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A massive hurricane is set to descend upon the coastal region of Alabama, which provides the perfect opportunity for a group of robbers to snatch up millions of dollars from the bunker of an U.S. Treasury building. A female special agent (Maggie Grace) teams up with a headstrong meteorologist (Toby Kebbell) and his suped-up weather vehicle to stop the greedy rogues from driving off with their ill-gained untraceable haul. THE HURRICANE HEIST is sheer dumb fun, the kind of entertainment that director Rob Cohen used to scoop out with ease. The script is ripped straight out of the recesses of 90s actionsploitation, brimming with crash-bang-boom theatrics that are laughably extravagant and jovial banter with a hint of wit that would make Steven E. de Souza a little envious. Characterization is very limited or stolen whole clothed (dig that TWISTER "inspired" prologue) but the film thankfully skips over much of the tiresome tragic backstories of the main duo. Cohen and the film writers would rather keep the energy of the audience high via some spirited debates between the protagonists about football and proper peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or embarking on nutty endeavors such as becoming human kites in order to save the weatherman's estranged brother from a hostage situation. But the cheesy fun and games amid torrential downpour can't save everything; the film oddly drops all of its plans at the conclusion of the second act and then immediately plunges into the action finale, which is riddled with a confusing order of character deaths and a painful whiplash of an ending. To make matters worst, the film was clearly edited down for a R rating because there are distasteful jumps in the rhythm whenever someone says something naughty. Others may label scoff at this movie and only describe it as a guilty pleasure or as the best of the worst offerings of early 2018 but I frankly had a blast with this refreshing throwback to when action movies were hooped up on goofballs.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
Army vet turned biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) joins up with a small squad of accomplished females in their venture into "The Shimmer", a classified region hampered by mysterious mutation and time dilation that her long-thought dead husband (Oscar Issac) somehow survived in. ANNIHILATION banks heavily on surreal visuals, disturbing sci-fi and easy ambiguity in order to fool the viewer that they are watching something highly intelligent and masterfully crafted. Alex Garland's take on the Jeff VanderMeer novel with the same generic name is a baffling affair, laughably amateurish at some points but quietly unnerving at other times. In order to partake in the real terror and intrigue of the picture, you have to twiddle your thumbs through the establishment of its wafer-thin characters and a lot of stalely directed walking segments. Some of the early goings feel like they weren't handled by the vision behind EX MACHINA but by someone with the same caliber as Tommy Wiseau; One of the biggest unintentional laughs comes when the geologist brings up the painful death of her daughter and then the film just cuts ahead, proceeding to never give said character any more actual distinction for the rest of the film. If you try to focus on the main plotline of Lena's strained relationship with her husband, you will be sorely disappointed. It's so rote and vanilla, never having a pulse to it until the predictable ending that any one with half a brain can call out. But even with all of the eye-rolling and deep sighs it helps produce, I frankly couldn't hate the film or say it's a complete wash. The actresses try their best with whatever they got, the horrors on display are truly horrific, and it wisely maintains a toxic air of helplessness the very moment the party crosses over. Even when the CGI comes out in full force during the climax, bequeathing many sights that are on the edge between sobering and ludicrous, you still feel uneasy and paralyzed from the gross aesthetics, nihilistic theming, and the intensely throbbing score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow. Maybe a re-watch down the road will help alleviate or possibly even cure my mixed feelings toward it but I certainly can not recommend it to the average joe. Those seeking a downer or dark science fiction need only apply.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
As always, these are my predictions to win, not who or what movie I wish would win.
Best Picture: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Actor: Gary Oldman - Darkest Hour
Best Actress: Frances McDormand - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney - I, Tonya
Best Director: Guillermo del Toro - The Shape of Water
Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Adapted Screenplay: James Ivory - Call Me By Your Name
Best Animated Film: Coco
Best Foreign Film: The Square
Best Documentary Film: Faces Places
Best Documentary (Short Subject): Edith+Eddie
Best Animated Short Film: Garden Party
Best Live Action Short Film: The Silent Child
Best Original Score: Alexandre Desplat - The Shape of Water
Best Original Song: "This Is Me" - The Greatest Showman
Best Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema - Dunkirk
Best Film Editing: Lee Smith - Dunkirk
Best Production Design: Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau and Jeff Melvin - The Shape of Water
Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges - Phantom Thread
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick - Darkest Hour
Best Sound Editing: Richard King and Alex Gibson - Dunkirk
Best Sound Mixing: Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker and Gary A. Rizzo - Dunkirk
Best Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049
I am actually fine with this year's edition of the Oscars but it frankly lost all steam with me up to this point. I had to keep reminding myself that it hasn't happen yet; that's what you get with a planning airing in March!
