Horror and comedy are a really great mix and the original Happy Death Day was a prime example of that combination.  It came from nowhere to surprise the movie going audience and turned into a sleeper hit for the horror studio aficionados Blumhouse.

However, this sequel to that movie does something odd and unexpected.  It really switches genre.  Oh, it is still comedy, but the horror aspects, while there in small bits, are pushed aside for a more of a science fiction feel.  And I think it works.

One of the top reasons why it works is the great performance from lead Jessica Rothe, returning as Tree Gelbman, the college student who, in the original, gets stuck in a loop repeating the same day that always seemed to end with her death.

She was able to break the loop in the original, but, who knew, she would wind up back in another loop, repeating the same day, once again. This time, however, there are some subtle and some not-so-subtle differences from the previous time.

The film goes into some explanation about why this was happening to her, and, at first, it felt a bit dubious in trying to explain what was happening, and the whole science fiction part was a bit iffy to me.  They made references to a certain 1980s movie that the film really is similar to.

However, after a little while, once the stage is set for Tree to be back front and center in the story, the film took off and it became great again.  Jessica Rothe is absolutely on fire here and she is the main reason this film works at all.  She is intense, angry, upset, emotional and ticked off, many times all at the same time, and pulls it off totally.  She emotes everything she is feeling and she also drives much of the comedy, most of which works well.

There are also some real emotional moments that she takes the audience through, much more than what you would expect in a film like this.

I have heard some criticism of the mystery surrounding the killer being weaker than in the first movie and I agree with that, but it is not intended to be.  The killer is a side plot that is there to show you different aspects of the character of Tree.  It is not the driving force of the plot and is really not that important.  It still provides a strong scene near the end of the third act.

There is a mid credit tag that feels as if it is setting up a third film, but it is not near as strong as the rest of the film, though there is a funny joke contained within it.

I enjoyed watching Happy Death Day 2U and feel that it is a strong sequel to a movie I was surprised to like as much as I did.

4.25 stars

It has been a long time coming for Alita: Battle Angel.  Based on a Manga graphic novel, the film is directed by Robert Rodriguez and co-written by James Cameron.

I was underwhelmed.

In a futuristic year of the 26th century, Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), a surgeon specializing in cybernetic replacements discovered the torso of a young woman whose brain is still alive.  He took the girl back and gave her a cybernetic body, treating her like the daughter he lost.

In the world, there is a floating city named Zalem which is where the special people live and the planet below is where all of the rest of humanity has populated known as Iron City.  Everyone from the earth wishes they could make it to the city in the sky.

When she awakens, the young girl does not remember anything of her past and is given the name of Alita by Dr. Ido.  It soon is shown that this young girl with the new cybernetic body is a fighter of high level and more than just another pretty face.

I had several problems with Alita.  The biggest one is that I just could not get past the CGI of the characters.  The surroundings of Iron City was amazing and most of the CGI of the action scenes was tremendous, but every time they put the camera on Alita or any of the other cyborgs with human heads, I thought the CGI looked rubbery and fake.  The characters reminded me very much of Steppenwolf from Justice League, and he was my absolute least favorite part of that movie.  I remember thinking immediately how much I noticed that this was CGI and how, during Avengers: Infinity War, I had not thought of Thanos as being CGI until 3/4 into the film.  I thought the distinction was clear.

As I said though, the action CGI was done considerably well and was, for the most part, fun to watch.

Rosa Salazar, who was the motion capture actress of Alita, does a fine job.  I think she delivered as much as you could expect from this film.  I felt as if Christoph Waltz was out of place any time the film took his character outside of the house/lab.  When he ventured out onto the streets of Iron City, Waltz stuck out, and not in a positive way.

The story itself was pretty lacking.  It was long and the film felt long.  There were distinct moments where I found the movie dull and I was wanting more.  I did not buy the relationship between Alita and Hugo (Keean Johnson) and there is one scene here involving Alita’s heart that was downright laugh-out-loud funny when it was supposed to emotionally resonate.

Mahershala Ali played Vector here and he is fine.  I would have liked to have seen him as more of the villain than what he turned out to be.

The film was not a total fail, but I did find myself wishing it was over on more than one occasion.  It certainly sets up for a sequel that, actually, could be more intriguing than this one was.

2.5 stars 

This was a strange movie.

