Tokyo Taxi (2026) Japan Cuts 2026

 

A remake of the French film Driving Madeline, Tokyo Taxi is its own charming film. While the film has the same flaw as the original, we kind of know how this is going to go, the film rethinks the material to echo Japanese culture.

The plot of the film has a cash strapped taxi driver who is planning on sleeping in after a long night. A friend calls offering him a well-paying job driving an older woman on a long-distance drive. Needing the money agrees.  As they drive, he becomes frustrated with her side trips. However, over the course of the journey, they bond.

Over all you know where this is going to go, mostly. However, what makes the film a delight is a combination the long flash back sequences revealing the woman’s tough life and the two leads who absolutely sell the film.Chieko Baisho and Takuya Kimura are note perfect in their roles and make you want to hang out with them. Actually, the best thing that I can say about them is that while their story is the same as the earlier film, they are not the same characters. Baisho and Kimura they may have the same place holders but how the act and react is different. They are so different that I would actually love to see the two sets of characters meet up to see what would happen.

I was moved to the point of tears, so bring tissues.

TOKYO TAXI is opening this year’s Japan Cuts. While the screening is sold out, there will be a stand by line so I suggest if you are interested, take a chance and see if you can get in. It will make you smile

Sleuth (2007) or how all the right filmmakers can make a bad film

Harold Pinter rewrites Anthony Schaeffer's classic play about a man going to visit the husband of his lover and having it all go sideways. The original film starred Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Caine has the Olivier role in this version and he's paired with Jude Law. Here the film is directed by Kenneth Branaugh.

The acting is spectacular. Both Caine and Law are gangbusters in their respective roles. I really like the chemistry and the clashing of personalities. It's wonderful and enough of a reason to watch when the script's direction goes haywire.

Harold Pinter's dialog is crisp and sharp and often very witty and I understand why he was chosen to rewrite the play (which is updated to make use of surveillance cameras and the like).The problem is that how the script moves the characters around is awful. Michale Caine walks Law through his odd modern house with sliding doors and panels for no really good reason. Conversations happen repeatedly in different locations. I know Pinter has done that in his plays, but in this case it becomes tedious. Why do we need to have the pair go over and over and over the fact that Law is sleeping with Caine's wife? It would be okay if at some point Law said enough we've done this, but he doesn't he acts as if each time is the first time. The script also doesn't move Caine through his manipulation of Law all that well. To begin with he's blindly angry to start so he has no chance to turn around and scare us.(Never mind a late in the game revelation that makes you wonder why he bothered) In the original we never suspected what was up. here we do and while it gives an edge it also somehow feels false since its so clear we are forced to wonder why Law's Milo doesn't see he's being set up. There are a few other instances but to say more would give away too much.

Thinking about the film in retrospect I think its a film of missed opportunities and missteps. The opportunities squandered are the chance to have better fireworks between Caine and Law. Missteps in that the choice of a garish setting and odd shifts in plot take away from the creation of a tension and a believable thriller. Instead we get some smart dialog and great performances in a film that doesn't let them be real.

 I understand why Pinter was chosen to rewrite the play (which is updated to make use of surveillance cameras and the like), but ultimately he was a very bad choice to do the revision.

Brief thoughts on BUGONIA (2025)

Two conspiracy theorists kidnap a big executive because they think she is an alien attempting to destroy the world. 

This is a bleak, black science fiction comedy is a remake of the Korean film SAVE THE GREEN PLANET. I never cared much for GREEN PLANET, there was a mean edge and an uncomfortableness that didn't like. This film was originally supposed to be a remake by the original director, however he dropped out and was replaced by Yorgos Lanthimos who madea film that reminded me too much of the original for me to like it much. Yes, the performances are fine, but I don't know why this film was needed except to have an English version.

HIGHEST 2 LOWEST opens August 15

                         

It’s difficult not to notice that somewhere in HIGHEST 2 LOWEST is a compelling and highly creative film that wants to examine the metrics of success (and failure), the true value of art, and the burdens of “fatherhood” in all of its meanings. When that film surfaces, Spike Lee’s direction is bold, if not inspired, and the experience can dazzle with its flights of pure cinema. Everything works in these passages: all the reckless, exhilarating movement, the quirky but fun editing, and the musical choices that add vibrancy every step of the way.

Unfortunately, such moments probably add up to 20-25 minutes of the two-hour runtime. The remainder is spent slogging through the necessary bits of connective tissue to get to the next set piece, which can be either an action sequence or an extended exchange of bristling dialogue. The fact that these police procedural and domestic/business drama scenes, almost all of which are intruded upon by the score’s syrupy piano tinklings and harp pluckings, feel transitional is perhaps the first sign of trouble. Typically, these would be considered, well, the plot, and an attempt would be made to render them gripping, real, or original. Maybe all three. No such intentions surface in Alan Fox’s script, however, and apparently Lee has no problem with that. It’s hard to tell if he simply doesn’t care as much about these elements of his narrative or if feels that the audience will tolerate whatever mix of warmed-over tropes and tired character types is necessary to prop up the ostensible spine of this would-be thriller. His true passions seem to involve celebrating Black music (both aesthetically and culturally), letting Denzel be Denzel, and offering up some rather obvious social commentary on media and celebrity. 

