THE BOOGEYMAN (2023) – Too Derivative to Be Scary

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Although it is based on a Stephen King short story, the new horror movie THE BOOGEYMAN (2023) is an exercise in lazy storytelling that suffers from overused horror movie tropes and weak character development.

It also has a horrible title. THE BOOGEYMAN? Not only is it lame, but it calls to mind BOOGEYMAN (2005) which was an absolutely dreadful horror movie. THE BOOGEYMAN is at least better than BOOGEYMAN, so I’ll give it that.

THE BOOGEYMAN is the story of a family— the dad Will Harper (Chris Messina), who’s a psychiatrist, his high school-aged daughter Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), and his youngest daughter Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair)— who are all grieving over the recent death of Will’s wife and the girls’ mom, but just how recent and more importantly how she died is never explained. So, while we get to see this family behaving somewhat dysfunctionally early on, we don’t really get a feel for their angst since so little is known about it, other than the general “loss of a loved one.”

When a strange and obviously disturbed man shows up unexpectedly at Will’s practice, which is located inside the Harper home, the man, Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) tells Will that his children are all dead and that while he will be blamed for their deaths, it wasn’t him, but some creature who his kids tried to tell him about, but he obviously didn’t believe them. Unnerved, Will sneaks out and calls 911, leaving Lester alone, or so he thinks. Apparently, Lester isn’t alone, as the murderous creature shows up and kills Lester, leaving him hanging in a closet, making it look like a suicide. Hmm, a clever boogeyman!

Anyway, soon after, the Boogeyman begins to haunt Will’s own children, and the rest of the movie tells the story of their efforts to defend themselves against the Boogeyman. Which unfortunately sounds better than it is. A lot of the screen time is spent on scenes of characters walking alone through empty hallways hearing strange noises, asking “Is anyone there?” These are the absolute worst kinds of scenes in horror movies. We’ve seen them so many times before. Or scenes where young Sawyer hears noises under her bed and in the dead silence of night looks underneath. Look, there’s nothing there! Wait for it! The big loud scare will happen momentarily. And it does. But it’s all so predictable.

And just how did the Boogeyman make the jump from one family to the other? No idea. The story doesn’t tell. We just can assume that this boogeyman can go wherever it pleases.

The characters also discover that this monster can bleed, so they assume they can kill it. Makes sense. But if it can bleed, does that make it a physical monster? If so, how is it going from one place to another without anyone seeing it? Does it know magic? Can it become invisible? Is it traveling through different realities? Again, no idea. Because on these topics the movie is silent.

While the characterizations may be weak, the acting at least is very good. Sophie Thatcher is convincing as teen daughter Sadie, who pretty much is the main character in the movie. She’s certainly the strongest character. As she finds answers, so does the audience, but sadly, most of the answers aren’t very satisfying. When she discovers that the thing bleeds, she says aloud that she’s guessing this means it can die. And that’s the best the movie has to offer in terms of answers. Guesses.

Chris Messina as daddy Will is sufficiently sad and gloomy, depressed over the loss of his wife while questioning his ability to care for his kids on his own. He’s kinda in a stupor throughout. He’s not a particularly effective dad. A far more effective story would have made the boogeyman in this one an entity threatening his role as dad, because his character is pretty vulnerable throughout.

Messina is a good actor who’s made bigger impressions in other movies, films like AIR (2023), where he had a field day playing Michael Jordan’s cutthroat agent David Falk. He’s been in a ton of movies, and going back a ways he was in ARGO (2012) and the weak horror movie DEVIL (2010).

Young Vivien Lyra Blair as Sawyer does “frightened” well, and a shout out should go to Maddie Nichols who in a very small role plays Natalie, one of Sadie’s school mates, who is as mean and as bitchy as they come. She makes Natalie the most frightening character in the movie, far scarier than the Boogeyman, mostly because she comes off as so real. Blair was equally as impressive in my favorite movie of the year in 2022, EMERGENCY (2022), an underappreciated gem from Prime Video.

And David Dastmalchian in what turns out to be just a cameo, makes for a very unsettled Lester Billings. Unfortunately, he’s only in one scene in this movie. Dastmalchian impressed as Polka-Dot Man in THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021). He also plays Kurt in the ANT-MAN movies.

The best thing that THE BOOGEYMAN has going for it is that its monster, the Boogeyman, is rather cool looking, mostly because it’s always seen in the dark, since it hates the light. Why does it hate the light? No idea. Like everything else in this movie, you just have to guess. As I said, lazy storytelling. But it looks cool, and as a monster movie fan, I can’t take this away from the movie.

But other than creating a somewhat frightening looking monster, there’s not much else that director Rob Savage does here that works all that well. As I pointed out earlier, there are lots of dull scenes of characters walking through dark hallways. Boring.