As I was looking at iTunes, I was attracted to the title of this film under the “Notable Indies” section.  Apparently it is in theaters in limited release right now.  I watched the trailer iTunes had and I was sold.

Then I started streaming the film and it was, as I already mentioned, strange.

The two big things in the title of the film, the killing of Hitler and the killing of Bigfoot, total maybe 5-8 minutes of the entire film.  It really is not about either of these events.  It is about Sam Elliot’s character Calvin Barr and his dealing with the choices that he has made in his life, choices that, despite being a myth and a legend, led to him being a lonely old man, alone with his dog.

Sam Elliott is exceptional here as he always is as a man who has to sacrifice happiness for an attempt at saving his country.  And the best part of the film is definitely his recount of the events surrounding his killing of Hitler.  The anger and resentment of his success and failure and how that changed the path of his life forever was very powerful and stood out among the laid back tone of most of this movie.

I also found the relationship between Calvin and his younger brother Ed (Larry Miller) fascinating as well.  Larry Miller is excellent here playing off the strong work of Elliott.

I can see people being unhappy with this movie after being drawn in by the fanciful title, expecting something different.  However, if you can get past that, as I did, you should enjoy this smaller, character-driven story of a unknown hero.

3.75 stars

Creepy kids can be very scary and that is something that The Prodigy has.

Good old Georgie from the remake of Stephen King’s It, Jackson Robert Scott gets the lead character here, as Miles, an extremely intelligent young boy who seemingly develops a darker side.

I was impressed with Jackson Robert Scott as he did a fine job as the bad seed Miles. Even more distracting was his mother, played by Taylor Schilling from Orange is the New Black.  I could not place her the entire movie and it bugged me the whole film.  I couldn’t believe when I finally saw the actress’s name in the end credits that I wasn’t able to immediately recognize Piper from OITNB.  It did distract me for much of the time she was on screen.  That was my problem, not hers.

The Prodigy was a mixed bag most of the time as there are good scenes and bad scenes. There are some times when you know exactly where the film is going and other times when you think you know, only for it to swerve off course.

Honestly, I found the first part of the movie pretty good.  I was engaged in the story and I was interested in what was going to happen.  Scott was doing his best creepy facial expressions and the jump scares were mostly well done.  I wanted to know more, and not just where I knew that actress from.

Unfortunately, the third act took the film off its rails completely in a sadly predictable and downright dumb conclusion that took away any chance The Prodigy had of being more than a forgettable and disposable horror movie.

2.7 stars

Cold Pursuit turned out to be like nothing I had imagined, and yet, just what I thought.

What do I mean by that?  Good question.  Well, the film itself was not like other type of revenge films that Liam Neeson has become quite well-known for, and yet shares much of the same DNA of that kind of film.  About halfway through the movie, I made a decision.

This is a satire of revenge films.

After making that analysis, lots of things that did not make much sense worked much better.  The comedy, which might seem to be trying too hard to be dark, makes more sense and fits the tone more.  The types of characters and their development can be understood.  Everything works better.

Either that or I am reading way too much into this movie.

Liam Neeson plays Nels Coxman, a snowplow operator in the city of Kehoe, Colorado, about 3 hours outside of Denver, and he is constantly busy clearing paths for the vehicles to even move.  So much so that he is dubbed the “man of the year” by a grateful community.

However, his ideal and happy life takes a dark turn when his son winds up killed by drug dealers, sending Coxman into a downward spiral.  It destroys his marriage to Laura Dern (who is criminally underused in this movie) and sends him to the verge of suicide.  When Coxman discovers that his son was not involved with the drug dealers but was, instead, an innocent victim, he turned his vitriol outward toward the drug dealers that were to blame.

The fact that Liam Neeson is the star of the movie helps give this credit because he is so involved in other types of this genre.  Here, Neeson plays a man who does not seem to be former military or trained assassin.  He is a snowplow operator.  Still he becomes a killing machine and continually disposed of the bodies in the same manner, a way he saw on TV.  That seems to me to be a shot at one of the typical tropes of revenge movies and using Liam Neeson to personify that is awesome.

