Holy animated nostalgia, Batman!

I grew up in the late seventies watching reruns of the Batman television series that ran for three years during the 1960s.  Starring EYG Hall of Famer Adam West and Burt Ward, the Batman series was full of cheese and old fashioned goodness.

Of course, Batman has evolved since this iteration of the Dark Knight.  He has become more dark and gritty, sacrificing the over-the-top goody-good of the series.

However, recently, DC Comics released a new comic book series called Batman ’66, which brought the character back to this campy version.  With the success of Batman ’66, it was just a matter of time before DC’s excellent animated movies would come calling.

And even better, they were able to get Adam West and Burt Ward to return and voice these characters that made them iconic.

The film also had the voice talents of former Catwoman, Julie Newmar.  Catwoman was one of the four most famous of Batman’s rogue’s gallery who made multiple appearances on the Batman series.  Along with Catwoman, there was Penguin, Riddler and Joker.

Sadly, the three actors who portrayed these Batman villains have passed on.  Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero and Frank Gorshin were amazing in these roles and having them gone was going to be a challenge for any version that would include them.

Yet, the new voice actors do a great job of paying homage to the original actors without completely doing an imitation.  William Salyers played the Penguin, Wally Wingert played the Riddler, and Jeff Bergman played the Joker.  Honestly, I actually wondered if the voice of the Riddler was actually Frank Gorshin (who died in 2005).

The story is wonderful.  It is just like the weird and off-center show that inspired it.  There were many laugh out loud moments in The Return of the Caped Crusaders, but it was not a jokey film.  The humor here came from the same place as the show did.  Everything was so ridiculous, from dialogue to plot points, but the actors played it perfectly straight.  They played it as if it was deadly serious and that only made it funnier.

The animation was nothing special.  It was not a big screen animation.  It was animation for a direct-to-DVD film.  I happened to see this on a big screen through a special presentation by Fathom Events, but there would be no mistaking this animation for Pixar.  However, I think the animation on Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders was superior to that of Batman: The Killing Joke, another animated Batman film from earlier this year.  And the animation really fit well with the campy tone and feel of this film.

People who were not fans of the Batman television show will probably look at this version of the Dynamic Duo and wonder what DC was thinking, but for fans of the show, like me, this was a magnificently wonderful trip down memory lane and an amazingly entertaining time at the theater.

4.5 stars

Another true life Disney story hit the theaters recently with the arrival of Queen of Katwe, an emotional and enjoyable romp through the competitive world of chess (with no sign of Bobby Fischer) and a poor village in Uganda called Katwe.

Young Phiona (Madina Nalwanga) was a girl who would sell maze to people in their small village of Katwe.  The money she brought in helped her family, who had been struggling since the death of her father.  Phiona’s mother Nakku (Lupita Nyong’o) desperately tried to provide for her family while staying true to her moral code.

Meanwhile, Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) was trying to get an engineering job, but his lack of a family tree was an obstacle.  He took a job with an outreach community organization to help coach the kids of the area.  Robert introduced chess to the kids and when Phiona arrived, he quickly determined that she was something special.

There were some really strong performances in Queen of Katwe.  Oyelowo and Nyong’o are special actors and they brought their “A” game.  All of the children involved were really very good as well, especially Madina Nalwanga.  This was her debut appearance and she carried herself wonderfully with big time established actors playing opposite her.  There were a lot of entertaining children in this movie, but Nalwanga has a bright future ahead of her.

One of the things that I really liked in this film was the presentation of the village of Katwe and the challenges that faced the families there.  Yes, this is a Disney film so you aren’t going to see a full on display of the challenges of the people of Katwe, but they did look at the difficult lives of these people which included females having to “sell” themselves to men in order to provide for their families.  The use of that topic in this film surprised me, but it felt like an undeniable reality of someone struggling to survive this harsh environment.

I also enjoyed the scenes where the children were placed in different surroundings at the chess tournaments.  Such situations as discovering ketchup was just perfect little touches and was played beautifully by these young actors.

I would say that the film leaned toward being too formulaic, as we have seen other Disney sports themed  movies that would echo this one, and the film did feel a little long at times, but these are not glaring weaknesses that prevent one from enjoying this inspirational tale of the underdog overcoming her obstacles.

