The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)

The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)

Cast

• Shay Mitchell as Megan Reed
• Grey Damon as Andrew Kurtz
• Stana Katic as Lisa Roberts / Nurse
• Louis Herthum as Grainger

Director

• Diederik Van Rooijen

Writer

• Brian Sieve

Cinematographer

• Lennert Hillege

Editor

• Stanley Kolk
• Jake York

Composer

• John Frizzell

Horror

Rated R for gruesome images and terror throughout.

85 minutes

 

 

The makers of “The Possession of Hannah Grace” clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty—and mostly scare-free—horror film ends up being.

Dutch director Diederik Van Rooijen’s movie mostly takes place in the middle of the night at a hospital, a brutalist monolith that radiates doom and gloom. (The exterior is actually the Boston City Hall building, transformed slightly with a bit of signage.) Once inside, though, everything else is dark too: the lobby, the hallways, the women’s bathroom and especially the morgue. Van Rooijen and screenwriter Brian Sieve actually use that room’s lighting as a vaguely intriguing plot point: It operates on motion sensors, turning on with a clickclickclick and an ominous buzz whenever someone enters. (The overhead lamps also happen to be shaped like a cross, in a not-so-subtle bit of symbolism.)

Surely, this was an aesthetic choice—an attempt to create an unsettling mood. But more often than not, it’s just plain difficult to see what’s going on, and that murkiness results in an overall feeling of frustration. It certainly doesn’t help that “The Possession of Hannah Grace” is one-note in its foreboding tone, punctuated by the occasional jump scare.

“Hannah Grace” begins with the title character (Kirby Johnson) undergoing a pretty standard movie exorcism. She’s tied to a bed with priests standing over her, praying and splashing her with holy water. The devil inside causes her to writhe and contort while spewing vile things. Seeing the carnage and chaos she’s causing, her dad (Louis Herthum) eventually says screw it, takes control of the situation and smothers her face with a pillow.

This is where most movies about demonic possession might end; here, it’s just the start. Because three months later, Hannah’s body turns up at the morgue on what just happens to be the first night of work for Megan (Shay Mitchell of “Pretty Little Liars”), a new intake assistant. The stoic Megan is a former cop battling demons and substance abuse issues; newly clean, she hopes for a fresh start at … the morgue. This is basically all we know about this character, who’s at the center of the film. (In order to secure the job, though, she insists in a winking bit of foreshadowing: “I believe when you die, you die. End of story.”) We know even less about the young woman who gives the film its title and serves as its driving narrative force.

Anyway, Megan tries to run through all the steps she’s just learned as far as photographing and fingerprinting the body before placing it in storage, but Hannah Grace’s overwhelming evil—even in cold corpse form—throws everything out of whack. In no time, she’s sneaking out of her drawer when no one’s looking and wreaking havoc on the few employees who have the misfortune of being on duty during the graveyard shift. This central premise is the only compelling element of Sieve’s script, but it’s executed in dreary fashion.

Part of the problem is that the rules are unclear. Sometimes Hannah Grace crawls in a crablike way, her mangled and bony body making a crackcrackcrack noise with every jumpy movement. (The sound design is indeed creepy the first time around with all these auditory tricks, but quickly grows repetitive.)  Sometimes, she walks upright. Sometimes, she leaps forward or skitters up a wall. She can interfere with cell phone signals and power lines and move entire ambulances with just a slight shove but wastes her time hanging around the hospital—and waits to inflict her wrath on Megan until the end.

We’d have no movie otherwise—and as is, “Hannah Grace” is barely 85 minutes, with an ending so abrupt that you’ll wonder whether you’ve missed something. (Spoiler alert: you haven’t.) But maybe we’d actually be able to see what’s going on in the outside world.

 

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Robin Hood (2018)

Robin Hood (2018)

Cast

• Taron Egerton as Robin Hood
• Jamie Foxx as Little John
• Jamie Dornan as Will Scarlet
• Eve Hewson as Maid Marian
• Ben Mendelsohn as Sheriff of Nottingham
• Tim Minchin as Friar Tuck

Producer

• Leonardo DiCaprio

Director

• Otto Bathurst

Director of Photography

• George Steel

Story

• David James Kelly

Screenplay

• Ben Chandler
• David James Kelly

Editor

• Christopher Barwell

Music

• Joseph Trapanese

Action, Adventure

Rated PG-13

104 minutes

 

 

You could build a suspension bridge over the gap between what "Robin Hood" could have been and what it is. Its hero is credible as a man who wants to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but the storytelling is so impoverished that the message can't stick. 

"Robin Hood" is a malleable tale, but the core is always the same: a cocky underdog fights the power on behalf of mistreated citizens. This new version from director Otto Bathurst ("Peaky Blinders") captures the heart of the legend, but frustratingly fails to translate it. Bluntly political and surprisingly coherent in its messaging, the movie is filled with deliberately modern details signaling that it's a folktale aimed at modern multiplex audiences, closer to a science fiction or fantasy epic than a "Barry Lyndon"-style "accurate" representation of life in another era. If the filmmaking and writing weren't so undistinguished, this could have been special. Instead, it's a flat and often grating experience, dotted by pockets of intelligence and surprise.

This incarnation of Robin of Locksley ("Kingsman: The Secret Service" star Taron Egerton) is a traitor to his class—a veteran of the Crusades who is literally to-the-manor born. He battles the cruel and corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn) after returning home and realizing that the bad guy has taxed his community into oblivion to fund the war effort. Robin is joined by the Saracen Little John (Jamie Foxx), who becomes his friend and mentor after Robin risks treason charges to save John's son during the Crusades. 

