Malignant Review

I dunno what I expected by a film named "Malignant," especially when you consider it's from director James Wan, who also produced and has "story by" credit. His penchant for bloodshed and plot twists is on full-display with his latest efforts, and even when they don't work, I found myself disregarding my standard "taste" and just went along for the twisty and twisted ride.

Annabelle Wallis plays Madison, a would-be mother who's abusive husband meets his due early in the runtime by the title villain. Who this unknown killer is eludes both Maddy and deputies Shaw and Moss, who are now on the case for his death. More people die of course, I mean, its a horror movie, but whole gimmick this time is that our title heroine "sees" the killings as they're happening. The cops don't believe her of course, and we the audience wonder if she's telling the truth, just crazy, or the murderer herself.

The answer to that loaded question might not come as a surprise, especially to any seasoned slasher flick fan, but what's commendable is that there is any sort of mystery here; in an age where so many supposed scary pictures hide from any actual explanation under the guise of god and religion, it's a genuinely good feeling to be watching something that expects me the viewer to piece together the subtle hits ahead of the end's big reveal.

None of that would matter if this was a cheapo geekshow, but it's not- Wan fills many frames with weird camera angles: some swoop overhead others spiral sideways, digging deep into the filmmakers bag of old tricks and exploits them to create something that's so heavy on style it is practically dripping. Sure, it is at the expense of some substance, but hey, that's what the surprise ending is for, providing the illusion of meat on this lean skeleton of a script. 

I won't spoil what actually happens, which means my synopsis of the plot is relatively light, and that is OK. I sat on my couch and pressed play on HBO Max having no real context, which is probably the way to go. It lured me in with a first-act straight out of "The Conjuring" universe, only to swing hard in a completely different direction. Things escalate quickly, becoming bloody and boggling, and its nerve to suddenly shift gears left me guessing what else it had in store. Turns out, we have enough time for a violent, "John Wick" style gunfight in a police precinct, a visit to a spooky, decrepit medical center, plenty of body-horror, as well as a riff on the actual definition of the word "malignant." Is that a spoiler? Only if you've seen a lot of movies.

I am not, however, saying this is a "smart" piece of cinema.

Characters still wonder in dark hallways after hearing a strange noise, cops are unable to hear gunshots from inside their own jail cell, and hospitals with plenty of patients become seemingly empty once inside. These moments are what reminds of what could have been and not what we actually have, resulting in a series of individual highlights surrounded by boilerplate.

Sweet Girl Review

We don't need a movie to tell us the horrors of cancer. We also don't need one this this professionally made, frustrating, and, for long stretches anyway, entertaining. Yet here we are, with Netflix's Jason Momoa action thriller "Sweet Girl."

Playing Ray Cooper who's wife succumbing to the awful disease, finds himself caught up in the politics when the promised miracle drug is taken off the market. He calls in to a news report with makers BioPrime's Simon Keeley (Justin Bartha), a scene without any of the succinct grace of that iconic Liam Neeson exchange in "Taken," but then again, our star Jason is no Liam. He lacks the cool detachment of everyone's favorite Irishman, instead raging across the screen like a pitbull with a toothache.

Mere scenes later, the corporate stooge is found dead in the back halls of a UNICEF gala. Now Ray and his daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) are on the run from both the cops and assassins who seem to know their whereabouts before the police do.

All your obligatory scenes follow, but director Brian Andrew Mendoza punctuates ordinary material with visceral action scenes. The best ones use Jason's physicality as an asset; he's no "former CIA agent" or whatever, just some random kickboxing father and widow. His brute force has the hired gunmen change their approach to conflict, giving the fights a sort of unchoreographed personality that's refreshing in the wake of all the John Wick copycats that's flooded the cinema.

Yet there's this unshakeable feel that, for as "everyman" as Ray the character is, he's still played by the foreboding Jason Momoa. He just isn't convincing as anything but a superhero, and in the more dramatic moments, his emotional range is angry and more angry. There either isn't enough time watching his fall into madness, or he simply cannot handle the thematic subtly the role occasionally asks for. Sadly, I think it's both.