Still, with these ingredients an idiosyncratic yet entertaining and satisfying crime drama could certainly be crafted. After all, Lee used similar pieces in terms of character study, historical observation, and genre elements when he made the winning BLACKKKLANSMAN. But between Fox, Lee, and the film’s two editors, no one here seems to care much about the actual crime in this crime drama. That the kidnapping features the most absurd ransom drop in history, predicated on all sorts of coincidences of timing and positioning, is not even the issue; it represents an audacious recasting of the original drop in HIGH AND LOW, and at least shows signs of ambition and flare. The rest of the kidnapping is conveyed with a touch that, as with the relationships within the central family, alternates between bland and lazy.  When Washington’s character comes up with a legitimate lead on the kidnapper, the cops dismiss it for no good reason; this would be fine except there’s no convincing reason for why they’d be so stubbornly close-minded, especially as there’s an entire team of investigators, one of whom could easily look into this new possibility given that there are no other promising leads. Similarly, one of the kidnapper’s minions is apprehended at the end of the drop, but we’re never shown what an interrogation of him yields, and no one even mentions it as an offscreen development.

Instead, it’s all hand-waving and hoping the audience won’t expect the same level of attention to detail that one gets from even the most generic of TV cop shows. Everything then takes on an unreal, almost artificial, feel—which also would be fine if Lee wanted to lean into this, and perhaps playfully wink at the audience. Think of how the incompetent cops are portrayed in Altman’s THE PLAYER. But Lee wants to take chances in only some areas, playing it safe the rest of the time. The kidnap victim is briefly shown duct-taped with layers of makeup bruises in a kind of insincere hat-tip to a grittier style of New York movie that HIGHEST 2 LOWEST not only isn’t, but isn’t even trying to be. That said, even such a clash of styles and tones could very well have been exploited to interesting ends, but Lee consistently opts for the easier, more Hollywood approach, as if biding his time until inspiration strikes again and he can next indulge in a flight of fancy.    

The end result is a frustrating mish-mosh of astonishing peaks and dismally clichéd valleys that is sadly reflected in the film’s title. 

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025) Tribeca 2025

 Young Hiccup, one of the vikings living on the island of Berk.  Hiccup is a clever boy who wants nothing more than be a great viking, but he's too clumsy by viking standards to be of any help.  The vikings are on the island because they are trying to find the nest of the dragons so they can wipe the beasts out. Things change when Hiccup discovers that he has caused a dragon to  be injured and unable to fly. The pair end up bonding, thus changing the lives of everyone in Berk.

I wish I had seen this film when I was six. This film would have changed my life forever. I would have been even more in love with the movies and giant monsters than I already was.

Yes this is a remake of the animated film that spawned both a film and TV series. It's a film that takes a little bit to get going, but once it does it's one of the great films of the year. 

I was staggered by the film and the emotion. There are real people and real dragons up there on the screen.

I sat in my seat and was so lost inthe film I wondering how the hell they did the flying sequences. I knew how they were done, but at the same time I was so lost in the beauty and magic of them that I had couldn't think straight behind the tears of joy.

Seeing the film at Tribeca was magical. My brother Joe was so enamored of the film that when the film ended all he could think about was taking my neice to see it because she would love it. I suspect that it was just because he needed an excuse to go see the dragons again.

What an absolute wonder.

Highly recommended

Robert Egger's NOSFERATU (2024) isn't what you think it's about

I was not going to post this. Peter was going to do the review and I was going to take the time off. However I've been having a lot of conversations about my thoughts on the film since the the reviews really started to hit. I am tired of having repeated conversations.  So while the I wasn't planning on posting anything on the film I had been writing something in order to get my thoughts straight. I have been noodling this since I saw the film in November and I've been working on it ever since making it longer and shorter. As it stands now this is more or less how I feel. 

I’ve had a lot of discussions about NOSFERATU since I saw the film a  month a go. A number of people are of the opinion I hate the film. I don’t, not really. I am just extremely disappointed in it and as such  I have a lot of issues with it. I suspect that I’ve had  three discussions with the film that ran almost two hours which have lead people to believe I don’t like it. It’s not that I don’t like it but it struck me as so filled with problems that I have a great deal to say about the film. I have questions about the choices made that make me wonder if Robert Eggers wouldn’t have been better just starting from scratch then trying to bend the original into something else. It’s the film that had me having discussions about what I meant when I said that often what we like or hate is simply a matter of figuring out how many flaws you can live with.

The first thing I need to say is that if you see NOSFERATU in the theater find one with a bright bulb. A lot of scenes are in dark rooms and if they aren’t illuminated they will look like they were filmed at the bottom of a well. 

