No One Will Save You (10.06.23)

 

Although I’ve been freaked out by fictional aliens before—the alien from Alien, the thing from The Thing, the potato-headed creep from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial—I have never considered myself afraid of aliens like I am of serial killers and ghosts and the like. Maybe it’s because while the more earthbound spooks can theoretically get at you anywhere, I have no plans on ever going to space or Antarctica or into a Stephen Spielberg film. I do frequently go home, though. That happens to be where I live. So when a movie drops about freaky aliens invading someone’s house I take notice. This time that film was No One Will Save You, a quite effective horror piece that stands apart thanks to its fantastic central performance, admirable CGI, and interesting framing.

There are less than ten spoken words in No One Will Save You, a bold choice that could have gone wrong in multiple ways if it weren’t for Kaitlyn Dever, who plays our main character Brynn, as well as some good old fashioned “show, don’t tell" storytelling on behalf of the screenwriters and director. Dever’s presence and command of the screen is astounding, making us care about and sympathize with Brynn despite the fact that we go into the film with only vague hints of her backstory and almost never hear her talk. All we know at first is that she is the town pariah and that, if the title is to believed, she won’t have anyone to turn to when things start to go down.

The film rarely lets up when this happens, ratcheting up the tension and keeping it there. The aliens are appropriately scary, always showing some new disturbing trait just when you thought you had them all figured out. As Jaws taught us, the less we see of a movie monster the scarier it is, and while this holds true of the aliens in No One Will Save You the CGI used to render them is done well enough that they are still scary when you do get an eyeful. The sound design and directing adds to the visuals, keeping things dark and creepy even when the action moves to the daytime.

And that ending? Well, let’s just say that it is one that I was thinking about long after the film ended. The lack of narrative handholding that makes Brynn's backstory so interesting is felt up until the credits roll, leaving the end up for debate and interpretation. Or I’m just a rube who thinks a lack of clarity is the same as being artsy. It’s one of the two.

Even at ninety minutes No One Will Save You does occasionally feel long, but I think this speaks more to the tension present in the film than any perceived pacing issues. It’s a tight, effective thriller that is a good choice for this upcoming spooky season, and if the creep factor doesn’t stick with you the ending will.

No One Will Save You is now available on Hulu. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on October 6^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

A Million Miles Away (09.29.23)

 

Too often do we focus on “firsts” to judge whether or not something is inspiring. The first person to get the top of Mt. Everest, the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic, the first man on the moon. As I sat down to watch A Million Miles Away I assumed it would be about the first Mexican-American to go to space. This turned out not to be the case (it was actually Franklin Chang Diaz), but Jose “The First Migrant Worker in Space"  Hernandez's story is no less inspirational, even if the movie based on his life is not as ambitious as the man himself.

A Million Miles Away stars Michael Pena as Jose Hernandez and Rosa Salazar as his wife Adela, a pair that make for some very easy viewing. Their chemistry is genuine and their performances are heartfelt and well done, as are those of everyone else in their orbit. A Million Miles Away is strongest when it focuses on the family dynamics of the Hernandez clan, affectionately showing that when one person excels it is usually with the help of many unseen and sometimes underappreciated coaches and cheerleaders. The performances and focus give A Million Miles Away an irresistible emotional core to its quintessential American Dream narrative, a core that sustains it when another movie might have started running on fumes.

If the film sags it is because of its script, which is not as interesting as it could have been. The dialogue is fine but not particularly snappy, a fact that can be easy to overlook when you have people like Pena and Salazar delivering the lines. And while it may closely resemble reality, the fact that Hernandez’s journey is so prototypical of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps tale that has enthralled hopeful immigrants for generations also means that the film sometimes feels like a cliché, or at least has moments that feel cliché. This might seem a bit unfair to real-life events, but even the narrative embellishments have an air of familiarity (How many times have we seen a butterfly metaphor in films like this? I feel like it’s a lot). Some additional time fleshing out the relationships between Jose and those close to him might have been nice as well, because while family is the driving force of this film it also feels oddly secondary, at least when compared to Hernandez’s ultimate goal of going to space.  All of this is to say that A Million Miles Away doesn’t take any chances from a movie-making standpoint, instead mostly letting its sentimentality speak for itself.

