Review: Sicario

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

The year's most nerve wracking movie isn't a horror film, but Denis Villeneuve's "Sicario," a deeply disturbing and intense drama that focuses on a battle between federal agents and cartels along the U.S.-Mexico border. There's a sense of unease that is first felt as a group of agents are seen descending on a home in the film's opening sequence that lasts through to the end when the film's lead character doesn't feel safe in her own home following an unsettling visit.

In the picture, Emily Blunt plays Kate, an idealistic federal agent whose specialty is kidnappings related to Mexican drug cartels. In the movie's first scene, she and her team find a house where one of the cartels has stored the decomposing bodies of numerous enemies or people who got in the way of its business.

Shortly thereafter, Kate is recruited to work with an elite - but shadowy - government task force led by an operative known only as Matt (Josh Brolin) and his cohort - a quiet, but frighteningly intense man, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), who has more than a few unpleasant methods of getting people to talk to him.

"Sicario" is the type of thriller in which we watch a character with good intentions - in this case, Kate - getting in way over her head. She joins Matt and Alejandro's squad because she wants to get a shot at nabbing the men who murdered the people found in the house at the film's beginning, but she begins to question whether her squad's methods are legal or morally sound.

There's a particularly horrifying sequence toward the film's end when Alejandro, who has his own dark history with the cartels, catches up with a kingpin who wronged him in the past. And although Alejandro is technically supposed to be the good guy in the scene, his actions give Kate good reason to question what she has gotten herself into.

This is a very well-made film and the type of picture that was once referred to as a white knuckle thriller. And it works so well because Villeneuve, who directed the vastly underrated 2013 thriller "Prisoners" and the creepy "Enemy," is such a sure hand behind the camera. This is a filmmaker with talent to spare and his latest is very effective at creating a sense of unease.

The performances are also very worthy of praise, especially Blunt, whose work here represents a career best, as well as Brolin's portrayal of Matt, who appears to take a light approach to his work, but can get heavy when necessary. And as the mysterious and ruthless Alejandro, Del Toro creates a character nearly as scary as Javier Bardem's sinister Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men."

I'm not sure how accurately "Sicario" actually represents the war on drugs battling it out in the borders of U.S. and Mexico, but the picture is more of a thriller with topical themes than a - for lack of a better phrase - social problem film. It's grim, powerful and tense as well as further evidence that Villeneuve continues to distinguish himself among his generation of filmmakers.

Review: Black Mass

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Let's get this out of the way first - "Black Mass" is not a great gangster movie, but it's a pretty good one and Johnny Depp gives his best performance in a while as the notorious James "Whitey" Bulger, although my favorite Depp mob movie remains the underrated "Donnie Brasco."

Bulger led a long and prosperous criminal career and was once listed as one of the FBI's most wanted, evading the bureau as a fugitive from justice for nearly 17 years. Those seeking an in-depth view at the life or personality of Bulger will want to look elsewhere as the mobster is more of a supporting player in his own story and Depp's portrayal, although quite good, emphasizes the myth over the man.

One of the elements that drags "Black Mass" down a bit is that it is missing a lead character or narrator. The picture occasionally focuses on Bulger and includes a few sequences in which he communicates with his wife/girlfriend (never quite clear) and young son to humanize him, but the story is mostly told through his cohorts.

As the film opens, we are led to believe that the character who will navigate us through Bulger's world is Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons, of "Breaking Bad"), a bouncer who becomes a de facto bodyguard for the gangster. And then, the narrative viewpoint occasionally switches over to Steve Flemming (Rory Cochrane), another cohort.

Most often, the story is told from the perspective of John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), an FBI agent whose assignment is to investigate Boston's mob scene but, since he knows Bulger from his youth, he comes up with an idea to bring Whitey in as an informant. However, this ends up resulting in Connolly shielding Bulger from investigation in return for measly tidbits of information that incriminates Bulger's competition - the Italian mob. It also helps that Bulger's brother (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a state senator.

Although Edgerton's character is a tad bit underwritten, he's a good foil for Bulger. He's the weasel to Depp's stone cold killer. Much of the film involves other characters reacting in shock to Bulger's behavior as if he's the boogeyman himself, which is likely another reason why Depp plays the character at a remove. It's a solid performance, certainly Depp's best in a while.

