August 13, 2020 “Monstrous” (*1/2 out of four) was a lead-footed horror story about a young woman (Anna Shields) whose friend disappears in the Adirondacks which has become known for its Big Foot sightings and she searches there to find some answers but soon becomes entangled with a sinister woman (Rachel Finninger) who does not want the full truth to be revealed. Intelligently done and well-made, with crisp and moody cinematography by Bruce Wemple, but so meandering and sluggish and devoid of energy that it winds up a waste of time. There were more scares and chills in “Harry And The Hendersons.” Continue reading →
August 12, 2020 “The Dark End Of The Street” (*1/2 out of four) was a blah, by-the-numbers melodrama about the residents of a suburban community (Scott Friend, Brooke Bloom, Lindsay Burdge, and others) who enjoy a nice night at home with their friends and family, unaware that their is an ominous and menacing force outside which is about to disrupt their happiness and tranquility. Yet another dark-side-of-suburbia story which was done to perfection in 1986 in “Blue Velvet” and then again in 1999 in “American Beauty” and this movie is simply a pallid imitation. Heather Monetti’s eerie music is one of film’s few merits. Continue reading →
August 12, 2020 “G-Loc” (** out of four) was a passable sci/fi action thriller about a mercenary (Stephen Moyer) who decides the flee Earth in the future which has become cold and uninhabitable and attempts to get to a distant planet named Rhea and soon befriends a feisty citizen (Tala Gouveia) en route but doesn’t anticipate so much friction and tension from the new planet once he arrives from other members (Casper Van Dien, John Rhys-Davies, and others). Not bad overall, with some decent effects and sets and maintains a zippy pace, but story is overall too derivative of past sci/fi classics, specifically “Blade Runner” (naturally), “Enemy Mine”, and “Starship Troopers” which also starred Van Dien. Continue reading →
August 11, 2020 “Souvenirs” (*1/2 out of four) was a stilted horror thriller about “a murderablia” store clerk (Rosa Gilmore) who discovers her family’s dark history when she’s asked to sell souvenirs from an unsolved crime that forces her to re-examine her roots which threatens her and her family’s sanity and safety. Gilmore’s empathic performance is a definite plus but film gradually grounds to a halt and leaves her with nothing much to work with. Film fanatics will note the casting of one-time “Grease” siren Jamie Donnelly as a loony old woman but I don’t think this is going to provide her with the greased lightning she needs for a comeback. Continue reading →
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 →
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