Clay Vanstone (T.J. Miller) is the screw-up branch manager of the Chicago offices of the Zenotek Company. His hard-nosed sister Carol (Jennifer Aniston) is the interim CEO and arrives on Christmas Eve to announce massive lay-offs, budget cuts and the canceling of that night’s company Christmas party. She threatens to close the failing branch down if they don’t turn things around. Clay holds the party anyway, to try to impress a potential client (Courtney B. Vance), while his Chief Tech Officer Josh (Jason Bateman) and his head of tech/love interest Tracey (Olivia Munn) try to save the company. Things start to fall apart as the party spirals out of control and Carol is stranded in Chicago and heads back to the office.
Raunchy holiday comedy is directed by Josh Gordon from a script by Laura Solon, Dan Mazer and Justin Malen. It’s a routine comedy in every way from the loser needing to triumph in the face of adversity to the divorced Josh finally working up the courage to pursue Tracey. None of that stops it from being a fun and naughty comedy thanks to buoyant direction from Gordon, some actual wit in the script and a very energetic and entertaining cast. Kate McKinnon steals many a scene, Anniston has a blast as the tough and all business Carol and the underrated Bateman and Olivia Munn have a really nice on-screen chemistry both comedically and romantically. To a degree, this comedy could have been set at any time of year, but does get a chance to have naughty fun with many Christmas traditions and clichés. Routine and familiar…yes. A raunchy, fun holiday comedy for grown-ups…that, too!
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Messy story has a Predator (Brian A. Prince) crash landing on Earth right in the middle of a covert operation by military sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook). His men are killed, The Predator is captured and eventually McKenna is taken into custody by a black ops unit, only after sending his autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) some of the Predator tech as security. Biologist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) is brought in to examine the creature and discovers the species is using various collected DNA, including human, to improve themselves. What they don’t know is that their captive is a traitor and a massive 11 foot tall tracker has been sent to earth to eliminate it. When The Predator escapes, McKenna, a band of psychotic army inmates and Casey, must team up to evade slimy government operative Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) and get to Rory before The Predator…or the monster that hunts it…finds his son and ex-wife (Yvonne Strahovski) first…still with me?
Flick is directed by Shane Black (Iron Man 3) from a script he co-wrote with Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps, Monster Squad) and it is a bit of a mess…though a fun one at times. One basic problem is that the film jumps around a lot with no transitional scenes to give us the illusion that characters traveled from one place to another or learned something that they suddenly know at a later point. While Rory is a savant with the alien technology, other characters including his dad and Munn’s Casey, suddenly know their way around the Predator technology when necessity serves. Let’s just say Black uses a lot of conveniences to move his story along. He also doesn’t seem to take his own story very seriously, as there is an overabundance of humor and it seems to overshadow the more serious moments, keeping the movie from building some real intensity. On a more positive side, Black doesn’t shy away from the gore and there are some very enjoyable action scenes. There is also some fun character banter and it is entertaining to see Predators stalking the suburbs on Halloween night…though they could have made better use of that aspect, too. Still, the film starts to feel like it’s being made up as it goes along once the mega-Predator arrives. The second half especially feels like they are not following a story, but going from one scene to another. The flick also starts out fairly seriously and then seems to get sillier and sillier as it progresses, till it ends in a goofy climactic confrontation of clichés and SPFX. It just doesn’t seem like Black trusted his own material enough to play it straight and tough like the first classic. Even the AVP films took themselves serious enough to get us to buy into them, even if they ultimately disappointed.
The film has an eclectic cast which works even if the material is weak. Boyd Holbrook makes a fine enough hero, though it seemed like he needed a bit stronger screen presence. Olivia Munn proves, after impressing as Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse, that she makes a solid action hero and when not left out of that action babysitting Rory, she can kick ass with the boys. Sterling K. Brown is OK as the government bad-guy. It’s a cliché role, but he works hard to make him a good bad guy despite being two dimension-ally written. Tremblay gives another good performance as the bullied and autistic Rory who has a gift for understanding the alien language and technology. As McKenna’s back-up, Trevante Rhodes is good as the soulful Nebraska, Keegan-Michael Key is fun as the joker of the group Coyle, Thomas Jane is solid as a soldier suffering from PTSD and touretts, Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones, John Wick) is good as the Irishman Lynch and Augusto Aguilera is amusing as the weird but likable Nettles. Rounding out is Yvonne Strahovski as Rory’s tough and protective mom and Jake Busey in an amusing role as the son of Predator 2‘s Peter Keyes, who was played by his father Gary Busey.
