Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) – Review

Do you remember Jurassic Park founder John Hammond having a partner? If you don’t you shouldn’t feel too bad, as he didn’t have one up until this fifth entry of the franchise. This is because director J.A. Bayona, along with screenwriters Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, seemingly have no interest in franchise continuity, and have also made it abundantly clear that their sole interest is in getting dinosaurs off the island so that they can terrorize the world — how this comes to pass is definitely not important to them.

With Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom we don’t so much as get another sequel, but something more akin to a placeholder — an installment simply there to fill in the gaps between Jurassic World and the inevitable Jurassic World 3. Basically the whole movie is an airless filler, with everything presented on-screen as just stuff to set up the next movie — a movie that the filmmakers seem more interested in making than the one we are watching today — and so we are all left wondering...

 

“What was the whole point of it all?”

Taking place three years after the events of Jurassic World, we learn that Isla Nublar’s volcano is about to erupt – which would once again make dinosaurs extinct – and former park manager Clair Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), now working for a Dinosaur Protection Group she founded, is striving to save the noble beasts. We have a nice, if somewhat pointless and very short cameo of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in front of Congress where he prattles on with his old rhetoric about how dinosaurs should no longer exist, and that letting the volcano wipe them out may not be such a bad thing. With the many deaths at the claws and teeth of the dinosaurs – especially in the last film – one can’t easily come up with a good rebuttal to Malcolm’s argument, but this franchise has never been short of insanely stupid people doing completely moronic things, so we have Claire leading the charge to save the dinos.

 

She at least trades in her heels for something more sensible.

Claire is hired by John Hammond’s old partner, billionaire Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to return to Isla Nublar and help rescue the dinosaurs by transporting them to a remote island where they would be safe from the prying eyes of mankind – they need her biometric handprint to access the islands dinosaur tracking system – and they also want her to convince Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to join the expedition because they need his expertise with the raptors to capture his old dino pal Blue.

Continuity Note: This film seems to have forgotten Jurassic Park: Lost World exists because in that movie we were introduced to Isla Sorna – also known as Site B – which was the "factory floor" to Jurassic Park, and the last time we saw that island, it was still populated with dinosaurs. In fact, the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar were originally shipped from Isla Sorna, so what is the problem with just shipping them back?

In Jurassic Park: Lost World, we had Ian Malcom not wanting to go back to the park – a sane and rational standpoint – but when he found out his girlfriend was already there, he had to strap on his big boy pants and ride to the rescue. Now, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Owen does not want to return to the park – once again, a feeling anyone could understand – but when ex-girlfriend Claire shows up to convince him to take the job, he caves – after a very weak first refusal – and thus, we get the first of many repeated plot points and call-backs to previous entries in the series. This film is so loaded with nods, winks and blatant call-backs to the first movie, that the end result is a film that simply has no identity of its own.

 

Cue stirring film score.

The one element this film does ratchet up is the villain quotient. Now, there have been human antagonists in the previous entries – in the first movie we had greedy Dennis Nedry, and in the second Hammond’s idiot nephew – but those characters were always just tertiary to the threat of rampaging dinosaurs. It wasn’t until Jurassic World that we got true villains. In this entry, ailing Benjamin Lockwood may want to preserve the dinosaurs – much as Hammond did in Jurassic Park: Lost World – but unbeknownst to him, his aide Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), an evil capitalist who has teamed up with mad scientist Dr. Wu (BD Wong), plans on bringing the dinosaurs back to America so he can sell them at auction – to other evil capitalists – and use that seed money to create weaponized dinosaurs. Is it just me, or does the plot of this film sound like something you could have come up with playing Mad Libs? Yet those two baddies aren’t enough villains for a film like Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, so we also have mercenary Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) – who, if he had a moustache, would be in a constant state of twirling. Wheatley tries to kill our heroes by leaving them behind on an exploding island, and aside from being a duplicitous, murderous asshat, he also has the strange hobby of pulling teeth out of live dinosaurs.

 

Guess how his story arc ends?

The film’s first act brings us back to the island – where our heroes somehow miraculously survive a volcanic eruption amongst stampeding dinosaurs – but it is in the second act that the film takes quite the tonal shift from previous entries. Instead of our heroes being stalked by a variety of dinosaurs through lush tropical jungle, we now find Claire and Owen running down the darkened hallways of a gothic mansion. It’s these scenes that really set the film apart from its predecessors – director J.A. Bayona is clearly a master of shadowy composition – and it is here where the film becomes a true monster movie.

Wait, I know what you are all thinking, “Aren’t all the Jurassic Park movies basically monster movies?” True, sort of, but the first few films in the Jurassic Park franchise were basically “man against nature” films – even if the particular nature on hand was genetically grown dinosaurs – and so not technically horror films. But, in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, we are introduced to Dr. Wu’s latest creation, an even more lethal combination of dinosaurs trained to kill on command, a creature that prowls the mansion’s hallways like something out of one’s worst nightmares.

 

"Oh, but, grandmother, what terribly big claws you have."