Oh boy, Jimmy Kimmel is back as the host. He was just so great last year I literally don't remember anything he did save for yelling at Warren Beatty. The awful hosts of past years at least have a nugget in my memory bank.
Expect way too many jokes about the winner envelopes and last year's Best Picture controversy. That is, if you are willing to turn it to watch the program; even with the still lingering hoopla about the Best Picture blunder, the television viewing audience will be very low.
I sadly see the potential of there being a total shut out for Get Out. Jordan Peele has been gaining some traction in recent weeks for Best Director but I believe del Toro has already earned the votes. He really should get it for Best Original Screenplay but the dumb Academy would rather give it to McDonagh. Three Billboards is a good film and the script is quite unique but it pales in comparison to Peele's social-political horror-comedy-drama.
Poor Willem Dafoe. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. The new Peter O'Toole of our time.
Best Foreign Language Film can go to anyone. Same with all of the short categories, which have not made a dent online. I just hope that Kobe Bryant one doesn't win Best Animated Short.
See you on Monday with my reactions to the awards and the ceremony itself.
Barry Crimmins has died. He was 64 years old.
He's best known nowadays as the featured figure in Bobcat Goldthwait's powerfully funny and tragic documentary Call Me Lucky. Crimmins himself was a very volatile stand-up comedian whose satirical jabs and anti-authoritarian barbs provoked laughter and shock among his audiences. He never received widespread acclaim during his heyday but remained a popular underground figure within the stand-up community. He opened and operated two comedy clubs in Boston during the 1980s, Stitches and The Ding Ho, which helped jumpstart the stand-up comedy boom and gave many future legends their big breaks in the industry.
During the 90s, Crimmins switched gears and became a political activist. He opened up to the public about being a survivor of sexual abuse and began targeting internet providers like America Online for their lax attitudes toward pedophiles operating their systems and creating chat room havens. He famously brought the matter and hard evidence he helped cultivate before the U.S. government, causing AOL to suffer a publicity nightmare and abruptly enforce new policies.
He will be missed.
It is barely two months into 2018 and already I have seen the absolute worst movie of the entire year. None of the junk coming straight out of Hollywood can match up with the putrid horror-comedy indie MY UNCLE IS A ZOMBIE! It's a mountain of shit created by a bunch of pathetic z-grade artists, all of whom refused to stop drinking the kool-aid and speak up against their writer/co-director/star/"living legend". John A. Russo has been banking on his cred as co-screenwriter of the 1968 horror classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for his entire career, despite the sheer fact that (arguably) George Romero was the real vision of the project both in writing and directing. He also tries to proclaim how he helped shape one of the grandfathers of the zombie comedy sub-genre with THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, despite heavy evidence that he only shares credit on the story with two of his buddies and that famed screenwriter Dan O'Bannon was the auteur of the movie. His other films best explain who he really is: a hack filmmaker that enjoys sexy ladies and keeping his friends well paid rather than artistic integrity and making a well-shot, well-constructed, structurally sound movie. MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE! is no exception.
I should be explaining what the plot of the film is but quite frankly that's a tall order. Here's the short version: an elderly zombie named only Uncle John (John A. Russo), who can speak and really wants to fuck every pretty girl in sight, somehow becomes a celebrity and some rednecks want to kill him. Now let's break down the story some more so I can lay out how logic and common sense have no place in Russo's world of madness. The film takes place in the same world of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD but then others say that it was just a movie, which is proved later on by the presence of its film poster. The zombie apocalypse is still going on but every normal human being still has electricity, can access their cell phones, drive their cars freely and/or produce a live television show. Some zombies are still brain dead minions shuffling around but then there's others that are like Uncle John and can return to somewhat normalcy and are now seeking fame in Hollywood as zombie extras. That little addition leads to the biggest plot hole of the film in that there's nothing that makes Uncle John special if other undead people can do the same. Instead of roaming the wilderness for free as a zombie-killing posse, the evil rednecks pay some fat mumbly Italian guy $2,000 for every zombie they shoot in the head at his so-called camp. But the biggest WTF moment out of this supreme clusterfuck is when George Kosana randomly pops up as Sheriff McClelland, the very same character he played in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Footage from the 1968 film is shown, the same film that is not considered to be real by some characters in this film, and is used against him by a journalist. He's now suddenly labeled as a racist for killing and burning only black zombies, including Duane Jones' famed character Ben who is now named a hero despite the unequivocal fact that no one can declare that he was one because everyone died in that film! This massive migraine becomes further exasperated because any viewer of the Romero film knows that Sheriff McClelland wasn't the one who fired at Ben!