Robin, John and their allies start stealing gold from the bad guys, Robin's face-concealing black hood becoming a revolutionary emblem on par with the Guy Fawkes mask. At the same time, Robin ingratiates himself into the Sheriff's inner circle, gathering intelligence for his growing rebellion, and uncovering a conspiracy to subjugate the people that's even more awful than what he'd imagined. The film's supporting heroes—including Robin's former fiancee Maid Marian (Eve Hewson) and the local clergyman Friar Tuck (Tim Minchin)—are quite jaded about the world. They require little prompting to join Robin's campaign to give gold and hope back to people who've been abused or taken for granted by the state.

Ben Chandler and David James Kelly's script takes a story that's several centuries old and marries it to modern-day concepts and language, and the filmmakers try to push that strategy to the next level. Like Guy Ritchie's recent attempt to update another ancient English hero in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"—and, for that matter, Kevin Reynold's 1991 hit "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," from which this film borrows freely—this is a loud, fast, choppy production, with a punkish yet earnest edge. It often apes the look and feel of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, trading energy for elegance, and enthusiastically owning its many, blatant anachronisms. Marian has circa 2016 smoky-eye makeup, the costuming showcases some of the yummiest custom-cut leather jackets in cinema history, and the combat sequences feature archers rapidly firing arrows at each other at close quarters, like gunfighters in a John Wick film. An opening action sequence set in Syria has stuttering handheld camerawork in the vein of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down." 

The dialogue is likewise packed with modern aphorisms and political slogans that seem meant to lodge in the mind and incite passions. At one point, the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham, who's presented as a Trump-Bolsonaro-Le Pen-styled nationalist/racist despot, quotes George W. Bush's post-9/11 statement "They hate us for our freedom," in reference to the Muslim hordes that the Christian warriors are fighting overseas. He warns that they'll overrun England unless everyone pitches in with their treasure and blood. "They'll burn your houses!" the Sheriff bellows. "They'll burn your land!" Robin and John's friendship is treated as a bond between men who are smart enough to see through the forces that are trying to trick them into hating each other.

The film's genuine cynicism towards the powers that be is palpable, and it runs deeper than you expect. The Sheriff is in cahoots with a cruel and greedy Cardinal (F. Murray Abraham), who reveals that they're secretly funding both the Christians and the Muslims overseas to keep the war machine going and the gold pouring into the coffers of the local mine and foundry, which employs much of the local population and belches flame and toxic fumes. Marian's new husband Will Scarlet (Jamie Dornan), whom she married after Robin was reported dead in the war, is what 2018 political commentators would call a "centrist," expressing guarded sympathy for the motives of Robin and the other rebels while decrying their methods and worrying that they're going to upset a system that provides him with a stable and comfortable life. This is the kind of movie that turns boilerplate phrases into images, as when a newly radicalized character becomes a literal bomb-thrower.

In contrast to many other heroic narratives that are about nothing more than being opposed to bad people doing bad stuff, this "Robin Hood" is about institutional as well as personal corruption; it goes out of its way to show how one feeds and expands the other, and how perpetrators cloak themselves in political slogans and religious imagery while picking the pockets of working people and turning nations against each other. The movie is specifically an anti-organized religion statement as well as an anti-capitalist and anti-nationalist statement: a Noam Chomsky editorial with bows and arrows. 

The film's storytelling, however, is as conservative as its messaging is intriguingly radical. While modernizing other aspects of the legend, the script fails to find a new way into Robin's relationships with John (essentially another neutered Black mentor/father figure to a young, white man, his lopped-off hand preventing him from ever besting his student) and Marian (a damsel in distress, still, no matter how spunkily she resists the rape-minded Sheriff and his goons). 

The direction is paint-by-numbers, capturing every piece of relevant action but evoking nothing—which would be aesthetically offensive even if the costumers, set builders and decorators weren't in there filling every frame with colors and textures worth savoring. There's not a single witty or lyrical image anywhere in the movie, which wastes its dynamic, wide framing, and is shot in a glitzy, fast-cut style, characteristic of high-end TV pilots, complete with BOOM! sounds to inform us that something important just happened. A lot of the special effects are dodgy, particularly a wagon chase scene where Robin, Marian and John flee the Sherriff's guards and the assassin Guy of Gisborne (Paul Anderson) in the fiery mills. The actors are so clearly not inhabiting the same space as the spectacle, they might as well be standing on the deck of The Love Boat. But in the end "Robin Hood," succumbs to Marvel/DC syndrome, presumptuously setting up a sequel that it's hard to imagine anyone demanding. 

 

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Glass (2019)

Glass (2019)

Cast

• James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb / The Horde / The Beast / Patricia / Dennis / Hedwig / Barry / Jade / Orwell / Heinrich / Norma
• Bruce Willis as David Dunn / The Overseer
• Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price / Mr. Glass
• Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke
• Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple
• Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn
• Charlayne Woodard as Mrs. Price
• Luke Kirby as Pierce

Director

• M. Night Shyamalan

Producer

• Jason Blum

Editor

• Luke Franco Ciarrocchi
• Renaldo Kell

Director of Photography

• Mike Gioulakis

Writer

• M. Night Shyamalan

Original Music Composer

• West Dylan Thordson

Drama, Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller

Rated PG-13

129 minutes

More “Split 2” than “Unbreakable 2,” M. Night Shyamalan has finally produced his first direct sequel, the mash-up that is “Glass,” bringing together characters from two of his biggest hits. As the end of “Split” hinted, that film took place in the same universe as Shyamalan’s 2000 film “Unbreakable,” still his best work to date. The promise of the coda to “Split” is fulfilled in “Glass,” bringing together Shyamalan’s vision of the Freudian brain in the uncontrolled id of DID-afflicted Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy), the regulating force of the super-ego in David Dunn (Bruce Willis), and the moderator between the hero and the villain in the ego that is Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Once again, Shyamalan is playing with comic book tropes, adding his twists to monologuing heroes and villains who are remarkably self-aware of their own genre arcs. There’s a truly ambitious film buried in “Glass,” and I do mean buried. The problem is that Shyamalan can’t find the story, allowing his narrative to meander, never gaining the momentum it needs to work. Say what you will about “Unbreakable” and even “Split,” they had a propulsive energy that’s lacking here, at least partially because any sense of relatability is gone. “Glass” is a misfire, and it’s the kind of depressing misfire that hurts even more given what it could have been.

