Review: Primetime

Image courtesy of A24.

There have been several movies in recent years that examine the concept of making the news in which unscrupulous members of the media help to create a story so that they can cover it. Much like Dan Gilroy's unsettling "Nightcrawler," Lance Oppenheim's new film, "Primetime," is a story with some stylistic touches that make it feel closer to a horror movie than the media ethics drama it is on the surface.

The film follows the phenomenon of NBC anchor Chris Hansen's popular early-aughts TV program "To Catch a Predator," in which Hansen (portrayed by Robert Pattinson here in a strong performance) helped to set up scenarios in which members of his team portrayed themselves as minors online, drew the attention of sexual predators, and lured them to a house, where Hansen, his crew, and police would confront them.

Hansen is told several times by various people during the course of "Primetime" that he is doing the Lord's work, although the show's methods become increasingly queasy as the story is told through the eyes of Dan Plumb, AKA Decoy Dan (Skyler Gisondo), an aspiring young actor whose boyish looks land him the gig of playing an underage boy who entices pedophiles to the houses where Hansen is lying in wait.

The picture portrays Hansen as an ambitious man who wants to have the same type of respect that some of NBC's other anchors command - watch him wince when one tells him that he can see him reporting live from Afghanistan (mind you, the film is set in 2006) - and, therefore, wants "Predator" to be the program that puts him on the level of the greats. You can see the fire in Pattinson's eyes when an NBC executive tells him that his show is being moved to a primetime slot against juggernaut "Lost."

However, Hansen is also having an extramarital affair, and his crew and producer (Merritt Wever) are possibly looking for the exit signs, that is, until one of Hansen's crew believes that he has a big fish on his line - one online predator appears to be a man who holds some sort of office. This leads Hansen and company to Texas, where they team up with local law enforcement to try to catch the man.

For those unaware of the circumstances of "Predator," the show was eventually cancelled after a massive controversy involving the suicide of a Texas prosecutor during a sting operation and the ensuing lawsuits. 
The depiction in the film of the police work involved makes it seem shoddy and careless, giving "Predator" that making the news feel as its characters help to escalate situations for the sake of ratings.

In the film, Hansen portrays himself as a righteous crusader, but his show clearly banks on people's fascination with the lurid. There's an interesting scene in which a passenger on a plane congratulates him on the show, but then launches into violent fantasies about what he'd like to do to the show's targets. Hansen laughs it off, saying what he does to the predators is probably worse, but it's a rare moment of reflection about the desire that his audience feels for punishing others.

"Primetime" is stylish in an unsettling way, and its images often have the feel of an old VHS tape that has captured something unsavory and disturbing on it. Hansen is always lurking in the background, rehearsing lines written by pedophiles online to read back to them during the moment of reveal during the program, and it's as if he's reading lines for a play he's about to perform. In another scene, he keeps changing the intonation of his voice during a voiceover recording session, annoying his producer, for more dramatic emphasis. 

Pattinson is very good here, but Gisondo's performance is just as noteworthy. His portrayal of a young man who wants to be accepted as an actor and thinks that "Predator" is his meal ticket, only to discover that he sold his soul for a SAG card, is a punch in the gut. This is a movie that is intended to make audiences squirm in more ways than one - and it's effective in doing so.

Review: Resident Evil

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Zach Cregger's "Resident Evil" is a whole lot better than it likely has any right to be. Based on the popular video game, the film is a wild and brief horror movie about a hospital medical courier who finds himself at the center of a nightmare when tasked with delivering a mysterious package in Raccoon City, which has been overrun with monstrous creatures after some sort of outbreak.

There had been a previous series of "Resident Evil" movies that started in 2002 and starred Milla Jovovich. I haven't seen all seven of those films, but the ones I saw were pretty bad. Cregger's film is a gigantic step up in terms of quality.

The director is coming off the success of last year's "Weapons," an ambitious horror saga that was my favorite in the genre in about a decade (since 2015's "It Follows"), so while his latest picture is often a good time, it feels like a much more lightweight effort. Interestingly, as Cregger noted that "Weapons" was inspired to an extent by Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia," it makes sense then that his follow up is something shorter and simpler, considering that Anderson's follow up to his picture was "Punch Drunk Love."

In some reviews of the film, critics have noted that Cregger's film is more successful than any other in recent memory in capturing the vibe and feel of a video game in a movie format. In other words, the movie follows a first-person shooter character (Austin Abrams as Bryan) as he enters dark rooms not knowing what's in there - the film includes a few very effective jump scares, one of which actually made me shout in surprise - and looks for clues or new weapons.

