Month: October 2019

Released: March 2013

Director: Brad Anderson

Run Time: 95 Minutes

Rated R

Distributor: Sony Pictures/Tri-Star Entertainment

Genre: Thriller

Cast:
Halle Berry: Jordan Turner
Abigail Breslin: Casey Welson
Morris Chestnut: Officer Paul Phillips
David Otunga: Officer Jake Devans
Michael Eklund: Michael Foster

Your average kidnap thriller is pretty straightforward as you can get.  They should be.  An effective kidnap thriller can’t deviate from the main plot point, so any extraneous twists and red herrings are thrown out the window for a more simplified and intense experience.  The length of a kidnap thriller will ultimately depend on what the filmmakers want to do with it.  Do they want to do what Denis Villeneuve did with Prisoners and opt for a more slow-burn experience that really gets under the skin of the audience?  Or do they want to hit the ground running like Taken?  Neither approach is particularly wrong, it ultimately depends on what you, the audience, wants to experience.  If you’re more akin to something that lasts maybe an hour and a half, then something like Prisoners may not be your cup of tea.  However, if you want something that’s a bit more cerebral than Liam Neeson beating down human traffickers, than maybe Prisoners is more your style.  So, where does The Call reside?  This one is strictly for the roller-coaster, thrill-ride crowd.  But is it any good?

The film opens on a Los Angeles-based 9-1-1 operating center that most people call “The Hive.”  This center has well over a dozen people fielding emergency calls ranging from bats flying around in a house to murders.  One operator, Jordan Turner, gets a call from a young girl saying that her house was broken into by crazed person.  While Jordan tells the girl to hide, the phone gets disconnected.  When she calls back, the ringing phone alerts the intruder to the girl’s presence and the girl ends up being kidnapped and murdered.  Because of this mistake, Jordan decides to step away from the phones and teach new people how the whole thing works.    Meanwhile, another young girl, Casey, is abducted from a mall and tossed into the trunk of a car.  When Casey calls 9-1-1, Jordan takes over from an inexperienced rookie and tries to work with Casey so they can find her before it’s too late.  It’s not very often that we actually get to see what goes on behind the scenes at an emergency response center.  It actually lends a degree of authenticity to what could have been a fairly generic plot.  For the first two-thirds of the film, the story is simple, yet fairly compelling in how it’s shown to the audience.  I say the first two-thirds of the film, because the last third of the film basically comes from a completely different kind of film and it just doesn’t really fit in with what’s been taking place so far.  Aside from the final act, which I will address a little later in this post(I won’t spoil it for you), it’s a surprisingly effective little thriller.

In order for a thriller like this to work, you need to have actors and performances that can really sell the tension and desperation.  Thankfully, The Call has a pretty strong cast here.  Michael Eklund plays the kidnapper and definitely gives the character a really creepy and unsettling vibe.  Morris Chestnut plays Officer Paul Phillips, Jordan’s boyfriend, and he does a pretty decent job here.  The real stars of the show here are Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Halle’s, but she turns in a very powerful performance here as Jordan Turner, silly hairdo notwithstanding.  From the moment she is talking to the first victim, we can definitely get a sense of dread and desperation from her voice and when things go horribly wrong, she loses it.  Abigail, initially turns in a performance of a typical teenage girl, but when she’s thrown into a trunk, she gives an incredibly gut-wrenching performance as a girl that is truly afraid that she might get killed.  She definitely sells it.  The back-and-forth between Jordan and Casey is one of the big highlights of the film, with Jordan trying to calm Casey and get her to start helping herself by trying to bring attention to the car that she’s trapped in.  Honestly, if it wasn’t for Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin’s performances, I don’t think this film would have registered on anybody’s radar.  The marketing certainly didn’t do the film any favors.

I absolutely dig the cinematography and production designs here.  While the set of the response office was built from scratch, it’s apparently based on one the actual centers in Los Angeles.  It’s really interesting seeing how these people actually work.  I’ve always wondered what it’s like on the other side of that phone call.  But a lot of the film generally takes place between two locations: Jordan’s response center and the trunk that Casey is trapped in.  The camera-work here is very interesting, because the trunk is a very cramped place so the camera is essentially right up in Abigail’s face.  It gives you a sense of claustrophobia that’s incredibly palpable.

