Review: Have A Nice Day

Image courtesy of Strand Releasing.

Jian Liu's "Have a Nice Day" led me to believe that its maker has been watching a fair amount of Quentin Tarantino movies. The filmmaker is a few decades late as the period during which others stole from that filmmaker - who himself is a master of homage - reached its peak in the late 1990s.

The film - which features relatively murky animation and an abundance of dingy locales - is a brief and occasionally amusing picture that follows a bag of money that switches hands among a group of criminals - some hardened, others of the novice variety - and leads to a fair amount of bloodshed as it makes the rounds.

As the film opens, a crime boss is threatening a lifelong friend - who is tied up and bloodied - after he finds out that the man has had an affair with his girl. He gets a call that a young man has stolen money from one of his cohorts and sends out a violent thug, who is constantly slurping from a cup, to retrieve it. Into the mix are thrown the thief's girlfriend's sister and her long-haired pal, a man and woman who throw the kid in the back of their jeep and various others.

The paths of these various characters cross and, needless to say, some of those paths end in a brutal manner. And that pretty much sums up "Have a Nice Day," which reminded me slightly of the films of Satoshi Kon - who was responsible for "Perfect Blue" and "Tokyo Godfathers" - in terms of the animation style, although Kon's films tended to be thematically richer than this one.

There are some odd flights of fancy, one of which in particular - a daydream sing-a-long involving two of the characters - doesn't work. It also doesn't help that we know so little about the film's characters, who spend much of their time chasing the money and inflicting violence on others. The picture occasionally includes some peculiar delights - a dog taking a piss on one of the film's many unlikable characters, what appears to be a gigantic Komodo dragon crossing a train track - but on the whole, "Have a Nice Day" is too fleeting (a mere 77 minutes) and in the debt of better films that it is emulating to leave much of an impression.

Review: Hostiles

Image courtesy of Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures.

Scott Cooper's latest film, "Hostiles," is another in a long line of movies about hardened men searching for their souls and his best since 2009's "Crazy Heart." From its opening scene - in which a family is attacked by Comanche warriors, who kill the entire clan, with the exception of the matriarch, Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), who manages to escape - to its flawed lead character, Capt. Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale), who hates Native Americans, Cooper's film bears some similar notes to John Ford's iconic "The Searchers."

If you're going to borrow from a western, it's a good idea to do so from the best. But while the first half of "Hostiles" feels like any number of westerns you might have seen before - a group of men must lead another group of people through hostile territory - the picture eventually evolves into something else entirely that is suspenseful, often visually gorgeous, thoughtful and - to some extent - timely.

Blocker is ordered - much to his chagrin - to lead Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family safely back to his native land in Montana. Yellow Hawk, whom we are told was fairly vicious in his heyday, is now a sick old man. After being imprisoned for seven years, the United States government has worked out a deal to set him free and return him to the home that was taken away from him. But Blocker - whose own vicious streak from the past is mentioned more than once - could care less about the chief's fate and, if you ask his opinion, the old man should rot in jail.

Blocker's team of men is a who's who of great supporting actors - Timothee Chalamet, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons and Jonathan Majors - and the group eventually runs across Rosalie, who has returned to her burned home, where her husband has been scalped and children lie dead under some blankets. She is clearly in shock and alone in the wilderness, so Blocker brings her along for the ride. At first, she is angered by the presence of Yellow Hawk and his family, but eventually begins to warm to the chief's daughter (Q'orianka Kilcher) and that woman's son (Xavier Horsechief).

Stopping off at an isolated post, Blocker is then tasked with taking along a convict (Ben Foster), who had once served with Blocker and Cochrane's Metz, and knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak. But at this point in the journey, it is Foster's character who is the savage, while Blocker and his crew have become more enlightened and depend on Yellow Hawk as much as the chief relies on him.

"Hostiles" is a movie about forgiveness and reckoning with one's own prejudices, but much like "The Searchers," this is thankfully handled with a fair amount of subtlety. Cooper makes great use of the gorgeous vistas and the pained looks of his characters with that scenery as a backdrop. Bale gives a strong performance here, while all of the other actors - especially Cochrane and Studi - provide excellent supporting work.

