Movie Reviews

The Predator

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  • Title: The Predator
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The Predator movie review

John McTiernan‘s Predator is a sci-fi action flick that holds up three decades later. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same for its sequels. Writer/director Shane Black is the latest to try his hand at breathing some new life into the franchise. Set in present day, The Predator acknowledges the previous films and offers more than a handful of callbacks (including someone actually yelling to “Get to the chopper!”).

I think expectations are going to play a large role in audience reaction to the film. On one-hand it does work as a throwaway B-movie. On the other the film misses the mark with a convoluted script and an underwhelming ending. Despite enjoying Black’s work, I expected very little from the movie and ended up having an okay time (while I freely admit that the elements here could have been put to far better use).

The first Predator arrives on Earth causing havoc. The second, uber-Predator (and his Predator dogs), follows later. I won’t give away the relationship between the pair, or why they are on Earth, but it is far more complicated than simply hunting for sport (making a pretty large deviation from other Predator films).

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The Happytime Murders

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  • Title: The Happytime Murders
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The Happytime Murders movie reviewAfter being in and out of development for the better part of a decade (delays included a legal battle with Sesame Street), The Happytime Murders finally has made its way to theaters. Directed by Jim Henson‘s son Brian Henson, the film is juvenile, crude, and certainly lacking in likable characters. That said, it also made me laugh, and (perhaps most importantly) it never bored me.

The story takes place in a world where living puppets are commonplace, although most humans treat them as second-class citizens. In the style of a gumshoe film noir, our lead is surly puppet detective Phil Philips (Bill Barretta) who gets drawn into a series of murders that tie back to a popular television show involving his friends and family.

For good measure, the film adds a classic femme fatale (Dorien Davies) and Phil’s gruff, but honest, narration as he works through the case. (I almost wish it had been made in black and white.) The investigation also brings Phil back together with his former partner (Melissa McCarthy) whose testimony got him thrown off the police force years before.

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Alpha

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  • Title: Alpha
  • IMDb: link

Alpha movie reviewAlpha is pretty much what you would expect. The screenplay by Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt combines well-established tropes of the long road home and a boy and his dog for an inoffensive summer popcorn flick. If director Albert Hughes (who also wrote the original story) isn’t that ambitious, he does succeed in producing a passable tale.

The film’s opening scene introduces us to Kedo (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a young warrior on his first hunt. The son of the chief (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), Kedo has the burden of the clan’s expectations on him. Separated from his group, and believed dead, an injured Kedo is forced to travel the long distance home alone, that is until he befriends a wolf he names Alpha.

One of the strengths of the film are its visuals, and by this I don’t only mean capturing the wide landscapes for IMAX screens. Hughes frames each shot in a way that the film would work (perhaps better) without any dialogue. His actors are expressive and the basic themes of family, home, friendship, and survival work on a universal level while both the (bland) dialogue and subtitles actually detract from the story.

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Christopher Robin

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  • Title: Christopher Robin
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Christopher Robin movie reviewChristopher Robin is a safe, by-the-numbers, inoffensive Disney live-action film that is likely to appease (although probably not delight) its target audience. Based on the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne, Ewan McGregor stars as the fictional character Christopher Robin (originally based on Milne’s own son) who has grown-up and left his childish things long behind and currently is lost in a stressful job while struggling to connect to his wife (Hayley Atwell) and daughter (Bronte Carmichael). In the midst of a crisis, Christopher Robin is shocked by the sudden appearance of his old friend Winnie-the-Pooh (Jim Cummings) who arrives in London and enlists Christopher Robin to help find the rest of the old gang who have disappeared.

There’s an interesting idea for a dark comedy in Christopher Robin about a middle-aged man having a psychotic break and running into the countryside with a make-believe talking bear made of felt. Sadly, that’s nowhere near the film Disney was interested in making. Instead, Christopher Robin takes his pal back to the old stomping grounds and, while in search of the other characters, rediscovers a bit of his old self.

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The Darkest Minds

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  • Title: The Darkest Minds
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The Darkest Minds movie reviewThe Darkest Minds is a mess. It’s as if someone took an entire season of a Freeform sci-fi series made for a tweenage fanbase and condensed it into a single two-hour film. Based on the story structure and pacing you can tell immediately that the movie was adapted from a novel. Drawn-out events are presented in meandering fashion as we follow Ruby (played in early scenes by Lidya Jewett and later by Amandla Stenberg) through a troubling adolescence when she becomes mutated by a virus that leaves 98% of the world’s children dead and the remainder gifted with poorly explained powers.

After being taken from her family by the Federal Government and thrown into a concentration camp for mutants, Ruby eventually escapes through the help of a social worker (hey, Mandy Moore is still working) who exists only as an agent to further the plot and lead Ruby to other kids like herself (Harris Dickinson, Skylan Brooks, and Miya Cech) hunting for a mythical camp of lost boys living outside the system. Yeah… because societies put together by kids (with super-powers no less) are sure to be super stable.

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