Review: Tomb Raider (2018)

* *
Director: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander

File this one under "Movies You've Already Forgotten About, Even Though They Only Came Out A Few Months Ago," and with good reason. Tomb Raider is a forgettable adventure movie that forgets the key thing that tends to make adventure movies successful - it's not very much fun. This is a movie with a plot that centers on a giant tomb that is full of elaborate puzzles that need to be solved in order for the players to survive and it somehow manages to be mostly boring. It never had to be great, it never had to be groundbreaking, it didn't even need to stray too far from its video game origins, but it needed to be entertaining and, save for a moment or two scattered throughout, it fails. It is, at least, better than last year's tomb raiding movie The Mummy, but if you've seen The Mummy then you know that that's pretty faint praise.

Review: Table 19 (2017)

* *
Director: Jeffrey Blitz
Starring: Anna Kendrick

At times Table 19 feels like nothing more than a premise - an evening spent at "the losers" table at a wedding reception - barely elaborated upon. Its characters are little more than sketches and its plot turns tend to rely on one character figuring something out about another based on almost nothing. Running at a quick 87 minutes, during which its handful of characters each has and neatly resolves a crisis, it's light and fluffy and almost instantly forgettable. Yet despite this, and largely because the film has the great good fortune of Anna Kendrick in the lead, it's not without its charms. It's empty calories, but so are cupcakes and sometimes you just want something that's not good for you but that gives you a short-lived buzz. Basically, if you have an hour and a half to spare, you could do worse than spend it with Table 19.

Review: The Mountain Between Us (2017)

* *
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Starring: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba

I'll answer the two most important questions first: Yes, the dog lives. As a matter of fact, I left the theater convinced that the dog is immortal because nothing takes him down, but try telling that to Kate Winslet's character, who sends Idris Elba's to look for the dog each time it runs off. Second, yes, they do it. How often does a movie put two people that attractive together and not have them get into bed? Now that you know that, you can probably skip it at the theater and catch it when it shows up on your preferred streaming service or when it ends up on TV. It's not a bad movie, but it's definitely the kind of movie that probably plays best when it's raining outside and you have nothing else to keep yourself entertained with.

Review: The Mummy (2017)

* *
Director: Alex Kurtzman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe

I'll give The Mummy this much: it takes stones to start your movie by announcing it as the inaugural entry in the "Dark Universe" when previous attempts to launch the series have already been released and failed (and then disavowed as if they were never meant to be anything of the kind in the first place). As for the rest? Meh. Marketed (in North America, at least) as a "darker" take on the Mummy story that would veer towards horror, it's actually aiming to be an Indiana Jones-style adventure yarn with frequent shots of humor, and if that's what you want to watch, well, you may as well just watch the Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy, which does everything that this one is trying to do (except kick off a shared universe) but much better.

Netflix Recommends... Rules Don't Apply (2016)

* *
Director: Warren Beatty
Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Warren Beatty, Lily Collins

Warren Beatty is a curious case when it comes to Hollywood stars. He's been a star for 56 years, since Splendor in the Grass, but his output during that time has been relatively minimal, starring in 23 films during that time. For the sake of comparison, his contemporary Jack Nicholson has been a star for 48 years, since the release of Easy Rider, and since then has made 44 movies, with a 45th on the horizon. This isn't to say that Nicholson's filmmography is necessarily better, I'm just saying that there is a heightened level of selectivity to Beatty's output. "Selectivity" might not even be the best word to describe the career of the notoriously fastidious Beatty, who is known for moving slowly on projects before bringing them to fruition. One of those long simmering projects was Rules Don't Apply, which Beatty reportedly spent 40 years working at bringing to the screen. I'm not entirely sure whether the end result suggests that 40 years left it overcooked or still, somehow, undercooked, but Rules Don't Apply doesn't exactly present itself as a film that ever really needed to be made.

