Review: A Quiet Place Part II

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Shorter on invention — and purpose for at least several of its characters — than its predecessor, John Krasinski's follow-up to his surprise 2018 hit, "A Quiet Place," is a lean horror sequel that ups the ante on action sequences, jump scares and special effects. Not surprisingly, it doesn't feel as original this time around, but as far as these type of things go, it gets the job done.

The picture opens with a flashback scene that's not exactly necessary, but is well executed. Taking place on "Day 1," we see the film's main family heading to a baseball game, with Krasinksi's Lee very much still alive and Emily Blunt's Evelyn shepherding the three — gulp — children toward the sporting event. It's at this game that the sky suddenly opens up to expose some sort of spaceship, and shortly thereafter people are running from the large, crab-looking monsters that move by sense of sound.

The film then cuts to the present, which is set just after the end of the first picture, as Evelyn and her two surviving children - Regan (Millicent Simmonds), a deaf girl, and Marcus (Noah Jupe), who wins the award for making the worst decisions of any character in this latest film — try to find a new place to stay. They stumble upon an old warehouse, where they run into a lone man — Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who was among many parents at the opening scene's baseball game — who, at first, tells them they can't stay with him. He'd lost his entire family to the creatures when they took over Earth.

Regan comes up with an idea to seek out an island that she believes is transmitting signals through the radio via Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea," and sneaks off to do so, hoping that the island's inhabitants can help them. Evelyn then manages to convince Emmett to go catch up to the girl before she gets herself killed.

It's at this point that Krasinski makes a curious choice to separate his two groups of characters for the rest of the film — Evelyn must go off on her own to find help for Marcus, whose foot gets badly injured and must stay with the family's newborn. Meanwhile, Emmett catches up to Regan, who at first doesn't trust him, but the duo's budding friendship results in the film's most interesting sequences, especially after the two of them finally make their way to the island — but they first stumble upon a group of nasty people, which leads to one of the picture's most intense action scenes.

The film's characters get varying mileage out of the material. Marcus' time alone with the baby isn't utilized to its full potential, while Blunt is surprisingly given the least to do this time around, whereas in the previous film, she was the anchor. On the other hand, Simmonds is quite good, and her relationship with Emmett — Murphy is the runner-up MVP here — gives the film its dramatic heft.

The movie clocks in at just over 90 minutes, and its abrupt ending adds to the feeling that the film feels less like a fully realized sequel, and more like a fast-paced continuation of the original one. Not a whole lot of ground is covered, there's little new exposition that does much to explain the series' central story and much of the action is mere reaction — in other words, things happening and the cast reacting to them. 

But "A Quiet Place Part II" is suspenseful and well made. The creative use of sound from the first picture doesn't feel as original this time around, but it's still more unique than your typical horror movie sequel.

Review: Army Of The Dead

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Perhaps coming off the long-awaited release of the four-hour cut of his "Justice League" movie - a version unseen by me - director Zack Snyder felt compelled to stretch out the length of his second zombie movie, "Army of the Dead," which has nothing to do with his 2004 "Dawn of the Dead" remake, a film that remains the director's best work. However, anyone not named George Romero has no business making a two-and-a-half zombie movie, especially one lacking in the type of political or social context for which Romero was known.

As it stands, "Army of the Dead" is a well-enough-made heist movie with a zombie flavor that is also a little on the generic side. Everything from the finale that obviously sets up a sequel to a scene toward the end of the picture that is very similar to the final scenes of the Korean zombie movie "Train to Busan," Snyder's film borrows a little here and a little there.

The film's title sequence is its best moment, and it follows the opening scene in which a newly-married couple engaged in fellatio while driving crashes into an armored military vehicle that is carrying a zombie that moves fast and has more intelligence than your average undead specimen. This occurs outside Las Vegas, which then becomes overrun by zombies in a fun credit sequence that utilizes a remake of "Viva Las Vegas" and squeezes a lot of exposition into the length of a song.

Regardless, the city has a wall built around it and is cordoned off from the rest of the United States. A greedy businessman approaches a former soldier - turned cook - named Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) with a job that involves sneaking into Las Vegas, now overrun with the undead, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars out of a vault. Ward and his crew will be able to split $50 million among themselves if they pull it off.

Next comes the sequence in which a motley crew is selected for the mission. It includes two soldier pals of Ward - Cruz (Ana de la Reguera) and Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) - as well as a safecracker who talks too much (Matthias Schweighofer), a zombie killing YouTube star (Raul Castillo), a helicopter pilot (comedian Tig Notaro), a coyote who gets people across the border Nora Arnezeder), an abusive border cop (Theo Rossi) and even Ward's daughter, Kate (Ella Purnell), who is searching for a friend who crossed the border into Las Vegas.