Cooper's films are about men who wrestle with demons - Jeff Bridges' struggle with alcoholism in "Crazy Heart," economic plight and familial bonds in "Out of the Furnace" and, well, being a cold blooded murderer and trying not to get caught for it in "Black Mass." Blocker joins that company as a man whose anger and hatred had consumed him, only to find that second chances are still possible. It's an engrossing western drama that sneaks up on you and feels like the type of film that - pardon the cliched expression - they rarely make anymore.

Best Movies Of The 21st Century (So Far)

Mulholland Drive. Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

So, I'm a little late to this one. Last year, a number of critics put out lists of their favorite films of the 21st century so far. I missed the boat.

Below, find my list of 100 movies that I believe to be the best that the century has to offer so far. The films are listed in order of the year in which they were released. Feel free to weigh in in the comment section.

* If Twin Peaks: The Return (2017, David Lynch) were considered a movie, it would most surely make this list. Some critics placed it on their 2017 best of the year lists. Technically, it's a TV show, but it deserves some sort of mention here.

Almost Famous (2000, Cameron Crowe)
Beau Travail (2000, Claire Denis)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee)
Requiem for a Dream (2000, Darren Aronofsky)
Traffic (2000, Steven Soderbergh)
You Can Count On Me (2000, Kenneth Lonergan)
Amelie (2001, Jean Pierre Jeunet)
In the Mood for Love (2001, Wong Kar Wai)
Memento (2001, Christopher Nolan)
Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2001, Bela Tarr)
Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze)
Far From Heaven (2002, Todd Haynes)
Gangs of New York (2002, Martin Scorsese)
The Pianist (2002, Roman Polanski)
Talk To Her (2002, Pedro Almodovar)
City of God (2003, Fernando Meiralles)
Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant)
Kill Bill vols. I & II (2003-2004, Quentin Tarantino)
Lost In Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola)
Mystic River (2003, Clint Eastwood)
Bad Education (2004, Pedro Almodovar)
Dogville (2004, Lars Von Trier)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry)
Million Dollar Baby (2004, Clint Eastwood)
Sideways (2004, Alexander Payne)
Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee)
Cache (2005, Michael Haneke)
Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)
A History of Violence (2005, David Cronenberg)
Munich (2005, Steven Spielberg)
Mysterious Skin (2005, Gregg Araki)
The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)
Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron)
The Departed (2006, Martin Scorsese)
Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
Pan's Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo del Toro)
Three Times (2006, Hou Hsiao Hsien)
United 93 (2006, Paul Greengrass)
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, Andrew Dominik)
Eastern Promises (2007, David Cronenberg)
I'm Not There (2007, Todd Haynes)
No Country for Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen)
There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Zodiac (2007, David Fincher)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008, Cristian Mungiu)
Happy Go Lucky (2008, Mike Leigh)
Milk (2008, Gus Van Sant)
Wall-E (2008, Andrew Stanton)
The Wrestler (2008, Darren Aronofsky)
The Hurt Locker (2009, Kathryn Bigelow)
Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)
A Serious Man (2009, Joel and Ethan Coen)
Silent Light (2009, Carlos Reygadas)
The White Ribbon (2009, Michael Haneke)
Another Year (2010, Mike Leigh)
Black Swan (2010, Darren Aronofsky)
Carlos (2010, Olivier Assayas)
The Social Network (2010, David Fincher)
Winter's Bone (2010, Debra Granik)
A Dangerous Method (2001, David Cronenberg)
Drive (2011, Nicolas Winding Refn)
Le Havre (2011, Aki Kaurismaki)
Melancholia (2011, Lars Von Trier)
A Separation (2011, Asghar Farhadi)
Take Shelter (2011, Jeff Nichols)
The Tree of Life (2011, Terrence Malick)
Amour (2012, Michael Haneke)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, Benh Zeitlin)
Django Unchained (2012, Quentin Tarantino)
Holy Motors! (2012, Leos Carax)
The Master (2012, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Kathryn Bigelow)
Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, Abdellatif Kechiche)
Her (2013, Spike Jonze)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Joel and Ethan Coen)
12 Years a Slave (2013, Steve McQueen)
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, Martin Scorsese)
Birdman (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
Boyhood (2014, Richard Linklater)
Inherent Vice (2014, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Selma (2014, Ava DuVernay)
Under the Skin (2014, Jonathan Glazer)
Brooklyn (2015, John Crowley)
Carol (2015, Todd Haynes)
Clouds of Sils Maria (2015, Olivier Assayas)
Son of Saul (2015, Laszlo Nemes)
Spotlight (2015, Thomas McCarthy)
Manchester by the Sea (2016, Kenneth Lonergan)
Moonlight (2016, Barry Jenkins)
Paterson (2016, Jim Jarmusch)
O.J.: Made in America (2016, Ezra Edelman)
Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade)
Call Me By Your Name (2017, Luca Guadagnino)
The Florida Project (2017, Sean Baker)
Lady Bird (2017, Greta Gerwig)
Personal Shopper (2017, Olivier Assayas)
Phantom Thread (2017, Paul Thomas Anderson)