Overall, this was a bit of a disappointment yet, not without it’s entertaining moments. There was some cool action, some solid FX and the cast of eccentric characters worked well together. Unfortunately the script is weak and the director favored goofy humor and allowed the film to jump from place to place, where it should have taken itself a bit more seriously and a smoother narrative would have made things flow a lot better. The second half seems to be made up as it went along and despite a cool new Predator, the film was more silly than scary. Your move.
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While X-Men: Apocalypse is not the worst of this series, it may be the dullest. The film opens in ancient Egypt where a powerful being, En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac) is about to transfer his consciousness into another body when he is betrayed and buried beneath the ruins of a great pyramid. We then cut to 1983 where he is dug up by a cult of mutant worshipers and set free to resume his plan of…you guessed it…world destruction and domination. Now Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and rebel hero Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) must somehow stop the first and most powerful mutant with only a group of young students and CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) at their sides. Worse still, En Sabah Nur has gathered a strike force of his own, Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Angel (Ben Hardy) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and only needs one more piece to carry out his apocalyptic plan…Charles Xavier.
As this is the fourth X-Men flick directed by Bryan Singer and written by Simon Kinberg, co-written with Singer, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, we see a series in definite need of new creative blood. The story is just another powerful villain looking to annihilate mankind yarn, directed very by-the-numbers by Singer. Gone is the cleverness from his first two flicks, as well as, the energy and the fun. The film plods along for 144 minutes, taking itself way too seriously and we only see a spark of life in the last few moments, when the young members of the team must step up against a god-like being…though a god-like being that never really impresses or exudes much menace. And that is another big problem with this flick, En Sabah Nur…or Apocalypse…is a boring villain. He is never frightening, nor do we ever truly feel the power he is supposed to have. He’s just some blue guy who wants to rule the world…yawn. Even his sidekicks, including the usually impressive Magneto, are given little to do, but stand glowering behind him, till the climactic battle and even then only Olivia Munn’s Psylocke shows a little promise, despite being as underused as the rest of them. Add to that a detour into William Stryker’s (Josh Helman) lair, which serves no purpose other than to give a certain familiar face a cameo and adds at least twenty minutes to an already overlong flick. Remove the sequence entirely and it would have no bearing on the story. Even Stan Lee’s usually amusing cameo is dull, though at least we get to meet his real-life wife.
There are some positive points. There is some solid action and the FX are spectacular, even though the whole city destruction thing has been done to death in recent superhero flicks. Evan Peters has another movie stealing scene as Quicksilver and should get his own movie at this point. Mystique’s graduation to team leader works well and Lawrence again shines in the role, as does Sophie Turner as a young Jean Grey, who has a bit of a scene stealing moment of her own in the final conflict. One of the few moments to show some life and have impact. Newton Thomas Sigel returns with some crisp cinematography and John Ottoman from X2 and Days Of Future Past again scores the soundtrack…of which also contains some cool 80s tunes.
The film has a big cast and the recent regulars like McAvoy, Fassbender, Hoult, Byrne and Lawrence all perform their roles well and we wish they were given something more challenging to do. Oscar Isaac is sadly underwhelming as En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse. He just doesn’t project any power or malice, as the supposedly first and most powerful mutant. It is almost as if he was phoning in the part. Evan Peters is once again amusing as the smart-ass Quicksilver and thankfully he has a bigger role. Sophie Turner is good as young Jean Grey and in her big scene evokes the kind of power Isaac could have used to make his villain memorable. As for the rest of the newbies, Jodi Smit McPhee is fun as Nightcrawler, Tye Sheridan is fine as the new Cyclops, Ben Hardy is given very little to do as Angel, so it is hard to really comment on his performance, Alexandra Shipp shows potential for Storm and Olivia Munn, as mentioned previously, makes an impression as Psylocke, even if she is underused.
What can be said? It’s not an outright bad movie like Last Stand, but even that had some fun stuff in it. While this is a better made and written film, it is also a very drab, uninvolving and overlong one. At least Last Stand had the decency to be less than two hours long. Our main bad guy is heaps of dull and his world destroying plot is heaps of been-there-done-that. On a plus note, the FX are as well rendered, the action is well staged and the recast favorites work well enough, with Sophie Turner standing out. There are a few good new characters such as Olivia Munn’s villainous Psylocke and another fun sequence with the scene stealing Quicksilver. A ho-hum entry in a series which has too many interesting characters to run out of gas quite yet.