3.9 stars

Based on an extremely successful novel, The Girl on the Train is the new film directed by Tate Taylor (The Help, Get On Up), and starring Emily Blunt.

Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) is in a downward spiral in her life.  She is an alcoholic, basically stalking her former husband Tom (Justin Theroux) and his new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson).  She takes a train past their house every day.

She has also built up a fantasy in her head about former neighbor Megan (Haley Bennett) and her boyfriend Scott (Luke Evans) as a perfect couple.  She would create the images in her drunken head as she traveled past their house on the train.

Unfortunately, those fantasies are just that.

Megan ends up dead, and Rachel becomes the number one suspect, as she had come out of a booze-enduced blackout with blood all over herself.

The movie was one that I was excited for since seeing the trailers, but the film was not nearly as good as I had hoped.  There are some pacing issues on the film, as it does have some dull moments.  The story itself is okay.  Some of the “twists” that happen in the film are pretty obvious, but they play them like it is the first time we have ever seen it.  Honestly, many of the plot points were obvious.

However, I must say that I thought Emily Blunt was just tremendous.  She was amazing with her performance.  Yes, the character of Rachel was fairly unlikable, but I found her to be very appealing.  Blunt brought humanity to this trainwreck of a stalker character who was drinking herself into oblivion.  Only an actor of Blunt’s quality could take the character of Rachel and make her enjoyable.

There were some silly things that happened in the film as well, mostly dealing with Megan.  Megan, the eventual victim, revealed much of her weird back story during the film in a series of flashbacks that jumped around in time.  I did not hate the flashbacks, but I can understand someone having trouble following the story because there were many times when the film would come back from a flashback and move into something from the current time without a proper transition.  Even I, who was following along reasonable well, had to think my way through a few of the time changes.

Many people have compared this to Gone Girl, but it falls way short of that mark.  I did not hate this movie, in particular because of the compelling performance of Emily Blunt.  This performance deserved a better film around it.

3 stars

Didn’t expect to love this one.  Yet, I did.

This thrill ride is a true story of the worst oil rig disaster in US history, as the tragedy that was known as Deepwater Horizon is told in this new film by director Peter Berg.

In April 2010, a series of events took place that led to explosions aboard Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was to drill a hole and set up another oil rig to be able to pull the oil from the Gulf.  Problem was that some corporate bigwigs were trying to push the crew to get started without proper testing.

Mark Wahlberg plays Mike Williams, one of the crew on the ship, and he does a wonderful job.  Wahlbeg is the heart of the film and really shows the heroism that was on display among these men and women.  Kurt Russell plays “Mister Jimmy”, the head of the ship and a man who is proud of his safety record.  Jimmy gets into a debate with the BP bigwigs, in particular Vidrine (John Malkovich) who is able to talk the crew into pushing ahead despite their reservations.

The first part of this movie does a really good job of setting these characters up.  Mike especially as we see his beautiful wife Felicia (Kate Hudson) and his charming daughter (Stella Allen).  Some people might complain that the beginning was too slow, but I thought it struck the perfect balance between setting up story and character.  And it made us care for these people whose lives would be placed in jeopardy later in the movie.

Then once the disaster movie kicked in…holy crap… it was suspense wrapped up in tension.  The special effects were astonishing, as I found myself gasping multiple times at the amazing and terrifying situation these people found themselves in.  The film does a great job of making the audience feel as if they too were stuck in these situations.  You could almost feel the heat of the fire closing in on you.

I will say that there was too much use of shaky cam for my tastes in some of the action scenes, but it felt like it made sense as to why it was used.  If Peter Berg wanted the audience to have the POV of the characters, than this worked well.  I just wish I could see things better.

This was a marvelous time in the theater, as I squirmed and worried as these characters were put into danger.  I cared about them and I watched in awe as the suspense was masterfully leveled by Peter Berg and the talented cast and crew.  Amazing visuals compounded the already tense situation and made into one of the better disaster movies you are going to see.  I really loved this film.

4.4 stars

I loved this book.  Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a young adult book by author Ransom Riggs and I fell in love with it.  When I heard that it was going to have a big screen treatment, I was cautiously optimistic.  The news that Tim Burton was attached to it did not really change my mind.  Burton has some great films, but also some real bad ones.  Seeing the trailers though made me think that this was not going to be good at all.  I did not enjoy any of the trailers leading up to the film.  I worried that this was going to be another weak YA adaption such as The Maze Runner or Divergent.

