New Releases for the Week of Aptil 12, 2019

HELLBOY

(Summit) David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Penelope Mitchell, Sophie Okonedo, Thomas Haden Church. Directed by Neil Marshall

Hellboy, the cigar-chomping half-demon entity and operative for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, must go up against Nimue, a resurrected sorceress with a grudge. She seeks to avenge a past betrayal; he seeks to stop her without bringing about the end of days.

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

After

(Aviron) Josephine Langford, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Selma Blair, Jennifer Beals. Based on the Anna Todd bestseller, After follows the dutiful, lawyer and well-behaved Tessa as she enters her first semester of college. Unusual for her age in that she has a clear idea of who she is and what her goals are in life, she meets a brooding, handsome young rebel who throws her carefully planned life and future into absolute chaos.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content and college partying)

Little

(Universal) Regina Hall, Issa Rae, Marsai Martin, Tone Bell. A young woman feels the stresses of adult life getting to her to the point she can’t stand it anymore. She longs to relive her carefree childhood days and this being the movies, it comes to pass. Think of this as the anti-Big.

See the trailer, video featurettes and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG=13 (for some suggestive content)

Master Z: Ip Man Legacy

(Well Go USA) Jin Zhang, Dave Bautista, Michelle Yeoh, Tony Jaa. After suffering defeat at the hands of Ip Man in a martial arts battle, Cheung Tin Chi turns his back on fighting to raise his young son and run a small store. However, he’s reluctantly drawn back when the hotheaded brother of a gang leader has a run-in with him.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Martial Arts
Now Playing: Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: NR

Mia and the White Lion

(Ledafilms) Daniah de Villiers, Mėlanie Laurent, Langley Kirkwood, Ryan McLennan. 10-year-old Mia’s life is turned upside down when her family decides to move from London to manage a lion farm in South Africa. Mia is heartbroken to leave everything she knows but develops a close friendship with a rare white lion cub. As the cub grows to full maturity, Mia uncovers a family secret. Distraught, she decides to run away with her white lion on a desperate journey to find somewhere her friend can live in peace and freedom.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Family
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, Cobb Plaza Cinema, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Waterford Lakes, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: PG (for thematic elements, peril and some language)

Missing Link

(Annapurna/United Artists) Starring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zach Galifianakis, Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson. The latest from the inventive animation house Laika, an anthropological wonder who lives in the Pacific Northwest longs to find others of his kind in the fabled valley of Shangri-La and recruits a famous adventurer to take him there.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a video featurette and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for action/peril and some mild rude humor)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Acres & Acres
American Warfighter
Chitralahari
Diane
Los Domirriqueños 2
Madhura Raja
Mary Magdalene
Noah: Sight and Sound

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Chitralahari
Diane
Ferrante Fever
Los Domirriqueños 2
Madhura Raja
Manje Bistre 2
Mary Magdalene
Noah: Sight and Sound
Penguin Highway
Sherdil
The Sower

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

A Dark Place
Chitralahari
Diane
Gangs of Madras
Kavacha
Los Domirriqueños 2
Madhura Raja
Noah: Sight and Sound

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Chitralahari
Madhura Raja
Noah: Sight and Sound
Transit

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Hellboy
Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Florida Film Festival, Maitland/Winter Park FL
Sarasota Film Festival, Sarasota FL

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Mom and Dad

Nicolas Cage just wants to have a chat.

(2017) Horror Comedy (Momentum) Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair, Anne Winters, Zackary Arthur, Robert Cunningham, Olivia Crocicchia, Lance Henriksen, Marilyn Dodds Frank, Samantha Lemole, Joseph D. Reitman, Rachel Melvin, Bobby Richards, Sharon Gee, Edwin Lee Gibson, Brionne Davis, Mehmet Oz, Grant Morrison, Bokeem Woodbine, Adin Alexa Steckler, Lorena Diaz. Directed by Brian Taylor

 

Most parents, at one time or another, want to kill their children. Not literally of course; it’s just that sometimes the frustrations of parenting (particularly with teens) can give rise to a fantasy of genuine mayhem against our offspring. It isn’t something parents like to admit but it is perfectly normal for, once in awhile, for parents to absolutely hate their offspring.

