SYNOPSIS: “Kraven the Hunter,” a new superhero flick now playing in theatres and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, follows the Marvel Comics character of the same name from his teen years to his emergence as the world’s most skillful and feared hunter. “Once you’re on his list, there’s only one way off.”
CAST: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. Directed by J. C. Chandor.
REVIEW: There are three bad guys in “Kraven the Hunter,” a toxic father (Russell Crowe), the enigmatic assassin The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) and the thick-skinned Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) but the real villain here is the lazy script.
The idea of The Hunter as an antihero, a bad guy who kills even worse guys (think “Dexter”), is a solid, if slightly shopworn idea. Even when you add a mystical potion that give him a Doctor Dolittle style connection with animals and the ability to stalk and kill using the methods of all the creatures of the jungle, the character is no more absurd than a physicist who transforms into a giant green monster when he gets mad or a half-Atlantean, half-human superhero.
With some suspension of disbelief, “Kraven the Hunter” and its lore is no more outlandish than any other superhero movie. It’s the execution, not the kills but the handling of the material, that sinks the movie.
Origin movies are tough. The script must introduce characters, motivations and backstories, and do so in an expedient, entertaining manner. “Kraven the Hunter,” scripted by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, manages neither. Talky and repetitive, the script never met a cliché it wouldn’t embrace, or a story element it couldn’t reiterate to the point of numbness.
Granted, one of the fight scenes uses a bear trap in a grimly unique fashion, but the other action scenes, while nicely choreographed, suffer from wonky CGI and frenetic editing.
Taylor-Johnson is suitably buff to play Kraven but he is saddled with clunky dialogue in several unintentionally hilarious scenes that undercut the character’s menace. Kraven is a classic example of, “fight not with monsters, lest you become one,” but, despite his piercing eyes, chiseled abs and parkour skills, he’s simply not compelling enough to maintain interest.
Worse, the stakes don’t appear to be very high.
As Nikolai Kravinoff, gangster, and father to Sergei, a.k.a. Kraven and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), Crowe is reduced to a mouthpiece for the script’s ideas of manhood. “Man who kills legend,” he says in his best Boris Badenov accent, “becomes legend.”
And the other baddies, The Foreigner, whose superpower appears to be his ability to count, and the Rhino, seem like small timers when compared to previous Sony Spider-Man Universe rogues like Venom or Doctor Octopus.
If there is a sequel to this movie, and I highly suspect there won’t, but if there is, Kraven should spend his time hunting for a better script instead of new villains.
LOGLINE: In “The Exorcism,” a new horror film now playing in theatres, Russell Crowe plays a troubled actor whose life crumbles while shooting a horror film. As he descends into devilish behavior, his daughter is torn between wondering if his conduct is the result of his personal demons, or something actually demonic.
CAST: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, David Hyde Pierce. Directed by Joshua John Miller.
REVIEW: You know those social media posts that challenge you to change one letter or word in a song or movie title to alter the meaning? Let’s play that with “The Exorcism.” Change the “m” to a “t” and you get one of the greatest horror films ever made. Leave the “m” in place and you get “The Exorcism,” a sluggish, scare-free movie that begins with a good premise and goes to hell shortly after that.
“It’s a psychological drama wrapped in the skin of a horror film,” says the director-within-the-movie, played by Adam Goldberg. That was, perhaps, the goal of the real film, the one we’re seeing in theatres, but the result is a mixed bag.
A riff on the legends of the supernatural events that allegedly plagued the sets of “The Exorcist” and “The Omen,” the new film mines a potentially rich vein of Hollywood history, but the plodding set-up and hokey finale fail to deliver an engrossing character study or pulse-racing horror flick.
At the heart of it all, for better and for worse, is Crowe. His considerable star power goes a long way to keep “The Exorcism” watchable. His descent into bad behavior gives the movie whatever steam it has, but the film’s lack of overall lack of drama and scares is a sin.
“Land of Bad,” a new military thriller starring Liam Hemsworth and Russell Crowe, and now playing in theatres, uses highflying drone warfare as a backdrop for a story of survival on the ground.
Set in the South Philippines, the story begins with a covert Special Forces operation to extract a CIA asset captured by some very bad people.
Three highly skilled veterans, Sergeant Abel (Luke Hemsworth), Bishop (Ricky Whittle) and Captain Sugar (Milo Ventimiglia), are teamed with Sergeant JJ “Playboy” Kinney (Liam Hemsworth), a rookie whose nerves are showing even before they parachute into enemy territory.
