Daddy's Home Two (2017) *1/2

Run Time: 1:38

US Release Date: November 10, 2017

Rated: PG-13 (Profanity, Sexual Content)

Director: Sean Anders

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, John Lithgow, Mel Gibson, Linda Cardellini, John Cena, Allesandra Ambriosio

Right up front I must admit that I have not as of this writing seen Daddy’s Home. A film should be able to stand on its own and I kept that in mind when sitting down to a mostly empty theater to see this latest attempt to attract holiday movie-goers with a Christmas themed sequel. This is the second such attempt to be released in the last few weeks (the other being A Bad Mom’s Christmas). Releasing these films nearly two months before the actual holiday doesn’t really make much sense. After all, do you release a Halloween movie in August or a Valentines movie in December? But I guess in the mindset of entertainment Thanksgiving is a non-holiday in the mad dash to get to Christmas.

The film focuses on a broken family, several in fact. We have Brad and his wife (Will Ferrell and Linda Cardellini) and Dusty and his wife (Mark Wahlberg and Alessandra Ambrosio) who share custody of their two children. A third child from Alessandra’s previous marriage is also in the picture and mid-way through the film her father also makes an appearance played by John Cena. The two fathers have different ideas on what is best for the kids but have come to terms with their differences, at least on the surface. But when daughter Megan (Scarlett Estevez) expresses her dislike for the holidays because of being pulled between the two households during the season the fathers determine the best way to deal with this is to have a joint Christmas together. This is complicated by the arrivals of Brad and Dusty’s fathers (Mel Gibson and John Lithgow). Bad spirits arise right out the gate as Dusty’s father, Kurt (Gibson) seems determined to drive a wedge between Brad and Dusty at every turn. Meanwhile Brad’s father, Don (Lithgow) arrives without his wife and questions immediately start to form as to why.

Right from the start there is trouble in paradise with this film. By fifteen minutes in I realized that I hadn’t laughed once. I knew it was going to be a long slog to the finish line when five minutes later the only other attendees at my screening left the theater and never came back. I sat it out, though, hoping it would get better and it never did. Not one laugh in the entire film. The jokes fall flat all around and there is a general feeling of mean-spiritedness to the whole proceeding. For a holiday film there is a lot of negativity to it. Even when it tries to add a pretty bow to the ending it fails to stick the landing and Gibson, whose character is the most in need of an arc, learns nothing and is just as much a jerk as he was at the beginning.

Holiday movie-goers will be sorely disappointed with what is served up here. This is not the film you would want to take the whole family to see this holiday season. It will make you question how much you really like those relatives you’ve gathered together for the holidays. If you are in a mixed family it will not inspire you into feeling you can make it work during the season or any other time of the year. It is a cynical film determined to cash in a successful film and a holiday theme and it fails on both accounts. You’d be better off seeking out one of the classics than wasting your time with this abysmal failure of a holiday film. Bah Humbug. 

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) ***1/2

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Olivia Colman, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom Jr, Josh Gad, Willem Dafoe, Penelope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Marwan Kenzari

Run Time: 1:54

US Release Date: November 10, 2017

Rated: PG-13 (Violence)

It seems like an odd choice in this day and age to take a novel from the 1930’s, a slow paced novel bereft of any real action scenes, and faithfully translate it for the screen in 2017. Casting a mixture of today’s rising stars and elite Hollywood royalty is a further head scratcher. Just who was this film made for? The trailer plays up the action scenes while also emphasizing a mystery that has been around for over 80 years and has existed in film form since the mid seventies. The modern movie-goer has probably never seen that 1974 film nor read the original Agatha Christie novel and thus can’t be expected to be familiar with the story, yet the mystery will feel familiar and play out roughly as expected because of that familiarity.

