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Misfire

A couple of years ago there was talk of Ron Howard directing a big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. The film would act as an introduction to the Dark Tower universe, to be followed by a TV series. Ron Howard was set to direct, with Javier Bardem cast as Roland the Gunslinger, the main protagonist of King’s multinovel series.

The original plan was jettisoned in favor of Idris Elba as Roland and a relatively novice director, Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), at the helm. (Howard took on producer’s duties.) The first film’s budget was reduced to $60 million, a price you would normally see for a Hollywood rom-com, not for the launch of what was proposed to be an epic, blockbuster franchise.

All of the uncertainty and delays that plagued the production are immediately apparent in the final product. This movie is a catastrophe, and a complete slight to fans of the King books, fans of Matthew McConaughey, and fans of science fiction/ fantasy. Oh hell, this thing slights everybody.

It looks like a low-level episode of Dr. Who, and we’re talking really schlocky, 1970s Dr. Who. You get the sense watching this that they used the same soundstage for all of their interiors and just repainted shit. The CGI is terrible, the pacing is ridiculously, unnecessarily fast, and the plot is confusing for those who haven’t read the books. I’ve never read the books and, after watching this, I don’t really care to.

The story involves some kid named Jake (Tom Taylor), a sad teenager who is gifted with “The Shine,” the psychic powers Danny had in King’s The Shining. He dreams of another world where there is a dark tower that acts as some sort of barrier between other dimensions, protecting planets like Earth from evil. He also dreams of a gunslinger (Elba) who is trying to kill the Man in Black.

No, it’s not Johnny Cash. It’s some sort of devil man played by McConaughey whose intention is to hunt people with the Shine because their brains harness the power to shoot laser beams into the Dark Tower, thus destroying it and releasing goofy CGI monsters upon the Earth. Tom winds up traveling to something called the Mid World, where he joins forces for a brief hike with Roland, then winds up back on Earth in present-day New York City for some kind of apocalyptic battle.

You can go ahead and badmouth me all you want if I got any of this wrong but, I assure you, that’s the best I could gather from this hackneyed, rushed, underwhelming production. There have been reports that this is, in fact, a sequel to King’s novels, and not a faithful beginning to the actual saga. I can’t really report on the authenticity of such a report. I can just tell you that the movie sucks.

When considering the apparent scope of the novels, it’s a bit of a shocker that the film clocks in at 95 minutes. There is a definite sense that a lot of backstory and exposition has been removed in order to dumb things down and streamline the pace.

Elba growls intermittent dialogue, with his character amounting to nothing more than shallow archetype. Also, if you are going to have a gunslinger with a Western motif, give him a cool hat. Elba, as always, looks and is cool, but something as simple as a hat would’ve made a little more sense in fleshing out the gunslinger character.

McConaughey roams from sloppy set to sloppier set looking lost and perhaps even a little pissed that he signed on for this garbage. He’s not all bad; he’s just given next to nothing notable to do.

There are still some sketchy plans to follow up this film with a TV series. Whatever the plan is, scrap it and start over a few years from now, when the memory of this unfortunate cinematic event has subsided. Ω

“At least there’s no clown in this one.”

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3Atomic Blonde Charlize Theron goes on a tear for the ages in this fun if somewhat shallow venture, another pin on her action hero lapel after her ferocious turn as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. As Lorraine Broughton, an undercover agent on a mission in Berlin in the late ’80s as the wall begins to fall, she showcases her ability to kick people through walls with the best of them. She also shows how to use a freezer door as a weapon. Directed by David Leitch, one of the directors of the original John Wick and future director of Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde pops with the same kind of kinetic energy as Wick when the bullets and kicks are flying. Also a legendary stuntman, Leitch knows how to make a hit look real, and the choreographed action scenes in this film stand as some of the year’s best. When Charlize lands a blow in this movie, you feel it in your face. Based on the graphic novel The Coldest City, the film does drag at times, especially when Lorraine does the standard interrogation room narrative scenes with Toby Jones and John Goodman drilling her for answers. While it could’ve used some tightening in the edit room, the movie is very much worth wading through the shallow parts. Late ’80s playlists are sure to spike on streaming services thanks to the film’s soundtrack, which includes David Bowie, Queen, Falco, ’Til Tuesday, the Clash and, quite notably, George Michael. (His “Father Figure” is put to astonishingly good use.)

