I wasn’t ready to be depressed tonight.

Beautiful Boy is a teen drug movie starring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell and the pair of them are amazing here.  Unfortunately, much of the movie itself was average at best and felt, at times, manipulative.

However, there is absolutely no denying that Timothée Chalamet nailed this.  He was superb as Nic, the young boy who finds himself addicted to drugs and unable to maintain his sobriety. As good as Chalamet was, I think Steve Carell matched with with every scene.  Carell provided such a remarkably subtle performance filled with nuances that made me believe that Carell was truly David, the father of this boy that, no matter what he did, he just could not help.

The rest of the cast is very good as well, with a special shout out to Maura Tierney as David’s second wife and step-mother to Nic.

Still, the story meanders around and, at times, feels more self-important than it needed to feel.  It felt a few times that my emotions were being manipulated and they were not just seriously reacting to the situations happening on the screen.

This is base don a true story, based on both the book written by David Sheff and the book written by Nic Sheff.

Still, the reason to see this is for the masterful performance from these two actors. Timothée Chalamet is amazing considering how young of an actor he is.  Steve Carell has improved with every outing and he matches his young co-star with every glance.  The performances make this much more compelling than it had a right to be.

3.1 stars

I liked the new Steve McQueen directed film, Widows.  I wanted to love it.  Unfortunately, I just could not get to that level.

Widows was fine, but I went in with high expectations and the film was not what I expected it to be.

When her thief husband (Liam Neeson) and his crew are killed in a robbery gone bad, Veronica (Viola Davis) gets stuck between her grief and loss and the people whose money was taken.  Veronica organized the wives of the crew to help her pull another job to get the money needed.

First of all, Viola Davis is the bomb.  She has a moment at the beginning of this movie after her husband is killed that might have guaranteed her another Oscar nomination.  She let loose a cry of anguish, only to pull it back insider her.  Viola Davis was absolutely tremendous in this movie and deserves all the credit.

In fact, the entire cast was very strong.  I really liked Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, Cynthia Erivo, and Brian Tyree Henry.  There were also great cameos from Robert Duvall and Jacki Weaver.  Acting here was top notch.

Fact is that Widows was considerably more of a slow build than I expected or than what this film sold itself as in its promotional material.  It turned out much slower than I thought it was going to be.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I got a little bored early as there were so many characters to set up and introduce.

The other problem was there was a twist that I won’t spoil, but I saw coming a mile away.  Anytime that happens, the film takes a hit in my eyes.

The subplot of the political race between Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell) and Jamal (Brian Tyree Henry) felt forced and out of place here.  I’m still not sure how it really fit into the narrative and seemed too convoluted for what it was worth.  Colin Farrell’s character was all over the place in motivation and was not filled with common sense.

I really liked the tension and the higher stakes than your typical heist movies.  Usually, a heist movie is just a fun time in the robbery, but this was ugly and nasty.  It felt much more realistic than most heist films and I appreciated that fact.  Thing was though that the heist does not appear in the film until the very end of the movie.

I wish the film’s material and script could have brought it as much as Viola Davis did.  She was just awe inspiring with her performance, bringing pain and grief as well as anyone.  The performance elevated the material.

3.5 stars    

EYG Hall of Famer Orson Welles’ final film, a film that had been locked away, mostly completed, for 40 years, has finally been released on Netflix.  And it is some kind of movie.

The story of how the film came to be is almost more of a tale than The Other Side of the Wind.  I would certainly recommend that if you plan on watching this movie, you take the time to watch the documentary, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead as well.  It makes for a very important companion piece to this movie.

The Other Side of the Wind is about a legendary film director who had been self-exiled to Europe for years, returning to Hollywood to get his final passion project filmed.  The narrative of this movie is told through two lenses.  One, the struggles of the director, Jake Hannaford (John Huston), trying to get through the filming with money troubles, struggles with actors and with the Hollywood machine.  Two, the film that he has made is used as a “film within a film” and helps to show the artistry and the imagination of Hannaford.

Now, many people assume that the film is basically an autobiographical tale of Orson Welles himself.  Welles had denied this, but it does seem to be pretty obvious that the character of Jake Hannaford is based strictly on the director.