In case you haven’t noticed, I really dig this movie.  There’s a lot to like here.  It’s a kidnap thriller, so the time-crunch really helps give the film that sense of urgency that is required for films like this.  When the film works, it’s one of the most intense movies I’ve ever seen.  When it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.  Honestly, the only time that I think the film doesn’t really work is in the final act.  When it comes to ending thrillers like this, you need to have an ending that is not only satisfying, but also logical.  Up until this point, The Call has been a fairly realistic and intense thriller that I could easily recommend to anybody who has a passing interest in the genre.  However:  The final act of the film takes an unfortunate turn into serial-killer horror film territory.  With everything that Halle’s character was doing in the film up to this point, having Jordan try to solve the crime herself really stretches the film’s credibility.  I get that they were trying to go for something empowering.  That would’ve been fine…..in a different film.  That’s because the final act of the film feels like it belongs in a completely different movie.  It damn near ruins all the good will that The Call was trying to build.  It feels like the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner that they didn’t know how to get out of.  Does it really wreck the rest of the film?  For a lot of people it has.  For me, I kind of went with it and I still managed to enjoy the whole thing, but it is a stark contrast to the rest of the film and brings the score down quite a bit.

So, would I still recommend The Call despite the film’s ending?  Honestly, yeah.  This is pretty good for a rental or buying on the cheap.  I picked it up for less than 7 bucks, so it wasn’t a bad deal.

My Final Recommendation: Don’t crank call 9-1-1.  They’ve got a lot of stuff going on.  7/10.

Released: April 2018

Director: Lynne Ramsay

Rated R

Run Time: 89 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios/Amazon Studios

Genre: Thriller

Cast:
Joaquin Phoenix: Joe
Judith Roberts: Joe’s Mother
Frank Pando: Angel
John Doman: John McCleary
Alex Manette: Senator Albert Votto
Ekaterina Samsonov: Nina

Well, HERE’S a surprise:  Two reviews in one day?  What are the odds?  Not very high.  What makes today so unusual for me, is not just that I’m doing TWO reviews today, but both reviews are of movies starring Joaquin Phoenix.  Both movies also deal with some pretty dark and heavy subject matter.  When I reviewed Joker, I mentioned how much of an amazing actor he truly is.  I’ve been a huge fan of his since Gladiator.   When it comes to really dark subject matter, I tend to get interested really quick.  Especially if it’s a character study like Joker.  But sometimes, I really like a good, violent kidnap thriller.  Ransom, Taken, Prisoners, and Furie, among others.  What I love about kidnap thrillers, especially ones that deal with human trafficking, is that there is time crunch involved.  It really amps the tension to another level knowing that there’s a time limit to recovering the victim.  The best films of this kind can accomplish the story and action within 90 minutes.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be more complicated than that.  Well, after seeing Joker, I decided to take a look at one of Joaquin Phoenix’s more recent flicks: You Were Never Really Here.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Joe, a former soldier and FBI agent whose new specialty is locating and rescuing young girls that have been trafficked.  The film opens as Joe has successfully completed a mission.  Shortly after, he’s contacted by his handler, John McCleary, who tells him to contact a certain Senator Albert Votto.  The good senator contacted Joe, because Albert’s daughter, Nina, went missing over a weekend and is believed to be held in a den for child sex traffickers.  Taking the job, Joe prepares to locate and find the girl by getting supplies including a ball peen hammer that he uses to dispatch evil-doers.  Soon after, he realizes that this job might not be as simple as he expected it to be.  Most kidnap thrillers should be rather straight-forward without deviating to far from the main plot-line, and You Were Never Really Here is no exception.  The story is simple yet compelling.  It goes to some dark places, especially with Joaquin’s character, as we see him suffering from flashbacks of some the horrible things that he’s witnessed over the years.  It’s pretty slickly paced and there moments where it slows down and gives us a bit of a glimpse into Joe’s life.  It’s pretty solid.

