Phoenix Forgotten (**1/2)

You'd be half-right in assuming that PHOENIX FORGOTTEN was a blatant ripoff of 'The Blair Witch Project.' As one might expect, the found footage genre has never really matched that film's commercial and critical success, but it's no surprise why. The thrill of The Blair Witch came from the unknown - the mystery that what we are watching could in fact be true. The logic behind it made sense, as did the realism of a shaky camcorder. Nearly 20 years later, the genre is all but dead, and potential for scares is replaced by the simple checking off of cliches.

The movie is set in modern times, 20 years after the famous Phoenix Lights in Arizona when thousands of people looked up in the night sky to see a strange formation of lights form in the night sky. They moves with skilled precision, indicating that they may belong to one singularly large, triangular object. As soon as they came, they disappeared. Three high school kids (Josh, Ashley, and Mark) decided to probe the desert in hopes of finding out what those lights really were. They were never seen again. Now in present time, Josh's sister Sophie returns home to interview her parents, neighbors, teachers... She wants closure to a missing persons' case that has stumped Phoenix officials ever since.

To be honest, I was hooked by the premise. The film may be billed as horror but there is actually skill in recreating the look of a documentary that uses skillful editing to jump back and forth through time and characters. Sophie travels with her boyfriend (a documentatian who is never seen) who films her and her parents with a cold distance. Her parents don't like it, but nor do they ever speak to him or acknowledge he's there either. Sophie digs through her lost brother's room and finds old cassette tapes, watching footage in order to try to piece together what has become a cold case.

The moment I began to get lost was when Sophie mysteriously finds a long-lost camcorder that has been buried in the high school's storage closet for years. There is a tape inside. It's the "missing" footage of what happened to those three kids 20 years ago. As they trudged through the desert, they are suddenly met with bright lights and odd metallic noises coming from the wilderness. They begin to run in fear, facing the camera with runny noses and begin to profess their apologies to friends and family. Sounds familiar, right?

What began as a somewhat clever film about a sister returning to her home town becomes a tired 20-minute section in which kids run from some unknown terror in the dark. If you've seen Blair Witch, then you know how it ends, and you've arguably seen it played out with more skill and precision. Justin Barber is a first-time director here and he definitely knows how to string together footage to make an engaging story He does not understand horror, nor the simple rules necessary to end a film on a rewarding note. This movie is a case of too little, too late. Too little time is spent on the actual "found footage" aspect that promised us scares and thrills. By the time we actually saw this smoking gun, though, I wondered if we even really care at all?

Free Fire (**1/2)

I liked the setup for FREE FIRE, in which maybe a dozen characters all meet in an abandoned warehouse to carry out a weapon's purchase. Set in the late 1970's in the midst of some sort of rival gang war, the people we see here are all funny, believable, and most of all have interesting interactions with one another. The movie was on track to be some sort of Tarantino-inspired think piece, but sadly whittled down into a mindless "shoot-em-up" movie that tested my patience and sanity on multiple levels.

It's late one night in Boston's warehouse district when the simple exchange of money for weapons is meant to occur. Chris (Cillian Murphy) is a member of an Irish resistance army and meets with Vernon (the ever-funny Sharlto Copley) who is a wise-cracking arms dealer who has the ability to procure crates of automatic weapons for a price. Accompanying Chris is Justine (Brie Larson), some sort of mediator, Ord (Armie Hammer) who acts as middle-man, and a slew of bumbling henchmen and the like.

The idea of this film was really appealing right off the bad, and I found myself entertained by the small conversations each character was having. Besides Chris (who wants the guns) and Vernon (who wants the case of money), practically ever other person in attendance has their own side grudges or hold ups. One of Chris's drivers was beat up in a bar fight the night before and needs makeup to conceal the bruise. Justine works on staying awake through the night while Chris attempts to woo her to dinner. Ord wants to make sure he is not only paid but that his beard can remain perfectly manicured at all times.

There is some sort of feud between two of the henchmen that results in a fight fight between them. Despite the fact that this brawl has nothing to do with the business at hand, somehow gun are drawn and every member of the company ducks and hides while a free-for-all shootem-up happens. We get that these are greasy conmen, but suddenly sides are lost and bullets fly through the air like snowflakes in a blizzard.

That's the movie. Not only do the writers drop all interest that was crafted in the film's setup, but they somehow felt compelled to make a video game for a movie in which no one can aim, no one can die, and no one's motives are clear. I'm sure this movie could take the record for having the longest continuous gunfight in a film. That's not a record I think anyone should strive for. At first, it's funny to see Vernon attempt to shoot a man from across the way with a handgun (I guess because he has a funny accent), but 10 minutes later, the sound of gunfire is about as boring as utter silence.

