritic: 45/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Neverending Story
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Autumn Road

A Quiet Place Part II

There is no hiding when you can’t make a sound.

(2020) Sci-Fi Horror (Paramount) Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cillian Murphy, Djimon Hounsou, Okieriete Onaodowan, Scoot McNairy, Zachary Golinger, Blake DeLong, Stefanie Warwick, Alycia Ripley, Cristalis Bonilla, Domonic Taggart, Silas Pereira-Olson, Alice Malyukova, Ashley Dyke, Dean Woodward, Barbara Singer, Michaela Juliann Pace. Directed by John Krasinski

 

After theaters began to reopen this past spring, one of the first blockbusters to return was this sequel to the surprise hit by former Office star Krasinski. It was kind of an appropriate choice; social distancing was still very much in force, and the forced isolation of the survivors in the film mirrored that which all of us went through – and are still going through, in some cases.

The movie begins with a flashback to the first day of the alien invasion. Krasinski as Lee Abbott appears here as he copes with the first appearance of the aliens, trying to protect his son Marcus (Jupe) as he tries to find his wife Evelyn (Blunt) who is with their deaf daughter Regan (Simmonds). It’s a harrowing scene full of noise and terror.

Then we return to the place where the first film ended, 473 days afterwards, with the survivors of the Abbott family leaving their flooded and burned out homestead. With a newborn baby to carry – newborns aren’t noted for their silence – it is a journey fraught with danger as the family try to apply their hard-won knowledge, including the means of killing the creature, something that they didn’t have earlier. They run into a trap set by one of their former neighbors, Emmett (Murphy) who has been through a hell of his own, but he at least has a sanctuary – a soundproof furnace in an industrial plant. The problem with it is that if you wait too long inside it, you run the risk of suffocating. By this time Marcus has been badly injured, an Evelyn needs to go into town and find medicine which he desperately needs. Regan has struck out on her own and Emmett agrees to go after her, but the two end up running into the sort of humans that would survive an alien apocalypse and find their way to an island which is cut off from the mainland – and the aliens. They need to go back and get Evelyn, Marcus and the baby…and the aliens have also unfortunately discovered away to do some hunting on the island…

Fans of the first film will notice the diminished role that Krasinski plays here, and the movie is less because of it. On the plus side, though, Simmonds blossoms here, making this a showcase role for her. Blunt remains steadfast, but as with the first movie she is not utilized as well as she might be. Murphy is one of those actors who does a good job every time out but doesn’t get enough credit for it, and he is definitely a high point here.

The best thing about the movie is the aliens themselves. Their design is absolutely marvelous, a picture of logic and aggressive behavior. They make perfect movie monsters. Hardcore horror fans will notice that the gore is pretty minimal here, which may irritate some. Of more concern are some of the plot holes that make no sense. The Abbotts, for example seem to have an unlimited supply of batteries. Where are they getting them?

Nonetheless, this is one of those horror films that keeps the tension high throughout. Thanks to outstanding performances by Murphy, Blunt and in particular Simmonds, it is easy to invest emotionally in the main characters. It was a fitting return of movies to the theaters and it’s getting a re-release in some markets even as we speak. Definitely worth seeking out, whether on VOD, streaming on Paramount Plus or in theaters.

REASONS TO SEE: Simmonds does a crackerjack job. Superb creature design.
REASONS TO AVOID: Suffers from Krasinski’s absence. A few general plot holes.
FAMILY VALUES:There is violence a’plenty, some bloody and/or disgusting images, and scenes of terror.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film made it’s New York premiere date but the COVID outbreak caused its general release to be postponed almost a year.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Alamo On Demand, Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Paramount Plus, Redbox, Spectrum, Vudu, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch As of 10/29/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 91% positive reviews; Metacritic: 71/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Signs
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: The penultimate entry in this year’s Six Days of Darkness!

Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse

Attack a Navy SEALs family? Oh no, you didn’t…

(2021) Action (Paramount/Amazon) Michael B. Jordan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jamie Bell, Guy Pearce, Lauren London, Jacob Scipio, Todd Lasance, Jack Kesy, Lucy Russell, Cam Gigandet, Luke Mitchell, Artjom Gilz, Brett Gelman, Merab Ninidze, Alexander Mercury, Colman Domingo, Rae Lim, Sumi Somaskanda, Zee Gunther, Jill Holwerda, Conor Boru, Bella Shaw. Directed by Stefano Sollima

 

It is a tried-and-true action cliché that you can mess with a Navy SEAL, but if you mess with a Navy SEAL’s family, you’re in deep doo-doo because not even God will help you. God knows better.

