August 11, 2020 “Nuclear” (** out of four) was a muddled melodramatic thriller about a woman and her mother (Emilia Jones and Sienna Guillory) who attempt to escape from her violent psychopathic brother (Oliver Coopersmith) by seeking refuge in an isolated retreat which is in the shadow of a nuclear power station. Writer/director Catherine Linstrum tells her story with a layer of mood and stark atmosphere but film keeps you at arm’s length with a jumbled and remote sense of cloudy ennui. Jones’ solid performance keeps you watching but there’s absolutely no dramatic payoff. Continue reading →
August 11, 2020 “Nicole” (*1/2 out of four) was a preposterous black comedy about a first-date between two people (Tre Lockhart and Tamika Shannon) which soon goes askew as both have to scramble to find out the other’s intentions and what they are really up to which leads to complications involving murder. Writer/director James Schroeder works in a cinema-verite style that recalls Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” and tries to make poignant observations about first dates and unscrupulous personalities but it all adds up to………nothing, since neither character is particularly interesting or entertaining and thus neither is the movie. Continue reading →
August 10, 2020 “Waiting For The Barbarians” (*1/2 out of four) was a ponderous adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel about the magistrate (Mark Rylance) working in a distant outpost who begins to question his loyalty to the empire of the war he’s fighting in as new soldiers (Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, and others) arrive at the post for battle. Director Ciro Guerra makes his noted English-language debut here but film is impossibly dull and has no real story to tell. And what time period are we supposed to be in here? A particularly egregious waste of both Depp and Pattinson who are given nothing to do; a real long slog. Continue reading →
August 9, 2020 “Made In Italy” (** out of four) was a trite comedy drama about a struggling artist (Liam Neeson) and his young son (Micheal Richardson) who travel to Italy to sell the house he inherited from his late wife but complications ensue when they both realize that personally and emotionally they are unable to let the house go. Neeson’s effortless charisma and likeability does all that it can to keep this movie afloat but it’s ploddingly told and never particularly moving or funny. Him and Richardson are real life father-and-son which is odd since they don’t have all that much chemistry with one another. Arrivederci! Continue reading →
August 9, 2020 “The Tax Collector” (** out of four) was a gritty crime melodrama set on the seamier side of South Central L.A. involving Latino street gangs and how two tax collectors (Shia Labeouf and Bobby Soto) who work for a local crime boss are caught in an escalating turf war when a rival crime boss tries to reclaim the streets as his own. Yet another violent and ugly crime drama from David Ayer (“End Of Watch”, “Training Day”) which holds your attention with its style and flash but you soon realize there’s not much underneath in the form of story or much context. Labeouf gives it a good try but he’s simply not very convincing as a mumbling Latino thug. Continue reading →
August 9, 2020 “Unbelievable” (** out of four) was an uneven sci/fi comedy about martians conquering Earth and how a team of astronauts and concerned citizens (Snoop Dogg, Garrett Wang, Chase Masterson, and others) attempt to thwart and stop them with the help of powerful plants of marijuana. Cheeky premise is played to the hilt with occasionally amusing resultsm just not enough to sustain a feature-length film. Cheech and Chong could have made this same movie- and funnier- about 30 years ago. Michael Madsen plays the President named Ben Dover, if that gives you a sense of the movie’s sense of humor. Continue reading →
August 9, 2020 “The Secret Garden” (** out of four) was a graceless adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel about a young girl (Dixie Egerickx) sent to live with her strict uncle (Colin Firth) and discovers a magical garden hidden at his estate of which has wonders and powers no one could ever imagine. Fourth film version of this story is handsomely mounted but story lacks momentum and is never as magical or compelling as it was on the stage. Some nice moments towards the end brighten things up but it’s overall pretty stuffy and blah. Young girls and hardcore fans of Burnett may like this more. Continue reading →
August 9, 2020 “Paydirt” (*1/2 out of four) was a slack, derivative action thriller about a hard-nosed parolee (Luke Goss) who is just home from prison and dives headfirst back into his former lifestyle of drug-running as him and his crew attempt to find a stolen and buried bag of cash but he soon finds he’s being tracked and investigated by a retired sheriff (Val Kilmer) and his parole officer (Mirtha Michelle) as things get really ugly along the border. By-the-numbers story of drugs, corrupt cops, and border politics cries out for Sam Peckinpah or Walter Hill in their prime. You have to admire Kilmer for continuing to act even after his cancer and tracheotomy (his voice is entirely dubbed) but I doubt this will be the “paydirt” that his career needs. Continue reading →
August 8, 2020 “The Girl In The Crawlspace” (* out of four) was an unendurable bore about the residents (Tom Cherry, Joni Durian,John Bradley Hambrick, and others) of a nowheresville Indiana town and their ensuing personal/psychological problems from a murderer called The Crawlspace Killer. Ironically titled dreck crawls by at a leaden pace and is made even more torturous by terrible acting and performances. Promoted as a horror movie which it is not; film is only a little more than an hour long but sometimes less really is more. Continue reading →
August 8, 2020 “Black Water: Abyss” (** out of four) was a logy sequel to the 2007 horror thriller set in Northern Australia in which five friends (Jessica McNamee, Luke Mitchell, Amali Golden, and others) descend into a cave and find themselves threatened and terrorized by a ravenous and deadly crocodile. Good-looking and sleek cinematography from Damien Beebe fails to give this the sharpness and bite (no pun intended) that it needs. Some good kills from the crocodile provide a few jolts but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t re-watch “The Descent”, “Crawl”, or even “Crocodile Dundee” again instead. Continue reading →
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