The film is a rethinking of the 1922 classic  by FW Murnau as dream like meditation on sexual awakening, the place of women in society and how we are all basically doomed by fate. Writer director Eggers has rethought the whole affair changing a lot of elements to make a film that probably would have worked better not tied to the original film or the Dracula mythos.  While I will agree that some of the elements being pushed forward are in the source material, I think Eggers pushes them so far that I’m not certain the film really says what I think he was trying to say. There is a darkness there that I’m not certain he, or many writers are aware of, or want to deal with.  I’m perfectly fine with his pondering the some twisted notions of fate, sexual awaking and the place of women in society, I just wish the film worked on its own dream like narrative level. 

That the story doesn’t work, and that it makes the the thematic threads troubling isn’t surprising since I don’t think Eggers particularly cares to be a good storyteller (all his films have story problems), and can see that people (or himself) aren’t going to know what he meant. He is an artist who works on a visceral and emotional level where ideas are passed to us through feelings created by images and sound.  His films look great but they don’t really make a lick of sense after a certain point. THE LIGHTHOUSE doesn’t really work for me since it feels like it’s reaching for something visceral  and it pushes the narrative too much beyond the edge of his grasp into nonsense, THE NORTH MAN has a more conventional narrative...which doesn’t really  hold together the longer it goes on. THE WITCH, which I only recently saw, works but its low key take never thrilled me enough (I suspect the fact people still telling me how scary it is worked against it.). Worse from my end is the fact that all of his films feel like they were heavily cobbled together from other better films. 

While I suspect what Eggers was going for some thematic truth in NOSFERATU, the objective truth is that, like or not, there are a lot of problems with how the film is constructed that make the film really dark thematically. Eggers refashions the story into a weird tale that has the awakening of female sexuality that is bent into all sorts of truly twisted ways. I mean this is now a Lolita like tale of an under aged girl who awakens the lust of dirty old man who travels across the globe to be with her. It's now the story of a cyber stalker refashioned for the 19th century. Simply, put it is no longer the story of a great evil infecting  the world (which is a major flaw in the film) but a tale of a pedophile and the object of his lust. The film seems to have a dark view of female sexuality, and can be seen to be arguing that women have to give into men because it’s the only way to stop their evil sexual urges.  You can take that as far as you want- but it’s beyond puritanical into psychotic. (The film seems to be saying you aroused him- now you finish him off because that's the only way to stop this.)

 

As you can see there are levels here that probably weren’t intended and shouldn’t be explored but which are right there since Ellen talks about her awakening sexuality at a young age and how it both excited and frightened her. The question is how young is Ellen? It's no mentioned in the film but the age of marriage in Germany at the time the film takes place tended to be around 20, however the age it was possible could have been as young as 13 or 14 according to some sources. Just how old was Ellen when she awoke the beast? The implication was she was young-but how young?  I have had two conversations where I mentioned  that and had people pause and say effectively “let’s not go there.” The problem is that it is there, whether we chose to look or not.

The narrative has has Thomas Hutter leaving his wife to go see Count Orlock in Transylvania in order to sell him a ruined castle in Germany. Orlock’s real object is changed from the original film from needing fresh blood and spreading his darkness,  to traveling to get to Hutter’s wife Ellen who had awoken him years earlier when she called out in the dark for release and he answered. The old guy wants to get laid and nothing else. It is not to spread his evil, he was, by his own admission sleeping or dead.

Don’t ask the whys and hows since changing Orlock from a massive evil/plague to a randy fellow not only is a radical rethink of the original film and source material, it makes no sense on any level. I mean someone who apparently was really dead until she called him is brought back to existence is a big WTF. To me it seems that Eggers just wants things to happen to serve his purpose so he opted for dream logic and then threw out the logic and never realized what the changes would actually mean. The way the film tells it, the awakened Orlock used to visit the younger Ellen some nights, despite being hundreds of miles apart and needing to take a ship to get there after Thomas arrives.

At this point I should say if you see the film don’t think about the plot turns because they make no sense and while the film is spun out in a dream like fashion,  the film falls apart in that that even on a dream logic level the film doesn’t work. And even allowing for the whole dream like plotting there is a point where you just have to accept everything is not making sense internally or go mad. 

Where was I? Oh yes, talking about plot problems. Orlock,  who wants to claim “his“ bride takes steps to remove Thomas, her husband, from her life by having him travel to him so he can feast on him. He survives because of love and returns to her. This really isn’t the case since Thomas going was part of a really WTF subplot about getting Thomas to Orlock’s castle to sign papers to renounce his marriage, but it is something that is never explained when Thomas is at his castle and which only comes up at the very end moments before Ellen takes the Count to bed. It’s one of those things in the film that we are just asked to go with just because.

Along the way we get meditations on the evil of sexual desire and notions about how we have no control over life and how we will be miserable until we give into fate (or even after we give in as Ellen finds out) or we simply say “fuck it we just have to go with it” ( like Willem Dafoe’s character).  This is before Ellen eventually gives into the demon’s lust and gets raped by a decaying guy while he drinks her blood (And you think slasher films were puritanical in response to our lusty and impure thoughts).

