Goat (***)

There is one review that describes GOAT as "Full Metal Jacket meets Animal House," which might be true if this movie were at all a comedy, or even a movie that examines the long-term effects of psychological abuse. There is a lot that Andrew Neel tries to say from the director's chair, but aside from a few interesting moments here and there, it seems like he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

The story follows Brad (Ben Schnetzer), the older brother of an all-around popular college boy (Brett, played by Nick Jonas). The film opens with Brad offering a ride to a set of strangers in the dead of night. He offers only because he believes they are coming from the same party. Right away the suspicions are tingling. A 20-minute ride down a deserted road finally has Brad come to terms with his situation: that he is mugged, beaten, and left for death in the middle of a field on the outskirts of town. His face is scarred, bruised, and his ease with strangers is never the same.

The movie is something I was not expecting, an odyssey into the mind of fear along the lines of a film Harmony Korine might admire. Where I was prepared for an dark yet entertaining film like Whiplash, we delve into the bowels of a film that more closely resembles "Spring Breakers," another hypnotic story with similar themes of the recklessness of millennials.

As the story falls into place, Brad finally decides to start college (we assume he took a year off after high school, since his younger brother is already well into his degree). Even before classes begin, Brad attends a Fall party at Brett's fraternity. The house is run-down, jammed, full of empty plastic cups and vomit in every corner. It's not so much a symbol as a right of passage: to belong to this house is to have a brotherhood that always has your back. James Franco (a producer on the film) has a brief but memorable scene as a former classmate who seems to hang around at the house a couple hours too long. Stuck in the past, he nonetheless shows Brad that this is an institution to which you can belong and be protected.

And so begins the odyssey. "Hell Week," as it's notoriously dubbed, is the hazing process where Brad, his roommate, and others, attempt to win the trust of the fraternity and eventually get "pinned" before the school year is out. The name is aptly given. Pledges are brought down to the basement where they are stripped, tied up, urinated on, and made to drink to the point of nausea. They drink cups of hot sauce. They are slapped. This is only day one.

The comparison to "Full Metal Jacket" would seem appropriate on a surface level, but the film rarely dives into the psyche of Brad, a boy who is torn between fear and commitment to pleasing his brother. Just as he allowed strangers to abuse him in the film's opening, so does he (poetically) allow it to happen again, this time for acceptance. In fact, maybe the abuse comes to represent a window into the connected world. Life is full of people who come and go, but what's the true test of a friendship if you literally go to hell and back.

The abuse, of course, is the highlight of the film, and the vivid scenes of torture are at times a bit overwhelming. We know going in that this is a movie based on actual events (events in which the death of a student was the culmination of the abuse), and as such each new scene comes with a heightened sense of dread: will this turn deadly? The violence is so relentless that I doubted I would even end this film with a positive thing to say about it. Filmmaking and production is one thing, but if you are making a movie about violence solely for the sake of violence, then what is the point?

I found Schnetzer's performance something that was both fragile and determined. While I at times failed to see motivation in certain scenes, his portrayal of Brad is fully-realized and the basic moral compass of the movie. From beginning to end, the story can be simplified to that of a boy who learns to no longer be afraid. It's a small arc, muddled in with a plot of hazing that does very little for the cause of the overall picture. On an intimate level, this was a story I could get behind. Everyone likes a happy ending, don't they?

Don't Breathe (****)

It's rare for a movie to have me on the edge of my seat, genuinely curious as to what will happen next. In a genre where cliches are now the running gag, to make a film that is full of original ideas and creativity is a relief to say the least. I had heard a lot about "Don't Breathe" mainly through word of mouth, so I decided to finally see it without having so much as read a brief synopsis. I was skeptical about how a movie like this could sustain itself for a feature runtime. I was pleasantly surprised by how effective it is.

The movie borrows major ideas and elements from some of cinema's best thrillers, and I mostly recalled "Panic Room" and "Wait Until Dark" as antithesis versions. The plot is almost laughably simple: 3 small-time burglars are hoping to strike it big when they hear a retired war veteran has won a settlement over the death of his daughter for upwards of $300 million. They assume the cash might be in his house, and even better is that they realize he has gone blind. These are barely kids in their 20's. Alex (the logical one of the group) uses his dad's spare keys from his security companies to disarm these homes, quietly loot various goods, and rearm the home and stage a fake robbery. Money, the wild one, is head-to-toe tattoos and carries a gun even though this could lead to a longer jail sentence should they be caught. Rocky, the heroine, sees the money as an opportunity to relocate her and her daughter to a better life. The plan is so simple.

