Film Freak Central

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

*/****
starring Rosa Salazar, Mahershala Ali, Eiza González, Christoph Waltz
screenplay by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis, based on the manga series "Gunnm" by Yukito Kishiro
directed by Robert Rodriguez

by Walter Chaw There's one genuinely good thing about Alita: Battle Angel and it has to do with a cameo by Jeff Fahey as a guy who really likes dogs. It's good because it's good to like dogs, but it also reminds of Fahey's villain from Silverado, who has a pretty great line about a dog; and it's good to be reminded of Silverado. In other words, the one genuinely good thing about Alita is there's something in it that, on purpose, reminds me of a good movie. The rest of it is noisy juvenilia taking place in the Sharkboy and Lavagirl universe--a YA disaster featuring the usual mysterious girl with the secret past who turns out to be a super-soldier and yadda yadda yadda. Jesus, does it break no new ground. Scrapper-cum-cyborg-engineer-slash-bounty-hunter Ido (Christoph Waltz, desperately hoping QT picks up the phone again) discovers the "core" of Alita (voiced and mo-capped by Rosa Salazar), basically her Victorian locket-silhouette parts, in the junkyard of a floating city housing the elites of this world ("300 YEARS AFTER THE FALL") and immediately grafts it to his dead daughter's unused robot body, because in addition to the movie being structurally unambitious and curiously sexist, it's also defiantly ableist. "I made her fast little legs," Ido says, mournfully, and then we get a flashback to the dead little girl being punched out of her wheelchair by a cyborg Ido created to compete in a future-game called "Rollerball"--I mean, "Murderskates." I don't know. Who cares. It's on roller skates and cyborgs do it. Oh, and they kill a dog.

Cold Pursuit (2019)

**/****
starring Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Laura Dern
screenplay by Frank Baldwin, based on the novel Kraftidioten by Kim Fupz Aakeson
directed by Hans Petter Moland

by Walter Chaw Cold Pursuit features the umpteenth iteration of Liam Neeson's angry white-vengeance avatar and its familiarity drags down Hans Petter Moland's English-language remake of his own In Order of Disappearance, as does the baggage Neeson's carrying around after revealing on the film's press junket that he once stalked the streets of Belfast, hoping a black man would start a fight with him so he could bludgeon him to death. When a white man "confesses" to being racist without initiating a conversation about his path to understanding the innate bias that would have him instantly equate the deeds of one black man with the character of all black men--not to mention instantly turn a woman's victimization and tragedy into a story of his own crisis and redemption--what he's actually doing is providing a racist/sexist dog whistle for thousands of similarly-blinkered white men to say "but for the grace of God" and, "who among us?" Except I've never thought the actions of one minority spoke to the worth, for good or ill, of an entire race. Not even when it seems like every mass shooting in the United States--and there's a new one every couple of days--is carried off by a mediocre white man who's usually angry with women for somehow identifying that he's not worth shit. I have certainly briefly fantasized about killing specific individuals for wrongs done to me or my family, but I have also never carried a weapon to their door in hopes they'd open it. I want to think I represent the majority. When the hordes sharpen their pitchforks in defense of poor Liam Neeson, though, it's cause to wonder.

The Amityville Murders (2019)

**½/****
starring John Robinson, Chelsea Ricketts, Diane Franklin, Paul Ben-Victor
written and directed by Daniel Farrands

by Alice Stoehr The case of Ronald DeFeo Jr. is a gruesome true-crime tragedy. On November 13, 1974, the 23-year-old shot his parents and four younger siblings to death in their Long Island home. A year later, a jury found him guilty of the murders. He's been in prison ever since. The family's house beside the Amityville River now has pride of place in the annals of American haunting. George and Kathy Lutz's one-month stay there served as the basis for a novel, then a film franchise whose second entry, Amityville II: The Possession (1982), fictionalized the DeFeos as the Montellis, with their son in a demon's thrall. Decades and many more sequels and reboots later comes The Amityville Murders, which depicts the family under their real name in the last couple weeks of their lives. Though loosely based on actual events, it's less a docudrama than an extrapolation, sticking to the timeline of the murders while ascribing them to the supernatural. Writer-director Daniel Farrands, whose slasher bona fides include Halloween 6's screenplay and a 4-hour Elm Street doc, applies a measure of realism in his retelling. The opening credits feature a faux home movie that surveys a family barbecue. It introduces the teenage sisters and little brothers before turning to worn-out mom Louise (Diane Franklin), abrasive dad Ronnie (Paul Ben-Victor), and lastly Ronald Jr. (John Robinson)--known to all as "Butch"--sporting a shaggy beard. The DeFeos' home, from the very start, is emphatically middle-class and Italian-American. Recipes for cannoli and marinara are points of pride. Floral blouses and turtlenecks help set the film during the Ford administration, as do a wealth of cultural reference points: Cher, Angie Dickinson, The Exorcist, and the puppet show "New Zoo Revue".