This element of the picture may not resonate with me, as I never played video games much, but the film operates almost simplistically as one tense sequence after the next in which a character wanders into frightening scenarios and then is forced to react to whatever is there. It's effective, albeit slightly redundant as Abrams sees something horrifying and responds with "what the fuck" or something along those lines, over and over again.

In other words, Cregger fans hoping that he would take on something as complex, both thematically and visually, as "Weapons" might be a little disappointed to find him dabbling in franchise filmmaking and delivering something that is relatively straightforward and lacking in complexity.

"Resident Evil" would rank third among the three films by Cregger that I've seen - "Weapons" is the clear favorite, while the unsettling "Barbarian" comes in second - but it's still a good genre effort that displays its director's talents throughout. It's often funny, grotesque, frightening, and stylistically impressive. While I not-so-secretly hope that his next film will be something of greater heft, this will certainly do for now.

Review: The Weight

Image courtesy of Vertical.

Padraic McKinley's "The Weight" feels like a crime drama and adventure that was written by John Steinbeck. It's many things at once - a tale of people struggling in the 1930s during the Great Depression, a prison drama, and a wilderness adventure that feels as if it was inspired somewhat by "The Wages of Fear" and "Sorcerer," but on foot.

The picture succeeds on all fronts and features yet another great performance by Ethan Hawke, who has turned in one underrated and understated portrayal after another in recent years. In this film, he plays Samuel Murphy, who is evicted from his home early in the picture and sets out to find a new place to live with his young daughter, Penny (Avy Berry).

While looking through the window of a place that rents out apartments, after not having been able to locate the superintendent, he is mistaken for a thief and gets into an altercation with some men, who turn out to be police. He is arrested and thrown into jail. Penny is taken away and placed in a foster home. 

Some time later, Murphy is residing in a work camp operated by Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe), a task master who allows for little nonsense. Within a year, Penny will end up a ward of the state, leaving Murphy little recourse to getting her back. 

When Murphy jumps in and devises a plan to help the men in the work camp to move a gigantic stone - seemingly an impossible task - he catches the attention of Clancy, who takes a shine to him. Eventually, he tells Murphy that he has a job for him that, if carried out successfully, could allow him to get out of prison earlier, thereby giving him a chance to get Penny back.

The mission involves carrying backpacks full of gold through the Oregon wilderness to a rendezvous point. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had announced that in an effort to halt currency deflation that was dragging out the Depression, he had decided to take the United States off the gold standard, sending federal marshals to remove gold held in vaults by the Federal Reserve Bank.

Murphy and the three other convicts he chooses - plus two heavies sent by the bank and a Native American woman (Julia Jones) who follows them - are tasked with transporting the gold before the government can get its hands on it. The problem is that people living in the region know the bank is holding gold, so there's a possibility that Murphy's men could run across greedy men with guns in the woods who want to get their hands on the gold.

"The Weight" works well as a Depression-era drama about people struggling to survive - something which I'm sure modern audiences can appreciate - but also as a tense thriller about desperate men up against unbelievable odds - there's a particularly nerve-wracking scene involving the transportation of the gold across a wobbly bridge that reminded me of something out of an Indiana Jones movie.

Crowe is effective in his role as the probably untrustworthy Clancy and most of the rest of the cast provides solid supporting work - Jones as the the resourceful Anna, Avi Nash as the Indian-American socialist prisoner Singh, and Austin Amelio as Rankin, the troublemaker of the group. 

But it's Hawke who carries the film in yet another strong performance as Murphy, a quiet man who has more going on under the surface than what his fellow prisoners might notice. Often, his performance relies on facial expressions, rather than dialogue, to carry scenes. It's a great performance in a film that, in another era, would probably have been directed by John Huston, Anthony Mann, or Walter Hill. "The Weight" was one of the biggest hits at this year's Sundance Film Festival and it's easy to see why.

Review: Practical Magic 2

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

A lot of old movies and TV shows are getting recycled to cash in on nostalgia, some of which are welcome while others are, perhaps, unnecessary.

“Practical Magic 2” is a case of the latter. The original 1998 film was a modestly amusing dramedy about two sisters named Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman) who lived with their spinster aunts, Jet (Dianne Weist) and Franny (Stockard Channing), all of whom happened to be witches.