The screenplay by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman is by far the weakest part of THE BOOGEYMAN. The characters are cliche, the monster isn’t clearly explained, and the situations are all from countless other horror movies we have seen before. The whole thing is exceedingly derivative. Beck and Woods also co-wrote 65 (2023), a dinosaur movie which also had an awful script which also contained very little details. Yet, these guys also worked on the screenplay for A QUIET PLACE (2018), which was an exceptional horror movie. Which just goes to show you how difficult writing is. Sometimes you nail it. Other times you don’t.

For the most part, THE BOOGEYMAN is watchable. The acting is decent, and the monster is cool looking, but if you’ve seen as many horror movies as I have, you reach the point where you are bored of seeing the same story elements and ways of telling them over and over again. And that’s the biggest knock against THE BOOGEYMAN. There’s nothing in it that I haven’t seen done better in countless other horror movies from years gone by.

It’s all pretty standard horror movie fare.

As a result, I give THE BOOGEYMAN two stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

BLOOD & GOLD (2023) – Nazi Killing World War II Adventure Spirited and Intense

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BLOOD & GOLD (2023) is the latest international movie to premiere on Netflix, as it hails from Germany.

I said this recently, but this has been my favorite part of Netflix of late, their making available foreign language films that I otherwise would not see at the theater.

BLOOD & GOLD is a World War II action movie that is reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) only not as intense nor as bitingly sharp with its quirky dialogue, traits that Tarantino excels at. You could say BLOOD & GOLD is INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS lite, although it’s pretty violent in its own right and does contain some unexpected comedic moments.

They both contain lots of creative killings of Nazis, and this sort of thing admittedly does make for high cinematic entertainment.

BLOOD & GOLD opens in the final days of World War II, when the Allies are closing in fast on the Nazis in Germany, and most can see that the end of Hitler’s reign is near. A soldier named Heinrich (Robert Maaser) is about to be hung by his small Nazi unit for desertion, and this unit leaves him for dead, but moments later, he is saved by a young woman Elsa (Marie Hacke) who brings him back to her farm where she lives with her brother Paule, who has Down syndrome. Elsa hates the Nazis because they killed her family, and of course her brother wouldn’t be safe with them around, while Heinrich explains that he deserted because he was sick of killing for no reason, and also because he’s searching for the only surviving member of his family, his young daughter.

Meanwhile, the troop which had hung Heinrich makes their way to Elsa’s village because their leader, von Starnfeld (Alexander Scheer) knows that a fortune in Jewish gold is hidden there. What he doesn’t know is a group of prominent villagers, led by the mayor, has stolen it for themselves and have no intention of giving it back.

The rest of the movie intertwines these two plots, as the Nazis search both for the gold and for Heinrich once they learn that he is still alive, while Heinrich and Elsa fight for their survival and freedom. The result is a well-made, well-written action thriller that contains lots of really well-choreographed action scenes.

Director Peter Thorwarth creates many memorable action sequences, including Heinrich’s rescue of Elsa when she’s about to be raped by Nazis, Paule’s fight for survival in a church tower when the Nazis bring him there to execute him in front of a crowd, and the exciting finale in the church when everyone is converging for the gold.

And there are thrilling dramatic scenes as well, like Elsa’s escape plan from von Starnfeld, who has decided to make her his bride.

Peter Thorwarth previously directed the vampire movie BLOOD RED SKY (2021) which I loved. I enjoyed BLOOD & GOLD even more.

The screenplay by Stefan Barth is very good. The story is a winner, and it includes many quirky characters, especially the different villagers, and memorable heroes and villains. The dialogue for the most part is strong, although it’s not quite as edgy enough as it needs to be. It’s missing the Tarantino-style cultural references and humor. It comes very close though.

Robert Maaser is excellent in the lead role as Heinrich. He’s believable as an action hero, and he is also very sincere. This is the second time in a week that I’ve seen Maaser in a movie. He had a supporting role in the comedy THE MACHINE (2023) in which he played a Russian mobster. He’s much better and much more memorable, and three-dimensional, here in BLOOD & GOLD.

Marie Hacke is equally as strong as Elsa. The scene where she plots her escape from von Starnfeld is the best in the movie. Speaking of von Starnfeld, Alexader Scheer is sufficiently villainous in the role. He wears a partial mask for most of the movie, and when he removes it later in the film, the CGI/make-up showing the hole in his jaw is very well done.

All supporting players in this one are excellent.

BLOOD & GOLD is a stylish, well-told adventure, filled with intense scenes of action and violence, memorable characters, and a spirited narrative that doesn’t quit.

This one satisfies from beginning to end.

I give it three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE MACHINE (2023) – Needs an Oil Change

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THE MACHINE (2023) is a new movie based on the comedy of stand-up comedian Bert Kreischer.

For my money, comedy is the most difficult genre to do well in the movies. A really good comedy is really hard to find, more so these days. Hopefully at some point soon we’ll witness a comedy renaissance, and they will be as prolific as Marvel superhero movies.