From all outward appearances, the Ryan family seems to be perfectly harmonious. A poster family for suburban bliss, the family is anything but behind closed doors. Father Brent (Cage) is stressed at work and is mystified as to how to handle his two children; mother Kendall (Blair) feels underappreciated and her relationship with daughter Carly (Winters) has completely disintegrated. Carly steals money from her parents, lies to them consistently and is basically the kind of teen that whines consistently about her parents but acts like an absolute bitch to them at every turn. Finally youngest Josh (Arthur) acts out and at 10 seems to have the issues of someone much older. Oh joy, right?

Then something weird happens. All over town, parents get a sudden irresistible urge to kill their own children. Not their grandchildren, not their nieces and nephews, not the neighbor’s kids, just their own offspring. And they aren’t out to off them in humane ways; the more bloodshed and violence, the better.

Carly, knowing her young brother is in mortal danger, rushes home to keep him safe in a rare and unexpected case of actual feelings for someone other than herself, but both parents are home and the two kids have to barricade themselves in various rooms in order to survive. That’s when Brent’s parents (Henriksen, Frank) arrive for a previously planned dinner…

Nobody plays manic like Nicolas Cage plays manic. As such this is pretty much the perfect role for him; he goes from playing father of the month (definitely not of the year) to a crazed homicidal maniac often in mere seconds. Some folks give Cage a whole lot of grief about his career choices but this shouldn’t be an occasion for that. He’s clearly having fun onscreen – he has stated in interviews that this was the most fun he’s had making a movie in more than a decade – and that enjoyment shows through. This isn’t just the most fun he’s had in ten years but maybe his best performance in that time, although there are a couple that give him a run for his money such as his 2013 drama Joe.

Most of the rest of the cast can’t stand up to Hurricane Cage although Blair gives a magnificent effort. Winters plays Carly a bit too well – she’s such a nightmare at the start of the movie that one actively roots for some kind of strange virus that will compel her parents to kill her horribly…oh, good. That makes it harder to buy her abrupt personality change once the carnage begins.

However, the real star here is Taylor, who along with sometime partner Mark Neveldine delivered the Crank films. Like those action comedies, the pacing is breakneck – at least once the mayhem starts – and the mayhem is cleverly done. Some might find it a little bit gruesome and more than a few will be completely affronted by the subject matter.

If you take it in the spirit in which it’s meant, Mom and Dad is an exceptionally entertaining film despite its blackest of black humor. There are some issues with the writing – a lot of the scenes seem disconnected from one another rather than flowing harmoniously as a story. Taylor also uses a fade to black with such regularity that it becomes completely annoying. However, these are mainly minor little faults  in what is a thoroughly enjoyable parental fantasy that may allow parents having a difficult time with their progeny to blow off some much-needed steam.

REASONS TO GO: Cage is at his twitchy best. The gore and violence have a great sense of black comedy. There’s no rhyme or reason to this but there doesn’t need to be. The film starts a bit slowly but once it gets going the pacing is non-stop.
REASONS TO STAY: Carly is such a nightmare teen you hope she gets horribly murdered. The scenes seem to be disconnected from each other.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a ton of violence, some of it extreme; there’s also plenty of profanity, some sexuality and drug content involving teens.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was filmed largely in Louisville, Kentucky.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/718: Rotten Tomatoes: 74% positive reviews. Metacritic: 58/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Crazies
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Get Me Roger Stone

The Family Tree

It’s always the quiet ones…

(2011) Dramedy (EntertainmentOne) Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis, Chi McBride, Max Thieriot, Britt Robertson, Selma Blair, Keith Carradine, Shad “Bow Wow” Moss, Gabrielle Anwar, Rachel Leigh Cook, Jane Seymour, Christina Hendricks, John Patrick Amedori, Evan Ross, Madeline Zima, Evan Handler, Pamela Shaw, Hannah Hodson, Ally Maki. Directed by Vivi Friedman

When you look at your neighbors, what do you see? Upstanding church-going citizens? Kinky fetishists? Hard-charging workaholics? Bratty snot-nosed teens? Or all of the above?