In Jurassic World, director/writer Colin Trevorrow introduced the concept of weaponized dinosaurs – we briefly saw them in combat against the genetically created Indominus Rex – but how exactly prehistoric creatures would function as military assets is never made clear. In this movie, we get some half-assed explanation as to how animals in the past have been used as weapons of war, i.e. horses, elephants and even plague rats, but the filmmakers kind of leave out the fact that technology has advanced, so we no longer need to use such animals in war. Yet in this film, mad scientist Dr. Wu creates a new hybrid dinosaur called the Indorapter, and for some reason it is trained to attack laser-designated targets. How does this make it an effective weapon?

  

This thing isn't even bullet proof.

Question: What is the point of the laser targeting system for the Indorapter? Laser designators provide targeting for laser-guided bombs, missiles, or precision artillery munitions, so the idea of using this system for a dinosaur to kill one person makes no sense. If the laser site on your rifle is hitting the person you want dead, why not just pull the fucking trigger, what does a charging dino add to the equation?

 

If you could train the Mosasaurus, now that'd be something.

If fun dino-action is what you are looking for, then Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will certainly fit the bill – though the complete lack of blood during the dinosaur attacks does get a bit ludicrous at times — and the creatures themselves look simply marvelous, but if you hope to encounter anything more than a series of action sequences populated by two-dimensional characters — and I'm being generous here, as most characters in this film strive to have one dimension — then you will most likely be disappointed. As I said earlier, this film is a placeholder – a “necessary” bridge if you will, to the story that Colin Trevorrow actually wants to tell – and thus, the resulting movie is rife with characters doing pointless and idiotic things that will leave many a viewer scratching their heads. That all said, I will admit to having some fun watching Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it was a big, fun-filled dinosaur extravaganza – and I’m a sucker for those – but I just wish they’d spent a little of that extravagant CGI budget on a few more rewrites.

Jurassic Notes:

• Lava in this movie doesn’t actually harm you; it has no radiant heat and can even drip on your arm without so much as leaving a burn.
• Our heroes outrun a volcano’s pyroclastic cloud – with Owen briefly being encompassed by the ash – and survive this despite gases in those clouds reaching temperatures of about 1,000 °C.
• In Jurassic World, we learned from Jimmy Kimmel that the gyro-sphere vehicles are impervious to gunfire, but good ole Owen – while underwater – is able to put two bullet holes in one.
• The villains keep Owen and Claire alive for no particular reason.
• Once again the series includes the now apparently required “small child in danger” element.
• And how come the pteranodons – who we saw freed in the second film – didn’t make it to the States until film five? Were they stuck at bloody customs this whole time?
• Half of the cool shots from the trailer take place during the film’s epilogue.

 

This film is basically a 128 minute commercial for Jurassic World 3.

Time Trap (2017) – Review

There are many time travel stories - with heroes zipping back and forth through time - from the H.G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine, to more modern comedic tales like Back to the Future, but most of these time travel stories have one thing in common: some sort of device that propels our characters through time, whether it be a steampunk-looking chair, a DeLorean, or Police call box. Such is not the case with Time Trap.

What sets apart Mark Dennis and Ben Foster’s film Time Trap from other movies of the genre is the fact that there are no gorgeously tricked out Victorian chairs or snazzy DeLoreans to aid our heroes, instead it's some kind of anomaly in the space-time continuum that is located inside a strange cave system. This allows for the interesting twist of the protagonists not realizing what is going on as they learn of the cave’s mysterious qualities along with the audience.

The movie opens with archeologist Professor Hopper (Andrew Wilson) trying to find a pair of Hippies who, while looking for the Fountain of Youth, went missing back in the 60s – an archeologist hunting for missing Hippies seems odd at first until we later learn of Hopper’s personal connection – but when Hopper turns up missing as well, after heading to explore a strange cave, his two teaching assistants Taylor (Reiley McClendon) and Jackie (Brianne Howey) decide to load up a four-by-four and go all “In Search Of” for their missing prof. For some reason this involves bringing Taylor’s friend Cara (Cassidy Gifford) – apparently her dad has the truck they need – and even more inexplicably they bring along a pair of tweens: Veeves (Olivia Draguicevich) and her annoying friend Furby (Max Wright). I’m not sure where in America this movie takes place, but they must have fairly loose child endangerment laws.

 

Meet the Scooby Gang.

When the group discovers the rusted-out hulk of a van, one that clearly belonged to the missing Hippies, they follow a rope that leads from the van to a large cave. Leaving Furby behind with a walkie-talkie – what they expected this kid to do if things were to go south is never made clear – the group then head deep into the cave system where they immediately run into trouble. After climbing down into a massive cavern, they find themselves trapped when the ropes they were using suddenly break – as if cut – but things get even worse for our heroes when they eventually find the broken body of poor Furby at the bottom of a rock shaft.  A dark twist that I didn't expect to happen.