I could go on and on and spill my guts out just to elaborate on all of bad ideas that litter the script. From the random and pointless characters who suddenly get killed off to the severe lack of understanding how satire works (how can the fake Fox News channel be pro-zombie?), much can be discussed about the toilet paper scribblings that Russo thought of. But let's move to the true blue example of how awful this film is by looking at its visual competent. Russo has always been a hack but this film expertly displays in embarrassing fashion how much of a hack he truly is. Some scenes are in black-and-white for no reason other than elbowing you in the rib at how it "invokes" NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. If that color change doesn't work for you, then Russo will just plagiarize the opening of the movie and have a couple little moments in Evans City Cemetery. Nearly all of the in-door segments are shot in a hotel, either in the private rooms or in the building's conference room. The zombie camp is literally a public park's tennis court and the bad guy's compound is a hunting cabin. Everything is stitched together with smash cuts or television static as in-between edits. The few moments of geninuely good low budget gore are heavily overshadowed by the extensive use of CGI blood, CGI muzzle flares, and intense closeups of plastic guns. The movie pads out its severely low running time with unfunny and out-of-focus fake commercials using a green screen, a plug of their very real movie website, repeated footage and flashbacks to events that just happened less than a minute ago, low grade video footage of real-life horror conventions and zombie walks, and an out-of-nowhere long cameo by Lloyd Kaufman, Toxie and others at Troma Headquarters. Bad audio capture, bad ADR, bad stock sounds being used, bad music, etc. Nothing god damn works! I have nothing really to say about the acting save for this: Russo is unbelievably uncharismatic and he put himself in the title role just so he can tell dirty jokes, talk about his dick, and try to fondle pretty women.
Many might say that being very critical about a grade-Z product is way too harsh. After all, I literally saw this at a special screening with John A. Russo and the cast and crew present, all of whom declared that they had a blast making it. As someone who has worked on professional movie productions, yes, it can be a very fun experience, especially your very first one. But working behind the scenes on a bad movie can never scrub out how objectively bad it is or how the final product will fall on deaf ears. I and the rest of the paying audience desperately tried to keep our utter disdain for Russo's new film out of his sight but it's quite hard when you're all dead silence during the Q&A. We all sat there, listening on as Russo just went on tangents or spewed out random lies about how zombies are so popular in 2018, how he nearly had one of his exploitation films selected for Sundance and how he used a rap song in a film in 1987 way before hip-hop was a thing. If I really wanted to be a jerk yet give a fair question to Russo, I would glad ask why there's no "in memory" credit for George Romero at the end considering how he stole from him and trampled on his legacy with this garbage. Don't seek this one out but honestly that will be quite easy in this day and age because this will not leave the horror convention circuit.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
Everything that Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh) seeks to possess, he does so by any means necessary, whether it's viciously killing his way to becoming sultan or conquering kingdoms just to snatch up all of their jewels and princesses. His latest whim of greed is the kingdom of Mewar, whose heavily fortified capital city of Chittor contains Queen Padmavati (Deepika Padukone), the exquisitely beautiful and intelligent wife of King Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor). PADMAAVAT suffered through a sea of controversy and violence in its native land just to be released, only for the film to end up being an an adequately entertaining epic with one hell of a great performance. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali presents the film as a mixture of old and new interpretations of the cinematic epic. In more simpler terms, this movie is what you get if you blend the 2002 take of DEVDAS with the aesthetics of Game of Thrones. The film is unbelievably gorgeous in all of its details, from the delectable costume design to the marvelous sets to the expansive cinematography that captures it all. Story wise, however, it suffers from often being too hokey and by-the-numbers for the modern taste. All of the betrayals, sacrifices, and tears hit their respective marks to ho-hum effect and I had to keep reminding myself that this isn't The Illiad despite its many allusions to it and even to the bad 2004 film TROY. One of the few saving graces in this department is the inclusion of Malik Kafur, a personal slave/assassin to Alauddin that brings a sexual charge to the picture that is sorely lacking in the main romance. If there is one reason to sit through this near three hour film, it is to