Borderlands

My View:  Borderlands  (2024)  PG-13    Borderlands tells the tale of Lilith (Cate Blanchett), an infamous bounty hunter who has reluctantly returned to her home planet, Pandora, to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), the universe’s most powerful villain. Lilith recruits a ragtag team to find the missing daughter, who might be the key to saving the universe. What drunken bet did Cate Blanchett make to be forced into making this movie? I can see why Kevin Hart would do it. He gets to be a hero in a sci-fi film, and it was probably a week’s worth of filming for Jamie Lee to do. Blanchett does give it her all, and it’s fun for a while to see her play the tough, spit-in-their-face bounty hunter with the red hair and the fun gunslinger outfit. She gives off her usual glow of charisma, which helps give the film some energy, but she’s just about the only one, as some of the cast seem to think they are doing a walk-through and not actually filming. The delivery of Edgar Ramirez's lines as Atlas, the film's bad guy, was so bad that fellow moviegoers at my theater laughed every time he spoke. I guess the film aspires to be a throwback to those late 70s/early 80s sci-fi movies that came out after Star Wars was a hit. Those films were often stupid and the special effects were bad, but they were fun to watch. Borderlands is not cheesy enough to be fun; instead, it’s just dull with a bunch of characters thrown together from the video game. I am guessing gamers who have played the game will be disappointed. Ariana Greenblatt, as Tiny Tina, the daughter of Atlas, tries to bring Cate some help as a pixie girl with a thing for bombs, but it doesn’t help. I don’t know; maybe this will become a campy cult film like Tank Girl or Buckaroo Banzai, but I think it will be forgotten like those 70s knockoffs of Star Wars. And by the way, Jack Black, as the voice of the sidekick robot Claptrap, has to be one of the most annoying characters in film since a certain Star Wars character that shall remain nameless. After the main credits, there is a brief bonus scene that features Claptrap, but it's not worth staying for. But then again, neither is the rest of the film.  My Rating: You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again  Borderlands Website  Now Playing in theaters. 

My View:  It Ends With Us  (2024)  PG-14   It Ends with Us tells the story of Lily (Blake Lively), who has overcome a traumatic childhood and has moved to Boston to open her flower shop. There, she meets the man of her dreams, a neurosurgeon, Ryle (Justin Baldoni), and falls in love. However, she starts to see a pattern in Kyle that brings up the mistakes of her childhood. Then Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), Lily’s first love, reenters her life, and Lily must rely on her strength to make tough decisions. Much was made online when the casting of this film was announced because the book’s characters were much younger than leads Lively and Baldoni. However, the author of the best-selling book, Colleen Hoover, wanted to escape the YA label for the movie and make the characters older. Good idea, since there are very few 28-year-olds (how old Ryle is in the book) that are neurosurgeons about to do a new technique in surgery. The film does an interesting thing, allowing us to see events through Lily’s eyes, and when things go slightly wrong (in her eyes) with Ryle, she doesn’t remember how serious those incidents were. First, the good: Blake Lively, as expected, is terrific as Lily, and she gives us a character that we instantly fall in love with. She deserves much better than the plot or the dialogue gives her. As Lily’s best friend, Jenny Slate brings light and happiness to every scene she is in, stealing each scene and our hearts. The problem in this film is twofold. One is Justin Baldoni as Ryle. Baldoni is not much more than a lot of abs. He just doesn’t have the star power or charisma for us to think from the start that Ryle is a match for Lily. Then, we don’t get enough of Atlas as an adult to see the contrast between the two loves of Lily’s life. And don’t get me started on where the heck do all these people (excluding Ryle) get their money. Lily has more designer costume changes than a Taylor Swift concert. And both Atlas and Lily are able to open their own businesses in a big city like Boston and almost instantly become a hit. The film tries to address violence and how it can follow people from their childhood into adulthood, which is great, but it’s done in such a clumsy way that we never get that feeling at the end that justice has been served. It’s only moved on.  My Rating: Bargain Matinee  It Ends with Us Website  Now Playing in theaters. 