Review: Rough Night (2017)

* *
Director: Lucia Aniello
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer, Zoe Kravitz

As it turns out, it's somewhat difficult to build a comedy around a graphic death and its subsequent cover up. I mean, if it couldn't work with this cast - Scarlett Johansson and Zoe Kravitz aren't known for comedy, but Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, and Ilana Glazer have solid comedy pedigrees - then I'm going to say that it can't work, period. It's not that Rough Night isn't funny at all; many parts of it are genuinely very funny (though it's odd that in a film with so many funny women, it's one of the male actors who ends up stealing the show). The problem is twofold: 1) the dark half of this dark comedy is so brutal that it drags the comedy half down, and 2) despite committing so fully at the beginning, in the end the film pulls back with a magical resolution that renders everything just fine.

Review: War Machine (2017)

* *
Director: David Michod
Starring: Brad Pitt

I'll give War Machine this much: it doesn't give in to the temptation to play "Fortunate Son" at any point during its running time, even at the end when you can practically hear the opening guitar riff start in your head. In just about every other respect David Michod's film aligns with pretty much every other movie ever made about the War on Terror (the exception being the great The Hurt Locker), pointing out the follies and the hubris that have already been examined and dissected ad nauseam, offering nothing new in terms of insight, and resorting to glibness whenever it can think of nothing else to do. War Machine aims for satire but, like the conduct of the wars themselves, confuses having a mandate with having the means to fully and successfully achieve the goal. And, yes, Brad Pitt is going to make that face through the whole movie and, yes, sometimes that is pretty distracting.

Review: Nocturnal Animals (2016)

* *
Director: Tom Ford
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon

I was a great admirer of Tom Ford's debut film, A Single Man, which was not only incredibly stylish but also managed to be a moving portrait of a man struggling to grieve a loss that the mores of the time keep him from openly acknowledging. I'm considerably less keen on Nocturnal Animals, which is also stylish and even, in moments, expertly made, but overall reeks of fraud. Nocturnal Animals is a movie that doesn't actually seem to have anything to say, save for the most superficial and banal things possible, but revels in empty symbols that give the appearance of profundity. It's unfortunate, because the film actually contains some pretty incredible performances (including that of Michael Shannon, which received an Oscar nomination), but even the fine work of the actors can't disguise how vapid an enterprise this is.

Tales From the Black List: The Judge (2014)

* *
Director: David Dobkin
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall

Back in the days before movies lived and died by their opening weekends, films like The Judge were Hollywood's bread and butter. A mid-budget drama where the stakes are emotional more than anything, as opposed to the now commonplace massive budget behemoths where the stakes are no less than the survival of the world itself, and where a big star gets to flex his muscle as an actor, The Judge is the kind of movie that used to be a no-brainer. Times change, of course, and now projects that used to seem risk free on paper struggle to recoup even their modest budgets (though The Judge might have helped itself by cutting 30 minutes from its running time and making the first casualty its weird and wholly unnecessary incest plot). The market is no longer particularly favorable to movies like this, but I can understand why they tried and why this would have seemed like a good idea when the script hit Hollywood. Old habits die hard, after all.

Netflix Originals Marathon: Special Correspondents (2016)

* *
Director: Ricky Gervais
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Eric Bana

When watching a movie there are few things more disappointing than when it has the opportunity, and seemingly the drive, to be a biting satire, only to lose its nerve midway through and end up being something a lot more generic and safe instead. That's the case with Ricky Gervais' Special Correspondents, a comedy that seems willing and able to take a piece off the media and the commodification of tragedy for the purpose of making money, only to fold up and reveal itself as a standard issue buddy action comedy. Parts of the film are quite funny, the performances are better than they have any reason to be, but overall I found myself much more engaged by the paths the film keeps choosing not to take than by the actual story it decides to tell.

Netflix Originals Marathon: Mascots (2016)

* *
Director: Christopher Guest
Starring: the Christopher Guest players

When Christopher Guest is at the top of his game, he creates comedies that are among the funniest out there. When he's not quite at the top of his game, he still creates films that are good for at least a few genuinely hearty laughs. Mascots, which like most of Guest's films plays out in mockumentary format, is not great Guest. That may be because it lacks two of Guest's most valuable regulars - Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy - and it may be because it takes as its premise something that doesn't have much air of reality. Community theater productions are a real thing (Waiting For Guffman), dog shows are a real thing (Best in Show), folk music concerts are a real thing (A Mighty Wind), and Oscar campaigning is a real thing (For Your Consideration), but are there actually mascot competitions? The focus here might be too specialized and obscure. There are funny moments in Mascots to be sure, but it doesn't hold together all that well.

