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Cold, cold Hank

I Saw the Light

It’s still a little early yet, but I Saw the Light is positioned to be one of the year’s biggest cinematic disappointments. The film is an ultimate downer because it contains a powerful central performance from Tom Hiddleston as country music legend Hank Williams. Hiddleston looks, and more importantly, sounds the part, performing live with a strong singing voice and stage persona. When I Saw the Light focuses on live music and studio performances of Williams’ standards, it shines. It’s when the film examines his life between the songs that it’s a dull, unrewarding experience. Yes, anybody who knows a little bit about the man knows he died tragically young (29) of alcohol and drug-related complications, and that he had a messed-up love life. Come on, though, this is Hank Williams. It’s hard to accept his life was as dull and humorless as writer-director Marc Abraham’s film suggests. Yes, his end was tragic, but the guy must’ve had a sense of humor. The movie picks up before Williams gets his big break. He’s performing his original songs on a radio show and marrying newly divorced singer wannabe, Audrey Mae Sheppard (a strong Elizabeth Olsen). Williams toils away in honky tonks and tries to make his mark at the Grand Ole Opry, where they are a bit resistant to Williams’ reputation. Of course, Williams does eventually make his Opry debut, and it’s during moments like this and other microphone-commanding performances that Hiddleston captures the spirit of the singer and gives us a hint of his justifiable legacy. It’s the love life stuff that is treated with a morose, dark, clammy tone that makes the film often a task to watch, and it way overstays its welcome at two-plus hours.

On top of his failed marriage to Sheppard, we witness his dalliances with random women, and his eventual last wife, Billie Jean Jones (Maddie Hasson). The time spent with Sheppard does feature a decent performance from Olsen. She does an admirable job doing her own singing, purposefully mediocre as Sheppard suffered industry ridicule for her by Bob Grimm voice. When Olsen basically leaves the film, the female lead baton is passed to Hasson, bgrimm@ and her main directorial instruction seems newsreview.com to be “pout and scowl a lot.” Her presence brings the film to a halt. 2 Again, the music in the film is strong. The movie opens with a nice, solo performance of “Cold, Cold Heart,” with Hiddleston alone in a smoky room as the camera circles him. His voice is strong and contains the proper amount of emotional heft. It’s a moment that seems to set the film up for good times. Then, the film effectively goes to sleep. Abraham saddles the film with long, dreary takes where actors and actresses often seem a bit lost. They’ve also seemingly been instructed to use sleepy tones and volumes, so many line deliveries give the impression they’re bored with the material. Williams must’ve raised some hell in his day. He must’ve played some pranks on band members, or trashed a couple of hotel rooms. He probably also shouted out a joke or two to provide life with some laughter. None of that makes it into I Saw the Light. Hiddleston is asked to play the man as a dull ghost rather than a robust, flawed legend. When he’s singing, the movie has life. When he’s arguing with his mom, it’s dreadful. Abraham relies on some of your basic biopic no-nos to move the story along, including the old fake black-and-white newsreel interview gimmick. That’s when you put an actor in a fake interview setting and make it look like a newsreel to give the film authenticity. It’s just proof that the writer was stuck and needed to cheat his way out of selfinduced plot ditches. Songs like “Lovesick Blues,” “Honky Tonkin’” and other Williams classics provide interesting interludes, but I Saw the Light will be remembered more for its dullness than its musical numbers. Ω

“I’m so bored now, I could cry.”

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310 Cloverfield Lane What’s the significance of the word “Cloverfield” in this movie’s title? Producer J.J. Abrams is calling this movie a blood relative to the original found-footage monster movie. The new film is not a found-footage film (and thank god for that). After seeing it, I can tell you that the title is not misleading, but don’t go to this thinking you’ll see the Cloverfield monster laying waste to middle America. It’s a much different kind of movie. The film starts with Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) having an urgent phone call with somebody. She grabs her keys, hits the road, and drives for what appears to be many miles out of the big city into the cornfields. After stopping for some gas, her car crashes for mysterious reasons. She wakes up from said crash with an IV drip and her leg cuffed to a bar. Shortly thereafter, she meets Howard (John Goodman). Howard seems a little bit anxious and tells her she needs to hydrate, practice using crutches, and, oh yeah, the end of the world is nigh. No one really knows why, but the air above is now contaminated, and they must reside in his emergency bunker for what could be years. There’s another inhabitant of the bunker, and that’s Howard’s soft-spoken neighbor Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.). The film then becomes an intense “is she a hostage?” drama, and then something altogether different by the time credits roll. Goodman and Winstead are both excellent in what turns out to be a nifty little thriller.

3Baskin The horror genre has been getting a nice boost these last couple of years. Well, here’s another one to bolster that argument, but it isn’t for the faint of heart. This one is for those original Hellraiser-loving, Dario Argentofollowing horror fans who want their scares as dismal, dirty and creepy as they can get. Turkish writer-director Can Evrenol goes for the total bloody freak-out and succeeds as a group of cops respond to a call, get in a strange car crash, and wind up going through the doorway to Hell after entering an abandoned building. While on their way to Hell, they are disemboweled, blinded, forced to do things with masked monsters, and generally not treated well. I can only recommend this movie to the most hardcore of horror fans. It’s as blood-soaked and nightmarish as these things get, and will screw with your mind and your sense of well-being. It will make you feel just a little scared about watching a horror movie again in that you will now be reminded that some directors out there have the key to what scares people the most. I have nothing but respect for a movie that can scare the crap out of me like this one did, but it’s probably going to be a while until I dare to watch it again. Unless you count the parts of it that I will see after I go to sleep tonight and have nightmares about it. Damn you, Can Evrenol! (Available for rent on iTunes and Amazon. com during a limited theatrical release.)

1Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice This is definitive proof that director Zack Snyder should be banned from the DC universe. The man who gave us Sucker Punch has effectively knocked the wind out of two great comic book heroes. This film is a crime to every geek who has ever picked up a graphic novel. Hell, it’s also a crime afflicted upon hardcore Ben Affleck fans. Affleck could be a fine Batman. Actually, he could be a great Batman. But, like George Clooney before him, he winds up looking quite ridiculous running around in a messy movie in which his character simply doesn’t fit. A nice effort by Affleck to portray a nuanced, older, somewhat weary Bruce Wayne—not to mention a badass suit—is utterly wasted. As for Henry Cavill’s Superman, I’m longing for those short-lived days of Brandon Routh as Kal-el. While it isn’t entirely his fault, Cavill’s Supes is officially a dud. A sequel to the dreary Man of Steel, also directed by Snyder, Batman v Superman is a soulless step in the wrong direction. Snyder, who made a great graphic novel movie with Watchmen, has just completely lost the ability to put together a cohesive, exciting movie. The film drags, the character motivations make no sense, and the film totally lacks any sense of joy or humor. It’s sad that somebody can’t make an entertaining movie with two DC classic superheroes, but that’s exactly what Snyder has done. He’s completely failed the fanbase, and he needs to be stopped. 4 Deadpool Ryan Reynolds scores big in this twisted film from first time director Tim Miller. The movie establishes its weirdness with scathing opening credits that poke fun at Reynolds’s stint as Green Lantern. It then becomes a consistently funny tragicomedy involving Wade, a mercenary who comes down with terminal cancer, dimming the lights on his future with girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). He submits himself to an experiment that leaves him disfigured yet superhuman, bent on revenge against the criminal who made him this way. Reynolds finally gets a good movie to match his charms, and Deadpool gets the nasty film the character beckons for. The film gets an R-rating for many reasons, and there was no other way to make a Deadpool film. It needed to be depraved, and it is.

4Eye in the Sky A drone pilot (Aaron Paul) has a missile shot all lined up and is about to pull the trigger on a houseful of terrorists when a little girl parks herself within the blast zone to sell some bread. This is just one of the dilemmas brilliantly depicted in writer-director Gavin Hood’s tense thriller about drone warfare and the political ramifications of collateral damage. Helen Mirren is superb as Colonel Katherine Powell, determined to take out multiple targets on Great Britain’s terrorist list, but needing to check the legalities of all her strategies before she can make a single move. In his last live action screen appearance, Alan Rickman is terrific as Lt. General Frank Benson, drolly responding to the bureaucracy that’s keeping him from doing his job. Paul brings his best big screen acting yet to the role of Steve Watts, a drone commander torn between killing an innocent child or preventing potential scores from being killed in a terrorist bombing. Phoebe Fox gives a breakthrough performance as Carrie Gershon, drone cocommander. The film poses many questions and many dilemmas, and wisely doesn’t take sides. It presents you with the frustrating situations and the consequences, and the viewer is left to mull it all over. This is one of the better-acted films in the first third of 2016.

3Hello, My Name is Doris Sally Field plays the title character, a 60-something office worker who gets a crush on John (Max Greenfield), a much younger co-worker. The two become friendly, and then Doris gets a little carried away into a fantasy world regarding him. Yes, she’s a bit of a stalker, but it’s Sally Field doing the stalking, so it winds up being kind of cute. Directed by Michael Showalter (The Baxter, Wet Hot American Summer), the film mixes goofy comedy with some of a darker variety. Field, who hasn’t had a chance to shine in a comedy in a long while, gives us a multi-dimensional character to go with the laughs. Greenfield is excellent as the object of Doris’ desire, and he actually has a palpable chemistry with Field. You never really know if something might happen between Doris and John, and even though Field is 30 years older, hey, it’s Sally Field. Showalter, who co-wrote the film with Laura Terruso, put together a nice supporting cast including Stephen Root and Tyne Daly. Showalter didn’t get his due with his sweet and funny feature directing debut, The Baxter. His movies show he can go beyond the realms of outrageous comedies and deliver material with a dramatic oomph—while still managing to be a bit silly.

3Zootopia Disney delivers another winner with this cute, uplifting story with a surprising dark side. It’s the sort of movie that’ll have kids asking their parents a few questions about some tough topics, while also being a movie that should entertain just about anyone who sits their butt in a theater seat to watch it. Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin entering the Voice Acting Hall of Fame) is a little bunny determined to be the first bunny cop on the force in Zootopia, a metropolis populated by animals. On the road to joining the force, she faces a lot of opposition for being both a bunny and a girl. Judy beats insurmountable odds, and winds up on the force, much to the chagrin of Chief Bogo (Idris Elba). She soon finds herself on a missing mammals case and enlists the help of a sly fox (Jason Bateman) for investigative work. The film is co-directed by three guys: Byron Howard (Tangled), Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) and Jared Bush (his feature debut!). The animation is top notch, with cute little touches throughout.