Review: Mom And Dad

Image courtesy of Momentum Pictures.

As far as farces go, "Mom and Dad" isn't quite as clever as it thinks it is, nor as subversive as it purports to be. That being said, it's often pretty amusing, mostly due to a completely unhinged performance by Nicolas Cage, the master of such things.

The film's last line best summarizes Brian Taylor's comedic horror movie, "We love you kids, but sometimes we want to..." In the tradition of such films as "28 Days Later" or the numerous "Living Dead" pictures, "Mom and Dad" features some sort of outbreak - in this case, it's one that turns parents against their children. Some talking heads on news channels make the case that it could be a biological attack that causes the species to eliminate its young, therefore terminating its future, but "Mom and Dad" is not particularly interested in fleshing out the particulars.

In some suburb somewhere, Carly (Anne Winters) and Josh (Zackary Arthur) live with their parents, Brent (Cage) and Kendall (Selma Blair). None of the clan - except, perhaps, Josh - is functioning normally, even before the outbreak. Carly steals from her mother's wallet and has a "who cares?" attitude toward school and life in general. Brent is fantasizing about his formative years when he drove around in a muscle car with a topless girl and becomes frustrated after the construction of his man cave, pool table included, goes awry. Kendall takes aerobics classes to stay in shape and is generally bored now that her children have lives of their own.

An early series of scenes is both creepy and good for a laugh after the outbreak begins and teens look quizzically at the gates of their school, where their parents are lined up, perhaps, a little too eagerly to pick them up. A bloodbath then commences. Carly and Josh do their best to survive, along with the help of Carly's secret boyfriend, Damon (Robert T. Cunningham), who continuously takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

If "Mom and Dad" isn't as sharp of a satire as it might think, its selling points are Blair and Cage, both of whom get some good scenes. In recent years, Cage has frequently appeared in lower budget films, providing dialed up performances that often border on insanity - most notably, Werner Herzog's wonderfully weird "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." The actor gets a few particularly bonkers sequences here - the destruction of his pool table and his enthusiasm for a drill, particularly - and they are fun to watch.

While my overall enthusiasm for "Mom and Dad" is somewhat tepid - it aims to be a satire, but never really pays off as one - it is a movie made up of interesting moments that, unfortunately, never cohere into a fully realized vision. In other words, it's not bad, especially for those who seek out midnight movie material - this is one that might fit that bill.

Review: Den Of Thieves

Image courtesy of STX Entertainment.

Christian Gudegast's "Den of Thieves" is a moderately entertaining heist drama, albeit an unoriginal one. While the picture moves along pretty swiftly - despite its two-hour-20-minute running time - and features a few well-handled action sequences, the biggest takeaway from the film is that its director has been watching a lot of Michael Mann movies.

Not only does the tension between lead cop Nick Flanagan (Gerard Butler) and top crook Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber) feel noticeably similar to that of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Mann's "Heat," but its shootouts and storylines - especially one involving Butler's crumbling marriage, which resembles that of Pacino in "Heat" - feel directly pinched from that superior 1995 movie. Plus, the ending of "Den of Thieves" appears to steal from yet another movie - "The Usual Suspects."