“Unbreakable” and “Split” have protagonists thrust into life-changing situations. The former told the story of David Dunn, the only survivor of a horrible train crash, who learned that he was more than human. The latter tells two stories—that of a girl, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, who returns here and is given woefully little to do), forced to discover her own strengths, and that of a mentally ill patient who may be more than your average person diagnosed with DID. 

As “Glass” opens, we know David Dunn, now known in Philadelphia as the mysterious protector called the Overseer and working with his son (Spencer Treat Clark), is a superhero. And we know Kevin Crumb has a personality called The Beast that can climb walls and take shotgun blasts. And yet so much of “Glass” is devoted to trying to convince David and Kevin that they are not super in any way. In the pursuit of another twist ending, Shyamalan takes a narrative step back, covering so much of the same ground that the two previous films did instead of carving a new path. He’s so obsessed with ending on a gotcha note that he delays any sort of narrative interest until then, basically forcing his audience to tread water until that point. Think long and hard about what you know at the end of “Glass” as opposed to what you knew at the beginning and you’ll realize how hollow this whole venture has been.

Most of “Glass” takes place at Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. In what could be called the prologue, David/Overseer tracks Kevin/Horde down after the villainous man with multiple personalities kidnaps four young women, holding them in an abandoned factory. The two men fight, and one immediately gets the sense that something is not quite right. This showdown between two of the most memorable characters in Shyamalan’s history lacks the punch or creative fight choreography fans should expect. The pair head out a window and into the arms of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), the confident doctor who shuttles them off to the same psych ward that’s been housing Mr. Glass for almost two decades. Glass is kept in a deeply vegetative state in a room in the same wing as David and Kevin. Dr. Staple tries to convince all three that they are not really super in any way. David’s strength isn’t that abnormal and Kevin’s powers as The Beast could be explained away.

In the midsection of “Glass,” Shyamalan hits every beat more than once, almost joylessly. Paulson gives the same speech multiple times, and a bit with a bright light that can change which personality of Kevin’s dominates goes on forever ... and then happens again. Shyamalan is determined to cycle through the back stories of these characters, even employing footage from “Unbreakable” and “Split” in flashbacks as if he doesn’t realize that 95% of viewers have seen them. He seems so intent on the reveals of his final fifteen minutes that he forgets to take opportunities to make the nearly two hours before that interesting. Why is Raven Hill such a dull bore to look at? Why is Shyamalan determined to make another film about whether or not superheroes are superheroes instead of just building on the foundation he’s created? Imagine “The Avengers” retelling all the origin stories and then questioning whether or not The Hulk is really a superhero or just an angry dude. 

There are glimpses of the crazy, ambitious movie that “Glass” could have been, and that’s what saves it from complete "Happening"-level disaster. Once again, McAvoy is giving it his all, even if he’s not getting as much back in return as he did last time (and is balanced by another half-hearted Willis performance in which I swear you can practically see him fall asleep). And there are just enough out-there ideas in “Glass” that it’s impossible to completely dismiss even if they don't come together. It’s that fine line between ambitiously clunky in a way that engages the viewer and just sloppy. I honestly kept trying to engage with “Glass” as a fan of Shyamalan’s early films, comic books, and movies that try to mash-up familiar genres in a way that makes a new one. I ultimately resigned myself to the fact that it’s not my fault that it’s broken.

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Bumblebee (2018)

Bumblebee (2018)

Cast

• Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie Watson
• Dylan O'Brien as Bumblebee (voice)
• Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Memo
• John Cena as Agent Burns
• Angela Bassett as Shatter (voice)
• Justin Theroux as Dropkick (voice)
• John Ortiz as Agent Powell
• Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime (voice)

Director

• Travis Knight

Writer

• Christina Hodson

Cinematographer

• Enrique Chediak

Editor

• Paul Rubell

Composer

• Dario Marianelli

Action, Adventure, Science Fiction

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence.

114 minutes

"Bumblebee," the first live-action Transformers movie to be directed by somebody other than Michael Bay, a Bizarro World version of this year's "The Predator," though only in one very particular way: there's too much undercooked human drama and not enough 'splodey high-concept stuff (which is competent). Sure, "Bumblebee" may seem like a welcome change-up after six Bay-ified Transformers flicks. But, as somebody who quit the recently revived franchise after the fourth entry, I have to say: so what? "Bumblebee" is only comparatively modest: it's 113 minutes and feels longer, and plays like a lukewarm, John Hughes-ified clone of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial." There's not only nothing new here, there's nothing convincing. And if I'm supposed to judge "Bumblebee" based on how well it succeeds at what it tries to do (rather than what came before it), it's still not very good.

"Bumblebee" begins with a lifeless homage/tip of the cap to the animated "Transformers: The Movie." War has come to Cybertron, the home of the Autobots—who have apparently already visited Earth, and therefore look like cars—and the Decepticons, who also look like cars and jets and things, despite ... not having been to Earth yet? You guessed it, dear reader: "Bumblebee" is a prequel, a bridge between the notoriously confusing "Transformers: The Movie" and Bay's tediously noisy "Transformers," so it makes sense that this new movie should be ... well, a bit like both the older Transformers film and the newer Transformer films, actually.

Yet while "Bumblebee" is a movie where sentient war machine robots go pew-pew at each other—and blow up trucks, and sometimes reduce human beings to translucent goo—this is also apparently a film about generically rebellious teenager Charlie Watson ("True Grit" star Hailee Steinfeld), a young woman who listens to The Smiths, resents her mom ("Better Things" star Pamela Adlon), and has a tentative romance with a wimpy boy-next-neighbor named Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.). Throw in the mute, nigh-magical, E.T.-like Bumblebee, and bam, you got yourself a thrice-nuked fish-out-of-water-tale.

