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

Stupid people doing stupid things.

That was my thoughts after seeing this fairly familiar story of a woman who becomes obsessed with a married man.  The twist… this time, the woman is a baby surrogate for the married couple.

John and Laura Taylor (Morris Chestnut and Regina Hall) want to have a baby, but they have failed at several attempts.  They have moved on to surrogacy in an attempt to have a baby, but they are down to their final viable embryo.  So when they discover this young, attractive girl who is willing to be their surrogate, they are extremely pleased.  Despite the fact that the young girl, Anna Walsh (Jaz Sinclair), had an abusive boyfriend (Theo Rossi), the Taylors found Anna to be perfect for their needs.

Of course, she becomes queen psycho once she is implanted with the embryo.  Anna falls in love with John and goes full Glenn Close on them.

There are decent things that happen in the movie, but nothing new.  There were entertaining moments during When the Bow Breaks, but there is not enough to overcome all of the stupid things that happen.  For example, when John is growing suspicious of Anna, he gets his friend Roland (Michael K. Williams) to investigate the boyfriend.  He found little about him, but he went ahead and looked into Anna, discovering a bunch of problems from her past, including a murder.  John is a big-time lawyer… why wouldn’t he have this same background check done on Anna before they implanted her with their last embryo?  It did not seem like it took Roland long to find this damning info.

John did so many dumb things throughout this film that, despite being likeable, you just wonder what he is thinking.

Not that Laura is immune to the stupidity bug that plagues the film.  She is completely oblivious to the machinations of the woman carrying her baby, but worse yet…when she finds out, she comes up with the brilliant idea that John should pretend to leave her and convince Anna that he wanted to be with her instead.  Nothing going to go wrong with that idea.  She told John that he had to do whatever he had to in order to convince her.

Then, for some reason, John and Laura decide to lie to John’s law firm about who Anna is, calling her John’s cousin.  I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just told them that she was having their baby, but that lie would, of course, come back and bite them.

When John started seeing the fact that Anna was bat shit crazy, he kept it to himself.  Eventually he tells Laura that he didn’t want to ruin the process for her.  I guess her thought the craziness wouldn’t have ruined the process…let alone the shotgun.   Somebody should send him a copy of Fatal Attraction, The Hand that Rocked the Cradle,  or the Perfect Guy (which, BTW, Morris Chestnut starred in as well.  Is this typecasting?)

I’m afraid that the dialogue was also pretty poor.  There were a few times when I was laughing to myself about what these characters were saying.  They did not talk like real people.

The finale is just dumb, but it is somewhat surprisingly satisfying.  Prior to that though was the proper use of a car in this situation.  SPOILER.  Laura and John are in a car with baby in backseat, and Anna has a shotgun and shooting directly at them.  Laura does exactly what she should have done.  She accelerated and ran smack dab into the crazy bitch.  I almost cheered.  I said out loud… “now back up”.  She didn’t.  It was like a double tap.  Always do that.  Of course, then the final scene was as dumb as the rest of the film, leaving everything up in the air.

If this film were playing on Lifetime, it might be worth a watch.  It is certainly fun and dumb.  You can wonder why these people are doing what they are doing and laugh at them.

2.1 stars

An amazing true story of an amazing moment in the history of New York and of air travel.  The “Miracle of the Hudson” is a story that everyone knew about, but this movie focused on something that I was unaware of.

Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger became a media darling after his monumental decision to land the airplane full of passengers he was piloting in the Hudson River after a bird strike on January 15, 2009.  Little did I know that the investigation into the decision to land on the water could have ruined Sully’s career and created a sense of uncertainty within the American hero.

The film started off with the aftermath of the landing, as Sully (Tom Hanks) was dealing with the barrage of media as well as the investigation.  Co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) was supportive of his co-worker and friend.  As the investigation continued, Sully was feeling the pressure, reliving the potential disaster in dreams, not sleeping much, and worried that this could cost him everything.  The movie only shows phone conversations between Sully and his wife Lorraine (Laura Linney), but I thought these were very effective showing how isolated Sully felt during this time and how his life affected his family.