But for a film that not-so-subtly borrows from others, you could do worse than "Den of Thieves," which is often intense and makes great use of Los Angeles as a backdrop. In the film, Flanagan is a rogue cop who describes himself as the "bad guy." It's hard to argue with him. He dabbles in police brutality, cheats on his wife and is of the school of shoot first, ask questions later.

The gang - or den, rather - of thieves that he is pursuing is led by Merrimen, who is no saint himself. In an early scene, he and his crew shoot up a group of security officers who are transferring money in an armored truck and he makes no qualms about letting loose a barrage of gunfire during a crowded traffic jam. One of the film's great frustrations is Merrimen's motivation. At one point, one of the cops investigating him points out his military service and asks what his deal is - in other words, what made him take the crooked path. We never find out.

Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson is Merrimen's top lieutenant, but his character is given little to do than act tough, although there is a modestly amusing scene during which he scares his daughter's prom date. O'Shea Jackson Jr. is given more to do as Merrimen's getaway driver and his character might be the most interesting of the entire film. I can't elaborate too much, but suffice it to say that Jackson gets the meatiest role here. In terms of plot, "Den of Thieves" is one in a long line of pictures about an impossible heist - in this case, the seemingly impenetrable Los Angeles Federal Reserve Bank.

"Den of Thieves" is a decent enough action thriller. Whether it's recommendable would depend, in part, on a viewer's tolerance for watching recycled material. In this case, much has been borrowed. That being said,  the picture is skillfully made. Narratively, you won't see anything you haven't already seen dozens of times, but Gudegast has the ability to squeeze some exciting and well-shot sequences out of tired material. Let's just hope that his next effort is a little more original.

Review: Proud Mary

Image courtesy of Screen Gems.

"Proud Mary" has its moments and Taraji P. Henson provides evidence here that she is leading lady material, but the actress also deserves a better showcase for her talents. The picture is an occasionally amusing, but overly familiar batch of cliches in a story about a criminal hoping to go on the straight and narrow. In most films of this sort, the protagonist aims to change their ways as the result of a love interest - in this case, it's a kid.

Rather than wasting any time with back story - that comes later - the picture jumps right in with the titular character, a top figure in and assassin for a Boston-based crime syndicate (although we never quite figure out the line of business here - drugs maybe?), killing a man in his kitchen and then having a crisis of conscience after noticing a young boy playing video games in another room.

One year later, Mary is following the boy, Danny (Jahi Di Allo Winston), around and keeping an eye on him. As it turns out, he is working for her syndicate's rival crime organization - which is run by Russians - and being abused by a nasty boss. Mary steps in, whacks the boss, saves the boy and takes him in. He, of course, is unaware that Mary is responsible for his being an orphan.

Much of the picture follows the increasing tension between the two crime factions - Mary's is led by a steely Danny Glover - as well as her trying to keep the secret that her killing of the young boy's boss is what set off the tension in the first place. It also doesn't help that Mary's former lover, Tom (Billy Brown), who is also Glover's son, is nosing around and doesn't appear to be pleased that Mary is sheltering the kid.

Typically, my complaint with most American action films is that they are loaded with nonstop violence and provide little in the way of characterization. In other words, it's difficult to care what is taking place because the people at the center of such movies are lacking in personality. "Proud Mary" has the opposite problem. Its action scenes are skillfully handled - albeit relying on cliches of the genre and often a little preposterous - but the scenes in which characters talk to one another do little to make the story more interesting.

Henson is a fine actress with great screen presence, but the story surrounding her character is like nearly every other story of a killer attempting to quit a life of crime. The back stories of her involvement with Glover's crime boss and Tom are too vague to be compelling and the scenes with Danny mostly involve her snapping at the kid to watch his mouth and mind his manners.

From the film's opening titles to the use of classic tunes by The Temptations and Ike and Tina Turner (guess which one), "Proud Mary" aims to capture the aura of blaxploitation crime dramas from the 1970s. But those films - at least some of the better ones, such as the Pam Grier pictures that this one appears to emulate - were grittier and frequently offered a layer of subtext that is missing here. "Proud Mary" may keep on turnin', but I doubt it will have you rollin' on the river.