"Black Mass" is violent and gloomy and while the screenplay occasionally lacks focus, the subject matter itself and Depp's unnerving performance keeps us hooked. There's a particularly unsettling scene in which Bulger torments Connolly's wife (Julianne Nicholson), who gets out of a dinner with the mobster and his pals by pretending she's sick due to the fact that he creeps her out. And it's easy to see why.

The film marks a departure for director Scott Cooper, whose previous two films - the very good "Crazy Heart" and the decent "Out of the Furnace" - were dramas set in the heartland and southwest. He's able to mimic the mean street settings and characters who inhabit them in the films of Martin Scorsese well enough, even if his picture never rises to the level of a classic mob movie.

The gangster story has been explored to death in both film ("Goodfellas" to "The Godfather" series) and television ("The Sopranos" and "Boardwalk Empire"), but it's a genre that continues to fascinate because the lives of its characters are so far removed from our own. "Black Mass" doesn't add much new to the genre, but it's a well-made crime drama with a very good lead performance and an air of dread that lingers after the picture has ended.

Review: The Visit

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

M. Night Shyamalan goes back to the well - but with fewer resources - with this low budget horror movie that relies on the type of twist that made his "The Sixth Sense" such a success. But, sadly, this return is middling at best.

The director's trio of twisty thrillers - the solid "Sixth Sense," much better "Unbreakable" and extremely creepy "Signs" - still hold up, but Shyamalan's work since those three has been spotty - "The Village" was conceptually interesting, but a failure in execution. "Lady in the Water" was, well, God knows what. "The Happening" was ridiculous, but at least kind of fun. And "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth" were virtually unwatchable.

"The Visit" is a modestly scaled attempt at a comeback for the filmmaker and while it has a few creepy moments, it's mostly just a tiresome series of jump scares and found footage cliches.

In the picture, two siblings - Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) - pay a visit to the grandparents they've never met. Their mother (Kathryn Hahn) had a falling out with them years before, but never reconnected. Becca, an aspiring filmmaker, wants to make a documentary about their week-long visit with their grandparents, who live in - what else? - an isolated farmhouse in Pennsylvania.

Shyamalan makes the most out of the scenery, which is creepy in the way that many houses in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods and sparse scenery tend to be. Shortly after their arrival, Becca and Tyler begin to notice strange goings-on - grandma (Deanna Dunagan) has a proclivity for crawling around on all fours late at night and quite often semi-nude. Grandpa (Peter McRobbie) takes frequent trips to the barn, where he stores bloodied diapers and can occasionally be spotted with a shotgun in his mouth.

There are some unsettling scenes to be had during all of this, especially one in which the siblings play hide and seek under the creaky old house only to find that they have a third member playing the game. Most of the rest of the scares primarily involve the old folks popping up when you least expect them to in front of the camera, which apparently is always turned on.

Even more unsettling than the film's numerous jump scares are the script choices. The level of Becca's precociousness is a little too difficult to swallow and would her brother really know the meaning of mise en scene? Worse, Tyler's character has a tendency to break out in random rap lyrics of his own inventing that would make even the 90's worst white rapper (choose your own artist and insert here) cringe. Someone must have found these scenes funny, but I'm not sure who that someone was. Certainly no one in the theater where I watched "The Visit."

On the other hand, there's a pretty funny running joke in which virtually every adult who crosses Becca's path used to be an actor and, therefore, feels compelled to show off their thespian credentials. Also, Tyler's decision to replace curse words with the names of female pop stars is occasionally amusing. But only occasionally.

Shyamalan can make a good thriller ("The Sixth Sense") and he knows how to frighten people (see "Signs" for evidence). And "Unbreakable" is not only a tense thriller, but it's also philosophically adept. So, it's unfortunate that the picture in his oeuvre to which I'd compare "The Visit" is "The Village," which is another film with an interesting concept that never quite materializes onscreen.

Review: Goodnight Mommy

Image courtesy of Radius TWC.

Having just returned from a trip to Austria, I can attest that most of that nation's people are quite friendly and not the severe and - occasionally - violent individuals they are portrayed as by films from their native country.

Although I'm a great admirer of the work of Michael Haneke, the filmmaker's most notorious movie - "Funny Games" - is among my least favorite of his pictures. The oeuvre of another Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, is more of a mixed bag in my opinion. What both filmmakers' bodies of work have in common is that they are stark, bleak and often disturbing.

