Film

“You liked the the Saw movies? really?”

Blind spot

Look, I know movies are mostly fiction and much of what happens in them can’t really happen in the real world. Still, I look for a certain amount of reality in movies that don’t contain ghosts, aliens, cyborgs, etc. In other words, when it’s steeped in reality, you sometimes lose me when things get too outlandish and inexplicable.

Case in point: Don’t Breathe. Now here’s a horror movie helmed by a guy who knows how to put a good scare together, that being Fede Alvarez, the guy who gave us that relatively decent Evil Dead remake. The movie deals with three dimwits (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto) trying to rob a blind military veteran (a growly Stephen Lang) of his dough in his house. In the course of their heist, they find out a few really bad things about the guy, including his aspirations to be the next Jigsaw (the presently retired, ridiculous villain from the Saw series).

Rocky (Levy, who also starred in Alvarez’s Evil Dead) wants to get out of Detroit—who can blame her?—and move to California with her little sister. She and her boyfriend (Zovatto) have been pulling off minor robberies with Alex (Minnette), using alarm codes from his dad’s security company. They get wind of a boatload of money in the blind man’s house and set out to rob him while he’s home.

Yes, the premise is interesting, but things go off the rails pretty quickly when The Blind Man—that’s his actual character name—somehow survives a gassing and interrupts the robbery. His initial thwarting of the break-in is convincing enough, but then the movie becomes all about the robbers standing still while The Blind Man races right by them.

Right here I’m calling bullshit because Alvarez makes a point to show us The Blind Man’s heightened sense of smell on many occasions. He also shows us that he’s a well-oiled, keen

soldier machine, even with the loss of his sight. I found it totally ridiculous that he couldn’t sense individuals—sweating, twitchy, overly scared individuals—within inches of him with that nose of his. He might race by them once, but he does it multiple times. Even if you were to let that go, the movie becomes a horror show when the robbers discover what’s in The Blind Man’s basement. It turns out The Blind Man has a backstory involving a daughter killed by a drunk driver and a revenge plot straight out of a Saw movie. And let me make this clear: When I draw comparisons to the Saw movies, it is not a good thing, because I totally hated all of the Saw movies. You get the inevitable lights-out scene with the robbers trying to evade The Blind Man and Alvarez switching to night vision, just as Jonathan Demme did in The Silence of the Lambs with much more success. Too much of this movie is based on everybody doing stupid, Don’t Breathe stupid things and reacting to their situations in a manner that quali12345 Director: Fede Alvarez Starring: Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Stephen Lang fies them as truly moronic. Again, I can buy a couple of errors and misjudgments from characters being chased by a malevolent force, but things in Don’t Breathe get way out of hand. And as for the bit with the turkey baster, well, I certainly didn’t need to see that. Don’t get buttered popcorn before watching this movie. On the plus side, Alvarez gets a few good jump scares, provides a decent homage to Cujo at one point, and gets good acting work out of Levy and, to some extent, Lang. Each performer is at the mercy of the silly script given to them, so when it gets a little too ridiculous, they must follow suit. The ending leaves things very open for a sequel, which should satiate The Blind Man’s thirst to be the next Jigsaw. Given the early financial success for the movie, it’s safe to say The Blind Man will get more opportunities to do bad things with turkey basters and light switches. The horror genre has been rejuvenated the past couple of years, but films like this stall that renaissance. Ω

3Blood Father Mel Gibson is a fucking asshole, but he can act with the best of them. As Link, an ex-con with a tattoo parlor in his trailer and a missing daughter (Erin Moriarty), he’s a stunning, grizzly marvel—elevating mediocre material into something completely watchable. When the missing daughter gets herself into some major trouble, she comes back on the grid by giving Link a call. Having never really known his daughter, Link is determined to be the dad he never was thanks to a seven year prison stint, and he goes into super protective mode. The two wind up on the run from a drug cartel, and that leads to sights like Gibson on a motorcycle blowing people away with a shotgun. This is a tour de force for Gibson, whose ranting inside Link’s trailer as it is being shot to shreds just might be the best piece of acting he’s ever put forth. Director Jean-Francois Richet lucked out in casting Gibson as this character desperately in search of redemption. It suits Gibson very well at this time, and I can’t think of an actor who would’ve done a better job with this material. William H. Macy is reliably good as Link’s sponsor. Moriarty holds her own against the insane Gibson, and Michael Parks kills it as a former friend and true bastard. If you should choose to watch it, I think you’ll be surprised. (Streaming on iTunes and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)

5Hell or High Water Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster all destroy their parts in this absolutely terrific modern Western from director David Mackenzie. Pine and Foster play two brothers who come up with a bank-robbing scheme to save the family farm, and Bridges is the soonto-be-retired sheriff trying to stop them. Pine takes his career into all new territories with his work here, making you forget he’s Captain Kirk and totally disappearing into his part. Foster, an actor I couldn’t stand when he was younger, just gets better and better with each film, with this being his best work yet. Pine is supposedly the more sensible one, while Foster is the nut. What’s great about the writing here is how those roles sometimes switch, and the acting by both makes it mesmerizing to watch. What else can you say about Bridges at this point? He’s one of the best actors to have ever walked the Earth, and this further cements that fact. Mackenzie, whose most notorious prior film was the underrated StarredUp, takes a step into the elite class with this one. His staging of car chases and manhunts is nerve-shredding .

