The Reel World

It’s summertime, and that means it is time for those bikini-clad bodies to start decorating the beaches and become bait for everyone’s favorite predator of the ocean. For those who don’t tan and manage to only burn in direct sunlight, there is a safer alternative to the beach, and that is your local theater with the new film 47 Meters Down.  Last year we had the surprise hit The Shallows that made a valiant attempt at making the beach terrifying once again. I love a fun, cheesy shark film; it’s one of those cinematic pleasantries I feel we just don’t get enough of. With the wait for Meg being another year off, it seems 47 Meters Down is going to have to tide me over till then. Is it worth taking a dip?

Lisa (Mandy Moore) and her sister Kate (Claire Holt) travel down to Mexico for a vacation.  The trip was originally supposed to be with Lisa and her boyfriend, though we find out early on that he broke up with her not long before the trip, and Kate was a quick backup guest. Though I had a hard time believing the pair are sisters, they could be best friends, and it would really do nothing to change the plot.  We know these young women are simply soon to be bait for the sharks, and that’s what matters in these kinds of films.

I think we can all agree that at some point we’ve all managed to make a fool of ourselves in the name of love. It’s almost a rite of passage so to speak. As for that forbidden love, well, I’m not so sure how many people will be so eager to admit to this one. When it comes to the film My Cousin Rachel, it’s a love story, but far from what you’d find on the Hallmark channel. Instead this is a film about the nightmare of what love can be and what it can do to you. Back in the 90’s, Roger Michell directed one of the sweetest and optimistic romances of that decade when he did Notting Hill.Now it’s 2017 and his return to romance could not be any more bleak, but how beautifully bleak it all is.

Philip (Sam Claflin) gets us up to speed in the film’s opening narration where he discusses becoming an orphan and being taken into custody by one of his cousins, Ambrose, a cousin who seems to have embraced the novel idea of bachelorhood. Philip manages to be raised just fine by his cousin, that is till things change and Ambrose falls ill and has to move from the English countryside to Italy, and during his recovery he meets a mysterious woman, Rachel (Rachel Weiz). His cousin continues to write Philip and tell him about his growing relationship with Rachel, till things take a turn for the worse and in the following letters his cousin goes on to believe Rachel is attempting to kill him. Concerned for Ambrose, Philip ventures off to see what has happened to his cousin, and upon his arrival he discovers that he is too late and that Ambrose is dead.

A large majority of horror fans would agree that when sitting down to screen a horror film, they are not accustomed to being challenged intellectually. Sure, horror films might have a message that you can theorize about, but you can just as easily turn off your brain and watch the carnage mindlessly. That is not the case with It Comes at Night:  it demands your full attention from the start and then intensifies like a white-hot light. Cut from the same cloth as The Babadook and It Follows, It Comes at Night is a film that confronts you with very real anxieties that permeate our modern-day societies. Where its predecessors are concerned with maternal guilt and vulnerabilities involving sexual intercourse (respectively), It Comes at Night asks audiences to confront their anxieties about the unknown, what it means not to know, and how we make a choice to remain ignorant, or attempt to understand what is just beyond our reach.

The film tells the story of Paul (Joel Edgerton) and his family (Carmen Ejogo and Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and the trials they must endure to survive a world doomed by a mysterious virus. As they try to enjoy what little peace they can muster in their home, they are confronted with a new threat: a new family looking for water. Adhering to the horror genre, Paul and company are immediately suspicious of their new guests, as “you can’t trust anyone but family.” Over time, tensions rise between the families, creating an inescapable rift of terror and paranoia.

Armies have been using dogs in battle for thousands of years. The Romans would turn the dogs on their enemy as a signal of the approaching legions, hence the expression “Let loose the dogs of war”. But in recent decades dogs have found a new, perhaps more noble calling during wartime. Dogs have been used to search for lost soldiers. They have been trained to assist wounded soldiers. They have also learned to sniff out explosives, helping to clear mines and saving the lives of their handlers and hundreds of soldiers and civilians. That's the kind of dog Rex is. And you'll fall in love with him just as the titular character Megan Leavey did. The movie Megan Leavey is a bit of a character study, and one of those characters is a German Shepherd.

Kate Mara stars as Megan Leavey. Her life has been pretty much a screwup, and she's facing pressure to get it together. She decides to join the Marines. At first it appears she's going to fail at this choice, too. But slowly she begins to get her training on track and starts to make the grade. Her inspiration? She is attracted to the canine unit, where she is first sent for punishment, but discovers Rex. Rex is a dog the vets don't think is trainable. He's aggressive, and very much like Megan, has a mind of his own. So Megan puts in the extra effort in the hope she can join the unit and work with Rex. Of course, she ends up getting her wish, and the two are sent to Iraq, where they are able to save lives by finding mines so they can be disarmed. It's a dangerous job, and their number ultimately comes up. It seems the enemy targets these dogs to protect the minefields. Wounded, the pair return home where the true battle is fought. The vet has labeled Rex unadoptable, and Megan fights to allow him to retire with her.

