Director: Shane Black
Writers: Fred Dekker, Shane Black; Jim Thomas, John Thomas (based on)
Stars: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Thomas Jane, Keegan Michael-Key, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Sterling K. Brown, Yvonne Strahovski

Synopsis: When a young boy accidentally triggers the universe’s most lethal hunters’ return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled science teacher can prevent the end of the human race.

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“Girl, he ain’t gonna catch you,” howled the lady in the seat directly behind, not giving a damn about her annoyed surroundings. The narration is for a moment where Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), after accidentally tranquilizing her right foot, needs help deboarding the Yautja-immobilized bus she’s on (the roof of) and our lead, Army Ranger Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), is standing below with both arms stretched out. “Nuh-uh, he ain’t,” the lady continues, her voice warps into the amplifying score and noise. And lo, it happens: Quinn lets the dirt greet Casey just as she jumps. Even though 3/4 of the auditorium are laughing their guts out, the lady’s “Told ya, honey!” is five decibels higher than the rest.

But credit where it’s due: The lady, total absence of decorum aside, is still not as embarrassing as what is on-screen. The Shane Black-directed and co-scripted film — Shane. Black. — does everything it can to three-point lasered our interest and, in turn, continually giving the lady a chance to make random statements, ask her friends for a summary (a fella among them is also an up-and-coming in-theater commenter, joy!), discredit Casey, question Quinn’s intelligence quotient and offer spoken commentary as if we’re watching Discovery Channel made The Predator.

The only watchable sequence in The Predator, and the one where the lady stays attentive as a filmgoer should, is the beginning, among the stars where a spaceship (of the Shaq-height Yautja, the one that met Arnold) crash-glides above South America after being chased by a bigger one (of the Mureșan-height Yautja). Afterward it’s a woefully impetuous and muddled chain of events where Quinn — the first to encounter, and loot tech from, the Predator — Casey — she’s been researching the creature — Quinn’s autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay, again as an “abnormal” boy!) — who receives the tech after Quinn mails it to his Georgia home and activates it — a troupe full of undesirables — among them the jokester Coyle (Keegan Michael-Key), oft-bullied (since he has Tourette’s!) Baxley (Thomas Jane) and semi-charismatic Gaylord (Trevante Rhodes) — and sinister agent (Sterling K. Brown, whose splendid chords makes his grating introductory line, “They’re large, they’re fast, and f**king you up is their idea of tourism,” tolerable) appear on the Yautja’s to-kill list.

Frankly, past Predator films assume a “whatever” attitude to the script; as long as the beast can show its badassery and the body count rises all is well. Black’s involvement, however, much like his brand of subverting preconceptions (for better and worse), suggests the freakish hunter’s outing will have that and a new-but-solid foundation. John McTiernan’s suspense and Black’s love of surprises? How can you not volunteer as trophy, right? Then comes the decloaking that reveals the horror: The advertised “explosive reinvention” vision never shows up as possible golds — the suburbs as a hunting ground, Predator “Bulldogs,” Predator vs. (CGI-heavy Super) Predator, to name a few — are introduced and then traded for actual pebbles — questionable vulgarity, encouragement of infantilism and, most visibly, disorienting structuring — until that’s what the entire bag consists of. The insulting, or humorous, thing here is not that you’ve been lied to (deception is a marketing tactic, heartless as that sounds), it’s that Predator 2 is more engaging than this. Add Predators, too, while we’re at it.

Noticeably, a lot of The Predator is on the cutting room floor. Not just the chase with the flipping Humvee in the trailers, but also — being a hopeful creature here — a narrative where the beats of refreshment (or, at least, the minims of a stalked-by-Yautja film) are realized, harmless-and-mindless entertainment is offered, temporal progression is shown and geographical switches are acknowledged. Right now, everything feels pureéd together and effortful to decipher, the latter is rage-inducing when you have Larry Fong as your d.p. Remember that bit with the chasing starships? That’s the only time his lensing skills are honored, otherwise a frame is placed under a turbocharged woodchipper. What’s worse, though, is Harry B. Miller III and Billy Weber’s cutting style turns the film into a high-budgeted propaganda for those who worship the “boys’ club” mentality to use; as regular as the pickings on the disabled are Munn’s character being the epicenter of others’ barbs. One sure hopes it’s accidental that this shows up after the reshoots and however many passes in the editing bay. That Steven Wilder Striegel can be on the set is an already depressing enough matter, you know?

Still, every film has an audience, and The Predator certainly has that in the lady in the seat directly behind. Mulling over it now, it seems she is a cognizant individual: The experience is an obnoxious one, and what she is doing that is stating the fact in her distinctive way. Should there be a sequel for this — the ending screams so (such brass) — one hope she’ll be in the audience again, highlighting truth in a time when most struggle to define it. Bless your heart, lady. Bless your freaking heart.

