Hurricane Heist:
Two brothers speed across the highway
with their father, trying to outrun the storm as it crashes down on top
of them. This is a flash back to decades before the film, adding
emotional depth through talk about football, whose fault it is
they’re running behind, and the sudden death of the father that we only
sort of barely got to know. Oh, they also have southern accents- these
are all some good ol’ boys. They ain’t meanin’ no harm. But that big bad
Hurricane is comin’ down on them hard and
fast and it roars and… dear lord… as they stare up from the wreckage of
the house where they were hiding they can see a face in the storm. A
face.
And about twenty years later, we come
down to the same area where the youngest boy (Toby Kebbell) is a
meteorologist tracking an oncoming storm. He feels the storm in his gut-
because he has magic storm predicting skills or some such and
really… look, he’s got Paxton in his soul. (I’m referencing “Twister”
here, so if you don’t get the reference then check out that film.) And
when you got Paxton-soul, you get a bad ass tank of a car and a sudden
desire to visit your brother (Ryan Kwanten)…
but before that we better establish that there’s more than just a storm
coming. And that’s when we’re introduced to the films hero and
protagonist, the female Treasury agent played by Maggie Grace. She and
her partner (Ralph Ineson) and transferring billions
in old bills to be shredded in the midst of the sudden hurricane. She
has a history, she’s made mistakes, this is a crap job for her, yadda
yadda blah blah, and what she doesn’t know is that there’s about to be a
robbery.
We find a bunch of far strung
mistakes and coincidences lead to our three protagonists meeting, kind
of forming a few alliances, and just as soon as the robbery goes down we
find them being chased and doing some chasing of their own through
the oncoming hurricane. Honestly, this is as preposterous a series of
stunts, scenes, and cool set pieces as you might imagine. This is a
ridiculously over blown and awesomely terrible flick with football
clichés, gung ho violence, and cheesy villains from
start to finish. If you expected something great, where have you been
through most of the disaster films that have taken place over the years?
Parts “Hard Rain” and “Twister”, the
movie is a cheesy popcorn muncher that you laugh at as much as you laugh
with, so it is what it is. But being what it is, that’s certainly a fun
ride if you turn off the brain and just enjoy the ride.
Oh, there’s also some ham-fisted
lecturing about environmental disasters, global warming, and other
stuff. Ignore that… it’s barely enough to function as a story point,
anyway.
6 out of 10.
The Strangers: Prey at Night
I’ve been trying to catch as much of
the main stream horror releases as I could this year, and I’ll let you
in on a secret; I didn’t enjoy the first Strangers film in the potential
franchise. It was creepy enough, it was shocking enough,
but I ultimately left the film feeling less satisfied than I would have
preferred. And so I wasn’t really looking forward to a sequel, but here
one is.
It doesn’t pick up where the first
left off- but we do start with a quick little scene of our three killers
arriving in a trailer park vacation spot that’s largely been abandoned
for the season. We then switch to our protagonists making
their trip to this same trailer park- the teen girl is moving north to
attend a boarding school after her parents literally give up on her. Her
older brother is the “perfect” child, and we see she’s feeling like the
disappointment of the family. Of course,
the family half-heartedly tries to reach out to her but they feel well
in over their heads. Thankfully, this family drama straight out of an
ABC afterschool special is quickly interrupted with the arrival of our
three masked Antagonists. And then, hilarity
ensues.
I found the filming style of the
movie to be a little strange, capturing angles and fading in on bizarre
close-ups with an after effect that kept the image a little out of focus
at times. Stylistically, I kind of enjoyed the technique and
it added to what tension did exist in the film. However, the story was
largely unencumbered with any real stakes and I lacked any real empathy
for the characters. The parents, especially, had already set off my
hackles for their willingness to abandon their
daughter.
Not a bad film, some decent gore
effects, and some satisfying sequences. To be honest, I did “enjoy” this
movie a bit more than the first Strangers film but ultimately realize
that it doesn’t carry the same punch as its previous entry.
6 out of 10.