The villains are all strange and eccentric, but go against the type you would normally see in revenge flicks.  The main villain, Viking (Tom Bateman) is just a total bizarre drug lord who is all over the place.  We see his relationship with his son (Nicholas Holmes), which was strange as could be.  Viking wanted his son to eat a strict diet and act in certain manner and could not see that he was anything but what he had wanted.  Nicholas Holmes’s character was not your typical child in these film either and his eventual connection with Liam Neeson was very sweet.

There was a very funny bit that happened every time someone was killed during the movie, and there were a lot of people killed during the movie.  The body count was definitely high but I thought they did a decent job of maintaining the violence level.  There was blood, but the scene was not just about the blood that was spilled.

Watching this as a satire/spoof makes some of the characters fit better too.  There was a character named The Eskimo that could be looked at in a different light in a satire of revenge movies.

As a satire, the ridiculously generic movie title works too.  Just sayin’.

I was entertained by the movie.  Of course, if I were looking at this with a different spectrum, then I could see many problems, but as I approached this as a satire, those problems turned into positives.

Or I am completely off track.

3.9 stars

Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old has been released in the theaters after a few special showing through Fathom Events.  I got a chance to see it today and the film is a technical marvel and very difficult, at times, to watch.

Jackson took footage from World War I and updated it, colorized it and revitalized it.  It is amazing what he was able to accomplish with the technology of this age.  We saw example of the film that he started with in Jackson’s own introduction to the movie and then we saw how it was transformed into more than that during the film.  No matter what you may have thought about the film, being able to restore this film and keep it available for history is a tremendous accomplishment.

The film has amazing and powerful moments to it as well as we hear from voices of people who had been there narrating the story as we discover the truth of how this time affected these soldiers.

I will say that it started a bit slow but the story really took off as the midway part of the film began.  There are facts that I never would have thought about mentioned in the movie that really highlight the unsanitary, unfavorable situation these soldiers found themselves thrust into.

My favorite part of the film was the section where it talked about the German soldiers that had surrendered.  They were treated more humanely than I would have believed and even acted as men carrying stretchers for wounded.  This section truly accentuated the lack of difference between the British and the Germans, going as far as to implicate that the soldiers did not really want to be fighting, despite the constant barrage of weaponry going on around them.

There were brutal scenes as well, spotlighting the horrors of war and the results of such a battle.  Both sides were shown in their suffering and there were moments that were unbelievably challenging to watch.

Compelling and challenging, They Shall Not Grow Old is an accomplishment on a grand scale for Peter Jackson, who dedicated this film to his grandfather who fought in World War I in the British army.  It not only is a historical document, but also a commentary on the superfluous war.

4 stars

Director Dan Gilroy, who last teamed up with Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, teams up with the actor once again in the new Netflix film, Velvet Buzzsaw, a horror/thriller centered on the art world.

A series of painting were discovered after the death of the artist who created them.  The paintings fueled a sensation among the art world, bringing out the worst in everyone involved, particularly the greed.

And those people whose greed led them to profit from the painting begin to end up dead.

The film has a great deal of mood about it as the supernatural force contained in the art eliminates the art lovers one at a time.

There is a strong cast in Velvet Buzzsaw, led by Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo. Once again, Gyllenhaal is able to transform himself into the character of Morf Vandewalt, an art critic who is as taken by the mysterious art as he is with the people in his life.  Morf wants to write a book about the artist, but the research he does turns up some details that makes one wonder.

Along with Gyllenhaal and Russo, we have Toni Collette, Zawe Ashton, John Malkovich, Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things) and Tom Sturridge and all of them do a fine job taking eccentric characters and bringing them to life.  Now, there are not too many of them that are especially likable, but as they slowly become victims, there is a pleasurable feeling to their ends.

I thought the film started slowly, but by the second act, I was fully engaged by what I was watching.  I was fascinated by the back story of the artist, Ventril Dease, and wanted more on him.

The film also serves as a satire of the art world, and in this way it is even more vicious than the horror movie.  There is a vapidity on display here that attracts the art denizens to these paintings that stir up such a darkness inside each person.

There are some truly funny moments here too, especially poor Natalia Dyer who has to keep finding these victims of the paintings.

As I said, the beginning took awhile for me to fully get involved, but once I did, I liked what I saw.  Despite its inconsistencies overall, Velvet Buzzsaw is a worthwhile piece of art.