Letting it all play out according to dream logic is all well and good but things get lost along the way. Characters become one note. There is no room for nuanced performances or for reality. Here we get characters that are histrionic and over act. These are not real people, they are puppets that are about as nuanced as Punch and Judy.  Everyone over emotes (which is one of the reasons that one writer told me the film is a comedy because the emotions are silly and drive the film into the territory of farce.)

No one walks outside of their narrow preordained path. Worse we don’t feel the characters are connected to each other. Damningly there is never a sense of Thomas and Ellen being in love other than in a fleeting moment. If they don’t connect to each other then we don’t connect to them either and we are left to make up ways to attach to them. 

Time and the logic behind things is all optional. Things happen because Eggers wants them to at that point. Thomas finds his way to his office blocked and then he makes a random left turn and is instantly there. Characters die and are almost instantly buried. Orlock claims he was dead and gone until Ellen called him, but the villagers at the inn seem to feel he was a centuries old evil (or are there other vampires?). Thomas wakes up in the inn and everyone is gone. Why? Because it looks cool. Even the rats come and go as needed.

Too many times during the film I wanted to ask why things were happening and how it connected to something else. I think Eggers doesn’t care because he is making an art film, not a representation of real life just his perceived emotions and ideas.

Frankly I’m kind of puzzled as to why Eggers remade the film when he largely removed many of the elements that worked for the original.  Yes he kept the story structure, but shaved down into a looser and flimsier frame work. Characters are some what the same. Enough is changed that it can be seen to be its own film, and yet not enough not to make comparisons., As I’ve said I still don’t know why Eggers stayed so close to the original when he wanted to do other things?  He should have kept the name and the basic ideas but leave nothing else.

Because Eggers changed the evil from something larger and outside of ourselves to basically lust  he had to change the monster at the center of the tale. Instead of this long undead ghoul that was literally death personified,  Eggers has refashioned him as a horny undead Russian Tsar that looks like Peter Stormeyer (so much so you have to wonder why he didn’t hire him). In doing so he stripped him of any menace other than as a large decaying oligarch. He is not the dark shadow that Eggers keeps referring to. He is truly and simply just a patriarch,and thus human,  villain not a force of nature. He isn't trying to get "life" but to one woman so he can get laid.  

Worse he has been grounded and made small. There is no sense of him outside of his presence as a being who talks too much. In the original we saw him as the coach driver, moving his boxes of dirt, and stalking the ship transporting him across the sea. This gave him shading and menace. This put him everywhere and anywhere. Here he is in his castle, in his box and the odd room. He is not really a frightening figure because there is nothing but labored breathing blaring on the soundtrack – we never really see him doing anything truly terrifying. It’s all Eggers fault since by removing the majority of Demeter episode, which was pivotal in the other versions of Dracula it showed the vampire as a monster, (hell they made a film just about that one part of the original novel) we are left with nothing to fear but a shadow in the dark who doesn’t actually do anything but talk.

The film  might have worked except that the look of Orlock is now no longer a unique creature but a guy who looks like a riff on one of the undead versions of Raputin that you find in the Hellboy stories from Mike Mignola or in the animated film ANASTASIA or other works of graphic and cinematic fiction. (though it should be said he does kind of resemble how Stoker describes Dracula in the novel)

This borrowing from other sources kind of bothered me about the film (and all of Eggers films). Why steal a riff of the Angel of Death  shadow from Murnau’s FAUST, or the design of Orlock, or Isabelle Adjani’s performance in POSSESSION or any of the the other bits, when you are going to great lengths to distance yourself from the source material and make something original. Eggers lifts bits from all sorts of sources in a mad attempt to be a visual Quentin Tarantino. It looks great but it irked me that so many shots reminded me of something else...and yet other than the plot and character names he makes little effort to directly reference the original film, except for the visual call back to the 1922 original and Herzog’s 1979 remake being the sea side cemetery with the sparse crosses. Sure applause for trying to be original with this version of the story, but  take away points for lifting from too many other places.

The most damning thing about the film is that as a horror film it isn’t scary. Sure it looks good, but there isn’t any suspense, nothing is genuinely frightening so  Eggers is reduced to using loud noises for a couple of cheap jump scares.

It doesn’t help that the performances are so over the top as to be funny. Willem Dafoe seems to think it’s a comedy with his crazed and wild eyed delivery being something that belongs in grand farce. I have in my original hand written review questions as to whether the film was a farce or not, and I never  intended to actually suggest anything until I saw writer who I admire a great deal who went into great detail about how the film is really a  raucous comedy and a send up, admonishing me for stifling laughs. It was in his opinion the best comedy of the year where the audience was afraid to laugh.

And yet despite all of that, despite the film being a real mess of a film, I do kind of like it. It has some great things to look at, more than a few laughs and it’s trying to be very adult. While I don’t think it remotely succeeds, I admire it for trying. (Though I don’t know if I ever need to see it again)

Worth a look for those adventurous and forgiving.

