The Rip Review

Any film headlined by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck should be a lot fresher, wittier and exciting than it is in Netflix's "The Rip." A new crime thriller about dirty cops and a big ol' pile of the cartel's cash, writer/director Joe Carnahan populates the picture with too many red herrings, too much style and practically no substance. 

And that's a real shame, I mean, look at that cast! But instead of character development, everyone has a motive, and it's often just greed. Why is it always money? I mean, in one instance it's revenge, but that's it? It's about as boring as Affleck looks here and in those memes I sometimes see of him on the interwebs.

The famous duo star as lieutenant Dane and sergeant J.D., under investigation when their police captain is killed in the opening scene. We see her gunned down by two assailants, their faces obscured by the night and masks, her just barely getting out a mysterious text before they take the final shot. Her small team is grilled by FBI agents, one of which is J.D.'s brother, and the two exchange expletives as well as fists. The sibling is played by action veteran Scott Adkins, who's wasted here with about two scenes and handful of perfunctory lines; he deserves more and it's high-time Hollywood realizes.

But back to the plot. Right after everyone's shift, Dane announces he got a crimestopper tip on some illegal dough stashed away in some house, and the group heads off for some unpaid overtime. (Where's the union when you need one?) In a messy house smack-dab in the middle of a cul-de-sac, where the entire neighborhood seems abandoned. They trick resident Desi (Sasha Calle) into letting the team in under the guise of looking for drugs, which she claims there aren't any. Well, aside from marijuana, but hey, it's 2026, who cares about the devil's lettuce?

Once inside, sure-to-be-star Wilbur the Money Dog (played by, you guessed it, Wilbur The Dog), soon sniffs something out in the attic. Desi continues to claim she doesn't have any narcotics, until she realizes he's tracking moolah. Dane says the tip was only for a few hundred thousand bucks, but what they find is something just north of twenty million. Something isn't adding up. That or someone is as bad at math as I was in grade school (the age the filmmakers are clearly aiming for).

Things escalate when Dane isn't following protocol and ignoring J.D.'s concerns. Who is not who they say they are? Why do some local badges show up, and why does J.D. recognize one? The film asks a million questions, answering them with more vagaries until the very end when the key players are in an armored truck. Problem is, the scenarios are so standard, and the resolutions so routine.

"The Rip" contains far fewer fisticuffs and gunplay than its trailer would suggest- the camera shrouding everything in a noir-esque shadow, giving the folks at home watching reason to suspect everyone. But films about bent police officers, double crosses and a butt-load of cash are a dime-a-dozen, and this is ultimately just a glossy, not to mention expensive, regurgitation of cliches and stereotypes.

But I am a pushover for material like this! I should be able to look over a flaw or two, but Carnahan seemingly is unable, or uninterested, in challenging either the genre or its audience with anything truly inspired. You'd think a leading cast featuring no fewer than two other acclaimed writers, and one acclaimed director, would have known better.

What's even more strange, while the man behind the camera does know how to make a truly great shot (a garage shootout with hazy green lights is a particular highlight), he can't seem to keep himself from getting all cute with technique and style. The climax, which I won't spoil, is so poorly shot with too much darkness and edited with too many cuts that I could only tell who was punching who because I've seen other films.

Greenland 2: Migration Review

"Greenland 2: Migration" is probably as good a sequel to a disaster film can be: the principal cast returns, (Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin as John and Allison Garrity, respectively) as does all the family drama, societal disintegration and special effects. Compared to the first "Greenland," seeing the latter on the big-screen mostly satisfies.

Taking place in the bunker from the original, years have passed and supplies are dwindling, the neighboring Earth either destroyed or inhospitable due to radiation from the meteor that crashed all those years ago. The Garrity's live in one of several bunkers throughout the world, so we get the obligatory scenes in a picture like this about where the survivors can possibly all travel to to avoid starvation. In a likely unintentional twist of current events, some of the countries are fighting each other (here over the site of the crash), where Dr. Casey Amina (Amber Rose Revah) believes that life can begin anew, free from the poisons polluting the air. She compares the theory to the time of dinosaurs at one point, which just made me wish a giant T-Rex showed up too, but alas, that never happens.