I'm not sure what the ultimate point of the movie is, other than the fact that in the end it seems like each character decides to steal the money for themselves in an attempt at a get-rich-quick scheme. Justine shoots Chris even though it seemed like they were partners. Vernon shoots his sidekick even though they were established as being old friends. Ord shoots the driver who he had just been joking around with. For the most part people only die due to bleeding out. What are they shooting each other for again? Also, for an hour and 10 minutes of gunfire, I'm amazed everyone came with enough ammunition to keep their guns loaded.

I can see this movie being a guilty pleasure for folks who like witty one-liners and wall-to-wall action. For those people who have such low standards, I can only say that I feel genuinely bad for you.

Colossal (*)

More so than any other movie I can remember, I've never been in such a catatonic state to see such critical love for a movie so blatantly bad. I went in knowing next to nothing about this movie and after leaving it I wish I could have returned to such a blissful state of ignorance.

If you are watching a movie and nothing much happens by the 30 minute mark, then I think you can guarantee that not much else is going to catch your attention in the latter part. Never has this been more true than here, a movie that starts off with a brief monster sighting in Korea, a drunken break up, and endless scenes of time-filling dialogue that has all the wit of a student film gone bad. Our heroine is Anne Hathaway in a wig, her name not being so important. She's a functioning alcoholic that gets kicked out of her boyfriend's place and is forced to move back into a 2-story home previously owned by her parents in the burbs. Along the way, she encounters an old childhood friend played by Jason Sudeikis who owns a bar and only works to feed her addictions. Did I mention she wears a bad wig?

By this point in the film, we are baffled to even remember than inexplicable monster from the beginning. Was that the same movie? Suddenly, the news is filled with terror from the city of Seoul: a giant monster is roaming the city every night, destroying everything in it's path. It appears and disappears in a cloud of electricity, and no one can explain why. Hathaway does some thinking and comes to the logical conclusion that she is the monster, activating it every time she walks through a nearby playground on her drunken walks home. The monster copies her actions. This might sound dumb if she didn't turn out to be dead on.

The logical thing would be to just avoid the playground altogether and the movie is solved. Not so fast. Sudeikis, who's character is designed to be the charming boyfriend-type suddenly turns in the last 30 minutes into a villain with no rhyme or reason. He inexplicably forms a large robot whenever he enters the playground, and he's suddenly set on destroying Seoul just to spite Hathaway. The script, which is oftentimes littered with some clever ideas, shows no respect for its characters and switches hats in ways that made my eyes roll to the back of my head. Sudeikis as a villain is about as laughable as anything I have seen this year. Coupled with Hathaway's wide-eyed tearful scenery chewing at every turn, we have two strong candidates for some Razzie Awards next year. I can't think of two more over-the-top performances.

The movie is weighted down by some absurdly intense scenes in the back half of the film where Sudeikis threatens his patrons with a large firework and repeatedly punches Hathaway in attempts to do something bad, probably. Another scene shows a sobbing Hathaway watching as Sudeikis stomps through a playground in slow motion (implying that hundreds of Koreans are being killed by this monster). Even common logic is thrown out the window: if a monster appears downtown every night, then why haven't citizens been evacuated and the city abandoned?

Watch the trailer for this movie. Not only does it fail to show the tone of the actual film, but it's actually a hilarious and off-the-wall peak at a screwball comedy that could have been.  If I missed something that audiences liked, then I don't want to know. I once read a critic who states it best: "one of the worst movies you'll see this year, but it's still worth not seeing."

The Void (**)

THE VOID would benefit seeing if you've been living under a rock for the past 30 years. This is a movie that liberally borrows ideas from movies as varied as The Thing, Hellraiser, Halloween, and Donnie Darko. The good thing is is that the movie as a whole is an engaging gorefest that draws you into a labyrinth of the creepiest monsters and scenarios we've seen in a while. The bad part is that hardly anything seems original.

It's a quiet rural town in the forests of Nowhere USA when an on-duty cop stumbles on a drugged up man wandering through the woods. He's taken to the closest hospital, the kind that is quite literally about to be rebuilt and has a staff of 3 during the night shift. There's a pregnant woman, her grandfather, a student nurse who's afraid of needles, and a doctor that would probably rather be at home in bed.

