Taking a lead from “How to Train Your Dragon,“ and other movies were fearsome creatures reveal their kinder, gentler selves, “The Sea Beast,” a new animated movie now streaming on Netflix, gives the old “never judge a book by its cover” platitude a nautical twist.
Monster hunter Jacob Holland (Karl Urban) come by his job honestly. As a child his parents were killed in a sea monster attack, one that left him adrift, alone in the ocean. After his rescue by the fearsome Captain Crow (Jared Harris), he devoted his life to the eradication of the sea beasts. “I swore I would do everything I could to keep people safe,” he says.
The worst of the worst, the King Kong of sea beasts is the Red Bluster, a giant lobster-red creature, rumored to be a menace to seafaring society. When Holland and his crew set off in their ship, the Inevitable, to hunt down and kill the menace, they discover a stowaway. Young orphan named Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator) lost her parents on a sea beast expedition, and she wants in on the action.
There is a lot at stake on this mission. The king and queen have threatened the monster hunters with dire punishment unless the beast is tamed. Maisie, Holland and the crew set off to vanquish the creature, but soon learn that there is more to the story than they could ever have imagined.
“The Sea Beast” has spectacular action sequences with well-crafted computer animation, a compelling story about finding family, and the usual kid movie messages about loyalty and the importance of role models, but what sets it apart is a more subversive idea.
At its heart this is a cautionary tale, a warning to never take things at face value, or blindly put your trust into accepted versions of history. History can be subjective, the movie suggests, depending the source. Are the sea beasts dangerous troublemakers, as king and queen claim? Or are they misunderstood creatures used by the rulers to instill fear and exert control over their subjects? Co-writers Chris Williams (who also directs) and Nell Benjamin have woven big ideas throughout the fabric of the story, encouraging kids to figure out things for themselves and not accept the conventional wisdom.
But don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some anti-imperialist, rebellious screed. It’s an action adventure with a conscience and some very cool “monsters” that kids will fall for at first sight. It slows down in the second half, but the combination of smarts and seafaring fun is a winner.
In “Morbius,” a new shared universe of films inspired by Spider-Man characters, and now playing in theatres, Jared Leto plays a doctor who takes the old phrase, “Physician, heal thyself,” a little too far.
Jared Leto is Dr. Michael Morbius, Nobel Prize-worthy biologist with a medical degree in hematology. His field of work is personal to him. Since childhood he and his best friend Milo (a preening Matt Smith) have battled a rare blood disease that drains him of his energy. As an adult Michael searches for a cure.
“I should have died years ago,” he says. “Why am I still here if not to fix this?”
He devises a cure, but it is it a cure or a curse? He will live, and maybe even thrive, but his life will be forever changed.
“I went from dying to being more alive than ever,” he says after going “batty.”
The cure has transforms him into a transgenic vampire, a being with superhuman strength and speed, heightened senses, accelerated healing “and some form of bat radar,” but none of the usual weaknesses associated with vampires. Bring on the garlic and crosses. But, like traditional vampires, he now must drink blood to survive.
“I have powers that can only be described as superhuman,” he says. “But there’s a cost. Now I face a choice, to hunt and consume blood or die.”
He chooses life, but his tolerance for artificial blood is lowering and soon he’ll have to break everything he believes in and drink real human blood, a choice he loathes.
Milo, on the other hand, chooses a darker path, pitting friend against friend. “All our lives we’ve lived with death hanging over us,” Milo says. “Why shouldn’t we enjoy life for a change.”
It can only be said one way. “Morbius” sucks… more than just blood. Likely undone by a PG-13 rating that must have shaved off some of, what could have been, effective horror elements, it’s a defanged vampire movie with no bite.
A generic story and dated special effects—the bullet time gag was fresh when we first saw it in “The Matrix,” but that was then and this is now—and the whole turgid affair culminates in a murky CGI climax that is visually hard to follow. You know where this story is headed, you just can’t tell what, exactly, is happening on screen.
Leto is the above-the-title star, but his bland work is over-shadowed by Smith who at least seems to be having fun as the bloodthirsty Milo.
There are two after credit scenes in “Moribus” that promise more stories with the batty doctor, but the franchise needs a serious transfusion before continuing the story.
Showbiz old timers believed any publicity was good publicity. Song-and-dance man George M. Cohan once famously bragged, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.” Brad Pitt is a pretty easy name to spell and the press has been using it a lot lately but will the news surrounding his break up with Angelina Jolie and subsequent stories of FBI investigations (no charges were ever filed) have any effect on the box office appeal of his new movie “Allied.”
Casablanca, 1942. Pitt plays Canadian intelligence officer Max Vatan, a deadly spy paired with French Resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard). They are to pose as husband and wife, infiltrate a high level Nazi gathering and assassinate the German ambassador. “Odds of surviving are 60 to 40%,” he says, “against.” They survive (not a spoiler: if they didn’t make it there’d be no movie), fall in love and are soon sharing the same next of kin in London as Max takes on a less rigorous and much safer desk job. Despite Max’s boss’s (Jared Harris) warning that “marriage made in the field don’t work,” the couple settle in, the very model of a nuclear family until a high ranking official (Simon McBurney), who calls himself “a rat catcher,” confronts Max with the words, “We believe your wife is a German spy.”
Pitt and Cotillard like they just walked out a 1942 issue of Silver Screen magazine. Add to that high end period details in the costumes and sets and you have a handsome movie, almost as good-looking as its two leads. That being said, it’s a shame the first hour doesn’t have the pop it needs to really make us care about the characters when the story swerves from wartime romance to personal espionage thriller.
