Director: Robert Schwentke
Writers: Evan Spiliotopoulos, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse. Story by Evan Spiliotopoulos, based on the character Snake Eyes by Hasbro
Stars: Henry Golding, Andrew Koji, Ursula Corberó, Samara Weaving, Iko Uwais

Synopsis: A mysterious lone fighter, known only as “Snake Eyes”, is welcomed into and trained by an ancient Japanese ninja clan, but finds his loyalties being tested when secrets from his past are revealed, as he eventually goes on the path to become the famous G.I. Joe hero.

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It’s truly astounding how many companies are trying to replicate the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not to say that franchises didn’t exist before Iron Man or The Avengers, but they always felt like a series of stories laced together in a more linear narrative. Since Marvel, franchises such as the DC Comics and apparently now G.I. Joe are trying to capitalize on their brand. The last G.I. Joe movie to be released was in 2013, and it was a sequel to the original made in 2009.

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is the first film to focus on (mostly) one G.I. Joe character and flesh out his back story, as the title suggests. The film doesn’t try to do a lot with the material it’s working with, but it also doesn’t succeed at much of what it’s trying to do. Apart from the strange accents and overall mediocre acting, Snake Eyes falls victim to its cliche plot and dialogue, confusing character choices and developments, and fails at the main goal it’s trying to achieve: action.

The plot of the film is entirely predictable from the second it starts. We see Snake Eyes as a child, and he watches as his father is killed in front of him. This happens within the first ten minutes of the film, so it’s not exactly a spoiler. It feels like the writers are trying to recreate a Batman origin story with their own character, but don’t know how to make it the least bit interesting or unique. The events that follow are all completely unsurprising, and only seem to happen because the film dictates that it needs to happen in order to keep the movie-going. You always know what’s going to happen next, and it’s never inspired by choices the characters are making or events that happen to them. Instead, it operates more like a storyboard that was never really finished.

Because of the strung-together story idea, the characters aren’t allowed any space to grow or develop in a way that really makes sense or is believable, they’re just kind of along for the ride. Snake Eye’s only personality trait is the fact that his father was killed as a child, and he’s honestly the character with the most depth to him at all, and even that seems to flip on its head in the third act. The other characters are only there to serve either exposition or predetermined and unmotivated conflict until suddenly that’s not what they’re needed for anymore and their purpose entirely changes as well. You can never understand what are a character’s motivations, drive, or desires. Instead, their actions only happen to dictate the plot, even if that means doing the complete opposite of what they were doing two minutes earlier. Alliances are constantly changing, good and bad are flipping back and forth, and characters only seemingly join up because it’s the most convenient outcome. It sounds confusing, and trust me, it is.

The greatest grievance of this film is definitely the action sequences. At the end of the day, this is an action film. It doesn’t need to be anything deep or moving, as long as the film entertains me, it can justify its existence. The action scenes are well-choreographed, especially the katana fighting near the end, but they suffer from multiple cliches and bad editing. In some of the first fights of the film we are greeted with the trope of “one person must fight 20 others surrounding him and he wins”, followed with pretty thick plot armor, putting characters in situations there’s no way they would live through but they need to because they’re a central character. This irritated me in the first fight, and it only continued in a majority of the fights throughout the movie. As the film progresses, there’s continually bad quips of dialogue thrown into the fight scenes, some even clearly added in post-production, that only continue to distract from the main focus.

But when it comes to the action, what is the main focus? I can tell that the fights look good, but the editing never seems to understand what it wants to focus on. I’m not sure if this is because they’re trying to show less violence and be more ambiguous with the kills that take place, or if the editing is just really THAT bad. We never have time to focus on what’s going on as the perspective is constantly changing to try to create a fast paced scene, but instead has the opposite effect, leaving me wondering when the fight is going to be over. Similar to the characters in the film, it’s unfocused and ineffective.

I did say that there were some successful moments, and I’ll touch on those. I think it’s incredibly smart to change the casting of Snake Eyes to Henry Goulding, and keep the entire cast Asian. From the brief research that I did (reading Wikipedia), Snake Eyes is not specified to be an Asian character, but his specialty in katana sword fighting is a distinct Japanese art. It makes sense to set the film in Tokyo and focus more on Japanese culture, although some of it comes off as performative at times. Henry Goulding is always beautiful to look at, and I’ll never question that, but I genuinely couldn’t tell if he was trying to hide his British accent or not. The entire film I was questioning if he was supposed to be British or American, and it was just distracting. Other characters rotate between accents as well, with some English speaking characters rotating between the triad of American, British, and Japanese accents. It only made the already unclear characters even more difficult to decipher, and while I always understood what someone was saying, I never exactly knew how they were going to say it.