The women in the family were victims of a centuries-spanning curse that ensured anyone they fell in love with would die. The picture – and its sequel – are based on novels by Alice Hoffman and could probably play on a triple feature with “The Witches of Eastwick” and “Bell, Book and Candle.”

In this sequel, Sally has long been living in a sort of denial of her witchy powers – especially after her husband (Aidan Quinn, not present here) died – while Gillian remains a free spirit and a heavy influence on Sally’s now-grown daughters, Kylie (Joey King) and Antonia (Maisie Williams).

Kylie has been sneaking around with a young man (Xolo Mariduena) and, as it turns out, has told him that she loves him, which leads to an accident that lands him in a coma. Distraught and angry at her family that she has been left in the dark regarding the family’s curse, she travels to England to break the curse. Why England? That’s apparently where the woman who started the curse was born, although the details are a bit confusing.

Sally and Gillian, who frequently bicker, follow Kylie across the pond to protect her and, in the process, Sally meets a professor (Lee Pace) on whom she develops a crush, but keeps it at bay for obvious reasons.

On the one hand, the film has a cast of great actresses – Kidman, Weist, Bullock, and Channing, so it’s a shame to see them all forced to go through the motions of a mostly middling sequel to a movie that’s now 28 years old.

Kidman gets to shine a little as the wilder sister, but it’s a primarily by-the-numbers sequel. Mostly, the cast revisits the same character beats from the 1998 picture.

The film has its moments – there are a few legitimate laughs to be had – but “Practical Magic 2” joins “Masters of the Universe,” “Scary Movie 6,” and “Mortal Kombat II” are further proof that not all existing IP must continue to be revisited.

Review: Hope

Image courtesy of Neon.

There's a lull for about 20 minutes a little over an hour into Na Hong-jin's absolutely bonkers monster movie "Hope," but everything that comes before and after is otherwise nonstop, relentless motion, giving the film the feel of an unholy mixture between Bong Joon Ho's "The Host" and "Mad Max: Fury Road." Alas, the picture doesn't quite stick the landing with an ending that is likely to elicit a few huhs, but this is a mostly enjoyable and wild sci-fi-horror-action hybrid.

The picture jumps right into it as a group of small town South Koreans notice mutilated cattle along the roadside. They don't think a bear could have been responsible and a few characters briefly ponder whether it was a tiger - which seems unlikely. From this point on, we follow police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jun-min) as he goes in search of an answer.

The picture flits about with various characters - Bum-seok, his badass fellow cop Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon), and Sung-gi (Zo In-sung), Bum-seok's cousin - as they track what turns out to be a large monster as it wreaks havoc in the town. The first hour miraculously involves numerous chases involving the monster, but we don't actually see what it looks like until shortly after the 60-minute mark. The film has a few flaws, one of which is that its creatures look a little on the CGI side.

But the look of the creatures matters little when the film is such an incredibly shot series of set pieces - which include a chase through the town on foot, a wild car ride, several chases through a forest, and then the craziest car ride this side of the "Mad Max" movies toward the film's end. This is one of those rare films in which I didn't mind overlooking some of the plot holes and lack of context and just sat back and enjoyed its incredible action sequences.

Although there comes a point when the nonstop action can wear the viewer down a bit, Hong-jin displays ingenuity in its final high-speed chase in which a monster pursues a car and a person on horseback on a highway. The film's weakest element, unfortunately, is its ending, which on the one hand could possibly provide fodder for a sequel, or instead merely intends to show that what took place in the film is merely a small piece of a larger puzzle. Either way, it's a bit jarring and not exactly successful.

Regardless, this is a film that I have no problem recommending to those who enjoy action movies, horror films, creature features, or Korean movies with an oddball sense of humor. This is a movie that you watch for the sum of its parts - and those parts often play like gangbusters.

Review: Onslaught

Image courtesy of A24.

 Adam Wingard has spent the past five years making Kaiju movies - two entries in the never-ending Godzilla saga - so it's nice to see him returning to the low-budget type of B-movies on which he cut this teeth. It's just a shame that his new film, "Onslaught" comes up a little short.

The picture shares some DNA with "The Guest," a far superior thriller about a super soldier who terrorizes a small town, in its story about men turned into killing machines. It feels like a mixture of "The Terminator," "Halloween," and various other low-budget, violent sci-fi thrillers from the 1980s.