Apparently there were some scenes of the nearly completed film that were damaged and had to be replaced with photos and voice over.  These scenes feel as if they would have been important for the conclusion of the movie unfortunately.  Of course there is no way around that and what they did with those scenes is the best they were going to be able to accomplish.

There are so many truly visionary shots in this film that you could break down countless numbers of them for analysis.  The scenes fly fast and furiously through the film and you are never allowed to linger on anything for long.  It is certainly an impressive feat of film-making and the creative process.  It changes perspectives, black and white to color, and points of view as easily as you can imagine.

It is slight on story and may be too inside Hollywood to truly reach a wide audience.

John Huston is tremendous here as Jake and the relationship between him and Peter Bogdanovich’s character, Brooks Otterlake, is compelling.

While Welles never put together the ultimate final cut of this movie, those who did paid tribute to his overall vision and presented the world with a film about moviemaking that is chaotic, wild, jubilant and full of the proper amount of satire.  This feels like an appropriate end to a legendary career.

4.2 stars

The Netflix original documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead tells the fascinating tale of the efforts of EYG Hall of Famer Orson Welles and his attempts to finish a film called The Other Side of the Wind, a film that has now been released on Netflix as well.

Alan Cummings narrated the documentary, which joins a group of wonderful docs from 2018.

Fast paced and engaging, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead uses archived footage of Orson Welles to show us truths about the legendary filmmaker that we have never known and to tell the story of the struggle to make this movie as a way of a comeback.

This documentary is not about Citizen Kane.  Sure, it is mentioned, but it is not what is being investigated here.  Instead, we see Welles’ conflicts with Hollywood and the movie business, especially the money providers, in his desperate attempt to get his movies made.

In fact, because of the money, an almost finished cut of the film The Other Side of the Wind wound up locked away in a vault for decades…even after the death of Welles.

Directed by Morgan Neville, this documentary really made me want to watch The Other Side of the Wind on Netflix myself, which is what a good doc about a movie should do.  The Other Side of the Wind will be my next watch soon.

3.7 stars

Claire Foy is the next actress to take up the role of Lisbeth Salander, the woman who arrived first in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  This is the next film featuring the character.  Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lack of what made Lisbeth such an original character in her past offerings.  Here, in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, she is basically just another action hero.

We join Lisbeth as she is in pursuit of a MacGuffin that gives the possessor the ability to control the nuclear weapons of the world.  The man who invented the technology (Stephen Merchant) is being chased, and his son August (Christopher Convery) knows how to access the info as well.

Lisbeth is in a race against her sister (Sylvia Hoeks) in a twist that is revealed in the trailers, but should have been held back.

There are a ton of action beats here, some decent, but others just silly.  The film is really more of a Mission Impossible or a James Bond type of flick. There is less darkness in the movie and Lisbeth is no where near as harsh as she was in the previous movie.  Where as the other movie showed Lisbeth taking to a serious extreme and being more psychological, this was more action/adventure.  I think this did not work as well for Lisbeth than the previous way.

Claire Foy continues her strong work this year.  I liked her as Lisbeth, or at least, what they let her do as Lisbeth.  I think she would have been a great actress to take this character to another level, but the film does not want to let her do it.

There were many scenes where I was bored during the movie.  It did not grip me the way I had hoped it would.  There were too many scenes where I was rolling my eyes wondering how that was even possible.  The Girl in the Spider’s Web was too predictable and too poorly executed and took a character that could be an original female protagonist and made her into just another action hero.

2.7 stars

You’re a mean one… well, maybe not that mean.

The Grinch is the newest version of the Dr. Seuss classic children’s book, How the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and this film is an animated film from Illumination, the company that brought us the Minions.

Benedict Cumberbatch voiced the Grinch and he does a nice job. The problem is that the Grinch seemed to be an alright dude early in this film.  He had some bad things happen to him, but I did not think that his heart was three times too small.  He was just lonely.  I would have liked to see the Grinch be more rotten early here.

The film followed the book pretty closely, except of course that there is way more added, because it is a short book, and the original animated version was around 20 minutes long.  This film is 86 minutes which requires a bunch more to the story.  Unfortunately, most of the additions were weaker than the parts from the actual story.  The middle of the film dragged a bit, making it feel longer than the 86 minutes.

