Review: Old

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Director M. Night Shyamalan's latest gets "Old" very quickly. The director, long known for his "Twilight Zone" styled setups and last minute plot twists, attempts to go back to the well for an original idea - although the film is based on the book "Sandcastle" by Pierre-Oscar Levy and Frederick Peeters - rather than update a previous property (like he did more recently with "Glass"), but the results are middling.

This is a movie with an intriguing concept that never materializes into something interesting. The setup is this: A group of vacationers - including a doctor with seeming anger management issues (Rufus Sewell) and his trophy wife, daughter and mother; a couple consisting of a male nurse and psychiatrist; a rapper (Aaron Pierre) with a name that makes me question whether Shyamalan has ever actually listened to hip hop; and a family with a mother (Vicky Krieps) harboring a health-related secret and father (Gael Garcia Bernal) who is playful with his young son and daughter (portrayed later in the film by Thomasin McKenzie and Alex Wolff) - arrive at a fancy resort and are told by its management to seek out a hidden beach to which the hotel will provide drop-off and pickup services.

Things quickly go awry once they get there - a young woman has seemingly drowned, and Sewell's doctor instantly blames the rapper - whose name is Mid-Sized Sedan - who had arrived at the beach earlier than the others. However, stranger things begin to happen - the doctor's elderly mother suddenly dies without warning, Bernal and Krieps' children at first complain that their swimming suits begin to feel tight, and moments later the two children look as if they've aged about five years.

As it turns out, all of the characters on the beach begin aging - one year there is equal to about a half-hour - although the film doesn't handle this particularly smoothly. While the children seem to rapidly grow older, which makes enough sense, the adults don't seem to age much, but then suddenly look like senior citizens and drop dead. Tensions begin flare on the beach - especially any scenario involving the doctor, who appears to be suffering from some sort of mental illness. In fact, all of the visitors to the beach and their families have at least one person who is ailing from something. On several occasions, the visitors attempt to leave the beach, but find that some kind of force prevents them from doing so.

While "Old" has some admirable qualities - the film's camera work especially, most notably a sequence in which the camera appears to swing back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather clock - they are overshadowed by the picture's overall messy structure and somewhat half-baked concepts.

There's little in the way of suspense, and at times it feels as if the filmmakers are merely going through a checklist of everything that can happen to someone when they age. Pregnancy that quickly materializes and comes to fruition? Check. Blurry vision? Check. Health problems that exacerbate at a rapid rate? Check.

The picture is also littered with expository or otherwise silly dialogue - my favorite is when one character tells another, "You're always talking about the future - and it makes me feel not seen!" - although a line from one young character to another about being neighbors one day and having mortgages made me smile. 

Shyamalan has long been seeking a comeback - at least from the standpoint of critical acclaim. "Split" was a modest hit, but while stretches of that picture were effective, I became annoyed with the lead character's multiple personalities. Early in his career - due to the shocking plot twist of "The Sixth Sense," the eerie and well-developed "Unbreakable" and the extremely creepy and underrated "Signs" - Shyamalan was hailed as the heir apparent to Steven Spielberg by way of Alfred Hitchcock. 

But nearly two decades worth of misfires later - from "Lady in the Water" and "The Last Airbender" to the more recent, and very disappointing, "Glass" - his new works are greeted less with excitement for another twist, but rather resignation that it won't be as good as his early work. I too hope to see Shyamalan get his groove back one of these days, but "Old" isn't it.

Review: Fear Street: 1666

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The finale to director Leigh Janiak's "Fear Street" trilogy is a little slow to start, but the payoff in the second half of the film - which has an amusing subtitle a little over halfway through the movie - is worth the wait. Those who have complained that explanations as to how the plots of the various films all tie together have been somewhat thin so far should be satisfied as "Fear Street: 1666" brings all of its various strands together.

The film starts where the previous picture left off - with Deena (Kiana Madeira) in 1994, having somehow been given a vision by Sarah Fier, the witch upon whom all blame of Shadyside's curse rests. For the first 70 minutes of the movie, both Deena and the audience get to witness what takes place through Sarah's eyes during Puritan times in a town known as Union, which will later split into Shadyside and Sunnyvale.

Sarah (also played by Madeira) knows her way around a farm, and this is appreciated by some of her fellow townsfolk. However, she is having a secret affair with the pastor's daughter, Hannah (played by Olivia Scott Welch, who also plays Sam in "1994") and this soon slips out after one of the town's ne'er-do-wells spies the two of them in the woods. Sarah is also on good terms with Solomon Goode (Ashley Zukerman, who also plays Sheriff Nick Goode in "1994"), who appears to like her.

