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Set during the dark days of the American Civil War, a girls school hidden within the expansive and luscious forests of Virginia becomes further on edge when the forlorn and injured Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) of the Union Army is brought into their gothic abode. THE BEGUILED is a beautifully well staged and acted drama that is able to bring enough in its later stages in order to be truly invigorating. I haven't seen the original 1971 film directed by Don Siegel and famously featuring Clint Eastwood acting against type but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice the enforcement of a strong and conflicted female viewpoint to the story. The main women are smart and brave enough to overcome some of their physical deficiencies yet still struggle with the mental stress of Southern societal obligations. After all, it would unbecoming of a proper Christian gal to be lacking in manners or refuse to bequeath proper hospitality. Sofia Coppola crafts a visually gorgeous movie around the story, coupled with some amazing acting by the entire cast, but several moments of palpable sensuality and twisted mind games lack their full punch. She tries to make up for these shortcomings with some liberal usage of catty melodrama and black humor but they don't really raise the heartbeat of the picture. That is until the film lets loose all of its bubbling tension, ominous atmosphere, and Chekov's guns in its last third, crescendoing with two quiet gut punches right at the end. Another enchanting work from one of the world's best female visionaries.
FINAL REVIEW: 4 / 5
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Official Trailer
Watch It Here
Person of Interest: It's got all the warriors: bearded Captain America, scared Iron Man, blonde Black Widow, new cyber-suited Spider-Man, human skinned and sure-to-die Vision, The Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Dr. Strange, Wong, Black Panther, Winter Soldier, Falcon, War Machine, Loki, Thor, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. And finally, we have Thanos complete with his space wife-beater, ugly bald head and his special gem holstering glove.
Scene Pop: I can't really pick one. Sure there are some cool shots but they feel like total audience bait, the type of crap that causes YouTubers to fake scream their heads off into the camera.
Effective?: As a teaser for its movie, yes. However, it does so at the expense of the upcoming Black Panther film. Why bother sitting through that film when you know he's going to survive his personal ordeal and team up with the reformed Avengers?
Check it Out?: Of course I'm seeing it. Why wouldn't I?! I'm just feeling a bit fatigued at this point and not as highly enthusiastic as when this whole secondary build-up by Marvel started with the Thanos reveal in The Avengers.
International private detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) wishes to use his long trip on the Orient Express as a brief rest before his next case in London. Unfortunately for the Belgian sleuth with the wild moustache, a dead body turns up in the next door cabin and he needs to figure out which of the other passengers committed the murder before the train is freed from a freak avalanche. Branagh brings a lot of new energy in front and behind the camera to the latest adaptation of the famed Agatha Christie mystery novel to slightly mixed results. The central whodunit remains the same but there are a few wrinkles in the details of Michael Green's script that helps reshape some of the drama, most notably the changing of one character to an African-American. To further punch up the devious festivities, Branagh sprinkles in a few action sequences and carefully blocked out long takes. Unfortunately, those brief moments of action are direly shot, ultimately pointless and feature a clear stand-in of the 56-year-old actor/director. As for the cinematography, it is often graciously well shot but some artsy maneuvers, namely a lengthy scene shot entirely in bird's eye view, end up spoiling the thrills. And the less said about the poor CGI and green screening, the better. Despite these creative missteps, the film is still an entertainingly warm picture about cold blooded slaughter and the icy fractures of human suffering. All of the games of deception are pulpy fun and there's plenty of humorous dialogue and black comedy to keep you chuckling. The acting is the best thing going for the feature; all of the players get to sink their teeth into the succulent drama and have a chance to shine. Funny enough, it is Branagh himself who really takes the cake, which of course was elegantly prepared by the fine kitchen staff and made from Godiva chocolate. He wisely sands off some of the hard edges of the peculiar investigator and plays up both the perfectionistic eccentrics and the hidden tragedies of the character, making his Poirot a more dapper and tolerable version of Adrian Monk. It may not overtake the celebrated 1974 version but it gets the job done.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