But it doesn't take long for, ahem, disaster to strike again: an earthquake destroys their safe-haven, everyone trying desperately to escape. Masks are a premium, as the air is eventually toxic, and John has his stolen during this initial chaos as everyone eyes one of the limited escape ships that washed up ashore recently. They dock in what used to be England, a partially flooded hellscape where the military patrols that country's bunker from non-government personnel. One just needs to watch the news in real-life to guess what happens.

The original, released during 2020 in the heat of the pandemic, and yet somehow six years later, scenes of this civil unrest play out far too hauntingly, and unfortunately, relatable. Even the film's title country is in the news.

A lot more happens, including a particularly effective scene where the family needs to cross a gaping valley on makeshift ladders and ropes, but John's been hiding a secret: he's sick, and it's not the kind that's curable. He claims he has just six to eight weeks from the time he begins coughing up blood, and while I won't spoil what ultimately happens to our aging action star, Butler is quite good here. His performance is one of exhaustion, reluctantly putting himself into situations to save his family, but never appearing bored with the role.

His son Nathan, played now by Roman Griffin Davis, remains diabetic like before, but aside from a throwaway line about "packing all the insulin he can grab," it never comes up or interrupts the small group's mission to the crater. There are a few other inconsistencies (like how the scattered survivors never show any obvious signs of radiation), but "Greenland 2: Migration" is consistently engaging, frequently thrilling and occasionally timely.

Primate Review

Horror movies aren't all that unlike the common "feel good" dramas- they're both purely exercises in audience manipulation. And in "Primate," a mad-slasher picture about an evil monkey from Paramount, I was manipulated. Totally and completely. I sat in darkness on the torn leather reclining chair, my eyes glued to the screen, not wanting to miss any of the surprisingly gory carnage.

There is no reason this should have opened in January, the famous "dump month" where studios send out their movies to die an unseen death: this would do some serious damage anytime of the year. 

As the film opens, the titular monkey brutally kills a vet (who visits at night, I guess it's supposed to be scarier at night) and escapes into its owner's house, where deaf novelist and it's owner Adam (Troy Kotsur) has left his daughters (the elder Lucy and the younger Erin, played by Johnny Sequoyah and Gia Hunter, respectively, who are not deaf) and friends alone in his remote Hawaiian house. The little primate has suffered a bite from a wild mongoose, who found its way into his cage, and the poor family's pet (named Ben) develops rabies. 

If you think I glossed over the plot just now, the film's lean eighty nine minute runtime means as does director Johannes Roberts (who shares co-writing credit with Ernest Riera). A veteran of the horror genre, I was impressed with Roberts' work on 2021's "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City," and he continues to showoff his skills behind the camera here.

A plot like this runs the risk of the audience sympathizing with the animal, but that doesn't happen here: not only does the initial attack really dissuade any ape empathy, but the suddenness of the mayhem that follows means we sit at the edge of our seat at this unexpectedly successful little thriller. What it lacks in narrative purpose, it more than makes up for it in terms of pure movie making. The soundtrack from Adrian Johnston especially, which echoes the electronic simplicity of John Carpenter to great effect.

Lucy, Erin and friends (which starts at two girls and a boy, only to grow to include an additional two males), immediately make their way into the pool, once Ben goes berserk and sinks his sharp, drooling teeth into the leg of the junior sister. Ben stalks his prey from the edge of the water, sometimes finding his paws onto an unsuspecting person, and other times disappearing into the house. The groups' mission is to get a phone that works, so to call for help, but this proves quite difficult when there's an animal killer on-the-loose.

I saw "Primate" in a relatively packed theater, and it's exactly how one should watch this: every time the music cut and a character went somewhere they shouldn't, everyone went dead-silent, only to yelp in surprise at the shadowy figure just barely visible in the background, followed by a light laugh in the back of their throats, directed at themselves for getting suckered in again. I was doing all of these right there with them, and I'm only slightly ashamed of myself.