Joaquin Phoenix, as an actor, is a force of nature.  Considering how amazing his performance was in Joker, he still put in a lot of effort to make Joe a really sympathetic, yet brutal, character.  This is a character that suffers from PTSD, and uses his business of rescuing kidnapped girls as a form of redemption, I guess you could say.  What Joaquin brings to the table is a real sense of gravitas and surprising amount of emotion to a character that basically beats people to death with a ball peen hammer.  The character is definitely out of shape, and Joaquin obviously adjusted his body to account for that.  He just inhabits every role that he takes on.  What I really like here is Joe’s relationship with Nina, the kidnapped girl.  There’s definitely a connection there, even though you don’t really see the girl for a good chunk of the film, but Ekaterina Samsonov’s performance is pretty good.  Overall, the performances are pretty decent across the board.

You Were Never Really Here was known for being particularly brutal when it comes to violence.  Here’s the thing about that:  Yeah, some of the action and violence can be brutal.  But, what’s really most important about that isn’t what you see.  Rather, it’s what you don’t see.  Often, we, as the audience come up these violent acts as they have already taken place or out of shot.  One of the most unique uses of the camera is when Joe is rampaging in the trafficking den looking for Nina.  Most of the action is shot from what are essentially security cameras.  It’s done in black and white, and there really isn’t any sound, which actually makes the violent acts that much more violent, interestingly enough.  Taking a ball peen hammer to somebody’s skull is a pretty brutal act in and of itself, regardless if the person on the receiving end deserves it or not.  It can be pretty harsh.  There are definitely some grisly images of violence that take place after a person has been brutalized.  The film doesn’t shy away from violence, nor does it glorify it.  The approach to showing the violence, however, is something that I really haven’t seen before, so kudos to director Lynne Ramsay for doing something unique.

The film is incredibly well shot with some really great cinematography.  One of my favorite scenes is when Joe is giving his mother a water burial.  It’s a very somber moment, but at the same time it’s incredibly beautiful with slow-motion in a fairly peaceful moment.  The music from Jonny Greenwood is also pretty nifty. There’s a decent amount of electronic music involved which definitely adds to the ambiance of the film.  If there’s a negative or two about the film that I have is that the violence isn’t necessarily brutal enough.  I honestly would’ve liked a bit more bloodshed, but I definitely appreciate the restraint.  Also, some of the characters aren’t particularly interesting, especially the main villain, who don’t really see until the final moments of the film, and even then he doesn’t say a word.

In my opinion, I think You Were Never Really Here is a pretty damn solid kidnap thriller that actually gets you to feel something for the main character.  Joaquin’s performance, again, is fantastic and the film moves at a pretty quick pace.  Do I recommend it?  Hell, yeah, I do.  It does get pretty heavy at times, due to the film’s tone and all that, but it’s definitely worth checking out.

My Final Recommendation:  Never mess with a guy wielding a ball peen hammer. 9.5/10

Released: October 2019

Director: Todd Phillips

Rated R

Run Time: 122 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Drama

Cast:
Joaquin Phoenix: Arthur Fleck
Robert De Niro: Murray Franklin
Zazie Beetz: Sophie Domund
Frances Conroy: Penny Fleck
Brett Cullen: Thomas Wayne

It’s been often, and I’ve mentioned it more than once, that a superhero is only as good as his or her villain.  In the Marvel world, we’ve got villains like Loki, The Mandarin, Thanos, Hela, Green Goblin, Magneto, and Ultron.  While some of those characters are interesting, at least on the outside, DC’s side of things paint a very different picture of their villains.  Superman has folks like Zod, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, and Darkseid.  While each of those villains on the surface may seem very threatening, when you dig beneath the surface, these characters offer a lot more and are generally more frightening than what you see on the surface.  But when it comes to a Rogue’s Gallery, Batman has the best:  The Penguin, The Riddler, Catwoman, Two-Face, Bane, Mad Hatter, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, and Deadshot.  But the one villain that truly defines Batman as a character is none other than the Joker.  This character is essentially the polar opposite of everything that Batman stands for: Law and order.  The Joker thrives on chaos and anarchy.  There have been a lot of actors to portray Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime: Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill(voice), Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto.  Well, we’ve got another character giving his unique spin on the character: Joaquin Phoenix.  This is Joker.

