Having taken her first steps into a larger world in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Rey continues her epic journey with Finn, Poe, and Luke Skywalker in the next chapter of the saga.
Having taken her first steps into a larger world in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Rey continues her epic journey with Finn, Poe, and Luke Skywalker in the next chapter of the saga.
Shawn and Zach are young lovers who move into a guest house together on
an estate owned by Mr. and Mrs. Marino. When bizarre events begin to
occur with increasing danger, Zach slowly remembers a forgotten time in
his childhood when he suffered from what appeared to be a severe and
violent psychosis - memories erased by as series of electroconvulsive
shock treatments administered by his psychiatrist. As the terrors
surrounding their lives grow to deadly proportions and innocent people
are slaughtered, Zach is forced to question his own sanity and fears for
Shawn's safety. Once the threat of psychotic behavior turns into the
possibility of demonic possession, Zach is confronted with a horrific
reality he never could before have imagined.
During filming breaks Jill Hennessy would sing and play guitar.
Rick Bieber’s latest directorial effort is being released on the same day as the remake of Flatliners,
the original 1990 version of which he produced. Whether or not that’s a
coincidence, this tedious slog of a horror movie isn’t likely to
provide much competition. Notable only for featuring Alex Rocco in his
last screen role, Don’t Sleep practically begs audiences to defy its ill-chosen title.
The film begins with a prologue in which a young boy experiences a
terrorizing nightmare set in a graveyard. That’s followed by an onscreen
quotation from Nietzsche, which is the first sign that we’re in for
heavy going. The little boy is subsequently sent by his concerned mother
(Jill Hennessy) to see a shrink played by Cary Elwes, which is the
second sign that we’re in for heavy going. Later that night, the mother
checks in on her son, who suddenly starts sounding like Mercedes
McCambridge’s gravelly demonic voice in The Exorcist. That’s the third sign.
Cut to 13 years later, when the now grown young boy, Zach (Dominic
Sherwood), a law student, and his girlfriend Shawn (Charlbi Dean Kriek)
rent a room in a cozy guest house owned by a married couple (Alex Carter
and Drea de Matteo, the latter deserving better than this after getting
whacked on The Sopranos).
Things at first seem idyllic. So much so that Shawn dreamily tells
Zach, "I just want to feel like this forever," which in horror films is
the cue for things to immediately start going wrong. And so they do,
although not before Shawn takes a nice hot shower, which gorgeous women
in horror films are very prone to do. Any guesses why?
To say that plotting is not the film’s strong suit is putting it
mildly. It has something to do with menacing hooded figures popping up
periodically, looking not so much demonic as badly in need of dental
work and acne medication. Zach also begins acting more than a little
strangely, finally demonstrating that he’s truly possessed by a
malevolent force when he and Shawn have sex and he takes her from
behind, standing up. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the mystery
revolves around the shrink’s unorthodox treatment of his child patient
years earlier, because by the time it’s revealed, most viewers will have
long since tuned out.
Wasting the talents of its several veteran performers, Don’t Sleep represents a sad career coda for Rocco, who so memorably portrayed Moe Green in The Godfather. Even getting shot in the eye seems more dignified.
FINAL RATING: 2/10 for the genre and 2/10 overall. Really really bad one.
When an elite crime squad's lead detective investigates the
disappearance of a victim on the first snow of winter, he fears an
elusive serial killer may be active again. With the help of a brilliant
recruit, the cop must connect decades-old cold cases to the brutal new
one if he hopes to outwit this unthinkable evil before the next
snowfall.
For a while, an unofficial movie poster created by a film student circulated on the internet. See more »
Quotes
Katrine Bratt:
[from the trailer]
I think it's the falling snow that sets the killer off
Katrine Bratt:
Cutting things up that's what a child does to maintain order
See more »
Michael Fassbender stars as a troubled detective tracking down a serial
killer in this screen version of Jo Nesbo's best-seller from 'Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy' director Tomas Alfredson.