But speak for itself it does. A Million Miles Away is a good time that will remind you that when you shoot for the stars you sometimes just might make it there. It’s sometimes overly fluffy and sometimes doesn’t have much substance under the surface, but it has its heart in the right place, and that’s enough for me.

A Million Miles Away is now available on Amazon Prime. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 29^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

A Haunting in Venice (09.22.23)

 

Summer is over, and with its passing we lay to rest another season of giant blockbusters. In autumn the releases tend to get a little smaller, occasionally a bit smarter, and often a tad spookier. When the big budget behemoths hibernate, films like A Haunting in Venice shyly make their way into the theaters, but audiences needn’t be shy about visiting them, at least not when they’re at the same quality level as Venice, the latest Kenneth Branagh-led Agatha Christie adaptation (based on her 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party) featuring the famously mustachioed Hercule Poirot.

A Haunting in Venice is smaller in scope when compared to the previous Poirot offerings: A Murder on the Orient Express and A Death on the Nile. This scaled-back approach works to the film’s benefit, as it gives us a more intimate and focused mystery to untangle. The fact that this film isn’t absolutely stuffed to the gills with household names like Orient Express and Nile were (besides Branagh, the only actors I recognized were Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh) is actually a good thing. By featuring “smaller” names the movie gives the impression that we are watching actual people instead of a group of pretty people acting like other people.

Is the mystery these characters are subject to smart? Yes, if fairly undemanding and ultimately pretty simple. I was never overwhelmed with quickly rattled off deductions made by a heavily accented Branagh, which was not the case with the previous two films, but I was also never wowed with the mystery itself. The denouement is perfectly understandable, and I didn’t have any lingering questions after leaving the theater, which was downright refreshing for someone like myself who has to understand the finer points of every plot but still often misses things.

The thing that sets A Haunting in Venice apart is instead how this mystery is presented. As you can probably tell from the title, Venice is much spookier than your typical Agatha Christie adventure, making excellent use of tried-and-true horror tropes while never quite devolving into a straight horror film (I’m usually a wuss with scary movies, but I got through this no problem). A lot of this success is owed to beautiful visuals and Branagh’s direction, which can only be described as Alfred Hitchcockian-- At least when it comes to dynamic shots… he does have a slightly distracting tendency to be a bit too static when filming scenes that are exclusively dialogue, awkwardly focusing on one character at a time in close-up, which sometimes makes it feel like they aren’t actually in the same room as the person they’re talking to. This slick combination of whodunit and horror makes A Haunting in Venice a must-see for fans of the mystery genre, even those who are scardey cats like me. Because while the scariest thing is always the unknown, you can bet that a guy like Poirot won’t let things be unknown for too long.

A Haunting in Venice is now playing in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 22^nd, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/.

Stan Lee (09.15.23)

 

If you’ve seen a movie based on a Marvel comic, odds are you’ve seen the old guy with the mustache and, more often than not, sunglasses. He shows up and says something funny and then disappears, only to show up in the next film as a different character with a different funny thing to say. This is Stan Lee, comic superstar and co-creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, and pretty much every other Marvel superhero that dates back to the 1960s and 70s. As a prominent pop culture icon, Stan was one of the most vocal advocates of the power of comic books up until his death in 2018, and now, five years later, we get a chance to know the man himself with Disney+’s Stan Lee, an entertaining if somewhat perfunctory documentary that is more honest than I was expecting, if still a bit sanitized and white washed.

              Stan himself narrates the documentary via a mixture of archived interview soundbites which naturally gives rise to questions about objectivity. Stan Lee isn’t an in-depth tell-all put together by impartial researchers, but instead feels like sitting down to listen to your grandpa as he talks about his life as he remembers it. One must also remember that, with all due respect to his legacy and legitimate creativity, business acumen, and general ingenuity, Stan was not afraid to take the spotlight in his day. Indeed, he often relished it. So while Stan Lee does touch on the main events and touchstones in the Marvelous Maestro’s life, one cannot help but feel like some things are being left out or misrepresented, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