I am happy to say that, after seeing the film, I was happy with the adaption.

Jake (Asa Butterfield) has to go see his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp), who seems to be having a dementia-fueled break down, only to find his place tore up and his grandfather dying.  Abe tells Jake that he needs to find the bird and she will tell him everything.  This strange message is compounded by a birthday gift that leads Jake to remember childhood stories that Abe had told him about a school for children in Wales.

Convincing his father to take him to Wales, Jake finds his way into a time loop and discovers the school full of peculiar children.  A peculiar is someone born with a strange power or ability (also called Mutants in the X-Men universe) who are shunned by the world at large.  They are led by Miss Peregrine (Ava Green), a Ymbryne- which is the term for a woman who can turn into a bird and who can play with time.  Miss Peregrine has created this time loop to keep the peculiar children safe from the monsters that chase them.

The monsters, known as Hollows, are former peculiars themselves who are controlled by the white eyed villains led by Barron (Samuel L. Jackson).  Barron is trying to capture Ymbrynes because their essence can give him ever lasting life.

There are differences between the book and the movie, as always, but the changes did not affect how much I enjoyed Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  The girl Emma (Ella Purnell) who had originally had a relationship with Abe, and then later with Jake, was, in the novel, the character with the fire power, but in the film, she had power over air and needed to wear lead shoes to keep from floating away.  That peculiarity was a different character in the novel.  These little changes did not bother me.

I will say that I thought the ending encounter with Barron was pretty forgettable and not up to the standards of the rest of the film.  I heard some complain that the film was slow and boring at the beginning, but I did not find it to be.  I thought they did a really strong job of setting up what would be a challenging concept.

Asa Butterfield was really good throughout the film.  I kept thinking about him as Peter Parker, though (not that I would have preferred him to Tom Holland, but Asa Butterfield was reportedly close to winning the role, so I kept picturing him as Peter).  I would have liked to have seen more of the initial problems with Jake and his life so it made more sense as to why he wanted to find these other children.  In the novel, Jake is portrayed as a really troubled teen, but here he simply seemed upset by the loss of his grandfather.

The look of the film is great, although the Hollows do seem a little too CGI.  The peculiar children are great.  There are some who could have used more fleshing out, but several are done very well.

In the end, I was concerned about the film, but I enjoyed watching it.  I was not offended by what was different and I found this more engaging than the trailers led me to believe.  I think this film series, if it continues, could become a very strong franchise.

3.4 stars

One could wonder how true of a true story this is.

There is so much slapstick and ridiculousness in this film that, if this were real, this could be the most bizarre story ever told.  However, the movie really was not good.

Masterminds is the story of a security guard at an armored car company in the south who was manipulated into committing the largest bank robbery in the US ever.  17 million dollars was stolen by David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), encouraged by his former co-worker and huge crush Kelly (Kristen Wiig) and her friend Steve (Owen Wilson).

David is shown as a typical Galifianakis character.  Stupid, but kind of lovable.  David and Kelly had a kind of nice relationship, but I found it difficult to believe that Kelly had any feelings toward David.  I guess since it was a true story, I have to accept it, but I did not see how there would be any connection.

There are so many dumb things going on that it really makes this a cartoon.  And that would not be a bad thing, if it were funny things, but, unfortunately, the laughs are very few and really far between.  This commits the biggest sin of any comedy…and that is it is just not funny.  There may be a couple of funny moments, but most of those had already been seen in the trailer (ex. the car crashing into the gate).

There is a really strong cast, but none of them could pull this out of the tailspin that it was.

Jason Sudeikis’s character, a hitman hired by Steve, is as horrible of a character as you are going to find.  He is just tremendously poor and unfunny.  Stupid, even.  He falls into a situation similar to the infamous “Martha” incident in Batman v. Superman, but he takes it to an even more stupid conclusion.

Stupid really isn’t funny.  A movie can be stupid, but clever, and that would work ( the original Dumb and Dumber is a good example), but Masterminds falls into that category of films that are stupid but not clever (Dumb and Dumber 2 is an example of this.)