Tom Hanks was exceptional in this real life role.  I have to say that I never thought of him as Tom Hanks and he just seemed natural with his grey hair and mustache.  Hanks as Sully is the everyman, and he pulled it off perfectly.  He showed the stress that was building on the pilot as he began to doubt that he had made the correct choice.

Aaron Eckhart was also very solid in his supporting role.  Honestly, Sully and Jeff were the only two characters who were developed to a large extent, but their camaraderie really helped this film.  I was very glad that we did not see the typical “co-worker doubt the other worker” trope that happens all the time.  Despite Sully’s own self-doubt, Jeff never once questioned whether or not Sully had made the right decision.  I expected Eckhart to be on the opposite side of the fence, but I am definitely glad that was not the case.

The scenes of the airplane landing and the response of the air traffic controllers and the first responders was just unbelievably brilliant.    I did see the film in IMAX and I was very glad that I did that.  These crash scenes were so tense and realistic that they could take away your breath.  The scenes of the response of all the people who helped save these 155 passengers was not only heroic, but downright moving.  None of these characters were developed, but that did not take away from my feeling of pride as they were helping protect these passengers.  When the person jumped from the helicopter to help save the woman in the water, it stirred some happiness inside me.

The film did drag at times before the film flashed back to the moments before the plane took off.  These flashbacks are as good as it gets.  The film is also pretty short, coming in at just around 96 minutes, however, since the actual event took about 202 seconds, the 90 minutes was a successful run time.

I enjoyed this movie a lot.  Tom Hanks has another memorable performance and the scenes of the plane going down are as good as they get.  Director Clint Eastwood has returned to form after a couple of weaker films as he shows the American hero who was Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger in the bright light of American pride.  Sully is a great film.

4 stars

This time of the year, we begin to see movies that are hopeful to earn some Oscar nominations as well as some that I would consider Oscar bait.

This is one of those.

The Light Between Oceans is a movie with a ton of melodrama and a lot of sentimentality, targeting the kind of stuff that the Oscars love to reward.  However, this felt very manipulative and intentional in its attempt for an award which makes it considerably less appealing.

Tom (Michael Fassbender) was back from World War I after years of dealing with many horrible things (or so we are told) and he is taking a job as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island to remove himself from society and isolate himself to think.  However, he meets the lovely Isabel (Alicia Vikander) and soon his thoughts turned away from the darkness and toward fancy.  After a marriage, Tom and Isabel started their lives alone on the island.

Everything was not perfect though as the couple suffered two miscarriages and their hopes of being parents seemed to be ending.

Then, the first of many, many coincidences jump to the front and center as a small boat came drifting toward the island containing a dead body and a very live baby girl.  Isabel convinces Tom to skip the part about reporting the dead body and the baby so they could keep the baby themselves.

Problem.  During a christening, Tom runs across a grieving woman in front of a tombstone.  On the tombstone, Tom reads that it is for a German man who was lost at sea with his baby for big coincidence number two.  Tom begins to feel guilty about stealing this woman’s child so he leaves a note saying that the baby was alive and being cared for and loved.

Huh?

The guilt of Tom was one of the least believable aspects of this film.  If he truly was feeling guilty, did he really think that telling this grieving woman that her baby was alive and out in the world, but she wouldn’t see her again would be a better thing?  Then they spend about three years raising the child, letting the woman wonder.

And, of course, they run into her again, this time while holding “Lucy” in their arms.

None of these people are worth anything.  Each one, including Hannah the real mother (Rachel Weisz), only care about themselves.  None of them cared about the little girl Lucy/Grace.

At least Tom wanted to protect Isabel from the authorities after he gave a distinct rattle as a clue to Hannah, knowing it would lead the authorities to the island.  He never discusses it with his wife, though, choosing instead to surprise her.

Then poor Lucy/Grace wound up being pulled between the two moms for a good chunk of the end of this movie.

Listen, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are very good in these roles.  The fact that I had any emotional connection to these rotten people are based solely on how talented those two actors are.  But this is nothing more than a grab for nominations, and really not a very good one.  The story betrays this film much sooner than Tom betrays Isabel and vice versa.

The one area where this film may secure an Oscar nom is in the area of cinematography.  There are amazing shots of the ocean and the sunsets and the storms that are sweeping in nature and absolutely spectacular to view.  Adam Arkapaw does a brilliant job with the shots throughout the entire movie.