watch Ranveer Singh. He is an unstoppable force of nature as the temperamental and conniving tyrant. The rest of the cast do an amiable job but can't keep up with Singh save for Jim Sarbh as Malik Kafur. This goes double for Padukone, who's sadly a bit dialed back as the titular heroine who can outwit anyone who challenges her. And that goes triple for Kapoor, who's a boring corpse of an actor that thinks that blue-steeling everyone and delivering his lines in a low tone makes him a charismatic leader. As for the music, the dance sequences are well shot and choreographed yet only the song "Ghoomar" proved to be memorable. And the less said about the CGI animals and the suited-for-3D shots, the better. PADMAAVAT is nowhere near as sacrilegious as some idiotic pundits and conservative thinkers believed it to be but it only checks enough boxes to be a serviceable epic.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
We once again have nine nominations for Best Picture but this time around I have at least seen four of them. That's one up from last year! Whoo-hoo! Anyway, three of those titles (Dunkirk, Get Out, and The Shape of Water) made it into my Best Films of 2017 list. The last one is the front-runner in this race and to the sure-to-win nom, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I recently saw the film after its surprise win at the Golden Globes and I frankly have to say that it is good but not that good. I loved Sam Rockwell and McDormand does a fine job, along with the rest of the game cast, yet it really didn't resonant after leaving the theater. It's also a little too stagey (the words are more important instead of the blocking) and way too indie-riffic (small sets, mixture of quirky and grim, and the presence of Peter Dinklage and John Hawkes). Certainly not my favorite of Martin McDonagh and I feel like I will be on backlash bandwagon in the near future due to my satisfactory response and the fact that I really want Get Out to be the surprise winner. Seriously, how cool would it be if we had back-to-back Best Picture winners by black filmmakers?
I would gladly pluck out Darkest Hour and The Post in favor for The Disaster Artist and Mudbound but alas, Oscar bait must rule again.
Jason Blum is now an Oscar nominated producer. Can you believe in miracles?
I was so excited hearing Jordan Peele's name being read for Best Director. Gerwig was the cherry on top. Very glad that Steven Spielberg got a pass.
Absolutely loved seeing Daniel Kaluuya up for Best Actor. Denzel Washington, on the other hand, made me roll my eyes. He's great and all but really, for the bomb that was Roman J. Israel, Esq.?
Of course, the snub of James Franco comes as no surprise given the recent allegations levied against him.
Best Actress went accordingly until, SHE CAME AT THE END! God damn Meryl Streep! I have not seen The Post and she may be great in it, especially compared to her nomination last year for Florence Foster Jenkins, but I'm just sick of her stealing a slot from someone more deserving of the rub nearly every year now. Will next year have her be up for Mamma Mia 2?!
Both of the supporting acting races each had a surprise new contender into the race. Armie Hammer was booted in favor of Woody Harrelson and Lesley Manville thankfully took the place over Hong Chau. I accurately guessed that Harrelson would sneak his way into another Best Supporting Actor nom but Manville coming in out of nowhere was a true shocker.
Speaking of shockers, Logan up for Best Adapted Screenplay!
Very glad that The Big Sick and The Disaster Artist at the very least got some love in the screenplay categories.
The Boss Baby. Potential winner of Best Animated Film.
Ferdinand. Potential winner of Best Animated Film.
I know last year's animated output stunk but those two really shouldn't be here. Unfortunately, some changes in the rules last year were implemented to curb the nominations in this category so that anime and indie films could be shoved aside for the heavy hitters. Yes, the animated elite in Hollywood were pissed off at My Life as a Zucchini and The Red Turtle so much that they pressured the Academy to rule more in their favor. Thankfully, we have The Breadwinner and Loving Vincent in there as potential spoilers against Coco.
Some good choices in Best Foreign Language Film but wow, how did Foxtrot not get in?
Good old Agnès Varda, still alive and kicking major ass as she's nominated for her co-direction in the indie favorite doc Faces Places.
In a Heartbeat not getting a Best Animated Short nomination is a serious headshaker. Maybe it was some stupid technicality.
Can't really say much for the technical side of the awards but I'm very happy its littered with multiple noms for Blade Runner 2049 and the fact that Baby Driver gets to compete for Best Editing.
Other major snubs: Gal Gadot, Tom Hanks, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tiffany Haddish, The Beguiled, Nick Jonas and Mariah Carey in Best Original Song (thank you lord), and mother!. Yeah, I know that last one didn't have a chance anywhere but last night's Razzie noms still burn in my soul!
That's all I can muster right now. Tune in next month for my predictions which I will obviously fail at.
