by BoB GriMM
b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
SHORT TAKES
1
“oK. Everybody make a tough guy face for the camera and say, ‘bullets!’”
Western union
thing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it here again: Hawke is the most improved actor I’ve witnessed in my years of reviewing movies. This guy used to be the worst thing on a movie screen, and now he is simply one of the best. Director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Pratt scores laughs as the slightly racist, Archie Magnificent Seven, which was itself a remake Bunker-with-a-pistol-and-a-deck-of-cards member of Seven Samurai, has enough in common with of the crew. D’Onofrio is equally funny, somethe Yul Brynner/Steve McQueen film to make times employing a high-pitched voice, as a man of it feel like a retelling of the classic story. It also honorable means who will, however, crush your contains enough departures to make it feel like a face with his boot if you steal from him. fresh take rather than just a rehash. Fuqua knows how to stage an action scene, The Mexican bandits led by Eli Wallach are and the action scenes in this one are absolutely replaced by an evil, land-stealing company led thrilling. Every gunfight is expertly staged and by Bartholomew Bogue. As played by Peter beautifully tense, especially the final standoff. Sarsgaard, Bogue is a memorable villain who I was reminded watching this movie that if it makes the skin crawl. He rolls into a mining weren’t for that final battle in The Magnificent town, kills a bunch of good hard-working people, Seven, we wouldn’t have had those final battles and winds up getting the group in the movie’s in Blazing Saddles and The Three Amigos. title on his ass. Let the spectacular gunfights While the film somehow commence! scored a PG-13, it’s worth noting Fuqua’s pal Denzel that it’s a borderline PG-13, in Washington—they did The that it’s very violent. There are Equalizer and Training Day not only a lot of gun deaths in together—is first rate as Chisolm, this movie, but some serious basically Brynner’s role from stabbing and slashing with knives the 1960 classic. When the wife and forks and things. I was actuof one of the deceased (Haley ally surprised by how brutal the Bennett) comes looking for help Director: Antione Fuqua film was. I guess the MPAA has and mentioning Bogue’s name, Starring: Peter Sarsgaard, some sort of blood volume they Chisolm flies into calm, collected Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke allow for, and a movie can stab and most certainly valiant action. and shoot as much as it wants He enlists six other men to visit as long as no more than two quarts or so of fake the town and prepare the townspeople for the blood is spilled. By my eye, this sucker is an fight of their lives. R-rated movie. The Magnificent Seven include Chisolm, If anything takes the film down a notch, scheming alcoholic gunslinger Faraday it’s the all-too-clean production values. The (Chris Pratt), the knife-wielding Billy Rocks sets often look like something out of Disney’s (Byung-hun Lee), the Confederate sharpshooter Frontierland, and the costuming is a little too Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), mountain clean and spiffy. For appearances, I prefer man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Vasquez Westerns that are a little grittier, like Clint the “Texican” (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), as Faraday Eastwood’s Unforgiven. coins him, and Comanche Red Harvest (Martin The Magnificent Seven gets the fall movie Sensmeier). season off to a good start. It’s actually the sort Each member of the cast does a nice job of well-cast, thrilling blockbuster we expect to building his character in the just-over-two-hour see in the summer. It kicks ass on most of the film. Hawke, who also frequents Fuqua films, so-called summer blockbuster offerings, and is especially good as the once heartless sharpgives the old-time Western and remake genres a shooter who now has a case of the Jon Voight-indecent addition. Ω Deliverance shakes when he tries to kill a living
The Magnificent Seven
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09.29.16
Blair Witch
This is the second sequel to The Blair Witch Project, the original “found footage” horror film. Would Lionsgate take this opportunity to reintroduce a once promising premise into a new style of film, perhaps a traditional narrative about the Blair Witch set in the forest without the gimmick of people running around with cameras filming themselves, even when they are in great peril? Nope—opportunity wasted. This movie is essentially the original with louder noises, a few more gizmos—drones, walkie talkies, better tents—and, yes, lots more sticks tied together with twine and piles of rocks. For those of you who are scared shitless by stick men made out of twigs and twine—and piles of rocks in front of tents—this movie will fuck your shit up. I’m thinking that accounts for perhaps .00009832 percent of the movie-going population. The rest of you will be bored out of your minds. James (James Allen McCune), long suffering brother of the original film’s Heather, who vanished all those years ago, has found … a tape. That tape contains shaky footage made by somebody moronic enough to try to keep the action on camera rather than focus on their much needed getaway. In said footage, a messed-up looking woman is glimpsed for a second, so James instantly thinks it’s Heather. James assembles a crew of idiots to go into the forest, the cursed forest where people disappear and strange tapes are found, in search of the house where the footage was filmed by some moron who didn’t just drop the stupid camera in favor of weaponry and get the hell to safety. The results: not scary and not entertaining.
2
Don’t Breathe
Three dimwits (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto) try 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 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.
5
Hell 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 Starred Up, takes a step into the elite class with this one. His staging of car chases and manhunts is nerve-shredding.
3
The Hollars
4
Sausage Party
3
Sully
Actor John Krasinski’s second directorial effort is a decent one with a first-rate cast. Krasinski stars as John Hollar, working a dead-end job for a publishing company when his girlfriend (the always great Anna Kendrick) informs him that his mom (a terrific Margo Martindale) is sick, and then he’s flying home to see her. Once there, John has to deal with his weird brother Ron (Sharlto Copley), the oddball nurse that is also his old girlfriend’s new husband (Charlie Day) and his weepy dad (Richard Jenkins). The script goes to some familiar territories, but the performers put new spins on the situations, especially Martindale, who takes the part and really runs with it. Krasinski does a good job handling the script’s many mood swings, and the relationships in the film feel real—that strange kind of real. The film manages to get laughs, even when the subject matter goes to dark places. It deals with the lousier side of life without getting totally depressing, something that could’ve happened easily. Krasinski makes it all work. The supporting cast also includes Randall Park, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Josh Groban in small but memorable roles. The soundtrack is stellar, featuring Josh Ritter, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, and Wilco.
Sausage Party, 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 Sausage Party a 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.
Historical accuracy be damned in Sully, Clint Eastwood’s take on the heroic actions of pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his plane on the Hudson River and saved the lives of all crew and passengers on board. The passages about a pilot successfully landing his plane in an ice-cold Hudson River and allowing over 150 people to tell the tale, live long and prosper are really the most important, and most compelling, parts of this movie. As for the evil, fictitious inquisition that basically tortures Sully (played by Tom Hanks in a typically riveting performance) and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (welcome back to decent movies, Aaron Eckhart!), well, that’s basically a lot of made-up horseshit. That’s not to say Sully wasn’t tormented and obsessed in the days after the event, and the film does a good job displaying his internal struggles. The man had to land a plane after a bunch of birds flew into his engines, and then he probably did have a bunch of dicks asking him too many questions in the aftermath. Undoubtedly, he went through hell during that flight and is haunted until this day. Eastwood and Hanks deliver a compelling psychological drama about a man who doubts his own heroism, to the point of nightmarish visions and self deprecation. Where the film goes a bit afoul is the depiction of a panel that didn’t even give Sully and his crew a chance to breathe after being plucked out of the Hudson. Yes, there was an inquiry, but it took place many months later, not a few days after the event.
