Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 19th, 2015
If nothing else, The Pyramid has an intriguing premise. A father-daughter archaeologist team discovers an unusual, three-sided pyramid buried 600 feet underground that might even predate the ancient Egyptians. Essentially, this is Ancient Aliens as a found-footage horror film. Yes…unfortunately, I said “found footage,” a cinematic device that now feels even more decrepit than your garden variety mummy. So while the film’s opening act probably got people like this guy extremely excited, the movie falls apart the deeper the characters descend into the titular pyramid.
Miles Holden (Denis O’Hare) is a patient, old-school archaeologist, while his daughter Nora (Ashley Hinshaw) is more excitable and has been quicker to embrace new tools like satellite technology in her work. Together, they have made what is potentially the find of the century: an ancient pyramid buried deep beneath the desert in Egypt. A documentary film crew — journalist Sunni (Crista Nicola) and camera guy Fitzie (James Buckley) — arrives to capture the Holdens’ discovery.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on May 8th, 2015
“Too much time alone, you get stuck up in your head. Your brain becomes a maze.”
The most important thing you need to know about Apparition is that it’s not a horror movie. (The second most important thing you should know is that this is a different film from The Apparition, which is one of the worst movies I’ve seen during my three-year stint writing for this site.) Yes, there’s a haunted house, cranky spirits, and an abnormally high number of jump scares. But at its heart, this low-budget thriller is a drama about dealing with the grief of losing a loved one.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2015
“A vigilante is simply somebody who violates the law in order to punish a criminal for what they believe is right, for what they believe is justice.”
It’s easy to understand the appeal of big screen vigilante justice. We’ve all gotten tangled up in red tape, which is why it’s so gratifying to watch somebody tear through it. (And often spray some red elsewhere.) John Doe: Vigilante ends up being as ludicrous as any of the 17 Death Wish movies, but it also goes beyond putting the entire blame on “the system.” There are some interesting ideas at play here, including the notion that there’s a little Vigilante in all of us.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 23rd, 2015
The Norwegian oil boom of the early 1980s isn’t the most obvious setting for a thriller, but director Erik Skjoldbjærg manages to squeeze plenty of intrigue out of what seems like a pretty dry subject. Of course, Pioneer could never be described as “dry” in the literal sense since the film follows a group of commercial divers in Norway as they try to establish the country’s first petroleum pipeline 500 meters underwater.
Petter (Aksel Hennie) is a brash professional diver obsessed with reaching the bottom of the Norwegian Sea. Norway has partnered with American company Deep Sea Diving to lay the country’s first oil pipeline. (Avatar’s Stephen Lang plays an American supervisor.) Petter and his more family-oriented brother Knut (Andre Eriksen) are part of the group of divers, which also includes a jealous American rival (Wes Bentley). The movie opens with a hallucinatory training exercise that sets the film’s hazy tone.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 16th, 2015
“2,000 years ago, the Bible prophesied the return of Christ...but only after God inflicts seven years of torment on the world to test the faith of mankind.”
It's not quite seven years long, but this two-part, three-hour TV movie — History's latest foray into original filmmaking — is likely to test the faith (and patience) of anyone who watches it. Revelation: The End of Days is intentionally less glossy than previous network offerings like Bonnie & Clyde and Houdini because it takes a ground-level look at the apocalypse. But in scaling back to achieve that aesthetic, the result is both frustrating and amateurish.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 12th, 2015
As far as I’m concerned, a filmmaker has to work pretty hard to screw up a poker game. (And for the record, I feel the same way about cinematic sniper fights and train heists.) It’s an inherently high-stakes situation that is both familiar and unpredictable, and in the hands of the right director a poker game can be either thrilling or funny. At various points, Poker Night manages to be both. But even though I certainly wouldn’t say writer/director Greg Francis screwed up this stylish horror-crime thriller, the movie is flush with flashbacks and subplots that distract from the really good stuff.
“Here's a problem with wisdom: you only get it after you need it.”
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 20th, 2015
We can blame thank Liam Neeson — or “Liam Neesons” — for this recent run of action movies about men of a certain age who tear their way through some part of Europe in the name of their missing or dead children. Viktor — a French/Russian production starring Gerard Depardieu and Elizabeth Hurley — is one of these latest Taken take-offs. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the more inert revenge films you’re likely to see.
It’s a shame because the movie has a lovely, kinetic opening credits sequence featuring a Chechen dance rehearsal. (The sequence is paid off quite nicely at the very end.) Shortly after that opening, we meet Viktor Lambert (Gerard Depardieu) a French art thief who has just finished serving a seven-year prison sentence. Just before getting out, his son Jeremie (Jean Baptiste Fillon) is killed. Viktor arrives in Moscow — where Jeremie was doing work for a diamond smuggler named Anton Belinsky (Denis Karasyov) — looking for answers.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 15th, 2015
“There are 32 ways to tell a story, but there's only ever one plot...that things are not what they seem.”
Early on in Bad Turn Worse, a character mentions this maxim credited to writer Jim Thompson (“The Grifters”, “The Killer Inside Me”) apropos of almost nothing. It's kind of a clunky, inauthentic interjection, but the message is clear and crafty: directors Simon and Zeke Hawkins know they're not re-inventing the wheel in terms of plot, so where they really hope to grab your attention is in how they present their stylish, well-acted feature film debut.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 21st, 2014
Breaking news: anyone who goes to see movie called Into the Storm is probably more interested in “the Storm” than they are in any of the people running away from it. The good news is the film understands this, to an extent, and clocks in at a slender 89 minutes. Of course, the titular Storm doesn’t appear for every one of those 89 minutes. This is very bad news because Into the Storm is populated with characters and storylines that are both forgettable and irritating. It’s basically Twister with somewhat better effects, but much less interesting people.
Into the Storm is mostly set in and around the fictional town of Silverton, Okla. A group of storm-chasers — led by cranky, road-weary Pete (Matt Walsh) — has been struggling to film tornadoes, and Pete is taking out his frustrations on the entire team. That includes data-driven meteorologist Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies), who steers the team toward Silverton. The decision looks like a bust until a dissipating system comes back with a vengeance. The storm erupts during a high school commencement ceremony, where Vice Principal Gary Fuller (Richard Armitage) realizes his oldest son is missing (and very inconveniently hanging out in an abandoned paper mill with his would-be dream girl). Gary eventually crosses path with the storm chasers, who help him in his quest to find and rescue his boy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 19th, 2014
Laughing out loud and getting startled out of your wits are two of the most visceral reactions you can have as a moviegoer. For a director to elicit either reaction is challenging enough, which is why I was so delighted to be feeling both during the thrilling, funny finale of Housebound. It’s an even more impressive feat when you consider it was accomplished by a first-time filmmaker working on a shoestring budget.
We first meet Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O’Reilly) as she and an accomplice comically fail to steal money from an ATM. She is a professional screw-up who has battled alcohol and meth addiction. Instead of sending Kylie to her umpteenth rehab program, the judge sentences her to eight months of house arrest at her family’s rustic home. Given Kylie’s unpleasant childhood memories there and the fact that she now has to share space with batty, blabbermouth mom Miriam (Rima Te Wiata), it seems like Kylie might have preferred spending time in prison.