Christie’s novel has been adapted three previous times into film. The first and most well known version was released in 1974 and featured a cast that included the likes of Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Richard Widmark, Martin Belsam, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York, all well known actors of the time. Aside from a rather quirky performance by Finney as the genius detective Poirot this was a straight forward retelling of the novel. Finney played the part so broadly that at times it felt like parody. He was really in a film of his own and it was jarring at the time. Still, as a whole the film worked and, while not a timeless classic, it holds up as solid entertainment.

The same cannot be said for the two following adaptions. 2001’s version was made for TV. This time around the story has been modernized, no longer taking place in the 30’s but in the era of internet. Much of this version is played out the same as before making it a jolting film that only occasionally reminds you that it is not a period piece. Once again we get a star cast, although not nearly as impressive of a pedigree: Alfred Molina, Meredith Baxter and Leslie Caron are the biggest names here and none of them manage to elevate what is ultimately a made-for-TV vibe.

Then came the 2010 version. From 1989-2013 BBC-TV aired a television series entitled Poirot and during the course of the series every Agatha Christie story and novel involving detective Poirot was produced. This led to Murder on the Orient Express getting an episode eventually. This version has an even less well known cast, at least to those of us in the states, but there are a few performers that stand out to me: David Morrissey and Jessica Chastain have made a name for themselves in recent years and Toby Jones was a welcome familiar face from years past. But the film itself is dismal and plodding despite having a rather short running time of only eighty minutes. The ending was changed somewhat to add a crisis of conscience for the lead character of Poirot that existed in none of the previous versions. David Suchet’s Poirot was a stuffed shirt who shouts out moral judgments like a preacher and distances himself from those around him and us the audience as well. It’s a capable, if very stuffy film that suffers from familiarity to the source material. 

Then comes this, the most recent adaption. Harkening back to the original film the cast of characters are made up of who’s who of Hollywood and the international cinema. There’s someone here from every modern era of film to appease to the older generation as well as the millennials. Kenneth Branagh leads the pack as Poirot. He is supported by the likes of Daisy Ridley (Star Wars – The Force Awakens), Penelope Cruz (Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides), Johnny Depp (Edward Sissorhands), Leslie Odom, Jr (Red Tails), Lucy Boynton (Sing Street), Michelle Pfeiffer (Scarface), Judi Dench (Casino Royale), Josh Gad (Love and Other Drugs), and Willem Dafoe (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Each holds their own and brings some panache to a very familiar proceeding. The real question going into this film is is it worth going into it when one is familiar to the story. Also, does it work if one is not familiar with it.

The story is pretty straight forward. Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is a world famous detective traveling on the Orient Express en route to another case. While on the way the train is stopped by an avalanche and one of the passengers is murdered. No one could have left the train so the murderer must be among the passengers. The bulk of the film is Poirot interrogating the passengers one by one while piecing the testimonies and clues together to figure what happened and how.

I came at it from both perspectives having seen all versions and reading the book prior to checking in for this one. My wife accompanied me without any of that baggage. The mystery unfolded exactly the same way it did in the other versions, this time with a little bit of action peppered into it to appease a crowd that might not be used  to a slower paced film. Still, three quarters of the way through my wife had the mystery figured out. There is enough foreshadowing to figure the whole thing out for those who are unfamiliar and for those who are there is a fascination with how this new cast and crew will present these characters and motivations in a way that will speak to a modern audience. For those who prefer the shaky action films of Michael Bay this film will bore them to tears. For those who don’t mind a slower pace and good characters this will be a delight to watch. It is an actor’s film through and through. The few action scenes added to break up the mystery a little feel natural and only stand out when compared to the other films that didn’t have those moments.

The story holds up even though it is a well known mystery. It is not quite as well known as And Then There Were None, but still familiar enough that those who see it should recognize where it’s headed. There is a twist to the ending that is true to the novel and films and does not come out of nowhere; it can be predicted if you pay attention to the investigation. The ending cribs some from the 2010 Poirot episode but not quite as harshly. It is a happy middle ground that plays better and doesn’t leave us with a bitter taste in the mouth about our protagonist. Who is this film made for? Hopefully a new audience that will feel inspired to pick up the book and experience a truly gifted mystery writer from the past. It holds up as an example of an older property that can still hold its own in the modern cinema landscape without changing its character into something barely resembling the novel. In this day and age that is rare. 

