Review: Blink Twice

Image courtesy of MGM.

Zoe Kravitz's directorial debut, "Blink Twice," is a #MeToo-themed thriller that is also likely inspired by the heinous exploits of Jeffrey Epstein. The film's intentions are good and its second half, despite an ending that I don't think sticks the landing, gets better - but the picture is more of an intriguing idea than a well-executed concept.

The film opens with two young waitresses - Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) - working an event where a famed tech mogul (Channing Tatum) is speaking. We get a sense that Tatum's Slater King has seen some sort of disgrace and is in the process of trying to make amends. At the dinner, Slater is accompanied by a gaggle of tech bros (Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, and Simon Rex) who seemingly worship him.

It's not quite clear why Frida seems obsessed with Slater, but she manages to catch his attention and he invites her and Jess to his remote island, where he's known for having wild parties. The tech bros join him as well as several young women, most notably Sarah (Adria Arjona), a former champion of a female-led "Survivor" show.

At first, things on the island seem relaxed and enjoyable - that is, if nonstop drinking and drugs are your thing. But there's something strange afoot. The servants on the island give the visitors odd looks and one woman especially - who seems fixated on snake venom - appears to be sending signals of some sort to Frida.

The film's first half employs all types of visual tricks - jump cuts, quick flashes, editing that intentionally confuses - to give the sense of a place that's a little off kilter. It's less compelling than the film's second half, when we realize what's actually going on - which I, naturally, won't spoil - and the film becomes more of a grisly thriller.

There are some powerful moments in the picture. There are multiple scenes involving sexual assault that will be hard to stomach for most, and the film's horrific plot twist is similarly a gut punch. There are scenes of comeuppance that arrive in the second half of the film, and are much warranted, not only for the film's villainous men but also a female enabler (Geena Davis), who I'd imagine is supposed to be a stand-in for Ghislaine Maxwell.

However, the final scene in the film, which caps off the film's final 30 minutes or so of female empowerment, comes off as awkward. It doesn't particularly make sense from the standpoint of its characters' motivations or the possibility of it being feasible. 

For a first-time director, Kravitz shows some promise. "Blink Twice" tackles weighty subject matter - the power that rich white men exert over women - and it earns some points for taking it so directly and gruelingly. But it ultimately just results in genre trappings, rather than saying anything particularly memorable on the subject. This is a film that has its moments, but never reaches its full potential.  

Review: Alien: Romulus

Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

The "Alien" movies are similar to the "Terminator" movies - they were great early on and there's been an occasional winner over the years, but the sequels to these series have mostly been just OK. "Alien: Romulus" is the latest in the just-OK category; the first two "Alien" movies were great and 2012's "Prometheus" is the one film in the series since that has made an impact.

The film is directed by Fede Alvarez, whose "Don't Breathe" was good enough but whose "Evil Dead" remake I found to be tiresome. I'll give him some credit: "Romulus" has some standout imagery, especially in early scenes that the film's cast spends on a planet that fits in with the visual style of the early films. For a movie this dark and often dank, it looks pretty good.

Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny, of "Civil War") believes that she has met her working quota on a mining planet, only to have the goalposts moved significantly. When she and her synthetic Andy (David Jonsson), who is more like a brother, catch wind of a plan to raid an abandoned space station floating above the planet, steal its cryo-pods, and take off for places unknown, the temptation is too great to pass up.

The crew includes a handsome leader (Archie Reynaux), his sister (Isabela Merced), his unpleasant cousin (Spike Fearn), and another young woman (Aileen Wu). Once aboard the abandoned ship, something seems off, and the discovery of a nearly destroyed synthetic makes the crew realize that they should not have boarded this space station.

"Romulus" is filled with fan-service callbacks, some of which are welcome, while others not so much. There's a digitally recreated former crew member of a previous "Alien" movie whose presence is, well, a bit strange, while the abandoned ship might seem familiar to fans of the series. Not one - but two - characters have aliens burst out of them, although in different spots. The most groan-inducing callback is a famous line from a previous "Alien" movie delivered somewhat haltingly. 

For the most part, "Romulus" plays by the numbers and, while it does so, it works well enough. I'll give credit where it's due to Alvarez for the finale, which is not something I would have had on my bingo card, for the chutzpah involved. However, I wouldn't say the surprise in the film's final 15 minutes exactly works. Outlandish, yes; effective, well, your mileage may vary.

Ultimately, this eighth (assuming you're counting the execrable "Alien vs. Predator") film in the series does little to move it forward but rather mostly plays like a variation on the hits. At times, this works well enough in its favor, but "Romulus" ends up being just another average entry in a long-running franchise.

Review: Skincare

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Music video director Austin Peters' latest feature, "Skincare," is an engrossing Los Angeles neo noir about... beauty products. It starts out as a story about a skincare guru with the aspirational name of Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) but eventually transitions into a thriller about a battle between two skincare businesses, a shady sidekick, and an attempted murder.

Hope's dream has long been to launch her own skincare line and she's close to that point when the film opens. She has just filmed a segment on a TV talk show with a slimy host (Nathan Fillion) and her assistant, Marine (MJ Rodriguez), is excited that she too will be taken on the ride that is Hope's burgeoning success. However, Hope is alarmed to learn that another skincare business owned by a dismissive man named Angel (Gerardo Mendez) is opening a similar outfit in the same plaza where she's located.

Hope tries to convince her landlord - to whom she owes money - to not allow another skincare operation to open in the same shopping center - but when that plea fails, she begins to receive sexually explicit phone messages, emails, and texts, while her face pops up on the bodies of porn actresses on websites and emails are sent out to her clientele with inappropriate messages.

