A couple more movies until next time

As we all know, among the non-essential businesses shut down by the coronavirus pandemic are entertainment venues including movie theaters.  Right before the curtains came down I managed to squeeze in two movies since my last posts, so I'll make it short until we meet again.  Stay safe, everyone, and watch lots of movies at home.

 

Universal Bloodshot

 

Vin Diesel's latest movie not part of the 'Fast & Furious' franchise is 'Bloodshot,' based on a rather obscure comic book character from Valiant Comics about a US Marine KIA'ed on a mission only to be brought back involuntarily, zombie-style, as a super-assassin to do the dirty work for Uncle Sam.  50 percent 'Universal Soldier' and 25 percent equal parts 'Groundhog Day' and 'A Long Kiss Goodnight,' 'Bloodshot' is a decent and entertaining enough sci-fi action thriller even if it's predictable and ultimately forgettable.

 

Grade: B

 

Blue Hunting Red

 

Some of you may remember Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse as two of the key producers/writers of the  popular sci-fi mystery suspense TV series 'Lost' started by J.J. Abrams.  Lindelof and Cuse's son Nick are the brains behind 'The Hunt,' a darkly humorous satire about a group of unwitting and hapless southern conservatives kidnapped and drugged by rich and self-righteous Silicon Valley liberals to be hunted and killed as game.  Movies about people hunting other people are nothing new, of course, but 'The Hunt' is surprisingly fun, up-ending our expectations (especially which people die first) and giving us a heroine in Crystal (Betty Gilpin) nearly as compelling and badass as "The Bride" played by Uma Thurman in 'Kill Bill' volumes 1 and 2.

 

Grade: B+
 

Elf Quest

Pixar’s latest original (as in non-sequel) animated feature is ‘Onward,’ the whimsical and wonderful tale of two unlikely blue-skinned Elf siblings who embark upon a magical quest to bring back their father in a contemporary fantasy world that would please the young and old alike.  Reaching #1 at the box office and making $48 million domestic ($76 million worldwide) in its opening weekend is no mean feat considering that moviegoers have been staying away from theatres thanks to the coronavirus.

 

In the make-believe world of New Mushroomton, Elf brothers Ian and Barley Lightfoot (the former voiced by Spiderman Tom Holland, the latter by Star-Lord Chris Pratt) defies our classical Tolkien-esque concept of an elf because Ian is skinny and has a decidedly large and un-Elfish “Karl Malden” nose while Barley is portly (so is their mom voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and oafish rather than lithe and graceful.   When the socially awkward Ian got a magical wizard’s staff from his mother on his sixteenth birthday and accidentally conjured up half the father he never met, who died before he was born, he and his D&D-playing older brother decided to jump into the latter’s unicorn-muraled van and go on a road-trip to “get the other half.”  While on their quest, they are pursued by their mother Laurel with the help of a manticore (Octavia Spencer) and her (their mother’s) new boyfriend, centaur Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez).

 

Light-hearted, filled with warmth and wildly imaginative, ‘Onward’ is brimming with geek-chic and 1980’s-style nostalgia.  It’s also ultimately about brotherly love and family, told through likeable and relatable animated characters inhabiting a colorful and wondrously immersive CG-rendered fantasy world.  Like the Harry Potter movies, I find this film hard to resist.

 

Grade: A

 

Disposable Labor

Perhaps it is only inevitable (and some might even say appropriate) that, in our current climate of irreconcilable contentiousness on the deeply divided issue of immigration, a movie like ‘Beneath Us’ would emerge as political statement thinly disguised as entertainment.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  In fact, you could say it’s even “trendy” nowadays considering the critical and commercial success of recent South Korean Oscar winner ‘Parasite,’ which brought the contrast of the “Haves” and “Have Nots” into sharp relief.

 

The premise of ‘Beneath Us’ is brutally simple and should be all-too-familiar to those of us who have ever made hardware runs at a Home Depot.  Outside of these hardware stores are gaggles of Latino “Day Laborers,” who would offer to do the heavy-lifting for a pittance compared to what normal by-the-book handymen would charge.  Supposedly entire homes have been built on the backs of these (oftentimes) illegal immigrants.  ‘Beneath Us’ is the nightmarish (as in horror movie) tale of how one such group of immigrants including two brothers were exploited by an evil white house-flipping couple (played by Lynn Collins and James Tupper) and, after their services were rendered, disposed of as nothing more than trash.

