by BOB Grimm
b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
SHORT TAKES
3
Movie miracle
“P-L-E-A-S-E ... D-E-L-E-T-E ... m-Y ... B-r-O-W-S-E-r... H-i-S-T-O-r-Y.”
Lin Shaye in the original movie. The house in which they reside is the same house where the girl hung herself in Ouija. The whole thing, as the title implies, is an origin story. How bad was 2014’s Ouija? It was so piss poor and We find out how a Ouija board winds up in forgettable that I had to actually look into my the house, and more about the spirits correspondarchives for a review to confirm I had actually ing through the board. After a couple of nice seen the damn thing. I wasn’t sure. conversations with her dead dad, Doris winds As it turns out, I did see the movie, and I up in conference with a rather nasty spirit, who crushed it with my lowest rating, proclaiming possesses her and causes her face and eyes to the following: “The PG-13 outing consists of do nightmarish things. Huge props to the special fake-outs and people behind doors, the kind of effects department for creating some of the best stuff you will see coming if you’ve seen, say, one horrific contorting tricks since the girl from The horror movie in your lifetime. If that is in fact Grudge did her wacky crawling all over that true, don’t make this your second one, for you townhouse. will wind up massively disappointed.” Flanagan captures lightning in a bottle with In short, Ouija was a deplorable shitshow. this ensemble, which also includes Henry Thomas Ouija: Origin of Evil is a bona fide movie taking the standard horror film priest role and miracle in many ways. Ouija was awful, but it making it something deeper and was enough of a hit to warrant more complicated. Thomas hasn’t a sequel. Still, it shocked me to been this good since E.T. This is see the sequel had actually made not a dig on him, because he’s it to movie screens rather than always quite good. It’s just a way some direct-to-digital platform. of saying he really hits this one out The fact that Mike Flanagan, the of the park. director of the crappy Oculus, As the anchor of the film, Basso was at the helm did little to is excellent as the young girl trying quash my skepticism. Director: Mike Flanagan to fall in love with a boy while her After about 30 seconds of Starring: Lulu Wilson, sister goes bananas and her mother watching young Lulu Wilson Elisabeth Reaser stumbles a tad with the parenting as Doris Zander, I realized thing. Make sure to stay after the that Flanagan might to be onto credits to see a scene that’s crucial something with this casting. in connecting the two Ouija films together. This kid, with her authentic 1960s haircut and Flanagan proves he can make a horror film mature-for-her-years delivery, crafts one of the that is scary, multi-dimensional, and effectively great horror film performances of all time. Yes, authentic. His ability to stage a convincing late I’m bestowing that honor on a performance that ’60s setting shows he also has a visual talent occurs in a sequel to one of the worst horror that can take him beyond the horror genre. Most films ever made. importantly, he’s quite the expert at delivering The film, set convincingly in 1965, follows solid, core-punching scares. right along with Wilson as truly inspired and The horror genre has been resurgent the last creepy. Is it one of the best horror films ever couple of years. That said, nobody in their right made? No. A few missteps in the final act take it mind could’ve expected something this good down a notch. Is it one of the best horror sequels here, considering the crap pedigree going in. ever made? You bet it is. Ouija: Origin of Evil, in a year littered with many Doris is the daughter of Alice (Elizabeth predictable disappointments, is one of 2016’s Reaser) and sister of Lina (Annalise Basso). Lina great surprises. Ω is the younger version of a character played by
Ouija: Origin of Evil
12345
22 | RN&R | 10.27.16
The Accountant
This plays out like a deranged Batmanwith-a-calculator action flick. Ben Affleck plays Christian Wolff, a high functioning autistic man who has managed to harness his extreme intelligence with numbers and physical tics down into the strangest of professions. By day, he’s your average accountant helping a farm owner find tax loopholes to save a few thousand bucks. At night, he’s some sort of accountant ninja who can take out a room full of mob guys with a dinner knife and some totally Batman forearm blasts to the face. Christian takes jobs laundering books for dirty folks all over the world and, while he does have a modest, sparsely decorated home, he also has a mobile man cave—or, should I say, Batcave— that keeps all the spoils of his riches—money, gold, Jackson Pollock paintings and, yes, collector’s items like Batman comic books. During one job, trying to find missing money for a prosthetics company led by John Lithgow, he takes a liking to fellow accountant Dana (the invaluable Anna Kendrick), and they conspire to find the missing money, which, of course, wasn’t really supposed to happen. Maybe I’m the only one who sees this movie as Batman doing taxes. Maybe that makes me some sort of amateurish idiot who likes movies that are actually a little on the bad side just because they play out in a weird way in his overreaching mind. If so, I say “Hooray!” to that. My ability to make a movie something else in my head means I have a better chance of making my movie ticket money well spent instead of blown dollars, like the money I blew on that The Girl on the Train piece of shit.