The weather outside is frightful in The Snowman, the
long-gestating movie adaptation of Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo's
2007 literary smash hit, which has sold in the millions. Directed by
Swedish left-field hitmaker Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy),
this is a classy, polished production with a starry international cast
led by Michael Fassbender. It was previously earmarked for Martin
Scorsese, who now has an executive producer credit.
But if production partners Universal and Working Title are hoping for
a Scandi noir blockbuster to rival David Fincher's 2011 version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, they are heading for disappointment. For all its high-caliber talent mix, The Snowman
is a largely pedestrian affair, turgid and humorless in tone. The cast
share zero screen chemistry, much of the dialogue feels like a clunky
first draft and the wearily familiar plot is clogged with clumsy loose
ends. While Nesbo's novel was a pulpy page-turner, formulaic but
effective, Alfredson and his team have somehow managed to drain it of
tension.
Of course, countless mediocre crime yarns have scored big at the box
office. Director, author and star probably have a sufficiently large
following between them to make The Snowman into a commercial
hit, but nobody comes out of this production with their reputations
enhanced. Critical reaction will be frosty, and Universal's reported
hopes of launching a new franchise seem likely to melt away. Rolling out
across much of Europe and the Middle East this week, Alfredson's chilly
killer thriller is set to open Oct. 20 in the U.S.
A killer is targeting the young mothers of Oslo, building a sinister
snowman as a calling card before he strikes. Maverick detective Harry
Hole (Fassbender) is officially between cases, but he inveigles his way
onto this one by shadowing a new arrival at the city's police
department, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson). Following a long trail of
clues, the pair expand the investigation to include different cities and
unsolved murders stretching back decades, soon realizing they have a
serial killer on their hands. Their inquiries turn up murky connections
between wealthy industrialist Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons), creepy doctor
Idar Vetleson (David Dencik) and boozy detective Gert Rafto (Val
Kilmer), who died years before in an apparent shotgun suicide.
In parallel with his police duties, Harry is also struggling to stay
on good terms with his estranged ex-wife Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg),
his sulky teenage stepson Oleg (Michael Yates) and Rakel's new partner
Mathias (Jonas Karlsson). But as the murder investigation deepens, the
killer gets Harry's family in his sights, and their deadly cat-and-mouse
game turns personal. Meanwhile, Katrine is revealed to have a secret
history that throws her interest in the case into question.
Fassbender plays the kind of rule-breaking antihero who ticks every
cliche on the flawed-genius screen cop checklist. Harry's crime-fighting
instincts are brilliant but unorthodox, which means his stuffy bosses
indulge him while female co-workers find him dangerously irresistible.
He may be too much of a self-absorbed drunk to keep his promises to his
ex-wife and stepson, but both still adore him anyway. He is a
chain-smoking alcoholic who routinely passes out on park benches, yet
strangely still possesses the athletic stamina to chase villains across
vast frozen landscapes wearing nothing but tastefully understated Nordic
knitwear.
In its favor, The Snowman looks magnificent. Norway is a
gift to Alfredson, with his strong eye for snow-covered landscapes and
stylishly bare modernist interiors. Cinematographer Dion Beebe and
production designer Maria Djurkovic transform the homely urban geography
of Oslo into a Nordic Gotham City of deep shadows, towering churches
and cavernous municipal halls, while the vast hinterland beyond the city
becomes a majestic winter wonderland of frozen lakes and snowy peaks.
The Snowman also boasts a fine cast, though its leaden
script and perfunctory characterization leave scant room for subtle
performances. Arriving on set direct from Assassin's Creed,
Fassbender coasts through the movie with his roguish charm on autopilot.
Ferguson wrings a little more complexity from her traumatized avenging
angel, but Gainsbourg wanders through her scenes in a daze, as if she
has accidentally stumbled onto Alfredson's shoot en route to her latest
self-lacerating encounter with Lars von Trier. Simmons, Chloe Sevigny
and Toby Jones are all underused in glorified cameos. And Kilmer's minor
role is just plain bizarre, with his raddled appearance and mannered
dialogue that seems to be overdubbed in places.
Screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan and Soren Sveistrup
stick fairly closely to Nesbo's plot, with a few minor changes and
shifts of emphasis. Thus The Snowman only has one major secret
to keep us in suspense: the identity of the killer. Even for viewers
unfamiliar with the book, this not-so-shocking surprise becomes pretty
easy to call about midway through the story, leaving Alfredson to fill
another hour with increasingly silly red herrings and pointless blind
alleys.
In a movie that had more layers, deeper questions and more fully
evolved characters, such predictable touches would not necessarily be
fatal lapses. But The Snowman does not do subtext. Indeed, its
by-the-numbers script barely qualifies as text. When the killer's
risible psychological motivation is finally revealed, it feels as if the
screenwriters began reading Freud for Dummies, but did not even get to the end. Alfredson has yet to make a terrible film, and The Snowman is certainly not terrible, but it falls way short of what a superior big-budget thriller should deliver.
FINAL RATING: 7/10 for the genre and 4/10 overall. But most important here is the genre rate where the movie represents a really good one.
A teenage girl, trying to enjoy her birthday, soon realizes that this is
her final one. That is, if she can figure out who her killer is. She
must relive that day, over and over again, dying in a different way each
time. Can she solve her own murder?
Jessica Rothe and Israel Broussard star in the horror-comedy from 'Paranormal Activity' franchise writer Christopher Landon.
Reuniting a variety of veterans of the Paranormal Activity and Insidious series, Happy Death Day offers
a comedic take on the usual stalker-slasher fare, which may sound more
promising than it actually proves to be. Lightweight and accessible
enough to appeal to its short attention span PG-13 target audience, this
is largely disposable entertainment that doesn't suggest obvious
franchisability or significant staying power.
Cultivating relatability shouldn't be a problem, though, as the
filmmakers offer up an easily identifiable mean-girl type as their
protagonist who's headed for a comeuppance. University sorority sister
Theresa (Jessica Rothe), nicknamed "Tree," displays all the traits of a
privileged campus minority, including a haughty attitude, superior
self-regard and shocking lack of empathy. So it's a bit of a comedown
when she wakes up totally hungover in the dorm room bed of
her hipster-ish classmate Carter (Israel Broussard), who's clearly not
remotely in her rarified league. Swearing him to silence about their
embarrassing hookup, she tries to go about her day unperturbed, but
since it's also her birthday there's a certain level of unpredictability
involved.
She's not pleased, for instance, with her roommate Lori's (Ruby
Modine) surprise birthday wishes or her estranged father's attempts to
call, opting to avoid any celebrations beyond paying a visit to her
pre-med professor Gregory's (Charles Aitken) office to unsuccessfully
reignite their secret fling. Then her downer day ends in the worst
possible way when some masked psycho attacks her that night on her way
to a party, repeatedly stabbing Tree to death. Only her life isn't over
yet, as she discovers when she wakes up in Carter's bed and her birthday
from Hell begins all over again, ending abruptly with her inevitable
murder.
Clearly it's going to take some time for Tree to work things through
and unmask her killer if she's going to survive her life on auto-rewind.
With each repetition of the incidents leading up to her demise, she
discovers additional details about the circumstances surrounding her
death and the identity of her killer, who wears the baby-faced mask of
her university's sports mascot. Enlisting Carter in her attempt to cheat
death appears to be her only option, since snotty sorority president
Danielle (Rachel Matthews) and her other housemates refuse to tolerate
any slacking or slumming that might tarnish their organization's
reputation.
While scripter and comic-book scribe Scott Lobdell (Marvel's Uncanny X-Men)
quickly demonstrates the repetitive pattern provoking Tree's recurring
reincarnations within the film's first 15 minutes, the exact mechanism
behind her mysterious fate remains unexamined. Brisk pacing helps
obscure this oversight, though, with Lobdell trickling out just enough
information to justify another iteration of the cycle before delivering a
couple of imaginative twists toward the film's conclusion.