3.5 stars

When I could not get to Serenity last weekend, I had pretty much decided to let this be one of those movies which I allow to slip past me.  I mean, I heard negative word of mouth, the Rotten Tomatoes score was in the 20s and it bombed at the Box Office.  No need to see it.

Then I listened to the Critically Acclaimed podcast.

Critically Acclaimed is a podcast featuring internet critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold. Every week, they review the new releases as a part of their podcast and I have enjoyed listening to their intelligent discussions on the films.  They raise topics and discussion points with wit, acuity and sophistication in ways that you do not typically hear from other online critics.  Ironically, many times I seem to disagree with their opinions, but that does not take away from my enjoyment of hearing their well-reasoned analysis.  Film is all subjective.

On the last episode (linked above), both Witney and Bibbs had seen the latest Matthew McConaughey/Anne Hathaway film, Serenity  and reviewed it.  Not only did they review it, but they went into full spoilers because of a certain twist that they indicated was in the movie.

Having no intention of going to Serenity, I decided that I may as well listen to the review and enjoy what they had to say.  And I did.  I enjoyed their review very much.  So much so that I decided that I needed to see the film that they were describing.  Thanks a lot, fellas.

In Serenity, Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) was a fisherman on an island called Plymouth Island, and he was not having much success.  Much like Captain Nemo, Dill was obsessed with the capture of the Beast, a gigantic tuna that had continued to elude him.  When former flame Karen (Anne Hathaway) arrived in Plymouth with a tragic tale of abuse at the hands of her current husband Frank (Jason Clarke), Dill had his past crash back in his face, especially the existence of and the well-being of his son Patrick (Rafael Sayegh).

Karen had come to Plymouth Island with a plan.  She wanted her ex to take Frank with him out on his boat fishing, get him drunk and toss him overboard for the sharks to eat.  Her tale of abuse and violence did not sway Dill at first, but the arrival of Frank on the island made it clearer that something had to be done.

This seemed to be a dark noir tale of revenge and retribution for Frank’s sins, despite a strange island and a community of people that could be considered weird.  However, I knew what the twist was, thanks to Critically Acclaimed, so I was watching the film with the power of prior knowledge.  That only made everything I was seeing all the stupider.

SPOILERS

From here on out, I am going to be speaking in spoiler talk, because I agree with Witney and Bibbs that you cannot effectively talk about how stupid this movie was without revealing the twist that colored everything about my review.

It was revealed that the entire Plymouth Island and everything around the island was actually a digital, video game world created by Patrick, who apparently was some kind of computer genius.  This twist was hinted at early in the movie (and not at all subtly) and it was revealed to Dill midway through. The whole thing was a game that Patrick was playing.  A fishing game.  How exciting.  What was his purpose?  To spend time with dad?  No, he doesn’t put himself in the game until the end of the film in one of the silliest parts.  The whole catch the beast tuna bit is the game that Patrick has yet to master, since Dill has never caught him.  Plus, it was dropped as a main storyline into the film.

But worse than that was that someone should probably check on the mental condition of Patrick.  Not only does he create this whole world, he makes his father (who we learn died in the sand in Iraq during time in the military) be down on his luck.  Dill drinks heavily.  He makes his dad basically have sex with a woman (Diane Lane) for money.  He has his dad and mom have rough sex on the boat, not to mention the fact that he wants his father to kill his step-father.  For what purpose?  In the end, Patrick had killed Frank himself, but it is unclear when this happened.  Was it after the death in the game?  Did it give him the courage?  If so, shouldn’t this have been a premeditated murder instead of the self-defense that it seemingly turned out to be?

And it appeared that the island itself was working against him as Duke (Djimon Hounsou), the man who worked with Dill on his boat, was actively trying to keep Dill from killing Frank.  The woman, Diane Lane, Dill was having sex with had a son (I think) played by Garion Dowds who appeared out of nowhere a couple of times and dropped into situations that prevented the killing from happening.

It was implied that the creator (Patrick) was creating the rules for the games, and if that was the case, why was he throwing these obstacles into the path of his father?  It made little sense before the big twist and after it, the story made zero sense.  That does not speak well for your big twist.

Sure, the film does try to do something original and daring, but it failed miserably.  The film truly missed its mark and was better prior to the twist.  Maybe the film would have been better if the island was actually a magical place that was working to try and keep Frank alive and to save the soul of Dill.  Maybe it could have been some kind of purgatory and these characters were all dead (except for Patrick, who would have had some kind of mystical connection to his father).  A vibe like LOST sometimes had might have played better.