But when things start to go awry - fruit going bad, a dead dog in a well and a shocking act of brutality against the town's children by the pastor - the town needs to find someone to blame, and they point their fingers at Sarah and Hannah, accusing them of witchcraft. But before Sarah meets her fate, she discovers something that gives a clue as to why Shadyside has been cursed for so many years. 

When we cut back to the present, Deena is now armed with that information. She and her brother, Josh (Benjamin Flores, Jr.) join Ziggy (portrayed in the present by Gillian Jacobs) and mall janitor (Darrell Britt-Gibson, providing the humor in this film) to take on the evil presence that has taken over Sam, unleashed the batch of serial killers from the previous film and is being orchestrated by a certain someone who I won't mention because that would give the whole damn thing away.

Reminiscent of a previous season of "Stranger Things," the third "Fear Street" picture ends in that bastion of 1980s and 1990s culture - a shopping mall. Yes, it's the type of scenario we've all seen before, but it is a lot bloodier this time around. It's a fun way to send off the series, and the characters who we've come to like help to make the somewhat routine setup more enjoyable.

The first half of the film - set in 1666 - naturally has no period music, although some choice decisions are made in that department later in the picture (nice use of Oasis and Bone Thugs N Harmony). Although the third film is the least scary of the trilogy - especially after the secret is out about the reason for the curse - it's an otherwise enjoyable finale for a series that has been more ambitious than most of its genre. "Fear Street: 1666" may be short on surprises - I could see the plot twist coming from a mile away - but it does a nice job of wrapping up its threads into a mostly satisfying whole.

Review: Fear Street: 1978

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The second entry in director Leigh Janiak's period piece slasher trilogy — based upon the series of novels by R.L. Stine — is a little scarier, a little better at filling in the period details than its predecessor and a little better overall. While neither reinvent the wheel or could be viewed as groundbreaking for their genre, both films are consistently solid for a series that riffs on gory low budget horror movies of yesteryear.

While the first "Fear Street" was set in the mid-1990s — and did a good job of capturing the essence of that era's clothing, mall culture and teenagers — the second entry in the trilogy is a lean and mean throwback to 1970s summer camp horror movies in the vein of "Friday the 13th" or "The Burning." The period details — from the clothing to the soundtrack including The Runaways, Kansas, Buzzcocks and Blue Oyster Cult — mostly feel right.

Much like the 1994 film, this one also centers around the relationship between two young women, although not romantically this time. As the film opens, the survivors of the first film seek out a woman who is known to be one of the few survivors of a 1978 massacre at Ohio's Camp Nightwing. Albeit reluctantly, the grown version of the character (Gillian Jacobs) — whose identity is masked for the entire picture's running time — tells the 1994 teens about her night of terror.

At the camp, rebellious Ziggy (Sadie Sink of "Stranger Things") is a resident of Shadyside who is tormented by the upper crust youths from neighboring Sunnyvale, who tie her up and accuse her of being a witch. Coming to her rescue is Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland), future sheriff, who later realizes he has some things in common with Ziggy — namely, an appreciation of Stephen King novels.

Ziggy's older sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd), who is a counselor, attempts to keep her distance from her younger sibling. She has a nice, polished boyfriend named Tommy (McCabe Slye) and wears preppy clothes to try to get the Sunnyvale youths to like her. She clashes with Ziggy, who sees through her behavior, and a wild child named Alice (Ryan Simpkins), with whom she was once good friends. We don't learn until the film's end which one is the surviving sister.

An early indicator that danger lurks is when the camp's nurse — who is the mother of one of the town's previous serial killers — attacks Tommy and is taken away by the police. However, the attack seemed like a warning of sorts — one that the film's characters don't take seriously. After several of the counselors stumble upon a lair that had previously been occupied by Sarah Fier, the town witch who placed a curse on Shadyside, a spell is cast on one of the young men, who engages in a bloody killing spree at the camp.

While Stine's novels were violent, they were still safe enough for teens, while "Fear Street: 1978," much like the previous entry in the series, earns its hard-R rating. Not only are teenagers dispatched with gruesome glee in the film, but several of the camp's younger attendees also see the business-end of the killer's axe, although mostly off-screen.

Among my few quibbles with the picture are the fact that several characters who are given a number of scenes early on just disappear and never return, and a sequence in which Cindy and Alice venture through an underground cavern goes on a few beats too long. But much like the "1994" entry in the series, the strongest moments involve the relationship between the two central girls in the story - headstrong and stubborn Ziggy and Cindy, who feels pulled between the town from which she hails and the aspiration one toward which she is drawn.