Navy SEAL John Kelly (Jordan) is part of a team led by Lt. Cmmdr. Karen Greer (Turner-Smith) that goes to Aleppo in civil war-torn Syria to rescue a CIA operative. It appears to have gone without a hitch but something about it feels wrong to Kelly and his suspicions soon prove to be true when it turns out that what they thought were Syrian soldiers were in fact Russians and boy, are they angry about the American operation. Once the SEALs go home, Russian operatives stalk the individual members of the team and kill them.

When they go after Kelly, he survives. Unfortunately, his pregnant wife Pam (London) doesn’t and if you thought the Russians were angry, Kelly is about to get medieval on some Russian tushies. He stalks a Russian diplomat and sets his car on fire, then leaps into the inferno with the diplomat and demands to know who carried out the assassinations. When he gets the name he needs, he exits the car but not before sending the Russian to join the Choir Invisible.

With the support of Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay (Pearce) and the more reluctant support of CIA agent Robert Ritter (Bell), Kelly joins a team that is headed into Mother Russia to track down the operative, Viktor Rykov (Gelman, a curious bit of casting) and exact his revenge but the plane is ambushed and shot down. It becomes clear that the Russians knew they were coming; but who told them and why?

Based on a novel by Tom Clancy in a spin-off from his hugely popular Jack Ryan series (the character of John Kelly, who will be known as John Clark for reasons explained later in the movie, appears in several of those books) has long been in gestation as a film project, but finally saw the light of day after nearly two decades of development – only to run smack dab into the pandemic. Ticketed for theatrical release in 2020, after several delays and postponements the property was finally sold to Amazon who have been having success with their own John Krasinski-led Jack Ryan series seemed to be a perfect fit.

This movie gets an enormous amount of star power from Jordan who has become one of the most charismatic stars in Hollywood. Even when he plays villainous roles, he turns in a performance that actually can be sympathetic. He has an enormous amount of screen presence and he actually elevates what is otherwise a mediocre film into something a little more.

Part of the problem here is that Clancy wrote with a Cold War-era worldview that is a bit off in the 2020s. It’s not that we don’t have an adversarial relationship with Russia these days – of course we do – but it’s a different kind of playing field altogether. Some of the geopolitical content feels a bit dated somehow.

A film like this is going to live and die on its action sequences and while most of them aren’t too bad, there are one or two that stretch believability and make you scratch your head a little bit and say “wouldn’t it be easier if he just…” and that’s never a good thing in an action movie. While action sequences should be breathtaking, there has to be an air of reality to it that viewers believe the derring-do is at least possible. It takes you right out of the movie when it feels implausible.

This isn’t a bad movie and Amazon Prime users get to watch it for no additional charge which makes it even more enticing. Could this have been a better experience in a movie theater? In all likelihood, yes, but it’s not a bad option if you want to watch something loud and that requires little thought on your part.

REASONS TO SEE: Jordan is one of the most watchable stars in Hollywood today.
REASONS TO AVOID: Lacks character development.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of violence and some profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Jordan is the third actor to play John Clark (John Kelly in this film); Willem Dafoe played him in A Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber played him in The Sum of All Fears, both Jack Ryan films.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/24/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 45% positive reviews; Metacritic: 41/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Clear and Present Danger
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Take Out Girl

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Lady Day sings the blues.

(2021) Biographical Drama (Paramount) Audra Day, Leslie Jordan, Miss Lawrence, Natasha Lyonne, Trevante Rhodes, Dusan Dukic, Erik LaRay Harvey, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Koumba Ball, Kate MacLellan, Kwasi Songui, Adriane Lenox, Letitia Brookes, Tyler James Williams, Slim Williams, Orville Thompson, Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Corbett, Amanda Strawn. Directed by Lee Daniels

 

For most modern Americans, Billie Holiday is a distant memory of our grandparents, a footnote on the cultural scene whose name might be familiar but whose music isn’t. As our tastes have turned more towards Ariana Grande, Beyonce and Lady Gaga in terms of female performers, few realize that all three – and so many more – owe Holiday a debt of gratitude.