Joker follows Arthur Fleck, a struggling stand-up comedian that works as a party clown on the side just to pay the bills.  The opening of the film sees Arthur getting brutally attacked by a group of kids in 1970s/80s Gotham City.  Arthur struggles to entertain people all the while dealing with severe mental issues.  He sees a therapist that clearly has no interest in anything that he says, even when he’s asking for more medication to help him through the day.  He also lives with his narcissistic mother.  One day, he loses his job as a party clown and everything spirals downward from there, leading him down a tragic path.  It’s really hard to discuss the story of Joker without going into spoilers.  Ultimately, the film is about a broken man who has been pushed aside by a severely broken society.  Fleck has been his best to remain on the straight-and-narrow, but with each bad day that he has, he begins to lose control.  For a lot of people, explaining the origins of the Joker would seem blasphemous, as it were.  Here’s the thing, though:  There’s no real definitive origin story, and as the character has said in the comics, it’s all a matter of multiple choice.  It’s really interesting, though, having a film take us on a very dark and twisted journey trying to explain why the Joker is the way he is.  While I don’t think Joker is the definitive Joker story, it does shed a light on not just what makes the Joker tick, but also the circumstances that brought him to that conclusion.  I loved the way the story was presented here.  It’s really engaging from the word go.

Let’s talk about the performances here.  Everybody does a great job with what they’ve got.  You’ve got Zazie Beetz as the potential love interest for Fleck, and she does a really good job as a sympathetic character.  Robert De Niro is phenomenal as Murray Franklin, a talk show host.  He’s definitely playing against type here, as his character is one of those smug assholes on TV that you just want to smack upside the head.  Ultimately, though, the film is centered around Arthur Fleck and Joaquin Phoenix’s performance.  I’ve been a fan of Phoenix’s for a while now and his turn as the Joker in this film is one for the ages.  The amount of work and effort that Joaquin puts into his roles is nothing short of astounding.  This guy is truly a master of the craft.  He lost a lot of weight to give Fleck that gaunt, semi-stick-figure look that the Joker is usually known for.  He also did research into what is known as the Psuedobulbar Effect, which is a condition that causes uncontrollable laughing or crying.  Phoenix incorporates this into his character, giving him that maniacal cackle that’s synonymous with the Joker.  Joaquin also has this really amazing ability to communicate feelings through his eyes.  When you see him glare at somebody or something, you get a feeling that there’s something about to break off with this guy, which of course, it does.  It’s all the little details and mannerisms that Phoenix pays attention to that makes this character feel incredibly real and yet relatable at the same time.

I have to bring this up, because it’s been a part of the news for the past couple of weeks leading up to the release of Joker.  There’s been a lot of press releases and articles declaring that Joker glorifies gun violence and mental illness.  Having seen the film, I can honestly tell you that these so-called “journalists” are lying through their teeth.  Is Joker violent?  Yes, but not in the traditional sense, especially if you’re referring to gun violence.  In fact, there’s really very little in the way of gun violence here.  I would even hesitate to call the film “ultra-violent.”  The violence of the film has more to do with how Arthur is responding to the world around him and how he feels as a person.  It’s also more about society’s rejection of those that aren’t as well-off as others.  That leads to some pretty severe consequences, both in the film and in every day life.  Because the film is more of a character study about a guy’s decent into madness, it makes sense that the film doesn’t really have a lot of physical violence.  That’s why when the physical violence DOES happen, it’s shocking and not very entertaining.  The violence in this film is brutal, but it’s not without purpose.  What also helps the film is the cinematography.  The Gotham that this film is set in is a dirty and grungy city that’s bordering on total anarchy.  The colors really do pop-out when they’re supposed to and make it that much more surreal at times.  The film’s music and score also really add to the dread, foreboding, and atmosphere of the entire picture.  It’s truly haunting and can be disturbing at times.