Piercing (2019)

*½/****
starring Christopher Abbott, Mia Wasikowska, Laia Costa, Olivia Bond
written and directed by Nicolas Pesce

by Walter Chaw Opening with a vintage "Feature Presentation" bumper and sporting a couple of lengthy, giallo-inspired transitions scored by vintage needle-drops (Goblin's Tenebrae theme pops up at one point), Nicolas Pesce's Piercing is hamstrung by a peculiar lack of energy and the casting of Mia Wasikowska, who can be very good in a particular type of role (Damsel, Stoker) but is just as often miscast (Alice in Wonderland, Crimson Peak). Piercing wants to be a psychosexual pas de deux between broken people looking to quiet some demons and ends up holding no real surprises over too long a period. It does begin well, as schlubby Reed (Christopher Abbot) thinks about shoving a knitting needle into his baby, who later tells him, in a surprising baritone, to kill a hooker. If only the picture had carried through on that promise to be arthouse Larry Cohen rather than listless De Palma. Alas, once Reed packs his bags for a business trip, makes notes on how he's going to do the deed, and solicits high-priced escort Jackie (Wasikowska), it's clear that Piercing is going to be lugubrious at best and declining at worst. It's a tease. High-minded, arch, and, fatally, superior to the material.

Glass (2019)

***/****
starring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson
written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Glass is really only about two things, but they happen to be the two most urgent things we have to talk about in 2019. It's about gaslighting--how people in positions of power lie about plain fact until the truth becomes a political theory. And it's about a cabal of white elites interested in maintaining the status quo at any cost. Late in the picture, someone says they're not "for" right or wrong, just ten thousand more years of same. The correlation to entrenchment Democrats who are as driven by self-interest as entrenchment Republicans is spot-on and devastating. The reaction of the Establishment Left to someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez--who, after all, never says anything remotely controversial to the majority of Americans--reminds that Trump would never be President if it weren't for the complicity of an entire ossified system that is at the end also not interested in right or wrong, just same. This country is not red and blue, it's grey.

Close (2019) - Netflix

**/****
starring Noomi Rapace, Olivia Jewson, Abdellatif Chaouqi, Sophie Nélisse
written by Vicky Jewson, Rupert Whitaker
directed by Vicky Jewson

by Alice Stoehr "I've always been so fascinated by female bodyguards," Noomi Rapace recently told ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. "It's just a very intriguing, kind of hidden and secretive world." The erstwhile Girl with the Dragon Tattoo steps into that realm as a brooding close-protection officer in her new thriller Close. She stars as Sam Carlson, who's signed on to protect a spoiled heiress flying from England to Morocco. It's a short gig, in and out after one night at a compound high in the hills. But since it wouldn't be much of a movie otherwise, everything goes horribly wrong. Following a bloody siege and a mix-up with the authorities, Sam and her charge find themselves in a race for their lives. These circumstances force the pair to get a lot closer as they evade their attackers and investigate a deadly conspiracy.