Thor Ragnarok (2017) ***

Run Time: 2:13

US Release Date: 11/3/2017

Rated: PG-13 (Cartoon Violence, Profanity)

Director: Taika Waititi

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Mark Ruffalo, Tessa Thompson, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, Anthony Hopkins

There was a lot of negativity surrounding the release of Thor: The Dark World a few years back and not without good reason. That movie was slow and brooding at times and took itself way too serious for it’s own good. After all, the idea of Norse gods battling it out in the cosmos over some red floating liquid that could destroy the universe isn’t exactly heady material. It also wasn’t all that exciting. To compound the problem it was a sequel to a film that was visually impressive but not much else. This doesn’t seem like the type of property to greenlight a third film yet here we are with Thor Ragnarok, a movie which ditches the feel and tone of both of its predecessors and skews so broadly into camp as to almost qualify as parody. There are moments in the film that would have felt right at home in a Scary Movie type of super hero film.

The film opens up with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) bringing us up to speed on how he got to where he is since the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Almost immediately we’re thrown into an action set piece that holds no danger to our lead character and serves only to showcase the power of Thor’s hammer, a point that was felt needed to set up just how formidable our lead villain, Hela (Cate Blanchette) is when she later destroys it.

Upon returning home to Asgard Thor finds his brother Loki right where we left him at the end of The Dark World, impersonating their father Odin. The two set out to find the real Odin only to come face to face with their heretofor unmentioned older sister, Hela, who is determined to take over Asgard and use her powers to expand her rule beyond the nine realms. Thor gets banished and forced to compete in a gladiator style arena where comes face to face with the main reason people will want to see this film, The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). This is all stuff that can be gleamed just from the trailers and all of it plays out just as expected. This movie really isn’t out to surprise you with its story. Instead, it tries to keep you invested by hitting you over the head with humor and pop culture as if to say ‘Look at how silly this concept is. See, we’re in on the joke, too.”

Nearly everything about this movie plays like a punchline. It’s evident from the first moments of the movie while Thor is narrating to a skeleton in a cage. First he asks it how much longer he has to wait in there in reminiscent of a popular meme about waiting on women in a craft store long enough to have degraded into nothing but bones. Then, to add a second joke into the same moment, the jaw bone falls off the skeleton as if the dead person is in awe of the story it is being told. There are at least a dozen more jokes and visual humor just in this scene alone and while they are mostly funny it is quite a bit jarring, especially after coming off all the previous Marvel movies that take their over-arcing stories much more serious.

Aside from this dramatic shift in tone Thor Ragnarok doesn’t really take any chances and serves up more of the same for the MCU. It advances the story leading up to Avengers Infinity War but only a little and only for the two lead characters. It barely mentions any of the other Avengers and the only other one we actually see is Black Widow via a recording that comes straight from Age of Ultron. While this might dissatisfy hard core MCU fans it actually helps Thor Ragnarok to stand on its own two feet without relying too heavily on the films before it. Doctor Strange gets an extended cameo, too, but it doesn’t add up to much other than to show that he has gotten better at his powers than when we last saw him.

Cate Blanchette is a delight to watch as Hela. She is clearly enjoying herself playing the part and it shows every time she is on screen. She chews up the scenery in a way that was sorely missed when she played another villain in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. She is better here and she knows it. She has presence and charisma, and she is formidable, something that comes across loud and clear the first time we see her. She is definitely the highlight of this film. Tessa Thompson and Karl Urban are both good but could have been utilized a little better, especially when undermined by their comedic moments. Elba is also good but sorely underused. The biggest let down is Thor’s brother, Loki, who never grows as a character. He’s in the same place as a character as he was last time and, if advance footage from Comic-con can be trusted, will still be there in the next film out the gate featuring him, Infinity War.