Review: The Commuter

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

It's winter, which means that it's about that time for another thriller directed by Jaume Collet-Sera and featuring Liam Neeson as an unlikely action star and everyman with a past caught up in dangerous circumstances.

Nearly every winter for the past however many years has seen entries into the Neeson action hero saga, starting with "Taken" and including two sequels to that film, 2011's "Unknown," 2014's "Non-Stop" and 2015's "Run All Night."

In this latest entry, Neeson plays Michael McCauley, a former cop turned businessman who is having one of those days. McCauley is laid off from the life insurance firm at which he works at the film's beginning and within moments of getting onto a New York City subway, he is pickpocketed - for the record, I've lived in New York for 15 years and have never known anyone who has been pickpocketed, at least, not in the melodramatic fashion in which it occurs in this film.

Once he is onboard a Long Island Rail Road train and headed for home, McCauley is approached by a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga), who pretends to be some sort of psychologist and poses what appears to be a rhetorical question as to whether McCauley would accept money in exchange for "one small thing," a seemingly easy task that could affect the life of another person on the train.

When McCauley realizes that the question is not rhetorical and has accepted the money, he finds himself involved in a labyrinthine, Hitchcockian scenario in which he must locate someone onboard the train who is holding onto a piece of valuable information on which some very bad people want to get their hands. McCauley must decide whether he wants to remain involved in the scenario - of course, his son is about to start college and he could really use the money. As time goes on, he realizes that he has no choice, but to remain involved (I mean, seriously, how many films can there be in which Liam Neeson's family is threatened?).

"The Commuter" is fairly entertaining as McCauley begins to put the pieces together regarding the film's central mystery. It is also completely preposterous, bordering on ludicrous. Neeson, as always, is pretty game and appears always to be on the verge of cracking a knowing smile that the material with which he is working is that of a B-grade thriller. But there are a few set pieces that are fairly well handled and the picture moves along at a brisk pace. In other words, it's entertaining enough, but pretty silly. Whether you'll consider this an endorsement is on you.

Review: Insidious: The Last Key

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Unless your name is George Romero, horror movie series rarely pay off the longer they go on. There have been numerous great horror pictures that have been bogged down with lousy, unnecessary sequels. "Insidious" has long since run out of inspiration. The first film in the series - directed by James Wan - was frightening and inventive. The three films that have followed in its wake, not so much.

That being said, "The Last Key" isn't as much of a slog as the second and third entries in this series, and this is mostly due to the fact that Lin Shaye - portraying, once again, psychic Elise Rainier - is the lead in the film. This is a wise choice. Shaye has long been one of the more interesting elements of the "Insidious" series, although I'm not sure this necessitated a backstory for her character.

The movie opens in New Mexico in the early 1950s as Elise is a young girl living in a very haunted house with her younger brother, kindhearted mother and nasty, abusive father, who constantly punishes Elise for her extrasensory talents. In her teens, Elise runs away from home, leaving behind her young brother.

Most of the film is set in 2010 slightly before the events of the original "Insidious" film. Elise and her two cohorts - Specs (played by screenwriter Leigh Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson) - are called to investigate Elise's childhood home, where a new owner - who's a little fishy himself - is complaining of poltergeists. Once there, she runs into her long estranged brother and his two daughters, and some familial drama is blended with the various jump scares that the picture liberally employs.

I'll say this for director Adam Robitel - there are a few spooky scenes here, especially an early one involving two kids in a dark room and a whistle. Many of the film's scenes take place in the dark and the filmmakers make good use of it. Unfortunately, they also - as I previously mentioned - fall back on the generic horror trope of the jump scare. This is, of course, when a camera wanders seemingly aimlessly around a room, at first spotting nothing, and then throwing something (a creepy face, a flash of a quickly moving ghost) into the frame. It's a cheap tactic that occasionally elicits the response for which it is seeking, but it doesn't make it any cheaper or less imaginative.

The picture mostly belongs to Shaye, who appears to be having a good time in this series. She's often a delight to watch and Whannell and Sampson make for decent sidekicks - although a joke they continuously repeat regarding this becomes tired quickly. "The Last Key" is mostly a generic horror sequel. It has a few scares and a laugh or two, but the most promising element of the entire endeavor is the use of the word "last" in the title.