 

‘Beneath Us’ could be classified as “torture porn/revenge thriller,” the former due to the sadism of the white couple and the latter because they ultimately got their expected comeuppance.  It’s a run-of-the-mill thriller that offered little new outside of its trappings and not nearly as riveting as the similarly themed 2015 Jonas Cuaron survival thriller, ‘Desierto.’ Nonetheless, it is a serviceable horror thriller in our times.

 

Grade: B-
 

The Hollow Man

Like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, H.G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man” is a vintage classic Hollywood monster that has spawned numerous film adaptations, whether they’re more-or-less straight remakes or new twists on the concept.  Since the original B&W 1933 film featuring the bandage-and-dark glasses wearing character, Hollywood has been continuously fascinated with “the man who can’t be seen” over the years, mostly as a perfect killer who can get away with murder.

 

Genre veteran Leigh Whannell’s latest iteration of ‘The Invisible Man’ is seemingly no different, at least on the surface.  However, he was savvy enough to center his story not on the invisible man himself but on Cecilia (“Handmaid” Elizabeth Moss), his terrorized and abused wife who thought she had escaped him for good after he reportedly committed suicide.  Except he faked his own death (no spoiler here since it was suggested in the movie’s trailer) and used his newfound freedom and invisibility to gaslight and terrorize her further in a sadistic attempt to drive her cuckoo for cocoa puffs and frame her for murder.

 

Amazingly enough, while the new ‘The Invisible Man’ is derivative and offered little in the way of plot surprises and twists, it possesses enough freshness, scares and suspense for an enjoyable and entertaining viewing experience.  Much of this had to do with the underrated but talented Moss who, as the film progressed, exuded a feminine vulnerability, fearful desperation, wild-eyed manic intensity and “I’ve got nothing left to lose” determination in her role as the film’s compelling protagonist.

 

Grade: A 

 

Lodge Fever

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s indie psychological chiller, ‘The Lodge,’ is one of those slow-burning, or rather I should say slow-freezing character-driven thrillers that makes great water cooler conversation the morning after.  Low budget indie films like this usually don’t get to see the light of day beyond direct-to-DVD and streaming services but I’m glad that, after a year since it debuted at Sundance in 2019, I finally got a chance to see it at my local 20-screen megaplex.

 

‘The Lodge’ is the tale of two siblings, a boy and a girl who, like so many other American children, suffered through the tragedy of parental divorce.  To compound this tragedy, the mother (played by “Clueless” Alicia Silverstone – where have she been?) didn’t handle it well (understatement of the century) and ate a bullet, which understandably if not justifiably caused the children to direct their resentment towards the perceived cause, the “other woman,” in this case a cult survivor named Grace played by Riley Keough, aka the grand-daughter of Elvis.  So when the kids were forced to spend a Xmas holiday at a cozy but remote lodge on the frozen tundra of Massachusetts to “get to know their new mom” better and the dad was unexpectedly called away by work, just what possibly could go wrong?

 

Riveting, engrossing and deeply suspenseful, ‘The Lodge’ relies on atmosphere and a creeping sense of unease to build towards its inevitable climax.  A throwback and homage to Dario Argento and the Italian "Giallo" genre of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, ‘The Lodge’ will no doubt “lodge” (pun intended) itself uncomfortably in the dark recesses of your mind and under your skin long after the final credits have rolled.

 

Grade: A

 

Short Takes

A dramedy and a couple more horror flicks.  Yawn.

 

The Boy is Back

Despite largely negative reviews from the critics and lukewarm feedback from moviegoers, 2016’s boy-playing-with-doll horror flick ‘The Boy’ recouped its meager $10 million budget nearly seven-fold and earned a sequel (big surprise).  ‘Brahms: The Boy II’ picks up the story as an unwitting new family looking for some peace and quiet in the countryside after a traumatic event stumbled upon the creepy pale vintage porcelain doll, since repaired after it was “destroyed” in the original.  Alas, ‘Brahms’ is but the latest low-rent horror flick that failed to scare or interest us during these dog days of February.