Hope believes that Angel might be behind the smear campaign in an attempt to steal away her business, which is exactly what happens. So, she enlists the help of a sleazy life coach (Lewis Pullman) to spy on Angel as well as a mechanic who has a crush on her and some possible criminal associations. Things, as they say, get out of hand.

While on the surface "Skincare" gives off a cheery vibe - at least, at first - due to Hope's attempt at pleasing every possible client with whom she comes into contact, the film eventually settles on a neo-L.A.-noir vibe that makes it feel more like "Mulholland Drive" or Bertrand Bonello's recent "The Beast." There's often a sense in the film that something is going on beneath the surface of the film - and the city - on which we can't quite put our finger.

This is a film that had little in the way of advance reviews or acclaim - but it's a pretty solid late summer sleeper. Banks is convincing as a woman veering into desperation, while Pullman's life coach is amusingly sleazy. There are some twists and turns, and although the film ultimately ends up in a place that you might see coming, the journey to get there is engaging and intriguing. This is a solid little movie that deserves a bigger audience.

Review: Didi

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Sean Wang's debut feature, "Didi," follows most of the tried-and-true elements of the coming-of-age story, often leaning into the rambunctiousness and off-color behavior of teenage boys. But when the film's action centers its lens on the titular character's mother (Joan Chen), it becomes deeper and more meaningful.

Set in 2008 - a choice that is either random or a selection that means something to its director - the film follows Chris Wang (Isaac Wang), also known as "Wang Wang" to his friends or "Didi" to his mother, as he navigates the perils of young adulthood. His older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen), is seen as an enemy until she eventually realizes how lonely he is and takes some compassion. 

Chen's mother figure is an aspiring artist who has more failures than successes and is seen by her son as clingy. Also living with the family is Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua), a grandmother who provides comic relief, but not so much for Didi's mother as she often reminds her that her son - that is, Chen's husband - is living in Taiwan to earn money for the family, while they live in California.

At school, Didi has a crush on a girl, Madi (Mahaela Park), who also seems to like him but slips in the occasionally racist remark - "you're pretty cute for an Asian boy." Didi's best friends are Farad (Raul Diad) and Jimmy (Aaron Chang), but their whole clique tries to pass themselves off with a white bro-ishness that teenage boys tend to adopt.

One of the film's running gags is how Didi tries to pass himself off as one thing or another, and then must rush to the internet for research - for example, he tells Madi that his favorite movie is the Mandy Moore weepy "A Walk to Remember" after seeing it listed on her Facebook page, and then is dismayed to learn it's a so-called "chick flick"; at another point, he pretends to be a skateboarder photographer to impress a group of older skaters and then has to find out the best angles for photographing the sport. Other lies passed off by Didi - he tells one group that he's only "half-Asian," which is a lie - merely come off as sad.

Some of the middle passages of the film - the obligatory drunken parties with older kids, the lying to impress girls or his friends, and the inevitably awkward moments that follow - tend to bog the picture down a little. But once the film begins to center on Didi's relationship with his mother, a woman who loves her children but is disappointed with her life's trajectory, it finds its footing. Chen, who has long been great, provides some lovely work here.

So, ultimately, "Didi" doesn't break much ground in terms of coming-of-age sagas, other than we now have a movie in which a young Chinese-American kid takes part in all the wild rites of passages that so many films of old depicting white teens have provided - in fact, there's a scene at a party when all the youths gather round a TV to watch "Superbad." But its more tender moments are the ones that count and that, ultimately, make it work.

Review: Trap

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

M. Night Shyamalan's "Trap" is likely the director's best film since his early successes, even if it's not quite as good as those films. The picture starts out as a somewhat gimmicky thriller set in one location - the concert of a popstar - but eventually becomes more tense once it leaves those environs.

The film's setup is simple: A man named Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is taking his teenage daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to the concert of a pop singer modeled after Taylor Swift named Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan, the director's daughter). He notices that there is heavy police and FBI presence at the concert and asks a gossipy T-shirt salesman as to what's going on.

As it turns out, the concert is an elaborate setup to catch a serial killer known as The Butcher, whom law enforcement has figured out will be in attendance at the concert. Cooper, as anyone who hasn't seen the trailer learns, is The Butcher, and much of the film is centered around his attempts to figure out a way to elude police and flee the concert.

During the film's first section set at the concert, there are numerous scenes of Cooper nosing about, looking for exits, and stealing items he can use - security badges, a walkie talkie, and information - to help him escape. Riley seemingly notices his odd behavior, but is also enraptured by seeing her favorite singer perform.

I don't know if this qualifies as a spoiler alert, but the latter half of the picture involves Cooper, his daughter, and Lady Raven after they have left the concert. Part of the picture's final section is set at Cooper's home, where his wife (Alison Pill) and children begin to learn more about Cooper's double life.

This final section is more thrilling than the earlier sections, which were well enough made due to the constrictions of the concert setting, but still felt a little gimmicky. There's a tense standoff between Cooper and Lady Raven late in the film as well as a series of escapes that add to the tension.

Ultimately, "Trap" has a difficult time wrapping up. There are numerous false starts and stops and its finale seems to exist solely for the purpose of setting up a sequel, assuming this film is a success. Hartnett does a fine job in the lead role as Cooper, who can occasionally elicit sympathy, despite being a violent maniac.

"Trap" is probably Shyamalan's best film since his early successes - namely, the solid "The Sixth Sense," the moody "Unbreakable" and the frightening "Signs." The decades since have seen a number of mediocre and a few bad thrillers or adventure films. "Split" was a decent entry in the director's oeuvre, but it fell apart toward its end. "Trap" may be somewhat of a mixed bag, but it's at least a step in the right direction after such recent misfires as "Old" and "Knock at the Cabin."