But that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon, and THE MACHINE certainly isn’t a step in that direction. As comedies go, it’s not very good. Actually, it’s kinda bad.

I saw it not because I’m a fan of Kreischer’s, whose comedy I barely know, but because the trailer was actually pretty funny, and Mark Hamill was also in the cast, playing Kreischer’s father. I was hoping to laugh a lot. I didn’t. The laughs are few and far between, and they’re not very hearty.

As I said, the plot of THE MACHINE is based on Kreischer’s comedy routine, in this case his famous story about how he earned the nickname “The Machine,” when he was in Russia and robbed a train with the Russian mob. In the movie, he’s pretty much playing himself, and so the film opens with Bert struggling to be a good dad for his two daughters, and a good husband. He’s trying, but he’s also failing. To make amends, he throws a lavish Sweet 16 birthday party for his daughter, and at the party, his estranged father Albert (Mark Hamill) arrives, and Bert and his dad have major issues with each other.

Also arriving at the party is Russian mobster Irina (Iva Babic) who tells Bert that her father, the head of a powerful mob family, wants his watch back that Bert stole when he was in Russia twenty years ago. Bert says he doesn’t remember stealing a watch, and so Irina and her henchmen kidnap both Bert and his dad and bring them to Russia where they are forced to find the missing watch.

Which is what the rest of the movie is all about, Bert and his father’s misadventures as they try to find the missing watch. I’ve seen worse plots. However, the humor in this one never really takes off.

While Kreischer is a fairly funny guy, he doesn’t knock it out of the park. At times, he can be raunchy, but most of the time he’s a goofy wannabe likeable “fat guy.” It’s also part of his shtick to go around without a shirt, which doesn’t really happen in this movie until the final reel. Neither persona is all that sharp, and so the humor is tepid at best. There are some laugh out loud moments, like when Bert is trying to pull a shaft out of Irina’s leg and he has to throw up, but these are few and far between.

I actually thought Mark Hamill was pretty funny as Bert’s weird dad, and his best moment is when he is high on drugs, but being high to get laughs is a rather low bar for comedy.

Iva Babic makes for an icy cold and sexy Russian mobster, and she plays it straight for the most part.

THE MACHINE is being marketed as an action comedy, but the action scenes aren’t very good. The fight sequences are a bit slow in their choreography, and they’re just not as slick and polished as what we are used to seeing in action movies these days. Director Peter Atencio features some nifty camerawork here and there, but he drops the ball with the action sequences.

The screenplay by Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes is meh. The story is okay, but the situations which should be rife for hilarity just aren’t. Bert and his father’s exploits in Russia have the potential to be laugh out loud funny, but they’re not.

I’m tempted to say that this one is for Bert Kreischer fans only, and he does have lots of fans as the theater was packed, but while these fans were laughing and being boisterous before the movie started, during the movie, they were fairly quiet. I laughed as much as anyone else, and that wasn’t that much.

And that’s the bottom line with THE MACHINE. It’s simply not very funny, and for a comedy that runs nearly two hours, that’s a long time to sit through an unfunny movie.

I give it a paltry one and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

Picture of the Day: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

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Today’s Picture of the Day comes from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), John Carpenter’s classic action thriller which made Kurt Russell an action movie hero.

I’ve chosen this picture mostly because, and I think this is true for most of John Carpenter’s films, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK has only gotten better with time. Like a lot of his other films in his early career, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK was not critically acclaimed. With the exception of HALLOWEEN (1978), critics gave Carpenter’s work a hard time. There was very little love for this movie upon its initial release in 1981.

It also didn’t wow the masses, as it was made on a smaller budget than most of big budget action films of the time, and it looks it, and back then with its cheaper look it struggled to connect strongly with audiences of the time. On a purely action movie level, it was not able to compete with the likes of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), for example.

But over the years, it has aged well, in spite of its “futuristic” science fiction plot— the action takes place in the “future” of 1997. Wow, that came and went quickly.

It has aged well because what was considered a “cheap” look in 1981, now looks artistic and special. I love the way New York City looks in this movie. The set design is dark and bleak, perfect for this story.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is probably most famous for being the movie which changed Kurt Russell’s career, turned him from a child star in Disney films to bonefied action hero. It actually did more than that, as Russell took on all sorts of movie roles and pretty much became a household name after this film. Russell doesn’t disappoint. He’s terrific in this movie.

He almost didn’t get the part, as the producers didn’t feel he had the tough guy status to pull it off. Carpenter wrote the part with Clint Eastwood in mind, and Russell admits he played it as an homage to Eastwood. His performance works perfectly.

Russell plays Snake Plissken, a convict who is tasked with sneaking into the Manhattan Island maximum security prison and rescuing the abducted President of the United States, and unless he can get in and out in twenty-four hours, the authorities will kill him. The world which Carpenter creates inside that Manhattan prison, and the bizarre characters residing there, are the stuff of nightmares. It’s fabulous movie making.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK also features a tremendous cast besides Russell. There’s Adrienne Barbeau, pictured above with Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, Season Hubley, and Jamie Lee Curtis provided both the voice of the computer and the opening voice-over narration.