The film's "formulaic" nature isn't necessarily a bad thing. Problems do, however, inevitably arise with "Bumblebee" since it often appears to be stuck on fast-forward, especially during big emotional moments. Several key scenes—ones that are supposed to establish the film's heartstring-tugging stakes—feel bewilderingly inconsequential, but only because screenwriter Christina Hodson's scenario (realized as it is by director Travis Knight and the gang), feels totally rushed. It's enough to leave viewers with burning questions, though the answers to those questions might seem obvious to anyone who's cursorily familiar with post-"E.T." fish out of water stories. 

Like: why did Bumblebee wait so long—in an early scene, before he loses his voice, and also one second before missiles decimate a bunch of gruff military guys—to command them to "Run?" Because the filmmakers don't have an extra couple seconds to earn genuine dramatic tension, not when they could just make their robot hero strike a cool pose and then get blown up. And why did Hodson and company have the film's villainous Decepticons kill Bumblebee’s Autobot friend on another planet before viewers are introduced to that character in a prior scene? Because wanton death is dramatic! 

As for the film's supporting characters, the one whose expectations Charlie rebels against: they're sadly not well-developed either. Which is a problem, since I can't root very hard for Charlie if my expectations are not overturned with hers. Stephen Schneider's amiably goony stepdad isn’t a convincing stick in the mud since his character's most heinous crimes against Charlie are practicing defensive driving and earnestly recommending one self-help book. And John Cena—playing cranky-pants, anti-robot military guy Agent Burns—isn’t a believable trigger-happy villain, despite the scary scar on his cheek. Finally, Lendeborg's Memo isn’t a credible nerd, despite the way he breathlessly explains why he wears disposable hair nets (sanitary reasons) when he’s confronted by a vaguely threatening valley girl bully.

Then again, what would you expect from a movie that asks viewers to fall in love with Bumblebee, a character who (in this film) appears to be a cuddly VW-shaped war machine? At the beginning of the movie, Bumblebee blows up a robot to rescue of his leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). Later, after a bunch of sappy moments that don't quite land, he blows up a bunch of other stuff (mostly inanimate). Yes, Bumblebee ostensibly loves Charlie, his human owner/buddy. But the military? And the bad robots? According to the film’s aimlessly destructive (but convincing) logic, Bumblebee delivers the only fitting punishment for their (inefficient) kind of violent intolerance: total destruction.

Look, I’m not expecting the shooty-shoot robot movie to deliver a great anti-war, anti-consumerist epic (I used to love “Transformers: Beast Wars” when I was a pre-teen). I do, however, wish that somebody who was responsible for this film’s creation was a little more serious about the tropes that they mercilessly ripped off, I mean borrowed, from executive producer Steven Spielberg. There's nothing implicitly wrong with this movie's approach. You just have to do something with it.

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Escape Room (2019)

Escape Room (2019)

Cast

• Taylor Russell as Zoey
• Deborah Ann Woll as Amanda
• Tyler Labine as Mike
• Logan Miller as Ben
• Jay Ellis as Jason
• Adam Robitel as Gabe
• Nik Dodani as Danny
• Jessica Sutton as Allison

Director

• Adam Robitel

Writer (story by)

• Bragi Schut

Writer

• Bragi Schut
• Maria Melnik

Cinematographer

• Marc Spicer

Editor

• Steve Mirkovich

Composer

• John Carey
• Brian Tyler

Action, Horror, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for terror/perilous action, violence, some suggestive material and language.

100 minutes

 

 

“Escape Room,” a new PG-13-rated horror film, is a sometimes diverting, but overly familiar series of set pieces in search of a good melodrama. There’s not much of a plot: six disposable protagonists try to solve a series of inter-connected puzzles, and death is the penalty for failure.

There’s also not much reason to care if these protagonists live or die, a demerit that slightly (but notably) distinguishes “Escape Room” from what appears to be its creators’ biggest influence: the go-for-broke “Saw” movie franchise, a series of “torture porn” flicks that weirdly improved as its creators grew more desperate to keep diehard fans (and only diehard fans) interested. The “Saw” movies are probably best remembered for their instantly dated gore. But, speaking for myself: I love their over-the-top soap opera plotting, especially in later sequels like “Saw VI” and “Saw: The Final Chapter” (the latter of which is not, as horror fans know, the last “Saw” sequel). 

“Escape Room” has a handful of enjoyably bonkers moments, most of which involve nonsensical death traps. But “Escape Room” is also anemic compared to the “Saw” movies, as you might imagine based on the film’s comparatively weak PG-13 rating. That wouldn’t be a problem if there were other major differences between “Escape Room” and the “Saw” sequels. Sadly, “Escape Room” is only longer and more impersonal than what came before it. 

“Escape Room” also feels pretty schematic since very few plots twists serve to develop the film’s cipher-like characters. Six thrill-seekers pile into the waiting room of a non-descript Chicago office building. A woman’s voice tells them to wait to be seen. They follow her instructions and exchange introductory pleasantries. But then the suite’s door handle breaks, their disembodied host’s voice disappears (surprise: she was a recording!), and a powerful convection oven-style heater turns on. The film’s deadly games begin.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t watch movies like “Escape Room” and “Saw” for their characters or performances. Still, that might be something you do while watching “Escape Room” given how threadbare the rest of the film is. Unfortunately, Nik Dodani and Jason Ellis—who respectively play clueless puzzle nerd Danny and hothead know-it-all Jason—are often loud and annoying. And Tyler Labine, in the role of the likeably clueless trucker Mike, barely does anything. Heck, even the characteristically charming Deborah Ann Woll—as the tough, capable war vet Amanda—is barely able to steal a single scene (you’ll know it when you see it).