If you're thinking "Hawaii is the only rabies-free state," don't worry, the film does acknowledge this bit of trivia. It doesn't answer it, but hey, I only noticed long after once my fingers began typing out this review.

Anaconda Review

1997's "Anacanda" was arguably the strongest entry in the decade's brief creature-feature resurgence. Director Luis Llosa and cinematographer Bill Butler created a fabulous looking film, the Amazon location almost as important a character as the titular monster. And the cast, my god the cast! Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, even a freaking baby-faced Owen Wilson is there! It really is a fantastic movie, a little time-capsule of that sweet, sweet cinematic section of the 90s.

Which brings us to the reboot, where the original film also exists. Paul Rudd stars as Griff, a z-list actor who tells his four childhood friends that he has the rights of the franchise, and the quadrilogy of people set out with hardly any money to remake it. They hire a snake handler (Selton Mello), who has an odd fetish for his pet snake Heitor, rent a boat and plan to guerrilla-style fulfill their dream of making an actual movie. It's a strange way to reimagine the first picture, especially when you remember one of the earlier sequels starred David Hasselhoff and a very lousy looking reptile on Sci Fi Channel.

Griff's best friend Doug (Jack Black) acts as the "movie-within-a-movie" director, who reluctantly agrees to the cockeyed plan. He's a family man who only joins because he has sort of a midlife crisis with his day job as a wedding videographer. I have no idea if the two are friends in real life, but they only slightly have any actual chemistry together, though anyone would struggle with the lame script from this film's director Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten. I heard exactly one laugh from the audience during my showing. It was over a dead rat, which isn't exactly the mark of good screenwriting. (I did not laugh myself, but who cares about what I think.)

Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn round out the fictional foursome, playing as Claire and Kenny respectively, but only Zahn really strikes the right tone this misbegotten meta-remake, with his crazy eyes and overanxious delivery. Claire and Griff are purportedly prior lovers, and they play romantic leads in the films' film, but they too aren't exactly believable as anything other than attractive actors acting attractive towards one another.

There's more plot than just a movie about making a movie: their boat captain is actually the mysterious Ana (Daniela Melchior), who we see as the film opens on the run from equally mysterious muscle men with guns. Doug quickly rewrites his script to include her (as they say several times, to add "themes"). This eventually leads to an artificial riff in the original cast, but wait, there's more! The sham film crew ends up bumping elbows with another film crew, when they learn Sony (who actually acted as distributed of this) is also remaking 1997's "Anaconda." Just don't go thinking this is some mockumentary- the narrative is never any more clever than the idea itself.

Oh, and then there's the snake itself: as a monster movie, the limbless lizard is never especially convincing. I assume it's because this is partly a comedy (supposedly) that the special effects are pretty pathetic. Are we supposed to laugh? Be thrilled? I doubt the filmmakers even know.

This new version of "Anaconda" never really gels, stumbling awkwardly from would-be jokes to would-be snake action. Everyone just runs around frantically, Rudd grinning stupidly at the camera, Black always sounds winded, Newton is just sorta there, and Melchior never looks like she's spent any actual time in the jungle. But we do have Zahn, and boy does he try.

I struggle to figure out what this whole production is really about. The few scenes about the hardships of movie-making are lost amidst the synthetic noise, but my biggest issue are the brief moments we see of the legit Sony produced remake. All these awesome sets (not to mention its cast) had me wishing I was watching that movie instead.

Jingle Bell Heist Review

Billed a romantic comedy, there is far more drama than expected with "Jingle Bell Heist," debuting on Netflix. Subplots about cancer and divorce seldom setup good punchlines, unless the humor takes a dark turn, which isn't what happens here. But buoyed by a good cast with good chemistry, this breezy fable about robbing a rich store owner on Christmas Eve is an easily digestible time on your couch, your very own Christmas lights twinkling just out of sight.

The plot is this: Sophie (Olivia Holt) is a struggling employee of Sterlings department stores in London, who also works shifts at the local tavern to support mom suffering from cancer. The doctor recommends a new treatment, but the wait-list is too long for her mother to survive, so she'd need to take care of expenses herself. See, even in the UK, heath insurance is a pain.