I didn’t quite hate this as much as it sounds, but the emotional manipulation and contrived coincidences were a lot to take.  There were some good performances, despite characters doing stupid things, and it is certainly a beautiful to watch film.  Unfortunately, the story just could not see the light.

2.4 stars

One of the greatest boxers to put on a pair of gloves was Panamanian welterweight Roberto Duran, a man who became WBC champion only to have everything collapse around him when he famously stopped a rematch vs. Sugar Ray Leonard in mid match with his infamous “No mas” statement.

Duran was also trained by legendary trainer Ray Arcel, another great boxer until a mob hit that went astray cost him his boxing career.

Two extremely fascinating real life characters… unfortunately, this movie does not work well filling in the story of either.  In fact, the film felt more like a series of unconnected scenes instead of a tightly told narrative.

Robert DeNiro played Ray Arcel and Edgar Ramirez played Roberto Duran.  Both men do a reasonable job with what this film gives them to do.  With DeNiro’s background in boxing movies, I immediately buy him as an old-time, knowledgeable trainer.  Ramirez commits completely to the arrogant and brash Duran, whose excesses threatened to derail his career.

Duran was not a very likeable character here though.  I found myself rooting for Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond) in both of the fights.  I found little redeeming about Duran, which, as I have said many times, really makes it hard for me to cheer for a protagonist.  There had to be more of a balance between the unlikable aspect of Roberto Duran and what we saw in this film.

But the biggest issue of Hands of Stone was the feeling that so many scenes were disjointed.  We would get certain scenes that really had nothing to do with the story that was being told that it was jarring at times.  There was one sex scene involving Sugar Ray Leonard and his wife that sole purpose was to show off Usher’s ass, I think.

There was also way too much being shoved into this film that a lot of the plot lines only received a tertiary glance.  Good example was the story involving the New York mob, led by Frankie Carbo (John Turturro) and Ray Arcel.  Every time Turturro came on screen, I was interested (that may be because I just got done watching Turturro in the wonderful HBO series The Night Of).  I would have loved more of that plot instead of the issues over the Panama Canal.

That whole political aspect was  weird.  I supposed Duran cared about it, but it did not seem to fit with the story.  There were also several flashbacks to Duran as a child steal mangoes for everyone that just felt tacked on and did nothing for the overall plot.

The boxing scenes themselves were adequate, but they could not compare to the amazing scenes from last year’s Creed.  I never really felt like I was in that ring with these boxers and that could have helped the film.

I am not sure how many times that I was watching Hands of Stone and I wondered why a certain scene was included here or why they were showing me things.  The film was in desperate need for more of a tight edit than it received.  DeNiro was solid, but Hands of Stone needed to say no mas much earlier.

2.6 stars

There have been a lot of really solid to great smaller movies this year (Sing Street, Hell or High Water, Swiss Army Man), whereas the big blockbusters have been lacking.  Captain Fantastic, starring Viggo Mortensen and directed by Matt Ross is another example of this trend.

Mortensen played Ben, the father of six children of varying age, who had taken them with his wife and went into the wilderness to live away from the capitalistic society.  However, the wife suffered from a disease that required hospitalization. leaving him alone to tend the kids.  When she died, the family heads off to her funeral, against the wishes of her father (Frank Langella).

This is really a road trip movie, following the kids and Ben on their trip to see their mother’s funeral.  Having seen the trailers, I think they kind of made this look like a different film.  The last half hour or so is what the trailers made me believe that the film would be about, but the bulk of the movie takes place either in the woods of the Pacific Northwest or on the trip to the funeral.

I really liked the first part of the film, and I found the relationships between Ben and his kids to be both sweet and original.  Ben would not lie to his kids, bluntly answering any questions they may have had or giving exact information to them.  As a survivalist family, Ben is gifting the kids big knives and bows and arrows, taking them hunting and rock climbing, and forcing them to be able to take care of themselves.  He was also home schooling the kids, providing a solid background of knowledge and forcing them to analyze what they read.