I went into this wanting to like it, and I didn’t despise this film.  I didn’t like it either.

2.3 stars

Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt team up with five other anti-heroes in the newest Western from the director of Training Day, Antoine Fuqua.

The Magnificent Seven is a remake of one of the most well-known and successful Westerns from 1960 that starred Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen.

This version takes Western plot 101 and throws it on the screen with several extremely likeable (albeit underdeveloped) characters played by excellent actors and tosses in some insanely exciting action sequences and what we get is a fun time at the movies.

Yes, the story has been seen many times before.  An evil villain named Bogue(Peter Sarsgaard) takes over a small, Western town, killing several people in the process.  Widowed Emma (Haley Bennett) finds Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), a bounty hunter, and she hires him to help kill Bogue.  Chisolm recruits several oddball Western archetypes to help.  And we’ve got ourselves a Western.

Among the characters recruited by Chisolm was Faraday (Chris Pratt), a drunken Irish gambler, Goodnight (Ethan Hawke) a former Confederate sharpshooter, Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio) a religious trapper who is more bear-like than man-like, Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) the Mexican, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee) and Comanche warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier).

Yes, the characters are a little lacking in development, although they do provide some back ground for Goodnight, in particular, but the actors are so talented that they carry the movie with their interactions instead.

But this is mainly an action movie, and this film does a great job with its action.  The action scenes are very well done, not relying on shaky cam like so many action films do today.  The gun fights are dramatic and feel real.  You feel the tension as these men are battling against all odds.

I was not impressed with Bogue as the villain.  Nothing against Peter Sarsgaard, but this villain was so one-note that I am surprised he didn’t twirl his mustache (and I’m not saying that I might not have missed him do it).  At the very beginning, Bogue looked to have some potential to be a really dominant villain, but then we don’t see him until the very end and his part of the finale is very sparse.

Chris Pratt was really good as Faraday.  His wise cracking worked well with the rest of the crew.  Yes, it is kind of what Pratt does, but he does it very well.

Vincent D’Onofrio was a stand out with his portrayal of Jack Horne.  Although there was just the barest of minimum development for him (something about having a wife and a daughter once), D’Onofrio continues to take the littlest and make it amazing.  The character chocies he makes for Jack was perfect and this was a character that demanded to stand out from the pack.

The ending also caught me off-guard.  I won’t spoil it for you, but I was not expecting what happened to happen.

This is a big-time, fun action movie with enjoyable actors in a basic Western story.  The action is done extremely well and the actors are fun to watch.  There is a lot to enjoy about the new Magnificent Seven.

3.9 stars

The latest animated comedy from Warner Animation, Storks, came out this weekend and I found it pretty underwhelming.

Storks no longer deliver babies.  After years of bringing the little packages of joy to perspective parents, one tragic event caused the  failure of delivery of a baby.  That baby was Tulip (Katie Crown), who now works at Cornerstone.com- which is what the Stork delivery has morphed into.  However, she is clumsy and sloppy.

Junior (Adam Samberg) is one of the most successful storks at the company and he has a desire to be the boss.  In fact, he is in line to be the boss when current boss Hunter (Kelsey Grammar) moves up in the company.  The only thing Junior has to do…fire Tulip.

Meanwhile, lonely young boy Nate (Anton Starkman), whose parents (Jennifer Aniston and Ty Burrell) are constantly working,  sees how cool it could be to have a little brother, and he decides to “order” a brother (with mad, ninja skills) from the storks.

Nate’s letter finds its way into Tulip’s hands and, through an accident, she ends up activating the baby-making machine.  Horrified, Junior and Tulip take off to deliver the baby before Hunter can discover what happened.

The plot is cute, and there are some really funny moments (in particular with the wolfpack- led by voices of Keegan Michael-Key and Jordan Peele), and I really liked the subplot of Nate’s family and their efforts to reconnect.  However, that was about as far as I went with Storks.

I really did not like the character of Junior or Tulip and I found their constant banter/arguing to be old really quickly.  I really enjoyed Andy Samberg in Popstar earlier this year, but I thought his work here was a definite step down.  Especially with the great voice work from Grammar and Key and Peele.