My View:  Cuckoo  (2024)  R  In Cuckoo, Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) is seventeen and is mad at the world after her mother died and her father remarried. She and her family move into a resort, where Gretchen’s father (Marton Csókás) and stepmother (Mila Lieu) have been hired to design a new resort to replace the aging one. Gretchen takes a job as a receptionist at the resort, and strange things start happening. It’s a job that just might be Gretchen’s last. Hunter Schafer is brilliant and fun to watch in this weird horror film that takes you down a road you didn’t know you wanted to be on. While playing the angry teen, Schafer gives us a reason to root for her early on and she doesn’t disappoint when the action scenes start. Schafer plays the outcast, having to join her dad’s new family because her mother has died. What makes it worse is dad has a new job at a really creepy European resort where you aren’t supposed to go out after 10 pm, and people throw up all the time. Add in the resort owner, Herr Konig (played with a great accent by Dan Stevens), who is just as creepy as his resort, touching everyone too long and always talking about science in a way that just seems personal. Gretchen takes the job at the resort to make money so she can return to her home in America. Then things get weird, with people throwing up in the lobby, then disappearing, and Herr Konig keeps warning Gretchen not to go out by herself after 10 pm. The film has some terrifying moments, with most of the scares building up to create tension that doesn’t let up. When things start going off the rails, Gretchen decides to find out what the hell is going on, and we know when she does, it is going to be off-the-charts bizarre. Cuckoo is a film you want to keep watching just to hopefully figure out what the heck is happening at this ‘cuckoo’ resort.  My Rating: Full Price  Cuckoo Website  Now playing in theaters. 

My View:  The Instigators  (2024)  R   In The Instigators, two robbers (Matt Damon, Casey Affleck) are part of a heist that goes bad. With the assistance of one of their therapists (Hong Chau), they go on the run. To put it simply, they have a lot of problems to work out. The Instigators is a heist movie where things keep going wrong. It’s supposed to be a fun romp, but like Matt Damon’s character Rory, who won’t laugh at any of Cobby’s (Casey Affleck) jokes, we also never get it. The film feels like Casey Affleck, who co-wrote the film, wanted to do a buddy pic but didn’t want to be a buddy to anybody. The Instigators is a film that works hard at trying to be clever, but it never is, as it uses car chases and blowing up buildings to try and build excitement, but we never get that feeling that the stakes are very high, especially when they ‘kidnap’ Dr. Rivera (Hong Chau), a character that is there to add humor and meaning to the movie but instead adds nothing but another person to look like they aren’t having any fun making this film. This may be one of Matt Damon’s worst performances, but it’s hard to tell if he is even in this film; his character is so dull. The ending is as unbelievable as the rest of the film and as just as unexciting and humorless as the rest of the film.  My Rating: Cable  The Instigators Info Now playing on Apple TV+

Indiefest:  Sing Sing  (2023)  R  I am rerunning this review from July 12th because the film is finally releasing wider and it’s that good! Devine G (Colman Domingo), a man in jail for a crime he did not commit, survives by acting in a theater group with other inmates. This is a powerful and emotional film about a group of men in a hopeless situation who find comfort and power in the theater. Led by an incredibly moving performance by Colman Domingo, we see how inspired the men are to find an outlet for their emotions and thoughts. The cast is made up mostly of former convicts who were in the theater program. Because of the casting, we see how moving and powerful acting is to let the men get in touch with their feelings and emotions in a system that doesn’t always allow you to do so. We get to see the men start the process of finding a play, in this case, written for them, that melds Shakespeare with modern spoken word to significant effect. I was struck by how much this cast made us feel what they were going through, giving us an inside look at a world we can only imagine. Sing Sing is a film about healing, no matter what you have done in the past, and using the power of theater and acting to find that way.   My Rating: I Would Pay to See it Again  Sing Sing Website   Now playing in theaters.

Indiefest: Coup!  (2023)  Coup! takes place during the 1918 influenza epidemic, when a new cook named Floyd Monk (Peter Sarsgaard) comes to work for the family of wealthy journalist Jay (Billy Magnussen) and his socialite wife Julie (Gadon) at their family estate on an island. It’s a hiring that will turn the family’s idyllic life upside down. The film is set during the 1918 influenza epidemic but the film certainly has COVID overtones as a family has camped out in a lush estate on an island in what they hope is isolation to wait out the flu epidemic. In walks Floyd Monk, who we know from the movie’s first few scenes, isn’t really Mr. Monk, but someone who has taken the late Mr. Monk’s identity. Right from the first appearance on the island, the now Mr. Monk, played by the wonderful Peter Sarsgarrd, starts causing trouble. From catching the eye of the socialite wife to pushing back at how the family treats the staff, Mr. Monk starts up the fire on Jay, the wealthy journalist who prides himself on being a voice for the working man. Peter Sarsgarrd is the reason to see this film because he has a blast as Mr. Monk, a man who enjoys pushing boundaries. The phrase ‘give someone an itch and they’ll take a mile’ fits Mr. Monk. He’s like the somewhat cool guy in the bar who is fun to hang around for an hour or two, but don’t invite him to do anything else because he will take every advantage of you. Billy Magnussen is fun as the put-upon head of the household, Jay, who thinks he is smarter than everyone else, but Mr. Monk runs rings around him, taking advantage of every little slip Jay makes. Coup! is a movie about class and how it sometimes breeds hypocrisy. So take a sip of the flask of Jay’s whiskey that Mr. Monk hands you and join him on a ride to see who actually runs the household. It may not last, but it’s going to be fun for a while.  My Rating: Full Price   Coup! Website  Now playing in theaters. 