The film as a whole is disjointed, wanting us to be drawn into the stakes while at the same time hitting us over the head with over-the-top humor. While most of the time it works there are moments that take it too far and push us out of the film. A little better writing and editing could have gone a long way towards fixing this. Altogether it is a fun movie to watch, just don’t expect anything revelatory. 

Suburbicon *1/2

Director: George Clooney

Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac
Screenplay: Joel & Ethan Coan and George Clooney &Grant Heslov
Rated R (Violence, Language, Sexual Situations
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Release Date: 10/27/2017

Suburbicon is the type of film that makes you ask questions after you exit the theater. The problem is that the questions you are asking are not the ones the producers and director intended. The big one, the one I couldn’t stop asking myself even hours after sitting through it, is ‘What happened?’ Not ‘What happened in the film, although there is plenty of confusion there, too, but what happened behind the scenes to make it turn out like this. There is plenty of talent both in front of the cameras and behind them with every key player on both sides having at least one Academy Award to their name, yet this film comes across as sloppy and poorly executed. ‘What happened?’

Suburbicon is a typical suburban in the mid-fifties, serene, quiet, and white. Problems begin when an African-American family moves in. Immediately the citizens are in an uproar over this. Things escalate quickly and turn violent. There is no real development behind the characters involved. Even the African-American family is nothing more than mere stereotypes with no one in the family given much to do beyond represent a problem with suburban white people in that era. A scene late in the film when the mother is denied the ability to shop at the local grocery store could have been powerful had we been given a real character for her. But this movie doesn’t care enough to develop her or anyone else in her family. This movie is also not really about this. The real story is about Matt Damon, a suburbanite who’s wife, Julianne Moore, is killed by two men during a break-in. To help his young son cope, Damon’s sister-in-law, also played by Julianne Moore, moves in. Like the B-story, things escalate, turning violent as only a film written by the Coen Brothers could.

The twist, if you could really call it that, reveals itself early on and from that point on the film loses much of its momentum. The only thing keeping it from a complete train wreck is the terrific performance by the two leads. Damon and Moore are in fine form here but they are given no real meat to bite into and it makes what they are doing feel like swimming upstream. It’s frustrating seeing these two struggling to make the most of so little material. Oscar Issac shows up about midway through the film for a couple of scenes and steals the movie away. It’s really two bad he’s not in it more as he elevates the film whenever he is on screen.

This is the type of film that could have soared under the direction of the Coen Brothers. It has all the elements of some of their classics, like eccentric background characters and absurd situations. George Clooney doesn’t seem to understand how to make this material work, though. At times it seems like it’s attempting to do comedy, then it seems to forget this and go into bad thriller mode. Then there is the B story which just seems to play in the background as noise before suddenly ending unsatisfactorily. It is a muddled mess that could have been so much more than what it ended up being. With a lesser pedigree this could have been forgiven. With the talent around it it ends up being a head scratcher. Again I ask: ‘What happened?’ 

Geostorm (2017) *1/2

U.S. Release Date: 2017-10-20

Running Length: 120 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Violence, Action Peril, Language)

Genre: Disaster

Director: Dean Devlin

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris

Geostorm is problematic right out the gate. It expects the audience to be so fundamentally stupid that they will take everything spoon fed to them on screen without questioning even the most obvious scientific inaccuracies. While I have no inherent issues with a film asking us to go with the narrative rather than hard science, (Hello Star Wars) it still has to be rooted in reality enough to keep me in the film. There has to be just enough ‘fact’ to get me past the ‘fiction.’ Sadly, or perhaps inevitably, Geostorm doesn’t do that and because of that it comes across as insulting to my intelligence. I’m no scientist and have never set foot in outer space and I could easily smell the bologna that reeked throughout the entire two hours.