And for those involved with the film: If you have a resume, leave this project out. Or retitle it “Yautja Skit.” Or something, as this is far from the Shane Black’s The Predator you’ve signed up for.

Overall Grade: D-

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Podcast review coming soon on Episode 291

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Director: Ethan Hawke
Writers: Ethan Hawke, Sybil Rosen
Stars: Ben Dickey, Alia Shawkat

Synopsis: The life of musician Blaze Foley.

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Musical bio-pics are films that we claimer to, with their unique perspective of the artist and the music that we have grown the love throughout the decades of content brought forth by said musician. But while most of the films about musicians we know are mostly safe and conventional, it’s the ones about the forgotten figures in music history that give us more insight into the mind of a musician, leading the audience compelled by what they have seen. Films like Inside Llewyn Davis and Born to be Blue give us thought provoking introspection into segments of fictional and nonfictional characters, and show us the real hardship of what it takes to be a musician – especially the baggage that life carries. In steps the new film Blaze by actor, now writer-director, Ethan Hawke, that blends together of a perfect Texas cocktail of old school music bio-pic film ideas with the thought provoking moments of movies we have seen come out within the last couple of year that are breaking the mold.

Blaze follows the life of country-blues musician Blaze Foley told in three nonlinear sections. The first follows Blaze (Ben Dickey) recording a live album in a small honky tonk bar that he plans to send to Merle Haggard for him to hear his music but also the story of his life. While this is going on, we get look backs to the main story of the film which follows Blaze’s love affair with the love of his life Sybil Rosen (Alia Shawkat) and how she inspired him and his musical career for better or for worse. While this is going on, we are also cutting back to an interview with two of Blaze’s friends (Josh Hamilton and Charlie Sexton) that fills in the holes of the remaining parts of Blaze’s life. The information gathered in all three sections amount to a messy life full of heart break and despair but that is the point, Blaze’s life is not a perfect one, just like many artists before and after that have left this Earth. He comes from a family of alcoholics and broken hearts, led by his father, briefly played by Kris Kristofferson, who barely remembers who Blaze is unless Blaze is playing his music. His relationship with his sister is strained and that becomes a common theme for anyone that tries to get close to him in his life, leaving his songs as the only memories he has of Sybil and the time they had together.

The music is what defines Blaze and yet it is his downfall, causing it to lead to be his own destructive tornado and lose just about everything in his life. Just like Llewyn in that Coen Brother masterpiece, the decisions Blaze makes throughout his life haunt him and led him down a road where there wasn’t much coming back from. The two films are like wild brothers of each other but the thing that makes Blaze’s story more layered is that we get an origin story of how he became who he was in the scenes with Sybil in the tree house, the parts that were taken directly from Rosen’s novel for which the film was inspired by. We see how the man rises from nothing and give shown by the woman he loves that he can make it in this crazy world of music, only to see it backfire and lay to dust his chance of happiness in this world. His music was his weapon and his curse and we see that played out beautifully throughout the film.

Hawke, who earlier this year turned in one of the most thought provoking, transformative performances of the year in First Reformed, gets Dickey, a friend of Hawke’s for the last twenty years who had no acting credits to his name before making this film, to give one of the rawest performances I have seen someone give within film this year. Dickey brings all the emotional turmoil and devastation someone can go through within not being every good enough to get out of their own way and make music that Dickey must have struggled within his own musical experiences in order for it to feel so real on the screen. Dickey is helped by a mostly great screenplay by Hawke and Sybil Rosen, whose realistic approach to the character make it seamless for Dickey to step in and transform into this music legend. The supporting cast is pretty good but is mostly out shined by Sexton, who brings songwriting legend Townes Van Zandt to the screen with so much unpredictability, you have no idea where this performance is going to go next. Sexton, together with Dickey performance, elevated this film into a different conversation than standard music bio pics.

The direction and the editing are the unsung hero of this film, and with the films nonlinear structure, it could be really easy to lose track of the story but you never feel lost. You feel like you are in a more than capable hands which is a little unreal considering that Hawke really hasn’t directed a lot of films over his career. While at my screening, Hawke talked about being influenced a lot when making this film by the style of his longtime collaborator and friend Richard Linklater. His comments made a lot sense because of Linklater’s knack of character development and the master of making his characters feel as real as possible, which I felt a lot when watching this film. But while Hawke has made a very good film here, there is only one problem to it, and that the film doesn’t know how to end. The last twenty minutes of the film, while moving and heartbreaking, is a jumbled mess that does drag along for a while, leading me to wonder if they had multiple endings and just used them all. That being said, Blaze is a very unique story and experience and proves that Ethan Hawke doesn’t just have to act in order to impress audiences.