First Blood (1982); Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985); Rambo III 4K (1988) - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

FIRST BLOOD
***½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy, Bill McKinney
screenplay by Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim and Sylvester Stallone, based on the novel by David Morrell
directed by Ted Kotcheff

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff
screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron
directed by George P. Cosmatos

RAMBO III
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Marc de Jonge, Kurtwood Smith
written by Sylvester Stallone and Sheldon Lettich
directed by Peter MacDonald

"Hate war, but love the American warrior."
-Lt. Gen. Hal Moore

by Bill Chambers I suppose I said it all in my previous review, but that was some sixteen years ago, and my feelings on the original Rambo trilogy have changed somewhat since then. I attribute this to age (if not maturity), evolving cultural attitudes, and 2008's Rambo (hereafter Rambo IV), Sylvester Stallone's powerful reclaiming of the character from the clutches of self-parody and blockbuster bloat. Rambo IV is essentially a stripped-down redux combining elements of the first three films; that there's nothing particularly innovative about its plot isn't, however, a commercial concession--what fans were really left to pander to, 20 years after Rambo III fizzled at the domestic box-office?--so much as it's part and parcel of the movie's thesis that Rambo's singular talent for warfare, a blessing and a curse, will never be wasted in a world as shitty as ours. No matter how often or how hard he tries to drop off the grid. There's a moment in Rambo IV where we hear his interior monologue as he forges himself a new blade: "War is in your blood," he says. "When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing." The tragic weight of these words ripples backwards across the franchise upon revisitation. For the lesser entries (the second and third films), I'd say it now counts among their redeeming qualities.

Halloween (2018) - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

***½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton
written by Jeff Fradley & Danny McBride & David Gordon Green
directed by David Gordon Green

by Walter Chaw In the middle of David Gordon Green's Halloween--the night before Halloween, as it happens--a family is having a dinner to celebrate something and to meet the new boyfriend of their teen daughter when grandma shows up, drunk and possibly having a panic attack. It's already not going well, seeing as how mom is lying about having invited her mother to this little do--and when it starts going to hell, she uses the discomfort as justification for not having done it. "See? This is what I've had to put up with my whole life." The grandmother sits down and apologizes. She's spotted the man who once attacked her for the first time in forty years, and the shock has brought everything flooding back. She starts crying and no one is consoling her. It's an unbelievably topical moment in a smart, topical film, this suggestion that the effects of assault last a lifetime. That the horror of helplessness and victimization never entirely goes away.

Phenomena (1985) - Blu-ray Disc

Phenomena (Integral Cut) ***/****
Phenomena (International Cut) ***/****
Creepers ***½/****
Image A Sound B+ Extras A+
starring Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Donald Pleasence
written by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini
directed by Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There's an extraordinary quality of dreams attached to Dario Argento's Phenomena. It's the mist that diffuses the light, the sudden foehn windstorms that whip up the trees at night, the logic that links scenes together by theme as opposed to narrative. It's a naturally beautiful film, its photography of "Swiss Transylvania" almost aggressively lush and somewhat at odds with Argento's reputation for extreme, some would say forced, artificiality. I would argue that the way nature is shot in this film is so hyperreal it's actually as surreal as the constructed mindscapes of his more obviously surreal work. Whatever the case, that's not the only expectation Phenomena upends, as, continuing from Tenebrae, the auteur seems to be working out what he's described as a terrible experience (the production of Inferno) and dealing with the fallout and expectations afterwards. Indeed, by all reports, Argento was unusually energized and enthusiastic about this project, and that invention, lawless and largely lacking in any sort of guardrails, is obvious and bracing--even as he, at this point in his career, relies perhaps overmuch on recycling his greatest hits. Still, early on, he has a young woman stand in a classroom to declare "screw the past," which plays as something of a punk mission statement for the singular Phenomena.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Note: all framegrabs were sourced from the 4K UHD disc

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke & Stanley Kubrick, based on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel"
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Bryant Frazer In 1965, film director Stanley Kubrick and science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke embarked on a remarkable collaboration. Taking an old Clarke short story as their starting point, the duo rewrote it and dramatically expanded its scope, drafting the blueprint for a film to be directed by Kubrick as well as for a novel to be scripted by Clarke. In Clarke's original story, "The Sentinel", astronauts found an ancient artifact on the moon that functioned as a radio beacon, transmitting signals into outer space. The expanded film treatment was many times more ambitious, beginning in the deep pre-history of human evolution and climaxing with a futuristic journey to Jupiter, where one man confronts an unseen alien intelligence--and undergoes transformation and rebirth. More than a science-fiction thriller or space-bound adventure movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a meditation on Man's place in the universe that mounts a convincing argument that the sum total of human knowledge gathered over the millennia is insignificant, at best, when compared to the vast mysteries of the greater universe. That sense of scale is demonstrated, vividly, in a climactic sequence that uses colour and sound to depict a wild journey into--a distant realm? Another dimension? A new plane of human existence?