Grade: D

 

Dark Fantasy Island 

While I probably watched more episodes of this soapy '80's TV show starring Ricardo Montalbán and (the plane, the plane!) Hervé Villechaize than I care to admit, Blumhouse Production’s horror spin on ‘Fantasy Island’ is an ill-conceived bloody mess of a movie.  The story follows five mostly good-looking young fantasy-seekers (Maggie Q being the oldest among them) as they live out their fantasies to the inevitable end, for better or worse, as Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña, who’s no Ricardo Montalbán) warns them upon their arrival.  All is well and good until things go horribly awry and the fantasies devolve into nightmares, culminating with a head-scratching twist at the end involving Lucy Hale's character that makes us want to pull our hair out and scream in helpless frustration.

 
Grade: D

Going ‘Downhill’

Love (or rather, marriage) is on the rocks (going downhill) in this quirky dramedy starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a middle-aged American couple on a ski trip in the Alps with their two kids, only to find their relationship sorely tested by an act of supreme cowardice on the part of Ferrell.  A remake of the 2014 Swedish film ‘Force Majeure’ (which I haven’t seen), ‘Downhill’ is a darkly funny yet somewhat uncomfortable viewing experience as we witness the gradual unraveling of a happy marriage amidst increasing doubt and awkwardness between Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus (and Ferrell and his two kids), casting a dark cloud on the family’s  future.  I’m more generous here than most critics probably because, not having seen the Swedish original, I have no frame of reference for comparison.

Grade: B

A Fantabulous Valentine Movie

Margot Robbie’s crazy yet charismatic scene-stealing turn as psychologist-turned-Joker’s sidekick Harley Quinn was just about the only thing that elevated and made 2016’s 'Suicide Squad' even remotely watchable, so when a 'Suicide Squad' sequel-spinoff centering on its best character was announced I was intrigued to say the least.  The spinoff, colorfully titled ‘Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn’ (since rebranded simply as 'Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey') is nothing less than the playful anthem to kick-ass girl power we’ve all been waiting for.

‘Harley Quinn,' directed by first-time helmer Cathy Yan, follows our loveably kooky villain after she broke up with (okay, got unceremoniously dumped by) the Joker. Without the protection of the crown prince of madness, she’s now fair game for anyone who has grievances with her, which she lists extensively each time when faced with one of them, including the fact that she “voted for Bernie.”  Chief among them is Gotham crime lord Roman Sionis aka “Black Mask” (Ewan McGregor) and his sadistic right-hand man Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), who’s after a diamond containing the bank accounts of the Bertinelli crime family (whom Sionis killed in a power grab) Harley gotten possession of from a wayward teen pick-pocket.  In order to survive, our pony-tailed protagonist must call on more than her wits, charm and nimble acrobatics alone, enlisting the aid of the "Birds of Prey," an ad-hoc group of female kick-assery including Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee-Smolett Bell) and disgraced GCPD detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez, I kid you not).

'Harley Quinn' is sassy and fun, largely thanks to yet another scene-stealing performance from the talented Aussie actress.  Robbie’s Harley Quinn is an eminently likeable caricature, a looney cartoonish odd-ball blend of Betty Boop, Jessica Rabbit and Marilyn Monroe.  Even in mortal peril, her Harley exudes playful innocence and a girl-just-wanna-have-fun insouciance that’s nigh irresistible.  Too bad the movie underperformed at the box office, because it really is both fantastic and fabulous.  Get it?

Grade: A

"Will you be my valentine?"

Out of Rhythm

Payback movies with strong female leads (e.g. ‘Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2,’ ‘Peppermint,’ the excellent French movie ‘Revenge’ starring Matilda Lutz) are among my favorite subgenres in cinema, so when I saw the trailer of ‘The Rhythm Section,’ Mrs. Reynolds’ (I mean Blake Lively’s) latest starring vehicle as a young woman who discovered from an investigative journalist that her family’s plane crash accident was not actually an accident and goes on a one-woman mission to make the shadowy perpetrators behind it pay the ultimate price, it unsurprisingly had me at “hello.”

