By Brett Blake The fact that ANNABELLE COMES HOME actually has some legitimately borderline-great elements (more on these below) only serves to underline just how frustrating it is to report that its scares simply are not up to snuff. Director Gary Dauberman is clearly somebody who knows his way around a camera, and he executes what the script gives him. Unfortunately, he’s also the writer, and that is where the problem resides. The screenplay's attempts at fright are just an endless series of variations on the same scene: a character creeps around a room or a hallway, sees or hears something peculiar, and then a specter pops out at the camera. Virtually every jump scare is telegraphed, and virtually every jump scare gets its jump from a loud stinger on the soundtrack. This is where James Wan’s two proper CONJURING films distinguish themselves and leave the rest of the “CONJURING Universe” in the dust. His jump scares are always staged with a certain amount of inventiveness, a certain amount of quirkiness, which keeps them unpredictable and unusual. There is no invention here. No artistry. Sure, the scares are technically competent (they’re well-framed and shot), but it’s all so predictable. Wan knows how to make jump scares feel like breathless fun; Dauberman’s efforts just sit there with a feeling of dull inevitability. I’ve got nothing against jump scares when done well. Great ones can be extremely memorable and effective... but if that’s all you’ve got in the bag of tricks... you’re not likely to be crafting a lasting experience that will stick with people. Now, all of that said, if you set aside the scares issue, there is some high quality stuff in here. Its hook -- which posits that the evil entity clinging to the Annabelle doll is so malignant and malicious that it allows other dark spirits to manifest -- is a great one, and the decision to marry that with what is basically a “teenage girls’ spooky sleepover” sort of tale gives the movie an enjoyable R.L. Stine/GOOSEBUMPS sort of flavor. Like last year’s THE NUN, the film also looks very good. It’s genuinely moody, and features some quite intriguing usage of light and color. Also, the designs of the various ghosts and ghouls have a just-slightly-tongue-in-cheek quality to them that gives them a throwback vibe; if they were in a better-written movie that knew how to use them for anything other than jolting the audience, this would be a quite effective roster of creeps. It also at times feels like a souped-up version of a “TV Horror Movie of the Week” from the 1970s, and as a fan of a lot of those productions, I mean that in a good way. Despite the expanded roster of demons and creatures, it keeps the scale pretty restrained, and wisely resists trying to go “bigger” than THE NUN, which remains the most bombastic installment of the CONJURING series so far. It also has a leisurely pace that might be too slow for some but which worked for me... because the three central girls in this story are very good protagonists and worth spending time with. These characters are the reason to see the movie and sit through the lackluster scares. They feel real, are grounded in identifiable emotional territory, and they behave - for the most part - in ways that are plausible given what we know about them. McKenna Grace has a somewhat sad, haunted quality that makes it very easy to root for her, but she also displays surprising strength; opposite her, Madison Iseman and Katie Sarife take what could have been extremely standard “types” and invest them with just enough personality to make them memorable. The movie actually cares about these characters, and that’s refreshing to see when teenagers are so often used just for body count fodder in horror movies (fun though that may sometimes be!). So ANNABELLE COMES HOME is a mixed bag. The substandard scares are genuinely frustrating, but the characters and production around them are strong enough that I come down slightly on the positive side of things.
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By Brett Blake This is a completely unnecessary movie, but it’s also surprisingly watchable and a fair amount of fun for fans of this sort thing, primarily because of a terrific vocal performance from Mark Hamill, nifty kills, and a strong cast doing some good work. The setup is a simple one: when a single mom (Aubrey Plaza) gives her son, Andy (Gabriel Bateman), the hottest new toy - a high-tech doll equipped with smart and A.I. capabilities - neither would expect that the doll, named Chucky (voiced by Mark Hamill), actually has the potential to be a dangerous killing machine, willing to cut down anybody that might come between it and Andy. It stumbles in the sense that you can feel the film sort of torn between trying to be a proper CHILD’S PLAY movie while also attempting to do its own thing (particularly in terms of explaining why Chucky is evil). One gets the vague sense that the filmmakers would probably have rather not been so directly tethered to an existing franchise, and instead been allowed to take their “smart tech goes bad” ideas into more dynamic and unexpected directions. Whenever the story starts to veer too far into new territory, we can feel it colliding with the CHILD’S PLAY template guide rails, and that results in story beats that are wholly unsurprising. At its weakest, the film predictably hits some rather tired marks that anybody who has seen ANY horror movies of this sort will be able to see coming. Beyond that, however, there is actually plenty of legitimately solid stuff in the movie. Chiefly, the dynamic that develops and evolves between Andy and Chucky gives the story a strong spine and a unique element when compared to the original movie. In this version of the narrative, the characters actually have a semi-bond that comes about before things turn sour, and Mark Hamill’s vocal performance when in non-overtly-evil mode is actually kind of affecting. All this Chucky wants - at first, anyway - is to be played with and loved by Andy. Hamill sells why this toy would be popular, and opposite him, Gabriel Bateman equally sells how a lonely kid would be sucked in by it. On paper, Aubrey Plaza should probably not be the first choice to play “Concerned