And much like "1994," this second entry slips in some interesting plot developments based on class — the victims in both films have primarily been youths from the poorer community, while the teens from the affluent Shadyside — even the rotten characters who you assume will get picked off, based on the standards set by the genre — tend to go unscathed.

"1978" also does a pretty decent job of answering some questions regarding the story in "1994." In other words, the trilogy — which goes backward in time, an interesting structure for these type of movies — is starting to come together as more of a cohesive whole. We'll find out in next week's "1666" where all of the pieces fit. For now, the first two "Fear Street" movies are pretty decent — their familiarity in terms of story are made up for by their execution — and better than your standard teen slasher film.

Review: Fear Street: 1994

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The first of the three "Fear Street" films feels a little bit like an intro and a placeholder - it sets up the central story for the three films and ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger - but as a piece of 1990s nostalgia and a teen-oriented slasher, it's mostly enjoyable. The picture definitely plays off recent films and TV shows that have utilized a certain formula - I'm thinking of the "It" movies and "Stranger Things" - in that a group of youths are the only ones interested in the strange goings-on in their towns, and adults are mostly a non-presence (in "1994," two siblings seemingly don't even have parents).

The movie opens with a great throwback and a creepy scene that might have been at home in a "Scream" movie. A young woman is working at a B. Dalton - remember those? - bookstore chain in a shopping mall. A young guy carrying around a blow-up doll - no explanation for that one - who works at a Spencer's Gifts-type of store converses with her. Moments later, she is attacked by a guy wearing a skull mask and hood, and we learn soon thereafter that the film's titular town, Shadyside, has a history of people seemingly going nuts and killing others.

Some of the flashbacks punctuating this history are among the film's creepiest images - a young boy bludgeoning someone to death, an eerie looking preacher, a serial killer at a summer camp (which will be featured in the next installment of the series) and a milkman who murdered housewives. One of the youths in "1994" often engages in scrolling through some prehistoric version of the internet and finds ways to link these murders together - it seems that a witch was killed in the town in 1666 (that's the third in the series) and cursed everybody thereafter.

At the heart of the film is a romantic relationship between a young woman named Deena (Kiana Madeira) and Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), who previously was sneaking around with Deena, but is now dating a meathead jock from a rival school - these two groups of students hate each other so much that during a vigil for the mall victims, they nearly get into a fight and vow to kill each other.

After an accident during which Sam is lightly injured, Sam; Deena; her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), the web-surfer; and two other friends, Kate (Julia Rehwald) and Simon (Fred Hechinger) begin to get the feeling they're being stalked by some otherworldly killers. As it turns out, the murderers of years past in Shadyside are back from the dead at the behest of the executed witch, who is after Sam for reasons I won't divulge here.

Much of the film's running time is spent on setting up the mythology of the town of Shadyside and seeing the main characters flee from the murderous undead. There's nothing particularly new here, but the personalities of the characters go a long way, the central love story is unique for this type of movie and the level of bloody mayhem unleashed here might surprise those who recall R.L. Stine's very PG-13 series of books. 

So, while the payoff for "Fear Street" will likely take place over the course of the next two films - released for the next two weeks on Netflix - this first picture is a good start. It's not as ingenious as "Scream" or as scary as the best of the slasher genre, but those who enjoyed the "It" movies - at least, the first one - and watch "Stranger Things" religiously will likely want to catch these movies as well. On the whole, the series is off to a pretty decent start.

Review: Summer Of Soul (Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Image courtesy of Hulu.

 A piece of music and cultural history that has apparently been locked away in a basement for more than 50 years, musician Questlove's chronicle of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival is an eye opening and joyous barrage of music as well as a look at a moment when American culture was undergoing a transformation. At one point in the film, a Black New York Times writer describes how she convinced the paper's editor to stop using the word "negro" in headlines and to substitute it with "Black." Questlove's film feels like an exuberant celebration of that switch at a time populated with tragedy - Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy's deaths, the war in Vietnam, etc.

Apparently, TV director Hal Tulchin shot 47 reels of the concert, but little of it was seen at the time by anyone who didn't attend the concert itself. Its producers tried to sell it as the "Black Woodstock," especially after the "Woodstock" film became an enormous success the following year. But there were no takers. So, for years, the footage of some of these amazing performances went unseen.

