Chop Chop (2020)

Live can’t come to the door, she’s all tied up.

(2020) Thriller (Gravitas) Atala Arce, Jake Taylor, David Harper, Mikael Mattsson, Jeremy Jordan, James McCabe, Mike Thompson, Nicholas Correnti, Natasha Missick, Lizzie Chaplin (voice), Jazmine Jordan, Theresa Byron, Emily Katter, Paul Syre, Mandy Martino. Directed by Rony Patel

 

Most couples appreciate the quiet evening home alone. Someone cooks dinner, maybe a movie (and microwave popcorn) out on the couch, and then to the bedroom for *ahem* the main course. Sounds like a pretty good night to me.

And that’s what Chuck (Taylor) and Liv (Arce) have in mind. Then, there’s a knock on the door. There’s a guy there named Teddy (Harper), delivering the pizza they ordered. Except, they didn’t order any pizza – Chuck made dinner, so Liv tells Teddy thanks but no thanks, and shuts the door, and goes back into the living room.

And that’s where she finds Teddy waiting for her. “I have abilities,” he says, almost modestly. He also has a bag of bloody severed heads. Now, that’s as promising a beginning for a movie as it gets, thinks I. Sadly, Chop Chop doesn’t quite live up to that early promise.

When Teddy attacks Liv, Chuck comes to the rescue and ends up killing Teddy. However, instead of calling the cops – technically, they were defending themselves which isn’t illegal, even in California – they decide to dispose of the body themselves, calling in some favors from some shady underworld types. When a cop (Jeremy Jordan) stumbles on what’s going on, the couple have to shove him in the trunk as well. And all these underworld sorts are, inexplicably, trying to kill Liv and Chuck. I mean, WTF, right?

Along the way, they meet all manner of killers and fend them off as best they can before they end up being captured and set up for torture…but by that point, you’ll be wondering why you’ve stayed with the movie even this long. The story is told in such an incomprehensible manner that you can be forgiven if you think that the chapter heading for the first scene, Teddy, actually refers to Chuck – it isn’t until a little later that you find out that Teddy was the dead serial killer. The one with abilities…that are never explained, or referred to. And let’s face it, Liv took them pretty much in stride. Do lots of people that she knows have abilities?

Another flaw of the film is that nearly all the action takes place off-camera, or is so brief as to be blink-and-you-missed-it. I’ll give Patel the benefit of the doubt and assume that was for budgetary reasons, but it may well be inexperience, or an attempt to set his thriller apart from the glut of them on the market. I will give him that the concept is solid.

However, he changes tone regularly to an almost maddening degree. The movie starts out as kind of a noir thriller, moves into a romantic comedy at one point, and then shimmies into torture porn at the end before finishing up as…well, that I’ll keep to myself. The really maddening thing is that there is a ton of potential here, but the decisions made by the person sitting in the director’s chair as well as the person at the laptop banging away the script (the same person, by the way) just about guaranteed the movie wouldn’t succeed. I think the movie could have worked as a kind of extreme action version of a noir Nick and Nora Charles-type of thing. That’s a movie I’d love to see – John Wick meets The Thin Man. Hollywood, get on that one, wouldja?

REASONS TO SEE: The concept is an intriguing one.
REASONS TO AVOID: Clumsy storytelling vies with questionable directorial decisions for the most damaging aspect to the film’s success.
FAMILY VALUES: This is plenty of violence and profanity, bloody images, some sexual content, and brief drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the feature film debut for Patel, who was born in India but currently resides in Los Angeles.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/27/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 20% positive reviews, Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Funny Games
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Day 3 of Six Days of Darkness!

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Adult Life Skills

Jodie Whittaker feels at home in the shed that is as cluttered as the TARDIS.

(2016) Dramedy (Screen Media) Jodie Whittaker, Lorraine Ashbourne, Brett Goldstein, Rachel Deering, Eileen Davies, Alice Lowe, Edward Hogg, Ozzy Myers, David Anderson, Andrew Buckley, Christian Contreras, Alfie Wheeler. Directed by Rachel Tunnard

 

In 2018, British actress Jodie Whittaker made history becoming the first female Doctor in the beloved sci-fi series Doctor Who. Before that, she was largely unknown other than appearances on the British TV show Broadchurch and the independent sci-fi flick Attack the Block. She also did indie films like this one which opened in the UK two years ago.

Anna (Whittaker) is days away from her 30^th birthday and she’s stuck in a garden shed. Not literally; she’s been using it as a studio for her short films of her thumbs made up as astronauts on a doomed space trip in which they are crashing into the sun. Life must feel a lot like that to Anna; she used to make little videos with her twin brother Billy (Hogg) until he passed away unexpectedly. She essentially lives in the shed which sits on her mother’s property in West Yorkshire. Occasionally, she forgets to bring in clean clothes with her and so has to make a mad dash to the house half-naked to get some.

This has been her living arrangement for some 18 months since her brother died and her mum (Ashbourne) is sick of it. She desperately wants her remaining daughter to move on and start living her life again. Anna’s grandmother (Davies) is a little less frantic about it than her daughter who seems bound and determined to make matters worse but still she knows her granddaughter needs to make changes, although the grandmother thinks a good shagging is all Anna needs.

Brendan (Goldstein), a work colleague (Anna works at an outdoor activities center part time) would dearly love to supply Anna with just that but Anna has decided in her head that Brendan is gay. Brendan is not but he is a realtor who is enlisted by Anna’s mum to find a cheap flat for her daughter which turns out to be a disaster; most of the properties that Anna can afford are absolutely hideous.

