A Good Day to Die Over..... and Over

It’s ‘Groundhog Day’ meets ‘Scream’ in ‘Happy Death Day,’ Blumhouse Production’s latest horror-comedy clearly aimed at the millennial set.  Blumhouse Productions, renowned for striking box office gold with such low-budget gems as ‘Paranormal Activity,’ ‘The Purge,’ ‘Split’ and ‘Get Out,’ has done it again with this $4.8 million slasher flick featuring an unknown actress but an intriguing concept, which already recouped its “meager” budget 10 times over after only two weekends of its release.

 

Imagine that you die at the hands of a stereotypical masked slasher drawn from such Hollywood classics as ‘Halloween,’ ‘Friday the 13th,’ ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Scream,’ except that you would wake up the next morning “as good as new” and relive the day like Bill Murray did over and over again in that beloved 1993 cult comedy classic.  Of course, you vividly remember what happened the previous day (which also happens to be “today”), particularly the pivotal moment when you died gore-iously by the hands and deadly implements of an unknown masked killer.  Talk about re-living your nightmares!  This is exactly the inexplicable, surreal predicament in which the film’s sassy protagonist, a hot blonde college sorority gal (Jessica Rothe) with a rebellious and mean streak who doesn’t fit the vain and shallowly materialistic archetype of her peers, finds herself on her birthday.  Nothing says "I love you" quite like the gift of death for your birthday, I’d say.

 

For all its faults,’ ‘Happy Death Day’ is a fun and enjoyable movie this Halloween season (it was released on Friday the 13th).  Tree (Jessica Rothe’s character) is an engaging, self-deprecating and headstrong heroine whom we can easily root for as she tries and tries again (or should I say “dies and dies again”) to solve her own murder and unmask the killer with the help of her obligatory cute boy love interest, Carter Davis (Israel Broussard).  If only this is a video game.

 

Grade: B+

 

Do replicants dream of electric sheep?

Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk neo-noir thriller ‘Blade Runner’ is considered to be one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, a thought-provoking meditation on what it means to be human set in the rain-drenched neon-lit dystopia of 2019 Los Angeles.  As the film’s protagonist, Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard is a hard-boiled bounty hunter in the mold of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, an android-hunter who ended up falling for one.  As far as replicants go, he could do much worse than the femme fatale Rachael (Sean Young).

 

35 years later, acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve (‘Sicario,’ ‘Arrival’) continues the BR saga 30 years after the original with ‘Blade Runner 2049.’  While diehard BR geeks still debate to this day as to whether Rick Deckard is a replicant himself, there is no ambiguity in BR2049 that Ryan Gosling’s “K” (Unit KD9-3.7 to be exact) represents the latest in cutting-edge replicant technology, a model that’s fully obedient to his human masters and poses no danger of joining a replicant freedom movement like his rebellious Nexus-6 predecessors.  As an unrepentant blade runner himself, K’s journey of self discovery in BR2049 also (like Deckard) made him question authority and seek redemption as he slowly unravels the juicy mystery central to the movie’s plot.

 

Complex, visually stylish and deeply satisfying to genre fans, BR2049 is a worthy follow‑up to the 1982 original.  When you think that Philip K. Dick couldn’t have written the story any better, the screenwriters (in this case Hampton Fancher and Michael Green) must have done something right.  BR2049 sucks us in with its compelling and slowly unfolding plot, intricate world‑building and future tech (including flying cars and cool holograms) and never lets up, making the 163-minute movie seemingly not so long at all.

Grade: A
 

Made in America

Shaking off his lackluster performance in the recent ‘The Mummy’ remake, Tom Cruise returns to form in ‘American Made,’ the “inspired by a true story” account of the life (and death) of Barry Seal, an airline pilot recruited by the CIA to conduct aerial reconnaissance on Central American Marxist revolutionaries who also moonlighted as a drug smuggler for the Medellin cartel during the 1980’s (my favorite decade).  Real life stories are often compelling and can be stranger than fiction, and ‘American Made’ certainly qualifies as one of them.

 

Set during the Reagan era, ‘American Made’ is a nostalgic trip down memory lane.  The US is recovering from the energy crisis but facing the spread of communism in its own backyard in the guise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  With the specter of Vietnam still making direct military intervention impossible, the new president sought to fight a low-intensity shadow war by proxy against the Marxist insurrectionists.  If the movie is to be believed, Seal was instrumental in this effort, first conducting dangerous low altitude photo-reconnaissance missions in a twin-engine plane for the CIA before directly supplying AK-47’s to the Contra “freedom fighters” in their half-hearted fight against the Sandinistas.  There is simply nothing Seal couldn’t do; he was also a regular errand boy for the US government in its underhanded dealings (as in bribery) with a certain colonel at the time in Panama by the name of Manuel Noriega.