3
Deepwater Horizon
3
In a Valley of Violence
I think my shockingly lustrous eyelashes got singed watching Deepwater Horizon, director Peter Berg’s harrowing account of the worst oil rig disaster in American history. That’s because Berg’s film drops the viewer into a situation where fire and explosions are so realistic, you can feel the heat and disorientation of the 2010 disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 men and led to an oil spill eclipsing all other oil spills. Mark Wahlberg is first-rate as Mike Williams, a man who was actually on the rig at the time of the disaster. Kurt Russell equals his power as Jimmy Harrell, who questions the integrity of the rig, and then proceeds to have the worst shower in cinema history since Janet Leigh had a showdown with Anthony Perkins. Berg puts his film together so that the mere sight of mud oozing from a pipe is terrifying. When the stages of the disaster go into high gear, it’s as scary as any horror film to hit screens this year.
Horror fans know director Ti West for his cult classic horror film House of the Devil, and the horror films V/H/S, The Innkeepers and The Sacrament. His latest, starring Ethan Hawke and John Travolta, is a major departure from his usual projects, a capable, full-on homage to Sergio Leone Westerns. Hawke plays Paul, a drifter who finds himself in a frontier ghost town with a few remaining inhabitants. He and his dog immediately get into some trouble with Gilly (James Ransome), the son of the town marshal (Travolta). Bad things transpire—this is sort of John Wick set in the old wild West—and Paul sets out for revenge. The resultant gunfights are nicely staged, accentuated by good work from Hawke, Travolta and Ransome. While Hawke is always reliable these days, Travolta’s film career has been on a bit of a downslide (one of a few his career has endured). His performance here as a semicrooked lawman with a small streak of decency is actually funny at times, and consists of his best work in a film in over five years. (He was also quite good as Robert Shapiro in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.) The film’s biggest surprise is Taissa Farmiga, providing solid comic relief as a fast-talking hotel operator. West does admirable work on the Western playground. The movie doesn’t feel all that original or groundbreaking, but it does look good, has some solid acting, mixing
in some nice, dark humor for an overall good time. (Available for rent through iTunes, On Demand and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)
3
The Magnificent Seven
Director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven, which was itself a remake of Seven Samurai, has enough in common with the Yul Brynner/Steve McQueen film to make it feel like a retelling of the classic story. It also contains enough departures to make it feel like a fresh take rather than just a rehash. The Mexican bandits led by Eli Wallach are replaced by an evil, land-stealing company led by Bartholomew Bogue. As played by Peter Sarsgaard, Bogue is a memorable villain who makes the skin crawl. He rolls into a mining town, kills a bunch of good hard-working people, and winds up getting the group in the movie’s title on his ass. Let the spectacular gunfights commence! Fuqua’s pal Denzel Washington—they did The Equalizer and Training Day together—is first-rate as Chisolm, basically Brynner’s role from the 1960 classic. When the wife of one of the deceased (Haley Bennett) comes looking for help and mentioning Bogue’s name, Chisolm flies into calm, collected and most certainly valiant action. He enlists six other men to visit the town and prepare the townspeople for the fight of their lives.
1
Mascots
1
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Director Christopher Guest, who hasn’t made a movie in nearly a decade, returns with what is easily his worst. His usual acting corps (minus Eugene Levy) takes a crack at the world of mascots, and I can’t think of a dumber subject for a comedy. Much of the movie is performers in full mascot suits in a competition doing routines that have nothing to them and eat up the running time. There’s a laugh every now and then, but mostly groans, and the subject matter just doesn’t call for a full movie. Parker Posey has the film’s biggest laugh after eating bad sushi, and it’s not a very big laugh, so that’s not saying much. In what amounts to a truly desperate move, Guest cameos as his Waiting for Guffman character, Corky. His presence in that persona simply reminds us that this once funny guy is now straining for laughs, Mel Brooks style. His improvisatory style has worked before on better subjects (community theater, pet shows, folk music), but this one certainly suggests that he has run out of ideas. In many ways, it actually rips off Best in Show, his pet competition movie. This is a tremendous waste of everybody’s time, and needs to be removed from Netflix to make room for more shitty Adam Sandler movies. (Available for streaming as a Netflix original.)
Holy hell, is this film a boring mess. Tim Burton directs a leaden Asa Butterfield in this adaptation of the Ransom Riggs novel. The movie is sloppy, as if the special effects weren’t completed. The story is convoluted, as if the filmmakers thought hiring a big time art director and costuming department were a fair swap for a good script. The narrative involves some nonsense regarding mutant children in a house in the ’40s that’s stuck in a time loop. The house is led by Miss Peregrine (Eva Green, the only good thing about the movie), and visited by young Jake (Butterfield), who heard about the place from his late grandfather (Terrence Stamp). The kids all have “peculiarities” but no personality. They are X-Men with no sense of purpose. Butterfield, a normally reliable young actor, decimates nearly every line he utters in this film. Burton stresses the visuals, as usual, but without a strong lead like Johnny Depp or Michael Keaton, Burton is a lost cause. This will hang tough as one of the year’s biggest disappointments. Samuel L. Jackson does show up, but even he can’t save this thing.