It’s the discovering of Furby’s GoPro that starts to clue us in on the nature of the cave, for even though it seemed that our gang spent about a thirty minutes in the cave the footage on Furby’s camera shows that he’d been waiting for their return for days. It’s Taylor who finally clues into the problem - when he concludes that the light flickering on and off at top of the cave shaft is the sun rising and setting - that time inside the cave is moving at a much slower rate than on the surface.  When one of the group climbs the shaft - with the hopes of calling for help - she finds the wooded forests that they left a little while ago now gone and replaced by a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

 

And what the hell is that thing in the sky?

With Time Trap, Mark Dennis and Ben Foster have created a taught and thrilling science fiction/mystery - one that constantly ratchets up the tension as our heroes slowly unravel the secrets of the cave - and raising such horrifying questions as; What does one do after discovering millenniums have been flying by while you were trapped in a cave? Could the legend of The Fountain of Youth be based on time displacement, and how can that help? And if they are in some kind of “Land of the Lost” scenario, could there be other inhabitants still wandering around the cave, and if so, are they friendly?

 

I’m betting they aren’t friendly.

This film was billed as a “sci-fi time travel adventure” and it certainly hits all the criteria to qualify as such. With its barely ninety minute running time, the story just rockets along at almost break neck speeds – with one character actually getting a broken neck – while tension mounts as their situation becomes ever more precarious. The one thing I took away from this movie was the incredible sense of dread that directors Mark Dennis and Ben Foster manage to build up as time goes by – quite quickly and quite literally – as we, the viewer, start to wonder if there can ever be a happy ending for this poor group.

Time Trap was originally to be in the “found footage” genre – everyone having a mounted GoPro of some sort is a testament to that – but I’m glad they decided to go the traditional route as it gave this group of young actors a bit more room to play around. I also have to point out that having 90% of the movie taking place inside a cave – with only the odd special effects shot – has to make this one of the more frugally budgeted time travel movies ever made.

 

If you have Bronson Canyon for a location, who needs to build sets?

We’ve had great stories dealing with the concept of time travel – Predestination being an especially fun mind-bending ride – but here with Time Trap, there is nobody worrying about the Grandfather Paradox; instead, they are on a bullet train to the future with only the hope of getting out alive. This is a wonderful low budget sci-fi adventure film that completely slipped under my radar, and if it somehow got by you as well, I highly recommend you track this baby down.

Monster Family (2017) – Review

With the popularity of the Adam Sandler-led animated Hotel Transylvania movie series, it is no surprise that other studios would want to rake in a little of that “monster money” with their own take on the classic monsters. Unfortunately, with director Holger Tappe's film Monster Family, those favorite monsters don't quite make an appearance. Instead, we get a middle American family who are transformed into a vampire, a mummy, a werewolf and Frankenstein's monster by the villainous Dracula. What a twist!

Based on the book Happy Family by author David Safier (the movie was released internationally as Happy Family and only changed for the North American release to Monster Family), the movie tells the story of a dysfunctional family that finds itself monster-fied because Dracula had inexplicably developed the hots for the mom.

Dracula (Jason Isaacs) is not only fond of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - a standard musical choice for classic monsters - but also the musical stylings of Tom Jones, even to the point of putting on a Las Vegas style stage routine for an audience of none. You see this Dracula is lonely (his trio of bat minions and poor put-upon Renfield notwithstanding), so when American mom Emma Wishbone (Emily Watson) accidentally calls Dracula’s castle instead of a local costume store, she immediately wins his heart. Now, I’m not saying it’s beyond the realms of possibility to fall in love with a person over a two minute phone conversation - those 900 phone-sex numbers are dangerous to the vulnerable at heart - but this film doesn’t really work all that hard on selling how it would work in this context. The writing from the get-go is rather lazy, and the meet cute between Dracula and Emma is as contrived as it is ridiculous - Emma was looking for vampire teeth for her costume and somehow dialed a long distance number by mistake, not only getting an actual vampire on the line, but the Prince of Darkness himself.

I wonder what phone carrier Dracula uses?

As the movie progresses, we discover that the Wishbone family is not the happiest of clans - every dysfunctional family cliché is trotted out in record time: we learn that Emma is a klutzy, hypercritical mom who wants her family to do fun things together; Frank (Nick Frost) is your standard overworked and clueless dad who is oblivious to his wife’s problems and is also saddled with a horrible flatulence condition; and their daughter, Fay (Jessica Brown Findlay) is your typical movie teen who has no use for her mother, is failing school, and is shy around boys. Finally, there is the youngest son, Max (Ethan Rouse), the standard brainiac kid who is picked on by the school bully and is in constant conflict with his older sister.

Is there a machine in Hollywood that generates these types of characters?

The only remotely original thing in this movie is the depiction of Dracula as a supervillain living in castle that has more in common with a Bond villain volcano lair than it does your standard Carpathian castle; not only is it his home that is updated, but he as well, as he now travels in a supersonic private jet, has an outfit that not only allows him to travel in the sun but also has jet boots, and to make the Bond villain theme more complete, he has a device that could freeze the sun and end all life on Earth. (Note: He doesn't have sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads, so there's that). What he doesn’t have is a mate, so he offers the imprisoned witch Baba Yaga (Catherine Tate) her freedom if she will transform Emma into a vampire (why or how he imprisoned her in the first place is never explained). He doesn’t want to transform her the old fashioned way via biting because that would result in losing her soul. The only possible wrinkle in this plan is that Baba Yaga’s spell will only work if Emma is unhappy, but of course everyone in Emma's family is unhappy about something, so when Baba Yaga casts the spell, it transforms the entire family into monsters, specifically the ones that they were dressed up as for a Halloween party that Emma was dragging them to.