Netflix Originals Marathon: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

* *
Director: Oz Perkins
Starring: Ruth Wilson

I think that I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House would likely make a good novel. It doesn't just have a literary vibe, it has a very specific Victorian Gothic feeling to it that makes it feel like an atmospheric throwback to a time when horror was more about leaving one feeling unsettled than about vivid and explicit depictions of gore. If I were reading I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, I'd probably be pretty into it. A lot of what it's doing would work pretty well in a novel. As a film? Well, it's actually kind of boring, which is something that you should really never be able to say about a film that only runs for 87 minutes. While Oz Perkins' second feature is definitely big on atmosphere, there's just not a lot of payoff.

Review: The Rewrite (2014)

* *
Director: Marc Lawrence
Starring: Hugh Grant, Marisa Tomei

Early in The Rewrite the protagonist, a once celebrated Hollywood screenwriter who has fallen on hard times, complains that he can't sell any of his story ideas because all anyone wants to make are stories about female empowerment. Lord, please tell me where this crowded marketplace of movies about female empowerment are, because as far as I can tell it's white male protagonists as far as the eye can see. If you can ignore the fact that the film is premised on a problem (if a rise in the number of films about women can be seen as a problem) that simply does not exist, then The Rewrite is a pleasant enough diversion. It's somewhat sleepy overall and not nearly as much fun as previous Marc Lawrence/Hugh Grant collaborations Two Weeks Notice and Music and Lyrics (I have no idea about Did You Hear About the Morgans?), but it's decent enough for what it is.

Review: Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)

* *
Director: Mandie Fletcher
Starring: Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley

It's been a little over 20 years since Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone first sweetie, darling-ed their way into hearts and pop culture in Absolutely Fabulous and, if anything, they are only more suited to the world today than they were to the world in 1992. With the rise of the internet and social media, culture has only grown more shallow, more celebrity-obsessed, and more youth-obsessed than it was 20 years ago, making it the ideal place for Eddie and Patsy. But Absolutely Fabulous the TV series was a half-hour affair that ran for 39 episodes off and on from 1992 to 2012. The stakes were never high and the ambition level was low. That was fine for a half-hour comedy, but it's pretty thin stuff for a feature length movie. Don't get me wrong: individual bits and pieces of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie are great, but the premise of the series really can't sustain 91 minutes.

Review: Womb (2012)

* *
Director: Benedek Fliegauf
Starring: Eva Green, Matt Smith

Girl meets Boy. Girl and Boy become inseparable. Girl's family moves away. Girl returns many years later and reunites with Boy. Boy dies in tragic accident. Girl convinces Boy's parents to give her permission to use his remains to have him cloned. Girl carries the cloned fetus, gives birth to cloned Boy, raises cloned Boy as her son. Classic story. Does it get weird? I mean, it pretty much starts weird, but does it get weirder still? Oh, yes, it certainly does, and in ways other than the obvious one. Does that make it interesting? Well... Womb is sometimes intriguing and raises some complex and interesting questions, but on the whole the film is far too listless for such a peculiar premise.

Review: Jane Got a Gun (2016)

* *
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Starring: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor

Gene Siskel had a pretty simple test for determining the relative value of a film: is the end product more interesting than a documentary about the same actors having lunch? A film with a production history as famously fraught as Jane Got a Gun can simply never pass that test. I bet a documentary about the goings on behind the scenes of this film would be fascinating. It was developed and originally set to be directed by Lynne Ramsay, but she walked off the project before shooting could begin on the first day, resulting in both a lawsuit and Ramsay being replaced by Gavin O'Connor. The role of the main character's ex-lover was originally set to be played by Michael Fassbender, with the villain to be played by Joel Edgerton. However, when Fassbender dropped out, Edgerton was recast into his role and Jude Law was brought on board to play the villain. Then, when Ramsay walked, Law went with her, as did original cinematographer Darius Khondji. Bradley Cooper was then brought in to replace Law, Mandy Walker stepped in as cinematographer, and Edgerton and Anthony Tambakis were hired to rewrite the script that had been prepared by Brian Duffield. Finally, Cooper withdrew and Ewan McGregor came aboard to take his place. All that fuss and the result is really nothing to write home about, with Jane Got a Gun ending up being, at best, an okay B-western, and, at worst, a messy mix of the original vision plus all the subsequent visions of the story.