None of this would be so bad if the two least interesting performers and characters didn’t overshadow everyone else. Logan Miller—as the twitchy (but young!) alcoholic Ben—is maybe one of the least convincing Byronic teenage protagonists in a recent horror film. And Taylor Russell’s withdrawn college student Zoey is exclusively defined by her exasperating savant-like behavior. You probably already know what’s going to happen to Ben and Zoey, but that also wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of “Escape Room” wasn’t so uninspired. 

To be fair: the death trap set pieces are united by dumb-fun themes, like Tim Burton Room or Dirty Hospital Ward. But that’s about it. The oven-heated waiting room features dull clues, like an (apparently) unread copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and a barely full water-cooler, too. And an upside-down billiards room is only noteworthy because of its annoyingly malfunctioning jukebox (it plays only one song, loudly and frequently!) and rapidly collapsing ceiling, I mean floor. 

Sure, it's less fun than the "Saw" movies, but why doesn’t “Escape Room” work on its own terms? The characters all have dark secrets that ostensibly give meaning to their Sisyphean struggles. But their secrets aren’t dark enough, nor are their Rube-Goldbergian trials wild enough to be memorable. (The second-to-last puzzle room, which looks like a condemned hospital ward, is especially tedious). “Escape Room” may be a welcome oasis at the start of January’s seemingly vast pre-Oscars wasteland. But if you miss “Escape Room” while it’s in theatres, you can probably miss it altogether.

 

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My Top 10 Movies of 2018

Helllo everyone and welcome to the ranking of my top 10 movies of 2018. With this said I want to point that this ranking was made according to my own list, independently of the reviews I made. So a 5 star movies does not automatically qualify for a high ranking. I made this list which includes the movies I remember most.

But first some honorable mentions. In 2018 there were 416 movies, I watched 353 and these are the ones which are not included in my very own top 10.

Widows was a brilliantly realized crime drama and feminist thriller with a spectacular lead performance by Viola Davis, but its ending didn’t resonate as it should have. Damien Chazelle’s First Man went the opposite way, building rather slowly from a prosaic beginning to a final half-hour - the recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing - that was majestic, breathtaking and profound in a way we haven’t seen since Kubrick’s 2001.

On the other hand, Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer took a rather straightforward noir script and elevated it through a devastating performance by an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman. To counter that film’s almost too bleak scenario, I would suggest Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a charming and moving documentary about how Fred Rogers worked tirelessly to teach our children well. Also deserving respect and praise: Private Life (Kathryn Hahn has never been better), BlacKkKlansman, Foxtrot, Black Panther, If Beale Street Could Talk, Paddington 2, We the Animals, and The Wife.

10. A Star Is Born

After three previous versions, who would think that a fourth telling could offer anything fresh from this story? And yet, Bradley Cooper found a way to inject thrumming new life into the tale of a musician on the decline (Cooper) finding love with the new star he mentors (Lady Gaga), all while failing to escape his own self-destructive impulses.
Directing for the first time, Cooper captures the life of a touring rock musician almost perfectly and delivers another in a string of excellent performances. Meanwhile, in her first lead in a major motion picture, Gaga brings humanity, warmth and a kind of curdling innocence to the part of the reluctant yet forceful Ally (a nod must also go to the truly great Sam Elliott as Cooper’s loyal but no-bullshit brother). Cooper and Gaga’s chemistry is fabulous, and if the script seems to skate rather quickly over Ally’s rise to fame, it makes up for it with sheer energy and emotion.

 9. Annihilation


As with the horror genre, science fiction cinema has taken a sharp step up in terms of quality, intelligence and meaning - getting away from simple battles in space with monsters and tackling bigger themes through both original work and surprising adaptations. Director and screenwriter Alex Garland has now done both: His Ex Machina was one of the best films of 2015, and now he’s back on the list with his version of Jeff VanderMeer’s genuinely eerie and thought-provoking novel.

Natalie Portman leads a team of five women who venture into a mysterious, expanding zone of mutating wildlife and bizarrely evolving landscapes, only to find that change will occur whether we want it or not. While freely diverging from the text, the movie is faithful to the book’s surreal tone and ambiguous nature, making Annihilation a challenging, bracing, and ultimately mind-bending experience - which is what we should want from all our sci-fi movies.

8. Can You Ever Forgive Me?

One thing that many of the films on this list have in common is that they are centered around one or two singularly great performances, a trend that continues in this sardonic, bittersweet and yet affecting adaptation of Lee Israel’s 2008 memoir of the same name. As played by Melissa McCarthy in a revelatory performance, Israel is a misanthropic writer of celebrity biographies whose livelihood is drying up - until she begins forging and selling letters from deceased writers and actors. She is joined in her scheme by a dissolute raconteur (Richard E. Grant), but their friendship is rickety from the start.

McCarthy’s talent has always been evident even in her most ill-fated comedies, but she takes things to a whole other level here with a complex performance that somehow makes you empathize with a pretty unpleasant person. Grant is fantastic as well, sad and hilarious at the same time. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl) also turns the film itself into a love letter to a now nearly vanished literary New York a place where Lee never quite fit in, as much as she wanted to.

7. Leave No Trace

It’s been eight long years since writer-director Debra Granik last wowed us with the riveting Winter’s Bone (which put Jennifer Lawrence on the map), and it’s with great delight that we can say her latest feature, Leave No Trace, exits 2018 as one of the year’s finest films. A sensitive portrayal of the profound but ultimately untenable bond between a deeply troubled veteran (Ben Foster) and his loving daughter (Thomasin McKenzie), Granik’s low-key approach makes what could have become an overwrought melodrama into one of the year’s more moving studies of PTSD and familial love.

Foster and McKenzie are downright brilliant as Will and his daughter Tom, who live in near total isolation in a remote area of an Oregon park until they are discovered and sent into social services. Despite many well-intentioned attempts to help them find a “normal” life, one of them must eventually make an agonizing decision. A compassionate, humanistic and powerful film.

