This film has one very cool visual effect and a fun noir comic-book style (even though it was based on a video game), but the story is a mess. Rather than trying to find the logic in the violence, it sees the two as equivalent, so whenever the plot starts to go off the track, the filmmakers simply toss in some more mayhem. Mark Wahlberg plays Max, a cop tortured by the reality that one of the men who killed his wife and baby is still at large. Mila Kunis plays Mona Sax, the gun-toting sister of a woman hacked to pieces in an alley not far from Max’s apartment. The deaths are related, of course, and lead Max to a shadowy group of people who sport wing-like tattoos as protection against a terrible evil. Or something like that. Cue the machine guns.
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This film has one very cool visual effect and a fun noir comic-book style (even though it was based on a video game), but the story is a mess. Rather than trying to find the logic in the violence, it sees the two as equivalent, so whenever the plot starts to go off the track, the filmmakers simply toss in some more mayhem. Mark Wahlberg plays Max, a cop tortured by the reality that one of the men who killed his wife and baby is still at large. Mila Kunis plays Mona Sax, the gun-toting sister of a woman hacked to pieces in an alley not far from Max’s apartment. The deaths are related, of course, and lead Max to a shadowy group of people who sport wing-like tattoos as protection against a terrible evil. Or something like that. Cue the machine guns.
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++++ Outstanding crime thriller about a successful bank heist and its bloody aftermath (not that the heist itself wasn't bloody enough) as the three robbers try to make good their getaway. Doc, the engaging leader of the gang, is cool, smart, suave, resourceful, and ruthless; everyone likes him (likability is his stock in trade). And yet, through some marvelous sleight of hand, Thompson keeps him at arm's length, turning him neither into hero nor anti-hero, positioning him instead for his highly unusual fate, detailed in an ending that segues into near-fantasy and is both horrific and hilarious. Fast-paced, written with confidence, verve, and humor, and hardboiled as hell. Filmed twice, once in 1972 with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, then again in 1994, with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. Note: The naval cap worn by the man in the cover painting and anything it might conceivably imply has no relevance whatsoever to this story. ++1/2 Science fiction classic, loosely based on the H. G. Wells novel, about an invasion of Earth from Mars plays better in the memory than on the screen, where we can hack it down to the select few scenes that are its bread and butter. Most of these scenes occur during the first third, when the action is localized to a small California town and the characters still seem to matter. Haskin, however, taking the title too literally, wants to tell a much broader story, evidently believing that mankind's peril will be ours. Of course, it doesn't really work that way, and as the images dance between Washington, D.C., and stock footage of calamity around the world, our titular heroes are reduced to searching for each other in churches throughout Los Angeles. But those early scenes, menacing and mysterious, are indeed good, and the Martian ships never lose their appeal: it’s fun watching them blast humanity to smithereens. With Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, and Lewis Martin as a pastor who doesn't quite make it through the valley of death. Wells' book was also adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2005. ++ Badly directed story of preposterous serial killer (Keanu Reeves) who murders women for no discernible reason other than to feed his incomprehensible obsession with his favorite detective (James Spader). To make things more interesting, Reeves begins sending Spader photos of his intended victims, giving him one day to find them before he strikes. The "time-bomb" antics occasionally work, but Charbanic is always ready with another slo-mo, herky-jerky flashback to put a stop to that. Good cast wasted all around. Also with Ernie Hudson and Marisa Tomei. +++1/2 "Before The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, there was The Case Against Satan." This is from the blurb on the back of Penguin's 2015 edition of Russell's first novel. It is, for once, an excellent selling point. It's about a Catholic priest, newly assigned to a small-town parish, who discovers that the teenage daughter of a widower may be possessed -- by Satan himself. The evidence for possession is compelling, yet Gregory is a modern priest with contemporary ideas on psychiatry, so for him the case against is equally persuasive. At first. Other than its leap directly to Lucifer, the book has little in common with Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby; on the other hand, if one didn't know better (and, frankly, one doesn't), one would be tempted to say that William Peter Blatty was quite familiar with this book when he wrote his own story of possession, The Exorcist. The parallels are extensive and fascinating, including the scenes of the exorcism itself. That said, while the two books have much in common, they are very different works. To be clear, this is no Exorcist, but horror fans of the latter should be delighted by this earlier book on the same theme, which is just as serious if not as deep and really almost as explicit -- Russell doesn't pull his punches. ++1/2 You know that the Bond movies are all about the Bond movies when they start building stories around actors playing secondary characters. This one is a send off for Judi Dench, who took over the role of M with Goldeneye. M, of course, is James Bond's boss. M is the person who sends Bond off on all his adventures. M is not 007. Yet here she is, the target of her own government (who think maybe she's too antiquated for her job) and a maniac with a personal grudge. Add to that a plot