Of course, my favorite part of this movie is the amazing score by John Carpenter. It’s one of his best. Then again, you can say that about nearly every film score he wrote.

About the only thing that still doesn’t work for me in this movie is the casting of Donald Pleasence as the President of the United States. I love Donald Pleasence, but he’s miscast here.

If you haven’t checked out ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK recently, do yourself a favor and give it a fresh viewing. It’s already considered a classic of the genre, a superb science fiction action movie from the glory days of John Carpenter’s early career, but it wasn’t always considered that way. It has stood the test of time, and what I am saying today is, that not only that, but it has gotten even better in recent years.

There’s an imagination and spirit in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK that is present from start to finish, and it’s largely because of the talent of writer/director John Carpenter.

Snake Plissken? I thought you were dead.

Nope. He’s very much alive. And better than ever.

—END—

THE LAKE (2023) – Giant Monster Movie from Thailand Is So Bad It Makes Ed Wood Look Good

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Let’s get this out of the way right now.

THE LAKE (2023), a new giant monster movie from Thailand, is not only the worst movie I’ve seen this year, but the worst I’ve seen in a long time!

THE LAKE was released to theaters back in March and is now available to rent on Prime Video at a reduced price— gee, I wonder why?— but sadly the version that is available is dubbed in English, which is the number one reason why this one is so bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen dubbing so bad before. It makes the goofy Toho Godzilla movies from the 1960s and 70s seem like high art.

The plot of THE LAKE is pretty standard giant monster movie fare. A monster emerges from a lake and terrorizes a small village in Thailand. Then, in a twist right out of the classic giant monster movie GORGO (1961), a larger monster emerges from the lake which happens to be the smaller monster’s mommy, and it attacks the village to get its baby monster back.

But none of this matters because the dubbing is so bad and completely sinks this movie. And by dubbing I’m not talking about the technical aspects of it, but the translation aspects. I have to believe that a lot was lost in translation, that the original Thai screenplay by Lee Thongkham, who also directed, couldn’t possibly be this bad. Could it?

The dialogue is nearly all exposition. For example, near the end of the movie, the villagers are all trying to escape, and they’re in a bus, and there’s a traffic jam, and panic ensues. There’s a conversation between a police officer and her superior which goes something like this:

Officer: Why is everyone leaving the bus?

Superior: Everyone is leaving bus?

Officer: Everyone is leaving the bus. They are running into the street. (While we see this happening on screen) They shouldn’t be leaving the bus. It is safer to be on the bus. Why are they leaving the bus?

Superior: It is safer to be on the bus. They should not be leaving the bus.

Officer: It is dangerous to be leaving the bus.

Superior: Yes, it is dangerous to be leaving the bus.

The entire movie is filled with conversations like this, that aren’t really conversations. They’re characters speaking but saying nothing, other than describing things that we are seeing playing out on screen. Another example: Are you hurt? Yes, I am hurt. I will call a doctor. I am calling a doctor. I am taking you to the doctor. We are almost at the doctor.

It’s horrible. The movie only runs for 90 minutes, yet it felt like three hours. The writing here reminds me of what I would expect A I -created content to be like. There’s no imagination or emotion. The actors are showing emotion, but the dubbed dialogue doesn’t speak to it. At all.

The story is a disaster as well. The movie opens with voice over narration that implies that the monsters and the humans are the same, and in fact, later, one of the characters becomes “connected” to the monster, and suffers the same injuries, but the script never explains how or why this happens. It does try to make the admirable point that people react out of fear, and that if we took the time to learn about beings that are different, we wouldn’t react that way, that we’d all be better for it, but the script fails at making this point as well.

The special effects aren’t bad, and the fact that CGI is minimally used is fun, but the final results are mixed. The monster looks best in the pre-credits sequence, which is shot in the rainy dark, which makes the monster look more menacing than when we see it later in full light. It looks like Alien and the 1998 Godzilla got together and had a baby. Until later when we get a better look at it, and at that point it looks like a giant Gremlin on steroids. At times it looks menacing, and at other times it looks like a guy in a rubber suit.

The characters are completely forgettable.

THE LAKE belongs in the Ed Wood category of movies. The only way to watch this one is if you’re drunk or high and want a few good laughs. For serious fans of giant monster movies, THE LAKE will disappoint.

It’s the worst movie I’ve seen in years.

I give it 0 stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE MOTHER (2023) – Standard Actioner Saved by Strong Mother/Daughter Dynamic

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Just in time for Mother’s Day, it’s THE MOTHER (2023), a new action thriller which just premiered on Netflix that stars Jennifer Lopez as an assassin who also happens to be a mother and who will do anything to protect her 12-year-old daughter from the deadly thugs who are trying to kill her.

Sound familiar?