Much of the rest of the film plays out exactly as you'd expect. Betrayals occur. Characters are picked off one by one by the zombies - some of which are slow and others are fast moving and more intelligent like the lead zombie who escaped during the crash at the beginning. The film often feels like a more violent "Ocean's 11" movie... but with zombies.

That's not to say there isn't fun to be had here. The film is stylish and moves at a quick pace, with well-made action sequences. Yes, originality is in short supply here, but the personalities of the cast often rise above the familiar material. It's only toward the end when the film stumbles as it tries to recreate scenes from other films of this type and includes a final sequence that is obviously meant to set up the obligatory sequel. "Army of the Dead" isn't bad - it's just a little too long for a film of this type and it plays like a greatest hits package of better movies of the same subgenre.

Review: Those Who Wish Me Dead

Image courtesy of New Line Cinema.

Taylor Sheridan's "Those Who Wish Me Dead" feels like a long-lost 1990s action-thriller script that has been revived. While it's good to see Angelina Jolie headlining a film again, and the picture's action sequences - especially those involving a raging wildfire consuming wooded areas of the Pacific northwest - are well made, the film's characters could have used more development and the central storyline is vague and generic enough that it somewhat lowers the stakes.

In the film, Jolie plays Hannah, a smoke jumper - a type of specially trained wildland firefighter - and hard drinker who is haunted by a past incident in which she failed to save several children from a wildfire. She lives in a small town - where her ex-boyfriend, Ethan (Jon Bernthal), is a cop who lives with his very pregnant wife, Allison (Medina Senghore) - and spends her free time riding in the back of trucks and opening parachutes for a thrill.

Meanwhile, a young boy named Connor (Finn Little) is told by his father, Owen (Jake Weber), that the two of them must flee following a successful assassination by two murderous thugs - played by Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult - of a district attorney. Owen, who is some sort of accountant, apparently has some top-secret information that implicates a number of high profile people, including Congress members and governors. He tells Connor to get the information to a news station in the case of his death.

At one point, the two hitmen meet with a heavy played by Tyler Perry, who talks about bumping off Owen and Connor and refers to a "zero sum game." Unfortunately, we never find out what it is that Owen knows, and the conspiracy he has uncovered is only discussed in vague terms, thereby lessening any sense of urgency that the film is trying to create.

After the two killers catch up with Owen, Connor flees into the wild, where he bumps into Hannah, who - in need of some sort of redemption after her previous failed rescue - decides to help him. Ethan searches for the boy as well, and the two hitmen make an unpleasant visit to Ethan's home, where they rough up his pregnant wife, only to find that she's not so easy to ruffle.

The theory of Chekhov's gun is that if a gun is introduced in the first act of a play, it'll be fired by the end of it. All the talk of wildfires in the picture should be a clear indicator that by the picture's end, one will be raging out of control. And in the middle of it, Hannah, Connor, Ethan and Allison will face off against the killers played by Gillen and Hoult.

Those final scenes are among the film's most potent, and the sequences shot against the backdrop of the wildfire are impressively intense. But this is a film in which there's little character development or motivation established - Hannah is the only one with much of a backstory - and, as a result, "Those Who Wish Me Dead" plays out as a somewhat standard action thriller. That being said, it's well paced, it often looks great and the action scenes are exciting, so while it's far from perfect, it's also reasonably engaging. In terms of films currently playing at the multiplex or streaming, you could certainly do far worse.

Review: The Woman In The Window

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Joe Wright's "The Woman in the Window" is an example of a group of talented people being stuck in a stylishly made but somewhat silly film. Clearly stealing more than a few lines from Alfred Hitchcock's playbook - as well as an entire setup from "Rear Window" - the film has some solid camerawork and its great cast does its best to sell the material, but it comes up a little short. This is not to say the film is bad or doesn't keep our attention, although its big reveal at the end is somewhat of a letdown.

In the film, Amy Adams plays Anna Fox, a child psychologist who has become agoraphobic and seemingly has some past troubles that are only slowly revealed. She is apparently separated from her husband (Anthony Mackie), who appears in flashbacks and whose voice is heard through conversations with Anna, although it's unclear when they're taking place. The couple also has a young daughter.

She quickly becomes embroiled in a mystery when a new family from Boston moves across from her Manhattan brownstone and she spies strange goings-on through her window. She first meets the couple's teenage son, Ethan (Fred Hechinger), who seems a nervous type, and Anna instantly begins to think there's something bad happening to the kid at home. 

Soon afterward, she meets a woman (Julianne Moore) who she thinks is the boy's mother, and not long after that believes she sees this same woman murdered while spying on the home across the street through her window.