“Are we different enough from The Munsters to avoid a lawsuit?”

Will Emma learn to be a less controlling and more understanding mom? Can little Max come to accept the fact that being feared as a monster is not actually a good thing? Is it possible for Fay to realize that beauty on the outside is fleeting and that it’s the person on the inside that counts? As for Frank, well his only issue was being overworked - causing him to nod off during his wife’s frequent rants - and his time as Frankenstein’s mindless monster provides him no epiphany. The script really doesn’t have a character growth moment for him, instead Frank learns that being big and green is something that supermodels find hot. Who knew?

I’m not sure what morality lesson this is supposed to be.

The animation and character designs for Monster Family are decent - even the voice work for the most part sells the characters just fine - but overall, the whole thing comes across as just another tired retread of what we have seen in dozens of other animated kids' movies. There is barely an ounce of originality in its ninety minute running time, as "Bond villain" Dracula suddenly turns into Syndrome from The Incredibles - with the added “bonus” of his bats trying their best to be the minions from Despicable Me - and the trope of the "family having to finally work together to save the day" is pretty much telegraphed from the beginning of the movie.

They even have the same “Death Trap” from The Incredibles, only its ice instead of fire.

I’m sure little kids will get a kick out of this film - there is plenty of colorful action and it does move along at a nice pace - but the reliance on clichés and Dracula’s strange seduction of Emma will have older audiences either yawning or scratching their heads. Monster Family is mostly guilty of being a cobbled together retread of better films, and thus it will likely fade away into obscurity.

American Assassin (2017) – Review

When Matt Damon took on the role of Robert Ludlum’s titular hero Jason Bourne - way back in 2002 - it created a shift in the action spy genre that radically changed audience expectations, thus when a movie based on a book from popular action/thriller author Stephen Flynn a certain level of balls-to-the wall audacity was expected, unfortunately what we got was something more in the lines of an old Jean Claude Van Damme movie rather than a Bourne film, or even an Expendable for that matter.

The movie has your standard revenge driven hero in the form Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien), who had his life thrown into turmoil when his fiancée is killed by random terrorists. Who exactly these particular terrorists are is not important, they are just the fuel to fire that would create a "badass" action hero.  And just how badass is Mitch Rapp? Well in the meager eight months from the time his fiancée was killed to the present he manages to become a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, turns himself into a man proficient in small arms, and he also manages to troll Islamic terrorists online in the hopes of finding those responsible for ruining his life. This had me wondering what in the hell was Mitch before the fateful day of his fiancée’s death. All we learn is that after her death he lost interest in school and dropped out, but unless that school was a Hogwarts for trained killers I call his sudden abilities bullshit.

 

“My godparents were James Bond and Lara Croft.”

When his sting to catch and kill the terrorists responsible for his fiancée’s death is interrupted - by a U.S. Special Forces team - Rapp finds himself in C.I.A custody where he is subjected to thirty days of intense debriefing, which somehow results in him being offered a job with the agency.  Is that how the C.I.A works? Does the Agency often recruit random vigilantes obsessed with avenging the death of a loved one? In fact ex-Navy Seal Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) thinks the kid is a walking Section Eight, and wants no part of him, but he is overruled by C.I.A Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) who wants Rapp to be part of a black operations unit called Orion, an off the books squad who if caught would be disavowed by the government, a sort of Suicide Squad if you will.

 

Couldn’t they have just called her Amanda Waller and gotten it over with?

Despite Hurley’s repeated objections- that the viewer can't help but agree with - Kennedy orders that Rapp be trained for the team.  And what exactly makes this guy so special? Well according to her he has, “Tested through the roof” and “Might be the best I’ve ever seen.” Really, a guy with no military background or professional training is the best she has ever seen? I’m sure that would come as a shock to the hundreds of men and women belonging to the Navy Seals, Army Rangers or any other branch of the military.  Or maybe she just doesn't get out much.  Irregardless of logic - or plain old common sense for that matter - it is apparently Rapp's “non-boot camp look” that is just what they need for these covert operations. So Rapp is whisked off to a cabin in the woods, where he is trained alongside a group of other recruits by the aforementioned Hurley, a man who repeatedly states that Rapp is an emotional powder keg and is unable to separate his emotions from the job at hand.  Sure may be an idiotic hothead- and he definitely is - but Kennedy thinks that this is just what the doctor ordered, even after Hurley points out the kid can’t obey a simple order.

 

“He’s a loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules!”