Mom” in a horror movie; she’s got a natural edge to her that would seem likely to be at odds with arriving at genuine emotional. And yet... she’s actually quite good here. True, she plays her as the “cool” and “hip” mom, but there’s more range on display than one might have expected. Brian Tyree Henry is also quite solid as the detective investigating Chucky’s misdeeds, and he brings a fair amount of grounded humor to the movie that works well. Additionally, the movie is bolstered by a very strong score from Bear McCreary, who has followed-up his recent (and excellent) GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS score with another winner here. His primary theme has the feel of a dark lullaby, and the orchestrations - using odd, “children’s toy” sounds - give it a unique and off-kilter feeling. And then there’s the violence! This new CHILD’S PLAY doesn’t shortchange us when it comes to some gruesome bloodletting; in fact, some of the kills here are surprisingly splattery and refreshingly done-for-real. It’s not overly gratuitous stuff (okay, maybe it is a little), but it adds some nice, extra shocks periodically throughout. The movie is under no illusions about being anything other than what it is, and leaning into the fun kills seems like a pretty smart choice that worked out (for me, at least). This movie is not the most amazing thing ever, or anything like that, and it doesn’t top the original CHILD’S PLAY as the best entry in this franchise... but it is enjoyable for the work of the performers and for the effective horror violence. In an era where genre remakes can so easily be truly awful, the fact that this is modestly entertaining is a win. By Brett Blake Now that Disney has consumed the 20th Century Fox film studio, the road is paved for the fabled X-Men characters to eventually join the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper. Before that happens, though, we have one final X-Men tale from Fox, and despite the overwhelmingly bad response from the critical community, DARK PHOENIX is actually better and more tonally interesting than the very sour reaction would lead one to believe. Set in 1992, DARK PHOENIX finds the X-Men presiding over a relatively peaceful world that has embraced the existence of mutants. When a sinister alien force invades the body and mind of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), the team’s powerful telepath, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy Erik Lehnsherr AKA Magneto (Michael Fassbender) must grapple with the implications of Jean’s extraordinary powers... which are spiraling out of her control and threaten not just the X-Men, but humanity itself. On a storytelling level, there are some compelling ideas, here. The way Jean’s situation divides the X-Men team and puts them internally at-odds provides some solid drama, as does the way in which the story presents a portrait of Professor X as an incredibly well-intentioned man, yes, but one who is not without flaw and significant blind spots. Tonally, DARK PHOENIX is not a breezy or lightweight lark; rather, it is attempting (often successfully, sometimes inartfully) to be a fairly emotionally mature look at what unfathomable power can do to a person. One thing the movie also does get very right is the way in which it presents the X-Men working together as a team, with all of their strange and fantastic abilities complementing and enhancing each other. The finale, which features the majority of the characters together in a single location and focused on a particular task, is arguably the best “team” fight sequence these movies have given us in a long time. Perhaps the single best element of the movie in my estimation is also the one that is proving to be quite divisive -- Sophie Turner’s performance as Jean. I have seen her work here decried by some as unconvincing and stiff, but I really don’t know what movie those people saw. Turner is great here, painting an extremely nuanced and finely-calibrated picture of what essentially amounts to a form of superhero mental illness. There’s a feeling of struggle that Turner brings to her Jean Grey, this sense that she is fighting with this force inside of her that she can’t control and which frightens her... but which also gives her almost unimaginable power that can easily seduce her. She puts quite a bit of range on display, as the role requires her to have rather pronounced mood swings of a sort, and she navigates that stuff very carefully and effectively. DARK PHOENIX is far (far!) from perfect, but when it works at its best, it works because of Sophie Turner selling the hell out of her character’s journey. McAvoy is also excellent, chewing through the quite dramatic meal that the story gives Xavier this time out. Fassbender’s always a strong presence, and he does his very best to deliver the script’s requirements of Magneto and Professor X going back and forth (again) over their worldviews; wisely, the story makes their conflict here primarily about what should be done with Jean, which gives that tension a more intimate and personal flavor, but even taking that into account, it does start to feel like we’ve been in this territory before. In terms of the rest of the cast, Jennifer Lawrence is still checked-out as Mystique (she hasn’t been invested in this role since 2014’s DAYS OF FUTURE PAST), but the filmmakers recognize this and have structured the story accordingly, so it’s not a glaring issue. Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Jean’s concerned boyfriend, does get some effective and emotional material to play, but it almost feels as though he’s not focused on as much as one might expect. Nicholas Hoult, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Alexandra Shipp all get moments to shine (either in the action or the drama), and they acquit themselves just fine. As the mysterious villain who eventually emerges in the story, Jessica Chastain is given relatively little to work with; though she seems to be game, her material is by far the weakest element of the movie, and this stuff is the closest the movie comes to being objectively bad. I have never been the biggest X-Men comics fan, so changing source material storylines has never been a hurdle for me, but I know there are a lot of people out there who have wanted to see the Dark Phoenix story “done right” in the cinematic format after 2006’s X-MEN: THE LAST STAND cherry picked only a few small elements and more or less ignored everything else about the famed comic book story arc. So it’s unfortunate that I have to hesitantly report that DARK PHOENIX does this again; it is not in any way a faithful adaptation of the original story, instead choosing some very broad strokes components and doing its own thing (again). It’s kind of baffling, because one would have thought that the rationale for tackling Dark Phoenix again (only 13 years after it was already done once) was so that the tale could be more directly translated onto the screen from the comics. But nope! Another of the unquestionable highlights of the movie is its score from Hans Zimmer. It’s a “blender” score, with Zimmer dropping in bits and pieces from several of his previous works (there’s quite a bit of ANGELS & DEMONS, INTERSTELLAR, and DUNKIRK in here) but in just the right proportions and with just the correct amount of freshness added on top. It’s a propulsive, driving, and often ambient sort of musical soundscape that he creates, and it works very well. His central motif for Jean Grey underlines the emotion of the story effectively, too. Ultimately, there are definitely some “mixed bag” elements to be found in DARK PHOENIX, but I can’t deny I had a good time with this. There are much worse ways Fox’s X-Men series could have ended, and the quality of the performances - especially Sophie Turner’s - make it impossible to completely write this off. By Brett Blake A sequel to 2014's GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS is nothing special on a screenplay level, but it does deliver spectacular monster-on-monster action of a scale that is truly impressive and an incredible amount of fun. The plot finds a nefarious eco-terrorist group attempting to unleash a hoard of dormant giant monsters on the planet in hopes of curbing mankind’s mismanagement of the world. Faced with the prospect of untold millions of lives being lost in the process, Monarch, the organization tasked with tracking and monitoring the monsters, must find a way to bring Godzilla, seen as humanity’s defender, into the fray to battle the formidable creatures. There’s a bit more to the story than just that, but it’s all a person really needs to know, because GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS does not exist to deliver an intricate narrative that is engaging on its own terms. It exists to deliver titanic monster action... which it does (and then some). In the previous film, there was the sense that Godzilla was some kind of externalized manifestation of nature itself, a primal force of unfathomable and mythological proportions. That aspect, not just with Godzilla, but with the rest of the monsters involved, as well, is mostly absent from KING OF THE MONSTERS. What’s strange, though, is that the script repeatedly emphasizes the idea that these ancient beings are part of the planet’s history, godlike beings who walked the Earth long before mankind... but this just doesn’t translate into the actual filmmaking and depiction of the the creatures. The last movie doesn’t make that idea nearly as explicit (in terms of exposition), but it conveys it so much more directly just by how Godzilla himself presented on a visual level, with an extreme amount of mystery, awe, and majesty. Where KING OF THE MONSTERS compensates for that lack of evocative grandeur is in pure spectacle, which it offers in spades. If some felt that the 2014 film was lacking in proper monster confrontations, this movie comes out swinging almost immediately with big-scale monster brawls. This 100% delivers on its inherent promise of seeing giant creatures battling for superiority while inflicting obscene amounts of collateral damage. It takes ideas and concepts that the classic Toho Godzilla movies toyed with (in all their wonderful man-in-suit charm), honors them, and then executes them with the advanced technological tools that Hollywood blockbusters have at their disposal in 2019. It’s a monster clash on a grand scale, and the real feat that director Michael Dougherty has pulled off is that the action never gets stale or boring or redundant. Each fight and setpiece looks and feels distinct, which goes a long way towards stopping the audience from being overwhelmed. There’s variation and variety, and it is ridiculously entertaining. Seeing Godzilla battle (and/or team up with!) some of his classic rogues gallery like Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah is just a pleasure. Composer Bear McCreary’s score is also a highlight of the production. In addition to honoring the same sort of “sound” that Alexandre Desplat brought to the previous film, McCreary also takes us back into Godzilla’s musical history by incorporating themes that the legendary Akira Ifukube wrote for some of the early Japanese films in the series. The result is a score which is propulsive and exciting, and McCreary once again proves that he’s one of the more underrated film score writers working today. The movie does have a problem in the same area most GODZILLA movies have a problem: the human storyline is nothing terribly impressive because the focus is on the monster stuff. To its credit, the screenplay wants the human drama to be compelling, and it spends a fair amount of time trying to get us to be invested, but it’s all rather inert. The cast here is terrific, packed with very capable performers, but they’re given very little to work with; for some viewers, this will be seen as an unforgivable waste of talent, while for others it, will be brushed aside because the action is strong enough to overcome it, Now, if I’m being completely honest, I have to admit that I still prefer the 2014 GODZILLA, which I have gradually come to believe is one of the best blockbusters of this decade. I prefer the mystery and the slightly more serious mythological weight of that movie, but I am also comfortable saying that KING OF THE MONSTERS is a rollicking monster adventure that I found to be a ton of fun. |
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