6. A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place is a 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John Krasinski, who wrote the screenplay with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck. The film stars Krasinski, alongside Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe. The plot revolves around a family facing struggles in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind monsters with an acute sense of hearing.  

The movie is dramatic, fantastic, and the love between the parents and the kids can be felt in every second of the movie. A horror movie, which has way more elements that I still remember most of the scences. Fantastic.

5. Free Solo

A film that’s mere existence becomes a fascination unto itself, Free Solo is a remarkable achievement for subject and storyteller alike, which in this case refers to Alex Honnold, the young man who holds the record for climbing the tallest vertical surface ever without a rope, and the moviemakers who dared to hang just out of his reach with cameras. A deceptively complex narrative about human endurance and the drive to actualize one’s dream, directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi are forced to place themselves into their own film as they discuss the ethical limitations of recording a dream with life-or-death stakes… and whether they should finish it if death actually enters into the equation (especially if their presence factors in).
A tense exercise in the morality of moviemaking, as well as a compelling story of a man who is only most alive when he could actually die at any moment, Free Solo captivates from beginning to end. And it’s dizzying height is reached in no small part due to the rock solid foothold discovered in the quiet love story between Alex and Sanni Mccandless, an infinitely patient woman who must come to terms with the knowledge that time and again, Alex will pick the mountain over her, just as he must come to accept ascending to the top only matters if there is someone to call afterward. There is, and for anyone lucky enough to see it on a big screen, they’ll never forget what he has to say. I love this movie because of the passion and most of all because of the landscape NG is puting in there.

4. Love Simon

Everyone deserves a great love story. But for 17-year-old Simon Spier it's a little more complicated: he's yet to tell his family or friends he's gay and he doesn't know the identity of the anonymous classmate he's fallen for online.

Such a beautiful story of love and acceptance! After watching this I love Simon, his family and friends. Love conquers all. Everyone should see it!

Well-acted, this adaptation of the YA novel chooses mostly correct paths through its simple telling of Simon's story. Shedding no new light on the coming out narrative, it does, however, offer a freshness in the way it presents acceptance, particularly within the family unit. Aiming for the centre, it judges its ripple effect well so as to embrace the majority of viewers without ostracisation and in doing so manages to not alienate or patronise the audience for whom the story connects the most.

  

3. Roma

It truly is a brave new world when Netflix releases the most exquisitely shot and breathlessly cinematic project of its calendar year. As the 2018 picture destined to be dissected and scrutinized in the halls of film school, Alfonso Caurón’s Roma is a wistful ode to his childhood that has the masterstroke of avoiding the urge to make his younger avatar the protagonist. Rather that duty, like so many others, falls to Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) the unsung and often unseen housecleaner and caretaker of an upper-middle class home in 1970s Mexico City.

An obvious tribute to the women who’s pain and suffering are usually a footnote in the fuzzier memories of those they thanklessly shaped, Roma is Caurón’s most personal film, which is marked by the fact that he, and not Emmanuel Lubezki, was cinematographer. And that photography is quite stunning, indeed. With the intimacy of a François Truffaut reverie and the sweep of a David Lean epic, the film takes over two hours to bring audiences to tears, but for those who surrender to its hypnotic thrall, it most definitely will. Finally the unseen has been made visible in this celluloid monument that is as irresistible as the rolling of the surf.

2. Hereditary

In this modern renaissance of thinking people’s horror movies, no indie studio is making us think more than A24. In that vein, writer-director Ari Aster knocks it out of the park with his feature debut in this vaguely perverse nightmare. A film derived from dread and the often overlooked storytelling tools that made Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist endure in our haunted subconscious beyond their mere red eyes and green plea soup, Hereditary is both a throwback and something original. Showcasing the slow descent into madness and despair of a family with an already tragic history, the film cheerfully muddies the water between supernatural and psychological terror, suggesting they’re one in the same.

Hereditary would be on this list no matter what, yet the reason you’ll be thinking about it for years to come is the tour de force performance by Toni Collette. Personifying the messy overlap of trauma, guilt, self-loathing, and maybe even the insidious notion of complicity acting as a connective tissue, it is a devilishly layered turn that leaves no one, onscreen or off, feeling clean. Plus, for our money, this movie has the most unforgettable shot composition of 2018, albeit once witnessed, you’re just as likely to wish your eyes had never been so scarred.

1. Sorry To Bother You

Film criticism too often relies on the claim “you haven’t seen anything like this before,” but that would be putting it mildly in the case of Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. Rushing onto the cinematic scene with more creativity and ambition in his debut than many directors can tease in a lifetime, Riley announces himself to film culture with a defiant and deafening mic drop. Sorry to Bother You is not only an original vision, but something even rarer in its industry: an actual subversive manifesto.

Merging magical realism with a joy for balancing multiple allegorical conceits, Sorry to Bother You is a pro-union, anti-capitalist, and fanged deconstruction of the corporate-labor-media triptych that grinds most Americans in their everyday life into dust. It is also funny, insightful, and features a fantastic leading man turn by Lakeith Stanfield. Armie Hammer similarly dominates in perhaps his finest work to date as the devil made white CEO-bro flesh. It follows Stanfield’s success as a telemarketer after adopting a white voice (an honest to God alabaster cadence, compliments of David Cross’ vocals), even as his Cassius Green becomes a scab during a union strike in the process. With a humor sharper than most comedies, and a Grand Guignol edge that can be more shocking than any horror, there simply isn’t anything else like Sorry to Bother You out there.

This is it. My Top 10 movies of 2018 and do not forget, that it is only my oppinion, it does not have to match you taste.
Thanks for a great year in 2018 and see you in 2019. WIsh you all a very happy new year.