I truly didn’t know what to expect out of Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. I thought the trailers looked cool, the score was fun, and the action looked interesting enough to check it out. I left the theater feeling like I had just watched a puzzle being put together, but each piece was rotated in a different direction and then jammed together to make a complete project. There is a complete picture in front of me, but it’s incoherent and unsettling. And don’t worry, they make room for a sequel!

Grade: D+

Director: Jimmy Giannopoulos
Writers: Jimmy Giannopoulos, Diomedes Raul Bermudez, Shiloh Fernandez
Stars: Shiloh Fernandez, Val Kilmer, Ewan McGregor, Ashley Benson, Lorraine Bracco

Synopsis: On the 10th anniversary of his father’s death, Giovanni reluctantly accepts the task of bringing a cake to the home of his uncle, a mob boss, for a celebration. Just two hours into the night, Gio’s life is forever changed.

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The first thing to mention about Jimmy Giannopoulos’ crime drama The Birthday Cake is it’s star-studded cast. It’s difficult to make it through the entire runtime without uttering phrases like ‘wait, is that Paul Sorvino?’, ‘hang on, what’s Vincent Pastore doing in this?’, or “no way, it’s Luis Guzman!,’ which is fantastic – albeit sometimes cliched – casting. Aside from Sorvino, Guzman, and Big Pussy Bonpensiero, we’re also treated to performances from the First Lady of crime drama, Lorraine Bracco; perennial bad guy Will Fichtner as a corrupt cop; Ewan McGregor (for some reason?) as a priest and omniscient narrator for the events we’re about to witness; Penn Badgely as a seedy criminal; Jake Weary (wasted in a nothing role) as an FBI agent; and finally Val Kilmer as the head of the crime family, Uncle Angelo. It’s sort of like a reunion of some of the best in the crime genre, but unfortunately comes out little more than a Goodfellas fugazi trying to be the real thing.

In fairness, that may be harsh. The Birthday Cake is Giannopoulos’ directorial debut, and it’s clear he has a love of the genre. References to Goodfellas, Sopranos, A Bronx Tale, and even a splash of Waiting For Godot are abound here. And even though it reminds you of much better movies, it’s all tied in fairly well – with just a few bumps along the way.

The Birthday Cake finds Gio (Shiloh Fernandez, looking like a cross between Donnie Brasco era Johnny Depp, and what you imagine Joaquin Phoenix’s son might look like if he gets into acting one day) on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death. As is customary every year, the family get together for a dinner to celebrate. Gio’s mother Sofia (Lorraine Bracco) bakes a cake which she instructs Gio to take to his Uncle Angelo’s for the dinner. And so begins Gio’s journey across New York as he tries to deliver the cake while also finding out what happened to his cousin Leo – who everyone seems to be looking for. Along the way, he’ll meet old friends, Puerto Rican taxi drivers, and witness things which will change his life forever.

Perhaps the most impressive thing Giannopoulos does is capture the atmosphere of street-level New York. The Birthday Cake feels episodic in the way that Gio wanders the streets running into one drama after another and it’s remarkably naturalistic how these events unfold. You can almost feel the air and hear the buzzing around the neighborhood, and there’s nothing stagey about Gio’s interactions with his friends as he wanders around looking for Leo. It’s just another weekend in the big city, everyone is up to something, and small moments such as a very heated argument between a couple in a taxi or Gio’s burgeoning romance with the girl at the bakery counter become more weighty because of the time devoted to them. The aforementioned argument in a taxi takes places after Gio exits the scene, and as a viewer, you expect to go with him, except Giannopoulos’ camera lingers to capture the fight. It’s almost entirely superfluous to the story, and once we’re done with them we won’t see or hear from the couple again, yet it adds to the flavor of the movie to witness what might be a typical argument for this couple. This is very much New York and its inhabitants, and the orbit around Gio’s day-to-day life.