It should. Because recently there has been a slew of action movies featuring super deadly female assassins, often protecting a child from harm, films like LOU (2022), GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE (2021), and KATE (2021) to name just a few. It’s a formula that’s wearing thin.

THE MOTHER, which is rated R and goes heavy with the violence, gets off to a good start, then sinks into a series of scenes that strain credibility, before eventually getting much better towards the end.

The movie opens with Jennifer Lopez’s character, who remains nameless throughout the movie, being questioned by F.B.I. agents who are trying to get her to give them information about a dangerous criminal, while promising her protection for doing so. She scoffs at this suggestion, saying that no one can protect her, and seconds later she’s proven correct, as snipers and assassins move in to kill her. She fights her way out of it, but the man who wants to kill her, Adrian (Joseph Fiennes) confronts her first, and when he sees that she is pregnant, violently stabs her in the belly. It’s a jarring opening scene.

Of course, she survives, as does the baby; hence, she becomes “the mother.” She agrees to give up her daughter for adoption in order to protect her, since Adrian also survived and is still hell bent on revenge. She disappears into the wilds of Alaska, until twelve years later, she learns that Adrian has discovered the whereabouts of her daughter Zoe (Lucy Paez), who’s now 12. She stakes out Zoe’s new family and watches her daughter, until Adrian makes his move. At that point, she grabs Zoe and takes her to Alaska where she plans to train her to survive, while waiting for Adrian to eventually find her.

THE MOTHER is a standard actioner with not much going for it until assassin mom takes her daughter Zoe to Alaska and trains her, because it’s in these sequences where Jennifer Lopez and young Lucy Paez share some onscreen chemistry, and the film pivots from unbelievable action movie to a somewhat heartfelt drama. Young Paez gives the best performance in the film, hands down. Her expressions, her emotions. She is a twelve-year-old who at first hates this woman who is her real mother and everything she stands for, but her feelings change as they grow close.

It’s also a decent performance by Lopez. Early on, she’s simply the emotionless assassin. Ho hum. But later in the scenes with her daughter Zoe, her character grows, and she becomes more watchable. In terms of believability, while the action scenes themselves strain credibility— every time there’s a fight, all the bad guys fall while Lopez escapes unscathed—, Lopez looks the part, and her performance is believable. She’s lean and mean, and I had no problem she could kick multiple people’s butts at the same time, but the sequences themselves were often over the top.

Joseph Fiennes, a fine actor, doesn’t do a whole lot here as evil bad guy Adrian. He’s not really a memorable villain. And Omari Hardwick has the thankless role of the F.B.I. agent who unlike mommy assassin gets shot, stabbed, and beaten up nearly every action sequence he appears in. It’s almost laughable.

THE MOTHER was directed by Niki Caro. The action sequences are slick and stylish, but the film’s best parts are in its latter half in Alaska, featuring scenes between mother and daughter. This is when the film is at its best. There’s also some neat sequences featuring wolves which factor thematically into the film.

The screenplay by Misha Green, Andrea Berloff, and Peter Craig like the rest of the movie works best when dealing with mother and daughter. The rest is all rather flat and uninspiring, and not very believable. Craig also worked on the screenplays for THE BATMAN (2022), and THE TOWN (2010), one of my favorite movies with Ben Affleck, who directed, who of course is Jennifer Lopez’ husband. Speaking of Affleck, both he and Lopez had movies released on the same weekend, as Affleck’s movie HYPNOTIC (2023) also just came out. I liked THE MOTHER better than HYPNOTIC.

I found the first half of THE MOTHER pretty standard and unimpressive, but it gets better, thanks largely to a neat performance by young Lucy Paez, as she and Jennifer Lopez lift the second half of the film to a much more satisfying final act.

I give it two and a half stars.

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

HYPNOTIC (2023) – Nothing Hypnotic About This Superficial Thriller

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HYPNOTIC (2023) is a new thriller starring Ben Affleck that tries to tell a clever story but instead ends up being superficial and shallow.

It’s also one of those movies where characters speak in terms of exposition. “We had to do this because….” “We had to do that because…” Lots of telling. Not much showing.

HYPNOTIC opens with detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) in a therapy session talking about the horrific day his young daughter was abducted from a park playground when he had looked away for only one second. Danny is clearly still a mess, yet at the end of the session, the therapist gives him the green light to return to active duty, which is the first of many instances in this movie where the plot just moves along because it is supposed to, rather than for any believable reasons.

We next find Danny staking out a bank with his fellow detectives because they received a tip the bank would be robbed, and there have been a string of robberies where the only thing stolen has been safe deposit boxes. When Danny observes a strange man (William Fichtner) speaking in code to a woman and then to a couple of guards, Danny wrongly believes they are all working together, and he rushes into the scene. He’s wrong, because the strange man, whose name is Dellrayne, is really hypnotizing these people to do whatever he wants.