She's a petty thief too- early on we see her steal the wallet of a grumpy man on the sidewalk, who kicks off peddlers from the block. She gives the money she swiped to them, so we're hardly ten minutes in and we already know she's got a "heart of gold." One day she sneaks a peak at diamond jewelry in the basement of the store (while stealing some quids, I might add), and the next day she is approached by Nick (Connor Swindells), a man who's hacked the security cameras, her mild burglary on record. He fixes phones at a repair shop, fresh out of prison from the alleged heist of the very same store she now works at. He's looking to rob them again to pay for a better apartment for his daughter, his ex-wife suspicious of him, rightly worried he'll slip into his old habits. Some great protagonists, I know.

The two decided to pool their resources and talents to pull off the caper, her on the inside with the knowledge that only staff members have, him on the outside controlling cameras and such. Only nothing goes as planned. We see far-fetched activities like crashing a gala for him to try and seduce Cynthia (Lucy Punch), the wife of the place's owner Maxwell (Peter Serafinowicz) to a security guard distraction ploy involving Run-D.M.C's classic "Christmas In Hollis." It's all very silly, but there is a sense of fun here as our modern-day Robin Hood's find themselves in increasingly ridiculous situations that are far above their skill level.

Olivia and Connor are good here together, and Peter makes for a terrific villain even with his limited screen time. Director Michael Fimognari moves things along I suppose, but it's Abby McDonald's script that wisely keeps the action grounded, even if the climax wraps this up a bit too cleanly and is filled with one too many moments of sudden conveniences to truly buy the whole thing. (Such as Sophie being able to pick locks, because her grandfather was a magician, or the safe company completely divulging the details on the exact same model Maxwell has. And don't get me started on the big "reveal" at the end. Grumble grumble.)

"Jingle Bell Heist" isn't good, but it's not bad either, occupying this watchable middle-ground where only the most familiar and conventional of movies reside in. It's "ho ho humdrum."

Sisu: Road to Revenge Review

Writer/director Jalmari Helander's "Sisu: Road to Revenge" doesn't shy away from gory mayhem, but there's an odd emptiness to it. Star Jorma Tommila returns as Aatami from the first "Sisu," and he dispenses henchmen like a hot knife through warm butter, but there isn't much purpose or creativity behind the many, many kills.

This time around, Aatami is bent on retrieving the remains of his former home, now no longer part of Finland, where his wife and two sons were brutally murdered offscreen by Soviet Union soldiers during World War II. Their slaying was done by the hands of Igor, played by Stephen Lang, who we first meet jailed for what I assume were war crimes. Aatami crosses Soviet territory with his cainine friend, but the notoriety of his actions in the first movie prompts KGB officer (Richard Brake) to offer Igor a deal: kill Aatami and you'll get your freedom back. 

And that's it, that's the plot. Aside from a brief opening burb of text, characters only speak in short, terse terms like "time to unleash hell" or something else that probably sounds good in the trailers. This allows the visuals to tell most of the story, and the first hour of Mika Orasmaa's cinematography is often striking, if not haunting, showing dusty roads from high above or rainy prison cells. So it is a shame that the back half of the picture takes place almost entirely on a cramp, creaky locomotive; once you've seen one train car, you've seen them all.

Igor first pursues the legendary Finish hero by car, Aatami trying desperately to cross the boarder with a house's worth of lumber. But that doesn't work, so he calls in a few planes to try and take him out; that doesn't work either. Even when they cause his truck to tumble into the ocean, he always somehow squeaks by. Did I buy the notion that a single man could collect all those planks of wood in the water and makeshift a boat? I could have, had it not been directly followed by him stumbling upon a working tank. A tank that still works somehow, and that he jerry-rigged to carry that same wood.

Again, sure, I can subscribe still, but then he attaches some explosives which somehow causes the military vehicle to flip upwards over a barricaded boarder, and it at this exact moment where I stopped viewing "Sisu: Road to Revenge" as anything other than just another silly action thriller.