I mean… Key and Peele as the Alpha and Beta Wolves from the wolfpack were by far the best and most entertaining part of Storks.  It was not even close.

The rest of the jokes fell flat for me.  I did not like any of the other characters and I really did not like the main characters either.  The baby was cute.

I really found myself hoping this film would finish less than a half hour into it, which is not a good sign.  I was bored with much of the film and I did not really enjoy many of the characters.  Some of the best stuff felt disjointed from the plot or the narrative that it was strange.  I did like Nate and his story line making it ironic that my favorite characters in a movie called Storks are the human boy and two wolves.

2.2 stars

This one was way better than I ever thought it was going to be.  I got so tired of seeing the trailers for this film that I was dreading seeing it.  And yet, I found myself enjoying the humor and the characters involved.

Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) finds herself in a typical situation… alone and depressed.  Bridget Jones meets a stranger and winds up sleeping with him.  Jack (Patrick Dempsey) gets left the next morning.  Then, Bridget runs into old flame Mark (Colin Firth) at a Christening and winds up sleeping with him as well.  When Bridget winds up pregnant, she is not sure who the father is.

Sure it sounds kind of soapy, but the talented actors in this film make it believable.  Plus, there is a ton of comedic situations to play upon.  Some of the best comedic moments came from Bridget Jones’s doctor, Dr. Rawlings (played to a dry British perfection by Emma Thompson).  Thompson was a riot in every scene and really gave voice to the ridiculousness of the situation.

I do think that the film had its favorite to be the baby daddy and let it show through too much.  Because of that, they made one of the men display some negative characteristics meant to manipulate the audience to cheer for their choice.  I did not like that as it felt forced upon me.

Having never seen any previous Bridget Jones movie, this one surprised me with how much heart it actually had.  Sure there was a great cast involved, but there are plenty of movies that can say that and still fail to entertain… especially a sequel to a comedy from years before.  Bridget Jones felt like a real person, who has to deal with an unexpected pregnancy, a pair of dueling daddies-to-be, a challenging new boss at work, and judgment from her mother.  Some worked better than others and it did seem to be formulaic at times, but the laughter was always consistent.

Unexpectedly, Bridget Jones’s Baby was fun and full of laughter for a big chunk of the film.  Who knew?

3.85 stars

Whistle blower or traitor? That is the question behind the newest Oliver Stone movie, Snowden…based on the true story from just a few years ago.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt played Edward Snowden, a former CIA hacker and NSA agent, who revealed NSA illegal surveillance activity to several journalists (including Zachary Quinto and Tom Wilkinson) and became one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a very good job with this role, bringing life to this real-life character.  Shailene Woodley gives her best performance ever as Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills.  The cast is really solid throughout the film.  Rhys Ifans, Tom Wilkinson, Zachary Quinto, Timothy Olyphant all had solid work and there was a really strong cameo from Nicolas Cage as Hank Forrester, one of Snowden’s idols at the CIA.

This film was really long.  Too long.  It was slow and had too many boring moments.  This movie could have been edited down from its two hours and twenty minutes run time.

Another issue I had was how I felt like I was being spoken to constantly.  Ed Snowden is shown as a heroic person whose motives are clean as the driven snow.  He seemed to be really white-washed and I have a hard time believing that this was an accurate portrayal of this divisive man.  And I did feel like he and others were preaching at me.  Plus, there were many moments where they explained what was happening, especially with the hacking stuff, that just felt flat.  The film did not need to explain as much as it did.

I think this story had potential to be interesting, but not without showing Snowden as a real person.  I want to see some more of the nuances of the character instead of just making him a hero.  I want the debate to be made whether or not Snowden did the right thing.  There is little doubt about this version of Snowden.

The appearance of the real Edward Snowden at the end of the film really messes things up.  I don’t know what reason Stone decided to use Snowden in this moment unless he needed an IMDB credit.

There were a lot of things that were okay during this film,but the negatives outweigh the positives in the end.

2.75 stars

I have always loved the Beatles, and hearing that director Ron Howard was putting together a documentary on the Fab Four, I was even more excited.  I had really hoped that I would get a chance to see it, since I do not live in an area that gets a lot of these types of films.

Then, I found out that it was to debut on Hulu, an online streaming service for which I did have a subscription.  Excellent!