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Aquaman (2018) - Film Review

Aquaman (2018)

Cast

• Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman
• Amber Heard as Mera
• Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko
• Patrick Wilson as Orm Marius / Ocean Master
• Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus
• Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane / Black Manta
• Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna
• Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry
• Ludi Lin as Murk
• Graham McTavish as King Atlan
• Djimon Hounsou as The Fisherman King
• Natalia Safran as Fisherman Queen
• Michael Beach as Jesse Kane
• Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin

Writer

• Will Beall
• David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
• Will Beall

Writer (Aquaman created by)

• Mort Weisinger
• Paul Norris

Writer (story by)

• Geoff Johns
• James Wan
• Will Beall

Cinematographer

• Don Burgess

Editor

• Kirk M. Morri

Composer

• Rupert Gregson-Williams

Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.

 

144 minutes

 

 

Whenever anybody asks me what “Aquaman” is like, I mention an early scene where opposing Atlantean forces square off and debate the kingdom’s future. One side rides armored seahorses that whinny. The other rides armored sharks that roar. "Aquaman" is as concerned with scientific accuracy as “SpongeBob Squarepants.” And that’s one of many reasons why I like it. 

It takes skill to be as ridiculous as this movie about a half-human, half-Atlantean prince who’s known on land as Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) without seeming to condescend to the material. Directed by James Wan (“Saw,” “The Conjuring”), it’s part of a thriving subcategory of superhero movies, also represented by “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Venom” and both “Ant-Man” pictures—sweet, goofy, at times psychedelically weird films that mostly reject the sour gloom that gets mistaken for maturity. But that’s not to say that those movies aren’t serious in their own way. “Aquaman,” in particular, feels simultaneously like a spoof and an operatic melodrama. Any film that can combine those modes is a force to be reckoned with. 

Aquaman made his DC Expanded Universe debut in “Batman vs. Superman” and was part of the ensemble in “Justice League,” but this is the first movie that’s put him front-and-center. The results are enjoyable enough that you may wish Warner Bros. had done it sooner. While it’s not billed as such, this is an origin story, positioning Arthur as a reluctant hero. As concieved by screenwriters David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, adapting Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris’ source, Arthur is a mixed-species character who feels alienated from both of the civilizations he embodies. He's the offspring of union between a lighthouse keeper named Tom Curry (Temura Morrison) and a stranded Atlantean named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) whom Tom nursed back to health. Atlanna then returned to the sea and was put to death for the sin of birthing a half-human child. 

Arthur has long hair and tattoos, a knack for wisecracks and a fondness for beer, and just wants to be left alone. He rejects allegiance to land or sea, but eventually succumbs to prodding by the idealistic Atlantean Mera (Amber Heard) and becomes a uniter at a time when radical forces, led by Arthur’s treacherous half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), want to destroy the land-dwellers as revenge for polluting and militarizing the ocean. Arthur is one of those Joseph Campbell-certified, Fated-for-Great-Things heroes, thus the mythically resonant first name. He even has the equivalent of the moment where the future King Arthur pulls the sword from the stone.

The movie is overlong and a bit repetitious (as big-budget superhero films tend to be), and its second half is more distinctive than its first because it lets its freak flag fly. But Wan and company mostly do a brilliant job of shaking the algae from cliches. Rather than get bogged down in plot particulars, they concentrate on characterization and performances, production design, costumes, and visual details. 

Every frame has marvelous details that you might not catch on first viewing. The Atlanteans use their mouths to speak, but there are no visible bubbles, only vocal distortion that suggests "bubbly-ness." When the characters aren’t swimming at dolphin speeds, they square off against each other as if they’re standing on a sidewalk on land, bobbing ever-so-slightly. The water dwellers have lighting that's supplied by luminous deep-sea creatures and high technology that’s inspired by aquatic animals and plants. Some of the battle armor features oversized crab and lobster claws. In one scene, Mera wears a dress with a collar made of glowing jellyfish and a multicolored seagrass skirt. In an arena sequence, we hear taiko drumming on the soundtrack, and the camera moves to reveal a lone percussionist: a giant octopus. 

The fight sequences use high-speed, 360-degree camerawork to create surprise and delight, rather than to add superfluous hype. We’re constantly surprised by where movements start and end, and there are multiple slapstick jokes woven into each encounter. "Aquaman" embraces the childlike absurdity of armored Atlantean troopers coming up onto the land and martial arts-fighting their enemies in broad daylight, presenting the mayhem as plainly as a kung fu showdown in a schlock fantasy like “Infra-man” or TV’s “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” Rather than cross-cut between multiple lines of action, the camera sometimes swims or flies from one location to another and back again—most spectacularly in a chase-and-fight sequence set in a Sicilian seaside town, where combatants smash through the walls of cliffside homes and scramble across tiled rooftops. 

Momoa anchors the film, imbuing the big guy with surly charm, like one of those early Marlon Brando characters who was a jerk most of the time, but so magnetic and wounded that you couldn’t help but care about him. The rest of the cast is just as committed, notably Kidman as Atlanna, who carries on as if she’s playing the lead in an ancient Greek tragedy; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as David Kane, aka Black Manta, a pirate who swears revenge on the hero; and Willem Dafoe as Atlantis’ counselor Vulko, who advises caution and reason to no avail, and who’s like a second (aquatic) father to Arthur. 

The most remarkable aspect, though, is the way "Aquaman" pushes against the idea that every problem can be solved by violence. There are plenty of bruising fights on land and sea, plus laser shootouts and aquatic infantry clashes, but some of the most important showdowns are resolved peacefully, through conversation, negotiation, and forgiveness. Men as well as women cry in this movie, and the sight is treated not as a shameful loss of dignity, but as the normal byproduct of pain or joy. For all its wild spectacle and cartoon cleverness, this is a quietly subversive movie, and an evolutionary step forward for the genre. 