"The 50 Best Films of 2018" by Walter Chaw

2018 was a traumatic year for me that should turn out to be a good year in hindsight. I read something by a career counsellor who told clients thinking about a change to stop thinking and quit their job. He said you can't know what you can do until you stop doing what you're doing. I've spent the past six months doing things I would never have had the time or headspace for had I not walked off a ledge. It's not good for the heart but it's good for the soul. I've finished a couple of large writing projects and positioned myself to be available for a handful of genuinely interesting opportunities. I'm evolving. It's a daily thing. It's a work of a lifetime. This year, I have watched my friends achieve extraordinary things with their art and it's filled me with joy, not to mention inspiration. I don't know what they see in me in return, but I hope to justify their faith in 2019. I wouldn't have been able to be rash without the strength of my family and the support of my friends. A couple--you guys know who you are--somehow knew when to reach out and did with the right encouragement in what felt like the nick of time.

A Year-End ICYMI (12/21/18)

Quick links to our reviews of current releases for those playing catch-up over the holidays. Thanks for reading us, folks.

• Destroyer
• Cold War
• Aquaman
• If Beale Street Could Talk
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Shoplifters
• The Favourite
• Roma
• The New Romantic
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
• Widows
• Transit
• The Front Runner
• Bodied
• Boy Erased
• Burning
• Suspiria
• Bohemian Rhapsody
• Can You Ever Forgive Me?
• First Man
• A Star is Born

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

****/****
starring KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Colman Domingo, Regina King
screenplay by Barry Jenkins, based on the book by James Baldwin
directed by Barry Jenkins

by Walter Chaw Barry Jenkins's If Beale Street Could Talk evokes Wallace Stevens's "The Snowman" and its idea of nothing beholding the nothing that is there and the nothing that isn't. It is all of the delirious, sublime rapture of falling in love; and it is all of the terrible fear of losing love to a capricious world that's rooting against you and rooting hard. The lips that would kiss are the same that form prayers to broken stones. If Beale Street Could Talk is about race and it's about sex--gender, somewhat, but more about how sex is politicized, used as a verb and an adjective, and there in the touch a sculptor gives his creation or lips give a cigarette. It's in the words that lovers old and new use together and it's in the sultry twilight where you can see the shape of your possible futures outlined as shadows against the exhaustion of another day. Baldwin's literature is seduction. His characters urge one another to listen and to use care when speaking. Words have meaning in Baldwin's world because in their interaction between the speaker and the listener, that's sex, too. He offers that there's harmony, even beauty, in the world, then shows the world in its bitterness and ugliness and challenges you to see it for yourself. I usually can't. Barry Jenkins, judging by the evidence of his films, can. It makes this adaptation by Jenkins of Baldwin's novel of the same name something a little like magic--you know, a little like sex.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro, Kyle MacLachlan
screenplay by Eric Kripke, based on the novel by John Bellairs
directed by Eli Roth

by Bryant Frazer What happens when Hollywood's foremost torture-porn impresario channels his inner child and goes into business with Amblin Entertainment as a director-for-hire on a kid-friendly adaptation of a young-adult thriller from the early-1970s? Well, you get something like Eli Roth's The House with a Clock in Its Walls--nobody's idea of an innovative masterpiece, but at least an unpretentious, lavishly-designed, and mischievously-executed spookshow. Adapted by "Supernatural" creator Eric Kripke from a novel written by John Bellairs and illustrated by none other than Edward Gorey, The House with a Clock in Its Walls is one of those sad-orphan-is-sent-away-to-live-with-a-distant-relative yarns that begins with a young boy's arrival in an unfamiliar city. Naturally, he becomes privy to magical goings-on that open a window on the wider, more dangerous world before him.