Deliver Us From Evil is the latest film from Sinister director Scott Derrickson, who co-wrote with Paul Harris Boardman based on the supposedly true experiences of New York Detective Ralph Sarchie and detailed in the book Beware The Night written by Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool. The movie tells the story of Detective Sarchie (Eric Bana), a once Catholic cop who has lost his faith, and his partner Butler (Joel McHale) who are investigating a number of strange cases that all seem to be connected not only by some very bizarre and violent behavior but, by three Iraqi War vets Santoino (Sean Harris), Jimmy (Chris Coy) and Griggs (Scott Johnsen). The incidents all seem to involve some very unexplainable activity and key on something the three found when on maneuvers in Iraq. But, when a mysterious priest named Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez) shows up proclaiming there is something far more evil going on here then just the dark side of human nature, Det. Sarchie’s disbelief is put to the test… and further tested as his family’s lives may now be in danger when the demonic force takes notice of Sarchie’s investigations and follows him home. Can a NYC cop, with demons of his own, fight an evil of biblical proportions?
I am not a big fan of Derrickson’s overrated Sinister, though I did like his The Exorcism Of Emily Rose. And I did like this movie though, I was caught off-guard that, for the first two thirds, the film is played like a routine police thriller with some very supernatural elements mixed into it rather then a straight-up horror. As the film progresses and the investigation deepens, it is only then that it starts to resemble a horror film and becomes a full blown one in it’s last act. Derrickson gives us some creepy moments throughout but, doesn’t really deliver the real scares and chills till the entity goes on the attack and Sarchie and Mendoza bond to confront it. It’s a little jarring but, it does work overall. The film is involving and interesting when it’s not being spooky though it could have used a bit more intensity and atmosphere like it gives us in the final act and it is plagued by some very familiar elements that we’ve seen time and time again in possession themed movies. We get swarms of flies, flickering lights, scratching noises and oddly behaving children’s toys and it is these overused elements that hold the movie back somewhat from really chilling us. Whether this is really what happened to Sarchie and his family or not, we’ve seen it all before. Even as the entity targets his 6 year old daughter, it reminds us of countless other flicks. But, Derrickson’s direction is solid and he has a really effective visual style. He is also supported by a really good cast, who all shine here, and while the film does have yet another exorcism scene, the director manages to craft a really effective one that actually throws in a few new twists on another overly familiar trapping of this type of flick. Too bad he couldn’t have freshened up some of the other time-worn elements a bit more, then this film would have been a real goose bump inducing treat throughout and not just in it’s last act when things get really intense and spooky. Flick is also not above getting gruesome, which it does at times with some top notch gore FX.
But, getting back to the cast, everyone is strong across the board and that helps get past the familiarity of it all. Bana is exceptional as Sarchie and I’m not his biggest fan. He takes us from good New York cop, who sometimes sees too much of the dark side of human nature, to one who recognizes there is even darker forces out there and its willing to fight them. Edgar Mendoza is also exceptional as the very unconventional priest and demonologist who has some past demons of his own and he and Bana really work together well. They have a great onscreen chemistry and the two opposing characters support each other very effectively. I also loved Community’s Joel McHale as Sarchie’s tough, tattooed but, wise-cracking partner. These two really work well together and their bond comes across as authentic and McHale paints an endearing character who is a bit of a wise-ass but, also a badass when he needs to be. I hope this leads to McHale’s talent finally being recognized and getting more major movie roles. He is leading man material. Harris and Coy are very creepy as our possessed former soldiers. We only get to see Johnsen’s Griggs in flashback footage so, there isn’t much he is given to do. We also get a nice down-to-earth turn by Olivia Munn as Sarchie’s wife Jen and Lulu Wilson is cute and precocious as 6 year old daughter Christina. Rounding out is a very creepy Olivia Horton as Jane Crenna, another of the possessed who gets some of the film’s more unnerving scenes. A really top notch cast that help elevate this above the routine.
So, in conclusion, Deliver Us From Evil is a routine possession thriller merged with a routine cop thriller but, elevated by some really good performances from it’s cast and a director who effectively cranks up the juice in the final act and gives us a few chills in the meantime. The film is weighed down by some all too familiar elements that we’ve seen in countless possession themed films but, is effectively directed enough to entertain and chill us, so we can be a bit forgiving and have had a creepy good time by the time the credits roll. A good and sometimes very effective horror that could have been better but, considering the familiarity of the elements involved, is a lot better then one might expect.
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