NOSFERATU (2024) is Dreamy--But Not a Nightmare

 

For those who celebrate, or even luxuriate in, NOSFERATU, which opens in U.S. theaters today, there’s little to say except congratulations—I wish I could have joined you. I’m fairly sure this group feels that the meshing of the sensibilities—that is, those of writer-director Robert Eggers and the source material—delivered on the promises made by the announcement of the project itself, not to mention the subsequent stills, posters, and trailers. Big, bold, and often dazzling, NOSFERATU is a Goth Christmas present from Tiffany’s, projecting tons of dark aura before the box is even fully opened.

Alas, for me the enthralling spell that the film cast started to wear off in its second half, and was only a nice memory by its conclusion. Nearly all the pleasures that NOSFERATU provides, from music and design to Lily-Rose Depp’s performance and Eggers’s sure hand guiding everything, become slowly revealed as unsupportive of any central impact, either narrative or emotional. Or at least one that we haven’t seen before, perhaps multiple times. Even Willem Dafoe’s late appearance, which lifts the audience just when it’s needed, is not leveraged in ways that feel worthy of our expectations. 

The temptation is to retreat into any number of critical tropes in response. There’s the “style over substance” argument, but I’ve seen that employed too many times when not warranted; moreover, it often ignores the fact that sometimes substance is conveyed through style, and that’s certainly true of much of the director’s work, most notably THE LIGHTHOUSE. Then there’s the “sum of the parts” observation, which I suppose applies here, given all the positives I’ve noted. Still, it can leave us with too many questions. What was the potential “substance” or the imagined “whole” that was not made manifest?

And this is where Eggers deserves not only credit, but applause: he’s attempted something which can be quite rare in mainstream American horror movies, and that’s to allow the female lead to explore the repressed archetype that Jung called “the shadow.” Insofar as his own THE WITCH did this in a stealthy way back in 2016, NOSFERATU represents a thoughtful, and more explicit, follow-up on a far grander scale. The vampire is not portrayed as an alluring, romantic figure along the lines of BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA as well as various big and small screen franchises over the past decade or two; rather, he’s truly monstrous at nearly at all times, and the mysterious connection between him and Ellen Hutter is presented as repulsively unwanted, trauma-linked, and yet... inevitable, like the Return of the Repressed.

But what of the monster’s attraction to her? One could read this retelling as less about the shadow and more about the pull of the anima (the hidden female aspect) in men and, in turn, that of the animus (its counterpart) in women. This would help explain why the script often goes the domestic drama route, emphasizing the valiant but unsatisfying efforts of Thomas Hutter first to understand, and then to save, his wife. She clearly doesn’t need his kind of saving, though. Yet the film never really allows these themes to land with the force of tragedy, as in Eggers’s earlier films. And this despite its more operatic trappings. Instead, NOSFERATU arrives as a highly artful minor fable rather than a full-fledged, and lasting, nightmare.  

A sound shot for shot remake of Nosferatu A Symphony of Terror (2023)

With Robert Eggers remake coming out on Christmas the home video market is being flooded with reissues of the original FW Murnau classic with new music and tinting. Additionally, there have been a couple of other versions including one version that alters the original film via A.I. manipulation and this film which is essentially a shot for shot remake of the original film with actors speaking the lines.

I’m mixed on this film. The performances, including Doug Jones as Orlock, make this film actually worth trying. The actors are not phoning it in which makes it worth seeing. 

The problem with the film is that the use of green screen for compositing makes it look unreal. While the use of composited images allows for the film to exactly mirror the original, it also results in images that are flat. There is no depth to any of the backgrounds. I suspect that this is the result of shooting in a confined space with no distance between the background and the actors. It feels stage bound. The result is a film that feels like it’s the wrong sort of cheap… which it really isn’t.  

Let me restate that problems with the compositing aside this film is very good. I was shocked that so much of this film worked since a shot for shot remake of a silent film shouldn't work but it does.

Is this worth seeing?

If you can forgive its short comings, yes. Is it as good as the original?  No, but the way the film was done raises some interesting issues about recreating films this way, as well as the strength and power of the original. Watching the film I understand why, beyond Max Shreck that the film has survived 102 years.

(ADDENDUM - a review of the remake from Robert Eggers will run closer to that films release on Christmas Day.)

Bad Genius (2024)

Remake of a 2017 Thailand film that was a highlight of that year for many of the people I know. The plot of the film has genius high school student helping her friends ace tests through questionable means. When the scam grows, things get out of hand and threatens her future.

If you want to see a well made film with a cast operating at the top of their game, this is it. It is a perfectly plotted thriller that hooks you early and pulls you in. It's a film you are going to watch and rewatch just so you can see all the moving parts.

Personally I had the same reaction that I had as the first film, which is this is great film but it's so perfect that I never connected to it. Why? Because despite being near perfect you can still feel the pieces being moved around. It's far from fatal, but it just means I love the construction but  just like the finished film.