The film's big twist is unsatisfying and unconvincing, an awkward revelation that belittles the plot's otherwise simplistic tone. But it did catch me by surprise, leaving in a sort of suspense as to where the rest of the runtime would go. Unfortunately, it is a most anticlimactic climax, a cop-out by screenwriters Philip Eisner and Gregg Hurwitz who couldn't think of a better way to end things than to pillage other pictures; you know the kind, where the actual villain is finally exposed to the movie-world not by the competency of law enforcement because they don't shut their traps when clearly the protagonist is recording!

All these issues throw the balance of the finished product awry, because for as fun as the fisticuffs are, their potency is diluted by a pedestrian execution of some rather basic concepts. The whole thing's about cancer after all, and no one seems to understand that.

The Suicide Squad Review

You can knock Marvel pics all you want, but they at least know how to name them; case in point, competitor DC's standalone sequel to 2016's "Suicide Squad." What's it called? "The Suicide Squad." Why oh why oh why?! It is a stupid move that makes zero sense to the casual cinema consumer, but hey, it's a silly superhero adventure where people in rubber suits fight CGI monstrosities to the tune of random songs you'd probably hear on the radio on your way to the theatre. Only this time things are very bloody, violent, and I saw it from my couch on HBO Max.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn takes over as writer and director from David Ayer, and the change is immediately obvious from his use of bright colors and his irrelevant script. Overuse would be more accurate, as each and every scene is punctuated by gratuitous style and gobbledygook dialogue that goes against the frequent bright bouts of bloodshed. Heads blowup, bodies torn in half, and we see it all. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but by the time our motely crew of sometimes bad guys actually get to the meat of their mission, it's so late into the runtime that you're left wondering "what was the last hour even for?"

Unfortunately Will Smith does not return as Deadshot (who readers will no doubt recall was one of the only reasons to see the original); in his place we get Idris Elba as Bloodsport. Actors and performances aside, they serve the same basic function in the mess of a movie. They both represent the onscreen relief from the chaotic crap that happens, serving as a way of us the audience to express our weariness. He bemoan the goofy cast, and spend a lot of the time looking angry at things. The weight of the film is on Elba's shoulders, so it's a good thing his are so broad.

Only three of the principal cast is back: Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, the government entity who runs the show offsite; Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, a name or a face who I honestly couldn't say I remembered; and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, who's shtick is about as tolerable as Fran Drescher in "The Nanny." Very little of her personality goes a long way, and lamentably she's in this a lot.

Other former castmates also reappear, albeit briefly, like Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang, though he's killed like ten minutes into the runtime thanks to a false-opening, and getting rid of his obnoxious smugness is one of the biggest highlight here.

Rounding out the main cast is John Cena as Peacemaker, a deplorable parody of Marvel's own Captain America. He wears a shiny metal helmet that at one point is called "a toilet seat." He of course claps back at the comparison, but the fact that a line of dialogue like this actually exists goes to show just how elementary the comedy is and how needless he is. But wait, it gets somehow worse! Daniela Melchior plays Ratcatcher 2, who's superpower is, get this, controlling rats. But it's David Dastmalchian who represents the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel of characters playing, no joke, "Polka-Dot Man." He literally kills people with polka dots. The existence of superheroes like this baffles me. You'd think that the sight of a man throwing polka dots and a woman summoning rats would illicit laughs immediately, but they don't, weighted down by the otherwise serious plot of government coverup and war.

The only moment between any of the above ensemble where I cracked a smile was with Mr. Polka Dot, who has some unexpected mommy issues. Gunn must have known this was a genuinely funny bit, so he repeated the same gag two more times. Sorry pal, that's not how jokes work.

Their job is to sneak into the nation of Corto Maltese, a horribly outdated depiction of South American countries, and destroy any trace of "Project Starfish." Spoiler alert, the project is actually a giant alien starfish (who attacks its victims like the Facehugger in "Alien," but I'm getting ahead of myself). It's easy to spot the influence of American war films, but unlike a great work like 1987's "Predator," which blended military action stereotypes with humor and aliens, "The Suicide Squad" gets distracted by far too many characters who come with their own baggage of subplots- there's just too much going on. That starfish at one point breaks loose, causing havoc as it wonders why it's even here.