Stuck on a military space station and tasked with turning a group of lazy, vanity-seeking Mars-born recruits into proper mobile infantry, Col. Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) sees his fortunes turn far worse when a surprise bug invasion unearths itself on the red planet. STARSHIP TROOPERS: TRAITOR OF MARS is a step in the right direction for the cult sci-fi franchise. Though it sadly still retains the odd Japanese 3D motion-capture animation look from the last movie INVASION, original screenwriter Edward Neumeier is back in the saddle as writer and boy does he have some new satirical things to say. The animated film is at its best when it focuses on some rich material that are certainly topical in our currently dark social climate. A rambunctious generation of people wired to online platforms, a glory hound with a five-letter last name who only cares about their approval rating, staff members who lavishly praise their superior or wear literal blinders, a political talk show that is legitimately called "Who's To Blame This Time?" and so on. These elements give the picture a much needed punch that is sorely lacking in the action department. Saying choreographed CGI violence looks like a video game is a way too easy knock to make in film criticism, doubly so if it's in an animated feature, but it really does here. While watching the several often mediocre shootouts and splattering of bug guts, I just couldn't shake off how much the power suits the heroes wear look like a cross between Gears of War and Vanquish, especially when they run or use their jetpacks. Or, how when Rico is sporting his basic battle gear, he looks like what you get if Xiahou Dun and Commander Shepard had a baby. Additionally, though I did enjoy the finer aspects of Neumeier's writing, the much hyped re-appearance of Dizzy, with Dina Meyer reprising the role, is ruined by a predictable twist and ultimately doesn't really matter in the end. I wasn't completely entertained but TRAITOR OF MARS brought enough vigor to barely cross the finish line and be an okay watch.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
Lt. Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) tries to get his new lifeguard recruits in gear, including former Olympic swimmer Matt Brody (Zac Efron), so he can have some backup when it comes time to deal with a shady lady (Priyanka Chopra) operating a secret drug operation outside her fancy beach resort. BAYWATCH is in all purposes a highly mediocre product and a very lame and tame adaptation of the cheesy syndicated television series but it's shoddy construction and being nearly two full hours laugh free makes it an insufferable watch. The film had an easy opportunity mocking while also celebrating the weird mixture of goofy police procedural and frank fan service involving scantily clad ocean workers that made the show a huge hit. Instead the makers decided to go with the old stand-by of drugs on the beach and evil rich people buying up land and corrupting government officials and playing it completely straight for again nearly two hours. The rest of the so-called script is a literal mish-mash of ideas, with subplots coming and going or hitting the brakes swiftly and crashing on screen. They can't tell the full scope of Zac Efron becoming a real team player or the slow ascension of the female second-in-command because they need to have some more pointless vulgar banter between the male leads and incite more nerd spunking by having an unfunny fat guy getting close with a model making her real acting debut, I mean a highly trained and attractive blond. The humor is basic juvenile jabs, the kind you would see rampant in student films or as placeholders in real feature films until they can come up with better material. Director Seth Gordon just lets the cast just mouth off expletives left and right with no punch to any of them, praying that the gullible ones in the audience will laugh and that others will give his latest misfire a shot given its R rating. If that doesn't work, throw in an obnoxiously long gag in a morgue involving simmering gay panic and gross genitalia and bodily fluids. The cast is all wasted here, particularly the actresses who often just sit on the sidelines and spend more time wearing many different outfits than they do with actual plot importance. However, I was generally shocked at how utterly boring Dwayne Johnson is at times during the film. This guy was able to do as much as he could with awful kiddie crap like THE TOOTH FAIRY but he couldn't even make every scene in this comedic tripe barely passable.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
Teenage monkey exiled on a floating piece of his former planet slinks away from his two guardians, a kung-fu deer and an obese pig mechanic, and sets out on an adventure to stop the evil domination schemes of a tiny statured monkey tyrant. SPARK: A SPACE TAIL is a boringly below average animated flick that will evaporate from any viewer's mind faster than you can say "let's kick some asteroids". Hell, the film isn't even bad enough to warrant it being labeled as the next DELGO or STRANGE MAGIC. The whole product is just a lame STAR WARS rip-off from the mediocre mind of writer/director/editor Aaron Woodley, complete with a whiny brat protagonist who looks out into space, a Darth Maul-esque lightsaber, "force" like powers, secret family relationships, a scene where the bad guy gloats over the hero while a spaceship battle goes south, and a musical score that has just enough minor note changes to keep John Williams' lawyers at bay. The only creative additions Woodley was able to think up are the fact that everyone can breath in space, wind can somehow exist in a vacuum, airlocks act like normal doors and don't actually lock out air, star destroyers operate just like sea battleships in space, and that black holes and worm holes are one and the same. Actually no, there is just one ingenious creation featured here by Mr. Woodley: the "space kraken", a giant space creature that acts as the film's MacGuffin and isn't a squid at all but actually a humpback whale with a mollusk shell and several wing-like tendrils that literally shits out black holes. The animation is cheap looking but decent enough for a $40 million Canadian-Korean production and some of the actors, namely Jessica Biel and Patrick Stewart, do their best but none of it can truly compensate for the ho-hum story, weak comedy, and unnecessary littering of pop songs.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