 

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Mary Poppins Returns (2018) - Film Review

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Cast

• Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins
• Lin-Manuel Miranda as Jack
• Ben Whishaw as Michael Banks
• Emily Mortimer as Jane Banks
• Pixie Davies as Anabel Banks
• Nathanael Saleh as John Banks
• Joel Dawson as Georgie Banks
• Julie Walters as Ellen
• Meryl Streep as Topsy
• Colin Firth as William Weatherall Wilkins
• Dick Van Dyke as Mr. Dawes Jr.
• Angela Lansbury as Balloon Lady

Director

• Rob Marshall

Writer (based upon the "Mary Poppins" stories by)

• P.L. Travers

Writer (screen story by)

• David Magee
• Rob Marshall
• John DeLuca

Cinematographer

• Dion Beebe

Editor

• Wyatt Smith

Composer

• Marc Shaiman

Family, Fantasy, Music

Rated PG for some mild thematic elements and brief action.

131 minutes

 

 

I don’t envy the filmmaker remaking or creating a sequel to a beloved classic children’s story. Yet numerous directors and stars are lining up for this latest craze, and especially the people over at Disney. Starting with “Alice in Wonderland,” the studio has been raiding its vaults to tap into its audience’s entrenched nostalgia, offering familiar characters and storylines in a spate of live-action remakes (“Cinderella” and “Beauty and the Beast”), sequels (“Christopher Robin”) and spinoffs (“Maleficent”) that have been met with mixed reactions.

The latest movie to join the revisited ranks is Rob Marshall’s sequel to one of the most recognized musicals in the Disney canon, “Mary Poppins.” The bar for this project is pretty high, since Marshall has to both entice newcomers and win over ardent fans with a loyalty to the Sherman Brothers’ catchy songs, memorable performances from Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and a heartwarming story of how one stern-faced nanny reunites a family. 

Unfortunately, “Mary Poppins Returns” falls quite short of being practically perfect in every way. The cast puts on a good show, but very little can be done to salvage the forgettable numbers by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and dance routines that already look dated. A handful of colorfully charming scenes liven up the movie’s dull events, but its copycat story arc isn’t strong enough to stand apart from the original. 

Back in the magical world of Mary Poppins’ England, things are bleak. A post-war fog has settled in 1930’s London, threatening the Banks’ family home unless they can find the MacGuffin—sorry, I meant proof that the dearly departed old man Banks left behind enough shares in company stock to cover the cost of the mortgage and save their house from foreclosure. The now grown Banks children Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) look through the attic, desks and shelves, digging up old childhood relics like their broken kite with their mother’s “Votes for Women” sash, but no form to save their home. Michael’s oily boss (Colin Firth) at his dad’s old bank extends the family’s deadline to come up with the receipt or they will finally lose the home. His three children—Anabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson)—try to help or cheer up Michael since the family is still reeling from the death of their mother that year. Unfortunately, there’s only so much children can do in these grown-up matters.

Just as the Banks family is once again in chaos, who should arrive but the sharp and resourceful Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt)? She invites herself in, much like she does in the original, and brightens the children's day while also hiding their adventures from their beleaguered dad. Her Bert-like friend, Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda), is part of an army of lamplighters called leeries who have seemingly taken the place of chimney sweepers in this economy. This time, the charismatic city worker doesn’t have a fondness for Mary (not in that way, it seems) but for the spirited activist in the family, Jane. Jack sometimes joins Mary and the three Banks children on a few tangential adventures before the family’s deadline for their home arrives and bad news is imminent.

The movie is a bit of a mixed bag from the get-go, with a wide-eyed Miranda singing a tune that’s not quite in his range and with an accent that doesn’t fully stick. However, he has enough energy to power through numbers that better suit his strengths. Blunt riffs on Mary Poppins by giving her some extra pep, a fresher wardrobe and an all-knowing sly smile that Michael and Jane always seem to miss. She’s delightful to watch, and her version of Poppins seems to take pleasure in throwing the children into magical situations.

Blunt and Miranda share the highlight of “Mary Poppins Returns,” a set of animated musical numbers with talking animals reminiscent of the “Jolly Holliday” sequence in the original, “The Royal Doulton Music Hall” and “A Cover is Not a Book.” Along with the three Banks children, the group travels into an animated world set on the side of a ceramic vase the kids accidentally chipped. Everyone’s costumes look more like drawings, and the movie takes on bright, bold colors missing from live-action London. The sequence feels at once singular yet clearly an homage to the original, and it’s enchanting to see it work—until it doesn’t. 

Sticking too close to the footsteps of the original has its own pitfalls, as evidenced by the “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” number. On their way home from a disappointing trip to the bank, Mary and the three children find themselves lost and in need of help from Jack and his streetlighting friends. They assemble for what’s supposed to be a rousing number in the spirit of “Step in Time” but ultimately falls flat. Marshall, who also co-choreographed routines with Joey Pizzi, John DeLuca, Tara Nicole Hughes and Marlon Pelayo, layers in too much for spectacle and ends up with a Baz Luhrmann-size hodgepodge of contemporary dance, parkour and BMX bike tricks that feels like it was choreographed in the last decade. The scene's steps reference everything from “An American in Paris” to “Silk Stockings” to the “Step Up” movies, but it is so messily shot that our characters get lost in the shuffle.

For someone who learned every word to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" thanks to old Disney sing-a-long tapes, perhaps any return of Mary Poppins would never measure up to the original. If anything, watching “Mary Poppins Returns” works best if the 1964 movie is a distant memory or something you just never got around to. There’s almost a parallel equivalent in the new movie for everything in the original, which makes me wonder, why not just stick with the original? For instance, the original had a character called Uncle Albert (Ed Wynn) for a one-off number, “I Love to Laugh.” The new movie features a character named Cousin Topsy (Meryl Streep) for a lukewarm number among many props called “Turning Turtle.” Not quite the catchiest title, but then again, none of the songs take off on their own. Although “Mary Poppins Returns” plays with a fan’s nostalgia with a few Easter eggs and cameos from Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury, there’s a feeling that something is missing beyond an appearance from Andrews. “Returns” is neither really new or familiar, but an odd knockoff that will work for some audiences and leave others craving a rewatch of an old favorite.

 

 

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