 

Based on a novel by Mark Burnell (who also wrote the screenplay for this adaptation), ‘The Rhythm Section’ offers a different kind of revenge thriller for those of us familiar with ‘La Femme Nikita,’ ‘Atomic Blonde’ and ‘Salt.’  Unlike those other films, Lively’s anti-heroine isn’t a trained assassin skilled in the fine art of death dealing but a physical and emotional wreck, a normal “girl next door” devastated by personal loss and grief even three years after losing her loving parents and brother – we find out why in the movie and I’ll leave it at that.  It is also interesting to note that this movie’s produced by Barbara Brocolli’s EON Productions, well known for all the action-packed death defying 007 movies we love.

 

The calling card of ‘The Rhythm Section’ is gritty realism rather than fast-paced action, and it lives or dies (looks like the latter) by this artistic choice at the box office.  Though it’s been compared to the Jason Bourne movies, I find it more akin to slow-burners like ‘Red Sparrow’ and Steven Soderbergh’s underrated ‘Haywire.’  While ‘The Rhythm Section’ isn't a great movie, it’s not as bad as its 28 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes would suggest either.

 

Grade: B-

 

Up next….. something kooky and fantabulous.

 

Wicked Witch of the Woods

The popular Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Hansel & Gretel” has seen numerous cinematic treatments in various interpretations, from more-or-less faithful adaptations to portraying the pair of siblings as badass witch hunters.  So what more can Hollywood do to put a fresh spin on such a well-worn tale?   Relative unknown actor-turned-writer and director “Wizard of” Oz Perkins attempts to give us a version of H&G we’ve never seen before in ‘Gretel & Hansel,’ only his third directorial feature.

 

G&H, like most of its predecessors, is a more-or-less faithful adaptation of the timeless Grimm classic tale.  What’s different about it – other than putting Gretel before Hansel in the title appropriately enough – is how he chooses to tell a story we’ve heard so many times before.  Rather than regaling a familiar tale with new characters and only sprinkling in cosmetic changes, Oz placed the emphasis on atmosphere, mood and lingering cinematography to tell the story of how poor Gretel and Hansel (Sophia Lillis and Sam Leakey), cast out of the house by their uncaring mother to fend for themselves, venture into the woods and discover the warm and welcoming hearth of the seemingly kind and charitable Holda (Alice Krige), only to “stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.” 

 

Although G&H conveyed a bold new vision to the tale, many will undoubtedly find its slow-burning pace and tendency to dwell on quiet and picturesque still scenes of nature quite boring and even sleep-inducing.  In fact, this film reminds me of Robert Eggers’ 2015 movie ‘The VVitch,’ albeit not quite as daring or creepy. While I applaud Oz’s indie arthouse approach to this familiar tale, it’s just a bit too somnolent for my tastes.

 

Grade: C+ 

 

Quick Takes

The Weed King of London

After a lackluster stint helming mainstream commercial fare (‘Sherlock Holmes,’ ‘King Arthur,’ ‘Aladdin’), Brit director/producer/screenwriter (and Madonna’s ex) Guy Ritchie returns to his gangster comedy roots in ‘The Gentlemen.’  And why not?  It is what he does best after all.  ‘The Gentlemen’ is clever, snappy and packed with the black humor we’ve come to miss from such earlier works as ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,’ ‘Snatch’ and 'RocknRolla.'  You can just tell that its ensemble cast of schemers and one-uppers including Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant and Henry Golding was having so much bullet-ridden fun.

Grade: A- 

The Turning of the Shrew

I’m a sucker for horror movies, especially “gothic” horror set in dark and foreboding creaky old mansions.  Floria Sigismondi’s (‘The Runaways’) latest feature film ‘The Turning,’ based on Henry James’ 1898 short story ‘The Turn of the Screw,’ just proves how big of one I am.  Boring, plodding and lacking in anything even remotely scary, ‘The Turning’ is further plagued by a head-scratching “WTH was that???!!!” final scene.  Because by that point, I was way beyond caring if nanny/tutor Kate’s (Mackenzie Davis) gone all “cuckoo for cocoa puffs” like her institutionalized mom or not.  Really.

