Gifted (2017)
DIRECTOR: Marc Webb
CAST: Chris Evans, McKenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Octavia Spencer, Jenny Slate
REVIEW:
Its trailers make it look like Lifetime Original Movie fodder served up with a cute precocious child and a dash of melodramatic courtroom drama, but that does Gifted a bit of a disservice. The movie isn’t anything hugely ambitious or original, but the movie is more emotionally true and—apart from some third act contrived narrative contortions—the drama more subdued than the previews might suggest, and the result deserves a chance to be judged on its own merits. Continue reading
Life (2017)
DIRECTOR: Daniel Espinosa
CAST: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanda, Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya
REVIEW:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS “SPOILERS”
Among the various sci-fi thrillers over the decades that owe greater or lesser degrees of inspiration to Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien, Life is one of the worthier indirect descendants/homages. Daniel Espinosa is not terribly subtle about borrowing a page (or several pages) from Alien, but screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (the same men behind 2016’s very different Deadpool) also come up with enough twists and turns on their own for it not to be unforgivably derivative. But while fans of Alien may find Life worth a look, be warned: this is a dark, gruesome ride that is not for the faint of heart or for those who demand happy endings. Continue reading
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
DIRECTOR: Bill Condon
CAST: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Audra McDonald
REVIEW:
Following in the footsteps of Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book, Bill Condon’s Beauty and the Beast is the latest (and arguably most ambitious yet) entry in Disney’s recent dubious fixation with throwing a lot of money around remaking its classic animated films as live-action versions. For those who decry virtually shot-for-shot remakes of Disney classics that didn’t need to be remade (especially with “new” versions that are content to slavishly follow the source material rather than doing any different or innovative on their own), Beauty and the Beast is unlikely to convert them into the fold. It’s technically well-made, handsomely-filmed, served up with a loving dose of nostalgia as a lavish love letter to the 1991 original, but despite sumptuous sets and flashy special effects, it lacks the heart and charm of the original. There’s a sense of a by-the-numbers hollowness to the proceedings, like a competent but uninspired cover of a classic song. Fans may enjoy themselves out of nostalgia, but it never escapes the shadow of its forefather (nor does it try). Continue reading
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
DIRECTOR: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
CAST: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, John Ortiz, Toby Kebbell, Corey Hawkins, Tian Jing
REVIEW:
As Marvel has done with The Avengers and assorted related characters, Legendary Pictures is now in the process of establishing an interconnected “cinematic universe” which began with 2014’s Godzilla reboot and continues here with Kong: Skull Island, leading up to 2020’s King Kong vs. Godzilla and possibly a resurrection of the Monster Island from the classic Godzilla series of the 1960s. To that end, Skull Island is a fun monster movie romp that serves up healthy helpings of what audiences expect when they sit down in the theater for this sort of thing. It’s not a great movie, or even a great monster movie, but those simply looking for a fun romp through the jungle shouldn’t be disappointed. Continue reading
Logan (2017)
DIRECTOR: James Mangold
CAST: Hugh Jackman, Dafne Keen, Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle
REVIEW:
Even more so than Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Logan defies the labels of “comic book” or “superhero” movie. Together with last year’s Deadpool, it’s a rare “comic book movie” to earn a well-deserved R rating, but their tones couldn’t be more different. Profanity and graphic violence flow freely in both, but while Deadpool was a tongue-in-cheek romp, Logan (loosely taking some elements from the Old Man Logan comic miniseries) is a dead serious, rather bleak affair. But while their tones are polar opposites, Deadpool and Logan both refuse to play by conventional superhero movie rules. Logan also serves as the swan song for two of moviedom’s most iconic superheroes, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier (both of whom have reprised these characters off and on for the past seventeen years). Small children should be left at home for this one, but for those to whom its grimness isn’t too jarring, Logan might be the most raw and uncompromising gut punch of any “comic book movie”. Those who thought The Dark Knight was for grown-ups haven’t seen anything yet compared to where this movie dares to go. Continue reading
The Shack (2017)
DIRECTOR: Stuart Hazeldine
CAST: Sam Worthington, Octavia Spencer, Radha Mitchell, Tim McGraw, Avraham Aviv Alush, Sumire Matsubara, Graham Greene
REVIEW:
If you’ve a hankering for a full-length, two hour plus version of a Touched By An Angel episode (or you’re a fan of William P. Young’s 2007 Christian-themed novel of the same name), The Shack might warm your cockles. Considering Young’s book sold upwards of ten million copies, it might make back its costs and then some—-how expensive can a movie this TV-ish really be?—but for anyone else, it’s a “Lifetime Original Movie” handing down wannabe profundities in facilely feel good ways, and not worth watching unless you’re a Sunday School teacher hard up for something to occupy your pupils for a couple hours.
Continue readingCollide (2017)
DIRECTOR: Eran Creevy
CAST: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins
REVIEW:
Filmed in 2014 for an October 2015 release, Collide was delayed by the bankruptcy of Relativity Media until being picked up by Open Road Films and eventually finding its way into a low-key February 2017 theatrical release. In retrospect, it might as well have stayed on the shelf it had been gathering dust on. Collide might be an adequately diverting action flick for the bored and undemanding, but it’s generic and disposable, and smacks of direct-to-video fare given a thin veneer of respectability with a slumming cast. Continue reading