So, imagine a horror film utilizing those attributes, especially "Funny Games," and you sort of have an idea of what to expect from "Goodnight Mommy," a picture that starts out creepy before becoming unpleasantly nasty. It also doesn't help that the film's twist can be spotted a mile away. If you've seen a movie or two before, you'll likely figure it out within the first 10 minutes.

The movie, which is directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, is effective enough, but it left me cold and its casual sadism became too much as it increasingly takes over the proceedings during the final half-hour.

In the film, two boys are left alone at an isolated house during the summer. Suddenly, their mother returns following some sort of operation that has left her with bandages wrapped entirely around her head, obscuring her face. The two boys think that something is off about their mom and increasingly begin to smell an impostor. But are they correct or just paranoid?

The film's best moments are near the beginning as the twins wander around the vast expanse surrounding their home, playing in corn fields and walking through creepy wooded areas. "Goodnight Mommy" is rich on atmosphere and if the filmmakers had relied on this attribute alone, it could have resulted in something richer than what we ultimately get.

But as the boys begin to become more and more disturbed by their mother's presence - especially after she takes off the bandages - things take a grim turn. The twins decide to try to torture the woman they do not believe is their mother into some sort of confession as to where their actual mother happens to be. As the film progresses, the mother figure becomes less sinister and the boys more so.

This is the type of film where I can sort of see where the filmmakers are heading and what they're aiming for, even when the picture eventually falls apart. Fiara and Franz display some talent behind the camera, so it's a pity that the film devolves into gory cliches as it reaches its denouement.

"Goodnight Mommy" is not a bad film, but it's also not the type that I can particularly recommend, especially since there have been some truly unique horror movies - such as "It Follows" and "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" - during the past year.

Review: Queen of Earth

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Elisabeth Moss gives an unsettling performance in Alex Ross Perry's "Queen of Earth," a psychological drama that plays like a horror film, as a young woman suffering from a recent break-up who spends a week in a secluded cabin with a semi-estranged friend (played by Katherine Waterston, of "Inherent Vice").

The role is a departure for Moss - who I'll always think of as Peggy Olsen, her "Mad Men" character - and she proves that she can take on challenging material. So, it's a little disappointing that Perry's film does not exactly match her commitment.

The director made his debut last year with "Listen Up Philip," a sardonic dramedy about an arrogant writer that had many thinking that the filmmaker was aiming to be a protege of Noah Baumbach or Wes Anderson. But with "Queen of Earth," he heads in a completely different direction, but with mostly diminishing returns.

The film opens with one of its best scenes as we witness a close-up of Moss's tear-stained and eye shadow-smeared face during a break-up with her boyfriend. The actress appears to go through all five stages of grief in a matter of several minutes and the performance immediately hooks you. The film, on the other hand, takes much longer to get moving and, ultimately, isn't as effective as its lead performance.

Moss's Catherine joins old pal Virginia (Waterston) at the quiet, backwoods cabin owned by Virginia's family. The trip is seemingly meant as a healing one, but it is quickly upended by the arrival of Rich (Patrick Fugit), a man with whom Virginia had some sort of affair the summer before. From the start, Catherine and Rich make it clear that they do not like each other and their taunting of one another quickly becomes, well, a little inappropriate.

Meanwhile, we witness flashbacks from the year before when Catherine and her now ex-boyfriend visited the cabin and Virginia and Rich met for the first time. One of the problems with the film is that we are led to believe that while Catherine is in the midst of a psychological breakdown in the present, it is Virginia who was suffering the year before. But this is only hinted late in the film and there is no evidence of Virginia's fragile emotional state in any of the flashbacks.

Also, "Queen of Earth" ultimately does not add up to much in its final sequences. Moss is asked to increasingly act more and more disturbed - and she does so with aplomb - but I'm not sure that we get any better sense of who Catherine and Virginia are and why their relationship has become fractured. The picture uses eerie music and hauntingly creepy shots of sunsets and early mornings to create atmosphere, but it's all used to give off the feeling that we're watching a horror movie, rather than a drama about two friends. In other words, it favors style over substance.