Red Sparrow
Jennifer Lawrence starts as the
titular character in this spy thriller based on the novel by former CIA
operative, Jason Matthews. I want to get that out of the way because a
lot of people are far too quickly drawing comparisons to the
Marvel property of Black Widow, of which this work bears no real
resemblance beyond the fact that both characters are Russian and trained
as specialists. But where they differ and how the story is told is very
different.
Recruited by her uncle after an
unfortunate accident, ballerina Dominika Egorova undergoes espionage
training as part of the “Sparrow” program for the Russian Government.
Sparrows are trained to seduce their targets, psychologically profiling
them to provide them with the things they want the most and gain their
trust. She is sent on a mission to get close to an American Agent who is
known to be working with a Russian double-agent deeply connected with
the Government. As with all espionage films,
the twists are plenty and there are plans within plans. Lawrence
delivers a credible performance and puts it all on the line. And I mean
ALL.
Okay, how this film avoided an NC-17
is a mystery to me. The movie gets incredibly graphic with regard to the
sexual content, avoiding all but penetration in a couple of scenes and
getting downright nasty in the dialogue. The weird part
is that it treats the subject matter in such a clinical way that it’s
not at all alluring or perverse, it’s utilized as a tool and nothing
more. There is one scene with another trainee that literally strips the
material down and destroys any sense of sexual
dynamic for the characters. It’s cold, it’s brutal, and we see it on
display with clinical distaste. But it’s still there.
As a fan of spy thrillers, this movie
moves more like a “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” than it does a “James
Bond” film, so don’t expect action set pieces and grand stunt work
combined with cutting edge sci-fi gadgets and technology. This
is pure espionage, cat & mouse chases, misdirection, manipulation,
and cold planning. I loved it.
8 out of 10.
Before We Vanish
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is mostly known for
his horror films, with “Pulse” receiving a big budget Hollywood remake.
But the Japanese film-maker has had a varied filmography, with his
latest film getting released to mixed reviews from the 2017
Cannes festival. And “Before We Vanish” is definitely a difficult movie
to rate, describe, or categorize… with some parallels to John
Carpenter’s “Starman”, Kiysohi crafts a world on the brink of alien
invasion while studying the ideas that make us human.
The film is based on a stage play of the same name.
Shinji is a philandering husband who
seems to have forgotten everything when his wife, Narumi, arrives to
retrieve him from a local hospital. The couple are facing a difficult
period in their marriage, with Shinji having been caught philandering
and Narumi focused on her career. The two have grown apart, but
Shinji’s new mental state may provide them with a new opportunity to
reconnect. But we quickly learn there’s more to Shinji’s affliction.
Concurrently, a recent massacre has left lone survivor
Asumi in a similar state. And reporter Sakurai finds himself traveling
with Amano, an self-proclaimed “alien” intending to invade Earth and
wipe out all human life as we know it. Chaos erupts as people begin to
fall to strange afflictions, their grasp on human
concepts stolen by the alien invaders.
This is difficult stuff to grasp- the
aliens aren’t eating our brains, they aren’t turning humans into
zombies, and they aren’t wiping us clean. They are taking individual
concepts in order to understand and destroy us. The very core concepts
of “Ownership”, “Family”, and “Work” are some of the most basic
functions to us, but if they were stolen from us entirely we would be
left with a large vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum. And it can help us
question what it is that makes us truly human.
I personally loved this film, but
wouldn’t recommend it to a wider audience. The film is much more of a
science-fiction romance than it is an adventure or horror of any sort.
But it affected me on a personal level and left me feeling parts
sad, hopeful, happy, angry, and other feelings I’m having a hard time
working through. If you enjoy Japanese cinema, you probably won’t want
to miss this film.
9 out of 10.
The Party
A bunch of intellectual left-wing
elitists are celebrating the election of a friend to a Parliamentary
Seat, representing her party on a number of issues relating to
healthcare. On the eve of her greatest triumph, her world is torn apart
with revelations of illness, adultery, greed, and hypocrisy. This is a
scathing black comedy about a small group and their personal drama. The
wit is sharp, cynical, and laced with poison barbs that pull through
social norms, politeness, relationships, and
social politics.
7 out of 10.
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