Grade: F 

Not a Civil War Movie

It’s just as well that Jeff Shaara’s last novel concluding his father’s ‘The Killer Angels’ civil war trilogy isn’t going to be adapted on the big screen after the disappointment that was ‘Gods and Generals,’ because ‘The Last Full Measure’ is now the story of USAF PJ (pararescue jumper) William Pitsenbarger, who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (the nation’s highest distinction for valor and sacrifice) 32 years later after a prolonged fight to have his heroic actions in ‘Nam recognized by Uncle Sam for saving – at the cost of his own life – many GI’s of the legendary “Big Red One” 1st ID who found themselves pinned down at a hot LZ in 1966.  It is a respectful story well told, even if it lacked the compelling you-are-there visceral quality of 2016’s WWII war drama ‘Hacksaw Ridge.’

Grade: B  

  

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Love Hina

It’s hard to believe that, being an anime fan since my childhood watching ‘Robotech’ and ‘Battle of the Planets,’ I have never reviewed an anime film until now.  I just don’t get to see a lot of anime on the big screen, the last two being Mamoru Oshii’s visually stylish but frustrating ‘Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence’ (2004) and Hayao Miyazaki’s strange but excellent ‘Spirited Away’ (2002) over 15 years ago, and before that Miyazaki’s ‘Princess Mononucleosis,’ I mean 'Mononoke' (1997) and Katsuhiro Otomo’s mindblowing cyberpunk classic ‘Akira’ back in 1988.  Now I can add a fifth anime movie I’ve seen at a theater in over 30 years, Makoto Shinkai’s romantic fantasy ‘Weathering with You.’

 

WWY is the story of 15-year old high schooler Hodaka, who jumped on a ship and ran away from his boring small town for a better life in bustling Tokyo, where he tries to get a job but lives as a vagrant when not sheltered by struggling magazine publisher Suga, whom he met on the ship.  One day, fate (in this case an act of kindless at a McDonald’s) made his acquaintance with another minimum wage-earning teenager named Hina, whom he’s (though at first he wouldn’t admit) smitten with and seems to possess magical powers in controlling the weather and bring a ray of localized sunshine to Tokyo’s perpetual state of gloomy unrelenting rain (brought about by climate change perhaps).  Their growing friendship and personal struggles form the basis of this movie.

 

Unlike the other four anime movies I’ve seen in theaters (though admittedly I’ve seen countless movies and anime TV series on DVD’s and digital streaming), I didn’t plan to watch WWY and chanced upon it by accident.  To be honest I only saw it because it happened to be showing at my local theater and I’m entitled to three movies a week via my movie membership, but I am glad I did because WWY is a wonderful story of hope, heartbreak and joy tinged with yearning and melancholy.  To the uninitiated this film can be a tad bizarre and overly melodramatic, but to anime fans it's fairly par for the course.

 

Grade: A

One Last Ride Together

I love buddy cop movies, having watched this often humorous subgenre of the crime thriller since its heyday of the 1980’s (big surprise) in such films as ‘Lethal Weapon,’ ’48 Hours,’ ‘Tango & Cash’ and ‘Stakeout.’  Although it lost some steam in the ‘90’s, ‘Bad Boys’ (1995) starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as two brothas with an attitude put a fresh spin on the genre with its hip take on ‘Miami Vice,’ doing well enough to earn two sequels – thus qualifying as a “franchise” – with the latest occurring some 25 years after the original.

‘

Bad Boys for Life’ is the long-awaited “Bad Boys 3” that’s been in developmental hell since ‘Bad Boys II’ 17 years ago.  Although BB2 grossed $273 million worldwide, BB3 was held off due to the high salaries of A-List superstar Will Smith and director Michael Bay (the reported budget of BB2 was $130 million).  BB4Life was finally greenlighted after Bay was dropped from the project, which reduced its budget to well below that of its predecessor at $90 million.  BB4Life sees detectives Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), backed up by a team of cocky millennials led by Lowrey's ex-flame Rita straight out of CBS's crime-fighting procedural lineup, go up against cartel hitman Armando (Jacob Scipio), who's spurred on by his prison-escapee mother played by telenovelas veteran Kate del Castillo to kill everyone involved in her late husband's downfall.  But there's a twist.

 

Although I found BB4Life to be enjoyable enough as a mindless popcorn movie, it is also packed with enough genre tropes and “family bond” relationship subplots throughout its 124-minute running time that make it an ultimately forgettable exercise.  The action sequences are so relentless and the “tender” family moments are so contrived that I almost mistook it for a ‘Fast & Furious’ movie.  Its only saving grace is the slow-building twist about who Armando is near the end of the movie.