I especially liked the relationship between Ben and son Rellian (Nicolas Hamilton) because the film teased tension between the pair throughout.  You could tell that something was going on and young Hamilton does a very good job opposite Mortensen of showing the rage that had been building inside of him.  Unfortunately, the pay off of that storyline just seemed to fall a bit flat for me.

That is also the biggest issue I have with the film.  The ending of this really felt forced and did not feel earned.  This flipped too quickly for it to be believable and the end became a sugary-saccharine sweet ending that went against the gritty and intelligent feel of the rest of the movie.  From the point after Viggo shaved off his beard, Captain Fantastic turned into a basic, happy-go-lucky film with typical results and events that did not make much sense in the overall arc of the narrative.

And there was little typical about these characters or this story until that point.  The first 2/3 of Captain Fantastic was just that…fantastic.  It was riveting, original and bold.  There were genuine laughter and really unexpected moments between a group of characters who loved one another and were thriving in their situation.  Viggo Mortensen was just exceptional throughout the film, and he had great chemistry with all of the young actors playing his children.

There was a danger of the film becoming too preachy about its anti-consumerism message, as well as messages against education, police, society and politics.  However, the film does a solid job of tiptoeing the line without ever actually crossing over into preachiness.

Captain Fantastic is fun and witty, very funny and mostly charming.  It features some really strong performances, particularly from Viggo Mortensen.  It just seemed that the ending of the film did not reach the heights set in the films first two acts.  Even still, Captain Fantastic is an extremely enjoyable family road movie.

3.9 stars

Director Luke Scott, son of Ridley Scott, makes his directorial feature film debut with a new sci-fi, futuristic film called Morgan, that takes several ideas that have been seen before and blends them into a film that is a decent time, albeit a familiar time.

Morgan seemingly borrows concepts from films such as Ex Machina, Blade Runner and many horror films for this film. I have to say I also had a Stranger Things vibe from Morgan (who reminded me a lot of Eleven from that Netflix series.)

Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an artificial creation of a agency looking to create a human/humanoid for…you know…reasons.  There is a corporation behind the group and they send a risk-management consultant named Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) to investigate Morgan attacking and injuring one of the team members.  Lee’s job is to decide whether Morgan deserves to continue or should be terminated.

When Lee arrives at the compound, she discovers the staff of the science organization had grown close to Morgan, seeing her more as a little girl than a thing.  The staff kept referring to Morgan with the feminine pronoun “she” instead of the non-gender word “it.”

Meanwhile, it is clear that something was bothering Morgan, as she was uncertain as to why she had assaulted Kathy (Jennifer Jason Leigh).  Lee, very closed down and emotionless, is there to do a job without any feeling or doubt.  Head scientist Dr. Ziegler (Toby Jones) clearly supported Morgan and wanted the girl to continue to live at the compound. They brought in a psychiatrist (Paul Giamatti) to do a psyche evaluation.  When that goes south, all hell breaks loose.

There are some very good moments in this film.  The aforementioned psyche evaluation was extremely tense and compelling, despite the fact that I questioned the techniques of Giamatti’s character.  The scene itself had me on the edge of my seat.

Anya Taylor-Joy was very good as Morgan and so was Kate Mara as Lee.  These two characters would be vitally important to this movie and if they were not handled properly, this would devolve into crap quickly.  Fortunately, that did not happen.

The story is serviceable but predictable.  There is nothing really new that this film brought to the science fiction genre.  And even though I thought of the ending twist earlier in the film, Morgan does a good job of making you unsure if the film was really going to go there.

The film raises some interesting questions early in the story, but the pay off was really just an action fest.  Now, the action was very solid, and Luke Scott looks to be a very good action director, but the ending just does not seem to fit with the beginning.  It is like two different movies.

Despite some flaws in the story telling and a lack of anything new, Morgan does hit most of its beats fairly well, making it an entertaining film.  It is short and quick, never dawdling on any moment too long and they used a couple of flashbacks that, although kind of heavy handed, helped give us some important details for the characters.  Add to that the solid performances and Morgan turns out to be a better film than anticipated.

3.1 stars

I really don’t know what has gotten into Kevin Smith.

The fan favorite director who manned such films as Clerks, Chasing Amy and Dogma has taken the film community into a stranger and more bizarre place than he did with Tusk.    And that was a movie about a man who turned into a walrus.