              That being said, there were a couple of moments that surprised me with their honesty. Stan and his equally legendary collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko famously had fallings out over who deserved credit for what creations, and Stan Lee does not shy away from this conflict, nor does it choose sides and declare that one party was right and the other party was wrong. It is true that Kirby and Ditko are very much out of focus in this documentary, but one must remember that this is a documentary about Stan Lee, not Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. It is also not a documentary about Marvel Comics itself; once Stan essentially retires the film jumps from the late 70s to 2010, leaving a lot of history unexplored (on the plus side, this means the documentary never turns into an advertisement for the Marvel or Disney, which I must admit I was concerned was a possibility). If there’s one thing I can fault Stan Lee for other than the predominant lack of objectivity it’s this: We never really get into any real depth, instead opting to jump from heading to heading on the Stan Lee Wikipedia page.

              Don’t get me wrong, Stan Lee is still an entertaining documentary that does have a lot of truth to it. One should just make sure to approach things with that ever-important grain of salt.

              Stan Lee is now available on Disney+. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 15^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

The Cloned Tyrone (08.25.23)

 

“Why has it taken so long for someone to make this kind of movie” is a question that may not seem like a compliment initially, but I usually do mean it to be whenever I ask it of myself. Because what is smarter than seeing something obvious that no one else has seen? In the case of They Cloned Tyrone, why did it take so long for someone to make a movie that combines blaxploitation comedy tropes with science fiction thriller? Because the combination is great, as it turns out, even if the novelty does wear a bit thin by the end of the film.

Directed by newcomer Juel Taylor, They Cloned Tyrone premiered at the American Black Film Festival in June before getting a limited theatrical release. It was then plopped onto Netflix and was advertised as an exclusive for the platform, a fact that didn’t bode well with me, seeing as how that particular streaming service is very hit-and-miss these days with its original content. But They Cloned Tyrone is actually really good, in no small part because of the intelligent script written by Tony Rettenmaier and Taylor himself that combines sharp humor with genuinely insightful social commentary that is reminiscent of the race-based horror explored in director Jordan Peele’s films. This mixture is further refined by science fiction-y ideas that are interesting but a bit unfocused, as they include concepts such as cloning, mind control, eugenics, and many more without giving too much attention to any of them. But the science fiction itself isn’t too important, really, as it’s mostly the laughs, mystery, and commentary that drive Tyrone. The script and story are brought to life by a wonderful cast of characters, and the chemistry between the main trio—drug dealer Fontaine (John Boyega, who pulls double duty as the dramatic focus and straight man), pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx, our main source of laughs), and sex worker/Nancy Drew fan Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris, who gets to be both dramatic and hilarious depending on the situation)—is hard to top.

It’s also hard to deny the style that They Cloned Tyrone enjoys, from Juel Taylor’s impressive directing (there are some really cool shots in there) to the music (I watched it with subtitles and my favorite audio description was “scary funk music plays”) to the costuming (Slick Charles in particular was clearly a blast for the costume department to outfit). It is a good-looking film in addition to being an enjoyable one, at least until late in the last act, at which point things become your standard chrome-surfaced, sterile laboratory science-fictiony fare. By then the novelty of the premise had worn a bit thin for me and I started to get a bit bored, mostly because the film feels like it lost a lot of the creativity and uniqueness that made it stand out up until that point. But last act aside, They Cloned Tyrone is one of the better movies I’ve seen this year, and you should definitely check it out if you’re good for a chuckle or two.

They Cloned Tyrone is now available on Netflix. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 25^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

Oppenheimer (08.18.23)

 

When I think of Christopher Nolan I think of four things: Giant scale, loud music, Michael Caine showing up for at least a little bit, and dense plots that sometimes border on the needlessly complicated. Until now the highly respected director has stuck to fiction, be it of the superhero, science, or cerebral thriller varieties, but it was only a matter of time before he applied at least a couple of these four calling cards to nonfiction. And while it is oddly lacking in Michael Caine, the other three are all there in Oppenheimer, a sprawling look at the Father of the Atomic Bomb that is dense and exhausting but also thoroughly impressive from a filmmaking standpoint, not to mention engaging and entertaining.