From nowhere, the hospital is surrounded by these shrouded people wearing white robes. It's indicative of the KKK save for a prominent black triangle on the face and the long knives they carry as weapons. They do not attack, they simply stand guard outside allowing no one to enter or leave.

 Villain #1: Established.

In the hospital, the rag-tag team of misfits struggle to find out who these people are and what their ties are to this mysterious man found in the woods and two men who have tracked him to the hospital in efforts to kill him. Our cop named Carter hears a noise from one of the hospital rooms during this ruckus and finds a woman peeling off her face and murdering a patient with some surgical scissors. After being shot, she transforms into a monster straight out of John Carpenter's The Thing, complete with whip-like tentacles and large bloody masses of deformed flesh.  We learn through unexplained means that everyone in the hospital has the potential to transform into one of these monsters due to the fact that the screenplay said it.

Villain #2: Got it.

In efforts to find the source of this blatant evil, Carter and the gang retreat into the basement from where they received a mysterious phone call from the hospital's morgue. It quickly turns into a descent into Hell, where Villain #3 and #4 are introduced just to add to the chaos.

If you've seen the poster than you have no idea what this film is about. If you've watched the trailer than you will be just as equally in the dark. The intrigue with a movie like The Void is that despite all it's bizarre twists and turns, it still keeps you guessing. That's not to say it isn't riddled with the cliches you might find in a horror movie set in a hospital (the inexperienced nurse has to attempt a c-section while the windows are being attacked by zombies, the telephones suddenly stop working, the sheets covering dead bodies are spring-loaded for a jump scare, etc). I will say for certain that despite the wildly bizarre story that eventually unfolds before us, this isn't something I would have necessarily guessed as a climax to a movie that begins with some robed clansmen standing still in the woods.

The tone of the film is remarkably grim and keeps you in a constant state of shock. Each new doorway adds to the tension, and I was genuinely intrigued by the setting of this movie, even though 'creepy abandoned hospitals' might also be added to that cliche list previously mentioned. The characters are carbon copies of all those people you yell at in movies who do stupid things that are so blatantly wrong (I'm going to go get some supplies in that dark stock room alone, I'll be right back).

If you need a movie filled with gratuitous violence and some clever creature/makeup effects, then by all means this is NOT the movie to go see. In 1982 John Carpenter made a movie about a collection of people in an isolated location being hunted by some malevolent, slimy evil. That's a great movie that at the time shocked audiences and has practical effects that still hold up today. It's clearly the main inspiration for this flick. It's called "The Thing." "The Void" is barely a shadow of that film.

Your Name (*****)

It may be cliched to say something like "I've never seen a movie quite like this," but where else can I start? The immediate turnoff for Americans would be that this is by definition an 'anime,' but it's a complex story told with such skill and beauty that I really don't think it is limited for fans of Asian cinema only.

The movie was produced by CoMix Wave Films, I would assume a rival of sorts to Studio Ghibli. Where the latter deals in fantasy, this movie indicates a company focused on human stories, fate, artistry. Although first released in 2016, it's only now that this movie is beginning to make more complete waves through North American cinemas. Might I recommend you see if it's playing near you.

The story follows two teenaged kids, a smart girl in a small village named Mitsuha and a boy living in downtown Tokyo named Taki. The first shot opens with Mitsuha waking up in a state of shock. She is confused by her room, her body, her appearance... Later we see Taki wake up with the same problem. By some unknown force or magic, they have switched bodies for the day.

Each goes to school, learns about the other's life and friends. They attempt their best to play off the day as though nothing has happened, but why have they switched bodies? I'll be the first to admit that a "body-swap" movie wasn't the most thrilling concept as it played out for me, but the circumstances of what they go through and what they learn left me completely riveted. The next day for instance, Taki reawakes in his own bed and is horrified to learn that "he" asked out a pretty girl from work on a date. Likewise with Mitsuha who learns that she was suddenly much better at sports.

The switching goes on and off for a period of time, and the two characters learn about the other even though they never meet or interact. They keep personal journals about the day in their smart phones and wake up the next day excited to hear from the other. One day the switching suddenly stop, and Taki never hears from Mitsuha again. What happens is a somewhat critical plot point that justly should be omitted, but it sets Taki on a personal journey across the country in order to track down this girl he has grown to love but has never seen eye to eye.