Does the film have a message?  Oh, yeah.  The film is targeting society that’s allowed certain people to fall through the cracks because of a complete lack of empathy.  In fact, the film spits in the face of the critics that think this movie is dangerous and promotes gun violence.  The film has definitely succeeded in riling up all those SJW’s and journalists that aren’t taking the time to consider that maybe a lack of empathy is what’s really wrong with this world.  I’m actually really glad that Warner Bros. let Todd Phillips keep the R-rating for this film.  It’s earned it, and it shows that sometimes a studio needs to push back against critics.  Todd Phillips comes from comedy like The Hangover, so seeing him direct a film like this was a huge shock, and he nails it out of the park.  It’s one of the most engaging and emotionally powerful films released this year.  Joaquin Phoenix absolutely nails it as the infamous clown.  I honestly hope that this film starts a trend with comic book movies being allowed to be more than just spectacle films.  This is a serious film that tackles serious issues in a fairly realistic way.  Yeah, it can be disturbing at times and shocking at others.  But at no point is this film not engaging.  It keeps you hooked from beginning to end.  Will it be for everybody?  No.  For people expecting a traditional Batman-style film with lots of action are going to be sorely disappointed.  This is not the film for those folks.  It’s a slow-burner with some real pay-off at the end of it all.  I can’t really think of any negatives for this picture.  It’s absolutely one of my favorite films of the year, and if Phoenix doesn’t got nominated for an Academy Award, it would be criminal.

My Final Recommendation: 10/10

Released: October 2019

Director: Tony Giglio

Rated R

Run Time: 95 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Home Entertainment

Genre: Action/Horror

Cast:
Amy Manson: Joan Dark
Nina Bergman: Private Carly Corbin
Louis Mandylor: Chaplain
Dominic Mafham: Dr. Malcolm Betruger
Luke Allen-Gale: Dr. Bennett Stone
James Weber Brown: Captain Hector Savage

As a youngster, I grew up playing video games on the PC.  I played games like Pac-Man and Frogger, but then I was introduced to a little game called Wolfenstein 3-d.  This game changed everything I knew at that point about video games.  It was a first-person shooter that had you going around levels shooting Nazis.  Pardon the pun, but Wolfenstein 3-d was a game-changer in so many different ways.  Over the years, we’ve gotten games like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Halo, and Half-Life, just to name a few.  But the one game that really ushered in a new era of PC gaming was a little id Software title called Doom.  The game took what Wolfenstein 3-d offered and amped it up to 11.  Better graphics with better lighting and elevated platforms, demons from Hell, and a completely insane run-and-gun mentality.  Doom took the world by storm and has since become a legend of sorts.  I’ve been playing that game since it was released back in 1993.  26 years.  While graphics have gotten better and immersion has taken on a new life of its own with virtual reality, there’s nothing more satisfying than turning on the original game and just blasting things.  That’s what it was for and the rest is history.  In the early 2000’s, it was announced that Universal Studios had acquired the film rights to Doom.  In 2005, Universal unleashed the film on audiences to…..mixed reactions.  It starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Karl Urban.  It was a full-on rated R affair with blood and gore.  It wasn’t quite the film that people were expecting though.  14 years later, we get a new film in the franchise: Doom: Annihilation

The film opens on a science facility on one of the moons of Mars as Dr. Malcolm Betruger walks through a teleporter when things go wrong.  Meanwhile, a group of UAC(Union Aerospace Corporation)Marines are en route to the facility as punishment for what Lt. Joan Dark had done in the past.  Upon arriving at the facility, the marines discover that the facility isn’t responding and when they enter the building, all hell breaks loose.  Nobody who knows anything about Doom is going to go into a film like this expecting Shakespeare.  No, like the game, you come for the carnage.  I don’t necessarily mind how the film sets up some of the main characters like Joan, Savage and Betruger, but the first 15-20 minutes of the film are a bit of a slog to get through.  It certainly doesn’t help that the film kind of has a bit of an Aliens-knockoff vibe about the whole thing.  For those that are big fans of the 2016 video game, this one ain’t for you.  It’s more or less based on the 2003 Doom 3 than anything else.  That being said, some of the elements that were missing from the 2005 film are here.  Namely, the demonic and supernatural aspects of the game are present.  You’ve got the imps that shoot fireballs, which is pretty cool, and then the film actually takes you to Hell itself.  It’s actually pretty cool.  But yeah, don’t come in to Doom: Annihilation expecting something profound.

