Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on July 6th, 2017
“There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little.”
This devastatingly simple yet endlessly revealing quote by poet Charles Bukowski appears at the start of Money, a lean, mean, low-budget thriller filled with well-to-do characters who nevertheless feel the need to steal millions of dollars. To be clear, there are more than two things wrong with Money — particularly in the movie's latter half, after the promising set-up starts to unravel — but the film still works as a brisk and entertaining game of cat-and-mouse mice.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 18th, 2017
“Sometimes...if there's too many white people, I get nervous.”
Some of the very best horror films/psychological thrillers succeed by taking a relatable source of anxiety and cranking it to 11. For example, The Exorcist can be viewed as the worst-case scenario for anyone suffering a crisis of faith, while The Shining taps into the madness of being cooped up with your family for too long. Get Out works because it uses the nerve-wracking experience of meeting your significant other's parents for the first time as a jumping-off point to tell a subversive, insightful, and entertaining story that mashes together Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and The Stepford Wives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on September 7th, 2016
“Anyone can betray anyone.”
The word “spy” tends to conjure images of international intrigue and attractive people getting into exotic adventures. But don't blame John le Carre. Despite being one of the most successful and prolific spy novelists of the past century, le Carre's stories tend to be aggressively un-sexy, morally murky tales that focus on the psychological toll of intelligence work. That's why it's interesting to find that The Night Manager — a British miniseries that also aired on AMC — manages to straddle both sides of the spy fiction fence.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on August 7th, 2016
The setup for Viral is promising enough. Throughout the early part of the film, we get subtle yet effective hints at the escalating catastrophe that is about to infect the story. (We hear about someone's mom coughing uncontrollably, plus a video of a bloody, unexplained elevator attack goes, well, “viral.”) So it's a shame that this sci-fi/horror thriller is limited by both its micro-budget and (more importantly) a filmmaking team that only sporadically delivers the goods.
Teenage sisters Emma (Sofia Black-D'Elia) and Stacey (Analeigh Tipton) have recently moved to a town called Shadow Canyon. Emma is the withdrawn, serious-minded sister who has a crush on a neighbor/classmate named Evan (Travis Tope). Meanwhile, Stacey is the rebellious black sheep in the family. (You can tell she's a rebel because of the purple streak in her hair.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 12th, 2016
There's a grand, lurid tradition of cinematic saps who think with the wrong head and get themselves in a heap of trouble. Misconduct tries to tap into that spirit while also mimicking none other than Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma (who was pretty much mimicking Hitchcock himself). Those are some lofty goals, but — at least on paper — Misconduct has some heavy hitters on hand to help achieve them. Unfortunately, this legal thriller is guilty of sloppy, nonsensical storytelling and largely wasting the talents of a pair of screen legends.
Ben Cahill (Josh Duhamel) is an ambitious, morally flexible lawyer who works long hours, which has put a strain on his relationship with wife Charlotte (Alice Eve). Ben perks up when college girlfriend Emily (Malin Akerman) contacts him out of the blue wanting to get together. Turns out Emily works for/is involved with pharmaceutical magnate Arthur Denning (Anthony Hopkins), who is currently in the news due to some unethical drug trials. Emily claims to have evidence of Denning's wrongdoing, so Ben — recognizing an opportunity to jumpstart his career — offers his lawyerly services with the hopes of impressing senior partner Charles Abrams (Al Pacino).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 8th, 2016
“Look at where the world is because of solitary dudes going mental in the desert.”
Depressed, deplorable artist Tom heads to the Mojave Desert, where he unexpectedly meets his match in crazed, charismatic drifter Jack. The fact that their tense encounter results in a death is one of the least surprising things about Mojave. What initially appears to be a cat-and-mouse game set in the desert turns out to be an interesting, uneven meditation on perception vs. reality that spills over into the vapid world of Hollywood.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 9th, 2016
“They are hard to get...”
Naturally, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings — the Soviet spies next door at the center of FX’s The Americans — have proven to be exceedingly elusive. Over the course of three seasons and 39 episodes, they’ve dodged numerous close calls from the federal government, enemy agents, and from within their own household. But while various parties have tried to catch the main characters in the act, the thing that makes The Americans one of the very best shows on TV is that it’s actually incredibly easy to “get” Elizabeth and Philip; their efforts to keep their (unconventional) family together are universal.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 11th, 2016
A detective appears to be trapped between heaven and hell in Convergence, which is not all that different from the way I felt watching this supernatural thriller. On one hand, I was impressed by some of the mood and unsettling imagery established by writer/director Drew Hall; the film is mostly set in an abandoned hospital, which inspires even more dread than spending time in a fully functional one. Then again, there are also a lot of nonsense characters and story elements here that don't get a satisfying payoff, making Convergence an occasionally confounding and hellacious slog.
The story opens in 1999 with a series of terrorist bombings targeting clinics in Atlanta. Detective Ben Walls (Clayne Crawford) is supposed to be enjoying a day off with his wife Hannah (Alysia Ochse) and new baby when he is called in by his captain (Mykelti Williamson) to investigate the latest bombing. But faster than Det. Walls can say, “I'm not even supposed to be here today” he and a few others are rocked by the bomber's latest explosion. The next thing Det. Walls knows, he is in an eerily empty hospital. Captain Miller is there too, but he insists that they can't leave.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on January 4th, 2016
At this point, the most shocking M. Night Shyamalan-related twist would be for the director to make a movie that people actually enjoyed. (The “M.” stands for “maligned,” right?) Hopes weren't exactly high when it was announced Shyamalan — who was once fated to become either “the next Hitchcock” or “the next Spielberg” — would be dabbling in the fading found footage genre. So imagine my surprise to find that The Visit — a broad, nutty mix of comedy and horror — is the director's loosest, most playful effort since Signs. It's also his first (subjectively) non-terrible flick in about a decade.
We meet a harried single Mom (Kathryn Hahn) as she prepares to send her two children on a week-long trip to meet her estranged parents. Becca (Olivia DeJonge) is a 15-year-old aspiring filmmaker who decides to document the experience of meeting her grandparents on camera; she also wants to find out the reason Mom had a falling out with them. Tyler (Ex Oxenbould) is a 13-year-old freestyle-rapping, germophobic goofball who enjoys undercutting his older sister's self-seriousness. The pair take a train to the rural Pennsylvania town where their mother grew up and are met at the station by Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), who take the kids back to their dilapidated farmhouse.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 4th, 2016
“This road is like a magnet for serial killers.”
There's a difference between paying tribute and ripping somebody off. Wrecker — a high-speed, low-budget actioner — bills itself as “an homage to road classics like Duel.” Unfortunately, that's far from the only nod to Steven Spielberg's 1971 thriller. Wrecker rehashes every significant story beat from Duel, except with a lot less filmmaking skill and a pair of infinitely more annoying protagonists.
