Film

All dolled up

Annabelle, the creepy doll from The Conjuring movies, gets her second standalone film with Annabelle: Creation, a silly movie that’s nevertheless enjoyable thanks to some deft direction and surprisingly competent acting.

The movie essentially holds together thanks to solid performances from Talitha Bateman and Lulu Wilson, the latter being the same child actress who gave incredible work in the also surprisingly good prequel/sequel to a so-so movie, Ouija: Origin of Evil. Mind you, the film is full of good performances from the likes of Miranda Otto, Anthony LaPaglia and Stephanie Sigman, but it’s Bateman and Wilson who get most of the credit for pulling this off in front of the camera.

The film is set many years before the first Annabelle movie, with orphans Janice (Bateman) and Linda (Wilson) on their way to a new home, a group of other girls and happy nun Sister Charlotte (Sigman) at their side. They arrive at the home of Samuel Mullins (LaPaglia), a doll maker who, we have learned in the film’s prologue, lost his daughter Bee in a tragic roadside accident. He’s miserable, his wife (Otto) is bedridden and ill, and he probably shouldn’t be bringing a bunch of orphans over to live in his haunted house. His attitude just isn’t right for orphan hosting.

Yes, the house is haunted with a spirit residing in that creepy doll we’ve all come to know and hate so damned much. I hate creepy dolls almost as much as I hate creepy clowns. Speaking of which, while Annabelle: Creation has some good scares, the preview scene from It that played before the flick was top-notch scary, and I can’t wait to see the whole movie. OK, I got off track a little bit.

Janice had a bout with polio, which has left her with a leg brace and a basic inability to run away from haunted, creepy, demonic dolls. One thing leads to another, and characters start getting possessed and ripped to shreds by demon forces.

While Wilson was so great in Ouija and is quite good here, it’s Bateman who is the real scene-stealer this time out. She makes Janice genuine, and you pull for her to get out of the movie with most of herself intact. Wilson gets some sort of award for helping to make not one but two horror prequel/sequels very much worth watching after their mediocre/lousy predecessors.

Last year, director David F. Sandberg delivered a decent genre film with Lights Out, based on his terrifically scary short film. (Talitha’s younger brother, Martin Bateman, starred in that one.) Sandberg continues to show he’s good with a jolt scare; there are many moments in this movie when you expect one, and it still jolts you. He also makes good-looking movies. The authentic Southern Gothic look of this film lends to its credibility and keeps you in the story.

Does the film horrify or scare on the same level as Carpenter or vintage Romero? Absolutely not. Will it please those of us who like a capable horror thriller low on cheese? Yes. It’s a decent, late summer, let’s-not-change-the-world-of-cinema-but-deliversomething-relatively-fun kind of film. Forgettable, but fun while you watch it.

These Annabelle movies, and the upcoming The Nun, have sprouted from The Conjuring franchise. Give New Line Cinema some credit for doing a horror franchise right—well, mostly right—as opposed to that nonsense Universal tried to kick off earlier in the summer with The Mummy.

These stories come together nicely and don’t feel forced and silly like, for instance, Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe) inexplicably showing up as some sort of super monster detective. Sandberg finds satisfying ways, especially in the final scenes, to link The Conjuring universe together.

So, with a decent film in her pocket, Annabelle is giving Chucky a run for his money as best killer doll you shouldn’t have bought in the first place because it certainly looks like it intends to kill you. I’m hoping for a Chucky vs. Annabelle in the future. Ω

“Why not a Teddy ruxpin?”

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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.)

1The Dark Tower The uncertainty and delays that plagued this production are immediately apparent in the final picture. This movie is a catastrophe, and a complete slight to fans of the Stephen 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 (Idris 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. 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. This is just a total shame.

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.

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.