When Danny thwarts the person who Dellrayne hypnotized to steal the safe deposit box, he opens it to see a photo of his missing daughter. Perplexed, he confronts Dellrayne, but the mysterious hypnotist escapes. Looking for answers, Danny and his partner Nicks (JD Pardo) track down the person who left the anonymous tip about the bank robbery, a woman named Diana (Alice Braga) who also happens to possess hypnotic abilities.

And it’s here where the dialogue in HYPNOTIC becomes bogged down in exposition. Diana explains who Dellrayne is and what he is up to, and since he wants the safety deposit box which Danny prevented him from stealing, he will be coming for it, which suits Danny just fine, since he wants to find his missing daughter. So many questions, so few answers. Honestly, at this point in the movie, the story is somewhat intriguing, as the mystery of why a picture of Danny’s daughter was inside a safety deposit box, and why Dellrayne wants that picture is a mildly interesting one.

HYPNOTIC then tries to go full blown “out there” and become a sort of poor man’s INCEPTION (2010), with equal parts TOTAL RECALL (1990) but it’s just not ambitious enough to pull this off successfully. There are lots of twists and turns and false memories and the like, but everything that happens in this movie is quick and superficial. It all fits neatly into its brief 90-minute running time, which sadly, might be the best part of this movie, that it doesn’t go on for too long! While I appreciated its briskness, it doesn’t take full advantage of this brevity by providing a lean mean story; instead, its plot is threadbare and summarized.

HYPNOTIC was written and directed by Robert Rodriguez, whose work I usually enjoy. Not so much this time around. My favorite Robert Rodriguez film is one of his earliest, the now classic vampire flick FROM DUSK TO DAWN (1996) which starred George Clooney, and he also helmed both the SIN CITY and MACHETE movies. Most recently he’s been directing episodes of THE MANDALORIAN (2020) and THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT (2021) TV series.

His work is usually slick, polished, and energetic, which is the case here with HYPNOTIC, but the problem is the story doesn’t hold up. Rodriguez’s screenplay rushes through nearly every story element here, and none of the characters are all that interesting. For a movie with a somewhat intriguing premise, I found this one all rather dull.

Likewise, I usually enjoy Ben Affleck. He just turned in a solid performance in a supporting role in the recent movie AIR (2023), which he directed, and which also just premiered for free on Prime Video this weekend. About the only time I haven’t really enjoyed Affleck was when he played Batman, and unfortunately, he kinda seems like Batman here only without the costume. He’s dark and grumpy, as he plays detective Danny Rourke as one dreadfully gloomy character, but without any real angst. He just looks serious and delivers somber lines, acting tough as if he were an indestructible superhero, a la Batman. Which is another knock on the screenplay. The dialogue is awful.

I also usually like William Fichtner, as he has stood out in movies like DRIVE ANGRY (2011) and THE DARK KNIGHT (2008), but he’s dull here as well as hypnotic villain Dellrayne. Like the other characters in the movie, he talks about what he just did, and what he is going to do, rather than actually doing anything. Ditto for Alice Braga as Diana.

Jackie Earle Haley shows up for one brief scene, basically a cameo, and it’s too bad he’s not in this one more, because in his few minutes of screen time, he delivers the best performance in the movie.

HYPNOTIC offers an intriguing mystery but drops the ball when telling a story about it. The characters are flat, the dialogue superficial, and the story, while it tries to go the route of a mind-boggling science fiction thriller, instead plods along a pedestrian path of unremarkable exposition.

I give it one and a half stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: THE MUNSTERS (2022)

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Rob Zombie’s reboot of THE MUNSTERS (2022) has been shown very little love by fans and critics alike since its release in September 2022.

Sure, the jokes are bad, the characters silly and over the top, the plot completely goofy, and the feel that it is all intended more for kids than for adults is prevalent throughout, but lest we forget, this is exactly how the campy original 1960s TV series THE MUNSTERS (1964-66) played out. Zombie has captured the exact feel of the show, and yet he seems to have been criticized for doing so. While I’ve always enjoyed THE MUNSTERS, I’ve never found the show all that funny because its humor was always purposefully awful, the canned laughter forced and annoying, and the situations more amusing than comical. This was how the show was, and how many of the 1960s comedy series were. The folks laughing the hardest were the ones on the laugh track! But this didn’t stop me and plenty of other fans from loving these shows.

And Zombie’s reboot isn’t just a rehash of the series. It’s an origin story and explains how these characters got together in the first place. There are also lots of homages and neat bits of casting, and it’s all wrapped in a lively exceedingly colorful package that makes this one a hoot to watch with or without your kids. I mean, you’ll love it on your own, but if you have kids, they can watch it, too. It’s not often you can say that about a Rob Zombie movie. In fact, this PG rated film is the first Rob Zombie movie not to be rated R.