The animation is wonderful and the colors are beautiful.  The film looks great.  The voices are really strong as well.  Cameron Seely, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury all do good work with voices.  I was not a huge fan of Pharrell Williams as the narrator.  His voice was not as deep or tense as Boris Karloff from the original.

This is a fine version, although fairly unremarkable.  There are some funny bits, but it is stretched out too much.  There is great animation and strong voice work.  The film will probably be loved by a lot of the kids watching it, and it is passable for the adults.  It could be worse.

3 stars

J.J. Abrams newly produced horror/thriller is awesome.  It is tense and exciting and about as dramatic as you are going to get.

How could you go wrong by combining a war movie fighting Nazis with a monster/zombie movie?  It is like peanut butter and chocolate.

Overlord had a strong young cast (including Agents of SHIELD’s Fitz, Iain De Caestecker).  There is Jovan Adepo (from Fences and mother!), Wyatt Russell (Everybody Wants Some), and Pilou Asbæk.  There are some good performances here as these actors brought more to these roles than you might expect.

The story takes place as US Forces were preparing to invade France during D-Day in World War II.  What we did not know was that a small team of US soldiers needed to be dropped into a village in France to destroy a tower if the US Forces had any hope of landing on the beaches of Normandy. However, once they found this village, the crew found more than what they thought they would.

Overlord is a violent film with some serious gore involved.  The tension is tight and the anxiety was real.  Jovan Adepo had the feeling of a star, commanding the screen throughout the movie.  He reminded me of a younger John Boyega.  I can see this young man being a real star for years to come.

The effects are very strong and the war scenes are put together very well. There may be some real stretching of the disbelief in a few scenes.

This is a fun film with a great atmosphere.  You are engrossed with the heroes, who are surprisingly three dimensional, and are in fear of the villains.  The film is a B-level movie, but that does not make it a bad thing.  It is a lot of fun.

4 stars

Tiffany Haddish can be really over-the-top, but she can also be very funny.  It is usually graphic or lewd in nature, but that can be funny.

In Nobody’s Fool, she was funny about a third of the time.

The rest of the film is a giant mess.

Tanya (Tiffany Haddish) has just been released from jail and she is staying with her sister Danica (Tika Sumpter).  Danica has a relationship with a man online whom she had never met, but they seemed to be soulmates.  Tanya believes that her sister is being catfished and goes about trying to prove this.

Now, that is what the trailers make you think this movie is about, but it really is not.  First of all, Tiffany Haddish is not the lead character.  She is at best a supporting character.  The film is about Danica and her relationships.  After the whole catfish this ended (early on), she had a relationship with Frank (Omari Harwick) and that relationship was rocky.

Not because of Frank but because Danica was a rotten person.  The film tried to make her out the protagonist, but she was simple a horrible person whom I did not want to cheer for even a little bit.  She was rude and mean spirited.  She caused people pain everywhere she went.

Why should I want poor Frank to end up with Danica when she treated him like something she scraped off her shoes?  She was stuck up and mean.  I would have totally kicked her to the curb if I were Frank.

This is a Tyler Perry movie and none of these people feel like real people.  They feel like poorly written characters in a movie script.  They do things that reasonably intelligent people simply would not do.

The exception here is Whoopi Goldberg who plays Danica and Tanya’s mother and she steals the movie every time she makes an appearance.  She is absolutely the best part of Nobody’s Fool and I wanted more of Whoopi.

This is just a mess of a film that does not know what the narrative is meant to be.  These characters are dumb and our protagonist is as unlikable as you can be.

1.5 stars

Boring.

Boring.

I did not enjoy this movie at all.

Honestly, as soon as it started up, I thought to myself that it was totally CGI and that it looked more like a cartoon than a real place.  Even the real world part was all CGI and I am not sure that was needed.

The movie features a young girl Clara (Mackenzie Foy) whose mother has dies and Clara finds her way into a strange and magical land that her mother was the Queen of ( I guess) and has to help save it from within.

This magical land is not Narnia.  It is not Wonderland.  It is not Oz.  It is a land of four realms and there are problems.

Yawn.

The Nutcracker (Jayden Fowora-Knight) is the last Nutcracker around, but he goes by Captain.  His name is Phillip. He reminds me physically of John Boyega in Star Wars without the charisma.

Helen Mirren is here too.  I usually love her, but she seems as if she is going through the motion as the mysterious Mother Ginger.

