Monthly Archives: August 2016

Lights Out

Genre: Horror

Director: David F. Sandberg

Screenplay: Eric Heisserer, based on the short film by Sandberg

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, Maria Bello, Billy Burke, Alicia Vela-Bailey, Lotta Losten

Running Length: 81 minutes

Synopsis: When Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) left home, she thought she left her childhood fears behind.  Growing up, she was never really sure of what was and wasn’t real when the lights went out…and now her little brother, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that had once tested her sanity and threatened her safety. A frightening entity with a mysterious attachment to their mother, Sophie (Maria Bello), has reemerged.

But this time, as Rebecca gets closer to unlocking the truth, there is no denying that all their lives are in danger…once the lights go out.

Review: David F. Sandberg’s 3-minute short film in 2013 was an exercise in horror simplicity – a creature that only manifests itself when the lights are out. It was a relatively fun and clever film, and it wasn’t surprising that Lights Out went viral, and more importantly, it got popular enough to get the attention of horror master James Wan. Sandberg’s first full-length feature is based on the same premise, and although it is a little rough around the edges, works very effectively as a commercial horror film, and should please fans of the genre.

The entire 80 minutes of Lights Out is essentially designed as setting up one jump scare after another, and there’s really nothing much else to say except that almost all the scares work as planned. Sure, the mythology behind the female entity is a little muddled and requires a very healthy amount of suspension of disbelief, and like all horror movies the protagonists behave in inexplicably silly (and hence life-threatening) ways, but the film delivers enough thrills for audiences to look past these flaws.

Palmer is effective as the lead, bringing a gravitas to the role while not being cheesy or over the top, like how some scream queens could be. Bello is a little underused as the anguished mother, but the small number of cast members and their general likeability goes a long way in making the audience root for all of them. The most memorable performance, however, belongs to Alexander DiPersia as the slightly clueless love interest of Palmer, and his one big escape sequence from the entity delivers all the goods – it’s scary, it’s thrilling, and it’s actually very funny. Lights Out is the quintessential effective low budget horror film, and I for one will be looking forward to seeing what Sandberg can do in his sophomore effort.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

 

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The BFG

Genre: Drama

Director: Steven Spielberg

Screenplay: Melissa Mathison, based on the book by Roald Dahl

Cast: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Jermaine Clement, Rebecca Hall, Rafe Spall, Bill Hader

Running Length: 117 minutes

Synopsis: The tale of a young girl (Ruby Barnhill), the Queen of England (Penelope Wilton) and a benevolent giant known as the BFG (Mark Rylance), who set out on an adventure to capture the evil, man-eating giants who have been invading the human world.

Review: On paper, The BFG movie is something that should see resounding success – after all, it’s based on Roald Dahl’s universally loved book, and the screenplay is written by (the late) Melissa Mathison, who had worked with Steven Spielberg on ET previously. It is surprising that this has not been the case, and The BFG had suffered a disappointing run at the box office in the USA. While there are some slight issues with the pacing, The BFG is an eminently watchable film, and though it is clearly aimed at young audiences, it will likely also appeal to those who have waited a very long time for this book to make the leap to the big screen.

Spielberg has always been at the forefront of technology in his films, and while The BFG doesn’t incorporate any groundbreaking CG work, the motion capture performance of Mark Rylance’s BFG is nothing short of flawless. It’s a testament to how far technology has come, and the BFG (and to a lesser extent, the other nine giants) feels like a living, breathing entity with emotions and personality instead of a digital construct. Landscapes are all impressively rendered, none more so than Dream Country, which forms one of the most visually stunning sequences in the film, well worth the price of entry on its own.

The chemistry between Rylance and newcomer Ruby Barnhill is palpable and their friendship is believable. However, their friendship also remains largely superficial and it does get a little hard to feel vested in the outcome of their caper to Buckingham Palace, even though the entire sequence with the Queen of England is undoubtedly the highlight and most enjoyable part of the film. The darker aspects of Dahl’s original story have been toned down somewhat, which makes The BFG an easy recommendation for family viewing.