Director Robert Zemeckis keep things interesting with several memorable action scenes. He may be making a war film that frequently feels like a homage to the classic movies of yore but he’s done it with a modern flair, including rougher language and sexuality. Marianne giving birth on a London street as bombs drop around her has the melodrama of an old time picture but a contemporary sensibility.
Anchoring all this beauty are strong performances from Pitt and Cotillard.
At its heart “Allied” a love story despite the bullets and bombs. Pitt plays Max as a stoic but lethal—watch him choke someone to death then shove a biscuit down his throat to make it look like and accident—but most importantly, he’s a man in love. When he is told his wife may be a spy he says, “It’ll be OK because it’s not true,” but the moments of self doubt that wash across his face tell the real story. In his third war flick (following “Inglourious Basterds” and “Fury”) he’s torn between love and duty and Pitt infuses the performance with an appropriate amount of pathos.
Cotillard has the less flashy role, particularly in the second half but gives this femme fatale a real live beating heart that elevates her from stereotype to thoroughly current and exciting character.
“Allied” is really two movies—a “Casablanca” style romance and a spy thriller—bound together by Zemeckis’s adherence to classic filmmaking and the love story that provides the heart.
In “Poltergeist,” the new reworking of the 1982 ghost-in-the-TV Tobe Hooper cult classic chiller, when Mom (Rosemarie DeWitt), “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” you know, of course, here’s loads to be afraid of… like crappy special effects and a story almost entirely devoid of thrills or chills.
Sam Rockwell and DeWitt are Eric and Amy, underemployed parents of three, Maddy (Kennedi Clements), Griffin (Kyle Catlett) and Kendra (Saxon Sharbino). Forced to downsize, the young family relocates to a rundown and apparently haunted home in suburban Illinois. The older kids aren’t thrilled with their new home but little Maddy loves it, immediately talking to the invisible spirits that also live there.
On their first full night in the place Maddy modernizes the most famous visual from the original film by sitting in front of the flashing big screen television. “They’re here,” she says and soon things get poltergeisty. Clown dolls attack the kids and Maddy disappears but is able to communicate with them through the television. And people say there’s nothing worth watch on TV now that “Mad Men” has gone off the air.
They discover the house was built on top of an old cemetery but are told the bodies were “moved to a nicer neighbourhood.” Freaked out, Eric and Amy call in experts, Dr. Claire Powell (Jane Adams) from the local university’s Department of Paranormal Research and reality show ghostbuster Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris) to rid themselves of the pesky poltergeist and rescue Maddy from the 500 channel universe.
“Poltergeist” would more accurately have been called “Paychequegeist: Good Actors, Terrible Movie.” I hope whatever money Rockwell, DeWitt and Harris were paid for this was worth it because cash must have been the only incentive to sign on for this movie. It certainly wasn’t the script and this one is likely going to come back to haunt them
Where to start? How about Rockwell’s reaction to Maddy’s disappearance? “If we call the cops they’ll blame us,” he says, opting instead to bring in a ghostbuster to locate his youngest daughter. Or how about DeWitt’s sly smile after overhearing a lover’s tiff between Powell and Burke? Her daughter is being tormented by malicious spirits who aim to drag her to hell but, hey, laughter is the best medicine, right? Yes, it’s laughable, but for us, not her.
There is so much wrong with “Poltergeist” it’s hard to know where to begin. Sure little Kennedi Clements could probably win an award for Best Scared Face of the Year but she’s more scared than anyone in the audience for this generic reboot will ever be.
Not many children’s movies would feature someone voicing the fear that the title characters would “kidnap me and slurp up my intestines like noodles,” but then again, “The Boxtrolls” is not like most other kid flicks.
Based on Alan Snow’s illustrated novel “Here Be Monsters!,” and from the folks who brought us the dark visions of “Coraline” and “ParaNorman,” “The Boxtrolls” is the most original film for young’uns to come out this year.
According to town father Lord Portley-Rind (voice of Jared Harris) of the Victorian-age town of Cheesebridge, the Boxtrolls are evil beasts that steal children, eat their faces and live underground among mountains of bones and rivers of blood. They’re so hideous there are even popular songs written about their dastardly deeds. To rid the community of these vile creatures Rind brings in a social-climbing exterminator named Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), who guarantees the complete annihilation of the trolls in return for a coveted White Hat and a place at the town’s exclusive cheese table.
The Boxtrolls, of course, aren’t evil. They are good-natured, green-skinned trolls who use cardboard boxes as camouflage, speak gibberish and get into mischief, like smelly Minions. Sure, they eat live bugs and live underground in a Rube Goldberg-esque steampunk world of machines made from parts salvaged from the garbage but they also love music and have raised a human child, Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright), as one of their own. If the Boxtrolls are to survive, Eggs will have to go head-to-head with Snatcher and his henchmen Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade), Mr. Trout (Nick Frost) and Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan).
Combining the atmosphere of Hammer horror films with slapstick humour, a deranged story, a “be who you are” message and morbidly marvelous attention to every stop-motion detail, “The Boxtrolls” is a trick and a treat.
Unabashedly weird and wonderful, the movie may be too scary for the little ones, but any child who has spent time with the “Goosebumps” series or “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” shouldn’t be kept up at night by either the story or the visuals.
Instead they’ll likely be drawn in by the beautiful set decoration, the ingenious character design—the baddies all have the worst teeth since Austin Powers—and fun voice work. As the lactose intolerant Snatcher Kingsley has the most fun. It’s a flamboyant performance, inventive and eccentric, that will entertain kids and their parents.
“The Boxtrolls” is Pixar on drugs, a wild ride that isn’t afraid to mix a scare or two in with the kid stuff.