There is so much of nothing going on here and I was so bored.  Every once in a while I noticed some recognizable music that told me this was the Nutcracker, but those moments were few and far between.

I just did not like this film and the tons of children in the theater I was in did not help the movie going experience.

1.3 stars

There were times in this movie where I had goosebumps.

Some may say that the biopic about the rock band Queen, led by one of the greatest front men in the history of rock music, Freddie Mercury, was too simple and basic of a story.  And the performance required of an actor to bring back to life Freddie Mercury was a task extremely challenging.  Fortunately, that job fell into the talented hands of Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek, who proceeded to unfurl a performance for the ages that combined perfectly with the magnificent music of Queen into a cinematic experience unlike most others.

I am uncertain if Malek performed the songs or if they were lip synced, but they were perfectly constructed into the narrative and brought what could have been a typical and unremarkable biopic into a marvelous musical engagement.

The film begins and ends at the Queen performance at Live Aid, the worldwide concert to raise money for starving people in Africa.  The concert scenes in Bohemian Rhapsody were wonderful and stirring.  Malek became Freddie Mercury before our eyes and embraced the character like few others could.

Although his performance transcended the film, Malek was not the only strong performance in Bohemian Rhapsody.  Gwilym Lee brought Queen’s guitarist Brian May to the screen and Ben Hardy embodied the drummer Roger Taylor.  Both band members were able to illuminate the complicated relationship with their eccentric lead singer.  The band displayed a wonderful feeling of family, where even when they fought, it was clear that they had each other’s backs.

No scenes exemplified this more than the scene where the band arrived at the offices of EMI record executive Ray Foster (Mike Myers, in a funny and surprisingly ironic performance).  Queen seemed to be completely together, a single mind shown to the world, intent on releasing the six minute Bohemian Rhapsody as their single, despite the objections of Foster.

Other scenes that were the best ones in the film were the scenes of the band and how they came up with the great music that they did. The creation of Bohemian Rhapsody the song is an epic section of the film and highlights the creativity of the musicians involved in Queen.

The relationships within the band were stretched to the limit, as many families are, with the introduction of Paul Prenter (Allen Leech) and the distancing of Freddie from his family by way of drugs, alcohol and sexual experimentation.  Leech must have done a marvelous job, because I hated that man, who threatened to tear the band apart by placing himself square in the middle between the band and Freddie.  The resolution of that situation in the movie was tremendously satisfying.

Another relationship that was beautifully rendered was the one between Freddie and the love of his life, Mary, his ex-wife who is truly his soulmate.  Mary knew Freddie was gay before Freddie knew it, and yet she did not blame him for his confusion.  The relationship was so powerful that it survived through the trials that Freddie heaped upon it.

While Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie, is not as experimental as the band Queen was with their music, I did not find that to be a problem.  As a big fan of Queen’s music, it was expertly interwoven in the movie and, along with what should be an eventual Academy Award nominated performance by Rami Malek, elevated what could have been typical biopic fare into something that was killer.  Killer Queen for sure.

I really don’t know why the reviews on this film are so mixed.  I think it is one of the best films of the year.

4.7 stars

This is a movie that, when I think back upon, I notice issues that I did not think about when first watching it.

I will say on the first viewing of Mid90s, the directorial debut of Jonah Hill, I enjoyed the narrative of the film and I did not have much problems with it with a notable exception of an uncomfortable sex scene that I wondered how they could get away with filming.

However, in retrospect, there are issues of misogyny, homophobic behavior and the aforementioned sex scene that should be questioned in a film being released in 2018.  I will say that the film is taking place in the mid 1990s and much of the language and thoughts are accurate to the times being shown.  Does that “artistic vision” make the use of these acceptable?  Were they necessary to display the time frame of the mid 1990s accurately or does it just highlight a deeper problem in the script?

It is hard to say.  If you remove the questionable material, you still have a story of a young boy Stevie (Sunny Suljic) who has an abusive older brother (Lucas Hedges) and a mother (Katherine Waterston- dreadfully under used here) who has her own problems to deal with.  Stevie finds a connection with a group of skateboarders made up of older kids, led by the cool older boy and best skateboarder among them Ray (Na-kel Smith).  Stevie bonds with this group and faces the problems of alcohol and drug abuse, jealousy from within and teenage rebellion.