The premise is simple. Global Warming and climate issues have taken their toll on the world, so much so that the world has united, or at least 17 countries have, (the film isn’t quite clear on this) to fund and built a net around the entire earth to control the weather. After three years of climate tranquility the system is set to fall under control of the world’s nations rather than solely the United States. All of a sudden there is a malfunction in one of the satellites in the net that causes a small area of the middle east to freeze, killing everyone in the area. Then another malfunction causes fire and destruction in Hong Kong. Things quickly ramp up to a deadly countdown to a geostorm, a worldwide weather event with the potential to reshape the earth. Is it really a malfunction or the work of a saboteur? Two guesses and the first doesn’t count.

To deal with the malfunction, estranged brothers Jake (Gerald Butler) and Max Lawson (Jim Sturgess) are recruited by the White House to get things back in order. Jake was the original engineer responsible for the creation of the net, dubbed Dutch Boy, and Max is the current head of the program who fired Jake when opinions got hot over the way to run it. Naturally things ramp up and explosions abound.

As mentioned above, to call this film stupid is an understatement. Director Dean Devlin, known primarily as partners with Roland Emmerich who spews out films in this genre every few years, had this film filmed and ready for release back in May, but test screenings were so poor that it was pulled from the summer line up for hefty reshoots by Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, writer Laeta Kalogridis and Director Danny Cannon. The result begs question as to just how bad it was before the retooling. Besides all the behind the scenes problems there is another problem that should have delayed the release of this film at least into February. That problem is current events. With the recent hurricane and tornado damage in Texas, the Caribbean and Puerto Rico the world is a little battle worn and tired of images of natural disaster devastation. This is sure to effect the box office clout. That coupled with the sheer cliché of the subject matter and visuals is unlikely to lure people into theaters. It doesn’t help that the visuals are often cartoonish and poorly done, but then again by the time people realize that they have already paid for their tickets.

The film tries clumsily to inject political hot points into it’s narrative. There are many instances of this but the worst one comes when an American character is saved by an Hispanic character who afterwards points to the Mexican flag on their uniform and says ‘by a Mexican’ as if it’s making a bold political statement about the current state of Mexico/America relations in the Trump era. This is just bad. It’s also in poor taste. For a film of this ilk it stands out like a sore thumb. This film is not smart enough to make these types of statements well.

In the end this film is boorish, borderline offensive, and just plain dumb. The scenes of destruction could have been copied and pasted from another natural disaster film of a few years ago, 2012. At this point, seeing skyscrapers collapse in old and tired. Seeing satellites explode in space and people run from fireballs and falling debris is cliché and unexciting. The political intrigue is anything but and even the most undiscerning viewer will have no problems guessing who is behind it all. The film would be disappointing if not for how low the expectation was in the first place.

IT (2017) ***

Run Time: 2:15

U.S. Release Date: 2017-09-08
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Gore, Profanity)
Genre: Horror
Director: Andy Muschietti
Cast: Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hamilton

Fans of Stephen King have had a lot of ups and downs when it comes to film adaptions of his written work. Let’s face it, when the bulk of your writing is in the horror genre it can be expected that most, if not all of the films based on it will be schlocky, pulpy fodder more interested in turning a quick buck than presenting interesting characters and a genuine sense of dread. Think back to many of the films over the last forty years that proudly display Stephen King’s name above the title and you’ll realize that most of it is utter garbage. The Mangler, Graveyard Shift, Children of the Corn, Sometimes They Come Back…the list goes on and on. The original mini-series IT came out in 1990 and doesn’t escape this either although it had one thing that made it stand out a bit above the worst of the worst, Tim Curry.