In a run-down Detroit neighborhood where the blind man is the only house that is occupied for blocks, they quietly enter his home and begin the quiet search for a safe. The time is 2am. In the modest 2-story home, they see photographs of his deceased daughter, and he plays home movies of her as a child. Money uses a homemade gas bomb in attempts to neutralize him to sleep. Of course we know that won't work. The blind man is quickly awoken, and in a shocking moment of confrontation, his combat skills come out and he quickly murders Money, believing him to be the only robber. With Alex and Rocky standing breathless in horror, they see him board up the house from the inside out, and begin to remove the body. They are now the victims.

The story becomes a cat-and-mouse game as the blind man soon discovers that there are more intruders in his home. Blind as he is, the man is still a dominant figure, rippling with muscles and a ghostly face that shows his aged gray beard and white eyes. He passes within inches of Alex in the hallway like a ghost, and retrieving a gun from his safe, Rocky can visibly see the code to reenter at a later time. I don't know if this classifies as a thriller or horror, since much of the drama comes from the chase that ensues throughout the house. Yes, he is blind, but the old man knows this house like the back of his hand, and indeed the dark rooms are full of terrifying secrets.

The director, Fede Alvarez, is known for making "Evil Dead" in 2003, but this is a clear exercise in tone and suspense. With each new moment, he adds a new layer to the dread, and the camera floats through the house to remind us where spare guns are hiding, which windows have bars... It's a technique that someone like Alfred Hitchcock might appreciate: showing the audience more than the characters know. When they first enter the man's home, there is a steady shot of a hammer hanging on a rack of tools. Nothing becomes of it, but our minds begin racing with ideas of how this will come into play or what it might be used for. Later, we see a spare gun strapped to the underside of a bed. Only the audience knows what dangers are in store.

I won't spoil too much more of the film, only to say that the robbers' tour of the home lead to nearly every room of the home and some in between. A dark discovery in the basement finds them trapped with the blind man amongst rows and rows of shelving units, and as casually as he begins hunting them, he turns the fuse box over and leaves them in utter darkness. This scene (about midway through the film) harkened back to the chilling climax of "Silence of the Lambs" and yet raises the stakes tenfold from what Clarice Starling encountered with Buffalo Bill. We know his basement can only be so big, and we see the man wandering through the darkness touching familiar landmarks to remind himself the path he needs to take. Both Alex and Rocky are blind, shaking, barely moving forward. The scene is photographed in a smoky black & white, and the quiet breathes of the victims move in and out of earshot. Rocky moves down a hall, at the end of which slowly materializes the blind man, quietly waiting.. Listening. It's without a doubt one of the most effective horror scenes I have ever seen and the crowning achievement of the film.

The film finally sees it's own form of climax, and for me this is where it began to drag. From the old man's dog (a vicious Rottweiler with an apparent taste for human flesh) to chases back and forth inside and outside the home, I have to admit the finale of the movie became an exhausting chore to keep up with. There were many moments when it felt like the story was coming to an end, and the 'shocking' moments were realizing that it was still going. This movie requires a great suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy (the logics of this movie have to be taken with a grain of salt or I would guess one's appreciation might be somewhat lessened), and with each new "twist" I felt the movie losing it's claustrophobic feel and moving more towards a standard slasher flick with it's own set of rules and horror cliches.

Regardless, I will honestly admit this was a very fun film to experience in a theater. The photography is closed in and haunting, and the performance by Stephen Lang as the blind man is sure to become a classic in the vaults of iconic horror villains. For a movie with such a simple idea as a robbery gone wrong, boy did they get it so right. I only wish they would have pushed it further instead of drifting back to the standards a typical Hollywood revenge flick might take.

Huntsman: Winter's War (*)

It's astounding how bad "Huntsman: Winter's War" is. From the preposterous title (it would appear that the story occurs in springtime, and that the one battle in the film is a tiny 10-person battle in a throne room) to the absolute lack of reason, sense, or skill, this coldly-received sequel to an already flawed film (Snow White & the Huntsman) is like finding a diamond in the rough in terms of bad movies. In a way it's almost good how bad it is. Almost.