The threadbare narrative continues to grow more ridiculous until it buckles under the weight of its own preposterousness and just sorta lies there. A simple tale of revenge like this doesn't need to grow less personal, less intimate to be entertaining. I sat in my reclining leather chair crestfallen that the plot was lost to cinematic excess.

Though Jorma Tommila possesses a great physicality, where he looks to almost come out from the screen and charge at you with an ax, he hasn't much to do here. Though filled with action, he spends almost every frame either walking slowly, blowing away necessary thugs with machine guns or looking concerned while sitting behind the wheel, swerving occasionally to avoid Lang's goons.

While I did appreciate overall lack of dialogue (containing practically as few spoken words as a Charles Bronson flick), anytime someone does speak it was jarring; why English, if the main characters are Finish and Soviets? Why not just cut all the discourse and make this a silent film?

By the way, the dog survives, in case anyone was worried. Why the hell the pup is so loyal after a journey like this is something only mother nature could explain.

Champagne Problems Review

Netflix's "Champagne Problems" takes every cliche from its familiar mix of Christmas and rom-com genres and somehow turns them into critical parts of its whole appeal. I can't champion its direction or especially its script, both by Hollywood veteran Mark Steven Johnson, but the idea of spending time in France, surrounded by the bubbles of sparkling wine and the glistening lights of holidays, with a group of misfit friends, had my body surrender to the film's irresistible charm.

Minka Kelly stars as Sydney, a businesswoman employed by The Roth Group, or TRG, a firm that she sees as helping small businesses but others see as acquiring them and selling them piece by piece. She gives a spirited pitch on pursuing the purchase of the Chateau Cassel vineyard company and her boss (Mitchell Mullen) decides to fly her to Paris to pitch it directly to the owner Hugo (Thibault de Montalembert).

After a brief bit of encouragement by her younger sister, Sydney spends her first night, not preparing for the meeting but instead out exploring the city. Inside a little bookstore recommended by the hotel's concierge (Thierry René), a case of mistaken identity has Henri, a regular guest, showing her around like he's a store employee. After he tells her he's just another customer and some mild flirting, he asks to show her Paris, things only the locals know. And because this is a romantic comedy, she of course says yes. 

He's played by Tom Wozniczka, and the two certainly have chemistry. His dialogue switches between French and English often, not only sometimes in the same scene but also the same sentence, but there's a believable anxiousness as he stumbles over both languages as she looks on with a lover's glaze.

He spends the night in her hotel room, like only the lucky experience, but- oh no, it's past ten AM, she's late for her big meeting. She hustles her way to the winery where she meets Hugo. Hugo's company is millions of dollars in debt, and has fancied several potential buyers to compete with one another; there's the flamboyant gay son of a billionaire Roberto (Sean Amsing), the stoic and socially awkward German Otto (Flula Borg) and the stony woman of business Brigitte (Astrid Whettnall), who's known Hugo for decades. The group is made up entirely of cliches, but these actors are professionals and handle the well-worn material with honest charisma.

The meeting is well underway but then the door swings open and in walks Henri, and it's at this moment that the characters all learn something we the audience could have guessed simply by reading the title: Henri is Hugo's son. Scandalous.

Hugo decides to suspend the sale until Monday, asking that this motley assortment of stereotypes join him at this residence for the weekend. He says this is to get a better idea of which seller to sell to, but my romance-radar suspects he is hoping for Sydney and Henri to fall madly in love like they do in the movies.

Look, "Champagne Romance" is not very original, having all the obligatory scenes one expects from these sorts of ingredients, like when our heroine successfully suggests to Hugo the exact car part that'll make his lemon of a vehicle run again, or how Sydney is able to find Henri's childhood book he hid somewhere in the estate decades ago. It's all so routine, but there's an undeniable warmth on display, from the locations like the fields of snow-covered grapes, down to the fabric everyone is draped in. This is a cozy little time-waster that is about as good as they come when the filmmakers settle on sensual whimsy.