Because this is a movie his" ignoring orders" pays off - instead of realistically getting him and his teammates killed - and shows us just what kind of a true badass he really is, but of course he isn’t the only "rule breaking" badass this movie has to offer.  Enter the villain.  The Orion team find themselves hunting down a mercenary who goes by the codename Ghost (Taylor Kitsch), who apparently plans to build a nuclear bomb for the Iranians. Anybody want to lay down bets that this Ghost has a troubled history with Hurley?  What, no takers?

American Assassin isn’t a terrible action film - there are a few decent stunt scenes - but it is an overly clichéd one, and aside from Keaton's Hurley none of the characters on display were all that interesting.  Then there is the plot - which provides nothing that we haven't seen in countless other film of its kind - and certainly no more original than what you could find on an episode Scorpion.  I will give the film credit for providing action scenes that were well choreographed - it gets bonus points for avoiding the shaky-cam that plagued the Bourne movies - but I didn’t really give a shit about Rapp or his problems, so this made those moments less than engaging.

 

It’s an actual toss-up as to who is more boring, the movie’s hero or the villain.

The movie was made for a rather small budget so what box office it took makes the possibility of a sequel more probable - so there is a chance we could see more books from the series being made - but in my opinion they’d be better off turning the character of Mitch Rapp into a television hero and recast it with someone with at least a modicum of screen charisma. If you catch this movie while flipping through channels it wouldn’t be the worst way to kill two hours, but certainly don’t go out of your way to see this thing.

Final Thoughts:

• We repeatedly see Hurley dry firing his gun which any professional would know is not conducive to keeping your weapon in perfect working order.
• A mole is discovered among the team members but whose revelation is completely undone mere moments later.
• The villainous Ghost borrows his backstory from Javier Bardem’s character in Skyfall.
• For a movie called “American Assassin” it surprisingly has nothing to do with assassinations of any kind.

 

This movie could really have used a Deadshot cameo.

The Ritual (2017) - Review

“If you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise, if you go down to the woods today you'd better go in disguise!” The lyrics for Teddy Bear’s Picnic contain some solid pieces of advice - ones that almost no character in a horror movie ever takes to heart. In David Bruckner’s horror film, The Ritual there may not be teddy bears playing hide-and-seek, or eating marmalade sandwiches, but there are certainly some surprises in-store for anyone who dares to go hiking in these particular woods.

The movie follows the hiking adventures of four friends; Phil (Arsher Ali), Dom (Sam Troughton), Hutch (Robert James-Collier), and Luke (Rafe Spall); they have decided on a hike through the wilds of northern Sweden to honor their fallen friend Rob (Paul Reid)  - he was killed during a convenience store robbery six months earlier - because this was the group vacation Rob had wanted before being brutally slain. We get the usual banter among friends – with a little break when they build a rock cairn in honor of their fallen friend – but when Dom twists his knee, the group decides to take a shortcut through the nearby forest.

 

Needless to say this scenic detour is not a good idea.

A small group of characters lost in the woods with “something” hunting them is certainly a common enough trope of the horror genre – Evil Dead, The Blair Witch Project, Wrong Turn, to name a few – but what is done with said trope is what makes or breaks a horror film. In The Ritual — based on the book by Adam Nevill – director  David Bruckner has our protagonists stumble across a gutted elk, which had been bizarrely mounted up in the trees. Later, the group comes across an old “cabin in the woods,” which they choose to enter because the weather started to get a little too disagreeable. It’s at this point that it becomes clear that none of these guys have ever seen a horror movie before or else they’d have bypassed the cabin stating, “Being wet is better than being murdered in our sleep.” But these yahoos enter the cabin – which is also surrounded by pagan runes – and inside they discover a headless effigy with antlers for hands.

 

Would you stay the night in a place that held this thing?

What Bruckner adds to his film – making it standout from its brethren – is the psychological element; as in this case, the “creature” is able to get into each person’s head and see their pain. In the opening prologue we see Luke’s inaction during the robbery – which led to Rob’s death – and this has caused a little rift amongst the guys; the guilt of Luke's inaction hangs over the entire group, and it becomes clear that his friends may also blame him for Rob’s untimely end. And what exactly does all that have to do with a monster hunting the group through a seemingly endless forest? Well this isn’t your typical “monster in the woods” story; soon, our heroes find themselves not only dealing with a supernatural force stalking them, but the people who worship it as well, and when we learn what the “ritual” is, it all becomes horrifyingly clear.

 

The Ritual also gets bonus points for having a very original monster.

I won’t say The Ritual is a perfect example of the genre – we do get the standard jump scares and cliché characters who try to rationalize away clearly supernatural events – but Bruckner keeps the tension ratcheted up to eleven for most of the film’s 94 minute running time, and the final act reveal of the creature's true nature is simply fantastic. You will find a lot of crap horror films on Netflix – 2016’s The Forest for example – so it was nice stumbling across this little gem. The Ritual may not have rewritten the horror genre, but it is one I can highly recommend, though I’d avoid watching it if you have any plans on camping this summer.

Cloak & Dagger (2018) Pilot Review

Marvel may be kicking butt and taking names with their Cinematic Universe – the latest Avengers movie having earned literally all the money – but on the small screen they haven’t been as consistently successful. With Netflix doing most of the heavy lifting on television – the less said about ABC’s Inhumans the better- one has to question if a regular Network can compete with the Netflix model, and with the premiere of ABC Spark’s Cloak & Dagger, that question becomes even more pertinent.