Worth a look.

City Hunter (2024)

Private detective Ryo Saeba teams with hi dead partner's sister to find his killer. Along the way they find themselves chasing a corporation making a super soldier serum that turns people homicidal before killing them.

Wildly uneven manga adaption has some truly great sequences (most of the action) as well as some head scratcher WTF bits (the cosplay convention) to become a pretty okay film.While not as good as the 1993 Jackie Chan film, it's probably just as good as the 2018 French film.  It's not high art but it does entertain which is enough.

The problem here is the manic humor rarely blends with the serious nature making things a bit bumpy. Still I laughed and smiled and talked to the TV.

Recommended

ROAD HOUSE (2024)

In this remake of the Patrick Swayze classic, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as disgraced MMA star Dalton. He beat an opponent to death in the ring.  Making money by fighting in unsanctioned MMA bouts he’s hired by a woman to help clean up her roadhouse on Glass Key. He quickly discovers that the property is wanted by a bad man  for some (fuzzy) reasons.

This film is an entertaining delight. This is a modern spin on an old Hollywood program film that is just supposed to make you forget about the world for a couple of hours. It has great characters, great action, wonderful one liners and a driving music score that drives it all forward. It was so much fun I refused to leave despite my dog begging to go out.

If there any problem it’s the script which is wildly uneven. Actually this is a perfect example of the modern trend of flushing narrative and characters for extended set pieces. Here we lose the characters and the light pencil line of the narrative thread for the action set pieces and Connor McGregor. While McGregor is very good and will make an excellent action star, here he's so far over the top as to be in another movie playing on Mars. As for the narrative- it never was really all that clear why the roadhouse was wanted by the bad guys or what exactly they were doing or why things happened- like a half burned book shop- reason just goes out the window in the drive just to kill Dalton. Actually everything goes out the window early since we don’t find out the bad guys reasons until so late in the game and are so half assed that there is no genuine suspense of tension.

Not that it matters because despite it’s Hollywood flaws the film is an action lovers dream and highly recommended

Terror Train (2022) on Tubi

 

A college Halloween train trip goes horribly wrong as a mad man begins picking off the college kids. Could it have anything to do with a prank that went horribly wrong a few years before?

Oh course it does.

Tubi remakes the 1980 horror film notable for starring Jamie Lee Curtis and magician David Copperfield and little else. That film was an okay time passer that wasn't really scary but held your attention because you wanted to know who the killer was.

I'm not sure why anyone will want to watch this new version because it's far from compelling. Walking through many of the original's scenes as if it were a dress rehearsal, this film really doesn't have much passion on display. Adequately acted the film never generates any suspense. Yes, it's bloodier and yes, they tweak a few things, but there really isn't a reason for this to exist, except that name recognition might bring a few people, like me, to Tubi.

While the film isn't bad, it's okay, the lack of passion, and the sense this was done on a set or before green screens, makes this a footnote film of a footnote film.

For horror completeists only

FINAL CUT (2022) Cannes 2022

Michel Hazanavicius, The director of THE ARTIST, remakes ONE CUT OF THE DEAD and all I'm left to wonder is why?

I am not going to go into details concerning the plot because the film is a puzzle box that changes in every third. Nominally the film is about the shooting of a zombie film that goes horribly wrong when real zombies attack. What happens after that is the film

If you haven't seen the original then give the film a try because it may work for you. Additionally if you haven't seen the first film stop reading here because after this point I'm going to discuss things that will refer to twists and turns in the film.

Still reading?

Then I assume you know the original and I can discuss this version.

Honestly I didn't care for this film at all for two reasons. The first is a matter of execution and the second is a matter of taste.

Execution wise the film is essentially exactly the original. The film is set in France and everyone has Japanese names. They took the original script and tweaked it slightly (I mean the film runs about 15 minutes longer than the original) and trotted it out as something new  It feels so close  to the original at times I was wondering why I was bothering to watch this version, (When this was announced for Sundance, where it was originally supposed to premiere,  there was no mention of it being a remake and five minutes in I knew I had seen it before).I mean everything carries over.

The one big change that Hazanavicius made was he brought his sense of humor to the proceedings. There is a broadness and silliness to the comedy that you either love or hate. He makes things sillier than they were with the result being that if the humor doesn't click it will seem stupid. I'm not a fan of his humor going back to his earlier films and understand why his films, outside of THE ARTIST, never clicked in the US.

If you saw the original you can skip this version 

Dumbo (2019)

Vile retelling of the classic tale is one of the ugliest Disney films ever made. It is a nightmare concoction that if I had children I would prevent them from ever seeing.

The film tells the story of ex- horseback rider (Colin Farrell) who returns from the first world war minus an arm, His wife has passed and his kids were looked after by the circus performers. With his horses long sold he is put in charge of the elephants, one of which has given birth to one that will become Dumbo. When word of the flying elephant reaches Coney Island, a grand theatrical showman goes to the circus in order to buy Dumbo for his own ends.