Much has been said about the irreplaceable Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown and you’ll get no argument from me. I first saw that film in the fall of 1990 and, while it never scared me, I was 15 at the time after all, it did leave an impression that carries to this day; I can’t read the book without visualizing Tim Curry as Pennywise, something Bill Skarsgard hasn’t really accomplished in his reinterpretation of the role. He nails the creepiness of Pennywise when playing menacing but fails all around at playing enticing. In the opening scenes when Pennywise is first introduced he comes across as so creepy that it is unbelievable that a child in the late 80’s would stop to have a pleasant conversation with him rather than turn tale and run for home. This isn’t a fatal flaw of the film. It does instill a strong sense of dread over nearly the whole film but it makes it hard to believe Pennywise could entice any little kid close enough to grab.

The story, for those who are unfamiliar with this one, revolves around the losers club, a group of 7 kids lead by Bill Denborough (Jaeden Lieberher). Bill’s brother Georgie went missing along with many other children in their hometown and he’s certain Georgie was washed into the sewers and missing, not dead. Bill and the other ‘Losers’ play down in the barrens, an area of town where the excess rain water and ‘grey water’ washed out before feeding into the Penobscot River, in hopes of finding Georgie and bringing him home despite the certainty that Georgie must be dead after all this time.

Meanwhile more kids turn up missing or dead and each of the ‘Losers’ has an encounter with Pennywise, taking on forms that will scare them the most before reverting to his clown façade just long enough for them to get a good look at him that way. It provides some insight into each of the kids’ fears while giving them something in common to latch onto when they put it together that they have all been seeing Pennywise and need to face this evil together.

To further add to this mix is Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his cronies. Henry is the bully to end all bullies who seems to pick on everyone except his cronies for no apparent reason. Only he isn’t limited to simply shoving and calling names; he’s flat out psychotic, wielding a switchblade like a greaser in a 50’s movie and more than willing to carve his name into someone’s flesh. He adds a level of danger that’s less supernatural but somehow less realistic, too. It doesn’t help that he’s given no real motivations behind his actions beyond a single scene with his father that only serves to show us the actor is lacking in any real acting abilities. Even his cronies have more depth, although not much, as we see uncertainty in their faces during a few of the more extreme examples of Henry’s sadism.

Much has already been said about Bill Skarsgard’s portrayal of Pennywise. The marketing of this film has all but ruined these scares as we’ve gotten plenty of glimpses of him in pictures as well as the trailers. To further leech scares away from him he is overwhelmed a large portion of the time with a lot of unnecessary CGI. This not only pulls us out of the film when we realize we’re seeing an effect, as well as undermines what could have been a really scary performance. Some of the creepiest moments in the film are just shots of Pennywise with his eyes slightly off in opposite directions, something the actor could actually do and is used to great measure. 

Those who have seen the ‘90’s film or, better yet, read the novel will know where this film is going from the start. It doesn’t deviate much from either while not feeling enslaved to them either. The biggest departures happen in the final thirty minutes but I will not spoil the details here. Suffice it to say that those final scenes are where IT starts to lose its momentum. Certain moments in fiction don’t translate well to the screen so the decision has to be made to make an attempt at it or go a different route. Director Andy Muschietti went a different route and the end result is a little unsatisfactory. It is better than what was given in the 90’s but not by much. There’s even a few tired old clichés along for the ride in this finale.

Still, flaws aside, this is a good solid horror film. Is it scary? All I can say is I’ve gotten too jaded over the years to find anything scary here. It’s not torture porn. There is nothing here to make me turn my gaze from the screen in discomfort the way Saw or Hostel might. There is a sense of creepiness over the whole proceeding that can be narrowed down to the fact that Pennywise is after the largely juvenile cast. How this will translate over to the follow-up film with a mostly adult cast in 2019 we’ll have to see. For now, though, we have a well made horror film with a good solid cast of leads surrounded by a bunch of one dimensional supporting characters. I didn’t even go into detail about the parents, none of which are any more fleshed out than Henry Bowers. It’s well worth a watch, but see in in a darkened theater  with a group of willing participants. Something tells me the effectiveness will all but disappear once this reaches home video.