My View:  Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes  (2024)  TV-MA  The documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes uses newly discovered interviews with Elizabeth Taylor to give us an inside look at a star who fascinated a world long before the internet and social media. In interviews given to a writer for a book that was never published and recordings that Liz did with friends and husbands, we follow Elizabeth’s path from child star to the highest-paid actor of her time. It’s a fascinating and insightful look at a woman who wasn’t always happy with her life, loves, and career. From being forced by the MGM studio to do movies, she felt didn’t show off her talent and only exploited her looks, Elizabeth wanted to be out on her own but also continually desired to be married. That conflict shows up time after time as she marries the wrong man almost every time. From watching the film, I feel that Mike Todd, the movie producer, was the only man who could have stayed married to Liz and made her happy. Unfortunately, he died in a plane crash, and her next husband, the sleazy singer Eddie Fisher, moved in. The film does a great job of giving us an inside look at the disastrous making of Cleopatra and the romance of Liz and Richard Burton. And she does talk about her first Academy Award win for Butterfield 8, which she felt was not deserved. That she only got the award (for a film she calls shit many times) because she almost died. The Lost Tapes is a wonderful celebration of a woman who captivated a world not only with her beauty and talent but also with her kindness and compassion. My Rating: Full Price  The Lost Tapes Website Now playing on Max.

Indiefest:  Didi (2024)  R  In 2008, during the last month of summer, before he starts high school, Chris (Izaac Wang), a thirteen-year-old at the horror of his mother (Joan Chen), is constantly shooting videos and trying to make friends instead of studying. He is a typical American boy, learning to be a teenager while trying not to disappoint his Taiwanese family. This is a touching, heartfelt coming-of-age film about a teen trying to find something, anything that he is good at because it seems all he does is disappoint his family. Chris is called Wang by his buddies and Didi by his family, but when he meets some older skating guys, he tells them his name is Chris. Chris decides to make his mark by being a skateboard filmmaker and googles everything he can on the subject. He tells a group of skaters that he is a filmmaker and will create videos for them. Then runs home and googles how to do it. Chris is surrounded by women in his family (his father is overseas), and his mother Chungsing, played by the fabulous Joan Chen, is holding down the fort. He has an older sister who is getting ready to go to college and is constantly at war with Chris. And then there is the opinionated grandmother (his father’s mother) who constantly tells the family what to do and puts down Chungsing every chance she gets. Chris has a crush on a girl named Madi, who he secretly stalks until one day, it turns out she might be interested in him. Chris tries what he thinks is the right thing, but often, he misjudges his audience or himself. In the end, Chris’s plans come crashing down, and he discovers that life can’t be learned on the internet. Didi is a wonderful film, full of laughs and a few heartbreaks, just like a thirteen-year-old kid’s life should be.  My Rating: Full Price  Didi Website  Now playing in theaters.

Forgotten Film:  Regeneration (also known as Behind the Lines) (1997) R  The story of soldiers from WWI who have been sent to a special asylum for emotional troubles. Two of the soldiers sent there are Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bruce) and Siegfried (James Wilby), two of England’s most important WW1 poets. Sassoon has been sent there after winning a medal for bravery, wrote a document citing his objections to war, which caused a stir when it was read in the halls of Parliament. He was given the choice of court-martial or treatment. The soldiers are under the treatment of Dr. William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce), who slowly comes to understand that the road to recovery is long, some of which may never recover from the horrors that they saw. The film shows the lives that are ruined by war and how hard it is to get back to the everyday world when you have experienced war. It’s a thoughtful and intense movie that has some outstanding performances.  My Rating: Full Price   Regeneration Info  The film is available on most streaming services under the title Behind the Lines.