4Morris From America Craig Robinson and Markees Christmas are one of the better father-son teams the movies have seen in a long time in this charmer from writer-director Chad Hartigan. Christmas plays Morris, a 13-year-old American living in Germany because his dad Curtis (Robinson) has a job there as a soccer coach. Morris is learning German, trying to make friends, and developing a crush on older girl Katrin (Lina Keller). He’s dealing with the kind of crap you would expect a black American to be dealing with in an all white city. The dynamic between Robinson (easily his best performance) and Christmas makes it seem like these guys are really father and son. They complement each other perfectly, and it’s refreshing to see a father and son talk and deal the way they do in this movie. The relationship between Morris and the somewhat troublesome Katrin is also refreshing in that it never seems false. It’s a solid coming-of-age story in an unexpected and unpredictable locale, with a cast of characters (including Carla Juri of Wetlandsas Morris’ tutor) that scores across the board. This is one of the summer’s great surprises. (Streaming on iTunes and Amazon.com during limited theatrical release.)

4Sausage Party SausageParty, the animated hellcat from writer-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is the first big studio film in a long time with screaming levels of originality. It’s a profanity-laden, blasphemous middle finger to the movie-making establishment that thinks it’s OK to turn out sequels and comic book movies that suck as long as people shell out for them. It couldn’t be more fun, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. In a sunny supermarket, a bunch of vegetables, hot dogs and buns wake up and sing a happy song, convinced that today will be the day they are chosen by humans to enter the great beyond—the world on the other side of those automatic sliding doors. What they find on the other side of those doors is nonstop carnage, certain death, and a generally bad time for all things digestible. What makes SausagePartya cut above your average stoner movie full of food items screwing and being murdered is that it’s actually a smart swipe at organized religion and politics.

4Southside with You Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter shine as Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson on their first date in this ultra sweet, enjoyable account of when the future President and First Lady got together for a day and eventually went to see Spike Lee’s DotheRightThing. Writer-director Richard Tanne, above all things, does a great job of capturing the spirit of the late ’80s with his period piece, placing the two icons in a very believable, low-key environment. Sawyers (a dead ringer for Obama) and Sumpter capture the spirit of the couple without exaggerating any of their characteristics. It’s a blast watching a young Robinson, who was actually Obama’s mentor and advisor at a law firm he worked for that summer, keeping a persistent Obama in check with his romantic pursuits. It’s also funny to see the future president lighting up many cigarettes during the course of the movie, including in his very first scene. Tanne’s approach to the subject matter is beautifully understated, allowing for his performers to show us a couple of real people getting to know each other slowly. We all know how things turn out for the couple, but it’s fun to see them starting in Obama’s crappy, smoke-stained jalopy with an unimpressed Michelle in the passenger’s seat.

1Suicide Squad BatmanvSuperman:DawnofJustice was a skunk blast to the face for most of us trying to have a good time with a superhero movie earlier this year. Suicide Squadlooked like a chance to get DC movies back on the good foot. With David Ayer (Fury, EndofWatch) at the helm, and a cast including Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie, it looked like summer was due to get a fun blast of movie mischief. SuicideSquaddoes nothing to improve the summer blockbuster season. It actually sends a big, stinking torpedo of shit into its side, and sends the thing barreling toward the bottom of the bowl. That’s being kind. After a first half build-up/tease that does a decent job of introducing bad guy characters like Deadshot (Smith), Harley Quinn (Robbie) and the Joker (Leto), the movie becomes what can only be described as a spastic colon, resulting in that big turd referred to above.

3War Dogs Director Todd Phillips, a man generally responsible for slob comedies like The Hangoverand OldSchool, goes a more serious, satirical route with this one. The results are mixed, but it’s ultimately entertaining. Based on an article in Rolling Stone magazine that described real-life gun-runners who bilked the government and screwed each other over, the film plays out as a sort of The WolfofWallStreetwith weapons and Albania instead of stocks and the Financial District. Contributing to that Wolfvibe is Jonah Hill, who stars in both, playing Efraim Diveroli, a diabolical, narcissistic weapons dealer who puts profit before morality and friendship. Even though Hill throws in an annoying laugh that should’ve been discouraged, the core of his performance is still funny, and brutal when it needs to be. Miles Teller plays his partner, David Packouz, a massage therapist who can’t keep his career in line and needs to straighten out fast, especially because he has a kid on the way with his wife, Iz (Ana de Armas, far less scary here than when she was torturing Keanu Reeves in KnockKnock).