Without a doubt this is perhaps the most impressive animated movie I have ever seen. Allegedly hand-drawn and yet I can't comprehend the time it would take to animate this level of detail in a Tokyo cityscape or a nightsky filled with light from a nearby comet. The colors almost drip off the screen, and I found myself immersed in a world that felt all the more real because of the care given to bring it to realization. It would be one thing to only praise the movie for it's visuals, but the story itself is mature and thought-provoking in ways that you simply don't see in American animation.

What begins as a somewhat slapstick comedy that features no less than 3 musical montages (of which I was less than thrilled with) breathes and grows into a movie of profound impact by the end. There are so many elements here that I found fascinating that the body switching aspect practically disappeared to me. Some might think it too saccharine, but the final scenes and interactions could honestly be described as heartbreaking. Having gone in with few expectations, "Your Name" was something of a joy to witness.

The Zookeeper's Wife (**)

Traditionally Holocaust-themed movies do well, both critically and critically (yes, I know). It's a cookie-cutter story of good versus evil, and the image of Nazis murdering innocent Jews will never be something that can be erased from history. With recent films like Denial last year and now this Jessica Chastain vehicle, the genre seems to have slipped from stories with passion to churned out movies riddled with cliches.

It's 1939 Poland and we find ourselves in a picturesque Warsaw zoo. The owners Antonina (Chastain) and her husband Jan (Johan Heldenbergh) ride bikes around the grounds, checking in on their camels, lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my! Can you guess what happens next? The city is bombed with the arrival of the Nazis and the country is soon conquered by Hitler's forces. The zookeepers stay to tend to the animals, but in typical Nazi fashion, they come through the zoo with guns and shoot down most of the creatures with the thrill and happiness you might see with folks in an arcade. The husband and wife duo hear about the Jews being rounded up into the ghettos, and concoct a plan to start a pig farm as a ploy to hide Jews in their home. A pig farm allows them to stay in the zoo, raise pigs to feed Nazi troops, and allows access to the ghettos for feed (rounding up garbage and slop from the trashcans provided ample nutrition).

There are a couple interesting aspects of the film, the first being that Antonina and Jan are not Jews nor are they ever under threat of persecution. They walk around the ravaged town freely to see the utter destruction, converse with Nazi officers, even invite some of them over for dinner. This allows us to see a completely shocking scene (the one memorable moment in the film for me) in which Jan rushes to the trains to Auschwitz in attempt to save anyone else he can. An elderly Jewish man who watches over a group of children tells Jan that rescue would be futile, that it wouldn't work. The Jewish children all around them are innocent to the fact of the matter, blind to the horrors of the situation. "Don't stir up fear," he says. Instead of saving any children, Jan instead lifts these boys and girls up into the cattle car, essentially sending them to their doom, unable to help.

The rest of the film is cookie-cutter in the way we get to know the hiding Jews, how they hold their mouthes in hiding when Nazi's come by to visit (of course one of the children makes a peep - what will happen next??), how the war ends and it's all smiles and rainbows. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and the story chooses to play it safe instead of showing the actual horrors of genocide. If you're going to tell a Holocaust story, don't shy away from the truth. If you're going to limit content to retain a PG-13 rating, maybe this isn't a story that needs to be told. I'm not saying the movie requires endless scenes of gore and murder, but to normalize a story by making such a forgettable movie does nothing to honor the memory of the actual heroes and victims of the time.

Power Rangers (*1/2)

Power Rangers is an exercise in the absurd. I am well aware of the source material, the children's action/superhero program from the mid 1990's. I'm aware of the campy nature of the show that was perhaps unnoticed by children and yet blatantly heavy-handed to adults. It makes sense that the series would be adapted into a feature film, it's too bad that the final result of 25 years of waiting is an utter mess.

The film is your traditional origin story in which 5 high school kids (portrayed by actors with the average age of 25) discover some ancient colorful stones in a gold mine and unlock a long-lost power. That power, which belonged to an ancient alien race, has been locked deep in the earth for 65 million years. An ancient race called "Power Ranger" (I guess) worked to protect the earth from an evil force named Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks, more on her later). A meteor strikes, the dinosaurs die, and both the goodies and baddies are buried for a looooong time.

It's present day in some sleepy mountain town that looks like it has no more than 1,000 people living there, and yet the high school is a blend of the most diverse and attractive people you have ever seen, a perfect melding of the cliche and political correct. There's Jason who is the football player-turned-rebel, Kimberly the hot one, Billy the autistic one who also doubles as comic relief, Trini the subtly gay one, and Zach the reckless Asian one. All that's missing is Farhad the Iranian immigrant and Steve the Australian (maybe he could be the valedictorian).