Holiday’s best-known song is “Strange Fruit,” written by the poet-activist Abel Meeropol, depicting the lynching of a black man. The song, even today, is absolutely horrifying and stark. Time magazine voted it the song of the centurn in 1999, and for good reason. The song also got Holiday the attention of the FBI, led by the noted racist J. Edgar Hoover, whose underling and chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), Harry Anslinger (Hedlund) remarked that while they couldn’t arrest her for singing a song, they could arrest her for her noted drug use.

From then on, Billie Holiday (Day) was a marked soman. Hounded by the FBN, she was arrested for narcotics use – turned in by undercover agent Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes) who later became romantically involved with her – and sent to prison for a year. Because of her conviction, she lost her cabaret license which allowed her to perform in nightclubs which was her bread and butter. She was able to get booked at Carnegie Hall, where she delivered a triumphant comeback performance that led to European tours and theater bookings, but Anslinger continued to put the pressure on, even arresting her and handcuffing her as she lay dying on her deathbed at the age of 44.

It’s a sad, disgraceful story that as told here, is largely true, although some things are inventions; the extent of her romantic involvement with Fletcher is unknown as is much of his background. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan Lori-Parks wrote her screenplay based on a single chapter of a Johann Hari book on the war on drugs that detailed how the FBI went after Holiday in the last decade of her life.

We are treated to an absolutely dazzling performance by Day, which has already netted her the Golden Globe in a bit of an upset (it was thought that Frances McDormand had the award sewn up) and puts her on track for the Best Actress Oscar, which she is nominated for. She does her own singing here and does a pretty good approximation of Holiday, although she lacks some of the vocal warmth that Holiday had. She captures Holiday’s feisty, don’t-take-no-crap attitude that was at odds with the amount of abuse she took from the men in her life who abused her physically (and helped her get hooked on heroin) and financially, as well as from a society that didn’t want women of color to speak out against the system. Her refusal to stop singing “Strange Fruit” is portrayed as an act of heroism, which it surely was.

The odd thing here is how the song, which was theoretically at the center of her troubles with the government, isn’t sung completely through here – she reads some of the lyrics at one point and a few lines are sung, but the song remains more of a concept than an actual presence. Even the triumphant Carnegie Hall performance, in which audience members are depicted calling out for the song, curiously doesn’t have her singing it, even though she did perform it that night. Considering how important the song is to the story, and that people are less familiar with the song now than they were even twenty years ago, it’s mystified why we don’t hear more of it.

Daniels weaves in a lot of flashbacks and flash forwards, jumping around in the narrative which can be confusing at times. We do see the absolutely horrific childhood she experienced which certainly led to her need to escape her demons through drugs, alcohol and sex. While her affairs with men are shown pretty graphically, Daniels is a bit coy with her affairs with women, alluding only to one female lover (actress Tallulah Bankhead); she was bisexual and had more than a few female partners during her time.

But that’s no nevermind. This is a much grittier – and less sanitized – version of Holiday than the more well-known portrayal in Lady Sing the Blues and while the movie is on the long side and could have used a bit less emphasis on Anslinger and Fletcher, this is still a high-end movie that deserves to have a wide audience, not just for the story of one of America’s great artists, but on how shabbily she was treated.

REASONS TO SEE: Day gives an award-winning performance. The music is unforgettable. Captures the reality of the African-American experience of the era. Daniels pulls no punches.
REASONS TO AVOID: The presentation is a little bit scattershot.
FAMILY VALUES: There is heavy drug use, profanity, racial epithets, sex and nudity, violence and disturbing images of lynchings.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Evan Ross, who plays an FBI agent in the movie, is the grandson of Diana Ross who played Billie Holiday in Lady Sing the Blues.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Hulu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/23/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 53% positive reviews; Metacritic: 52/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Billie
FINAL RATING: 8/10
NEXT: Older

What Men Want

Touchdown!

(2019) Romantic Comedy (Paramount) Taraji P. Henson, Aldis Hodge, Richard Roundtree, Tracy Morgan, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Josh Brener, Tamala Jones, Phoebe Robinson, Max Greenfield, Jason Jones, Pete Davidson, Brian Bosworth, Chris Witaske, Erykah Badu, Kellan Lutz, Kausar Mohammed, Paul B. Johnson, Auston Moore, Shane Paul McGhie, Lisa Leslie. Directed by Adam Shankman

In 2000, Mel Gibson had a hit rom-com with What Women Want, in which a bathtub electrocution gave him the power to hear the thoughts of women (but not men). In this gender-reversal update (and I use the term loosely), Henson stars as Ali Davis, a brash and ambitious sports agent working basically at a white boy’s club where she hopes to become partner. When she’s passed over, she demands to know why since she has an impressive list of Olympic athletes with an impressive list of endorsements; her smarmy boss replies “You just don’t connect with men.”