The concerts, which took place over the course of several weeks during the summer of 1969, feature a smorgasbord of talent across various musical styles and cultures - the revolutionary funk of Sly and the Family Stone, the haunted stylings of Nina Simone, the pop songs of The Fifth Dimension, African-styled music by Hugh Masekela, soul from Gladys Knight and the Pips, gospel by The Staple Singers and Mahalia Jackson and percussion by Puerto Rican musician Ray Barretto. 

The concert footage does a great job of capturing the energy of the performances - there's a drum solo by Stevie Wonder that will blow your mind - and the political vibe of the concerts - Simone gives a spirited performance of "To Be Young, Gifted and Black." Questlove intersperses interviews in the present with the concert scenes - everyone from Chris Rock and Lin Manuel Miranda to concertgoers pop up to weigh in, but one of the most compelling interviews is with The Fifth Dimension's Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., who discuss how many people thought their band was white due to their pop leanings, and how they viewed the concert as an opportunity to connect with a Black audience.

The film would make for a great double feature with the 1973 documentary "Wattstax," which portrayed a benefit concert in Watts to commemorate the anniversary of the 1965 riots in that Los Angeles neighborhood. Both feature tremendous performances by predominately Black musicians and celebrate African-American culture. 

And sadly, both festivals were mostly overlooked at the time they were held, got little attention from the media and weren't mainstream cultural touchstones like Monterey Pop or Woodstock. "Summer of Soul" is an attempt to right that wrong - and a glorious concert film featuring some of the best musicians of the late 1960s. I'd highly recommend it.

Review: No Sudden Move

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Steven Soderbergh has been responsible for a number of very good movies during the past 20 years — "Che" and "Magic Mike," for example — but his latest, the cynical period piece crime drama "No Sudden Move," is his best film since the late-1990s, early-2000s heyday of "Traffic" and "Out of Sight," the film which his new picture resembles most.

Soderbergh has assembled one of his best ensembles — and that's saying something — with this sleek and stylish, although not showy, film. It's great to see Don Cheadle in the lead as Curt Goynes, who's fresh out of jail and looking for one job with a big payoff that will allow him to skip town and avoid the numerous criminals who are gunning for his hide.

At the film's beginning, he meets a shadowy character named Jones (Brendan Fraser), who tells of him a three-man job that will involve forcing a man named Wertz (David Harbour) to steal a document from his boss's safe at work, while staying in the house with Wertz's wife (Amy Seimetz) and children (Noah Jupe and Lucy Holt) and holding them hostage. The other two men involved in the operation are Ronald (Benicio Del Toro), who's sleeping with the wife of a crime boss named Capelli (Ray Liotta), and Charley (Kieran Culkin), the possible loose cannon of the trio.

There's a lot more going on beneath the surface with these characters. For starters, Wertz is having an affair with his secretary, and the setup involving the document in the safe seems as if there's more than meets the eye. This turns out to be the case after one character gets bumped off early on, and Curt and Ronald decide to try to cut themselves in on a deal involving the Detroit auto industry — the year is 1954, by the way.

Meanwhile, a detective named Finney (Jon Hamm) investigates the aforementioned killing, and the Wertz family tries to hide what actually happened. As Curt and Ronald make their way up the food chain to obtain money for the document in the safe, they find themselves at odds not only with Jones and Capelli, but also a gangster named Aldrick Watkins (Bill Duke), who apparently wants both of them dead.

A meeting with a mysterious man played by a big name actor — who I won't reveal, considering he's not credited — shows further proof that Soderbergh is interested in power structures (see also "Traffic" and "High Flying Bird," among others), and takes the film in a different direction that ends up transitioning it from a straight-up crime picture to something more substantive. "I did not create the river, I am merely paddling the raft," the mystery man tells Curt and Ronald during a trade-off late in the movie. And yet, Soderbergh suggests, while figures like this character who are at the top of the power structure didn't create it, they've figured out how to control it at the expense of everyone else.

This is the type of film in which there are numerous times when the story could technically have ended, but it often veers off in interesting new directions, and we're never quite sure where it's going. But Soderbergh is such a gifted filmmaker that we're willing to follow him anywhere as the story suddenly lurches one way or another — the title "No Sudden Move" almost seems to be an ironic one. 

Soderbergh is an adventurous filmmaker — his work varies from the "Ocean's 11" studio movies to the experimental "The Girlfriend Experience" — and "No Sudden Move" might not find the filmmaker venturing out to try something new. It matters little. This is an excellent genre exercise with more substance than you might originally expect, and it finds Soderbergh working at the top of his game.