The setup is simple - almost too simple: A weirdo German scientist (Dan Stevens) who appears to be into BDSM with his wife (Rebecca Hall) is developing three super soldiers at a base in the middle of the desert. The place is top secret, so when the three soldiers go berserk and kill everyone at the base, it is in the government's best interest to cover it up.

Rather than try to put down the soldiers, Hall's character tells the government spook assigned to the case, a foppish character named Cyrus (Drew Starkey), who is introduced for no apparent reason at a BDSM-themed strip club (this film goes all in, albeit briefly, on the kink), that it would be interesting to see what happens when the soldiers are released on a civilian population.

That population is a small trailer park community down the road, where a former soldier named Celeste (Adria Arjona), who has a lot of flashbacks and a small daughter (Blake Kennedy) in tow for the weekend after her ex shows up unexpectedly, fights through the night to survive. She is joined by another older veteran (Reginald VelJohnson) and a seemingly useless cop (Eric Wareheim) to fight off the marauders.

The film is short and since it takes a while for the two worlds to collide - the super soldiers and the trailer park - it feels somewhat inconsequential when they finally do and the situation is resolved pretty quickly. Arjona is good enough as Celeste, but she and all of the other characters in the movie are merely sketches. There's an incident from her past that is divulged to her daughter that then resurfaces in the present in a not particularly believable way. This flashback involves what has to be the lowest-stakes fist fight I've ever seen.

The picture combines over-the-top violence and outright weirdness - the German scientist and the Cyrus character - that make the film colorful enough, but feel like whiplash in terms of tone. Some of Wingard's previous genre exercises - especially "The Guest" - were tense and engaging, but this one feels like a paint-by-numbers genre exercise that utilizes the styles, concepts, and vibes of better movies. Wingard is a talented director of genre movies, but this one felt a little flat.

Review: By Any Means

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Elegance Bratton's "By Any Means" makes up for what it lacks as an historical race-related drama with some intense and enjoyable wish fulfillment sequences - something you might expect out of Quentin Tarantino in recent years - that get the job done. It's somewhat of an exploitation picture that just happens to - allegedly - be based on a true story.

The murder of three men who went down to Mississippi to register Black voters during the Freedom Summer of 1961 is, unfortunately, true. So is the killing of Vernon Dahmer (portrayed here by Giancarlo Esposito), an NAACP chapter president in the region, by the Ku Klux Klan for similar reasons in 1966.

"By Any Means" follows the story of a Black FBI agent named Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who is fictional, who puts himself forward to investigate the murders, but is stifled at first by his superiors (David Strathairn and Josh Lucas). He is eventually partnered with Gregory Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg), a man nicknamed the Grim Reaper who serves as a hired killer for the Colombo Crime Family in New York.

The entire story behind "By Any Means" is that Scarpa was an FBI informant whom they used in Mississippi to obtain information by violent means to help solve the cases of the murdered men. The idea is that Scarpa would strong-arm people to get information, whereas a typical FBI agent would probably play by the book and, as a result, get nowhere.

The FBI has denied that it used Scarpa - and it very well might have - so much of the action in this film is all speculation. The possibility that Scarpa worked with a Black FBI agent is nothing more than a rumor, so the film is mostly a piece of fiction.

However, the atmosphere in the Deep South at that time is far from fiction. So, there's some pleasure to be had watching Scarpa bust some Klan heads to get information. Although Strider is much more by-the-book, he becomes increasingly less inclined to do so. He sure is shocked, however, when Scarpa kills a racist police officer and tells Strider that they should leave the body in the middle of the road and just proceed with their business.

Some might see comparisons to "Green Book," an Academy Award-winning movie that also involved a tough Italian-American - in that case, a bouncer - and a Black man traveling through the South during the 1960s. That picture received some blowback because of the white character introducing the Black character to fried chicken and some similar scenes. 

The closest that "By Any Means" comes to this is Scarpa trying to instill in Strider that following the rules when it comes to investigating bad men isn't always all that it's cracked up to be. Plus, Wahlberg's hamming it up - and I don't mean that as a critique as his portrayal of Scarpa is often amusing - adds a certain levity to the proceedings.

The film isn't one of the great movies to explore civil rights during the 1960s in the United States, but it's often an engaging enough crime procedural with an odd couple at its center. And similar to the joys of pulpy movies in which the Allies crack Nazi heads, there are some pleasures to be had seeing Klan members receive the same treatment.