Well, that problem is about to be solved by singer-songwriter Erykah Badu who plays Sister, a wacky psychic who is hired by a bachelorette party that Ali is attending. She supplies Ali with a drug-laced tea and then for good measure, Ali gets knocked upside the head by an oversized dildo. When she comes to, voila! She can hear the thoughts of men (but not women). She hopes to use her new superpower to her own advantage rather than trying to stop Thanos in his evil mission…err., wrong film. In any case, she discovers it isn’t so much what men are thinking that’s important (and non-spoiler alert – I think most women have a pretty good clue what men are generally thinking) but what is inside her own head that really matters.

The movie is full of rom-com clichés and never really excites any sort of glee from the audience. Henson is a talented actress who I’ve been a great fan of for more than a decade, and she does do her best here, but she has to contend with Badu’s shameless overacting (although to be fair Badu is pretty much the most consistently funny in the cast), a script that does her no favors and patter that rather than being snappy falls about as flat as a remake of a comedy about misogyny in the era of #MeToo. Timing matters.

REASONS TO SEE: Henson is a little bit over-the-top but still always watchable.
REASONS TO AVOID: Very cliché.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity and sexual content, along with some drug references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first R-rated film to be directed by Shankman.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Epix, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hulu, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/10/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 49% positive reviews: Metacritic: 42/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: What Women Want
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Relic

Bumblebee

A girl and her bug.

(2018) Science Fiction (Paramount) Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Landeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, Pamela Adlon, Jason Drucker, Megyn Price, Rachel Crowther, Grey Griffin, Gracie Dzienny, Peter Cullen (voice), Len Cariou, Marcella Bragio, Steve Blum, Vanessa Ross, Glynn Turman, Kirk Bailey, Jon Bailey, Kevin Kent, Michael Masini, Fred Dryer, Mika Kubo. Directed by Travis Knight

 

After a decade of Michael Bay’s sturm und drang Transformers movies comes a different take in the franchise’s first spin-off…or is it prequel? I guess either appellation works.

With the Decepticons having overrun the Autobots in their ongoing war (if you don’t know what that sentence signifies, you should probably go no further and look for something else to rent), Bumblebee is sent by Optimus Prime (Cullen) to Earth to protect the human race. Unfortunately, he’s tailed by a couple of Decepticon warriors who basically kick the gears out of him, disabling his vocal functions and leaving him nearly dead. He makes like a VW Bug to hide from the evil robots, who are looking hard for him so they can find out where the Autobots are hiding and destroy them once and for all.

But teen Charlie (Steinfeld), mourning her late father, takes a liking to the Bug when she spies him in a scrapyard and decides to rebuild him. You can imagine her surprise when he rebuilds himself. The trouble is that those evil Decepticons have managed to convince the American government that Bumblebee is a threat and the gov’mint sends out iron-jawed Agent Burns (Cena) to locate the wayward Autobot and take him down. All that stands between the human race and total annihilation is a badly damaged robot and a plucky teenage girl. How much more 1987 could you get?

Quite a bit, judging from the wonderful soundtrack here. Still, this is a refreshing tonal change for the series which had fallen into self-parody with the last movie, Transformers: The Last Knight. While the movie starts out with a Bay-esque scene of mayhem and massive robot carnage, the movie abruptly shifts gears and becomes something of a buddy movie. Steinfeld is a very talented actress and not many could pull off doing a buddy movie with a car, but she does it pretty well, playing the 80s tomboy despite not having been born until the following decade.

But it’s the mayhem that most people buy tickets to these movies for, and there’s plenty of that. Knight, who has mostly worked with stop-motion animation with Laika, has a good sense of how to stage an action set piece but also has a good sense of balance with character development and plot. He even manages to inject a little pathos and humor into the mix, something Bay wasn’t known for.