In THE MUNSTERS, Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) lives with her father The Count (Daniel Roebuck) in his castle, and she is actively searching for the “man of her nightmares.” Her latest date with the vampire Orlock (Richard Brake) doesn’t go so well, as he is more interested in rats and the plague than in her. Meanwhile, Dr. Wolfgang (also played by Richard Brake) and his assistant Floop (Jorge Garcia) are busy trying to create life, and their creation, Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips), thanks to their mistaken use of a brain belonging to a failed comedian, awakens thinking he’s funny, and so he can’t stop telling bad jokes while trying to entertain people.

When Herman and Lily meet, they instantly fall in love, and the rest is history. And when the Count loses his castle, Herman moves them all from Transylvania to California, paving the way for their future family adventures on THE MUNSTERS.

Everything in THE MUNSTERS is completely silly and over the top, which is exactly how the show used to be. My favorite part of Zombie’s THE MUNSTERS is its exaggerated color scheme. The entire look of the film is bright, showy, and pretty darn impressive. It looks like a live action cartoon.

Zombie’s screenplay isn’t going to win any awards for best comedy, as the jokes are goofy and lame, the plot silly, and the characters absurd, but since it captures the spirit of THE MUNSTERS TV show, it’s ultimately successful.

He also includes various homages, like Herman’s fur vest, which is an homage both to the iconic Frankenstein Monster ads in 1960s comic books and to Boris Karloff’s Monster attire in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939). The vampire character Orlock is a dead ringer for Count Orlok from the silent classic NOSFERATU (1922), and the scenes between Dr. Wolfgang and Floop leading up to Herman’s creation parody situations and conversations from the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN.

The cast is fun. Jeff Daniel Phillips cracked me up throughout as Herman, and he captures Fred Gwyne’s goofy persona when he played the character. Herman is a hoot throughout this movie. Likewise, Sheri Moon Zombie captures the spirit of Yvonne De Carlo’s Lily from the series. And ditto for Daniel Roebuck as The Count, who also embodies Al Lewis’ performances as Grandpa.

Jorge Garcia, probably best known for his role as Hurley on the TV show LOST (2004-2010) enjoys lot of comedic moments here as the mad scientist’s assistant Floop. The cast also includes Catherine Schell, known to genre fans as Maya on the TV show SPACE 1999 (1975-77) as a gypsy woman, and Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, as a real estate agent. And original MUNSTERS cast members Butch Patrick and Pat Priest both have voice cameos.

THE MUNTERS isn’t high art. It’s not even a very good comedy. But neither was the original TV show. What it is, however, is a colorful and very amusing salute to the 1960s horror comedy series.

If you want to know how the Munsters first got together, and you want to enjoy a trip down memory lane, in one extremely colorful and cartoonish package, you should check out Rob Zombie’s THE MUNSTERS. It completely captures the undead spirit of the original. The only thing missing is the canned laughter.

And that’s a good thing.

—END—

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (2023) – Final Installment in Marvel’s Guardian’s Trilogy Mixes Light and Dark with Favorable Results

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The GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movies have been the most offbeat and fun of the Marvel movies, and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, the third installment in this series, is no exception.

Even with a serious plot— a race against time to save Rocket’s life— the movie contains enough shenanigans and quirky conversations to keep this most recent installment a lighthearted affair.

The biggest reason for this consistency is that all three films were written and directed by James Gunn, who has quite the interesting resume, as he has achieved success with comedies, superhero films, and horror movies. He even worked for Marvel’s rival DC, and created a movie I liked every bit as much as the first GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie, THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021), which was my favorite superhero movie that year. He is a master at writing witty, snappy, and flat-out funny dialogue.

I had a blast watching GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, even with its serious plot. When Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) is injured with a life-threatening wound, the Guardians, our friendly neighborhood protectors of the universe, discover that they cannot treat him, that his body has been encrypted with a suicide device if he is tampered with, which leads the Guardians to a search for Rocket’s origins so they can learn how to diffuse the device and save his life.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn Rocket’s origin story, and it’s not a pretty picture. He was created in a lab by a cold-hearted scientist known as The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who would have felt right at home on the set of STRANGER THINGS experimenting on the likes of Eleven, only his experiments are far worse. Rocket spends his youth with his closest friends, animals who have also been experimented on, and they dream of the day when they will be free from their cages, but freeing them is not part of The High Evolutionary’s plan. All these years later, The High Evolutionary is still at it, creating worlds and destroying them when he’s not happy with the result. He is also obsessed with capturing Rocket again, as Rocket was his most successful experiment, and so he welcomes the news that the Guardians are on their way to him to learn the secret of saving their friend.

And that’s the main plot of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, which really is secondary to watching the Guardians interact on screen.

It’s been a tough time for Star Lord aka Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) as he’s still lamenting the loss of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who’s not dead, but since returning to life after the Thanos purge, has lost all her memories and does not remember being in love with him. Chris Pratt has always been fun in the Peter Quill role, and he’s just as fun here in Vol. 3.

