Normal Review

My favorite moments in the black comedy action thriller "Normal" are the, admittedly rare, quiet ones, where quirky characters do or say odd things that simultaneously feel expected and unexpected. There's a little yarn shop run by a little old lady (who keeps tabs on the sheriff with her combination police scanner/CB radio), but a highlight for me is early on, when a dorky deputy, played by Billy MacLellan, walks into his provisional boss' office and whispers something to the tune of "I don't know if I should be telling you this, but we have, like, the same mustache."

Bob Odenkirk stars as Ulysses, the interim sheriff of the snowy little town of Normal, Minnesota, on week one of eight until the full-time sheriff is elected. What happened to the previous one? Found dead, frozen outside in the middle of the night, fishing rod in his hand. Smells, ahem, fishy.

Trying to get over the demons of a shooting at his last job, Ulysses takes this temp job with the hope of leaving the town the same as he found it, as he puts it, staying at the only motel in town. He orders Chinese food from the only Chinese restaurant in town, and drinks at what's probably the only bar in town too. In case you haven't guessed it, it's a really, really small town.

But Ulysses begins to suspect something is afoot in this idyllic place, and he's right. He doesn't do anything about it, of course, that is, until one day there's a robbery at the bank. Two crooks, a couple played by Reena Jolly Lori and Brendan Fletcher, are in way over their heads as guards accidentally shoot each other, a bystander has a heart attack, and so on. Ulysses decides to go in to try and cool things down, to negotiate you might say, but the other two policemen there, well, let's just say they have other plans. The mayor (played delightfully by Henry Winkler) orders them to shoot their stopgap sheriff and the robbers, fearing they might find out about the vault. Good thing for Ulysses that the other cops are such bad shots.

What's in the vault? Tons of money, gold bars, military-grade weapons, the works. The contents belong to the Yakuza, who we find have paid off everyone in town, from store owners to politicians. Their money has helped keep this 1950's town thriving in the year 2026, despite the continuous beat of time. Ulysses teams up with the two burglars, blowing up everyone who stands in their way, like a crooked parody of John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13." Like that film, the mayhem is pleasantly free of any obvious CGI. In fact, the only thing that I noticed was a moose, which the mayor is obsessed with.

At just ninety minutes in length, the film feels longer than it actually is, neither ending where you expect nor with satisfying results. The relatively listless direction from Ben Wheatley is at the mercy of Derek Kolstad's sometimes funny script, but the end-result isn't able to sustain this blend of violence and humor the way the superior Liam Neeson vehicle "Cold Pursuit" could. The jokes here feel achieved almost as if by accident, and the infrequent action is bloody enough to be distracting but not vulgar enough to work as satire against the peaceful municipality.

The story paints itself into a corner about two-thirds of the way through, forcing characters to act in a way that only serves to wrap things up. The ending, which I won't spoil, only makes sense if no one, that's both you and the characters, never stop to think about it. And that's a shame: these characters are all interesting enough that I began to grow kinda fond of them, only for the whole production to cheat the relationship I build with these wacky people by having them form alliances they didn't earn. And of course, keeping things open just enough for a possible sequel.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy Review

If anything, writer/director Lee Cronin having his name above the title in "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" makes this one easier to reference, as there's been, by my count, four other films just called "The Mummy." In fact, it's been almost ten years since the last one, the shared universe non-starter starring Tom Cruise that I am probably the only one who enjoyed. This latest attempt narrows the scope to a few locations, no big actors and an emphasis on horror, which makes sense considering Lee's filmography. Problem is, he hasn't made a mummy movie: he's made "The Exorcist" with sand.

The film follows the Cannon family, with parents Charlie (Jack Reynor) and the expecting Larissa (Laia Costa) raising their two kids, Katie (Emily Mitchell & Natalie Grace) and Sebastián (Dean Allen Williams & Shylo Molina) in Egypt. Charlie works as a TV reporter and Larissa a nurse, but the two are hoping that he gets that job in New York. He does, spoiler alert, but while he's on the phone getting the good news, little Katie is being groomed by a cloaked woman (Hayat Kamille). She's apparently been ploying her with candy, but today, she offers her a tangerine, but Katie's apparently never seen "Snow White" and accepts the fruit. An insect hops out, goes into her mouth, and by the time Charlie notices she's not inside, she's gone. Ah yes, the old cliche of showing a kid in danger as a cheap ploy to evoke emotions. Classy.

The woman is able to kidnap her, some plot happens, and now we flash forward eight years. The family now lives in New Mexico with Larissa's mom (Verónica Falcón), the couple now having another child, played by Billie Roy. By the way, her name is Maud- must be big Bea Arthur fans.

Then one day, the family gets a call, their missing daughter has been found. And she's alive! But it is the strangest thing: she was only discovered back in Egypt, found among the wreckage of a plane crash, wrapped up in cloth inside a sarcophagus. She looks, well, exactly how you'd expect. The doctors explain the lack of sun exposure, etc., are the cause behind her wrinkled, twisted appearance. Yes totally, being trapped in a box for almost a decade without food or water, no need to investigate. All her vitals are fine too, which is odd considering tradition insists the brains are removed during the mummification process. This must have been one of those "budget mummifications" I see advertised on late night TV.