that sees Bond (Daniel Craig) returning to his family home (a dark topic he refuses to discuss) and the (re)discovery of Q and Miss Moneypenny, and what you get is not so much a Bond movie as a Bond family soap opera. Javier Bardem plays the madman, Silva, and his performance is creepy enough, but the character's a chump. Director Mendes is convinced he is one of the great Bond villains. A great Bond villain, however, doesn't whine about doing his job or others doing theirs, and he sure as hell isn't consumed by mommy issues. Silva is supposed to be a cyberterrorist, but we must take that on faith. All we know for sure is that he's a spoiled brat who got his butt spanked long ago and isn't ever going to forget it. Some villain. The movie is best, by far, in its first half, when Bond, shot and presumed dead during the opening, later learns that MI6 has been destroyed and battles back into shape to take on the psycho responsible for that. One fight scene is imaginatively shot in a high rise office building in Shanghai against the backdrop of one of those giant Asian electronic advertising screens. Bond's big break comes when he speaks to Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe), the maniac's mistress. It may be the best scene in the film: dark, quiet, and humming with tension. But the second half is a drag, one that plays up the film's confusion over point of view. Is the story about Bond, M, or Silva? You get to take your pick. Which isn't the way a "Bond movie" should work. + Remake of Meir Zarchi's brainless ode to torture is slicker and in some ways sicker than the original. The basic story remains the same: young woman (Sarah Butler) goes to backwoods house to write a book and is set upon by a group of violent opportunistic rapists who live to regret their unsociable behavior as she picks them off one by one in revenge. The big difference here is the weird way in which our heroine begins to channel Torquemada as she creates one elaborate torture device after another to exact her retribution, becoming in the process even more depraved than her attackers. (Ms. 45 would have kissed a bullet just for this chick.) So, once again, the woman loses, and Zarchi (co-producer here) who says he once rescued a rape victim in real life, metaphorically slaps her around a little more. Followed by several sequels. ++1/2 Significant for spawning the lesbian pulp genre, important for its authentic depiction of lesbians (the novel is based on the author's experiences as a member of De Gaulle's London-based Free French Forces during World War II), but, for all that, a rather banal and depressing read. Told by a fly-on-the-wall narrator, it is about the women of a Free French barracks, each of whom is seeking her own version of love and acceptance. Yes, there's a war going on and, yes, these are patriotic women, but as Torrès points out, until the Normandy Invasion, which doesn't occur until the very end of the book, it was often difficult for the women to feel that they were actively engaged in the war effort, despite the military discipline and largely because of their routine administrative jobs. That left them to the cultivation of their social lives, which, rampant same-sex liaisons notwithstanding, come off as messy and dull. It didn't have to be this way, but Torrès, alas, is much better at writing about emotional characters than writing emotional prose, and her ideas are hardly revelatory. Too much memoir and too little fiction, we are left with character sketches that tantalize yet never fully materialize. One of the big takeaways here is that this book that was published as pulp in America but not written as pulp is lesbian pulp through and through: do not expect a happy ending. Reprinted in the early aughts by the Feminist Press, with amusingly hypocritical reference to the book's bestseller status, when, of course, the vast majority of those millions of copies sold were bought by men seeking this new brand of titillation. ++ When their little girl is abducted by malevolent spirits, the Bowen family turns to paranormal investigators to help get her back. Remake of the 1982 Steven Spielberg production manages to follow its central storyline nearly to the end, but falls short of the original in almost every other way. Much of the movie is composed of variations on scenes and ideas from the earlier film, and while some of them work, others do not. Most noticeable is the absence not of the mother's fear but of her wonder and delight for the spirit world that made the other so unique. One original idea -- that of turning the little girl's frightened brother into a hero -- simply smacks of pandering. Relentlessly updated and modernized, with flat screen TVs, cell phones, and one of those remote controlled toy drones; regrettably, diminutive medium Zelda Rubinstein is given the same treatment, being replaced by the host (Jared Harris) of a supernatural-themed reality TV show. Some of the special effects, particularly in the early going, are very good, though. With, as the Bowen family, Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Saxon Sharbino, Kyle Catlett, and Kennedi Clements. +1/2 Super-serious yet silly religious horror film starring Winona Ryder as a Catholic schoolteacher who moonlights as an exorcist's assistant; she gets the assignment of a lifetime when a possessed mathematician puts her on to the true-crime writer (Ben Chaplin) chosen by Satan to become the antichrist. If Satan were as stupid and weak as movies like this one would have us believe, we'd have no need for God. Poorly written (by Pierce Gardner) and ineptly directed by Kamiński (who, to take but one example, unnecessarily delays a dramatic reveal -- the writer finding proof that he has been marked -- then jump-cuts through it with the speed of an afterthought). Chaplin, however, plays his part well: that is, if the vacancy in his eyes is meant to suggest the emptiness of soul that makes him an attractive target for Satan's usurpation. With a few good, if ultimately pointless, special effects. |
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