Overall Grade: B+

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Director: Pierre Morel
Writers: Chad St. John
Stars: Jennifer Garner, John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz

Synopsis: Peppermint is a revenge story centering on a young mother who finds herself with nothing to lose, and is now going to take from her enemies the very life they stole from her.

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When I first saw a trailer for Peppermint, I thought to myself, “Jennifer Garner playing Frank Castle? I’m in!” I grew up with Garner kicking ass on Alias and I’m a big fan of the moral ambiguity and overall grittiness of the Netflix Marvel shows, so even if it looked a bit predictable and derivative, I was ready for the ride. And, for the most part, I wasn’t wrong, but I was disappointed.

Peppermint is an interesting mix of several classic action movies and TV shows, including the Daredevil and Punisher Netflix shows (a particularly bold move considering Garner’s noncanon link to the franchise), the Death Wish franchise (another bold move releasing Peppermint so close to the newest installment), the Kill Bill movies, Die Hard, and Fight Club, among others. I think it’s worth noting that the general critical consensus for Peppermint is fairly low (13% Rotten Tomatoes score and a Metacritic rating of 29, as of the writing of this review) while audiences seem to be receiving it fairly well (81% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes). I think, in general, action film fans have fun seeing the tropes and genre elements play and see the reuse of tropes as more of an homage than a ripoff, while critics (myself admittedly included) tend to find the reuse of the same tropes tiring, lazy, and predictable. Neither side is wrong, it’s just a difference in perception. If the genre in question were one of my favorites, like sci-fi or horror, I’d be on the other side of the line, for sure.

Personally, when it comes to this movie, I could have sat back and enjoyed things like Garner’s character Riley North channeling Tyler Durden for no apparent reason or imagery almost exactly mirroring images from season two of Daredevil if the script had been a little tighter and more thought out. Instead of carefully crafting characters and plot, Peppermint just throws in various archetypes and tropes together in a kitchen sink stew, stirs till it bubbles, and dishes it out. Garner’s character jumps to the crazed revenger archetype with no subtlety or explanation and neither she nor the script can seem to figure out if she’s a misunderstood vigilante hero, an anti hero, or a downright villain. The law enforcement characters have some of the most stereotypical, stiff dialogue I’ve ever heard and the villains of the movie are one-dimensional, archetypal, and downright racist caricatures whose only character descriptors include “Mexican” and “ drugs”, though they notably weren’t members of the Drug Cartel.

The plot of Peppermint also meandered quite a bit, spending way too much time on Riley North’s past when all we really needed to see was a happy memory montage, the tragic deaths, and a courtroom scene to seal the seal. Bam. Setup complete in 10 minutes, top. Instead, we spent the entire first act following Riley around when we know full well how things are going to go. Once things finally kick into gear in the second act, we spend so much time with the police officers and the villains that we almost forget about Riley.

Really, all this movie needed to do to meet my expectations was spend more time with Riley post-tragedy, not only so that we understand her character a little better but also because Garner carries this movie. The fact that we spend so much time away from her makes me think that someone somewhere down the line didn’t have faith that she could carry it. I have my suspicions as to why that might be, but suspicions aside, it was the wrong call. This movie needed way more Garner and, hey, let’s cut out the racist villain caricature while we’re at it.

It’s slightly more understandable when it comes from studio-era espionage thrillers, but it’s 2018. Do we really need Hollywood movies perpetuating negative stereotypes that are already being perpetuated on a national, political level?

Anyway, easily the biggest takeaway of this movie, for me, is that Garner still kicks ass. Alias might not hold up as a super awesome show in this golden age of television, and Elektra certainly stunted Garner’s chance at being a big screen badass, but 13 years later, she’s back and she kills it. The script may lack emotional depth and any sort of subtly, emotionally or otherwise, but she’s able to make up for a lot of that with her facial expressions and body language throughout the film. The action set pieces are actually pretty awesome, too. If I sound surprised, it’s because I am. I’m a big fan of superhero action and hand-to-hand combat, but when it comes to gun fights, my attention wanes quickly. But the action in this movie kept my attention. Even when it was at its most ridiculous and unbelievable, it was fun enough to make it worth my time.

For as awesome as Jennifer Garner and the action set pieces throughout this movie are, though, the rest of the movie, unfortunately, does too much harm to the quality of the movie overall to make this movie one I would recommend aside from to the biggest of action flick fans. Maybe if the villains weren’t so offensive I could’ve gotten past the cliches and bad dialogue but, alas, that is not the case. I’m not writing Garner off as an action star, but I am giving this movie a hard pass.

Overall Grade: D+

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