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.

Infinite Review

There's a lot of expectations for movies today. People want bigger universes. Better stories. Smarter writing, the works. But it's a lie. We as humans are sometimes completely satisfied with "mediocre." And that's what the Paramount+ original "Infinite" is. I counted three good scenes and two bad ones- not a bad average for a direct-to-streaming science fiction action flick.

The remainder are boilerplate exposition and boring retreads, but hey, it wasn't like I had anything else to do that night I sat on my couch and pressed "play."

Surprisingly absolutely no one, all the best parts involve car chases, guns and hand-to-hand combat, and director Antoine Fuqua proves once again that he knows how to handle not only the actors but the special effects. They're not all that special themselves, but I could tell who was firing at who and who was tailing who; now that's special.

Mark Wahlberg plays Evan, one of the titular "infinites," who currently can barely pay his bills or even get a job (though he obviously somehow pays for a gym membership). He's also an addict, who forges samurai swords in exchange for his pills. A deal goes wrong, he's arrested, but that sword! That's all it takes for the fellow infinites to find him, both the bad guy Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and fellow hero Nora (Sophie Cookson), who busts him out the police station.

Though what the infinites can and can't do is only mildly defined, but a few new abilities are wisely shown over the course of its zippy runtime, allowing for new plot developments and ways to show people in danger. When Evan is hanging onto a plane by nothing but one of his blades of steel, he's able to become unaffected by gravity and walk without issue as the machine roars through the sky. Of course only moments later, he suddenly forgets this power and is bounced about the hull as the aircraft is crashing down. Inconsistencies add a sort of goofy sense of fun to what is otherwise an overly serious series of insignificant stunts.

We travel from set piece to set piece, all an excuse for bullets to fly and people to die. But won't they just be reborn? Bathurst's got that covered; using this special bullet, he's able to trap the "soul" of someone in a computer chip, blocking any and all reawakening. This adds a real threat to our protagonists, something that equally middling works like "The Old Guard" failed to accomplish.

Now I'm not going to herald any of this as particularly original, because it's not. But what is notable is the antagonist's wish: he is simply tired of being reincarnated. No monetary motivation, no plan to dominate the world- he just is done with it all. His honest demands are refreshing in a cinematic marketplace filled with stereotypical incentives of, in Dr. Evil air quotes, money and power. Why doesn't he just shoot himself with one of these unique rounds and save us all the trouble? Hey, I already said there were plot holes.

Of the "bad scenes," they all contain one crucial one thing: dodgy CGI. During that aforesaid jet scene where Wahlberg, or at least his stuntman sprawled out across on a greenscreen, hangs on tight. It's frantically cut to the point of distraction, with a body that moves inorganically like a bad video game.

But that's enough of the negative, because the good stuff is pretty decent. Take when Even is busted out of the precinct, early on, which leads to a vehicular pursuit inside the building. For all I could tell, there were real cars in a real building breaking through real walls and real furniture. Is it thrilling? Not exactly, but it kept me from looking at my phone, which is the real enemy of today's home entertainment.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Review

Somewhere during the latest "The Conjuring" movie, subtitled "The Devil Made Me Do It," I realized a pattern: the only time something jumped into view of the camera was when someone was somewhere they shouldn't be, like in a bedroom by themselves or when mopping the jail floor. You hear the music stops, and characters look around, telling us the audience to hold onto your bucket of popcorn so you don't spill it in fright. 

Once you identify this pattern, you can never really be scared. This hold true for a lot of horror flicks, but the best ones play you like an instrument, your heartrate going up and down; whether or not there is any "scare" is A) subjective and B) never really the point, it is all about sucking you into the world created by the movie. Alas, this is not one of those movies.

Instead, "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It" is two hours of things that go "boo" a lot, and it's a shame. An adaptation of the Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, something I'd never heard of until now, we follow Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively), who are helping with an exorcism of young David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), when the demon leaves the kid's body and sets up shop in Arne, who invited the evil in to save the little boy. Only Ed witnesses what happened, but suffers a major heart attack, giving the now possessed Arne time to kill his and his girlfriend (Sarah Catherine Hook)'s landlord.