If the script is so full of shenanigans, why is it a war movie? And if its a war movie, why does it have superheroes? It doesn't spoof either genre, and never benefits from shoehorning them into the story. I'm sure this is all based on some comic and fans will no doubt eat every onscreen minute up, but when I see an awkward hodgepodge of half-baked concepts, I call it.

Oh I almost forgot: Sylvester Stallone voices "Nanaue," or "King Shark" as he's known. He's inappropriately toyetic in such an R-rated feature, sporting cute little eyes that cancel out his giant, flesh-tearing teeth. But the stunt casting of Sly is inherently funny, and it would be unprofessional for me not to mention him. Why? Easy, he's the best part of last two or so hours I just spent on my couch.

Fear Street Part One: 1994 Review

Nostalgia is a powerhouse today, with all forms of electronic entertainment graverobbing our memories of years past, both the good and the bad. The horror genre in particular is victim to this, due to their usually cheap budgets and lingering eye for the distasteful. Gore and nudity are all cheap thrills, throw in some other clichés and bam, you have a movie. Or at least that's what the folks at Netflix think with their latest streaming experiment, "Fear Street." A trilogy of loosely related films, the digital entertainment platform is releasing one film every week this month, a sort of halfway point between movies and series.

I think it's brilliant: no longer are films something you normally watch in the theaters; now the only thing differentiating the two mediums is their runtime. From Netflix to Hollywood: "checkmate."

This first entry, dubbed appropriately "Part One: 1994," takes place in the haunted town of Shadyside, where a witch mix with a masked killer at a camp, a knife-wielding kid in a skull costume and more. From what I gathered about the next two episodes, they all are based in this sad little city, with grumpy prepubescents, a small police department and a high school rivalry with the neighboring academy. It all makes for a bit too derivative blend of the usual tropes, filled with swearing, bloodshed and yes, even teenage sex. Wouldn't be trash without the sex.

But what saves this initial pic is its consistent acting and the little touches that set it apart from all the "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" knockoffs. Oh sure, there is the obligatory hospital slaying, the friend who always knows what's going on, the skeptic sheriff, among many other standard slasher film stereotypes, but there is also a solid story about accepting who you are, the power of friendship and love. I get it, the genre really has seen a lot of duds since the seventies and eighties, but when I can walk away not feeling like I spent two hours yelling at the screen "... don't go in there," it deserves special mention.

Kiana Madeira plays Deena, your typical hormonal teenager who's mad at the world and especially her ex Sam, played Olivia Scott Welch who's moved to the richer community down the road. Their relationship feels more real than this type of film really demands, two terrific actresses who not only have believable chemistry but also capture that feeling all minors have where the world "doesn't understand them." After some generic hooliganism at a football game, Sam's new boyfriend's car crashes into the burial of the Sarah Fier (scary name, screenwriters), who put a curse on the land just before being executed for witchcraft. A few drops of blood from the wreckage later, and, well, let's just say that the deceased don't like being waken up anymore than a juvenile does on a Monday morning.

That's enough of the plot, nobody puts on a movie called "Fear Street" expecting Oscar-nominee material: you want bare skin and slaughtering, and you want it exploitative and you want it now. In that front, the film delivers the goods. It does shy away from actual nudity, but who knows? Maybe that's what the sequels are for.

The Tomorrow War Review

Chris Pratt brings warmth and charisma to "The Tomorrow War," Amazon Prime's very violent celebration of 4th of July weekend. It's a cocktail of various other movies, most of them better, or at least benefitting from nostalgia, retelling so many familiar elements as one loud, long, and bombastic extravaganza that throws everything it can think of at the screen and hopes something sticks. Whether or not anything sticks depends on if you have any suspension of disbelief or alcohol on hand.