Weird Credits:  From the credits of Cuckoo: Mood Storyboard 

Coming Soon to a Screen Near You: Speak No Evil  (2024)  R    A married couple, Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise Dalton Mackenzie Davis) and their young daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler), on vacation, meet another couple (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi), along with their daughter and son. A friendship is developed, and the other family invites the Daltons to stay at their country home for the weekend. Their stay is fun at the start, then the hosts’ behavior soon turns sinister as dark secrets are exposed and the family realizes that they will be lucky to get out alive. The film is a remake of a Dutch movie of the same name and is already causing a stir among horror/suspense fans. The film comes out in theaters on Sept. 13, 2024.  Speak No Evil Website

Until Next Time

IF

My View:  IF  (2024)  PG  Bea (Cailey Fleming) has gone through some tough times but has discovered a secret power: She can see everyone’s imaginary friends. With help from Cal (Ryan Reynolds), Bea embarks on a magical journey to reconnect forgotten ‘IFs’ with their long-lost kids. I was excited for this film. John Krasinski has given us a funny family film in The Hollars (2016), a great horror film in A Quiet Place (2018), and a good, if not quite great, follow-up film in A Quiet Place Part II (2020). So I had high hopes for this film, especially hearing that he had lined up a stellar voice cast for the Imaginary Friends, including Steve Carell, Louis Gossett Jr., Phoebe Waller-Bridge, George Clooney, Awkwafina, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, and more. Unfortunately, a stellar cast can’t overcome a script that doesn’t know who its audience is and a cast of animated characters that no kid in his right mind would have as an imaginary friend. IF is a film that young kids will be bored with, and the only IF character they will enjoy is Blue, a giant fuzzy purple muppet-like monster voiced by Steve Carell. Pre-teen girls may enjoy this film since the main character is Bea (played by Cailey Fleming), a twelve-year-old who has to have grown up fast, losing her mother to cancer and now her father (played by John Krasinski) and is about to go in for heart surgery. So Bea starts seeing the imaginary friends and decides to help Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who lives in her grandmother’s apartment building, find the IF gang, their long-lost kids who have grown up and forgotten them. First, it’s a little creepy that a twelve-year-old is hanging out with a grown man who doesn’t seem to have a job and sees the same IF characters she does. Then half of the IF characters are just strange, like an ice cube in a glass of water or a bubble that pops when excited. What kid would come up with these as their imaginary friends? If you hoped this would be a Toy Story or The Lego Movie, this isn’t it. Despite a spirited performance by Cailey Fleming, including a rousing musical number to a Tina Turner classic, the film falls flat and never hits the heartstrings as it should. IF isn’t a bad film, just disappointing. Be sure to stay through the credits for a lovely tribute to the late Louis Gossett Jr.  My Rating: Bargain Matinee IF Website Now playing in theatres. 

My View:  Back to Black  (2024)  R  Back to Black tells the story of the life and music of Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela), who went from unknown singer to Grammy-winning best-selling artist. Amy burned bright, but that light died much too soon. I was not a fan of Amy Winehouse until I saw the Oscar-winning documentary Amy, and then I fell in love with Amy and her music. Now we get a bio-pic on her life, told from Amy’s point of view. I will say that Marisa Abela does a fantastic job of singing Amy’s songs, though I thought her midrange was a little off, but no one can do vocals like Amy could. We see why Amy got involved with Blake (played by Jack O’Connell), that man that she fell madly in love with and is the person who got Amy into drugs (though she was already an alcoholic by the time she met him). The film shows how thunderstruck she was by Blake and how he was the love of her life (as evident in her many songs about their relationship). I had trouble with how the film showed Amy’s relationship with her father (played by Eddie Marsan). The film whitewashes their relationship and shows how he was her hero and great supporter, which is not something I remember from the documentary about her life. Marisa Abela does an admirable job of portraying Amy. Still, it’s hard to capture the stage presence and charisma of Amy, and I never felt the power that Amy Winehouse had over her audience through her voice and mannerisms. I was heartbroken by the end of the documentary, but I didn’t have that same feeling at the end of this film. I loved the music but wanted more from this film, never connecting with the character that Abela was performing. Unlike Amy’s songs, this film felt lacking in any connection with the audience. And that’s too bad because Amy deserves more.    My Rating: Bargain Matinee  Back to Black Website  Now playing in theaters.