By the way, we never saw any sort of connection between Dill and Patrick so we had to accept the fact that they loved each other.  There were some flashbacks to a time when they went fishing, but Patrick was three years old (according to the movie…and was a different actor) and he may not have remembered that at all.  All we saw of Karen was a mean spirited woman plotting for the death of her husband.  Is that how her son saw her, because he had to program her avatar in that manner.  There was no chemistry between Dill and Karen and, near the end, when she tells him that she did love him, I simply did not believe it.  I believed that he was only good for what she needed.  Maybe the abuse was meant to humanize her, but it did not help me like her at all.  Hell, I liked the prostitute Diane Lane played way better and I thought she had more connection with Dill than the mother ever did.

I am glad I saw this because it will have a special place on the worst list at the end of the year.

1 star

The second film from last year that I had not seen but found on iTunes today was Assassination Nation.  Film critic and Schmoe Mark Ellis had loved this movie. which it made his top 10 favorite list.  That had made me interested in seeing this.

I will say this.  I really enjoyed this movie considerably more than Susperia, the other film I saw on iTunes today.

This film was brutal and rough.  The film shows the bad behavior of kids, social media and the underscore of hatred of other people.

An anonymous hacker reveals personal messages and online histories to the community, ruining lives.  The community turns violent and begins to target the girl Lily (Odessa Young) who the people blames for the hacking.

The film is like Bad Girls meet the Purge.  Directed by Sam Levinson, the movie is angry and mean, but also darkly funny.  It is bloody and violent.  It shows the dark side of the human race and how cruel people can be to one another.

I watched a lot of this with my mouth open.  It was surprisingly deep and has some serious themes going on here, which surprised me.  I found this to be quite an impressive film, better than I thought it was going to be.

4 stars

With the cold temps, I have had a chance to watch a couple of movies that I missed during the 2018 year, movies that were never in theaters around here but are now on iTunes.  The first of these was Suspiria.

I had heard both extremes of this film. Some people loved it and called it one of the best films of the year.  Others could not stand it and thought it was horrible.

I fall into the latter category.

I did not like this movie at all.  I found it a confusing, weirdly pretentious art house film that tried to be more than what it was.  I was bored ten minutes in and the shock value did nothing for me.

This is a film inspired by a 1977 Italian film of the same name.  This has lots of blood and viscera as well as dancing without music.

Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson were in the film but, honestly, I did not care for anyone so I barely registered what I saw.

I really did not like this movie.  I appreciate the attempt at something weirdly different, but not this different.

1.2 stars

Mads Mikkelsen stars in Polar, a strange mix between John Wick, Red and Sin City.  An attempt to turn the violence from a revenge flick into something artsy, splashed with bright colors and cartoon-like imagery.  Unfortunately, there are too many competing tones for this film to maintain itself.

Duncan is an assassin for hire preparing to retire from the business.  The company for which he works sets up to pay out a huge amount for their assassins on their retirement and is due to pay Duncan 8 million dollars.  The company, instead of paying out, has a hit squad that murders the soon-to-be retired killers and has the money revert to the company.

Problem is that Duncan is one of the deadliest assassins in the world and trying to bring him down becomes a real threat to the safety and success of the villainous Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas).

There are two (if not more) competing tones to this movie and it spent a great deal of the film’s run time bouncing back and forth.  That made the film difficult to watch.  There was also little fun as most of the violence was mean-spirited and lacking that cool kill type that you see in the better revenge flicks.

This one might fall into a B-movie at best, and Mad Mikkelsen is actually pretty good.  The rest of the film is too much of a cartoon and does not create the kind of stakes that it needs.

There is a side story with Duncan and Camille (Vanessa Hudgens), a woman who lived in a cabin nearby Duncan, that could have been considerably more interesting if it had been given priority in the film, but as it is tossed in without much explanation or care, when the twist comes, it does not feel earned or effective.

There is a lot of crudeness and unnecessary exploitation that turns ugly.  There are some attempts to humanize Duncan that fall completely flat.  He is truly a horrible person.

It had a few moments and Mads Mikkelsen is good, but there is not much more that is worth the time.  Watch The Punisher instead.

2.4 stars