The hospital sends her home almost immediately, saying that time with the family is just what the doctor ordered. This infuriated me to no end: there should be everyone from NASA to the scientists at the end of "ET" there, quarantining her and running every test in the book. And here I thought the American healthcare system was crap.

Back at home in the states, things clearly are not right with Katie. At first, the family holds out hope, but then strange things start to happen. She escapes into the walls of the house, crawling like a possessed monster, before eating a scorpion. Then soon after, the mom, trying to clip her toenails, ends up peeling off a strip of her leg skin. She bursts out and is found stabbing the wound with a fireplace poker. And these people still decide to keep her here! Well, the mom does at least: Charlie expresses concern about his newfound daughter, but Larissa takes this as a slight at her ability as a mom, leading us to a mild detour into marriage discord, just what every horror film needs.

Things escalate with possession of the other two kids, wolves that stalk the house outside, something that crawls on the ceiling, floating bodies, VHS found-footage, a cult and at least one person being flung out a window to their death. Lee goes all in with style, overwhelming us with slime but never able to actually scare us. I saw "Lee Cronin's The Mummy" in a mildly populated theater, and I heard one "gasp" one time. The yelp was not from me, who stared at the screen in bored silence on my fully-reclined leather chair. And as I did, I found myself appreciating his technique as a director, but lamenting his inability as a writer.

Thrash Review

It's "Shark Week" this week on "So I Went to the Movies," but sadly Netflix's latest, "Thrash," is a pretty unsatisfying way to kick off summer. Maybe it's because it's still April- yeah that's it, Hollywood is saving the good stuff for when sunscreen season officially begins. Let's forget this one and check back in June. Please?

Oh I couldn't do that to you. So what's "Thrash" about? Picture it, South Carolina, present day. The fictional town of Annieville is besieged by a category five hurricane, and the government orders the entire place to evacuate. The once dry land quickly becomes flooded, bringing along some very hungry hungry sharks. So yeah, it's the exact same premise as 2019's "Crawl," trading violent reptiles for violent fish, as well as some of the minor details, and while I did like that creature feature, "Thrash" suffers from the comparison.

Whitney Peak stars as Dakota, a young woman tormented by panic attacks whenever she leaves her house after the offscreen death of her parents. Her uncle Dale (Djimon Hounsou), a marine biologist, because of course he is, promises to pick her up since he knows she can't (and doesn't) skip town to safety. She is content with just chilling in her home, feeling sad for herself, probably trying to think of a way to get out of leaving once her uncle shows up. 

But wait, there's more! Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), a single pregnant woman, is driving home from work as she complains to her mom over video call that her boss made everyone come in today. (Vehicular video calls are illegal in SC, the interwebs tell me, but I digress.) But soon she crashes into a tree, trapping her inside with the water slooooooowly rising. She works at the local meat packing plant, and by pure movie-magic coincidence, a tanker truck from her company carrying, um, liquid meat product, is carried away and splits open, leaking blood everywhere. I don't know if that's actually how meat is moved across the country (I hope not), but then again, it's been a long time since I read The Jungle.

Now obviously, the blood will draw sharks, everyone knows that, but why bother having her work at the slaughterhouse? I kept waiting for some type of satire on the corporate exploitation of its workers, but no, the evil mammal flesh place just exists to, ahem, make sure the plot swims along.

Also under fishy assault are a trio of siblings, whose foster parents (Matt Nable and Amy Mathews) also refuse to leave the aquatic salvo. They are a pair of generally unpleasant folks, hicks who swear at the three youngsters while drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, hoarding steaks in the basement while feeding the children white bread. I guess the adults don't need bread- you know what I'm thinking too much into this.

And with that, we see the film's biggest failings: we have way too many characters, some of whose stories never intersect, and you don't need to be a genre veteran to tell who was going to be shark food and who was going to live. The characterizations are as shallow as the water the sharks are swimming. Compare Dale to another film marine biologist, Hooper from "Jaws." I'm not implying Richard Dreyfuss is a better actor than Djimon, but the abundance of these kinds of pictures means everyone knows something about sharks. This renders Dale's monologues about the animals boring and unnecessary; anyone who's ever watched a single episode of "Shark Week" knows everything the film knows, and clearly doesn't know, about these ancient animals.

But what about the violence? If a monster movie isn't going to bother much with populating its world with interesting people, then all that's left are the attacks. "Thrash" comes up short here. Some of it comes with the territory: because sharks don't go on land, a lot of the attacks are underwater, so you see some splashes, red water, and yelling. Writer/director Tommy Wirkola does give us one nice kill, where you see a head bit in half, but with a story this stale, you really need some more of that kind of sick creativity.

That's to say nothing of the wonkiness of the special effects. Some shots of the water crashing through the levee look real, but many others look painfully like wet actors standing around in a cold pool. The rest? Like the sharks, clearly CGI. I hate to say it, but "Thrash" is trash.