My View:  The Strangers: Chapter 1  (2024)  R  The Strangers: Chapter 1 takes place when Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and her boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), are on a road trip in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, their car breaks down, forcing them to spend the night in an isolated Airbnb. Maya and Ryan are about to be visited by three masked strangers. This is a remake of the 2008 film The Strangers, written and directed by Bryan Bertino, with Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler starring. The original was a very cool and scary horror film that made horror fans squeal with delight as they were scared out of their seats. Unfortunately, this version isn’t. One of the great things about the first film was that there were a lot of scares, which were the kind that you questioned if you saw that or not. Not so in this film, which bases all its scares on ‘jump out of the dark scares’ that make the film feel very repetitive. The original was just that, original. This ‘Chapter 1’ just feels like a badly done copy. If you do make it to the end, stay through the first part of credits for a bonus scene that sets up ‘Chapter 2.’   My Rating: Cable  The Strangers: Chapter 1 Website  Now playing in theaters. 

Indiefest:  Power  (2024)  R  The documentary Power explores policing in modern American society, as its grown, originally to contain threats to social order to exploding in scope and scale. I saw this film at the 2024 Atlanta Film Festival and was riveted by a film that commands your attention from the start and brings up points that make you sad and infuriated simultaneously. This is a history lesson on how we have let police departments become militarized and given almost complete carte blanche to do anything they want, including trample on people’s rights. This is a documentary that raises a lot of questions that are direct from the headlines of today’s papers, including the right to protest without the threat of violence by police. To the film’s credit, it brings in a lot of experts to discuss and give us background into both the history of police departments and how they are set up today. This is a film that doesn’t give answers but opens the door to invite discussion and challenge what is happening in today’s America.   My Rating: Full Price  Power Website  Now playing on the Netflix platform.

Sorry I Missed it (A film that has been out a while, and I’m just now seeing it):  Downtown Owl  (2023) R  Julia (Lily Rabe) moves from a big city to Owl, North Dakota, in 1984 to teach high school for just a semester while her husband is finishing up his doctorate. The town she has moved to would make any soap opera on TV weep with shame. The reason to see this film is Lily Rabe, as the woman who has moved to nowhere and must start her life over again, surrounded by people who know everyone’s business. Rabe is hilarious as a fish out of water, unhappy in her life and wanting more, but will this small town give her what she craves? The film is aided by an outstanding supporting cast, including Vanessa Hudgens as the town floozy who is stuck re-living her high school memories, Henry Golding as a cowboy that Julia develops a crush on, Finn Wittrock as the high school football coach who is having an affair with one of his students and Ed Harris as the one person in town who seems sane. The film meanders a bit in the middle and sometimes tries a little too hard at being strange, but the film has a sweet and funny core that makes you want to root for Julia. By the way, the film has a wonderful music track that includes a few of my favorite Elvis Costello songs.  My Rating: Bargain Matinee  Downtown Owl Info  Now available for rent on streaming services.

Forgotten Film: Alamo Bay  (1985) R  A fishing community on the Gulf of Mexico is torn when Vietnamese immigrants move into the area and begin fishing for shrimp, threatening the local fishermen’s way of life with the possibility of overfishing and taking away their livelihood. One of the leaders of the Texas fishermen is Shang (Ed Harris), a troubled Vietnam vet who is barely hanging on. Shang has an unhappy home life and is having an affair with Glory (Amy Madigan). To complicate things further, Glory’s father is the one who is supplying the boats to the newcomers. Directed by Louis Malle (Pretty Baby, Atlantic City) and written by Alice Arlen (Silkwood), the film works when it focuses on the relationship between Glory and Shang, buoyed by outstanding performances by Harris and Madigan. The film begins to fall apart a bit near the end when the KKK comes to town, and the ending is disappointing. But it’s worth a watch to see two actors work together so well on the screen.   My Rating: Bargain Matinee  Alamo Bay Info  Now available to rent on streaming services.

Weird Credits: From the credits of IF:  Lens Mapping Grip Operator

Coming Soon to a Screen Near You:  It Ends With Us  (2024)  R  Lily (Blake Lively) has overcome a traumatic childhood and has moved to Boston to open her flower shop. There, she meets the man of her dreams, a neurosurgeon, Kyle (Justin Baldoni), and falls in love. However, she starts seeing a pattern in Kyle that brings up the mistakes of her childhood. Then Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), Lily’s first love, reenters her life and Lily will have to rely on her own strength to make some tough decisions. Based on the best-selling book by Colleen Hoover and starring Blake Lively, this could be a hit.  It Ends with Us Website  The film is scheduled to be released in early August.