“You have been my greatest love. Be careful, Diana...they do not deserve you.”

Ever since Richard Donner made us believe that a man can fly with 1978's Superman — considered by many to be the first modern superhero film — we've gotten three different Men of Steel, along with five different versions of Batman (if you don't count Will Arnett's voiceover work). Heck, in the last 15 years alone we've had three Spider-Men and (incredibly) gone through three Hulks! Yet in all that time, a movie starring Wonder Woman — a superhero just as iconic as all the ones I just mentioned — could never get off the ground...until now. I'm happy to report it was worth the wait.

“This may seem a peculiar request...but could someone explain why I'm here?”

That question is posed slurred by Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's perpetually sloshed swashbuckler, during his very first appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Given that this is the fifth film in a faded franchise — and that Depp probably needs the money — the answer for why any of this is happening appears to be painfully obvious. Which is why I was delighted (and frankly a little shocked) by how much fun I had watching this latest entry, which manages to entertain while openly plundering the original movie's winning formula.

In the vein established by 21 Jump Street of taking a serious television series and transforming it into a comedy comes Baywatch. I’m sure everyone remembers Baywatch, possibly one of the most watched television series of all time that featured buxom ladies like Pamela Anderson and Yasmine Bleeth in tight swimsuits, running in slow motion.  Transplanted for a moderate time period, this film adaptation features this generation’s hard bodies such as Zac Efron, Dwayne Johnson, and Alexandria Daddario (those eyes are hypnotic) taking on the established and iconic roles of Matt Brody, Mitch Buchannon, and Summer Quinn.

In Emerald Bay, an elite squad of lifeguards patrols the beach, going above and beyond to protect the people of the community. Led by Mitch Buchannon, this group finds themselves investigating murder and the increase in drug activity, which leads to businesswoman Victoria Leeds, who has a plan to privatize the beach, and surrounding businesses.

Alien Covenant is a perfect example of making a plan and sticking with it, because if you don’t you may be infected by an alien organism that will explode out of your chest. Graphic, I know, but informative, right? The latest installment in the Alien franchise picks up sometime after Prometheus and continues to pursue the critical question that was posed in the previous film: who created life? An intergalactic colonial expedition comes to face to face with their worst nightmare. It’s ironic how a mission to preserve life results in so much death.

Fifteen years after the events of Prometheus, a colony ship named Covenant is bound for a remote planet with thousands of colonist and embryos when they are struck by a neutrino burst (think of it as a power space storm) which damages the ship as well as results in the death of several colonists as well as members of the crew, including the ship’s captain (James Franco). Thrust into the leadership role, Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup) finds himself overwhelmed by his new position and dissent among the crew.

Director Doug Liman has been a director whose career I’ve enjoyed following since I was in high school and first saw Swingers. It was one of those cool independent films that appeared in the mid-90’s when independent films were all the rage.  A couple years later he did the film Go which I felt beautifully captured the rave culture that had taken the states by storm but the film was quickly overlooked.  Then he got his big break with The Bourne Identity and as his career expanded to Mr. and Mrs. Smith so did the budgets ie: Edge of Tomorrow. Now with the release of The Wall Liman seems to have gone back to his roots in a way in creating one of the most intimate and intense war films to hit the cinemas, despite its major release being set by Amazon Studios.

After being called out to a site where a group of contractors were attacked, two American soldiers are sent out to investigate the site.  When the film starts, Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Matthews (John Cena) have already been hidden and monitoring the site for more than 18 hours and have seen no movement and believe the site is secure, believing if there was a sniper he would have already left by this point.  It’s when the pair go to investigate the scene they discover that they are not alone in the process but men are wounded and separated.

So it finally happened; I found a Guy Ritchie film that I didn’t enjoy. I wasn’t expecting much from King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, but it is worth noting that I got even less than I expected. I know that sounds cruel, and I will admit that there were a few thing that I did enjoy, but the amount of things that went wrong versus what went right is not a close margin. Before we get into it fully, let me issue this disclaimer: the sword in the stone, which is known in the film as Excalibur, according to Arthurian legend is not really Excalibur, which is a different sword that Arthur was given after he became king.

Born into royalty, Arthur is the heir apparent to his father, King Uther's (Eric Bana) throne as well as his father’s sword, Excalibur (again, not the real Excalibur) until the king’s most trusted advisor, Vortigan (Jude Law), betrays Uther and usurps his throne and plots to kill young Arthur. Though he is killed, Uther manages to get his son to safety and prevent Vortigan from taking the sword, which becomes lodged in a stone and submerged at the bottom of the lake. Discovered alone, Arthur is taken in by the ladies of a local brothel, forgetting his past and birthright. However, a legend is whispered that one day the born king will return and end Vortigan’s reign.