Rothe proves game for taking on Tree's escalating tribulations, but
doesn't really get a chance to shine until her character goes on the
offensive against her tormentor, devising some increasingly clever
strategies to corner her killer. As her potential love interest,
Broussard gets stuck with an underwritten part that could have benefited
from a more focused motivation beyond just trying to get the girl.
Director Christopher Landon — who built his career with a series of scripts for the Paranormal Activity franchise before directing Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones —
here disposes with much of the mythmaking that made that series so
memorable. Although concentrating on delivering easily digestible
situations and scene progressions, Landon does demonstrate some enticing
visual flair that gets rather diminished by the repetitiveness of the
plot.
The filmmakers' appropriation of Groundhog Day's narrative
template will probably be of little concern to younger viewers and
doesn't really grate as much as might be expected, even when the
characters are forced to gratefully accept patently obvious life
lessons.
FINAL RATING: 7/10 for the genre and 6/10 overall. A cool horror movie with an intelligent topic and storytelling, a sexy main character and a super nice funny twist, which works good. Good job and the movie is better than expected.
A young blade runner's discovery of a long-buried
secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who's
been missing for thirty years.
High school loner Bird Fitcher has no idea what dark
secrets are tied to the mysterious Polaroid vintage camera she stumbles
upon, but it doesn't take long to discover that those who have their
picture taken meet a tragic end.
Polaroid is styled in the vein of The Ring and Final Destination and
centers on a high school loner, Bird Fitcher, who stumbles upon a
vintage Polaroid camera. Bird soon learns that the camera houses a
terrible secret: whoever has their picture taken by it meets a tragic
and violent end. The girl and her friends must survive one more night as
they race to solve the mystery of the haunted Polaroid before it kills
them all.
The camera used in the movie is a Polaroid SX-70. Whenever it is used in
the trailer, the distinctive sound of a charging flashgun is heard,
followed by a pop and visible flash when the picture is taken - but the
SX-70 has no flash built in and there is no flash attachment fitted to
the camera. See more »
Goofs
The Polaroid camera being used is an SX-70, which does not have a flash
build in, nor makes the sound of a flash charging. The location of the
flash from the camera on screen is actually a built in light meter on
the camera.
Thanks a lot for reading and have fun watching movies.
A lavish train ride unfolds into a stylish &
suspenseful mystery. From the novel by Agatha Christie, Murder on the
Orient Express tells of thirteen stranded strangers & one man's race
to solve the puzzle before the murderer strikes again.
Stranded after a tragic plane crash, two strangers
must forge a connection to survive the extreme elements of a remote snow
covered mountain. When they realize help is not coming, they embark on a
perilous journey across the wilderness.
Stranded after a tragic plane crash, two strangers must forge a
connection to survive the extreme elements of a remote snow covered
mountain. When they realize help is not coming, they embark on a
perilous journey across hundreds of miles of wilderness, pushing one
another to endure and discovering strength they never knew possible.
She once survived a sinking ship in "Titanic." He once thrived on the mean streets of Baltimore on “The Wire.” Kate Winslet and Idris Elba
should by all rights have enough dramatic weight between them to easily
elevate a two-hander about strangers who must rescue themselves from a
desolate snow-blanketed Utah mountain range after their charter plane
crashes.
Instead, “The Mountain Between Us” is a high-altitude
soap opera, woozy with overly telegraphed peril and determined to make
the audience root for a couple who clearly aren’t meant for each other
and played by actors who deserve a generous C-minus in chemistry. In the
film’s production notes, Elba—considered dreamboat material by his many
fans—notes that this is his first-ever romantic lead. His surprising
awkwardness during the film’s intimate moments perhaps explains why.
What really comes between Winslet’s globetrotting photojournalist
Alex and Elba’s brain surgeon Ben as fate and bad weather bring them
together isn’t so much geographical but script-related. Based on a novel
by Charles Martin, the screenplay is a collaboration between Chris Weitz (“About a Boy,” the live-action “Cinderella”) and J. Mills Goodloe (“The Age of Adaline,” “Everything, Everything”). I’ll vouch for Weitz’s skills, but in the case of Goodloe, anyone who has adapted a Nicholas Sparks’ novel that isn’t “The Notebook” is suspect. And having seen “The Best of Me,” I rest my case.
Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, the maker of two politically charged Oscar-nominated foreign films (“Paradise Now” and “Omar,” the last featuring a love story) certainly has cred. But he fails to achieve producer Peter Chernin’s self-proclaimed vision of a romantic epic in the tradition of “Dr. Zhivago” and “Out of Africa.” Compared to those classics, “Mountain” is more of a molehill.
Right
out of the gate, I had an uneasy feeling about “The Mountain Between
Us” as all flights are canceled at an Idaho airport because of an
incoming blizzard. Alex, desperate to head back to New York in time for
her wedding, overhears Ben complaining that he has to operate on a young
boy the next morning. She proposes they share a small plane for hire.
Their pilot is Beau Bridges,
who emits good ol’ boy vibes as he brings his soulful-eyed golden
Labrador on-board. That his Walter doesn’t bother to file a flight plan
is an all-too-convenient warning sign.
Not long after takeoff,
while flying over remote treacherous terrain packed with white stuff,
Walter begins to slur his speech and Ben recognizes he is having a
stroke. Thank goodness, I have never witnessed anyone having such an
attack. But Bridges, perhaps making up for the brevity of his part,
seems to have taken his cues from Ian Holm’s Ash, the malfunctioning android in “Alien.” The crash itself isn’t all that terrifying in these days of “Flight” and “Sully.”
But Walter is a goner, the dog survives and he is in better shape than
Alex, who has a huge gash on her leg. Ben—oh, thank goodness, there just
happens to be a doctor in the house—fixes her up as best he can before
tending to his own cuts and bruises.
The medical stuff is the easy part. Cooperating with someone you
just met is a bit tougher. Once Alex wakes, she reveals herself to be
someone prone to taking risks and usually trusts her instincts in tight
situations. With no cell phone reception and with all devices that could
have alerted the occasional jet overhead unfortunately out of
commission, she thinks they should abandon ship and take their chances
on foot. The more conservative Ben, meanwhile, is less inclined to leave
what’s left of the aircraft and would rather stay put. As she heals,
the pair has a get-to-know-you period. Oddly, Ben wears a wedding ring
but does not mention his wife. Alex, meanwhile, knows that if she had
made it to her nuptials, she would have “rushed down the aisle like Dustin Hoffman
in ‘The Graduate.’” Ben waits a beat and echoes the thoughts of many a
cinephile in the theater by observing that Hoffman was trying to stop
the wedding. For emphasis, he meekly utters, “Elaine!”
That is
meet-cute stuff right there but the early portion of “The Mountain
Between Us” suggests a variation on “When Harry Met Sally…” Namely, can a
man and a woman become companions and work together for a common cause?
(That cause here being survival.) I liked that there seemed to be no
lovey-dovey business at this point. But then Alex looks through her
camera lens and sees a metallic glint off in the distance. Off they go
with their makeshift emotional therapy dog in tow and the days-long trek
forces them to cuddle against the cold at night. And, all too soon, the
movie takes a tumble from which it never recovers.
I should
have known when Ben early on portentously utters, “A heart is nothing
but a muscle” that this movie, just like the plane, was destined to
crash. Not to spoil the ending, which is corny as a crate of Cracker
Jack, but It seemed almost inevitable that Alex’s perfectly nice yet
bland fiancé would be Dermot Mulroney. For him, such roles are like Morgan Freeman playing the president or God. Meanwhile, weep not for our stars. Winslet’s career overcame the laborious “Labor Day” and Elba isn’t going to let the deadly “The Dark Tower”
get him down. Besides, once you realize that “The Mountain Between Us”
almost falls into the so-bad-it’s-good category, it just might become
destined for riff-worthy cultdom.
FINAL RATING: 6/10 for the genre and 6/10 overall. I expected a bit more but the movie losses in the main part my attention because of the plot.