In 1982, comic book writer Bill Mantlo and artist Ed Hannigan created Cloak & Dagger – a unique duo introduced in the pages of Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man. They are a couple teens that were experimented on with a new synthetic heroin that gave them superpowers. Those familiar with these characters from the pages of Marvel Comics, or random guest appearances on some of Marvel’s animated shows, won’t quite recognize the heroic Tyrone "Ty" Johnson (Cloak) and Tandy Bowen (Dagger) we see here on ABC Spark, as series creator Joe Pokaski has almost completely divorced his show from the source material. Pokaski has stated that, “The original [comic] stories were fantastic, but for the time, while they were a little progressive, they were a little bit sexist and racist once you got into it.” And this apparently means changing everything about the characters found in the comics and recreating almost the whole lot from scratch. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Absolutely not, but if you are going to totally re-imagine a beloved comic book, you better bring your “A” game.

 

"Can I get a do-over?"

In the 80s, Cloak & Dagger were all about the war on drugs – not even as an allegory, they basically hunted down the drug manufacturers who turned them into super-powered freaks –  but as times have changed, the alteration of this origin story is pretty understandable. Pokaski has their new backstory centered around some sort of industrial accident at a facility owned by the Roxon Corporation, one of the show's few links to the Marvel Universe. Now, drugs do still rear their ugly head in this show - Tandy (Olivia Holt) is no longer the privileged runaway white girl from the comics, she’s now a career criminal who snorts stolen drugs – and her mother is an alcoholic/drug user as well. Tyrone (Aubrey Joseph) isn’t the urban youth whose stutter resulted in his friend being shot by a trigger-happy cop - as it did in the comic - now he lives in an affluent neighbourhood with his successful parents, though he still has a similar tragic backstory as his misdeeds as a child led to his older brother being shot by a trigger-happy cop.

 

Required guilt ridden origins: check.

The industrial accident at Roxon looks to be this season’s main mystery – with Tandy’s dad being blamed for it and his subsequent death sending his family into poverty – but in the two-episode premier, we only get hints at what direction the series will go.  We get to see the corrupt cop who shot Tyrone’s brother - who also becomes a future nemesis for teen Tyrone - but we have yet to know if he is tied into the bigger story or if it’s just a mini-mystery unconnected to Roxon.  But, most startling of all, is that in the two hours that make up this premiere, we get very little explanation as to how Tandy and Ty’s superpowers work. We see Tandy conjure up light knives to stab a would-be rapist – that these "daggers" draw blood is another departure from the source material – while Tyrone’s “shadows” seem to teleport him around as if guided by a divine force and not something he can control — at least not yet.

 

"How the hell did I get up here?"

What this version of Cloak & Dagger has going for it is definitely the two leads – who even with very little screen time together show great chemistry – and it's their performances alone that will have me back to check out episode three. How a budding romance will fit into the show – with Tandy having a fellow crook as a love interest complicating things – is still up in the air, but as their strange powers throw them together, we could be treated to an interesting dynamic. The one thing viewers won’t be seeing is the many superhero team-ups that Cloak & Dagger have had in the comics – don’t expect to see Spider-Man or the X-Men showing up – but there is a little continuity from other shows as Tyrone’s powers tap into the Darkforce dimension, which has been previously established in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, and the aforementioned Roxon corporation who made it's cinematic debut in Iron Man 2.

 

"Do we at least get to meet Hayley Atwell?"

Season one will most likely be about how the two kids learn to use their powers – which, as mentioned, are radically different from the comics, as here they also get visions that allow them to see into a person’s heart – and aside from seeing Tyrone teleporting in his sleep, and Tandy accidentally stabbing a would-be rapist, we don’t get a lot of on-screen superheroing. The showrunners clearly are going for the slow burn here – no sprinting to the finish line like their Netflix cousins – and whether the show makes this work will mostly come down to how they balance the social drama/young adult aspect of the show with the superhero elements of its comic book origins.

Coming from a guy who has been reading their stories since their debut back in the 80s, I’d say it’s clear I’m not the key demographic here – just too many changes for an old comic nerd like me – but Young Adult viewers will most likely get a kick out of this new show.

 Overall I was fairly underwhelmed by Cloak & Dagger – the pacing was a tad sluggish and some of the supporting cast were less than convincing – but those first two episodes did lay enough interesting groundwork for me to at least want to find out what happens next.

Fifty Shades Freed (2018) – Review

Most would agree that the Fifty Shades books are a cross between fanfiction and a trashy beach read - no one is going to be proclaiming E.L. James author of the year any time soon - but the movies based on these books are only slightly better, in that they are faster to get through than the books. In Fifty Shades of Grey we were introduced to naïve doormat Anastasia Steel, and her billionaire stalker Christian Grey. Then, in Fifty Shades Darker, we learn that Christian had a mistress when he was underage - this was included simply because statutory rape adds spice to any movie romance. There was also an ex-slave of Christian’s who stalked Anna because she wanted her hunky master back. But all this was clearly not enough: we also had Anna’s boss Jack Hyde sexually assaulting her and trying to murder Christian by sabotaging his helicopter - talk about rich people problems - and now, with Fifty Shades Freed, we get the “startling” climax where we hope to learn if gorgeous women and billionaire playboys can have a happily ever after.