But strangely, the boy's creepy father (Gary Oldman) and another woman claiming to be his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) show up together after Anna calls the police to report the murder. Oldman's Alistair Russell threatens Anna, while Leigh's character tells her to leave her family alone. Meanwhile, Anna has a tenant (Wyatt Russell) living downstairs who is occasionally her confidant, but she soon finds out information about him that makes him not-so-trustworthy.

About two-thirds into the movie, we learn about an incident from Anna's past that is likely meant to throw a wrench into the plot, making us think that Anna is, perhaps, a little cuckoo. However, it's obvious that this is meant to merely distract from the fact that there is indeed someone guilty of murdering the woman who Anna saw through her window.

When we finally learn the identity of the villain, it could have made for an interesting twist, but the reasoning behind it is somewhat generic and a final standoff between Anna and an intruder in her home doesn't quite pack the punch that it should. 

"The Woman in the Window" has some impressive camerawork, especially considering that it's mostly set inside an apartment - albeit the type of huge New York City apartment we see in movies that nobody can actually afford. And the cast all does its best, but ultimately this is just an average thriller with a lot of talent on board trying to make the best out of an idea that's far from original.

Review: Spiral: From The Book Of Saw

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

The alleged origin story of "Spiral: From the Book of Saw" is more interesting than the film itself. The story goes something like this: Chris Rock, a longtime "Saw" fan, approached Lionsgate with an original idea for the at-that-point defunct series that the company's leaders found compelling and agreed to make it, giving Rock some creative freedom in the making of the picture.

Well, here it is, and there's little sign of whatever it is that the Lionsgate executives found so compelling. "Spiral" introduces a timely and relevant theme into its proceedings - corrupt and violent police behavior - and then does nothing interesting with it. Also, anyone who thought the addition of Rock and Samuel L. Jackson would liven up this dreary series was mistaken - instead, they've merely been sucked into its vortex.

As the film opens, Zeke (Rock) is an undercover cop infiltrating a violent gang of thieves, telling them a joke that reimagines the film "Forrest Gump" with Jenny as the villain. Once the bust occurs, his captain (Marisol Nichols) berates him for once again taking matters into his own hands. But who can blame him? Zeke has been ostracized in his department after turning in a corrupt partner who once shot and killed a witness who could identify a police officer who committed a crime.

Prior to our introduction to Zeke, we get one of those improbable "Saw" setups, this one including a crooked cop in Zeke's department who finds himself in a predicament in which he must either sacrifice his tongue - this was a cop, we're told, who frequently lied in courtrooms to get convictions - or his life to an oncoming subway train on a track. Needless to say, it all ends with a splat.

Against the wishes of his fellow officers, Zeke lands the case and, in the process, gets a new rookie partner named Schenk (Max Minghella), whose naivete is irksome at first to Zeke. Meanwhile, Jackson is Zeke's towering figure of a father, a former captain at Zeke's precinct who once protected his son from the dirty cops in the department who wanted to target Zeke after he turned in his former crooked partner.

All the while, someone pretending to be Jigsaw, the serial killer from the previous "Saw" movies, begins capturing bad cops and leaving them in dicey situations - one must choose between losing all of his fingers or being electrocuted, while another must choose between hot wax on the face or severing the spinal cord. As usual, these sequences emphasize the gruesomeness of the scenario, all the while glossing over how completely preposterous and, at this point, tired they've become.

Prior to its release, audiences were promised that "Spiral" would take the series - which at eight entries had long become stale and, to be honest, I never even liked the first movie - in a new direction and that "Spiral" would be more in the vein of a David Fincher film like "Seven," rather than another "Saw" movie. It's hard to see the difference between "Spiral" and the previous eight "Saw" movies - it's gory, ridiculous, has paper thin characters, is visually drab and features a lame, last minute twist that I figured out about 20 minutes into the film.

So, all that's left are the gory but lame death sequences; a central plot element that could have been compelling regarding police brutality and corruption, but is never addressed in a meaningful way; occasional histrionic acting and absurd flashbacks (one of which includes the funniest fake mustache in recent memory). The film is appropriately titled, considering how this latest entry into this exhausting series just circles the drain.

Review: Here Today

Image courtesy of Stage 6 Films,

Until it goes all in on a barrage of schmaltz during its final 15 minutes, Billy Crystal's "Here Today" - which the comedian wrote and directed - utilizes the surprisingly effective teamwork of Crystal and Tiffany Haddish to full effect. This is a funny, charming, witty, well written and somewhat serious look at the horrors of old age - that is, until it suddenly feels like a Hallmark Channel movie in the moments when the film is winding down. Those who can get past such things might find the film to otherwise be a genuine surprise.

In the film, Charlie Burnz (Crystal) is somewhat of an icon in the world of comedy - although his career trajectory doesn't exactly make sense. He is the "old guy" writer among a team of young people who write for a late night sketch comedy show, and once wrote Broadway plays and movie screenplays for comedies that have become legendary. In the real world, Burnz's career might have been flipped around, having written for the sketch show before graduating to big time movies and plays. But I digress.