This group of skateboarders was shown considerably more developed than a typical movie of this fashion.  Each member of the group had their own motivations and personalities and it makes this seem like a much more realistic film.  Yes, the female characters of this movie, including the terribly undervalued Katherine Waterston, are poorly developed and based on cliches and stereotypes, but the film’s main focus is on the group of boys.

There are some really powerful scenes, but there are also some scenes that feel disjointed and out of place.  Some of it is uncomfortable and other aspects of it are very strong.  Much of the language is irritating to listen to, but it certainly is the way teens talked during that time period.

My first response after walking out of the theater was positive for Mid90s and I will be giving the movie a recommendation, but I would warn those who may be easily offended that this may not be the film for you.

3.5 stars

This was an animated movie that I had not seen yet, despite it being out for several weeks.  It is not that I was actively avoiding Smallfoot, but I was having trouble finding a good spot for it to fit into my schedule.  There always just seemed to be other movies that I wanted to see more.

It is not that I had heard negative things about Smallfoot, but it was truly just a scheduling issue. So the last couple of weeks, I was looking to fit it into my schedule and I finally got to see it today.

It was fine.

Migo (Channing Tatum) is a young yeti whose goal is to take over as the official gong ringer from his father Dorgle (Danny DeVito).  During a round of gong-ringing practice, Migo winds up overshooting the gong and lands elsewhere in the Himalayas.  As he was heading back, an airplane, something the isolated yeti had no idea about, crashed, revealing the infamous and long believed to be mythological “smallfoot” aka a human being.

The existence of the smallfoot shook Migo’s belief system to the core, as his culture’s ultimate rules, held on by the Stonekeeper (Common) says that there is no such thing as a smallfoot, and if that stone is wrong, then what else might be wrong as well?

When he returns to his village, Migo is cast out because of his blasphemous ideas, and he set off on an adventure to find proof of the existence of smallfoot.

On that adventure, Migo comes across TV reality show star Percy (James Cordon) and he takes him unwillingly back to his village to prove the stones wrong.

Smallfoot is fine.  There are some interesting concepts hidden inside the story, in particular the use of the stones as a way to question religion and the way religion demands dedication from its believers.  And the film does not make it so obvious that you feel preached at.  I’m sure there are some who found that aspect of Smallfoot irritating, but I liked the idea they were going with.  It is not developed enough, in my opinion.

The animation and voice work here were fine, but there is nothing here that would really make Smallfoot memorable.  It seems to be a serviceable film.

The songs, however, were all very much dull and unremarkable.  With the exception of the Under Pressure (Queen) parody performed by James Cordon, the music of this film is as disposable as can be.

I did like how the language barrier between yeti and humans cause a problem.  And while the joke got a little stale after awhile, it was nice to see that there were more language problems here than there was between the Americans and Russians in Hunter Killer, which came out this weekend.

I am glad I finally got around to seeing Smallfoot, even though it is most likely an animated movie that will settle into the recesses of my brain after a while with little to be remembered for.  Still, it is not a bad film to show the children and it has a few intriguing plot ideas that are touched upon.

3.2 stars

In what may be Robert Redford’s final movie appearance, we see the charm and warmth of the actor who has been one of the greats in cinema.  Unfortunately, if you look at it closely, the character he is playing is anything but.

Redford is playing the real life Forrest Tucker, an old man who loved robbing banks.  He would walk into the bank, politely showed the gun to the teller or manager, and quietly walk out after receiving the money.  Everybody said he was a gentleman.

However, he was still robbing the bank.

After robbing one of his banks, Forrest met Jewel (Sissy Spacek), woman whose truck had broken down and he took a fancy to her.  They spent some time together, but it does not curtail the criminal activities from Mr. Tucker.

Redford is wonderful here, as is Spacek.  Their relationship is one of the best parts of the movie.  They are two pros and you can tell that every second they spend together.

I did like the character of John Hunt, played by Casey Affleck.  Hunt was the police officer who put together the clues of who Tucker was.  He was able to link the robberies together and found a strange relationship between Tucker and himself.  Tucker has some kind of odd connection to him once he discovered that he was searching for him.  Tucker even went as far as to leave notes for Hunt.  Affleck was very good here.

The film dragged some and I had a harder time rooting for Tucker as he just continued to show little to no remorse for his criminal activity.  Still, the film was watchable and Redford was great.