The movie is narrated by Liam Neeson with empty phrases like "lands to the North" and "the Good Queen built a fortress around her heart." We meet the Evil Queen from the first movie (the absurdly over-the-top Charlize Theron who is the only fun role in the film) and her sister, Elsa -- I mean Freya, a woman who's heart was broken and uses her ice powers to turn her hair white, adopt an icy wardrobe, and reign in an ice castle on top of a mountain. Her ultimate character arc is the discovery that love can ultimately be a good thing. She didn't even have to sing "Let It Go" to figure it out.

Simultaneously we have a remake of "Braveheart" occurring, as we meet the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth reprising his titular role) and his love affair with fellow huntswoman, Sara (with an off-again on-again Scottish accent). Declaring their love for one another in a forbidden encounter, the Huntsman all but states that he "wants to raise crops and God-willing a family" with his new lover. A stroke of misfortune leads him to believe Sara is brutally murdered, and thus the war is launched. I mean the battle that takes place in the last 3 minutes of the movie.

In reality, the plot seems to be about the group of heroes (the Huntsman, some of the dwarves from the first film (whoever wanted to come back, I guess), and some other female dwarves) on the hunt for the Magic Mirror, hoping to find it before Evil Queen Freya reclaims it for herself. Like the ruby slippers, it's said to have dangerous powers, but I am sure as hell unaware of what those powers could be (aside from being able to judge the hotness level of women like a caddy bitch). Why this is so important is never explained, nor are any of the plot details seemingly relevant at any one point. The story is vapid, lifeless, thrown together. As I was watching this film, things kept happening, but overall nothing was occurring. I began to doubt the reasoning for this movie's existence other than an attempts for a cash grab (the original made over $400 million in sales... This one barely made $160 million against a budget of $115 million. Ouch).

If you need an example of what is wrong with the Hollywood system right now, then "Huntsman" seems to be a textbook example. From the overly-choreographed fight scenes, Lord of the Ring's-inspired mythology (which seems to be the standard for fantasy films nowadays), and the rehashing of characters both living and dead with no regard to story (how many times can Charlize Theron come back to life without absolutely flushing brain power down the toilet?), the film churns along from one predictable beat to the next, and by the time it ends it's hard to remember that there are actually decent movies made anymore. To watch "Huntsman: Winter's War" is to lobotomize a part of your brain. Movies can be art, and they can be moving, and they can be thrilling. This movie is the cinematic equivalent of expired milk.

Blair Witch (1/2)

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. Though the odds are slim, it has a chance. I would wager, then, that in half the time it would take to reproduce a great play, a monkey could easily draft a screenplay with more skill and subtlety than "Blair Witch," easily one of the worst films I have seen in a while. I don't know if that's a compliment to the simple odds of chance or an insult to the skill and brainpower of the filmmakers behind this slosh.

In 1999, "The Blair Witch Project" began what has been dubbed 'the shakey-cam' style of filmmaking. It's borderline documentary, and the film did it with such skill and art that many people believed the three actors to be truly missing persons. Even today, rewatching this film is a powerful testament to structure, psychological horror, and growing suspense. I wouldn't say that I still find the film scary, but it does what great horror always has done: it burrows deep into our psyche. I'd even go so far to say that the final 5 minutes of the original film are some of the most genuinely-horrifying and eerie moments I have ever seen in a movie.

It's almost 17 years later, and we find Hollywood churning out work like this; a movie so riddled with inconsistencies and jump scares that it's a wonder it was ever at all greenlit. The plot is so thin that it's barely there: a young boy tried to find his sister (Heather, the girl from the original film) who he believes is still alive in the woods based on footage he found online. Why he would assume a girl missing for over 20 years (don't forget, the original was footage found from 1994) would still be alive is one thing, but he convinces 3 of his friends to journey with him to find out the truth. At this point in the movie, he should have become concerned at seeing his friends are all attractive teenagers who fit the standard slasher lineup: a couple who is more interested in sex than anything else, a single and beautiful brunette, and a single teenage boy. Perfect.