One of the few flaws in The BFG is that the screenplay moves at a slightly sluggish pace, and there are scenes in which the film grinds to a near-halt. Given the source material, it was probably unnecessary to have the film run at close to two hours long, and a snappier edit may have given more immediacy to the proceedings. Despite the technological achievements of the film, The BFG feels like a “small” movie, especially with Spielberg at the helm.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

 

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Suicide Squad

Genre: Action

Director: David Ayer

Screenplay: David Ayer, based on characters from DC Entertainment

Cast: Will Smith, Viola Davis, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Cara Delevingne, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adam Beach, Karen Fukuhara, Aidan Devine, David Harbour, Ben Affleck, Ezra Miller

Running Length: 123 minutes

Synopsis: A secret government agency recruits imprisoned supervillains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency.

Review: Suicide Squad is set in Midway City, and that’s exactly where the entire film ends up – it’s midway between director David Ayer’s usual hard hitting action and Zach Snyder’s slick, hyperreal stylistic flourishes (used to great effect in 300 and with vastly diminishing returns after); it’s midway between trying to be a mirror of Marvel’s winningly irreverent Guardians of the Galaxy (a motley crew of relatively unknown comic universe characters being reluctant heroes) and a follow up of the ultra-dour Batman v Superman; and unfortunately, it’s midway between a good movie and a bad one. As this is a particularly weak Summer for film releases so far, the box office for Suicide Squad should still be decent, but despite a handful of bright spots in the film, it feels like a terribly wasted opportunity that fails to liven up the DC cinematic universe.

The biggest problems for Suicide Squad lie in its script and editing – simply put, this is one of most schizoid movie I have seen in a long time. The film starts with 20 minutes of endless exposition, cramming in one tonally discordant origin sequence after another in an attempt to introduce the Suicide Squad’s many characters, and yet the film is furthered peppered throughout with jarringly out of place flashback sequences. Despite that, there still isn’t enough room to include everyone, and one Squad member is literally given a one-sentence introduction and casually dispatched of minutes later, which raises the valid question of “why even bother?”

There are sudden lulls amidst the action that make no narrative sense, the most egregious being the Squad taking a protracted timeout just before the supposedly climactic finale. All the attention to the characters’ back stories also leads to there being not much of an actual story to work off on, and the central plot involving the Enchantress is unfortunately bland and uninteresting. It boggles the mind that someone named the Enchantress ends up doing nothing more than create some unexplained giant Macguffin doomsday device that feels more at home in the Ghostbusters movie than in this one. Pitting the Suicide Squad against the Enchantress is also problematic, since essentially all of them, apart from El Diablo and Killer Croc, are simply armed vigilantes with no discernible “metahuman” powers, and are technically all outclassed by a 6,000 year old witch.

The performances in Suicide Squad are actually quite decent, the standout being Margot Robbie who does an excellent job as Harley Quinn in spite of limited material to work with. She gets the deranged sexpot killer part of Quinn down pat (and gets all the best lines in the movie), but it’s the brief glimpses into the emotionally vulnerable, damaged side of her where Margot truly impresses. The much vaunted Jared Leto method-acting version of the Joker turns out to be quite a non-event, since he is left mostly in the periphery of the overloaded script, though what is on display here bodes well for the eventual DC movie where Mr J steps up to be the central villain.

The action in Suicide Squad is generally serviceable, but does get repetitive after a while, since it’s composed largely of groups of people firing guns at each other. Unlike the much more successful Deadpool, Suicide Squad’s violence is severely constrained by its PG rating, resulting in bloodless altercations that end up feeling disengaged. David Ayer is definitely capable of better, but Suicide Squad feels like it has simply been meddled with way too much both in pre and post. This is not the movie that would “rescue” the DC movie universe, and now the weight falls on Wonder Woman and Justice League in 2017 to attempt that.

Rating: * * (out of four stars)

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