Yet, I cannot say that there wasn’t a perverse amount of enjoyment to be had in the world of cartoon Canada, where mini, one-foot tall Nazi made out of bratwurst (aka Bratzis) who had sauerkraut for blood ran around killing people for… you know…reasons.

The film was pretty stupid.  Still, I found it fun.  Kind of like the fun of watching a ten car pile up on I-80.  You just can’t look away.

Kevin Smith took two characters from the film Tusk and spun them off into their own film.  He further connected Yoga Hosers to Tusk by returning Guy Lapointe (Johnny Depp) to appear in the film once again.

Colleen C (Lily-Rose Depp) and Colleen M (Harley Quinn Smith) are 15-year old girls who are always on their phone and work, begrudgingly, at the Eh-2-Zed convenience store in Manitoba, Canada.  They are all “aboot” their own lives and can barely be considered clerks.  When they are invited to a senior party, they are out of their minds, until they get stuck working.  Unfortunately for them, the Bratzis have awakened and are ready to re-establish the Nazi Party in Canada.

There is just no way around it.  This movie is a full-on, ridiculous B movie in the spirit of Plan 9 from Outer Space or Piranha.  It is the kind of film that would be a perfect fit for the Rifftrax boys.  Still, there is some kind of joy here, maybe because Kevin Smith is so in on it.  He full admits that this film may not be for everyone, and that he made it because he thought it was funny.  It is a passion project for Smith that is unceasingly brave in taking that next ridiculous step.

Lily-Rose Depp and Harley Quinn Smith, daughters of Johnny Depp and Kevin Smith respectfully, are actually quite good in this.  They are real life friends and that camaraderie plays through with the two Colleens.  They feel natural (to borrow a line from Smith).   They are very lovely and command attention on screen.  Yes, the material around them is strange and, conceivably, dumb, but they go past it.

Now, some of this movie does seem amateurish.  The music sometimes is too loud to hear dialogue (especially Harley Quinn Smith, who is too soft spoken at times) and some of the shots are very weird.  Since Kevin Smith has been a successful director before, I suspect that some of this manner of creating film was intentional.  I think he intentionally made a film that would be seen as a low-level B film (if not even lower) and embraced the quirks of it.  If he purposefully made a movie bad, does that make it a better movie?

I was able to see this on a special premiere night as a Fathom Event and that meant that Kevin Smith introduced the film.  When Kevin Smith introduces something, that means he is going to talk.  Kevin Smith is known for being a talker, and I think he is legitimately one of the best storytellers that we have today.  The 20 minutes or so that Kevin Smith talked about the making of Tusk and, eventually, the spin off of Yoga Hosers, really helped the film take on a new life for me.  I do not know what I would have thought if I did not have that initial story surrounding how the two daughters ended up in Tusk, how Johnny Depp wound up with a “dick” on his nose and working on Tusk, how Depp loved the Guy accent despite everyone in his life hating it, and how Yoga Hosers came about because Kevin Smith felt bad for taking his daughter to all of these male dominated super hero movies.  The introduction by Kevin Smith really put me in a proper mindset and I do not know what I would have thought of Yoga Hosers without it.  I have a feeling that I would not have as much of a positive feeling as I do without it.

The movie is not good, and there is no denying that.  But I found myself entertained by the sheer brazen silliness and outright camp of the film.  I had fun that night, even though I could barely believe what I was seeing.  I have always been a fan of Kevin Smith so I probably came in with a predisposition toward liking Yoga Hosers.   That helped.

Kevin Smith said he made this a child’s movie even though the target audience wouldn’t be able to see it.  I commend him for doing something so out there that I had a lot of trouble deciding what I thought of it afterwards.  I wasn’t sure how I was to score this film.  I did have a lot of fun, but the film was not a good one.  Smith even admits that.  So in the end, as a critic, I am giving Yoga Hosers a….

2.7 stars

However, if you are in the proper mood, and don’t mind some seriously weird and warped storytelling, including a bizarre performance from Johnny Depp, then maybe you should check out this movie.  If you approach it with the proper mindset, you may even laugh a few times.