For the cast of characters, we’ve got Amy Manson as Lt. Joan Dark, Dominic Mafham as Dr. Malcom Betruger, and Louis Mandylor as the Chaplain.  These three are the main standouts of the film.  Amy Manson is not bad as Joan, even though the character is about as thin as a cheap piece of paper.  She gives it her all, though, and she comes across as pretty bad-ass.  Dominic Mafham plays the mad scientist Betruger, and if you are at all familiar with Doom 3, then you know that he’s responsible for everything going wrong here.  Louis Mandylor is one of those actors that is incredibly underrated.  He’s done fantastic work in recent films like Avengement and The Debt Collector.  It’s just a shame that he wasn’t really given more to do here.  Everyone else is pretty much cannon fodder….or demon fodder in this case.  So, yeah, no Oscar-worthy performances here, ladies and gentleman.

Let’s get this out of the way:  Doom: Annihilation is a very low budget film, and as such, the look of the film is not on the same level as the original film.  Because of the film’s low budget nature, I tend to adjust my expectations a bit, and as a result, I tend to give films like this a bit more leeway in how the final product ends up.  That being said, I’m rather impressed with how the film looks and how it’s shot.  Yeah, some of it looks very cheap, but that’s to be expected for a direct-to-video film.  I will admit, however, that some of the prop designs are…..less than impressive.  When Joan picks up the BFG 9000 weapon, it looks extremely cheap.  I wasn’t expecting something from the 2016 game or even Doom 3, but I was hoping for something that looked less like a toy and more like an actual weapon.  Some of the set designs are pretty good and some of the make-up and creature effects are pretty damned amazing for the budget.  The demon designs are pretty cool and they still use a man in a rubber suit, so it actually looks like it’s there.  The look of the Hell dimension is pretty cool, if lacking in certain aspects, but I’m just happy that film actually took us there.

There’s definitely stuff to like here.  There’s a lot of fan service thrown in that fans of id Software’s earlier games will absolutely pick up on, and that’s cool.  However, I can’t escape the feeling that Doom: Annihilation just wasn’t as good as it should have been.  Tony Giglio does the best he can with what he’s given as a director, but considering that we’re getting a new Doom game in the next few months, the film feels like it’s being rushed to market in time for the new game.  I’m not going to lie:  Movies based on video games have always been sub-standard, at least in the eyes of the fans, and Doom: Annihilation isn’t going to change that.  It IS a movie based on one of the most legendary and controversial video games ever released, but it doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from the rest of its ilk.  If you hate movies based on video games, this sucker ain’t going to change your mind.  While it’s trying to be for fans of the games, it falls short in enough areas to keep it from being memorable.  The ending to the film is going to piss people off, though.  I really hate cliffhanger endings.  I don’t mind when a film sets up for another film, but Doom: Annihilation is extremely blatant in its sequel-baiting.  It wouldn’t have been as bad if we knew for a fact that a follow-up film was coming, but we don’t.  I do expect one to show up, because this is a direct-to-video feature, but there’s a better way of setting up a new film than this.

Do I recommend this film, though?  On first viewing, no.  Not unless you’re a die-hard fan of the original film and the games.  Even then, I find myself hard-pressed to give this film a glowing recommendation.  I think it gets enough right to warrant a viewing at least, but would I tell people to go out and buy this film?  That’s going to be up to them.  I bought it, because it was a 15 dollar purchase on Blu-Ray, but I don’t necessarily think that it’s worth the 15 bucks.  Sorry.  There’s a reason why id Software and Bethesda distanced themselves from this film.  While I don’t think it’s all bad, it just feels very generic with the Doom name slapped on it.  It certainly doesn’t help that the title includes Annihilation in the title.  The last video game movie that had Annihilation in the title, had Mortal Kombat in front of it, and we all know how that one turned out.

My Final Recommendation:  This film franchise feels doomed.  Yes.  I went there, and yes, the pun was intended.  6/10.