Review: Oblivion (2013)

* *
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise

How can a movie cost so much to make and still seem so incredibly half-assed? Is it really so much to ask that, with $120 million dollars to play with, the result not be shoddily constructed from the spare parts of other science fiction, action, and post-apocalypse movies? That at least one of the two female characters not be wafer thin? That it at least have enough of a spark of originality to not name its hero "Jack," the go-to name (along with "John") for everyman heroes? Action movie screenwriters of the world: if you need your hero to have a down to earth, dude's dude name, can we maybe start branching out a bit? If you're going to surround your protagonist with every cliche and recycled plot point that comes to mind, can you at least make him a "Mike" or "Dave" or "Chris"? That alone wouldn't make the movie better, of course, but it might make it somewhat less annoyingly familiar.

Review: The Boss (2016)

* *
Director: Ben Falcone
Starring: Melissa McCarthy

I'll admit it, I'm something of a Melissa McCarthy apologist. I find the most consistent criticism of her - that she plays the same character over and over again - to be kind of lazy as, aside from the occasional foul-mouthed tirade, I don't really see that the ruthless con artist who discovers that she's capable of actually caring about others of Identity Thief, the tough, lone wolf cop of The Heat, the woman damaged by a lifetime of disappointment of Tammy, and the hyper-capable agent hiding inside a meek and submissive persona of Spy have all that much in common. Even the way that the people who surround those characters relate to them is quite different, with Tammy inspiring people's pity at basically all turns, Mullins (of The Heat) inspiring fear of her hair-trigger temper, Susan Cooper inspiring those around her to constantly underestimate her, and Dawn Budgie (Identity Thief), inspiring wariness because she's so clearly a sociopath. I also, generally, admire McCarthy's willingness to go for broke in the interest of getting a laugh, often sacrificing all vanity to get there. That said, The Boss is far, far from her best and her collaborations with husband Ben Falcone continue to be a distant second to her collaborations with Paul Feig

Netflix Recommends... Transcendence (2014)

* *
Director: Wally Pfister
Starring: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman

We can do anything now that scientists have invented magic. But, oh, this is not cause for celebration, for the future brings nothing but despair according to Transcendence, a film pitched not merely at the level of panic, but at sheer hysteria in its nightmare vision about the slippery slope of technology. Once we create a self-aware AI, there's nothing it won't be able to do! We'll have to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater just to stop it! All that will be left is destruction, darkness, and a backwards leap into a pre-technological age. Transcendence has an interesting premise, which is perhaps to be expected from a film whose screenplay once appeared on Hollywood's famed Black List, the annual roster of the best unproduced screenplays in any given year (though given that this year's critically reviled Dirty Grandpa also once appeared on the Black List, as did such beloved classics as The Other Boleyn Girl, Wild Hogs, All About Steve, Clash of the Titans, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, it's perhaps not the prestigious list it sells itself as being), but it doesn't do anything very interesting with it.

Review: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016)

* *
Director: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
Starring: Tina Fey

Meet Kim. She's a 40-something woman with a good job that leaves her unfulfilled, a relationship that she's decided to remain half-way invested in despite feeling unfulfilled by it, and a life that is marked by an inescapable sense of sameness and lack of forward movement. She's complacently unhappy and so when the opportunity comes to go to Afghanistan to work as a war correspondent, she sees it as no less than an opportunity to scrap her life entirely and remake it from scratch. "That is the most American white lady story I've ever heard," is the response she gets when she explains what she's doing in Kabul. If that moment was indicative of the level of self-awareness that Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was dealing in generally, it would be a much better movie, but it's ambitions are much lower. While the film certainly has its moments, it's ultimately not more than a star vehicle built on an uneasy mishmash of genres.