Kinney’s job is to provide on-the-ground data to Captain Ed “Reaper” Grimm (Russell Crowe), a drone operator at a remote command post in Las Vegas. “I am the eyes in the sky,” Grimm says. “The bringer of doom.”
When the situation goes awry, Kinney is left on his own in hostile territory with only Reaper’s disembodied voice to guide him to safety.
“Land of Bad” asks (but doesn’t answer) questions about the role of technology in warfare, and if long distance battle, in the form of drones, is less barbaric than up-close-personal, Mano a Mano conflict. It’s an interesting, very twenty-first century issue, but it falls by the wayside as the action takes center stage.
Director William Eubank stages several exciting battles, provides lots of ticking-clock tension and plenty of obstacles—ie: baddies with guns and giant mountains between Kinney and safety—to keep Kinney’s odyssey edging the viewer toward the edge of their collective seats. There’s nothing much new here, but the action scenes are effective in creating a sense of immediacy and danger.
As a newbie in the group, Liam Hemsworth has an interesting arc, from nervous newcomer to reluctant hero. It goes a notch beyond the usual action hero portrayal, and humanizes Kinney as all hell breaks loose around him.
Crowe slides by on sheer movie star charisma. His take on Reaper is, by times, playful and powerful. But at the end of the day, he’s a stereotype of the anti-establishment figure who places emotion above authority. But, in the film’s unexpected dance scene he proves he can still cut a rug. Are You Not Entertained? Sure are, by the sheer absurdity of Crowe’s last twenty minutes on screen.
“Land of Bad” does not reinvent the war film wheel, but rolls along serviceably enough as an engaging action flick.
Heartwarming is not a word often used to describe movies based on the Vietnam War, but “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is no “The Deer Hunter,” “Platoon” or “Apocalypse Now.” It’s an occasionally glib, often naïve movie that studies the timely issue of the gap between the press and the public, and the horrors of war.
“Green Book” director Peter Farrelly presents another hard-to-believe-it’s-true story set during the height of the Vietnam War in 1967.
Zac Efron plays an aimless, but well-meaning Merchant Marine named John “Chickie” Donohue, a playful patriot who accepts a dare from the guys at his local NYC bar to track down his army buddies in Vietnam and deliver good old American beer to them as a thanks for their service.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he says, “but I’m going to show them that this country is still behind them.”
With a duffle bag full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, he makes his way into the heart of the conflict, hanging out with hardnosed war correspondents like Arthur Coates (Russell Crowe) and getting in over his head, but nonetheless, handing out “sudsy thank you cards” to soldiers on the front lines.
At the heart of the film is Efron in his meatiest role in years. His eager performances matches the tone of the film. He’s a charismatic actor who plays up Chickie’s good-natured, guileless side. Even as the weight of the war bears down on him, he’s still tossing chilly PBRs to his buds with a grin. He’s fine, but his trip to Vietnam feels more like a goofy—but dangerous— adventure and not a serious journey of self-discovery. He does find his way to a new understanding of the world, but the movie meanders along the way to revealing his enlightenment.
“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is a Vietnam War movie with a twist. A story of loyalty and friendship, it comes with good intentions, even if it leans into its crowd-pleasing aspects a little too heavily.
Despite featuring the most Guns & Roses music this side of a headbanger’s ball, thematically, “Thor: Love and Thunder” owes more to the frilly pop of 10cc’s “The Things We Do for Love.” Love, not thunder, is at the very heart of this Taika Waititi directed take on the Marvel Space Viking.
The film opens with Gorr (Christian Bale), a simple man praying for the survival of his beloved daughter. His planet is barren. Life is unsustainable, but his blind faith in the gods and an “eternal reward” keeps him going. When things take a turn for the worse, his god rejects him, offering ridicule instead of help.
“Suffering for the gods is your only purpose.”
In that moment Gorr obtains the Necrosword, the legendary god slaying weapon, and vows to kill all gods, starting there and then. Now called Gorr the God Butcher, he travels through the shadows, seeking vengeance.
Meanwhile, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is in isolation. He has lost everyone he’s ever loved, including Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), an astrophysicist and ex-girlfriend. He has had some adventures and gone from “Dad Bod to God Bod, but underneath all that he was still Sad Bod.”
His midlife crisis has hit hard, and since Jane dumped him, he has kept everyone at arm’s length. He now lives a life of lonely, quiet contemplation, emerging only when needed for battle. “After thousands of years of living,” “Guardian of the Galaxy’s” Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) says to him, “you don’t seem to know who you are.”