The group forms an unlikely friendship that is simultaneously forced and uncomfortably artificial. Fate leads them all to this gold mine where they discover an ancient Alien shape ship complete with a wise-cracking robot named Alpha-5 (Bill Hader) who, despite being underground since the Jurassic period, has a comprehensive understanding of the American-English language (a language he describes as "primitive.") Alpha-5 communicates with Zordon (Bryan Cranston), an ancient alien now locked in the ship's hard drive. He teaches the Rangers how to fight. He also reminds us that Bryan Cranston is a better actor than this.

The movie is a bizarre, choppy blend of camp and drama, and at times it's anyone's guess which one the filmmakers were going for. Rita Repulsa, our villain, is part Gloria Swanson from "Sunset Blvd" and the booing wench from "The Princess Bride." It's a bafflingly bad performance that presents no clear threat and provides Elizabeth Banks with more than enough scenes of laughing to herself (as maniacs do) and eating Krispee Kreme donuts and gold by the pound. Also, how funny is it that a 65 million year old alien would be named Rita, one of the 100 most popular girl names in the 1990's?

As for the Power Rangers, I am not exaggerating when I say that out of the entire 2-hour run time, we see the 5 kids in their actual armor for the final 20 minutes of the movie. Yes there are a handful of fight scenes where the gang trains in a cave, but the actual sighting of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Black, and Pink Rangers is tacked on merely as an afterthought. Why is this film 2 hours long anyways? The final fight scene plays more like a scene out of a Transformers movie, and I am shocked to say that perhaps the Michael Bay films would be more fun to watch if forced at gunpoint between the two. At least there's more action.

I can see this becoming a film that is mocked in years to come for being so laughably bad. It's hard to imagine the adolescent audience that grew up with the TV show being satisfied by such a poor screen adaptation. I have to believe audiences are smarter than that. The script feels like the writers threw darts at random words to form sentences and plot, and the editor accidentally dropped the film into a paper shredder. There isn't an ounce of logic to it, nor was there a want to understand. If you're a fan of the original series, don't tarnish such innocent memories. Stay away from this flick.

Ghost In The Shell (**1/2)

There's nothing particularly wrong with Ghost In The Shell. The effects are convincing, the makeup is spectacular, and the action often time will keep you intrigued. I wasn't necessarily bored during the film, nor did I find an urge to get up an leave. After leaving, however, I found my mind blank - awash to what I had just seen. In the end, this is as forgettable as they come. It's a recycled hash of so many other films that I defy you to distinguish it from the likes of The Matrix or Blade Runner in 5 year's time.

The whitewashing of Asian-inspired cinema continues as Scarlett Johansson is cast as Major, a half-robot / half-human crime fighter inspired by a famous Japanese manga. Prior to the film, Major was kidnapped by the government and her brain was put inside a robotic form. This is the evolution of AI. At one point in the movie our suspicions are confirmed when Major visits her long-lost mother. We learn her name is Motoku, and that this government organization (much like Hollywood) found it more reasonable to employ a white woman to play what is so clearly an ill-fit.

The doctor who looks over Major (Juliette Binoche) explains in the first scene how Major suffered an accident and only her brain could be salvaged. She quite literally says "your body was damaged but your ghost survived, so we built you a new shell." Not only is that the most medically-inept explanation that spoon feeds the audience the title, but it's a key point that makes this movie so disappointing: weak writing. Many scenes seem content by explaining what is happening instead of showing us, coupled with such on the nose dialogue, it becomes a silly exercise in simply focusing on the visuals.

I mentioned Blade Runner, and wow does this feel like a familiar setting. Whether it's the sky-high billboards or the holographic human beings set against the city's silhouette, it's a stunning image that nonetheless harkens back to more memorable creations, namely the Ridley Scott classic. In many ways, the two stories share very similar ideas of 'what makes a human a human,' so for the designs to so closely echo each other, it feels more lazy than visually-stunning.

The plot is meandering and the characters are practically paper-thin. Scarlett Johannson carries the film as a true Hollywood star might, and yet her face is in a constant state of either confusion or deep thought (sometimes it's hard to determine which). What the film mostly lacked is a sense of fun, a sense of discovery. I suppose the movie would ultimately classify as a simple mystery plot in which Major seeks to discover her identity. What's wrong with having a little fun with it along the way? Not once does a character break a smile, or make a joke, or smile, or say anything that doesn't sound the slightest robotic. By the end of it, there's really only one word to sum it all up: "meh."