Maintaining most of the classic scenes and even most of the music cues, there is a great deal that the film gets right. Unfortunately the film also contains an endless string of ugly abuses perpetrated by the villains of the piece, first a a roustabout who is eventually killed by Dumbo's mom, then the audiences at the circus performances who torment it and lastly by Michael Keaton's theatrical producer who is just a monster. Never mind that this is nominally a kids or family film the ugly abuse directed at the (CGI) animals  and other humans is deeply disturbing. (Mad killers in violent horror films are not this evil) Even arguing that was the way things were 100 years ago when the film is set doesn't account for it. There is an ugliness that is is at such a level that I have to wonder why they felt the need to be that dark.

I am left to ask Who did they make this film for? Not for kids since despite the small children who are Dumbo's friends and the primary human characters, what is going on around them is ugly and likely to induce nightmares. While I know world wide the film covered cost, I suspect the ugliness of the film kept it from doing so in the US.

Well made with some great looking sequences and great CGI the dark atmosphere makes this a film I can't recommend to anyone for any reason.

Brief random thoughts on Suspiria (2018)

Remake of the Dario Argento classic takes the plot and reshapes it into something else entirely. The nominal plot  has a dancer going to Berlin in order to study dance a prestigious academy. Winning a place she soon finds herself in the middle of all sorts of weird stuff as the school is actually the home of a coven of witches.

Throw back film to the sort of off kilter Euro-horror films of the 1970's and 80's it has a grimy look and feel. Where the original had bright colors everything  this time out is muted and we feel oppressed as a result. Juggling a number of themes about (for a detailed discussion see Hubert Vigilla's take here or Lauren Humphries-Brooks review here)) I personally find the film works best simply as a horror film.  Full of dread and unthinkable nightmares the film chills and drags us along into a weird waking nightmare.

I don't think I need to full investigate the deeper meaning and intellectual horrors when there is enough visceral reaction to raise more than a few goose bumps. Besides I started to pull the threads of the deeper meanings and the film began to be less scary as the mechanics of the chills removed much of the fun.

Is this a great horror film? Maybe? Maybe not? I'm still trying to deal with a film that is an immersion tank of emotion of almost three hours.

Worth a look for the curious.

The Vanished (2018) Fantasia 2018

THE VANISHED is a twisty turny supernatural tinged crime thriller about a dead body that gets up from the slab in the morgue and walks off. This sets in motion a police investigation…and to say more might be telling.

The less you know the better this is going to play. I say this because in reading on the film in the Fantasia material I read comparisons to various classic thrillers (I won’t say which ones) which kind of took the edge off the WTF nature of some of the twists. Knowing too much made this slightly less thrilling. I should also point out that the film is a remake of a Spanish film called THE BODY so if you saw that film you may know what to expect here. (Not having seen the earlier film I don’t know how they compare).

I will say that is an expertly made film. Everything about it is as good as it gets. I love that the pithy dialog is delivered by an expert cast. I also love the look of the film. There are numerous shots and sequences that not only added emotion to the proceedings but delighted my inner film geek (the underwater shot where the red lighting looks like blood may be one of my favorite shots of all time).

Simply put VANISHED is a great little thriller and worth a look.

Memoirs of a Murderer Japan Cuts 2017

22 years after a a series of unsolved murders and 7 years after the statue of limitations ran out the murderer writes a book telling all...

Remake of the Korean film Confessions of Murder is a really good little thriller.  Taking the  plot of the original film and amping it up this  deftly directed film manipulates image size and quality to create a real sense of being something all it's own. Jetting along at a good clip for  two acts the film made me completely forget the first film.   Its a hell of a ride.

The problem with the film is that in striving to make the film different from what went before they made it overly complicated. As the film spins to its third act conclusion and it all has to be summed up it kind of gets away from  director Yu Irie. Things get messy. (I can't say what lest I give things away)  Its not fatal but you do realize things are not going to end as neatly as it should.

However despite my reservations I'm really looking forward to seeing the film again since I want to see it for what it is on its own terms and not as a copy of an earlier film, since ultimately this is a stand alone kick ass film.

Messy third act aside- highly recommended

Whisky Galore (2016)

Remake of the classic 1949 film, which is based upon a novel and a true incident that occurred in 1941, WHISKY GALORE is a charming romantic comedy about an island that has run out of alcohol thanks to the privations of the Second World War. As the the two daughters of the local postmaster find romance, a cargo ship runs aground off the coast the locals spring into action to try to rescue the cargo of tens of thousands of bottles of whisky. Unfortunately a stick in the mud army Captain (Eddie Izzard) tries to stop them.

Utterly charming, completely non-taxing and fully enjoyable WHISKY GALORE will put a smile on your face. This film that seems to seek to do no more than just entertain manages to do that in spades. I have been so full of important films at film festivals and big budget money grabs from Hollywood that this film was a real delight. In fairness I think I would have had a smile plastered across my face no matter when I saw it because it just clicked with me.