 

While Cruise may be deemed too handsome and lean compared to the man he portrayed in the film, his natural charisma and commanding performance carried the movie along with its snappy pacing and near constant sense of danger.  Seal was one of those “adventurous” people who loves to play with fire and court disaster, and his exploits in the movie consist of one tightrope walking act after another as he worked both sides of the law to his own advantage even if it ultimately proved to be his undoing.  Director Doug Liman demonstrated a flair for the dramatic in this riveting docudrama, portraying Seal as neither good nor evil but simply human, warts and all.

Grade: B+

 

Where hath all the Kingsmen gone?

Matthew Vaughn’s ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ was a mayhem-filled, rollicking (and very R-rated) joyride of a movie which went on to gross over $400 million globally.  Based on the comic book series created by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, ‘Kingsman’ is an over-the-top James Bond spoof with an unlikely former street punk in the role of the quintessential British “gentleman spy.”  With stylish action sequences ripped right out of ‘The Matrix’ trilogy and a cast of flamboyant and colorful heroes and villains, ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ was a pleasant surprise in 2014.  Therefore it isn't exactly a surprise that it caught a case of sequelitis in ‘Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle.’

K2:TGC pulls no punches and starts off with some high speed heavy-metal fisticuff action inside a London cab between Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton) and Charlie Hesketh, a disgraced former Kingsman trainee who appeared in the previous film.  Soon afterwards (spoiler alert!) Kingsman HQ and various other stations in Her Majesty’s realm were destroyed by a well-coordinated missile strike, killing all Kingsman (and one Kingswoman, the spunky Roxy) in one fell swoop.  The villain, or villainess rather, this time is Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), a June Cleaver-like yet ruthless drug Queenpin with a thing for Elton John who rules over her own domain, a 1950’s-themed (think “Happy Days” or “Grease”) jungle paradise somewhere in Cambodia.  We also learn that “Kingsman” has a heretofore unknown sister organization in the United States aptly called “Statesman.”  I know, how silly right?

 

Being a sequel, the question now becomes: “Is K2:TGC as good as the original?”  The critics have answered that question with a resounding “Hell, no!” which is not unexpected of course, but in my humble opinion K2:TGC actually held its own quite well.  I try not to judge a sequel too harshly and found the movie to be an action-packed, over-the-top, entertaining and fun romp despite it not being quite as good as the original.  My suggestion to y’all is just to sit back and enjoy the ride as the unabashed popcorn flick that it is.

Grade: A-

  

Killer Klown from Underground

Following closely behind the box office disaster that was 'The Dark Tower,' the big screen adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 horror novel "It" proved to be a much bigger draw after four weeks of theatrical release, having raked in over $550 million worldwide on a budget of $35 million.  The first chapter in a two-part series, 'It' is one of the best and scariest movies in recent memory.

While I vaguely remember the TV mini-series back in 1990 starring Tim Curry, I was keen to revisit the quaint and homely (but fictitious) town of Derry, Maine.  As the sinister and malevolent “eldritch demonic entity of evil” in this unassuming small town, Pennywise the Dancing Clown ranks easily as one of the most terrifying movie monsters ever imagined, and you don’t have to have a case of jester-phobia for the “Clown with the Red Balloons” to haunt your worst nightmares.  ‘It’ Chapter One introduces the uninitiated to Pennywise as he stalks and terrorizes a group of misfit teenagers, who must overcome their greatest fears and band together in order to banish “It” in his own lair, the creepy haunted house on Neibolt Street.

 

What sets ‘It’ apart from other run-of-the-mill horror movies is that it is a coming-of-age tale with a lot of heart.  The seven kids in the film may be outcasts, but they are flesh-and-blood real people dealing with a myriad of issues.  And as bad as “It” may be, Pennywise isn’t their only problem; many of them also have to endure repeated bullying and parental abuse at home.  Fact is, you simply can’t experience this movie without getting attached to these kids.  I don’t know about you, but I’m already eagerly awaiting Chapter Two of this richly layered, immersive and utterly terrifying “American Horror Story.”

 

Grade: A