3Detroit Director Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) directs this uneven yet powerful at times account of the infamous 1967 Algiers Motel incident, part of a race riot that put the city of Detroit under siege. When a man fires off a starter pistol from his hotel window during intense riots, the police and National Guard converge on the Algiers, and a terrible night ensues. It results in three men shot to death, others psychologically and physically tortured, and the sort of judicial rulings in the aftermath that have become all too commonplace. John Boyega plays Dismukes, a security guard who finds himself entangled in the bloody events perpetrated by racist policemen led by Krauss (a legitimately scary Will Pouter). The men and women held captive at the Algiers are played by a strong ensemble cast including Jason Mitchell, Anthony Mackie, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Nathan Davis, Jr. and Algee Smith. The film feels a bit too fictional in spots. In an odd move, Bigelow incorporates real stock footage along with scenes meant to look like stock footage, much in the same way Oliver Stone did in J.F.K., further confusing fact from fiction. She’s going for a documentary feel, but the script sometimes calls for cartoon caricatures with its bad policemen. No doubt, most of the policemen at the hotel that night were a bunch of monsters, but the portrayals of them (beyond Poulter’s) feel too cliché and, in some cases, aren’t well acted. There are enough strong performances to make it worth your while, and while some of the details seem manufactured, this is a true story that needed to be told, even if it seems tainted by fiction at times.

3Dunkirk Christopher Nolan’s ambitious film about the 1940 evacuation of allied troops from Dunkirk is one of the great visual cinematic spectacles of the 21st century, and for that, he should be applauded. Unfortunately, some of his scripting and editing decisions take away from the effectiveness of his movie. In a strange way, this is one of his least successful films. We’re talking about the guy who made Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Inception, Insomnia and Memento. All of those films are better movies than Dunkirk. They are, in fact, great movies. Dunkirk is a good movie, and an occasionally astounding one if you manage to see it on an IMAX screen. Nolan shot on film, with all scenes intended for IMAX. Mixed with some incredible soundtrack work by Hans Zimmer, the movie begs to be seen in theaters. All that said, it still feels like a bit of an empty experience in some ways. I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad it exists, but it didn’t blow me away. Any Nolan fan knows that he loves to make his movies complicated in relation to time—Memento being a prime example—and the director himself has called Dunkirk his most experimental yet. Nolan is out to prove that you can cut away from a harrowing ship-sinking sequence to an also harrowing battle sequence set in the air and maintain the tension. He simply doesn’t pull off the stunt every time. There are moments when he cuts away to another timeline that are nothing short of totally frustrating and unnecessary.

4Spider Man: Homecoming The last two Spidey adventures were a bummer. Things get back on track in a fun way with Spider-Man: Homecoming, a complete overhaul of the Peter Parker character thanks to the effervescent casting of Tom Holland, a fine actor and an impressive athlete (he does most of his own acrobatic stunts). The film gets a great villain in Vulture, played with snarling glee by Michael Keaton. Director Jon Watts and an admittedly ridiculous number of writers give Vulture an interesting origin. He’s Adrian Toones, a construction salvage worker who had a city contract to clean up the mess in New York City after the events of The Avengers. Some government types take over and kick him off the gig, leaving him pissed and with a bunch of high-tech alien junk in his possession. Toones constructs some weapons, including an elaborate winged suit, with the alien technology and, voila, Vulture. Parker is a younger incarnation this time out, dealing with typical high school traumas that seem a little trivial after the events of Captain America: Civil War, where he sort of saved the day. He’s gone from stealing Captain America’s shield to worrying about girls, and he’s just a little bored. Enter Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) who has given Parker his Spidey suit with some conditions, like that he can only be a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” concentrating on local problems The film is basically one half kickass Marvel movie and one half enjoyable and frothy high school comedy.

4War for the Planet of the Apes The enthralling, modern Planet of the Apes trilogy comes to a close with its best chapter yet. Caesar (motion-capture Andy Serkis) is holding his own in the forest with his band of ape soldiers when a crazed colonel (Woody Harrelson) finds him and delivers a painful blow. Caesar finds himself on a revenge quest, with the likes of Rocket (Terry Notary), Maurice (Karin Konoval) and a new character named Bad Ape (a funny Steve Zahn) in tow. It all leads to a man vs. ape showdown for the ages, and the special effects that were great in the first movie are 10 times better in the third. For fans of the original Apes films, this movie is a virtual love letter to the series. It even has a mute girl named Nova (Amiah Miller), the same name as the girl who saw the Statue of Liberty with Charlton Heston in the original. Matt Reeves, directing his second Ape film, has managed to imbue his special effectsladen adventure with genuine emotion. This is a big budget blockbuster with heart and soul. While this concludes a trilogy, it’s a safe bet it won’t be the last for the Apes. If you recall, astronauts went missing in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Events in this film seem to be leading up to the events of the original movie. We might be getting a new dude in a loin cloth barking at Lady Liberty in our cinematic future.