Pratt plays Dan, a former solider turned teacher drafted into a future war with a deadly alien race, where us humans are dying, a lot, and in very unpleasant ways. Take for example when we first see the battlefield in Miami Florida. "You'll drop five to ten feet from the air" claims a lieutenant as we see a batch of fresh recruits being briefed about the situation. But a computer glitch interrupts the loosely defined mechanics of time-travel, and the soldiers are dropped from hundreds of feet in the air, and we watch bodies crash to their doom against the edge of buildings: this is before we see any creature-on-person action!

When the space beasts do come into play, they have all the usual sci-fi trappings, depicted as organized but brainless, who's sole mission in life is to protect the "queen" and to eat. They don't think, and they're not afraid to die, but to the film's credit, they at least don't look that much like the Xenomorph.

Now look, I'm all for a good monster movie. Actually, it doesn't have to be any good, just show me the good stuff, you know blood and the likes, and although the PG-13 rating here doesn't allow for the camera to dwell on such gore, it does tackle some surprisingly heavy issues, like divorce, fate, and the horrors of war.

That last one is the most interesting thing here; the occasionally witty script from Zach Dean and a fun performances from Sam Richardson as Charlie and J.K. Simmons as Dan's dad poke holes at the plot's center of military pride. It unfortunately steers clear of satire, but its presence give "The Tomorrow War" an off-kilter sense of humor that elevates it from what could have been an excessively stylized exercise in how to spend millions of dollars on special effects (I'm looking at you, "Army of the Dead"). In fact, the whole endeavor feels more like something closer to the work of Roland Emmerich, like a long-lost bastard-child of 1996's "Independence Day," with "The Thing," "Aliens," "Starship Troopers," "Back to the Future," and oh so many others thrown in for a little color.

To its credit, the action is kinetic and easy to see, and Chris Pratt continues to look good onscreen. And the pacing strings you up and down; I counted no less than three times where I thought "OK this is the end," only for more to happen.

Not to its credit however, all this includes a lot of dumb things, like how the film partly takes place in 2022 but looks exactly like 2021. Why bother? Here's another one: a point is made to show that no single army anymore but all the nation's combined, so then why does everyone speak English? Let's keep going... why do all the soldiers have weapons that barely pierce the enemy's skin? Why can a character bring back things to the past, to change the future, without creating some sort of paradox? These are questions the film doesn't answer but it never even bothers to ask, instead settling for a bunch of things that explode "real good." And on my paltry home-theater set up, I can confirm that yes, they did explode real good.

Dynasty Warriors (film) Review

Kids have it easy when it comes to entertainment; they don't challenge what's happening onscreen, question character motivations and are more than satisfied with the incompetent. And if an adult can somehow channel that mindset for just two hours, then they'll have one helluva time with "Dynasty Warriors," based on the popular video game. I know I did.

... But I didn't start out that way. For the first, oh I dunno, fifteen minutes or so, I paid attention. I tried to remember the names of people and places as they were spoken and appeared in localized subtitles. Then something happened, something came over me. It was my childhood. This innocence allowed my normally critical eye to succumb it its exaggerated excess, where people in elaborate costumes and makeup leap dozens of feet in the air while battling with preposterous swords. Where every important character rides horses and trees can be chopped down by lightning summoned from the evil Lu Bu (Louis Koo). Somehow though this gets even more ridiculous, but I won't spoil it for you. I sat on my couch with pure wonder and awe, sucked in perhaps by my subconscious lust for my own youth.

Or maybe it's the film's pacing, which is rarely boring. Or was it the decorated set pieces, with not an extra out of place. Or was it its unflinching dedication to style, where thousands of (probably CGI) armies clash with the occasional spurt of blood as the camera pans left, only to suddenly swoop right, then cut to a bizarre angle, then its back to battle. No wait, that's not it at all.

Where "Dynasty Warriors" succeeds is that it's fun, plain and simple. It's simultaneously complicated and not, a common war tale of royalty, revenge, and devotion, but also one filled with betrayal, corruption and fate. Just don't think that much about it. Nuance is forsaken, any substance beneath its polished exterior of violence ignored in favor of professional purity. It's a sense of enjoyment in its most basic form, filmmaking distilled into uncontaminated amusement for all your eyes and ears, just not your brain. The flick not only expects but demands that you put blinders on to logic and just hang on for the ride.