So, while the performances in "Queen of Earth" are solid, the film itself feels a little lost. There's a sense of tension throughout, but it's difficult to parse exactly what we're supposed to feel tense about. Moss is a wonderful actress and Waterston is a star on the rise and it's always a pleasure to watch them. I'd just love to see some material that gives them more to work with than this film does.

Review: No Escape

Image courtesy of The Weinstein Company.

If you can get past the retrograde sequences of white Americans being terrorized by hordes of crazed foreigners abroad and the film's occasionally confusing politics, John Erick Dowdle's "No Escape" is an intense low budget thriller.

In the picture, Owen Wilson plays a bigwig at an American company that will take over the water supply in a section of a southeast Asian country that I'm guessing is Indonesia (although the film was shot in Thailand) and, shortly after Wilson's Jack Dwyer and his family arrive, he comes to find that the natives aren't too happy about that.

No sooner than he, his wife (Lake Bell) and two little girls have checked into their hotel, which is swarming with Americans and Europeans, a massive riot begins, pitting men with all sorts of sharp weapons against the police. The picture opens with the nation's prime minister/president being assassinated, so it's a little unclear how exactly this apparent coup ties in with the violent protesters going after Wilson and all Americans involved with the water supply situation.

Dwyer and his family escape the marauding masked men - who shoot, stab and bludgeon virtually any non-native who crosses their path - with the help of Pierce Brosnan, who plays some sort of CIA operative who happens to be staying at the same hotel.

The first of Dwyer and family's many perilous escapes - the film's title is a little misleading, no? - involves he and his wife throwing their young children from one very high rooftop to another. During other sequences, Dwyer and Bell's Annie are captured and just when you think they are about to be killed, well.

As I'd mentioned before, the film is occasionally a bit retrograde as it portrays the unassuming Americans abroad fleeing repeatedly from the scary foreigners. And while most of the southeast Asians are portrayed as machete wielding maniacs, there are also a few stoic ones on-hand who, of course, put their safety in danger to help Dwyer and company.

Also, there is a sequence in which Brosnan's character essentially places the blame on western nations and organizations such as the CIA for the melee that ensues. So, the combination of this speech with the occasionally crass portrayals of the natives makes for a slightly confusing mix.

However, "No Escape" is an example of a low budget genre film done well. It's quickly paced and often intense. Wilson and Bell are mostly there to react to outbreaks of violence, rather than act out the parts of fully formed characters, but they do well, all things considered. In other words, don't go looking for a serious movie about U.S. corporations meddling in third world countries. But if you're down for an exciting and well-shot white knuckle thriller, "No Escape" is a pretty good one.

Review: American Ultra

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

"American Ultra" feels like the result of a mix-up at the screenwriting laboratory. On the one hand, it wants to be a stoner comedy with quirky characters, while on the other, it's an ultra-violent espionage movie as well as sort of a romance. All of these elements do not exactly blend naturally, although the film has its charms, a few funny moments and some decent - albeit gratuitously violent - action sequences.

In the film, Jesse Eisenberg plays Mike Howell, a wake-and-bake convenient store clerk whose raison d'etre is his stoner girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), but who feels as if he is constantly letting her down. As the movie opens, they are planning to take a trip to Hawaii, but Mike cannot get past his phobias and anxieties, so the trip is called off.

Meanwhile in Washington D.C., a CIA agent played by Connie Britton is told that the cover is going to be blown on an operative she has in the field and that said agent is to be eliminated. As it turns out, that operative is Mike, who is programmed in a "Manchurian Candidate" manner, so that whenever specific nonsensical words are spoken to him, he becomes a professional killer.

Much of the film involves Mike and Phoebe attempting to figure out Mike's identity as a smarmy CIA bigwig played by Topher Grace sends out hired killer after hired killer to snuff out the duo. Whenever the characters aren't speaking in expository dialogue, they are stabbing people in the neck with spoons or hitting them in the face with hammers.

The plot lines of "American Ultra" don't always work well together and the story is a little threadbare. What makes it occasionally work is that Eisenberg and Stewart prove they are game for the film's unrelenting silliness and, as a couple, there is some charm on display.

I rarely laughed out loud during the film, but I smiled often enough. And although I wouldn't go as far as saying that it works, I can assure you that you could do worse when it comes to mindless summer fare.