Clocking in at exactly three hours, Oppenheimer is sometimes a lot to take in. It is chock full of science talk and political maneuvering, a relentless and headache-inducing combination that often made me feel as if I was just barely understanding the bare basics of what was going on. Compounding this is a massive and somewhat bloated roster of characters played by what must have been half of the people currently working in Hollywood, as well as a non-linear style of storytelling that covered several different time periods simultaneously, because heaven forbid Christopher Nolan do anything simply. Sometimes I got bored. Once or twice I even got frustrated. But the fact of the matter remains: Oppenheimer is still a darn good movie, and it owes a lot of that success to its sheer ambition and scope.

Cillian Murphy is exceptional as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and I appreciate that neither he nor the scriptwriters pretend that the famous scientist was a shining hero that one must aspire to, instead presenting a flawed individual who may have done some good and certainly did a whole lot of bad. This nuance extends to all of the characters, all of which are portrayed equally as well as “Oppie” himself. Ludwig Göransson’s soundtrack is both bombastic and creative, underlining even the most mundane events with gravitas and meaning (I particularly enjoyed a track that utilized the clicking of a Geiger counter in its tune). Nolan’s habit of exclusively using IMAX cameras to film pays off handsomely in Oppenheimer as well, as the film looks breathtaking from start to finish.

It is a challenging film, but the challenge is integral to its success. The cast may be huge and it may be hard to keep everyone straight, but this just reinforces how monumental and important the creation of the first atomic bomb really was. It may be full of complicated science and intrigue, but this speaks to fact that history and the people who make it are messy. All of this would be meaningless if Oppenheimer wasn’t an engaging and entertaining film, but thankfully it is that as well thanks to its compelling character work, elegant script, and everything else that makes a film worth watching. And if I were to use any phrase to describe Oppenheimer it would be exactly that: Worth watching. 

Oppenheimer is now available in theaters. 

This article was first published in the Keizertimes on August 18th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Haunted Mansion (08.04.23)

 

Pirates of the Caribbean-- a film franchise based on a theme park ride— seemed like such a novel idea in 2003 when the first entry knocked my socks off and immediately became one of my all-time favorite action-adventure movies. Disney, not a company to let good intellectual property go to waste, quickly followed up on this unexpected hit with the Eddie Murphy-led The Haunted Mansion, which by all accounts (I never saw it) not only failed to capture the spirit of the ride it was based on (pun intended), but just wasn’t good overall. Now, twenty years and one adaptation of Jungle Cruise later, the reboot rules tell us that the time is right to once again dig up the idea of bringing these 999 spooks to the big screen and try again for that old Pirates success; unfortunately, the result is much the same, as 2023’s Haunted Mansion is, simply put, not that great either.

As a big fan of the ride, most of the enjoyment I got out of the film was recognizing all of the little references to its source material that are sprinkled throughout, but that mild joy eventually fizzled out because the framework propping up these references turned out to be as rickety as the mansion itself. Haunted Mansion has a great cast full of funny people, but the script that they are beholden to is not particularly funny, nor are the frights that they are subject to particularly frightful. The characters themselves are weak, and only the lead, LaKeith Stanfield, has anything interesting to work with—the rest are boring stereotypes smashed together that claim to be a found family by the end of the film with absolutely no reason for us to believe that is true (and as much as I love Danny DeVito, did that character really need to be in this movie?) Overall Haunted Mansion is just plain boring, the lack of excitement and laughs that amount to anything more than a slight chuckle making the two-hour runtime feel like an interminable slog. By the time it was finally over I wasn’t even enjoying the easter eggs, instead wishing that I was at my own home watching something else without the loud family sitting next to me.

There are some good things about the film—as I said earlier, LaKeith Stanfield does a particularly good job as he does the vast majority of the heavy lifting as our sorrowful lead, and the themes of grief and acceptance in Haunted Mansion are actually done quite well. These give the film a nice emotional heart that it does not feel like it deserves given the state of the rest of the movie.

Maybe Disney will have something better to show in another twenty years. We may even finally have a great Haunted Mansion by the year 2063, if we’re not all permanent residents of the Mansion itself at that point. You should not lose any sleep if you skip this one, though.

Haunted Mansion is now available exclusively in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 4^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/.