Category Archives: Reviews

John Wick’s Excellent Adventure

irremediably Image result for john wick 3

immunologically Here’s looking at you, Wick. Part grisly Casablanca, part bloody Blade Runner and part macabre Matrix, the elements combine to make John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum an epic of choreographed mayhem and the best action film of the year. Endgame schmendgame.

Directed by Keanu Reeves’ Matrix stunt double-turned-action auteur Chad Stahelski, Parabellum mixes terrific CGI with even more impressive stunt work to become that rarity in an the action genre: a live-action cartoon that doesn’t look cartoonish. Yes, the violence is over-the-top and Parabellum is by far the most brutal film of the sleeper franchise. But as body counts go, this is bloodshed as high art.

The opening of Parabellum picks up just minutes after the end of its 2017 predecessor, with Keanu Reeves’ wronged, out-of-retirement super-assassin on the run through nighttime Manhattan. Wick, as you may recall from part 2, committed the cardinal sin of killing a made member of the shadowy assassins’ guild known as The High Table. Now, he’s been declared “excommunicado”, which in layman terms means that it’s open season on Wick, who has a $14 million bounty on his head.

Out of loyalty, colleague Ian McShane’s gave Wick a one-hour head start to get out of Dodge before word attracts the enumerable professional hit men (and women) who come after him for the reward. As played by Reeves (who, at 54, can still remarkably dish out and take a nasty beating), Wick is the ultimate tragic loner – haunted and hunted. The role fits the soulfully unknowable star like the custom, slim black suit he wears on the job.

The first brawl in John Wick 3 sets an ultraviolent tone that never relents as Wick does with a library book what he famously did with a pencil in the first film, and it just gets nastier from there. What makes that brawl — and the dozens subsequently – so effective  isn’t just the lightning-quick fighting or the cameo appearances of Asian cinema martial-arts heavies that are easter eggs for the action savants;  it’s the way the audience feels each blow in the fights. As in The Raid films, the punches are insanely inventive, but they also hurt. And they also sound especially crunchy. Whoever was John Wick 3’s Foley Artist deserves a raise.

It also doesn’t hurt that cinematographer Dan Laustsen creates a world that would make Ridley Scott envious. From the sands of Casablanca to the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, the worlds of Wick never lack for flair or twists. There’s a horse raise in Wick 3 — on city streets instead of Moroccan sand — and it looks somehow natural in the Wickian universe. Image result for john wick 3 horse

One of the new characters introduced in John Wick 3 is Asia Kate Dillon’s “Adjudicator,” who spells out the fine print rules of the High Table. It’s a nice countermeasure to the chaotic violence that immerses us for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

As a man without a country in John Wick 3, Reeves’ bruised and battered hero is forced to call in the only two favors he has left to his credit. The first is with an underworld Russian mother figure who’s played by Anjelica Huston and who helps him flee to Casablanca. The second is with an equally badass assassin played by Halle Berry (whose pair of attack dogs steal the middle-third of the movie). Neither one steal Wick’s thunder, but they do add some emotional weight to the film.

If Wick 3 has any weaknesses, it’s that the fights can feel a little long and so quickly edited you can miss the nifty, fatal moves. And while Parebellum clearly sees itself as a franchise film, it sets up another sequel a little too blatantly.

Still, with his dog and muscle car already avenged in the first two movies, John Wick 3 really leaves viewers with one question, one never answered in the movie: Who or what is a ‘Parabellum?’ For the non-scholars of dead languages, an internet search  reveals that it comes from the Latin phrase: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Which translates as, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” And  no one prepares for war like John Wick does.

 

Ted, Just Admit It

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The risk of making “based on true events” films is that sometimes the real events are more interesting than the fictional ones — and make for more entertaining moviegoing.

Take Man on Wire, an Oscar-winning documentary about a tight rope walker who crossed New York’s Twin Towers on a cable. The film was naturally followed by a big-budget feature starring Joseph Gordon Levitt. Alas, Levitt and co-stars could not match the mischievous humor of real-life walker Phillippe Petit and his cast of harmless hooligans, and the feature film plummeted to a flop that made only $10 million. Image result for man on wire

Netflix’s new film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, isn’t an equal disaster, but it comes up similarly short on the heels of the terrific Netflix documentary Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. A serviceable-if-unspectacular thriller, Vile captures neither the horror of Bundy’s reign of terror, nor the charm Bundy used to lure victims, which numbered in the dozens.

It’s a strange shortcoming, given that both Bundy films shared the same director, Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, Brother’s Keeper). Documentary filmmaking is clearly his forte, and Vile ultimately feels detached enough from its characters to be a non-fiction flick, though there are some nice personal touches from the big-name cast, namely Zac Effron as the killer.

Still, Vile requires that you already know the story of America’s most notorious serial killer, because the movie does little to educate the viewer, let alone bring you into Bundy’s mind. Even the title is a bit misleading: Bundy may have been vile and wicked, but the movie is a largely bloodless examination of his cross-country killing spree, which left at least 30 women dead.

If anything, Vile glosses over the murders so briskly that it’s not until the final minutes of the nearly two-hour film that the savagery of Bundy’s acts become evident. And even then, you’re left with the sense you just watched an apt, if detached, Lifetime movie about a man’s hidden, murderous demons.