The movie opens with Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) tying the knot with her billionaire boyfriend Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), but after some interminable banter and light bondage, their honeymoon is cut short when they learn that Anna’s ex-boss/sexual assaulter Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) has broken into the headquarters of Christian’s company to steal some private files. The only reason this particular crime was possible is because in the last movie neither Anna nor Christian thought it important enough to inform the police of Hyde’s assault on Anna because of…reasons?

 

I guess they had other things on their minds.

Dakota Johnson attempts to do something with her character this time around - she gets all alpha when a slutty architect flirts with her man - but it’s hard to get past the fact that she's married to a guy that any sane person would have fled from as fast as their million dollar sports car could take them. Sure, I bet there are lot of people who would put up with worse if it meant they could live in the lap of luxury - private jets and fast cars are nice - but that isn’t the type of character Anastasia Steele is supposed to be, and at some point the whole “I was abused as a child and sexually preyed upon as a teen” would no longer wash as an excuse for Christian being a total dick.

There is a point in the movie when Anna discovers she is pregnant - causing Christian to go into full on petulant child mode because he doesn’t want to share her with anyone, least of all a child - and Anna finally tells him, “You need to grow the fuck up.” Now, this seems like Anna is finally growing a spine by standing up to Christian, but director James Foley undercuts it all by having the scene play out with Anna in her underwear. I will admit to finding Dakota Johnson very attractive, and seeing her naked is certainly no viewing hardship, but at some point, I started to wonder if in the making of this movie they had long bull sessions where they discussed ways in which to get her character naked.

 

“No, I’m not going to work naked or let you fuck me on my desk.”

The only thing "freed" in Fifty Shades Freed is any semblance of character or plot, and when we aren’t being treated to PG 13 sex scenes, we are bored further by pointless moments with Anastasia and her friend Carla (Jennifer Ehle) - who thinks that her boyfriend Elliot Grey (Luke Grimes) is cheating on her - and not only is none of that resolved, it's not even vaguely interesting. Then we have Jack Hyde - possibly the dumbest criminal in the history of sex crimes - who breaks into Anna and Christian’s apartment with the apparent plan of kidnapping Anna at knife point. And just how dumb is this plan? Well, earlier we discovered that the reason he broke into Christian’s files was to help with his stalking - how corporate files aid in stalking is never made clear - but somehow he forgets the age-old truism that two armed bodyguards trump a kitchen knife, and so he gets his ass kicked. How this guy ever became an editor of a successful publishing company is beyond me. Of course, Christian gets all pissed that Anna had disobeyed him - she went out for drinks with Carla when he told her to go straight home - even though the threat was waiting for her at home and not at the bar. He goes even further into “I’m a total dick” territory by bringing her to the Red Room the next day so that he can punish her with orgasm denial.

Relationship Tip #462: If the woman you love has had a knife held to her throat during an attempted abduction, maybe wait a day or two before tying her up and torturing her.

The movie reaches its “climax” when Jack kidnaps Christian’s sister - somehow Hyde’s research has finally paid off and he is able to outsmart Grey security - and he demands that Anna bring him five million dollars. He also tells her that if she informs anybody of what is going on, Christian will be getting his sister back in pieces. Then he tells her that she has less than two hours to get the money, and when she tells him this is impossible, he responds, “You were smart enough to take my job, you’ll figure it out.” The problem here is that his request really is impossible. Completely and utterly impossible.  Even if one of Christian’s banks had five million dollars on hand - which most banks don't - what makes Jack think a newlywed wife would have access to that kind of money?

“I know I’ve only been married to Mr. Grey for a couple weeks, but can I have $5 million dollars?”

Fifty Shades Freed is basically a drippy television romance show - with some PG 13 bondage tossed into spice things up - but upon realizing that even the easiest audience would get bored with this after awhile, author E.L. James throws in some ridiculous crazed villain subplot that wouldn’t pass muster in a Harlequin romance story. That this series of movies has made any money is clearly due to a collection of weird dating choices (these films were all released on Valentine's Day), and a lot of suburban moms day-drinking and ending up at the multiplex. If you want to watch a movie with alternative BDSM lifestyle, check out films like The Story of O or The Image and give the Fifty Shades movies a wide berth.

Most Laughable Moment: We learn that Jack Hyde has a history of having sex with his assistants - blackmailing them with pictures he has taken of their time together - and somehow this translates into forcing his former assistant Liz (Amy Price-Francis) into helping him with the whole stalking and kidnapping plan. Does Liz not realize kidnapping is a federal crime and could land her a life sentence? What kind of pictures could he possibly have that would coerce her into aiding and abetting such a crime?