The husband and wife team persuade Arne's attorney to plead, ah hem, "the devil made him do it," but need to figure out the why, what, and how of the prosecuted's possessed problem. This leads to a series of stereotypical spooky locations like basements and forests where creepy artifacts cause our leads to gasp at the camera.

I won't spoil the rest of the narrative, because I imagine that fans of this successful franchise live for the "surprise." Only it isn't very surprising, and certainly isn't very scary. But who am I? I am someone looking for a movie to take my breath away with relentless thrills and to haunt me with something more than the sight of men of the cloth shouting the bible at contorting bodies.

I suspect the problem with me even reviewing this is it's optional home release; available in theaters and on HBO Max, I chose the latter. My viewing area can never be as dark as at the cinemas, and without a packed crowd to holler in terror, it removes something vital from it. Alas I can only critique the version I watched, and that's not fair for this latest "Conjuring" entry.

Army of the Dead Review

Maybe I have seen too many movies. Perhaps too many of those were filled with gruesome images. Then, just perhaps, I have become desensitized to violence. Netflix's newest release, a zombie heist thriller by director and co-writer Zack Snyder, has so many shots of people getting torn apart, bones piercing skin, exploding heads, the works. Yet my eyes watched with zero remorse, unaffected by the carnage. And by the time I stood up from my couch, I was unfazed. I could see what the picture was aiming for, but I am sorry Zack, you are no George A. Romero.

Things start promisingly enough. After Las Vegas is overrun by the undead, it is locked off by the government. We see TVs in the background explaining the controversy behind the military's intent to nuke the city on the 4th of July, and it is on these TV's where any satire come into play. Is there anything more American than nuclear weapons and explosions?

Dave Bautista plays Scott, our main hero who's suffering from the trauma of having to shoot his wife in front of their daughter Kate (Ella Purnell) once she's turned. A mercenary who helped people escape the initial infection, he's now flipping burgers. He also still working out, since his body is leaner than the meat he's grilling. Anyway, that is until a man named Tanaka, played by Hiroyuki Sanada, walks into the restaurant. Why did the billionaire walk into the diner? Obviously because he wants to steal from himself.

In his Vegas casino sits a vault with 200 million dollars. Fifty of it is Scott's, if he can break in, get the dough, and get out before the US sends out its dangerous fireworks. Tanaka's already been reimbursed by the insurance company, so it's "dead money," ripe for the taking. If you've ever seen any heist film since the inception of cinema, well, then you know the drill.

Anyway, after the obligatory scenes where Scott forms his team, from helicopter pilot (Tig Notaro) to safecracker (Matthias Schweghofer); this means that it takes a solid forty minutes before we get any real zombie action. The dialogue is blunt and only occasionally pithy, but it's hardly revolutionary. Most in the merry band of money misfits shows humanity at their worst, blinded by the all-mighty dollar, with the only real moments of honesty are by our bulging hunk of man muscle Mr. Bautista. He continues to be better than the material he's served in Hollywood.

There are a few other subplots, including the shady Martin (Garret Dillahunt), right-hand-man of Tanaka, who's acts so disingenuously that he might as well have just introduced himself with a "hello I can't be trusted," and Scott's kid Kate, who's friend got lost in the quarantine city. These moments don't end in surprise, and pad out what I anticipated to be a tight-knitted movie into this bloated, almost three hour long undead epic; one that feels decidedly less grandiose once you realize they just end up riffing James Cameron's "Aliens."

A few decent ideas can be found, such as the almost romanticized ghouls (who appear to breed and are apparently monogamous) and the concept of infected animals (including no less than a tiger and a horse), but they go unrealized. Do they conceive the same way as humans? How to they attract potential mates? Why do undead critters obey undead humans instead of just tearing them apart? Why aren't there any monster cockroaches or any other creatures running around?

Maybe Snyder wants us the audience to think about those things until the already announced prequel and animated TV show drop? Or, maybe, he just didn't really think this whole thing out.