While the script is a spruced up version of the original story, that I think adds much more romance to the tale (forgive me it's been at least a couple of decades since I saw the original), it still is decidedly old fashion in it's story and story telling. There are no bad words any where and I don't think there is any real violence. The result is a wonderfully low key film.

That the film works as well as it does is because the cast sells it. We fall in love with everyone because they manage to make everyone so charming.

Highly recommended to anyone who wants a good film that isn't big and loud and crude when the film hits theaters Friday.

Magnificent Seven (2016)

Second cinematic western remake of Kurosowa's classic THE SEVEN SAMURAI  is a largely enjoyable mixed bag.  While nowhere near as bad as some reviews made it out to be, it's also nowhere near as a good as either of the earlier classics.

The plot of the film has a literal robber baron named Bartholomew Bogue tormenting a town on the road to his mines in remote valley. He wants the land to expand his mine and instead of paying everyone what it's worth he'll give them a token payment or kill them outright. He feels he can take whatever he wants. After her husband is killed a young woman hires a group of gunman, headed by a man named Chisolm  to defend the town and kill the robber baron.

A broadly drawn plot is nicely filled in thanks to a group of actors working at the top of their game. Make no mistake the reason the film works even as the plot sputters along along is that the cast of gunmen Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier make their characters people we care for. Trust me the shading these great actors give their characters will break your heart as they begin to die in the climatic battle. I could argue that D'Onofrio and Hawke turn in some of their best work of their careers which is saying a great deal.

The problem with the film is it feels about 45 minutes too short. Too many details are left out or fleetingly mentioned. There is a sense of a whole world of back story missing from the film. Either the writers took a short hand approach to everything, including a villain who is simply a series of stock evil traits or the film was heavily chopped by the studio.

The other problem with the film is that there are several plot points that make no sense. Why would there be a town in a valley with only one way in? Why would the villain want the town gone when it could help his mine since it could service his miners? Where are all the homes for the townsfolk? How can the Gatling gun riddle the entire town from a fixed position? More importantly how can it reach the town when it is so far far away? It was those last two that caused me to really throw up my hands.

The plotting is a real mess...

...and yet the film remains entertaining. Thanks, as I said above to the work of the actors who make the gunmen people we care about and whom we shed a tear over when they die.

Also the film has a great series of set pieces including the final hour long siege of the town. say what you will the motion helps a great deal.

This is a solid piece of filmmaking. While not nearly as good as previous versions, it is entertaining , and it does possess some truly great moments.

Defnitely worth a look see.

Elimination Game (aka Turkey Shoot) (2014)

Back in 1983 a grubby little exploitation film called ESCAPE 2000 ( originally titled TURKEY SHOOT) was released to US theaters and made a small profit for the films US distributor Roger Corman. Set in the future the film had prisoners in wilderness camp being given a chance at freedom by allowing themselves to be hunted. If they made it to the end they were free- or so they were told. For reasons that have eluded me over the last 32 years the film has developed a small but very vocal following of film fans around the world (it's good but not that good).

Last year an Australian film company took the basic frame work of TURKEY SHOOT and it’s hunting of prisoners and remade it with Dominic Purcell as the story of a Navy Seal who is set up for a “failed” assassination and forced to play the game in order to get him out of the way in the most public way. The film was retailed THE ELIMINATION GAME for US release, though if they wanted to be truthful in advertising they should have just called it TURKEY.

The desire to write a long and very snarky review is strong, but it’s something that I’m going to resist doing since I can’t really see the point. I've suffered enough watching it and don't need to prolong the agony by writing an over long piece on a film best forgotten.

Outside of the performances of Dominic Purcell and a few other actors there isn’t much to recommend this film. Yes, some of the action is good, but some of it is also dreadful with assassins clearly shooting into the ground in front of them as we watch bullets hit near their supposed targets (ie. the battle in the shipping containers where the girl with two machine guns chases Purcell).

I’m not going to blame the anemic budget, I’ve seen too many cheap action films that made something of their material even if they had to resort to CGI to fill in the gaps and still showed enough skill and heart to make up for the short comings.

I’m also not going to blame the script which has some great plotting and solid verbal exchanges (I like Purcell sparing with his one-time friend turned one of his assassins.)

I’m going to blame the direction which is weak and static. People frequently are seen just standing against a background as if they aren’t in the same space in the scene. The action sequences are either amazing or laughable (The container fight or Purcell vs the female sword master and bow master). Things clunk along instead of flowing. There is a sense of plot details being left out. Worst of all the modulation of tone between the comedy and drama doesn’t exist. Serious things are funny for the wrong reason and jokes lay there dead. (Whats with the opening piece with the General being stripped by the girl? Am I laughing at it or with it?)As I said it’s not the script it’s the direction which is just awful.

I don't know what to say other than this film killed 90 minutes of my life I won't get back.

One of the least films of the year. While not one of the worst of the year- Dominick Purcell alone keeps it off the list and kind of watchable, it not worth your time.

The film hit theaters and VOD Friday.