In the world of Serenity, Ohio, the last answer would be appropriate. Bunnie Burnett (Davis) is an offensive shrew who rules her family through her sharp tongue and sadistic sensibilities. Her husband Jack (Mulroney) seems meek and inoffensive on the outside but years of being browbeaten has worn him down, turning him into a quaking philanderer after years of being refused sex by his wife. She would no doubt emasculate him if she knew but the truth is she’s far too busy engaging in role-playing games with their neighbor Simon Krebs (McBride) to do much investigating.

Her children aren’t much better. 17-year-old daughter Kelly (Robertson) is promiscuous and foul-tempered – she is well along the road of becoming her own mother although if you pointed it out to her you’d probably get kicked in a very sensitive portion of your anatomy. Kelly’s twin brother Eric (Thieriot) has fallen under the sway of pot-smoking gun-toting preacher Reverend Diggs (Carradine) who talks tough on the outside but on the inside…well he’s just an idiot.

During a particularly rough game of home invasion/rape fantasy with Simon, Bunnie is accidentally dealt a particularly severe whack on the head (Simon flees, leaving Bunnie to be discovered by her family) which leaves her with an unusual amnesia in which all her memories after the first year of her marriage have disappeared. Once again, Bunnie is the woman that Jack fell in love with. It’s an opportunity for the whole family to start fresh. The trouble is, the other lunatics in Serenity may not necessarily let them.

This is supposed to be a black comedy. Now, I understand that in such enterprises that a certain amount of cynicism should be expected and even appreciated. HOWEVER, the fact that every…single…character has some sort of dark side or sexual secret gets old really fast. You find yourself having nobody to really hang your hat on – everybody here is basically a douche, although some find at least a measure of redemption by the closing credits. For the most part even Jack who’s perhaps the closest thing to a truly nice character still cheats on his wife – deservedly or not. Not that I’m a prude nor do I need my lead characters to be too good to be true (in fact, some comedies go too far the other way). I just need my characters to act like PEOPLE and not CHARACTERS. How many characters do you run into every day when you walk out the door of your house (and I’m not talking about the ones at the multiplex) – I’m betting none. I can’t find too funny a comedy in which I identify with nobody.

Which is a shame because there are a lot of really talented actors involved as you can read from the cast list. Mulroney, who some might remember from My Best Friend’s Wedding has some decent screen presence and Davis is one of those actresses who has tons of talent but doesn’t get the roles these days that she is worthy of. Most of the rest of the cast – particularly Blair, Seymour, McBride, Carradine and Hendricks are either wasted in scarcely developed roles or appear in little more than a glorified cameo.

I like the concept here of a dysfunctional family given an unexpected second chance to be a family. I just wish they’d tried for a simpler approach and eliminated a lot of the extraneous characters who are just that – characters – that detract from the film overall and turn it from the satirical comedy it could have been into a wooden, leaden blunt instrument without the finesse to really capture my attention – or my laughter.

WHY RENT THIS: A somewhat satirical look at family and community dynamics. Nice opportunity to play “spot the character actor.”

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Muddled and scattered. A little bit too mean-spirited for my taste.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s sex, violence, bad language (a whole lot of it) and some drug use.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film received its world premiere at the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There are some on-set home movies.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $6,035 on an unreported production budget; no way in Hell this made money.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Family Time

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Monsters University

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

How about a little eye candy little girl?

(2008) Action (Universal) Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Luke Goss, Seth McFarlane, Anna Wilson, Brian Steele, Roy Dotrice, John Hurt, Jeffrey Tambor, Jimmy Kimmel, James Dodd, Andrew Hefler, Ivan Kamaras, Mike Kelly.  Directed by Guillermo del Toro

We’ve seen in movies like An Inconvenient Truth and Wall-E cautionary tales of what happens if we continue to abuse our environment. The end of mankind on Earth may come in an unending pile of garbage in the latter, or in the inability of our planet to sustain us in the former. Of course, what nobody realizes is that our ecological irresponsibility is pissing off the faeries.