Elsewhere, Jane is being treated for stage four cancer. Chemo treatments aren’t working so she takes matters into her own hands. “If science doesn’t work,” she says, “maybe Viking space magic will.” The result is a transformation into Mighty Thor, a warrior who wields a reconstructed version of Thor’s magic Asgardian hammer Mjolnir. “Excuse me,” Thor says to her. “That’s my hammer you have there. And my look.”
When Gorr the God Butcher and his creepy crawlers come to New Asgard, the Norwegian tourist town and refuge for the surviving Asgardians, and kidnap all the town’s children, it sets off a battle that will see Thor and sidekick Korg (Waititi) alongside Mighty Thor and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), travel to the Shadow Realm on a rescue mission.
“Thor: Love and Thunder” has all the usual Marvel moves. There are action set pieces writ large, loads of characters with complicated backstories and enough CGI to keep a rendering farm in business from now until eternity.
What it also has, and the thing that makes it feel fresh, is Taika Waititi. As director, writer and co-star, he infuses the proceedings with a certain kind of silliness, and panache that sets it apart from other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
The action scenes deliver in carnage but also provide some eye candy. An early fight has overtones of 1970s air bushed van art, while the choreography includes little jokes, like an homage to flexible kickboxer Jean-Claude Van Damme. Later, in the Shadow Realm, Waititi evokes German expressionism in his use of stark black-and-white to create a world of horror, while still maintaining a Marvel feel to the action.
With these large franchises, the action scenes are where the money is, I suppose, but above all else, “Thor: Love and Thunder” is a story about the power of love to hurt and heal. In the face of unimaginable losses—his daughter and his devotion to the gods—Gorr abandons love and embraces vengeance. Thor, still smarting from being dumped by Jane, learns the power of deep feelings when she suddenly shows up again.
Thor’s new weapon, Stormbreaker, might have the heft to do battle with Gorr the God Butcher, but it is love that wields the true power in this story.
“Thor: Love and Thunder” isn’t an all-out action-comedy like “Ragnarok.” It juggles several life-and-death scenarios, and much of the plot is rooted in heartache and pain, but Waititi’s singular style, Hemsworth’s charm and a heartfelt examination of the pain and pleasure of love is a winning combo.
“Unhinged” is the kind of b-movie that normally would have gone straight to DVD or streaming but in our topsy-turvy pandemic world, where the rules are being constantly rewritten, the new Russell Crowe psychothriller is playing only in theatres this weekend.
Hairdresser Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is having a rough time. The young mom is in the midst of a brutal divorce and her brother and his girlfriend are unwelcome guests at her home.
Today she’s stuck in traffic and if things don’t get moving, she’ll be late for both an appointment with a client and dropping her son (Gabriel Bateman) at school. Pulling her Volvo tight behind an idling truck belonging to Tom Cooper (Crowe), she honks her horn and triggers an epic fit of road rage. “I need you to learn what a bad day is,” he says, “and I need you to learn how to say sorry.”
Subtlety, thy name is not “Unhinged.” From Crowe’s snarling, sweating psychopath and a bloody “courtesy tap” to emasculation and car crashes, the movie delivers a buffet of b-movie pleasures. Crowe spits out lines like, “I’ll make my contribution this day with violence and retribution,” and amps up the angry but like the movie itself, he’s one, loud note.
Director Derrick Borte begins the film with context, a long montage of current world ills, suggesting that things are falling to pieces because we lack civility, but then forgoes any kind of social commentary in a story that relies on shock and awe to fill the screen with violent images. At one point Cooper talks about being an “invisible” man and, after a diner scene, it’s clear he has no love for divorce lawyers, but that’s it for character development. He is simply a dangerous man who has been cut loose of the bonds of polite society.
In the relatively small sub-genre of Crazed Driver Movies—“Duel” and “The Hitcher” come to mind—“Unhinged” distinguishes itself by keeping the pedal to the metal without providing anything new in the way of thrills. As a study of an emasculated man seeking revenge it brings to mind “Falling Down,” Michael Douglas’ 1993 black comedy, except “Unhinged” is all darkness and no comedy.
Six years ago writer/director Drew Goddard deconstructed the slasher movie genre with the whimsical and exhilarating “Cabin in the Woods.” A mash-up of horror and humour, of post-modern self-awareness and gruesome gags, it simultaneously adopted and challenged the conventions of the slasher genre. He returns to the big screen—his day job is writing, producing and directing TV shows like “Daredevil” and “The Good Place”—with “Bad Times at the El Royale,” an inversion of a 1990s broken timeline crime drama.