Less impressive are the later scenes at Uncle Angelo’s. Throughout The Birthday Cake, we’re constantly told that Leo is up to something. Is he talking to the Feds? Did he get mixed up with the Puerto Rican mafia? Why has no one heard from him? This thread is teased all the way throughout, as Gio picks up crumb after crumb of information and begins to piece together the larger mystery. A shame, then, that Giannopoulos can’t quite stick the landing. Although there are some expertly wrought moments of tension (in particular the ominous sense that something isn’t quite right about the party at Uncle Angelo’s and that it may just be out of Gio’s grasp), it fizzles out by the climax and proves it doesn’t have anything up its sleeve which might distinguish it from its peers in the genre. Indeed your first instinct about what’s really going on will probably be the correct one.

Not for nothing, The Birthday Cake isn’t a bad movie. It boasts an impressive cast for a film of its budget (and one wonders how much of a pay cut certain actors may have had to take to accommodate it) and has some impressively naturalistic filmmaking. Ultimately though, it’s a paean to better movies and you might end up asking yourself why you didn’t just watch one of those instead.

Grade: C

Signature Entertainment presents The Birthday Cake in Cinemas and on Premium Digital 16^th July

Director: Leigh Janiak
Writers: Leigh Janiak, Phil Graziadei, Kate Trefry
Stars: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Ashley Zukerman, Benjamin Flores Jr., Sadie Sink, Matthew Zuk, Elzabeth Scopel

Synopsis: The origins of Sarah Fier’s curse are finally revealed as history comes full circle on a night that changes the lives of Shadysiders forever.

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If there’s one thing Fear Street Part Three: 1666 has going for it, it’s the original idea of what the third installment of a trilogy can be. I was enamored at the beginning with the unique concept of taking the core actors from the first two installments and casting them in new roles that help build upon the main legend of the story and bring the larger narrative to a close. It’s something I’m not sure has ever been done before, and it’s hard to say that about any movies these days. And I will admit this—if you’ve been a big fan of the first two Fear Street movies, you’ll likely be satisfied with this final chapter, especially with the epic finale the second half gives you.

Unfortunately, most of my compliments end there because no matter how much I wanted to love this trilogy—R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books were my jam in my later years of elementary school—most of the thrills, chills, and magic of Stine’s series were allotted to the solid first installment set in 1994, only to be seen in bits and pieces in the 1978-set sequel and now almost nonexistent in this 1666-set closer, especially in the lugubrious first hour. There’s a tremendous sense of fun in Part One, with fast and suspenseful pacing throughout, and by Part Three, the story has turned so grim and slow, the entertaining spirit of Stine’s work has been drained away completely.

As the title suggests, the events take place in 1666, with Deena (Kiana Madeira) now inhabiting Sarah Fier’s body in a settlement that would centuries later become the ill-fated city of Shadyside. Ashley Zukerman is back as Solomon Goode, an ancestor of his eventual 1994 character of Nick Goode, and the terrific LGBTQ storyline from the first movie is back in full force here, with Olivia Scott Welch back again now playing the seventeenth-century Hannah Miller. There’s your standard hysterical witch-hunt by many paranoid members of the settlement that puts some of the most innocent of characters in danger, and the leads we’ve been following from the first movie have to work together to put an end to the curse.

There’s almost nothing scary or compelling about the first half of Part Three, with only the romantic moments between the two female leads showing signs of life, the remarkable love story that played out in Part One getting more screen-time here than it did in Part Two. Director and co-writer Leigh Janiak captures a nice sense of place, one that certainly gives off vibes of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, but unlike that deliberately slow-paced film which was filled with constant dread and terror, she’s left with little to do in this movie but get us quickly to the action-packed conclusion that feels entirely separate from everything that comes before. Like my criticism of Part Two, lots of Part Three feels like an overlong flashback rather than a new, exciting story, which the second half of this film ultimately confirms.

Now, to avoid major spoilers, all I’m going to say is there’s a major shift in 1666’s story at the hour-mark that works to bring the complex, three-movie, multiple-character narrative to a close. It’s certainly the final half-hour that works the best, all the loose ends being tied up, but the structure and tone of Fear Street Part Three: 1666 are so all over the place it’s almost hard to think of it as a complete movie. More important, by the end of these six hours of storytelling, I no longer cared about who the killer was or how he or she might get away with. All I cared about by this point was the conclusion to Deena and Samantha’s love story, which does have quite the memorable final scene if you care to stick it out to the very end.