The documentary focused heavily on the band and the tours and performances that they played.  It included plenty of footage from the actual tours and interviews with all four members of the Beatles.

Listening to the Beatles tell this story in their own words was fascinating.  It is wonderfully edited together to tell this narrative beautifully.  It is clear that Ron Howard worked to put this together as a fan of the band.  There are many amazing images crafted together from the Beatles’ concerts through the early sixties.

There was not much in way of controversy.  The biggest controversy that was included was John Lennon’s statement that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.”  The remainder of the documentary painted a picture of four young lads from Liverpool who were there for each other and who slowly started to be wore down by the constant expectations and admiration that were heaped upon them.

The film steered away from any implications that the band had internal strife, despite the fact that there was plenty.  It was almost as if there was the character of the Beatles and they were four-in-one.

The most successful part of the documentary was the area that the Beatles excelled in:  the music.  Howard expertly continued to return to the Beatles’ music as a way to tie the film together.  That alone made this an enjoyable film to watch.  Listening to how the Beatles’ music changed from the early pop hit of the early sixties like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to the more spiritual and chance-taking music of Rubber Soul is a fascinating look at the evolution of a band.

The film only touched upon the drug use that the band underwent during this time period, having Paul McCartney speak a funny line when talking about filming the movie “Help” in the Bahamas.

One of the more interesting thoughts I had was how Beatlemania would not happen today in the age of social media.  The haters would come out of the blue to post and tweet about the pop group from their early stages.  I do not think we will ever see anything like the Beatles again because of how easy it is to access the performers these days.

Seeing the outright manic response of the crowds is amazing, even at Shea Stadium where the sound system was simply not effective for 56,000 people to hear a concert.  Speaking of Shea Stadium, one of my favorite parts was an interview with actress Whoopi Goldberg, whose mother, despite their being poor, was able to get two tickets to the Shea Stadium concert.  According to Whoopi, her mother did not tell her where they were going and was able to surprise Whoopi with the tickets outside of Shea Stadium.  The joy of the memory could be seen in the teary-eyed adult eyes of Goldberg.  It was displays of this kind of emotion where the documentary really hit.

There is not much analyzing going on here.  The film is really more of a love letter to the Beatles and their fans, and, although I wouldn’t have minded a little more details into the trouble of the times (the use of some of the other aspects of the decade such as segregation and the Kennedy assassination were able to help show where the Beatles fell into the pantheon of the sixties), no one can deny the wondrous music and humor that the Fab Four generated.

4 stars

Back in 1999, a film was made that revolutionized the industry with the use of “found footage” technique.  You find a ton of movies trying to copy the Blair Witch Project, a film that had many people believing that it was real.

17 years later, we have the second sequel to that 1999 movie. The first sequel was anything but good.  How would this new film compare?

James (James Allen McCune) and a group of his friends head into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland after seeing a YouTube video about finding the mysterious house.  James’s sister was the character from the Blair Witch Project who disappeared.  Holding out unlikely hope that she might still be in that house, James took off to the forest.

Lisa (Callie Hernandez) was recording everything for a documentary she was working on about James’s sister’s disappearance.  James’s best friend Peter (Brandon Scott) and Peter’s girlfriend Ashley (Corbin Reid) came along to help.

They meet a pair of YouTubers Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry) who had discovered the tape in the woods.  These two horn into the search to continue their own paranormal investigation.

Once in the Black Hills Forest, things start happening that make the group freak out.  Lane and Talia leave, but realize soon that leaving was not an option.

This movie was better than the first sequel, but it was not as strong as I thought it was going to be.  There were some definite tense moments with a lot of frightening images.  Blair Witch uses the found footage genre better than most, but it can be taxing to watch at times.  I have never been a huge fan of all the shaky camera stuff, but there is enough here that is done well that I am not bothered by the camera work.

I thought that the film took too long to get going.  I liked both the idea of the documentary Lisa was working on and the YouTubers investigation.  I would have liked to see more about them.  I was not much of a fan of either Peter or Ashley.  I thought both of these characters added nothing to the story except giving some excess weight to be killed off.

I did think that the use of the history of the original Blair Witch was creative, making James related to the original film’s main character.  One wonders where the parents of these two are.  Why would they not stop their son from following (quite literally) in his sister’s footsteps?