The El Royale is the kind of seedy hotel that dotted the highways and byways of 1960s America. Split down the middle by the California/Nevada border, it’s a perfect slice of mid-century kitsch, like the same guy who decked out Elvis’s rec room designed it. When we first lay eyes on it a shady character (Nick Offerman) with a bulging suitcase and a gun wrenches up the floorboards and hides a case of money before replacing the carpet and the furniture. It’s an act that establishes the El Royale as a home-away-from-home for transients and ne’er-do-wells and sets up much of the action to come.
As for the action to come, you’ll have to go see the film to find out what happens. I will tell you that the film takes place ten years after the suitcase was hidden in the hotel and begins with a disparate group of folks checking in well after the El Royale’s heyday. There’s slick talking vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), Reno-bound singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a priest with tired eyes and hippie chick Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson). All three pay front desk manager Miles (Lewis Pullman) the $8 deposit and take to their rooms.
Secrets are revealed about the guests and the hotel as an aura of menace clouds the sunny California/Nevada border. “We’re in a bit of a pickle,” says Father Flynn in what may be the understatement of the year.
Goddard takes his time setting up the narrative drive of “Bad Times at the El Royale.” He bobs and weaves, playing with time, slowly revealing the intricacies of the story. For the patient—it runs two hours and 21 minutes—it’s a heck of a ride but may prove too opaque for casual viewers. Large conspiracies are hinted at, secrets are kept and no one is really who they seem to be. For those willing to submit to the grimly funny and admittedly indulgent proceedings, it’s a Tarantino-esque web of intrigue and unexpected violence that plays both as a crime drama and a metaphor for the decay of 1960s idealism.
“Bad Times at the El Royale” is a good movie filled with bad people. It asks you to care about people who do terrible things and by the end, thanks to inventive storytelling and good performances—Erivo is s standout—you just might.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
No longer content to simply offer up an endless string of remakes, reboots and reimaginings Hollywood is now in the business of creating universes. Marvel and DC lead the pack, generating big box office with movies that mix-and-match their flagship characters in ongoing and connected stories. Now others are looking to get a piece of that action.
This weekend’s “The Mummy,” a self-described “action-adventure tentpole with horror elements,” is the foundation of Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe. The studio aims to create a cross-pollinated world were their brand name monsters, like Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, are mixed and matched to infinity or at least as long as audiences will pay to see them.
The Mummy reinvents the story of ancient malevolence, presenting a new, female title character and adding Russell Crowe as Henry Jekyll, a doctor with a serum that unleashes his inner demons.
The idea of pairing up monsters is nothing new. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein saw The Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster cross paths with The Invisible Man and Freddy Krueger battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees in a Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street combo pack but another monster movie mash up beats everything that came before it.
The Monster Squad, a fun 1987 teenage horror comedy sees Count Dracula recruit a posse of monsters — Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon — to retrieve and destroy an ancient amulet that holds the key to controlling the balance of good and evil in the world. Trouble is, he didn’t count on a band of fifth graders (and one chain-smoking eighth grade greaser) who call themselves the Monster Squad, driving a stake through his plans.
The boys are a geeky group who wear “Stephen King Rules” T-shirts and debating important topics like, ‘Who is the coolest monster?’ and ‘Does The Wolf Man have the biggest nards?’
The Monster Squad, despite the salty language (the boys swear, no doubt courtesy of screenwriter Shane Black who also wrote more adult fare like Lethal Weapon), the refreshing lack of political correctness, the violence and the presence of nightmare-inducing monsters this is, above all, a kid’s film. The youngsters are the heroes and battle the monsters in ways that only kids can. A garlic pizza proves to be Dracula’s undoing, and in one classic scene The Wolf Man is felled by a well-placed kick to “the nards.”
Director Fred Dekker says he set out to make an exciting teen adventure movie, but may have been a bit ahead of his time. In the post–Buffy the Vampire Slayer world we live in the mix of kids, humor and horror seems normal, but in 1987 it didn’t click with audiences.
“I like to think that Monster Squad, in its own small way, says something about what it is to be a kid and to be afraid in the world,” says Dekker, “and discovering the need for heroism.”
“It took several years before the combination of young people in jeopardy in genre-horror situations like Buffy and Goosebumps and Harry Potter really became acceptable. The audience wasn’t ready for it in the ’80s. Sure there was The Lost Boys and The Goonies, but specifically the kind of monster-slayer approach wouldn’t be popular for another ten or fifteen years. So I like to think that we were a little ahead of the curve.”
SYNOPSIS: “Kraven the Hunter,” a new superhero flick now playing in theatres and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, follows the Marvel Comics character of the same name from his teen years to his emergence as the world’s most skillful and feared hunter. “Once you’re on his list, there’s only one way off.”