In fact, you can say the same for the rest of the characters as well. Dave Bautista as Drax gives probably my favorite performance in the movie. Drax gets the best lines and for my money is the funniest character in the series. Pom Klementieff is enjoyable as Mantis, and she and Drax share many fun scenes together.

Karen Gillan gets more screen time as Nebula, and we get to know her character more in this installment. Vin Diesel voices Groot, and he gets his share of moments. And Bradley Cooper gets more serious scenes this time around in the very dark story of Rocket’s origins.

Chukwudi Iwuji is okay as The High Evolutionary. He’s more sinister early on. By film’s end, he becomes a more traditional mad scientist, and the character ends up being less menacing than we was at the beginning of the movie.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 provides a good mix of laughs and drama. I laughed a lot, as did the very large movie audience I saw it with— which is a very good thing, by the way. It seems more and more movies these days I’m watching in near empty theaters.—. And it does this even as its plot covers themes like ruthless experiments on animals, mindless destruction of entire planets, the rescue of children, and in the film’s final reel a rescue of a myriad of animals which resembles something out of Noah’s Ark.

The one thing I wasn’t crazy about in this movie is we don’t really get to see the Guardians together all that much. They’re all involved in their separate mini adventures as they attempt to rescue Rocket. And when finally, they are reunited at film’s end, we’re met with the news that some of the Guardians are going their separate ways. As Rocket complains, “We’re breaking up?” Indeed, they are, as the film previews what the next variation of Guardians will look like, while others are going off on solo and smaller group projects. I’m all about evolving, but I also enjoy revisiting successful stories, and the present group of Guardians, certainly had not worn out their welcome yet.

Also, in typical Marvel movie fashion, there are scenes after the end credits, including one at the very end, so if you want to see it, you’ll have to wait till all the credits have rolled.

My favorite GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie remains the first one from 2014, but I enjoyed this third installment more than the second film in the series, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 (2017).

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 is nothing new, but that’s not a bad thing. The characters here are all fun and quirky, and their interactions make for an enjoyable two and a half hours at the movies. It’s all well-written and directed by James Gunn, and it looks amazing as well, filled with bright stunning and colorful visuals throughout.

And oh yeah. It features a worthy soundtrack of tunes which would make Peter Quill proud.

I give GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

AKA (2023) – New Actioner from France Will No Doubt Satisfy Action Movie Fans

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If you like action movies, chances are you’re going to love AKA (2023), a new action thriller from France which premiered on Netflix this weekend.

I gotta say, one of my favorite parts about Netflix these days is their promotion of international films. There are a lot of movies premiering on the streaming service that aren’t available at theaters, and in recent months they have showcased some outstanding movies from countries like Thailand, South Korea, and Norway, to cite just a few.

Their latest is AKA, an action flick from France about a special ops agent named Adam (Alban Lenoir) who is called in to infiltrate a mobster’s organization in order to learn the whereabouts of a terrorist in hiding who is intent on wreaking havoc in France. The terrorist is friends with the mobster, and the French government knows the mobster is hiding him. Adam’s mission is to find the terrorist and eliminate him.

Adam is reminiscent of Jason Bourne, only without the memory loss. He’s a killing machine, and it doesn’t take him long to win over the mobster, Victor Pastore (Eric Cantona) and be invited to join his security team. Adam also connects with Victor’s young son, who looks up to Adam, and Adam is sympathetic to children because as a youth some horrible things happened to his brother, and Adam murdered the man responsible, an event which led to Adam being recruited by the French government at a very young age.

The story told in AKA is really secondary. Adam’s search for the terrorist is mildly interesting, and towards the end, there is one twist too many, but none of this affects the quality of the movie all that much, because what makes this one so entertaining are its action scenes.

The movie opens in dramatic fashion as we see Adam single-handedly “rescue” a female hostage in the middle east, taking out an army of guards, but rather than free her, he shoots her dead. He’s a cold-blooded killer and pretty much unstoppable. He’s also a good guy, and as the movie goes along his loyalties are aimed more towards good people than his superiors. The action sequences are second to none, and well done by director Morgan S. Dalibert.

Alban Lenoir is quite good in the lead as Adam, the unstoppable assassin. He’s got a quiet Arnold Schwarzenegger vibe going throughout. He’s in most of the movie, and he is able to drive this one along. Lenoir also reminded me a little bit of Alan Ritchson, who plays Jack Reacher on the excellent TV show REACHER (2022). He effortlessly makes Adam a larger-than-life action hero.

The entire cast in this one is commendable, and there are fine performances by everyone involved.

Lenoir also co-wrote the screenplay with director Morgan S. Dalibert. As I said, the story told in this one plays second fiddle to the action sequences, but it’s still a decent story which held my interest throughout. The dialogue is strong, the characters well-defined, and other than a “one-twist-too many” ending which falls into the government is really a bunch of crooked bastards category, it’s a good script. It supports the action well.

As a result, I had fun with AKA, and I give it an enthusiastic three stars.

—END—

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful