In lighthouse and deep-sea oil rig movies and series, like The Vanishing
and The Rig, characters often feel like the rest of the world might have
disappeared, leaving them stranded forever. For the rag-tag crew aboard this
post-apocalyptic ocean fort, that is a very real possibility. Their relief is distressingly
late and some of them are starting to act a little stir crazy in Tanel Toom’s Last
Sentinel, which opens this Friday in theaters.
The
seas have risen, but the two tiny surviving nations remain perpetually at war. It
is just four of them manning this remote, seabound military outpost (modeled on
WWII Britain’s Maunsell forts), but Sgt. Hendrichs will not let any of them
slack off. Cpl. Cassidy tries to be an intermediary between him and the grunts,
Sullivan and Baines, but it isn’t easy. Their relief is way, way overdue, but
when a ship finally arrives, unannounced, it is a cause of concern rather than
relief. In fact, Hendrichs almost uses the fort’s super weapon to blow them all
up.
That
would have been a mistake, but the empty vessel is still disconcerting. At
least it isn’t full of rats, like in Three Skeleton Key. It also holds
some supplies, as well as a good deal of mystery. Regardless, it is still a
sea-worthy ship, but Hendrichs is not about to let the squad abandon their post.
The
basic concept of this Waterworld-like world is familiar, but the
execution of the Estonian Toom (an Oscar nominee for the short film, The Confession)
is notably strong. The initial encounter with the derelict ship is surprisingly
tense, as are several subsequent sequences. The isolated setting is definitely
eerie and the spartan set design is highly effective. It all looks great, but
unfortunately, some of screenwriter Malachi Smythe later plot points stretch
credibility.
In the original Quantum Leap series, Dr. Sam Beckett encountered “evil
leapers,” who were trying to set wrong events that had gone right. Dr. Ben Song’s
rival, Richard Martinez, a.k.a. “Leaper X,” insists he is not one of them, but
he would say that, wouldn’t he? Regardless, Song finds himself reluctantly working
with his presumed antagonist in “Ben, Interrupted,” tonight’s episode of Quantum
Leap.
This
time around, Song’s host is a private detective going undercover in a notorious
1950s mental asylum, sort of like Nelly Bly did, but without a good exit strategy
in place. Fortunately, Song has the Quantum Leap team and their AI, Ziggy, to
help guide him. His mission is to rescue his client’s sister, who was committed
by her husband, for the sake of a quick and easy divorce. However, Song probably
won’t be able to leap if one or both of them is lobotomized.
As
a further complication, Martinez leaps into the body of one of the thuggish orderly-enforcers.
He claims he wants to help, but Song is understandably wary. Nevertheless, he
does not have a lot of options.
This
is the first episode in a while that really digs into the “Leaper X” subplot. In
addition, there is also more intrigue and drama involving Janis Calavicci, who
apparently assisted Song make his unsanctioned leap. That means this episode
really involves time travel, rather than mere small-bore family melodrama. The
stakes are also huge, at least for Song.
This is the first cinematic foray into the Indonesian “Satria Dewa” superhero
universe—and probably the perfect time for it, considering how stale the Marvel
and DC franchises are getting. At least this is something different, inspired
the Mahabharata, albeit in a very modernized kind of way. Our hero still
fights the Kaurava, but now they are more like an evil, genetic secret society
in Hanung Bramantyo’s The Legend of Gatotkaca, which releases tomorrow
on DVD.
Yuda’s
mother Arimbi barely saved her son from a sinister supervillain, but the battle
cost her memory. Since his teen years, Yuda has cared for her, dropping out of
school to earn money. He therefore hoped to at least vicariously enjoy his
well-heeled friend Erlangga’s graduation, but instead the valedictorian is
mysteriously murdered on-stage.
Many
of Jakarta’s best and brightest have recently fallen victim to a serial killer,
who has the cops baffled. Of course, it is not really a mortal agent doing the
killing. It is the Kaurava secret society, especially Beceng, their chief
costumed assassin, who is knocking off those who carry the rival Pandava gene.
Beceng also killed the father and brother of Dananjaya, who is sort of like the
Hawkeye of the Satria Dewa universe. As Yuda starts asking questions, he meets
the small band of Pandava resistance against the Kaurava cabal, led by Dananjaya.
Yuda
also forges and alliance and perhaps something more with Agni, the daughter of
Erlangga’s professor. With all their help, Yuda will unlock the secret of his
mother’s mysterious heirloom, which holds the power of Gatotkaca, but he still
has a lot of butt-kickings in-store for himself, at the hands of Beceng and the
Kaurava.
Or
something like that. Bramantyo and co-writer Rahabi Mandra lean into the series
lore, presumably to please pre-existing franchise fans, but they often leave
newcomers a bit confused. Regardless, if you consider the film a Sanskrit
fusion of The X-Men and Underworld, you might generally get the
idea. In fact, many of the Javanese elements make a refreshing change from the vanilla
superhero movies Marvel and DC have been churning out (more Ant-Man and Shazam
movies, really?).
The
action is also pretty intense. Let’s put it this way, Yayan Ruhian (“Mad Dog”
from The Raid) plays Beceng—and he hasn’t lost a single step. He
definitely delivers in the fight scenes, making a spectacularly nasty bad guy.
Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Tove Jansson’s Moomins characters are popular throughout
Europe and maybe even more so in Japan, where there have been numerous anime
adaptations and one of two Moomins theme parks. However, they have a smaller
cult following here in America, mostly from fans of Japanese animation. The British
dub for Sky TV could still find an audience here, if a streamer picked it up,
given the voice talent (including Kate Winslet and Taron Egerton during earlier
seasons). For Moomins lovers, three episodes of the third season screen again
today during the 2023 New York International Children’s Film Festival.
Moomins
look like hippos, but they are trolls—of the pre-social media variety. They are
also quite sweet-tempered. It is mostly Moomins in Moominvalley, but they are a
few other creatures, like the Kangaroo-looking Sniff and some humanoids, who
are referred to as “Hemulens.” Perhaps for accessibility’s sake, the three
episodes selected for NYICFF feature the Moomins helping their human friends.
In
“Toffle’s Tall Tales,” Moomintroll (son of Moominpappa and Moominmamma) and
Sniff help the five-year-old-looking little boy Toffle, who was changed to
non-binary in this series (to appease the new kind of woke trolls), find a safe
place to stay while the residents of Moominvalley hibernate. Their journey gets
thoroughly complicated by Toffle’s penchant for spinning outrageous yarns. Conveniently,
Jansson has been dead since 2001, so she had no feedback on the revision to her
original character.
In
“Miss Fillyjonk’s Last Hurrah,” Moomintroll misdiagnoses a tiny chicken bone
lodged in her throat as inevitably fatal, so instead of trying to cure her, he
convinces his severe spinsterish neighbor to finally enjoy some adventures in
life, while she can. It is a very O. Henry-ish “carpe diem” episode, but
pleasantly so.
Finally,
in “Snufkin and the Fairground,” Moomintroll’s best friend (who displays
anarchist tendencies in Jansson’s books) takes over a popular amusement park,
after the previous owner resigns. Not surprisingly, he turns out to be a weak
manager.
The Twilight Zone had
its share of extra-terrestrials, but first contact and alien invasion were really
specialties of The Outer Limits. The was true right from the start—the very
start. The first episode aired that under the title, “The Galaxy Being” was
very slightly re-edited from the unaired pilot, appropriately known as “Please
Stand By.” That “being” was from another galaxy, who did respond well when he
suddenly found himself in our world. In honor of the show’s 60th
anniversary, the original pilot screens tonight at UCLA.
Sit
back and enjoy, because cosmic forces will be controlling the transmission we
are about to watch. Allan Maxwell is a brilliant scientist, who uses his radio
station as a cover for his underground SETI research. Basically, his DJ-brother
Gene “Buddy” Maxwell programs polite jazz and bachelor pad-ish easy listening.
It was probably a good spot on the dial to hear Joe Bushkin and Eddy Duchin, if
you could pick-it up. Dr. Maxwell deliberately keeps the output low, so it does
not interfere with his own experiments.
Much
to his surprise, Maxwell’s microwaves create a link through which he and a
mysterious alien from Andromeda start communicating. The scientist could continue
their trans-galactic exchange all day, but his wife insists he attend their
local town’s long-planned awards ceremony in his honor. He turns the station’s
output down even further, to maintain a stable connection, while the “Galaxy
Being” “holds the line,” but the fill-in DJ cranks it way up, inadvertently
dragging the alien into our world. Havok soon follows.
Obviously,
the network picked up Outer Limits, but they had creator Leslie Stevens
(who wrote and directed the pilot) somewhat water-down its intensity. They also
cut a line from the Galaxy Being that suggested his people might just come to
Earth and kick our butts, now that they knew of our existence. That is
especially unfortunate, because it represents one of the earliest pop-culture manifestations
of Cixin Liu’s “Dark Forest” concept, decades before the Chinese novelist’s Three-Body
trilogy.
Playing pinball is sort of like the video game experience, except the ball and
flippers are actually real. The game seems cool in a retro way now, but it was
some of the most fun you could have for a quarter in the early1970s.
Unfortunately, it was still banned in New York City, thanks to the Puritanism
of the Progressive reform movement. Inexperienced GQ journalist Roger
Sharpe played a major role in legalizing the game. Sharpe’s campaign for pinball
respectability is quite charmingly dramatized in Austin & Meredith Bragg’s Pinball:
The Man Who Saved the Game, an MPI-supported film, which releases today on
VOD and in select theaters.
As
a divorced twenty-five-year-old with hardly a quarter to his name, Sharpe came
to the City with vague dreams and limited prospects. However, when he finally
found a pinball machine, in an adult bookstore, the college pinball wizard
started to get his groove back. Then the store was raided—for the pinball
machines, not the porn.
By
this time, Sharpe had secured a junior writing position at GQ. He also
started dating Ellen, a very pretty but somewhat older single-mother working in
the same office building. First, Sharpe parlays his pinball outrage into his
first major GQ piece. After that, he is able to secure a book deal for
his illustrated pinball history. In the process, he interviews all the founding
fathers of the much-maligned pinball industry. As a result, he starts to make a
name for himself as a pinball expert. Soon, the trade industry group covering
pinball approaches Sharpe to testify on behalf of the game in front of the New
York City Council, but Sharpe is leery of potential negative attention.
Given
the title, it is probably a safe bet that Sharpe “saves the game,” or at least
contributes to the repeal of New York’s ban. However, the Braggs still make the
drama surprisingly pacey and entertqainingly grabby. Their use of the older, third-wall-breaking
Sharpe to offer sly commentary on the unfolding action works much better than in
previous films. Thanks to Dennis Boutsikaris’s portrayal of the somewhat more
mature and graying Sharpe (who was onboard with the film, as an executive
producer), all the exposition is weirdly fun and amusing. Frankly, we could
listen to an entire multi-part documentary, featuring Boutsikaris adopting
Sharpe voice, to talk about pinball history.
Yet,
throughout the film, the Braggs give equal weight and significance to Sharpe’s
relationship with Ellen and her son, Seth. As Sharpe, Boutsikaris explicitly
says there are things that are more important than pinball, in almost exactly
those terms. That means the younger Sharpe has more to do once he “saves the
game,” which is a refreshing break from the typical climatic testimony cliché.
As
Roger and Ellen, Mike Faist and Crystal Reed (also very good in Swamp Thing)
have insanely appealing chemistry, right from the start. Their relationship necessarily
has its ups and downs (otherwise this would be a pretty dull film), but viewers
immediately start rooting for them. It is also worth noting the work ethic and
values espoused by Ellen, who at one point explains how she grinds away as a
secretary to provide for her son, in order to avoid resorting to welfare. That
is really quite something to hear in a film.
Faist
and Reed are terrific handling the grounded romantic comedy. Bryan Batt and
Mike Doyle also deliver a lot of snarky laughs as Harry Coulianos and Jack Haber,
the now legendary art director and editor of GQ. Among other things, Pinball
nicely recreates the groovy milieu of 1970s magazine publishing.
The Norse Wolf Cross looks satanic, but it is actually Pagan. Either way, it
is a handy symbol for a horror movie. Hunter White was found with one when her
adopted father, a cop, responded to a call, regarding a baby wailing in a cemetery.
Having taken DNA tests and done extensive research, she secretly visits Norway
in search of her roots in Alex Herron’s Leave, which premieres on
Shudder tomorrow.
White
told her father she was leaving to start college at Georgetown (where The
Exorcist was set, a completely unrelated fact), but she is headed to Norway
instead. Her DNA is 99% Norwegian and she discovered Cecilia, a Norwegian Death
Metal vocalist, was playing in Boston the night she was abandoned. Despite a
rocky start, Cecilia turns sympathetic, deducing White is the birth daughter of
her now-institutionalized bassist, Kristian, and Anna Norheim, the girlfriend
her presumably murdered in a particularly grisly fashion.
From
there, Hunter follows the trail to the Nordheims, who are welcoming, but also
suspiciously hardcore fire-and-brimstone Christians. Some supernatural force
keeps telling White to “leave,” as per the title, but she keeps ignoring it.
That’s right, this film teases good old fashioned satanic panic, but turns into
to be all about evil Calvinists. It does not do itself any favors in this
regard. The film starts with the frighteningly evocative scene of White’s
discovery in the graveyard, but that is just about the film’s first, last, and
only scary moment. The rest is a bunch of silly stuff with sinister Evangelicals,
including a patriarch pushing eighty, who somehow consistently overpowers the
twenty-five year-old White.
When watching this documentary, the parallels between the Soviet Union’s
response to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the Chinese Communist Party’s
response to the Wuhan Covid outbreak look eerily comparable. Reports were
covered-ep and whistle-blowers were silenced, resulting in thousands of deaths
that might have been prevented. Yet, Nobel Prize winning oral historian
Svetlana Alexievich’s book was not just an expose. It also thoroughly documented
and expressed the love and grief of survivors. Luxembourgian filmmaker Pol
Cruchten adapted her book with his artistically rendered documentary, Voices
from Chernobyl, which premieres today on OVID.tv.
The
words are spoken in French, but they are adapted from the Ukrainian and Russian
of survivors—if “survivor” is the right term. Many widows of reclamation
workers and fire-fighters remain in mourning years after the disaster.
Alexievich also talked to a teacher, who explains how damaged her young
students have been by the incident. Physically, they are under-sized and
sickly, while psychologically, they are preoccupied with death.
Counter-intuitively, she are her colleagues are oddly pleased to see any signs
of traditional school children misbehavior, since it signals signs of inner
life.
We
also hear (or in many OVID viewers case, read in subtitles) the words of the
chief of the Belarusian nuclear authority, who had cautionary reports regarding
the Chernobyl disaster stolen from his office. Had the authorities acted on his
warnings, it would have saved hundreds of lives—maybe thousands, but the
Soviets preferred to pretend nothing was wrong, in hopes of avoiding an
international propaganda disaster. The lives of thousands of Ukrainians were
disposable towards that end. Remember, good old Mikhail Gorbachev was General
Secretary at this time—you can see his rotting portraits abandoned throughout
the wreckage of Pripyat Cruchten’s cameras capture.
Instead
of talking heads, Cruchten superimposes the words of Alexievich’s interview
subjects over scenes of ghostly Pripyat or carefully composed tableaux,
symbolically representing the horrors of Chernobyl. Stylistically, it is a lot
like experimental hybrid films, such as Scars of Cambodia or Into the Crosswind. Cruchten’s cast are more like interpretive dancers than
traditional thesps, but there is definitely something acutely expressive about
their screen presences.
Drive-ins were widely considered the big winner of Xi’s pandemic, because they
were the only theaters open during the shutdown—but not so fast, mister. It
turns out they also suffered from the same supply chain issues and staffing
woes that affected every other company. Often, opportunity turned into
frustration, but drive-in proprietors carried on. Writer-director-everything-else
April Wright follows eight drive-ins as they plug away amid the pandemic’s
aftermath in Back to the Drive-In, which releases today on VOD.
If
you have seen the documentary At the Drive-In about the Mahoning Drive-In in Pennsylvania, you will be familiar with the general state of
drive-in business. Converting to digital was a challenge for most, if not all,
but it was necessary to keep screening the latest Hollywood studio tent-poles.
Some, like Bengie’s Drive-In still largely feature new releases, except during
the pandemic shutdown, when they had to rely on older films.
However,
many drive-ins have found success with repertory programming. After all, what
sounds like more fun to watch on a hot summer night, a timeless favorite like Jaws
or Jurassic Park or the next Marvel product, carefully sanitized for
the Chinese market? In fact, the Greenville Drive-In really embraces the retro
rep spirit, designing special cookies and cocktails to accompany films like The
Great Lebowski (obviously, they were serving White Russians that night).
All
the featured drive-ins share a number of problems, like supply chain issues.
Everyone seems to have problems stocking staple items like popcorn cups. Of
course, they also complain about the cost of doing business with the studios.
However, the Wellfleet Drive-In on Cape Cod must contend with heavy fog that is
unique to their location.
One
of the cool things about Wright’s film is seeing the new Drive-Ins spring up, like
the Field of Dreams Drive-In the owners literally build in their Ohio back
yard. The owner-architects of the Quasar Drive-In in Nebraska emphasized nostalgia
in their design, incorporating vintage equipment acquired from shuttered
drive-ins around the country. Good luck to them both.
Honestly, the new leadership at Warners probably saved the DC franchise by axing
the unreleased Batgirl movie if reports were correct it killed off
Michael Keaton’s Batman. He was a lot of people’s introduction to the Caped
Crusader and superhero movies in general. Seriously, they bring put him back in
the mask, just to murder him? That would have produced some massive ill will. However,
killing off a hardly seen Batman in a CW show based on a DC video game is
another matter. Yes, Batman is about to die (violently), but his adopted son
and a rag-tag band of rejects hope to find his killer and clear their names in Gotham
Knights, developed by Natalie Abrams, Chad Fiveash, and James Stoteraux,
which premieres tomorrow on CW.
Turner
Hayes’ birth parents were also murdered, which was presumably why fellow “orphan”
Bruce Wayne adopted him. The wealthy philanthropist never revealed his secret
identity to Hayes. He seemed determined to keep his adopted son separate from his
Dark Knight world. Yet, he still trained Hayes extensively in martial arts and
fencing. The now-privileged teen only learns the truth when Batman is murdered,
presumably by Duela, the slightly unhinged daughter of the Joker and Harley
Quinn, and her current running mates, Harper Row (known in the comics as
Bluebird) and her trans brother Cullen.
Just
as Hayes and his platonic bestie, Stephanie Brown, start using the Bat-computer
to investigate possible payments to Duela’s crew, he finds himself framed as
the source of funds. Barely escaping the crooked cops trying to kill them, Hayes
reluctantly convinces the outsider-weirdos to team-up to prove their innocence.
In addition to Brown, they have an ally in Hayes’s classmate Carrie Kelley, who
also happened to be the final Robin—and isn’t wanted for murder.
Based
on mysterious coins that keep turning up, Hayes and company deduce the real
culprits are the Court of Owls, which is sort of like Gotham’s Illuminati, the
secret power pulling all the strings. Working with Duela and the Rows is not
easy, but as they start interfering with the Court’s criminal enterprises, they
gain a reputation as a new vigilante group dubbed the “Gotham Knights,” by a
press that is unaware they are also Gotham’s most wanted.
Gotham
Knights is
definitely a mixed bag, but the stuff that works makes it compulsively
watchable. As Hayes, Oscar Morgan too much of a cold fish to be a compelling
lead, but Olivia Rose Keegan is entertainingly twitchy and erratic as Duela.
Frankly, Navia Robinson portrays Kelley/Robin with the kind of grounded
charisma that should have made her the lead of the series, whereas the constant
whining of Fallon Smythe and Tyler DiChiara as the Row siblings gets to be a
chore to sit through.
Fortunately,
the series also gets some help from adults. Misha Collins is terrific as
District Attorney Harvey Dent, who will slowly start to believe Hayes’s claims
of innocence. Of course, since his name is Harvey Dent, he will have his own
issues to deal with. Doug Bradley (of Hellraiser fame) has one of the
best guest-starring turns of the year in episode six, playing Joe Chill, the
gunman convicted of killing Bruce Wayne’s parents, who wants to speak to Hayes
before he is finally executed.
1989 was a great year, except maybe here in New York. The city was about to descend
into a period of chaos, ended by Giuliani’s election in 1993. Dr. Ben Song will
not do anything to prevent that this leap. Instead, as a public defender, he
scrambles to save a young man who will be wrongly imprisoned for manslaughter
in “Ben Song for the Defense,” tomorrow night’s episode of Quantum Leap.
The
clever thing about this episode is it breaks format slightly, without really
breaking format. Since Addison Augustine’s military background was so helpful
to Song in the previous episode, she hands the holographic baton over to her
Quantum Leap Project colleague Jenn Chu, because of her knowledge of the legal
system. Chu got her legal degree while serving time, so the former hacker
certainly has some insights.
Unfortunately,
Song’s host is so overworked, because crime in New York is starting to explode,
she hardly has the time to give Camilo Diaz’s case the attention it deserves.
No, that is not how the series’ writers room spins things. Regardless, Song has
to get Diaz off, so he can save his younger brother from the gangs trying to
get their hooks into him.
There
is some decent courtroom drama in “For the Defense,” which harkens back to
classic episodes of the original series, such as “So Help Me God.” However, the
writers cannot help including little digs at the 1980s, which leads to some
credibility issues, like Song’s host being in a romantic same-sex relationship
with the second chair Assistant DA on her case.
A SPY AMONG FRIENDS is a carefully crafted espionage thriller that depicts the treachery and hypocrisy of Kim Philby. It turns out it was easier to admire the workers' paradise from afar than to live under it. EPOCH TIMES review up here.
This classic tale is all about a prince trying to save a princess and it
starts with a monster attack. We typically do not see it this way, but Mozart’s
most popular opera is a total quest fantasy. Therefore, maybe it isn’t totally inappropriate
to combine it with elements of Harry Potter, just slightly goofy. Young Tim
Walker does not simply study Mozart’s opera, he journeys into it in Florian
Sigl’s The Magic Flute, produced by Roland Emmerich, which is now playing
in Los Angeles.
Walker,
a Sensitive Andrea Bocelli copycat, has been granted rare permission to join
the student body of Hogwarts-like Mozart Academy of Music, because of the
recent death of his alumnus father. Before he died, Walker’s father asks him to
return the rare Magic Flute manuscript he nicked from the school’s
library. He tries to sneak it back his first night there, triggering the
mystical portal to the world of The Magic Flute.
Accepting
Prince Tamino’s quest, Walker constantly sneaks out of his room at 3:00 to
reinsert himself into the opera. His disappearing acts thoroughly confuse his
sidekick Papageno, the opera’s comic relief. Meanwhile, in the real world, his
flakiness annoys his roommate, Paolo, and his prospective girlfriend, Sophie.
The
look of both worlds is quite amazing. The “Potterizing” of The Magic Flute is
sometimes quite clever, but Walker really ought to be better prepared for the
trials he faces, considering how intently he studies the titular Mozart opera.
Regardless,
probably the best part of the film, both in terms of special effects and vocal delivery
is the Queen of the Night, played by real deal opera diva Sabine Devieilhe. She
definitely rises above the often-awkward-sounding contemporary English
translation of Mozart’s libretto.
Nobody
else can match her range, but wisely, Jack Wolfe and Niamh McCormack really do
not try, as Walker and his potential real-world love interest. Instead, they
perform some likable vintage pop. Their romantic chemistry is lightweight, but agreeable.
Who better to catch a serial killer than an eighty-something year-old
anthropologist? It probably makes more sense than asking another serial killer
for help, especially since Dr. Mackles is an expert in Muti, the traditional spiritual
medicine practiced in Southern Africa. It appears there is a rogue practitioner
committing sacrificial murders to benefit his clients in George Gallo’s The
Ritual Killer, which releases today in theaters and on VOD.
The
guilt Det. Lucas Boyd carries after his daughter’s death has left him nearly
non-functional, except when chasing violent criminals, who then bear the full
brunt of his rage. He and his partner start investigating a trail of bodies
mutilated with surgical precision that lead to the mysterious Randoku. The
large, scarred man definitely stands out, but he is still frustratingly hard to
catch.
To
interpret the African writing and exotic spices found at a crime scene, Boyd
enlists the help of Dr. Mackles, an African Studies professor, who is clearly
freaked out by them. Initially, he tries to play cool and beg off the case, but
he inevitably starts advising Boyd on the Muti aspects of the ritual sacrifices.
That
all sounds like a passable premise, but the screenplay (unpromisingly credited to
three scribes: Bob Bowersox, Francesco Cinquemani, and Luca Gilberto) proceeds
in such an orderly straight line, it turns into a total snooze. At least the
one moment of lunacy at the end gives viewers something to remember, but the
rest is the stuff of mediocre 1990s TV-movies.
The
legendary Morgan Freeman looks about as bored playing Mackles as he did in the
underwhelming Vanquish, which was also helmed by Gallo (maybe Freeman
should stop working with him). The saving grace is Cole Hauser, whose hard-boiled
brooding as Boyd is better than the film deserves.
Remember during basic training, when your drill instructor told you war was a lot
more than teddy bears and unicorns? (Most New York film critics can ignore this
rhetorical question.) Turns out that was a good thing. This eternally running
war between teddy bears and unicorns is both brutal and pointless. It makes you
wonder just what good is war anyway, except for halting genocide, repelling
illegal invasions, and liberating oppressed people—but aside from that, what is
it good for? Regardless, the titular war is not good for anyone except maybe
the privileged teddy bear officers in Alberto Vasquez’s Unicorn Wars, from GKIDS, which
opens tomorrow in theaters.
Bluey
and Tubby are two Kane and Abel teddy bear brothers, who are going through
basic training together, Tubby acts like the shy, sensitive one, but Bluey is
actually scared and damaged inside, due to his mother’s rejection. They
recruits act like Care Bears around each other, but when the subject of
unicorns comes up, they turn into blood-thirsty Z-emblazoned war criminals.
For
years, the teddy bears have waged a genocidal war against unicorns, fueled by
propaganda dressed up as ancient wisdom. According to legend, the teddy bear
who drinks the blood of the “last unicorn” will gain super-heroic powers, sort
of in the Highlander tradition. Of course, it doesn’t make sense. That
is Vasquez’s statement on war.
It
is hard to say whether Unicorn Wars works or not, because it greatly
depends on Vasquez’s intentions. If he set out to make a film about unicorns
and teddy bears that would shock and horrify parents that accidentally took
their kids to it, then Unicorn Wars is a smashing success and completely
worthy endeavor. However, if it was meant as a lofty anti-war statement then it
is a clumsy, ham-fisted, rub-your-nose-in-it failure. At some point, when you
are constantly getting hit over the head, it starts to drag. That point comes
awfully quickly in Unicorn Wars.
This is another extremely zeitgeisty horror movie that the filmmakers
probably did not realize was so zeitgeisty. In this film, talking can lead to
death, so express yourself at your own peril, just like when you brave
censoring tech companies and woke trolls on social media. Counterintuitively,
this time around, it starts very analog, with an old fashioned “wireless”-style
radio, which had all kinds of wires. Soon, noise in general becomes weaponized
in the T3 directing trio’s Sound of Silence, which releases Thursday on
VOD.
Back
in Italy, Emma Wilson’s tinkering father comes across a vintage radio, but
after he fires it up, all heck breaks loose. Her father is now in a coma and
her mother is being held overnight, due to her defensive wounds. When Wilson’s
arrives with her boyfriend Seba (for Sebastian), her mother begs them to book a
hotel rather than go to the family home, but of course, she insists on staying
there.
Shortly
thereafter, the radio starts menacing her. In several scenes, a spectral woman
appears and disappears, advancing towards Wilson, as she turns the wireless on
and off. Soon, any noise is sufficient to trigger the audio specters. The evil
force also infects Seba as it had her father. However, she has one recourse not
available to most people—the soundproof studio her father built for her during
her teen years.
The
quiet fearful quaking stuff has been done before, but the neo-Giallo style
adopted by T3 (Alessandro Antonaci, Daniel Lascar, and Stefano Mandala) serves
it well. There are several genuine nailbiter scenes, especially the on-off
sequences. Admittedly, the conclusion does not make much sense, but what do we
really expect, anyway? The epilogue also seems almost completely unrelated, but
it is also seriously creepy, so why not?
This sort-of-near-future world is sort of like Elysium, but with
catfishing. However, you have to give hacker James Walsh credit. He is actually
more than he presents himself to be. He looks exactly like his avatar, but he
is a real person instead on AI. Unfortunately, his overtures to a lonely satellite
resident might undermine her efforts to save humanity in Crash Buist’s The
Stratum, which releases today on VOD and DVD.
The
Peoples’ Terrorists, or whatever they call themselves, blame Gatesian oligarch
William Wright and his company for all the ills in the world. When the
even-worse-Covid hit, he ferried those who could pay to the safety of his Satellite
of love. However, his secret daughter Ayla was inconveniently allergic to the
life-support systems. Instead, she needed her own hermitically sealed capsule.
With
all that free time, she created art and possibly discovered the formula for
clean cold fusion. She is lonely though, so she talks to Walsh when he injects
his avatar into her VR workshop, posing as an AI sent by her father.
That
was not part of the original plan. Edgar Bane, self-proclaimed general of the
Peoples Extremists hired him to hack Wright Corp. As he was touring through their
system, he stumbled into Ayla’s virtual realm. While drawing out intel from her,
Walsh starts to fall for the cyber-punk princess, so he takes exception to Bane’s
“revolutionary” plans for her.
Obviously,
The Stratum was shot for less money than it would cost too buy two dozen
Dunkin Donuts for your next office breakfast. However, co-screen-writing
co-stars Buist and Lauren Senechal have sketched some interesting ideas in
here. The “courtship” between Walsh (in his AI guise) and Wright works
surprisingly well. The violent extremism of the Peoples’ Army is also highly
realistic and all too believable (regrettably). Bane’s big plan is simply
horrific. Yet, perhaps the film’s cleverest element is the crazy “Buddha” AI
persona that manages the underground tech “Red Box” vending system.
Redcaps are basically goblins or leprechauns gone bad. They are supposedly
mainly Scottish, but also Northeast Ireland, where Jamie and Maya have just inherited
a home. Locals call then the “Little People,” but if you cross them, you could
get it right in the lucky charms. Criminal lowlifes are also pose a danger to
their wellbeing in Jon Wright’s Unwelcome, which opens Wednesday in
theaters.
Just
when Maya’s pregnancy test finally tests positive (as they hoped), she and Jamie
are badly beaten by a gang of thugs. Fortunately, a presumably safe escape from
London estate violence suddenly opens up when Jamie inherits a somewhat dilapidated
but cozy Irish country home from his eccentric aunt. The only stipulation,
according to his late aunt’s friend, is that they leave a little bit of raw
liver by the gate to the woods each night as a “blood offering” for the “Little
People.”
Okay,
fine—Maya will humor her. The problem is grouchy old “Dad” Whelan is the only
contractor available to fix the hole in their roof. It won’t take long to
figure out why he and his creepy family were idle. Things will take a Straw
Dogs turn, but the Redcaps in the woods are the wild card that could save
the couple, but at what cost?
Too
much of Unwelcome focuses on the Irish-style Deliverance business,
but when the Redcaps finally show themselves, they turn out to be awesome. They
are actually laugh-out-loud hilarious, in a darkly macabre sort of way. They
out shine the Leprechaun and Gremlin franchises when it comes to
attitude. The creature design work is also pretty cool.
It
somewhat makes sense Wright (who previously helmed Grabbers and Robot Overlords) tried to hold back and not show too many Redcaps
too soon, to maximize their impact, but they are far and away the best thing about the film. Colm Meaney is
appropriately sinister as Whelan, but his abusive behavior is not nearly as
much fun. Hannah John-Kamen and Douglas Booth are frankly a little too whiny
and a little too drippy to embrace with much enthusiasm as Maya and Jamie.
In The Final Countdown, the entire U.S.S. Nimitz is sent through a time
warp. In this case, it is just Dr. Ben Song time-traveling. This Naval-themed leap
will be extremely personal for Addison Augustine, his fiancé and holographic
guide—not just because she is a veteran. She was actually Army, but her
estranged father is the Executive Officer on the American battleship Song leaps
aboard in “S.O.S.,” this week’s episode of Quantum Leap premiering
Monday on NBC.
Awkwardly,
Augustine knows exactly what went wrong during these 1989 war game exercises.
Her father ignored a garbled distress call from an American sub, resulting in
the loss of all souls aboard her—except he doesn’t. It is XO Alexander Augustine’s
mentor and legendary commanding officer, who is convinced the S.O.S. is a
Chinese ruse (not completely without cause). Unfortunately, there is a bit of a
Caine Mutiny situation going on, but in this case the captain is a
little too decisive.
After
a bit of a rough patch, the new Quantum Leap continuation series returns
to its early form. There is a lot of smart writing this time around, especially
when the holographic Addison explains the cold hard truth about military chain
of command to Song. He might not like his commanding officer’s decision, but he
has to accept it, at least in the short term.
The
truth about the incident turns out to involve questionable Chinese tactics that
spiraled out of control. Even though Quantum Leap project director Admiral “Magic”
Williams has a friendly “reach out” to his Chinese contact, the implications of
this episode will likely get it banned by the CCP. It also applies finally time
travel complications to big macro events, like a potential war that never
originally happened. As a result, the stakes in this episode are considerably
greater than mere family melodrama.
In the new Avatar movie, the blue humanoids like to splash around in water. On
this planet created by Julia Donaldson, it is the red creatures that enjoy the water,
whereas the blue ones prefer to hop around trees. If they sound a little weird
to you, the red people certainly agree. Neither the red Smeds or the blue Smoos
will have anything to do with each other, until things take a Romeo &
Juliet turn in Samantha Cutler & Daniel Snaddon’s The Smeds and the
Smoos, the latest Magic Light Pictures Donaldson adaptation, produced for
the BBC, which screens during the 2023 New York International Children's Film Festival.
Aside
from not liking each other very much, the Smeds and the Smoos live simple,
pleasant lives. They stay on their side of the pebble border, because, like
Frost said, good fences, etc. One day, Janet the Smed and Bill the Smoo venture
into the neutral forest, where they start playing together and eventually fall in
love.
Of
course, Grandmother Smoo and Grandfather Smed are having none of that, so Bill
and Janet steal the Smed rocket, so they can live together on another world. The
old rival matriarch and patriarch worry for their grandchildren, so everyone
piles into the Smoo rocket, to search the universe for them—Smeds included.
You
don’t suppose the Smeds and Smoos might learn to appreciate their differences
during their quest? Yes, perhaps so. This time around, Donaldson’s story has
all the subtlety of a jackhammer. However, this might be some of the best
animation of any of the Magic Light Donaldson films, so far. The various alien
worlds really are quite lovely. It has a richer, more sophisticated look than
previous Donaldson short films, such as The Highway Rat.
Cioma Schonhaus had two advantages that helped him survive the National
Socialists. First of all, he looked more like a blond matinee idol than the
regime’s anti-Semitic caricatures. Of course, it was not enough to look the
part. He also had to have the right papers, but he could help himself there
too. Schonhaus’s incredible survival story unfolds in Maggie Peren’s The
Forger, which opens today in New York.
The
rest of Schonhaus’s family have been deported East, but he is allowed to remain
in Berlin, because of his menial munitions job—at least, for now. Most of his
family’s flat has been sealed by the authorities and the contents exhaustively
catalogued. Schonhaus has been relegated to one small room, which he happily
shares with his friend Detlev Kassriel, a fellow Jew rendered homeless by
National Socialist appropriation.
However,
the two young men try not to let that stand in the way of a good time. Using
uniforms abandoned at a tailor’s, Schonhaus and Kassriel regularly party the
nights away at hot spots, pretending to be junior officers on the night before
their deployments. During the days, Schonhaus is recruited by the once-socially
prominent resistance leader Franz Kaufmann, applying his graphic design
training to forge identity papers.
The
Forger is
not exactly intended as a breakneck thriller, but Schonhaus’s ability to
brazenly bluff his way out of sticky situations is hugely impressive and often
highly entertaining to witness. However, it is also a meditation on the
loneliness of exile (even within one’s own home) and the quality of life, even while
enduring extreme pressure.
In
fact, Schonhaus is not always so heroic. Sometimes he is rash and
irresponsible, as so many of us were in our early twenties. Regardless, it
might sound like a tired cliché, but Schonhaus really did try to live on his
own terms—and he definitely survived to tell his story—he was the most compelling
interview subject in Claus Rafle’s hybrid-documentary, The Invisibles,
which released a few months after his death.
Those thin, fragile little smart phone power-plugs are not just annoying. They
could cost lives—Emily’s life to be specific. The vision-impaired woman received
a miss-dial from Sam, a total stranger with a beat-up and unreliable-looking phone, whom
she must rely on to guide her away from her kidnapper in Yoko Okumura’s
Blumhouse-produced Unseen, which releases Tuesday on VOD (and launches
on MGM+ in May).
Sam’s
life is in a bad place. She is deeply depressed and works for a complete jerk
at a gator-themed gas station, in a region of Florida where that sort of thing
looks normal. Emily is in a worse place. She has just been kidnapped by her abusive
ex-boyfriend, Charlie, who intends to gaslight her back into a dysfunctional
relationship—or suffer the violent consequences.
Somehow,
she manages to escape, but her glasses are damaged in the brutal scuffle,
leaving her natural vision too blurry to navigate the Upper Michigan wilderness
outside Charlie’s cabin. She cannot see her phone’s screen, but she manages to
return her last call: Sam’s hang-up. The completely freaked-out cashier
reluctantly agrees to guide Emily via video-phone, very much like the visual
assistance operator in See for Me, but she must also deal with her
crummy job and Carol, a customer from Hell, who could only be played by Missi
Pyle.
The
concept and execution of Unseen are indeed very similar to See for Me,
but it works even better because of the more colorful characters and the
superior chemistry between Emily and Sam. Midori Francis and Jolene Purdy
develop some terrific digital-foxhole rapport and both are appropriately
earnest and vulnerable, conveying the urgency of their situation.
Pyle
is basically a caricature as the unhinged Carol, but she is funny and
definitely ups the stakes for Sam dramatically. Most of her sequences defy
credibility, but the lunacy is impressive. Unfortunately, Michael Patrick Lane’s
Charlie is a bland, completely disposable villain.
This is one Stephen King property that can probably be remade without a lot
of pressure. The first film from 1984 remains popular, despite departing
significantly from the original short story, which really isn’t considered King’s
best work anyway. Then there were a raft of questionable straight-to-DVD
sequels and SyFy Channel remakes. The last film in the franchise was truly
awful, so most fans should be willing to give director-screenwriter Kurt Wimmer
a little leeway for his take on Children of the Corn, which releases Friday
in theaters.
No
strangers come to town this time around, because why would they? Boleyn
Williams’ corn-farming community is dying, thanks to pestilence and faulty GMO
seeds. It is so bad, her father wants to pull the plug and accept Federal
subsidies for not growing corn. However, Williams wants to stay and fight. So
does creepy little Eden Edwards and the corn cult that has sprung up around
her. She used to live at the local group foster home, but when her brother went
crazy-from-the-fields, the sheriff tried to gas him out of the house, killing
two dozen other children in the process. Subsequently, Edwards has claimed to
have a weird, pagan connection to the corn fields.
Ill-advisedly,
Williams recruits Edwards’ help in staging a public inquiry into the state of
local agriculture. She thought it would be a public forum, but Edwards and her
cult quickly turn it into the corn-country equivalent of Robespierre feeding the
guillotines.
Wimmer’s
Corn isn’t exactly fantastic, but it is certainly a healthy improvement
over the dismal Children of the Corn: Runaway. It also shows some signs
a bit of thought went into it, at least at some early stage. Although Wimmer
starts out suggesting this will be an environmental horror, he quickly steers
away from that dead end.
Despite
the supernatural elements, this Children of the Corn seems to more
depict the insanity of mob behavior and cults. In some ways, it very definitely
critiques the revolutionary impulse, which once again leads to violent horrors
Williams never imagined, but Edwards is eager to unleash. It turns out show trials
can go in a very, very ugly direction.
Elena
Kampouris and Callan Mulvey are both surprisingly strong as Williams and her
decent father Robert. In fact, Mulvey might earn Wimmer’s film the distinction
of having the nicest dad of any Stephen King film yet. Unfortunately, Bruce
Spence plays Pastor Penny as a sweaty, leering stereotype, but that certainly
follows in the King tradition. However, young Kate Moyer is certainly creepy,
in an appropriately Village of the Damned-kind of way.
Remember how those Alaskan cannery boats used to recruit college students to come
work during semester break? That wasn’t such a bad deal. You maybe smelled like
fish for three months, but the pay was good and everyone came home safe and
sound. This luxury cruise liner cannot make the same claim. Jamie Walsh’s sister
Pippa disappeared aboard its last cruise, so he signs up under an assumed
identity to sleuth out what happened to her in creator Ryan J. Brown’s
six-episode Wreck, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.
We
have a pretty good idea of Pippa’s fate from the prologue, when she was forced
over the side by a killer wearing the ship’s duck mascot costume. There is no
question Quackie is the most distinctive element of Wreck. Now, Walsh is
looking for answers, but he will have to do so with even more door-slamming
chaos, because his friend Cormac Kelly, whose slot on the ship’s roster Walsh
purchased, stowed away with him, to keep an eye on his ex-girlfriend.
Initially,
Walsh suspects one of the bullying ship’s officers, but than his prime suspect
falls into the fool with several suspicious puncture wounds to his torso. As
usual, the company sweeps the incident under the rug, because the ship is
registered in Panama. That means an easily corrupted Panamanian cop only has
twenty-four hours to conduct an investigation. (If you book a cruise, check to
see what nation your ship is registered—and what civil liberties protections
exist under their jurisdictions.)
Walsh
and his new friends, such as runaway Vivian Lim, basically enjoy zero workplace
protections. The martinet-like Officer Karen MacIntrye (whose name cannot be a
coincidence, given how on-the-nose Brown wrote the series) works the
service-help like dogs, cuts their hot water, and then plies them with cheap
booze.
Basically,
Wreck starts out as a promising slasher horror (thanks to good old
Quackie), but craters into a risible class-warfare parable. Then it sinks even
further when we learn the big secret of the ship, which is absolutely
ridiculous and also a tired and predictable cliché. About 75% of the characters
are LGBTQ, which is an unrealistic over-representation, even among Millennials
and Gen Z, but fine, whatever.
The
thing that is offensive about the series is its relentlessly nasty portrayal of
veterans. The entire officer ranks are made up of military veterans and they
are all violent, duplicitous sociopaths—but surely Brown thanks all the
veterans out there for their service. Indeed, there is not one single
sympathetic veteran character in Wreck, which is truly shameful.
Brown’s
biases are unfortunate, because series director Chris Baugh (who also helmed Boys from County Hell and Bad Day for the Cut) stages some nifty slasher
sequences, especially in the first episode. If it were more like Terror Train
(either of them) and less determined to vilify veterans, Wreck might
have been a successful guilty pleasure.
Vikings were known to drink out of skulls, so they were not very progressive,
but they still lived by a code. Consequently, Western genre conventions transfer
pretty easily to a Norse setting. Hallstein Thordsson made some terrible
mistakes, but the prodigal Viking has returned to reclaim his father’s legacy in
Erik Kriek’s graphic novel, The Exile, which releases today.
Thordsson’s
stepmother Solveig Kjetilsdottir is sort of the Norse Susan McSween, but for
timber rather than cattle. Unfortunately, her own brothers have been
collaborating with her unwelcome suitor, Einar Ragnarsson, to plunder her
timber. Thordsson has returned just in time—and he brought his comrade-in-arms,
Bjarki “Baldpate” Leifsson, who will be eager to help Solveig—really, really
eager.
It
is all quite a complicated situation, because Ragnarsson has long nursed a
grudge against Thordsson, with fair cause. After Ragnarsson’s father refused Thordsson
his daughter’s hand in marriage, the future exile forced himself on the fair
Vigdis and killed Ragnarsson’s older brother when he came looking for payback.
Admittedly, that is all pretty bad. In fact, it has weighed on Thordsson’s
conscience, while he was off pillaging England and Ireland.
Thordsson
is a difficult character to embrace, but Kriek successfully invites sympathy
for Team Hallstein, particularly Solveig and Leifsson. Team Einar’s underhanded
duplicity also contributes to the counter-intuitive alignment of rooting
interests. It is all a fraught tangle of family melodrama that frequently
culminates in hack-and-slash hand-to-hand combat.
Seriously, Hollywood and indie content makers just seem to hate people making an
extra buck. If you doubt it, when was the last time you saw a positive portrayal
of online BNB host or a ride-share driver in film or television? It is pretty
clear these hosts are little weird too, but in this case they have an excuse.
They market their cottage as haunted, so they reasonably assume their latest
guests want the usual “treatment” in Scare BNB: The Hosts, the first two-episode
arc of the new anthology series premiering tomorrow on DIVABoxOffice.tv.
June,
Layla, Ellie, and Gemma are all old friends, who have come to Nashville for
their favorite annual music festival. June and Layla are already a couple,
whereas Ellie and Gemma are slowly taking their friendship in that direction,
after the latter’s recent breakup. To their credit, Mitchell and Deede, their
online BNB hosts, do not seem to care about that. Their brand of creepiness is
something else entirely.
Initially,
the retired couple tries to treat the women to some jump scares, but when they
learn their guests are not into it, they assure them the cottage is not really
haunted. It is just their marketing gimmick to stand out. However, Layla, who
has a history of sleep paralysis (during which she regularly sees demonic
figures), has a particularly disturbing episode. The most distressing part being
June can see it to.
The
two thirty-minute-plus episodes of The Hosts story arc constitute a
pretty clever and economically constructed anthology story. The sleep paralysis
angle really distinguishes it from all the previous BNB horror already out
there. DIVABoxOffice.tv is dedicated to “queer” programming, but both episodes
of The Hosts are quite accessible to viewers outside their target
community. (Sure, there is some hooking-up going on, but it is healthier and
less in viewers faces than Hulu’s upcoming Wreck.)
Usually, it takes Dr. Ben Song a few beats to figure out the relationship
dynamics of a new leap, but he catches on almost immediately when he finds himself
amid an immigrant Indian restaurant-owning family. His host’s mother reminds
him a lot of his own late mother, so he is determined to prevent their
restaurant from burning down in “Family Style,” tonight’s episode of Quantum
Leap.
Fortunately,
Song has watched enough cooking shows to avoid embarrassing himself in Sonali
Prasad’s kitchen. However, he knows the matriarch will potentially die from a
heart attack in a few weeks, after the loss of the family restaurant. It is not
hard to identify potential causes, starting with their landlady, Kathy Tanner, whose
thugs pull a gun on Song, demanding their back rent with interest.
This
is probably Song’s most recent year yet, going all the back to the distant year
of 2009. Way back then, Song hatches a plan to generate business and buzz using
Groupon. Wow, remember them? At least there is some high stakes tension
supplied by Tanner’s thugs. However, like the previous episode, “Family Style”
leans heavily into dysfunctional family drama.
This
episode is still a vast improvement over the previous installment, because it forgoes
the preachy messaging. However, the writers’ room would be well advised to add
in more genre elements going forward, be they science fiction, capers, or
general criminal shenanigans of some sort. Frankly, time travel fans deserve
another “Leap, Die, Repeat” or “Salvation or Bust,” which really explored the
sub-genre’s potential.