Its actual plot is inconsequential- I mean, how could they summarize a franchise with nine mainline entries (eight if you live in Japan, it's... complicated), not to mention all the spinoffs, which have their own sequels. At least, that is if my cursory knowledge of the brand isn't failing me, but I digress. 

But how can I recommend this movie; three and a half stars, what's happening?! But then again why can't I? At the end of the day (or er, well film), I knew I had spent my time wisely. I chortled at the chubby Zhang Fei (Justin Cheung), who's paunch never got in the way of his blade. And during during a climatic moment where he, alongside his friends Liu Bei (Tony Yang) and Guan Yu (Han Geng) combat their aforementioned antagonist down a river, I caught myself mesmerized in the awful special effects, the moment where I let go of any remaining hesitation I had, to fully commit myself to living in its world of absolute absurdity.

The Ice Road Review

Liam Neeson takes on his most ridiculous mission to-date: ice road trucking. If you can still believe the sight of the now 69 year old Irish actor beating up men a third his age, then Netflix has the movie for you. His latest picture, "The Ice Road" belongs to a relatively forgotten genre, the goofy disaster action thriller. It calls to mind 2018's "The Hurricane Heist" more so than any legitimate piece of cinema, with a dopey plot, hokey CGI and sense of misguided fun that makes for an easily-digestible sandwich of aged masculinity with plenty of cheese.

Playing Mike McCann, Neeson is a skilled man but can't hold down a stable job, no small part to being the primary care-giver of his skilled mechanic but disabled veteran brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas). When a diamond mine collapses in Winnipeg, Canada, they answer the call to help transport wellheads across the titular and deadly "ice road." What's in it for them? An equal split of $200,000, which he's hoping is enough for a down payment of their very own rig. 

Leading the relatively small cast of secondary characters is Jim, played with usual conviction by Laurence Fishburne, who'll be taking his own semi. With Mike and Gurty in another, this leaves fellow Tantoo (Amber Midthunder) to drive with the tropey corporate "insurance" man (Benjamin Walker). It doesn't take a film scholar to figure out what's going to happen here (the movie's preview trailer doesn't help either).

But that's enough of the formalities; what you need to do is ask yourself two questions: A) can you suspend your disbelief and B) do you like Liam Neeson? If the answered "yes" to both then, OK, quit reading this review, and enjoy the show. If you answered "no" to either or (gasp) both, then well, you can stop too. Only difference is that you will miss out on the hilarious spectacle that is watching the Academy Award winner actor hauling a big rig. The dialogue plays all the stupidity relatively straight, but it can't hide the fact that this is an inherently silly exercise of filmmaking excess. Writer/director Jonathan Hensleigh, who's credits include 1995's equally preposterous "Die Hard with a Vengeance," among many other bombastic pictures, does stage the action with relative finesse. The practical effects are pleasing to the eyes, but are stitched together with unconvincing computer-generated moments, but they only add to its cockeyed charm. And the commitment by the cast is venerable, never acknowledging that they're in a B-movie. All this suggests that everyone involved thought bigger than their seemingly modest budget allowed; slash away a few more millions, film with less famous individuals and you'd have something that could have debuted on cable.

If it sounds like I'm defending this, it's because I am. But I'm struggling to defend the fact that I'm defending it. The "Taken" actor remains stoic as always, and it's just so amusing to see the new and increasingly wacky ways Hollywood keeps coming up with to show Liam in action. The pacing is snappy and there is nary a dull moment; in fact, there were at least two times where I thought "this is it, this is the end," only for something else to happen! It lures you in with its absurdity, lowering your expectations only for it to pull a surprise out of its trucker hat. And by being filmed on location, the cinematography by Tom Stern is sometimes quite beautiful. This barren snowscape helps create a feeling of isolation, as we watch our heroes (and villains) struggle to survive among the elements.

But then I remember that this is a Liam Neeson movie, where he drives an 18-wheeler with a Hawaiian girl dashboard doll.