There did seem to have a lot of similar situations from the first movie in this film.  It could be considered a homage to the first film, or some might consider it a rip off of the first film.  To me, I did not mind the similarities.

I found Lane one of the more intriguing additions to the story, and the fact that there was some hinting at time displacement with him was very interesting.  Unfortunately, I do not think that it was used well at the end.  I did not think they paid that piece of information off.  Perhaps it was done to just set up for future stories, but I wanted more of that strange time warp mojo in this one.

The characters did several things that I found dumb.  It usually led to trouble for them.  Peter, an African-America character, went off into the woods at night by himself and I wondered if he had ever seen a horror movie in his life.  Ashley started climbing a tree after the drone that her group had brought with them.  Gee, what was going to happen there?

Yet, I was entertained for the most part.  There was nothing that was so drastically bad that I felt my intelligence was insulted and the film definitely had some good parts, in particular the new mythology about the forest and this strange time loop that Lane and Talia had been caught in.  More like that might have made this a better movie.  Still, it is passable and better than a lot of sequels that come out 17 years after the original.

3 stars

If you like the old and stupid 80s action movie…and I do mean stupid… then you might enjoy Mechanic Resurrection.

I, on the other hand, was never a fan of that type of movie.

This was so stupid.

Bishop (Jason Statham) was supposed to be dead, but clearly he isn’t and Crain (Sam Hazeldine), some kind of evil villain, wants Bishop to kill three people for him.  In order to do that, he sent Gina (Jessica Alba) to meet Bishop and fall for him so she could be used as bait for him.  Then, Crain kidnapped her and forced Bishop to do what he wanted.

That plan made absolutely no sense because what if Bishop and Gina did not fall in love?  Bishop discovered this plan immediately, but he still let himself fall for her.

Add to this that Bishop and Gina had zero chemistry and almost as much rooting factor.  They were so boring that I could barely care about them.

Bishop then went to a prison to try and kill Krill (Femi Elufowoju Jr.).  The second guy was some crook named Adrian Cook (Toby Eddington).  The third guy was Tommy Lee Jones, who Bishop made a deal with.

The story makes my head hurt.

I knew immediately when Bishop leaped off a chairlift and wound up on a hang glider that this movie would be ridiculous.

Tommy Lee Jones looked really funny with his character.  Of course, there was no development of this character.  It was just Tommy Lee Jones as a tweener-villain.

Oh, I don’t want to talk about this film any more.  This was a boring show.

1.6 stars

We have had a great year in horror.  With Conjuring 2, Lights Out, and Don’t Breathe, there have been some really great horror movies.

The Disappointments Room will not be considered in this class.

I did not hate this film.  It is not the worst horror movie of the year.  But there are a lot of problems with it.

Dana (Kate Beckinsale) and Teddy (Michael Landes) take their son Lucas (Duncan Joiner) and move from the city to a spooky old house after a tragic family event.  Dana wants to restore the house while Teddy does something for a job.  There are weird things that start happening in the house, including a strange, locked, hidden room in the attic.  When Dana went to see one of the weird librarians of the town, she discovered that the room was called a disappointment room.  It was where people of wealth would hide away their kids who had deformities or who embarrassed them.

This actual disappointment room was owned by Gerald McRaney, who was a mean judge with a black dog.  This was one of the ghosts in this hidden room.

Or was he?

Dana’s character fluctuated throughout the film, changing practically every time she was on screen.  She was a tough, no-nonsense negotiator to an unstable psychotic, with stops everywhere in-between.

Lucas Till (X-Men First Class’s Havok) was here as well for some reason.  He played Ben, a handy man that Dana either hired or flirted with.  I have no idea why he was in this movie.  I also have no idea what happened to him.  I think he wound up dying, but who killed him or even if he was killed…I don’t have  a damn clue.

The film tries to make everything about Dana’s breakdown, which I did actually like, but they did not commit to it fully.  They left the possibility that there was more than mental illness at play in this house which dampens the message.

I had never heard about this movie before this past week.  Apparently, it had been filmed in 2014 and bounced around release dates after the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Relativity Media.  That is never a good sign.  This is just another example.

2.2 stars