Grade: B

 

 

Saving Leftenant Blake

World War I (aka “The Great War”) could never hope to match its successor in terms of the number of Hollywood movies made on it, perhaps due to the widespread perception that it was a static war fought in the trenches characterized by machinegun suppression and artillery duels.  Indeed, it is telling that the greatest and most definitive WWI movie is still considered to be ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ the 90-year old anti-war film and Oscar winner about the futility of war based on Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel.

 

Director Sam Mendes (‘American Beauty,’ James Bond’s ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Spectre’) attempts to redress this imbalance in his latest release, ‘1917,’ inspired by old war stories recounted by his grandfather who fought in The Great War.  If you’ve seen the trailer, you are no doubt aware (mild spoiler ahead) that’s it’s the tale of two lowly British PBI (poor bloody infantrymen) played by Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay on a perilous mission across “No Man’s Land” to warn a friendly unit off a planned attack the next morning, which will fail spectacularly with massive casualties from a German trap if carried out.  Why would the hapless lance corporals risk their lives, you ask?  Well, as you’re no doubt also aware from the trailer, the general (Colin Firth) ordering the suicide mission is clever enough to put a personal stake in it (as if saving 1,500 soldiers alone wasn’t enough) by choosing the brother of an officer in the battalion (2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment) to be saved to undertake it.

 

Like ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘1917’ is more about the journey than the destination.  In fact, to make sure we don’t take our eyes off LCpls Blake’s and Schofield’s arduous journey, Mendes shot the movie à la ‘Birdman’ (Alejandro Iñárritu’s 2014 Oscar winning anti-superhero movie starring Michael Keaton) to give it the appearance of being filmed in one long uninterrupted take.  It is a highly effective filmmaking technique, and one not as disorienting as the method used in ‘Dunkirk,’ in which Christopher Nolan told his story through three separate perspectives with three different timeframes.  While not quite as indelible as SPR, ‘1917’ is still a subtle and poignant war movie powerfully told from the grunts’ POV and a fine addition to the understocked WWI film catalogue.

 

Grade: A

 

Underwater, No One Can Hear You Scream

Growing up as a teen in the 1980’s with little parental supervision, I was fortunate enough to live on a staple of horror and sci-fi movies that largely shaped my somewhat geeky cinematic preference even today.  Among my favorite movies of that fondly remembered era are classics which combined sci-fi and horror, films like James Cameron’s ‘The Terminator,’ John McTiernan’s ‘Predator’ and, perhaps most notably of all, Ridley Scott’s seminal masterpiece ‘Alien.’  ‘Alien,’ with its “scary chitinous monster preying on soft fleshy humans in the dark and claustrophobic confines of a spaceship” premise, spawned a slew of analogues set underneath the sea including ‘Leviathan,’ ‘DeepStar Six’ and ‘The Rift.’  Needless to say, I enjoyed all of them.

 

‘Underwater,’ director William Eubank’s (‘The Signal’) homage and 21st century update of these beloved movies from my youth, dispenses with the requisite pre-disaster “character development” and thrusts us right into the chaotic mayhem, as young tomboyish engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart or KStew) scrambles to survive deep (six to seven miles) beneath the ocean as the state-of-the-art drilling facility she works at collapses around her from an earthquake, which turned out to be something else altogether.  The movie follows her and a handful of other would-be survivors as they trek across the deep ocean floor and try to reach escape pods at a nearby station some distance away, while being menaced by unspeakable horrors from the deep.

 

While ‘Underwater’ is derivative and liberally borrowed tropes from its predecessors, it nonetheless manages to do the job remarkably well and is a highly effective thriller.  The tightly focused, sometimes shifting and close-up camerawork really captures the chaos and foreboding sense of unseen peril reminiscent of ‘Cloverfield’ and ‘The Descent.’  And with her closely cropped haircut, KStew resembles Ellen Ripley in ‘Alien 3’ in more than appearance alone, imparting Norah with a dogged determination, quiet leadership, think-on-her-feet resourcefulness and spunkiness that are obviously a nod to Sigourney Weaver’s famous heroine.  Like her co-star Robert Pattinson, she had really come a long way since her moody, lower lip-biting ‘Twilight’ days and is becoming quite an actress.

 

Grade: A-

 

Quick Takes

Note: Due to the large number of movies I get to watch as an AMC Stubs A-List member, I will be posting these encapsulated reviews more frequently, maybe one a month or so.  This month we have an eclectic mix: a musical, a horror flick and an animated feature.

Pigeon: Impossible

I don’t watch many family-friendly computer-animated movies, but ‘Spies in Disguise’ caught my interest because it’s different from most of the unimaginative kid fare nowadays and is a spy movie.  This feature, based on (according to Wikipedia) a 2009 animated short whose name I stole for the title of this entry, is about a tux-wearing superspy (voiced by Will Smith) who’s accidently transformed by a tech geek (Tom Holland) into a large eye-browed blue pigeon which, other than providing the obvious comedic effects, gave him the perfect disguise to vanquish Killian (Ben Mendelson), the cybenetically-armed nemesis in this silly-fun but ultimately disposable exercise.

Grade: B

Please don't bring back vengeful water spirits from Japan 

Though ‘The Ring’ may be what comes to mind when it comes to Japanese scary movies or “J-Horror,” ‘The Grudge’ is proving to have more staying power thanks to producer Sam Raimi’s latest installment of the critically maligned franchise now spanning four films dating back to 2004 (not counting the Japanese-made original ‘Ju-On: The Grudge’).  But what do the producers care about the critics as long as suckers like me keep going to see these low budget affairs?  While this latest “sidequel” boasts some talented actors in John Cho, Jacki Weaver and genre veteran Lin Shaye, it’s about as much fun as watching someone ravaged slowly by cancer.

Grade: C-

Meow Mix

The critically-panned movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s time-honored feline musical ‘Cats’ from acclaimed director Tom Hooper (‘Les Mis,’ ‘The King’s Speech’) is perhaps doomed from the very start due to an ill-advised creative decision to utilize the much derided “digital fur technology” blending the faces and anthropomorphic shapes of its ensemble cast of talented and accomplished human actors with digitally rendered cat fur.  While I didn’t find the film’s aesthetic approach particularly unsettling or repulsive, this so-called “uncanny valley” effect apparently was too much to stomach for most.  Regardless, the song and dance numbers have a certain cheesy/burlesque-y 'Cabaret' and 'Moulin Rouge!' charm so I'm going to recommend it.

Grade: B+

Failure to Explode

The downfall of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes as a result of sexual harassment allegations is the subject of ‘Bombshell,’ the latest movie from comedy director Jay Roach (‘Austin Powers,’ ‘Meet the Parents,’ ‘Dinner for Schmucks’).  Despite the star power and veritable bombshells featured in the film including Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie and Nicole Kidman, ‘Bombshell’ failed to go off at the box office in our climate of anti-media cynicism and political divisiveness, notwithstanding its “feminist” message.

 

Long before Harvey Weinstein was laid (no pun intended) low for his misdeeds against women, Ailes (played by John Lithgow in this movie) found himself under fire from sexual harassment allegations by various Fox-y newswomen, chief among them Gretchen Carlson (Kidman) and Megyn Kelly (Theron).  ‘Bombshell’ tells the story of how a deeply suppressed “dirty little secret” finally emerged into the open and took on a momentum of its own, bringing down a remorseless predator who thought himself untouchable (metaphorically speaking, that is).

 

While ‘Bombshell’ is packed with cynical wit and behind-the-scenes fourth-wall breaking candor, its impact is somewhat diminished by the fact that Theron’s Kelly and Kidman’s Carlson failed to garner any sort of sympathy or empathy from the viewers.  The former is pragmatic to a fault, an office politics survivor who sat on the fence until the absolute last moment; the latter just came across as self-centered, petty and vindictive.  Indeed, the only character I found to be interesting or even remotely likeable is the fictional Kayla Popsicle, I mean Pospisil (Robbie), an “evangelical millennial” whose character is based on a composite of all the other women who spoke out against Ailes.  It’s no mean feat that ‘Bombshell’ manages to provide both CNN and MSNBC-following liberals and FOX‑watching Trump-supporters something to agree on and dislike.
 
Grade: C