3 stars

Extremely powerful.

Based on the novel by Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give tells an emotional story of a young African-American teen who witnesses the shooting of her childhood friend by a police officer and the after effects of the trauma on her life at home and at the upscale school that she attends.

Amandla Stenberg plays Starr, the young girl who struggles to find her voice after the horrendous event.  Stenberg was the best part of a bad movie earlier this year in The Darkest Minds and she was absolutely astounding here.  Her boyfriend was Archie Andrews (just kidding… K.J. Apa, who plays Archie on Riverdale was Chris, her boyfriend here).  Apa was really good in the film as well as a remarkably supportive boyfriend.  Starr’s father (who was on Grimm) Maverick (Russell Hornsby) was brilliant as well.  Regina King played Starr’s mother.  Common was an uncle.  Anthony Mackie was here too.

However, Mackie’s character was a fairly stereotypical black drug dealer character and his inclusion did not create much in the movie. There was a connection between Mackie and Maverick, but it was not developed enough.

This movie is one of those important movies that is difficult to watch and I may not want to see it again.  There were some moments here that were just heart breaking in its intensity and realism.

I have to say that it was so apparent that there are feelings that I, as a white male, can never truly understand that African-Americans spend every day living with.  The first scene with Maverick teaching his young children how they were to handle themselves when they get pulled over by the police really shows the way the mindset differs.  It was very painful and shook me.   I watched the unfolding of the story with shock.  I mean, we know this happens to African-Americans, but to see it illustrated here was difficult to see.

This was a long movie, but it did not feel that way.  It felt shorter than the Robert Redford movie that I saw on the same day and it is 45 minutes longer.

The ending of the movie did seem to be a little nicely wrapped up for what had just happened, but the scenes proceeding the ending were so tense and anxiety-ridden that you can almost forgive that.

There is a lot of pain in this movie and you can feel it with every scene.  It brought tears to my eyes several times as it shows the racial struggles that are daily occurrences for African-Americans.  If only we could find that nice ending in the real world too.

4.56 stars

This was an okay stupid movie.

Of course, there are more plot holes in this than there were in Geostorm.  When Geostorm is the more realistic film, you know there may be an issue.

The movie tells the dual story of a submarine crew and a small group of soldiers heading toward Russia to investigate the sinking of a US submarine.

The story was split into two separate prongs.  First, new submarine captain Joe Glass (Gerard Butler) leads his crew to the area where the submarine was sunk.  They find a Russian sub that had also been sunk that contains some survivors.  Those survivors included the Russian sub captain (Michael Nyqvist).

Second, a group of soldiers led by Bill (Toby Stephens) and they were trained for special missions.  They wound up being sent into Russia to see what they could find out by Admiral John Fisk (Common), who reports to the CJCS Charles Donnegan (Gary Oldman).

It turns out that this whole plot was an attempted coup by the Russian Admiral Dmitri Durov (Michael Gor) over Russian President Zakarin (Alexander Diachenko).

So there are so many major plot points here.  When Durov started his coup by capturing the Russian president, he shot the president’s men, but kept the president alive and took him off to a room to hold him.  Seriously?  Why keep the guy alive?  What purpose could he have?  And if they did need him alive, when he is trying to escape with the Americans, they certainly were shooting at him a bunch.  I guess they did not need him alive after all.

There was the typical bland story writing involving Captain Glass too.  He came on the sub, started making decisions that everyone was unsure about and the XO (Carter MacIntyre) had to question him out loud and just be generally oppositional.  Couldn’t we have an XO who ONCE doesn’t have to question everything the new captain says.

It was also very convenient that every Russian on the screen was able to speak perfect English so they did not have to waste special effects on translations.

Gary Oldman was so misused here.  He is an Oscar winner but he was barely in the movie.  And when he was, he was the more cliched character that you could guess. Not even the talent of Oldman could elevate this material.

This is a really stupid movie.  However, there are some fun moments too, if you can suspend your disbelief.  The action with the submarine was decent and I did like how the Russian and US captains worked together.  Butler and Nyqvist worked well together.  Most of the remaining characters were disposable and had little to no development.

If you want to see really great submarine movies, then find Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October.  This one is a movie to watch and stuff your face full of popcorn.

2.3 stars