REASONS TO SEE: Excellent action sequences. Steinfeld gives an affecting performance.
REASONS TO AVOID: A fair number of clichés are present.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of sci-fi action and violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Steinfeld was born nine years after the movie was set, so she had to be taught how to use some of the props such as the Walkman.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Epix, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hulu, Microsoft, Redbox, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/18/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 91% positive reviews; Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Big Hero 6
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Union Bridge

Instant Family

Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne get a little cuddle time in.

(2018) Family Comedy (Paramount) Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, Isabela Moner, Gustavo Quiroz, Julianna Gamiz, Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro, Tom Segura, Allyn Rachel, Brittney Rentschler, Jody Thompson, Margo Martindale, Julie Hagerty, Michael O’Keefe, Joan Cusack, Edson Gary Weeks, Kenneth Israel, Hampton Fluker, Randy Havens, Iliza Schlesinger. Directed by Sean Anders

 

Having been an instant Dad, coming into a family in which there were already children, I imagine I have a bit of a leg up on the adoption comedy Instant Family. In some ways, the movie tackles some serious issues with the foster care system and of dealing with kids who have been through the ringer. It also has some humor which can be charitably described as weak; on top of it you have an awful lot of cursing, a fair amount of which is done by the kids themselves. This is a movie that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be.

Which is weird because writer-director Anders based the film on his own experiences adopting three Hispanic children, which is what childless Yuppie couple Pete (Wahlberg) and Ellie (Byrne) do. They end up with problematic teen Lizzy (Moner) who still harbors hope of reuniting with her birth mother, her little brother Juan (Quiroz) who is as clumsy as any anxious kid is and whose first instinct is to always apologize profusely whether he’s responsible or not, and finally little Lita (Gamiz) who is a bundle of need and a volcano when she doesn’t get what she wants.

Trying to guide these prospective parents through the process are agency workers Karen (Spencer) and Sharon (Notaro), as well as Ellie’s introspective mom (Hagerty) and Pete’s bulldozer of a mom (Martindale). When the birth mom of the kids, who has a history of drug addiction, decides she wants her kids back, Pete and Ellie, who have at times regretted their decision, suddenly realize that they need these kids as much or more than they need them.

It’s definitely a movie with all the feels, the kind of thing that infuriates a whole lot of movie critics who hate being emotionally manipulated, but in all honesty, I think Instant Family comes to its emotional high and lows honestly. Wahlberg is at his most charming here, and he has a solid cast to back him up including Oscar winner Spencer, Notaro (one of the finest comedians of our time) and particularly Martindale who over the past decade has become one of the most reliable and interesting character actresses in Hollywood.

It’s a shame that there’s so much here that doesn’t work, from Isabelle Moner doing her best to channel Selena Gomez, to the somewhat lame humor which never quite hits the mark, to the script that doesn’t really rise above its own limitations. I think the movie would have been better served to try less to be light comedy and harder to be a bit more realistic about the pitfalls – and joys – of being a foster parent can be. It’s not quite a Hallmark Channel movie, but it needed a little more firm direction in terms of what it wanted to be.

REASONS TO SEE: Reasonably heartwarming.
REASONS TO AVOID: Plays it safe by following established formulas and really doesn’t know what kind of movie it wants to be.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity, some sexual material, adult thematic material and some drug references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film is loosely based on the real-life experiences of director Sean Anders, who adopted three Hispanic kids.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Epix, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hulu, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/12/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 81% positive reviews, Metacritic: 57/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Blended
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Liz & Ray

Overlord (2018)

War is literally hell.

(2018) Horror (Paramount) Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Olivier, Pilou Asbæk, John Magaro, Iain de Caestecker, Jacob Anderson, Dominic Applewhite, Glanny Taufer, Joseph Quin, Bokeem Woodbine, Erich Redman, Mark McKenna, Hayley Carmichael, Marc Rissmann, Meg Foster, Sarah Finigan, Gunther Wurger, Bart Lambert, Michael Epp, Alison Thea-Skot. Directed by Julius Avery

 

War is hell, but some wars are more hellish than others. The evil that was Nazi Germany makes for fertile ground for all sorts of horrors, both real and imagined.

The 101^st Airborne Division parachutes into occupied France in preparation for D-Day. Their mission is to take out a radio tower that will mess up Nazi communications and help the Allies when the troops hit the beach. The survivors of the drop have to find their way to the church upon which the tower sits. They are led by Corporal Ford (Russell), who inherited the job when everyone above him in rank bought the farm during the drop, and Private Boyce (Adepo), a young naive recruit seeing his first action of the war. They are aided by scavenger Chloe (Olivier) who leads them to the village where the church is.