That’s right, the races of myth and legend – the trolls, faeries and so on – have been living underground as the result of a treaty imposed on them by humankind  for eons and they are heartbroken at what we’ve done to their planet. One of them – Prince Nuada (Goss) is a little bit more than heartbroken. He’s cheesed off and has decided to resurrect an indestructible Golden Army that will eradicate humans from the Earth if he’s successful.

Of course Hellboy (Perlman) and his cohorts Abe Sapien (Jones), a half-fish half-man telepath, Liz (Blair), a pyromancer, and Johann Krauss (Dodd, voiced by McFarlane) who is more or less a ghost inhabiting a mechanical body, object to this in the strongest possible terms. They do so with the assistance of Princess Nuala (Wilson), Nuada’s twin sister whom Abe has fallen for like a salmon in spawning season.

The group will battle lethal tooth fairies, gigantic squid-like demons, a very dangerous Troll Market and finally the Golden Army itself to save mankind from the mad Prince. There are times that Hellboy has to wonder if we’re really worth saving.

Del Toro, who did this movie immediately after the Oscar nominated Pan’s Labyrinth, is one of the most visually striking directors on Planet Earth. He has an imagination and a vision that is extraordinary and singular; the result is that Hellboy II: The Golden Army is one of the most visually intriguing movies of the past five years. Not only is Mike Mignola’s comic book brought to life, it’s actually fleshed out into a world even Mignola couldn’t adequately create. The movie has an epic quality to it as a result.

Perlman has made Hellboy a relatable character, one who has been forced into isolation for his demonic background and whose many idiosyncrasies rather than make him a caricature serve to make him more human than his visage would allow. While he is less a center of focus than he was in the first film, he is nonetheless a major reason why this movie works so well.

The supporting cast fares pretty well. Tambor, as the bureaucrat who runs Hellboy’s BPRD, is solid and witty, while there is a melancholy element in Goss’s villain performance which makes him stand out among a galaxy of comic book villain who really are more or less all the same. Jones as the lovelorn Sapien gets to voice a character he only played physically in the first movie (David Hyde Pierce gave the original Abe Sapien voice) and does it well. Blair’s character is a little less interesting here than in the first one but she fills it out nicely.

The story here is simple enough on the surface, but there are a lot of complications and it gets a little muddled, particularly near the end. That’s all right; every frame of this movie is an absolute gem, something that you’re going to ooh and ahh at for generations to come. The movie pulled disappointing numbers, to my mind mainly because it was exiled to an August release date in a year where blockbusters limited the landscape and wound up getting trumped by the better-promoted Journey to the Center of the Earth. It’s a shame audiences didn’t get to discover it on the big screen – it was as amazing a theatrical experience as I had that year, and to my way of thinking the kind of movie that should be seen in a movie theater and not streamed to a laptop. Some movies just need to overwhelm you, and this one is definitely one of those.

WHY RENT THIS: Serious eye candy. Del Toro is one of the most visually imaginative directors working today.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The story is a bit muddled.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a little bit of foul language but mostly there’s a lot of violence and fantasy/sci-fi action.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Thomas Kretschmann was originally cast to voice Johann Kraus but when del Toro found his work dissatisfactory he brought in “Family Guy” creator Seth McFarlane to do the voice making this McFarlane’s feature motion picture debut.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: The 3-Disc DVD includes a featurette on the Troll Market and one of the most informative and detailed making-of documentaries ever. An animated comic serves as an epilogue on the movie that fills in some blanks you didn’t even know were there. The Blu-Ray features a BD-Live chat with del Toro that is quite enlightening on projects he was working on (and is no longer) and the future of the Hellboy franchise. There’s also an interactive feature that allows you to pull still pictures from the movie and create a comic book, complete with word balloons which is a very little fun feature to play with.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $160.4M on an $85M production budget; the movie lost a little money.