Death Wish (2018) – Review

Bruce Willis became an iconic action hero with his portrayal of police officer John McClean in the film Die Hard which spawned four sequels; so, casting Willis in the Charles Bronson role of Eli Roth’s remake of the 1974 film, Death Wish – which spawned four sequels as well – must have seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.

The remake deals with trauma surgeon Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) whose wife, Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) is killed during a burglary gone wrong, and while his college-bound daughter, Jordan (Camila Morrone) ends up in a coma. When police detectives Kevin Raines (Dean Norris) and Leonore Jackson (Kimberly Elise) fail to catch the perpetrators, Kersey decides that “Crime is a disease and I’m the cure,” and becomes a vigilante. Now that quote may be from Sylvester Stallone’s action film Cobra – a film about a cop going outside the law - but it’s very fitting for this movie as well because Eli Roth’s remake has a very 80s action movie vibe to it. Unfortunately for MGM and Eli Roth, the climate in the United States is not the same as it was back in the action heyday of the 80s - or even of the 70s when the original was released – as mass shootings in the real world have dampened the spirit for this kind of character.

 

Dressing him like the Unabomber certainly didn’t help.

Of course, guns in movies still make big box office – and the percentage of guns on movie posters to ones without is still surprisingly high – but where film’s like John Wick give audiences an over-the-top stylized action, with very little basis on reality, Death Wish aims to give us a more gritty down-to-Earth violence. Paul Kersey isn’t a top level assassin mowing down legions of killers (with an endless supply of guns and ammunition), instead, he is an average citizen who has decided that the system has failed him and thus murdering criminals is justifiable. Now this kind of revenge story is certainly nothing new to Hollywood – it’s one of the larger subgenres of the action film – but Eli Roth’s blend of the “Average man pushed too far” trope, with the extreme gore typical of his films, doesn’t quite work here. The political climate may have been a factor in the film performing poorly at the box office – grossing $34 million on a $30 million dollar production budget – but what really sank this film was its terrible script — plain and simple.

In the original film, Charles Bronson played an architect who - after his wife is killed and daughter raped – takes to the streets to clean up crime, but what he doesn’t do is track down the particular guilty party. He’s not some genius investigator – able to navigate the city's underbelly – so he just stalks the streets hoping to run across random criminals. In the remake, the film does seem to be going in that direction – his first “victims” are a group of carjackers and a known drug dealer – but then as luck would have it one of his wife and daughter’s assailants shows up in the emergency room of his hospital sporting a few bullet holes of his own. Now, “luck” is the key word here, as this version of Paul Kersey has mutant level powers of luck, and one of the killers falling right into his lap is only the tip of the iceberg.

• When Kersey decides to become a vigilante, he goes to a gun store to pick up a weapon – only to learn that guns used in the commission of crimes tend to be traced back to their owners – so he goes home empty-handed. The very next scene, we see Kersey in the Emergency Room – where a gangbanger riddled with bullet holes is brought to him – and a gun falls off the gurney right at his feet. No one else in the ER hears this, so Kersey is able to kick it under the table, and thus, he now has an untraceable gun.
• After a couple random acts of vigilantism, the aforementioned assailant of his wife and daughter shows up in his ER – sporting a watch stolen from Kersey’s safe so our hero can be sure he is one of the gang – and, lucky for Kersey, the dude’s cellphone – which he finds inside the ambulance – just so happens to contain information that he can use to track down the other assailants.
• A text found on the phone leads Kersey to a bar that the gang uses to fence their ill-gotten gains, and after a ridiculous gunfight – that takes a break for Kersey to torture out a second lead to another gang member – the villain gets the drop on him, and it looks to be the end for our hero. At the last second, Kersey is saved when a falling bowling ball lands on the dude's head. And yes, this scene is as ridiculous as it sounds.

So the film started with the premise of a man – jaded by the failures of the system – deciding to prowl the streets to fight crime, but then it switches gears into the standard revenge plot of the hero tracking down the ones who wronged him – it’s kind of like Eli Roth blended the plots of Death Wish and Death Wish II – and then we get the most contrived plot elements imaginable that vary between simply unbelievable to outright laughable. Roth also throws in some of his trademark gore – a man’s head is literally exploded when Kersey drops a car on it – that are cartoonishly out of place.

Note: The “car kill” ends with the gang member stupidly asking, “You’re not going to kill me?” - while he lies trapped under a car that is being held up by an incredibly long jack – and Kersey responds, “No…Jack is.” He then yanks out the jack and the car falls, popping the dude’s head like a grape. This is the kind of one-liner you’d expect to hear Arnie to spout in one of his 80s action films.  It’s as out of place here as the gore.

These types of films rely on the audience putting themselves in the place of the hero – getting to viscerally live out dreams of being a badass – but Eli Roths’ film is neither that kind of action movie, nor is it a social political commentary, as it doesn't seem to have any kind of message other than "Don't cross Bruce Willis."  What we did get was a movie that was tonally all over the map – with a plot that strains credulity to the breaking point – resulting in a remake that is all too forgettable. The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that at least we won’t be seeing a remake of Death Wish: Crackdown.