When Anna’s best friend Fiona (Deering) returns from travelling, she also tries to kickstart Anna’s life with some success but things really start to change when she meets Clint (Myers), a young cowboy-obsessed boy who is just as quirky as Anna who is undergoing a similar trauma to the one that Anna suffered and the two begin to identify with each other but Anna is an expert at pushing people away. Will she ever find her way back to the land of the living?

The film not only serves as a treatise on grief but also as a paean to the deliberately weird. Nearly all the characters here are off-kilter in one way or another not unlike certain American indie films that star Greta Gerwig. Like those films, sometimes the quirkiness wears on the viewer and becomes almost forced but the good news is that it does only to a lesser extent. However, the thick Yorkshire accents used by the character can be incomprehensible at times; home viewers should definitely watch this with subtitles turned on. The dialogue though when you can understand it is actually quite clever; lines like one in which Fiona, exiting a pub, exclaims “It’s like The Wicker Man in there” can be quite brilliant.

A lot of Whovians are going to want to see this because of Whittaker and to be honest her performance is worth seeing whether you’re a fan of the series or not. It’s a very different role and some of her fans from the venerable BBC sci-fi show may not be able to accept her in a role like this. Anna is far from the self-assured and brilliant Doctor; she is a woman-child coping with an overwhelming tragedy and not always doing it well. In the hands of a lesser talent viewers might just shut down watching Anna make terrible choices and do things that are weird in an eye-rolling sense but Whittaker’s charm carries the day. Like other actors who have taken on the role of the Timelord, she has enough screen presence to continue with a career that transcends the TARDIS; I wouldn’t be surprised if she eventually gets lead roles in franchise films or maybe even some Oscar bait films. She’s truly an incredibly versatile talent.

Like a lot of British films, the soundtrack is absolutely brilliant. The supporting cast is solid and the production design gives the film a cluttered but lived in tone. At the end of the day my recommendation is going to depend on your ability to tolerate quirkiness; those with low tolerances should probably skip this one but those who don’t mind a little off-beat with their independent cinema may well find this delightful.

REASONS TO GO: The film is blessed with a terrific soundtrack. Whittaker is sublime in a very different role.
REASONS TO STAY: The film rapidly goes from quirky to annoying. The dialogue is occasionally incomprehensible.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of profanity as well as one sexual scene. There are also some fairly adult themes.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The feature film is based on a 2014 short that also starred Whittaker.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, iTunes, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/19/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 74% positive reviews: Metacritic: 49/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Rabbit Hole
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Burning

Despicable Me 3

Gru can’t believe that his twin brother has Fabio hair.

(2017) Animated Feature (Universal/Illumination) Starring the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel, Pierre Coffin, Steve Coogan, Julie Andrews, Jenny Slate, Andy Nyman, Adrian Ciscato, Brian T. Delaney, Katia Saponenko, Ken Daurio, Cory Walls, Carlos Alazraqui, Mindy Sterling, Laraine Newman, Teresa Ganzel. Directed by Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin and Eric Guillon

 

There’s this thing about the third film in a trilogy. Once in awhile, it turns out to be the best of the series i.e. the original Star Wars trilogy or Indiana Jones. Most of the time, however, the films in a trilogy tend to get progressively weaker. Which one in the Gru trilogy will the third film be?

Gru (Carell) is working with his new wife Lucy (Wiig) in the Anti-Villains League trying to take down Balthazar Bratt (Parker), a kid star from a forgotten 80s sitcom who is out to steal the world’s largest diamond. When that goes sideways, the two are fired by new no-nonsense AVL head Valerie Da Vinci (Slate).

When Gru’s mom tells her son about the twin brother Dru (Carell again) that he never knew he had, Lucy urges him to visit his twin along with the girls – Margo (Cosgrove), the level-headed one; Edith (Gaier) the playful one and Agnes (Scharrel), the shrill unicorn-obsessed one – to visit. It turns out that Dru has taken up the family business and plans one last big score with his brother. It’s back to being despicable once again – or is that deplorable?

The first movie felt fresh and fun, the sequel less so and this one feels tired and uninspired. Dru isn’t much of an addition to the ever-expanding family and the girls get more obnoxious and unendurable with each passing film. Worse yet, Bratt is an unremarkable villain who seems to be all gimmick and no interesting traits. The movie relies way too much on gadgets, some of which are admittedly fun but one gets into gadget overload – did the directors learn nothing from the mid-80s Bond films?

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the Minions up to now. That’s because they have a much-reduced presence in this film compared to the first two and I think that ends up hurting the movie overall. I can understand that the producers might have been concerned about an oversaturation of Minions, considering that they had their own movie a couple of years ago (and another one scheduled for 2020) but they have been the best part of the Despicable Me franchise from the beginning. Trying to rely more on Gru and the colorless Dru was a tactical error.

There’s enough here to keep the kids entertained and clearly they were – the movie was the only summer release to gross more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. However, parents who decide to rent or buy this one might want to find a reason to leave the room when the kids are watching.

REASONS TO GO: There are some great “mom” moments. Some of the gadgets are clever.
REASONS TO STAY: The franchise feels like it’s running out of steam. The film could have used more Minions and less Dru.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a little bit of cartoon action and some rude humor (if your kid goes ape for fart jokes, you might want to think twice about letting them see this).
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Elsie Fisher who voiced Agnes in the first two films was replaced by Scharrel because Fisher had outgrown the role.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/22/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 60% positive reviews. Metacritic: 49/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Minions
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: The Man Who Invented Christmas