FINAL RATING: 8.5/10

TOMORROW: City Island

The Fog (2005)

Driving Miss Daisy, this ain't!

(2005) Supernatural Horror (Columbia) Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Selma Blair, DeRay Davis, Rade Serbedzjia, Kenneth Welsh, Adrian Hough, Sara Botsford, Matthew Currie Holmes. Directed by Rupert Wainwright

One of the most underrated of John Carpenter’s movies was his follow-up to Halloween, 1980’s The Fog. Although there were cheesy elements to it (heck, that wasn’t uncommon for any horror film of the era), it still was a genuine creepfest and still gives me the chills whenever I watch it even now, a quarter of a century later.

When they announced the remake of it, I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic. I’ve found most of the horror movie remakes of classic ’70s and ’80s scare flicks to be uneven at best – few have really done little more than to update the stories for a more modern audience. I didn’t hold out hope for much better from this.

Antonio Island is celebrating the centennial of their founding, but there is a terrible secret harbored by the remote Northern California seaport and it is born on the fog. Nick Castle (Welling), a charter fishing boat operator, has to put up with a ne’er do well first mate named Spooner (Davis) and a boat that has seen better days. Still, they manage to make ends meet, but while on a charter their anchor dredges something up from the bottom – artifacts of a bygone age that have been at rest for a hundred years.

Back on shore, Nick is surprised to encounter an old flame, Elizabeth Williams (Grace) walking to town from the pier. She had left suddenly five years ago without really resolving things between them, and he had been hurt by it. He was just now beginning to get involved with the pretty single mom DJ Stevie Wayne (Blair) but now he is torn.

In the meantime, Spooner has taken out Nick’s boat to party with a couple of bikini clad girls and Nick’s cousin Sean (Holmes). But a heavy fogbank is headed their way unbeknownst to them, and moving against the wind. Before you can say “bad things are going to happen,” bad things happen.

Spooner survives the mayhem, but is considered primo suspect number one for the murder of the other three. His story is completely whacko about ghost ships and fog banks, so his friend Nick goes out to find out what’s going on. He and Elizabeth discover a startling truth – that the town was founded on blood money stolen from a colony of lepers who were then burned alive on the ship that they thought was going to take them to a new home. That kind of thing can piss a ghost off.

The effects are much more sophisticated than in the original fog, but then again they don’t use nearly as many effects as you would think they might, director Wainwright wisely allowing the natural setting of the fog-shrouded town to create an atmosphere of creepiness that carries the film. The problem is that the characters are a bit faceless. Welling is a good-looking lead, but he doesn’t really carry the film like you think he might. He does better in his role as Clark Kent in “Smallville,” but here he seems a little bit passionless.

Grace and Blair are both lovely to look at, but Grace is given not a lot of character by the script; she exists mainly to move the plot along. Blair has a bit more to chew on as a character, and takes advantage of it. I’ve always wondered why we don’t see more of her in the movies – she was certainly marvelous in Hellboy.

There are a lot of plot holes in the script – for example, they clearly state that they are celebrating the hundred year anniversary of the town’s founding, and they clearly link the founding of the town to the nefarious acts with the lepers, but they also clearly state that those events took place in 1871 and it is even more clear that the movie is set in contemporary times, not in 1971 which would be accurate. Whoops.

Still, despite all that, I liked the movie, I liked the atmosphere that was created, I liked Blair and I really liked the climax of the movie. It’s certainly far from perfect, but it’s a nice evening’s entertainment, particularly if it’s a dark and stormy evening. 

WHY RENT THIS: Atmospheric to the max. Blair is a particularly good performer and easy on the eyes, as is Grace.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Weilling is unaccountably bland. Cheese factor a little high for modern horror fans.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s plenty of violence, a little sensuality and enough bad language to be…bad.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Debra Hill, the co-writer of the original movie and given a producer’s credit here, died shortly before filming began.

NOTABLE DVD FEATURES: There is a nice feature on the special effects which show how good-looking effects can be accomplished on a tight budget.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $46.2M on an $18M production budget; the movie made money.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Country Strong