The problem is that Charlie is in the early stages of some form of dementia. When we first meet him, he is walking to his job at the TV station, memorizing the route he takes. For now, his main goal is to not break routine, so he doesn't get confused. His boss on the sketch show obviously has affection for him, but some of the younger writers don't get why he's kept around. They come to realize that Charlie's affinity for what works on TV and what doesn't is spot on.

An early sign that he isn't doing well comes during a scene in which Charlie sits on the stage during a retrospective - at which Barry Levinson, Kevin Kline and Sharon Stone play themselves - and the audience thinks Charlie is joking when he acts as if he can't remember the names of the people on stage.

Meanwhile, Emma (Haddish) is an aspiring singer with a jerk of an ex-boyfriend, an actor who was obsessed with Charlie's work. Therefore, he bid $22 during a charity event to have lunch with Charlie, but Emma managed to keep the raffle ticket when they split up. That's how she meets Charlie. Although their luncheon doesn't go so well - Emma is apparently allergic to shellfish and the lunch date culminates at a hospital - they soon begin to bond.

After he pays her hospital bill, Emma is determined to befriend Charlie, especially after she is the only one to figure out that he has a health problem, while his busy children (portrayed by Penn Badgley and Laura Benanti) are too busy with their lives to notice. Charlie's goal, before he loses his senses completely, is to write a book dedicated to his late wife, a young artist with whom he was madly in love. She died years before in an accident, and it's clear that at least one of Charlie's children sort of blame him for it.

There are some funny and warm moments in the picture between Charlie and Emma - and Haddish and Crystal have surprisingly strong comedic chemistry. Also, thankfully, the film doesn't make the mistake of having Charlie and Emma provide important life lessons for one another of the type that films about friendships between people of two different races tend to include. They're just friends - and they show up for each other, most notably a hilarious bat mitzvah that Emma attempts to liven up.

This is a mostly sharp and witty film about two likable people whose unlikely friendship makes for some good laughs and some genuine displays of emotion. That, unfortunately, is nearly undone during a climactic scene in which Charlie - in the throes of dementia - wanders into the woods, and Emma and Charlie's family must go looking for him. The schmaltz factor is cranked up quite high in this scene, and although its last shot is a nice one, the final scenes come close to being a deal breaker. But it's the insight, strong writing and genuine warmth of the film that make it worth recommending. "Here Today" might not be Crystal's strongest work, but it's good to have him back.

Review: The Human Voice

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Pedro Almodovar's "The Human Voice" is essentially a one-woman - well, and dog - show starring Tilda Swinton that is ornamented and enacted in the typical Almodovar style: props and decor bursting with color, some melodramatic flourishes and a dab of dark humor here and there. It's also apparently based on a Jean Cocteau play titled "La Voix Humane" and runs a mere 30 minutes. It's the shortest film I've ever reviewed on this site, although it is by no means a slight trifle.

At the same time, it's a minor Almodovar film, but one that's effective and enjoyable enough. The picture opens with Swinton and her pup visiting a hardware store and her purchasing an axe, which might lead you to believe that some sort of foul play is in motion. Instead, she arrives home and puts the axe to use on a man's suit, which is neatly laid out on a bed.

Swinton's nameless woman then pops a mouthful of pills and guzzles it down with some wine before reclining on the bed and apparently hoping for death to overtake her. Instead, her dog licks her face to awaken her as the phone rings. She answers and engages in a long conversation that makes up most of the rest of the film's brief running time.

As it turns out, the woman has been involved with a man for the past four years, but now he has left - perhaps for another woman - and this phone call will be their last contact. The woman goes through the various stages of grief - at first, she attempts to make him believe she's doing fine and tells him she spent the previous evening at the theater with friends. Then, she tries bargaining with him, then threatens her own safety and then pleads with him for mercy.

This all leads to an ending that might seem on the surface to be apocalyptic - you'll know what I mean when you see the woman's most drastic action - but then it ends on sort of a lark involving the woman and her dog. Almodovar films often feature great tragedy and a fair amount of drama, but there's always room for redemption or levity.

A few years ago, Almodovar made his best picture in a decade with the remarkable and personal "Pain and Glory." "The Human Voice," on the other hand, is the type of small film that could be knocked off somewhat quickly to keep the creative juices flowing. It's enjoyable, Swinton carries the picture and the camera work is strong, especially considering the tight quarters in which it is mostly set, but it's not the type of movie to rank among the great Spanish director's best. 

Almodovar currently has more films in the works than he possibly ever has - there are several in various stages of production during the next few years - so until then, "The Human Voice" is an amusing little picture to keep fans satiated.