Instead, Vile concentrates on Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), Bundy’s ex-girlfriend and single mom who struggles to reconcile the man she knows with the headlines she’s reading. It’s a compelling portrait of falling in love with a monster, but Vile does a lackluster job of portraying just what a monster Bundy was. Despite Bundy strangling and raping his victims (and beheading at least one), Vile jettisons most of the violence for the headlines that followed.Image result for liz kendall lily collins

If you don’t already know Bundy’s story, Berlinger’s carefully paced drama won’t spell it out for you; Bundy’s true nature stays largely below the surface. The deliberate pace of the narrative partly mirrors Liz’s own path from faith in her fiancé to creeping doubt. And Collins walks that line gracefully despite not being given much to work with, considering the movie is based on Kendall’s own memoir.

But it’s Efron’s movie. Alternately charming, belligerent, and incalculably shrewd, he captures both the shark-like charisma of Bundy and the deeply damaged man beneath. Problem is, news clips — some from Beringer’s previous documentary — suggest Bundy was more charming, more media savvy, even more handsome than the man playing him.

Vile‘s real strength is in its examination of a sociopath. Effron’s Bundy is a smooth talker whose lies are so effortless and convincing you think Bundy may believe them himself. And his rapport with  Tallahassee judge Edward Cowart (John Malkovich), who finally renders judgement, is not only engaging, but nearly word-for-word accurate in its re-enactment of the nation’s first televised trial.Image result for judge Edward Cowart (John Malkovich)

“You are skating on thin ice,” he tells Bundy at one point, “and ice does not last long in Florida.” He’s right, of course. But Vile leaves you wondering what made it crack.

 

Brains!

Jaime King, Black Summer

Let’s face it: America has a zombie problem. They’ve invaded our TV shows, our films, our commercials, our toy shelves, our seasonal pop-up Halloween stores, not to mention the takeover of comic-book shelves and bookstores. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, there have been 70 zombie movies since 1980 — 23 of them since 2012.

So Black Summer, the latest horror series from Netflix, comes as something of a relief. Sure, it’s yet another homage to the flesh-eating undead. But at least it’s a fresh take on rotting corpses.

Created by John Hyams and Karl Schaefer, co-creators of Syfy’s Z Nation, Summer is supposedly a prequel to that eccentric zombie series, which was intended as a counter-punch to The Walking Dead, though Nation was canceled recently after five seasons. In truth, Netflix calls it a prequel likely to draw in the cultish fans of Nation, because the two shows share little zombie DNA. Summer is set at the onset of the apocalypse; Nation took place three years into the apocalypse. Summer takes itself (perhaps too) seriously and feasts on tension; Nation featured a zombie stripper whose arm fell off mid-dance.Image result for z nation strip club

Set a few months after an initial outbreak wipes out Denver, Summer thrives in the chaos of a nation that knows it is being overrun and unprepared to stop the takeover. It’s absolute mayhem when we drop into the premiere. Handheld camera operators follow survivors with long uncut shots as they creep through tunnels, break into abandoned houses and sprint down deserted streets (easily the most terrifying element of the show). If The Walking Dead is a cinematic look at the potential end of mankind, Summer is a flat-out sprint from that possibility; much of the show looks as if it were shot with GoPro cameras atop running actors.

And Summer has to capture that frenetic pacing, because character development is essentially non-existent. Instead, the story line — what little there is of one— revolves around getting from Point A (a suburb that’s been evacuated) to Point B (a sports stadium where survivors are being airlifted to safer parts of the country), and the depth of the characters goes as far as them not wanting to be eaten.

Though largely a B-list cast, Jaime King is the biggest name in the credits as Rose, a mother looking for her daughter after they get separated in the evacuation. Co-stars come and go as they get their own story threads, run away or become Lunchables.Jaime King, Black Summer

But that is the show’s unspoken strength. Black Summer is about thrills and thrills only. No maniacal Walking Dead human villains, no abstract debates about humanity’s role the apocalypse, no absurd rules to avoid becoming a living appetizer.  Summer runs solely on adrenaline and instinct; there’s no time to debate morality because survivors are dropped from one creepy situation to the next.

The downside of this is repetition, and it’s hard to see Summer aspiring to be anything beyond zombie chases and run-ins with scumbag survivors taking advantage of the chaos. One episode consists almost entirely of a foot chase with brain-eaters that has about a half-dozen words of dialogue. Deep? No. Effective? Quite.

What Summer lacks in depth it almost makes up for in structural simplicity. Each episode is presented as a series of smaller chapters, with simple title cards laid over a black screen. As we follow characters, they are constantly crossing paths with each other, so we’ll see several scenes from different perspectives as we follow the different survivors.Image result for black summer zombie foot chase

Episode lengths range from your standard 45-ish minutes to a mere 20 minutes — the finale, which is a descent into chaos as the city is overrun. The lack of format works here, as it nicely underscores a lack of structure in an overturned world. Government forces are impotent; survivors accidentally shoot each other; some humans are as venomous as the undead. Summer forgoes exposition for breathless escapes.

Most effective are the zombies themselves. For one, they’re fast: think 28 Days Later or World War Z over the stumbling mumblers of, say, Night of the Living Dead. And zombies don’t die with a simple head trauma. Here, creatures usually need a fusillade of automatic gunfire to be brought down.

In a sense,  Summer is The Walking Dead without the bloated melodrama and pretentious blabbering (and, unfortunately, big-budget makeup and special effects). Summer is less a TV show than a sensory experience. It’s not going to redefine the zombie movie, but Summer manages to breathe some life into a genre at risk of dying out from overexposure.