In the woods, they quickly begin a camp out and are joined by a local couple who originally discovered the online footage. In the night, many of the iconic 'stick-figure' voodoo dolls are mysteriously hung up. I wonder who's to blame? So forth and so on, the characters find themselves stuck in a loop as in the original: unable to find their way out of the woods. The local couple admits to stringing up the figures to conjure up fear, and yet the next night when they return, the group is again terrified of the mysteries of the woods.

Where the original found horror in the unseen (I think the most horrifying moment is hearing a baby laughing in the distance while the campers sleep in the safety of their tent), this movie throws it all at the screen, with mutilated bodies and scary naked monsters roaming free at any given moment. There is no suspense, no build up, and justly no pay off. What the original mastered, this isn't even a pale comparison. It is garbage.

I give the film 1/2 a star as opposed to zero based solely on the performance of Callie Hernandez (the single, attractive brunette) who in the final minutes of the film gives one of the most authentic performances of panic I think I have ever seen. The quiver in her voice, the inconsistency with her breathing. For only a moment, I found myself actually understanding the horror meant to be felt by the characters on screen. Too bad for me that I only began caring in the last 30 or 40 seconds of the entire film. What a mess.

Sully (**1/2)

Clint Eastwood has nothing to prove to anyone anymore. Having won a handful of Oscars and directed two Best Picture winners, we are only so lucky to have such an esteemed veteran behind the camera (he just turned 86 this past year). His repertoire covers a wide range of subject and setting, from westerns to historical pictures to modern fiction. He has hit's and misses. It's unfortunate that such an inspiring story as the Miracle on the Hudson could wind up so flat on the big screen.

It wasn't but a few years ago, and I know we all know the story - how Captain Sullenburger successfully ditched his US Airways flight into the river just outside of Manhattan and miraculously kept everyone on board alive and well. It was a 1 in a million landing, all the more spectacular and alarming for taking place so close to Ground Zero. The world proclaimed him a hero, but (you guessed it) some had initial doubts.

The story itself follows Sully in the immediate aftermath of the landing, when he and his copilot (Aaron Echart as Jeff Skiles) are hotel-bound while a hearing is underway to investigate the cause of the crash. Sully frequently calls his wife Lorraine (Laura Linney) at home to assure her that he is okay and will be home soon. The hearings proceed simultaneous to an endless barrage of news coverage and late night appearances. In the same day, Sully met with both Katie Couric and David Letterman.

The trailer promised a somewhat suspenseful story with a crash scene that would rival that of the movie "Flight." We flash back several times in the film to the actual incident, when birds struck both engines and caused the plane to lose forward thrust. The entire incident was so quick (200 seconds or so) that Eastwood devotes several scenes to show the crash in it's entirety from various perspectives. It's a Rashomon approach in many ways, and the effect is a powerful testament to the quick wits of not only Sully but the flight crew and the Coast Guard and even passersby watching a plane descend into the frigid Hudson River in disbelief.

Tom Hanks, of course, plays the titular character. He is barely there, so steadfast in his beliefs and quiet in his doubts, I don't think any other man would be as suited for the role. One would think that this would be a sure bet for an Oscar nomination (and well overdue: Hanks hasn't been nominated since Cast Away in 2000) but his performance is as muted and subtle as anything he has done. From crash to court hearings, Sully is played as a man you understand to be a real hero. He is quiet, determined, scared of being wrong but persistent when he knows he is right.

The villains (the National Transportation Safety Board who scrutinize his every move) are often laughable and there for the obvious reason of creating more cinematic drama. I don't know how factual the film is in regards to the final scenes, but we are led to believe that Sully is on the cusp of being fired for having endangered the lives of everyone on board. Flight simulations (and we see no less than 4 entire flight simulation sequences, mind you) prove that the plane could have landed safely at LaGuardia, and it comes down to a simple speech by Sully in which human error ultimately would have made landing on a runway impossible.

When the movie is good, it's good, but when it's not, it's apparent. There are many sequences of PTSD and such from Sully's perspective that feel taped on and hasty. A dream sequence in which Katie Couric presents a news story about Sully being a fraud is forced to say the least. Clint Eastwood has never been a meticulous director known for precision edits or immaculate framing. Sully simply feels like a rough cut that required a few more trims to make it feel concise. Hanks is great, of course, and the story is inspiring. The film itself leaves a bit to be desired. Still, for a man closer to 90 years old in age, I doubt you will find a more assured director working today.