Unfortunately for the good guys, the church is also a place where the Nazis are conducting unspeakable medical experiments, trying to create super-soldiers for their thousand-year Reich, and they are succeeding in their attempts. It will be up to the Americans to not only take out the tower but the research facility if the Allies are to have any hope of winning the war.

This film moves in fits and starts, with some sequences of almost impossible intensity (like the opening when paratroopers desperately leap out of a shot-up, crashing plane through flames and gunfire) while other sequences allow the audience to catch their breath. The filmmakers opted for practical effects over CGI in most cases and that serves the movie well.

However when we finally get to the super-soldiers, they are a bit on the disappointing side. They are very much “been there seen that.” The mainly little-known cast also doesn’t particularly distinguish themselves (Adepo and Russell are exceptions, and Asbæk does make a mighty hissable villain) and the plot at times feels like we’ve seen it all before.

Nonetheless the movie is a ride indeed, and those who like rides are going to enjoy this one. There is a ton of gore and the really squeamish might feel their gorge rise a bit, but the viscera never overwhelms the viewer. This makes for some great popcorn viewing, whether at Halloween time or whenever you’re in the mood for a fun romp through monster-infested Nazi Germany.

REASONS TO SEE: Very much a roller coaster ride.
REASONS TO AVOID: The monsters are underwhelming.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of strong bloody violence throughout, a fair amount of profanity, some disturbing images and brief sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Rumors to the contrary, this film is not a part of the Cloverfield universe.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/3/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 81% positive reviews: Metacritic: 60/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Frankenstein’s Army
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: White Boy Rick

Book Club

In any decade, nobody parties like Candice Bergen.

(2018) Romantic Comedy (Paramount) Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Andy Garcia, Craig T. Nelson, Don Johnson, Ed Begley Jr., Richard Dreyfuss, Wallace Shawn, Alicia Silverstone, Katie Aselton, Mircea Monroe, Tommy Dewey, John Shartzer, Ravi Kapoor, Lili Bordán, Marisa Chen Moller, Amanda Martin. Directed by Bill Holderman

 

Four literate ladies have been friends for ages and have seen the curvature of their lives move towards the downward slope. One of the hallmarks of their friendship is their regular book club meetings in which the four women read a book and then discuss it the following week. The membership includes Vivian (Fonda) the somewhat oversexed owner of a boutique luxury hotel chain; Sharon (Bergen), a divorced judge who is notoriously career-driven; Diane (Keaton), a recent widow whose bossy daughters (Silverstone and Aselton interchangeably) want her to move to Scottsdale into a basement apartment even though she’s perfectly happy and capable of supporting herself in Los Angeles and finally restaurateur Carol (Steenburgen) whose husband (Nelson) has been notably absent in the bedroom of late – corresponding with his retirement. The reading of Fifty Shades of Grey inspires them to ramp up their love lives.

This is one of those films that perpetuates the myth that senior sexuality is at best cute and at worst a colossal punchline to a bad joke. Being that I’m climbing towards those rarefied age climes, perhaps I’m a little more sensitive to that sort of thing but with modern medicine allowing us to live longer than we used to, sex drives are correspondingly lasting well into our sixties and seventies, sometimes even into our eighties. While there may be those who still giggle at the thought of Granny and Grampy getting busy, it’s not realistic anymore to expect that they don’t.

At least Holderman, a veteran producer making his directing debut, doesn’t waste the talents of his cast. All of these pros deliver performances that range from strong to terrific. Bergen in particular brought to mind past glories as we’re reminded watching her that there has never been another Murphy Brown and there likely never will be.

The film suffers from having too many characters and not enough backstory; I would have been much happier with fewer but better developed characters in the mix. Still, I’m glad that these ladies are still drawing a paycheck and I would love to see much more of them, albeit in better films than this one. At least it has a killer soundtrack going for it.

REASONS TO SEE: The great cast also gets a great soundtrack.
REASONS TO AVOID: The myth that senior citizens having a sexual life is ridiculous is perpetuated here.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity including sexual references as well as other sex-related content.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Bergen, Fonda and Keaton all dated Warren Beatty at one time or another.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/12/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 54% positive reviews: Metacritic: 53/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Boynton Beach Club
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Patient 001