The best part of the trilogy for me was the opening scene of Part One, with Maya Hawke playing the first victim. I loved everything about that scene—the music, the style, the colors, Hawke’s believable performance. It felt like Fear Street, it felt like Stranger Things, it felt like Scream, it felt like horror! It was the beginning of so much promise and anticipation, but aside from the occasional inspired moments in the rest of the trilogy—and the well-crafted, emotional love story between Deena and Samantha—little came close to the power of those opening minutes, and by this third movie, the all-essential horror aspect has almost been forgotten until the too-late, too-little blood-soaked finale.

In the end, I believe this trilogy was too big and too epic, with too many characters to get us to care. It was a cool idea to make three two-hour horror movies each heavily connected to the next, but a single tightly constructed film might have been the better call, with a shortened version of Part One, a condensed second hour of Part Three, and a few scattered flashbacks in the middle.

Grade: C

Director: Michael Sarnoski
Writers: Michael Sarnoski, story by Michael Sarnoski and Vanessa Block
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin

Synopsis: A truffle hunter who lives alone in the Oregonian wilderness must return to his part in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped.

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Nicolas Cage’s career may have gone through a bit of a tumultuous time as of recently, but his turn to indie flicks has proven that he’s still the powerhouse actor that he was once known for. Filled with successful dramas of the ’80s and ’90s, and action flicks of the 2000s, Cage is incredibly versatile in skill, and always adapting to what’s fresh, or what may be necessary. Cage is definitely an acquired taste, and although he may be bitter to some, like a fine wine he has only aged gracefully with time.

My first interaction with Nicolas Cage was at a young age when I saw him in National Treasure, although he wouldn’t come into my attention again until his voice over role as Spider-Man Noir in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Having not seen most of his critically acclaimed roles until recently, Cage has mostly lived in my memory as the man who was going to steal the Declaration of Independence or the fun caricature who effortlessly fits into an ensemble cast so perfectly.

On the surface, Pig seems like a John Wick rip-off, and based on the trailer that appears to also be how the film wants to present itself. In actuality, it’s one of the most nuanced and subdued films I’ve seen all year, taking its time with its story and allowing the audience to approach it from any aspect. While it might be too slow for some, and its conclusion may not be satisfying for similar groups, Pig kept my interest the entire 92-minute runtime and left me with endless thoughts of what the characters experienced for hours afterwards.

We initially see Rob (Cage) living a humble life as a truffle hunter with his pig in the Oregon forest. Cage fully embraces the subtlety and simplicity of the life Rob has chosen, already drawing the viewers full attention in normal daily activities. After his beloved companion is kidnapped, you’d expect the action to ramp up a little bit, but instead the film builds suspense by remaining faithful to a more nuanced approach that we first experienced in the first ten minutes of the film. Cage really leans into these moments of intensity behind his character, boldly allowing himself to be vulnerable underneath his tough exterior. Rob enlists the help of Amir (Alex Wolff), a young entrepreneur who purchases Rob’s truffles to resell to local restaurants, to assist him with finding his Pig. Although the interactions between the two are initially reluctant and only taking place out of self-interest, the connection between the two allows itself to slowly grow, blooming into an unexpected companionship that’s both comforting and heartbreaking to watch take place before us.

Rather than the approach we’ve seen before in both John Wick or even Taken, using physical action to try to recover something that has been lost, Pig forces us to look inward and consider what’s truly important to these characters, and by proxy us as an audience. Rob uses personal connections that he has retained with people, even after 10 years spent in the wilderness, to try to get those around him to help him. Every scene Cage shares with someone feels so deeply personal and emotional, it’s hard not to get invested even when the characters are just looking at each other, communicating on a much deeper level that is palpable from the screen. Cage’s performance especially intensifies the raw exposure and openness, taking a subtle and nuanced approach that’s some of his quietest work in perhaps decades, but also some of his best since his last career surge in almost 20 years.

The film covers a multitude of ideas and themes, all of which to discuss would feel as if they’re spoiling the film. I was constantly thinking about the deeper ideas behind the simple plot that was taking place in front of me, and it left me truly speechless after leaving the theater. I’m sure the conclusions that I come to and what I think is being said are completely different from another viewer who has had different life experiences than me, and it’s the simple notion that so much can be conveyed through such little dialogue that I think truly makes this film the thrilling and rewarding experience that it is.

Pig is an incredibly unexpected but welcome surprise, and it will take you in directions that are unpredictable in the best of ways. Cage’s performance anchors the film and connects to the audience by daring them to consider the same questions his character poses to others.

Grade: B+