Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: Scott Derrickson (screenplay), Paul Harris Boardman (screenplay)
Stars: Eric Bana, Édgar Ramírez, Olivia Munn

Synopsis: NY police officer Ralph Sarchie investigates a series of crimes. He joins forces with an unconventional priest, schooled in the rituals of exorcism, to combat the possessions that are terrorizing their city.

[/info]

DIRECTION
Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us From Evil comes across and is masked as a paranormal horror film, but really it’s more of a crime drama about a man who has his own demons, if you will, that he must learn to overcome. The film is well-paced and offers some interesting questions that parallel the superficial horror. Many critics have bashed the film for it’s stereotypical tropes and lack of originality, which is valid, but I’m not so sure that’s what the films was all about. Sure, Derrickson throws a lot of typical jump scares at you, but the inner struggle of the film I found compelling. The overall aesthetic is creepy and fits the vibe he was going for and the final sequences were pretty thrilling, despite it being nothing new.

Grade: B

[divider]

SCRIPT
The story is “based of true life events” and centers around New York Police detective Sarchie and his partner Butler. When they investigate a domestic disturbance, they find out they’re in for more than just an abusive husband. Through several circumstances that arise, the story works as a crime thriller and the pieces of the puzzle start to fall in line as they continue their investigation. At the same time, Sarchie, is experiencing symptoms that on the surface seems supernatural, but rather his pain is much deeper and needs a, well let’s just say a different kind of healing. Eventually Sarchie and Butler find out that the three men they were after suffer from being “demon-possessed” and need the help of Mendoza, an undercover priest who specializes in supernatural occurrences. As mentioned, there are many tropes that we’ve seen a hundred times over and the film is pretty predictable. However, there are two types of exorcisms that are featured here and one is certainly more relatable than the other.

Grade: B-

[divider]

RELATED: The Immigrant Movie Review

[divider]

PERFORMANCES
Eric Bana is pretty great in the role, selling both the crime aspects as well as the spiritual ones. His character is a man who is struggling in more ways than one and Bana showcases that well. Joel McHale is also great and delivers some nice comedic timing, in a movie that doesn’t have much humor. Édgar Ramírez, as an undercover priest, delivers a solid performance as well and delivers some dialogue that is sure worth thinking about. Olivia Munn isn’t in the film a ton, but when she’s there, she’s actually pretty good. Really, none of the supporting actors are terrible, and while some of it is stereotypical, it’s never distracting.

Grade: A-

[divider]

SCORE
Christopher Young’s score is probably the most mundane part about the film. Like the script, it’s not that it’s terrible, but rather something we’ve heard before. It certainly adds to the horror moments but in the end, it’s forgettable.

Grade: C

[divider]

FINAL THOUGHTS
Look I get it, I understand why a lot of people don’t like this movie. It certainly is unoriginal and doesn’t add anything new to the genre on a horror production standpoint, but I found the inner struggle parallels compelling and the crime drama story was still interesting. Given that, it wasn’t a bad watch and something you can still engage with.

Overall Grade: B

Director: Dave Green
Writers: Henry Gayden (screenplay), Henry Gayden (story)
Stars: Teo Halm, Astro, Reese Hartwig

Synopsis: After receiving a bizarre series of encrypted messages, a group of kids embark on an adventure with an alien who needs their help.

[/info]

DIRECTION
Dave Green’s Earth to Echo makes itself pretty clear that it’s trying to be this generations E.T., which is a standard that’s almost impossible to achieve. The premise is endearing, however, Green’s execution is pretty poor and unfortunate, because there was good potential here. The choice to film this “found footage” style wasn’t too much of a distraction, and actually made sense within the story they wanted to tell. The problem was more the pacing and editing, which was feeble and unfocused. None of the emotional beats it was going for was earned and much of it felt forced. In other words, it gets very campy. However, the visuals were pretty great and almost Transformers-esqu at times. Green uses Google maps and phone technology effectively that was fun to see on screen. Echo himself was also pretty compelling, but in the end it’s more of a lost opportunity.

Grade: C

[divider]

SCRIPT
The story centers around three kids, Alex, Tuck and Munch, who are three best friends in Nevada, but are being forced to move away from one another due to the government buying their neighborhood to build new roadways. The friends find themselves heartbroken, but Tuck narrates us through their last journey together, a story in which they find an alien whose crash landed on earth. Upon finding the alien, they name him Echo, because of the way he communicates. The kids eventually learn that Echo is wanting their help so he can rebuild his spaceship and go home. Of course, they run into trouble when mysterious construction workers catch up to them, who has been looking for Echo all this time as well. Much of the narrative is unoriginal but you have to give them credit for just going for it. It’s very much a crossover of E.T., Chronicle, a little bit of The Goonies and a little bit of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And it’s absolutely intentional, in my opinion. All in all, the first five minutes is compelling when we learn that these three kids have to deal with the moving of their closest friends, which is heartbreaking for anyone at that age. And once again, the last five minutes of the film comes back to that premise and how they learn friendship isn’t about proximity. However, everything in between is so muddled, forced and trite, that it doesn’t earn much engagement.

Grade: C-

[divider]

RELATED: How to Train your Dragon 2 Movie Review

[divider]

PERFORMANCES
Earth to Echo stars three kids that are mostly unknown. Brian ‘Astro’ Bradley as Tuck who narrates the story and has some pretty funny lines throughout the film. Bradley’s performance was easily the best of the trio and there’s some good potential there for him. For Teo Halm, this was his first major credit, and I gotta say, he’s not bad at all. His character’s arc was forced and not written, which is no fault to him. He plays the emotional beats okay enough, but it’s not enough to save the story. Ironically, Reese Hartwig has the most credits of anyone and he is the campiest as well. His character is annoying, which was part of it, but he plays it too over the top. And here I am criticizing a 12-year-old, who am I? Let’s just say they aren’t the best performances we’ve ever seen, but they’re still adorable nonetheless.

Grade: B-

[divider]

SCORE
Joseph Trapanese has put in some great work on the Raid movies, and while this is very different, it’s still very effective and one of the best elements of the film. The music by itself is gorgeous and absolutely worth listening too. Trapanese uses a lot of strings, while going for the one’s in your heart, which is beautifully done. The use of it in the movie enhances the forced melodrama, but it doesn’t make the music less exciting. Good stuff here from Trapanese.

Grade: A-

[divider]

FINAL THOUGHTS
Earth to Echo, while I’ve given it a hard time, will most likely work for kids and young teens. It has some fun sci-fi elements and Echo is adorable, which is really all that matters right? The kids dealing with their friends moving away is something a lot of us can relate to, which is probably what makes the film more disappointing than anything. So Earth to Echo, it’s not that I’m mad at you, I’m just disappointed. Or is that just worse to say? Well, I’ll just say, of the kid-friendly material out there, go see The Lego Movie or How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Overall Grade: C

Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Ehren Kruger
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor

Synopsis: A mechanic and his family join the Autobots as they are targeted by a bounty hunter from another world.

[/info]

DIRECTION
First off, the fact that this film is two hours and 45 minutes means there is no way can Michal Bay’s direction is any good. The movie is tolerable till about the point when Optimus is tracked down in Texas, then the story-line begins to stretch out every single scene. Every car chase is longer than it needs to be, every action scene is longer than it needs to be and between it all we are force to care about the interactions of the Yeager family. The film easily could been scaled down about 45 minutes and Michael Bay I’m available if you need some help next time around. I would have removed several of the melodramatic scenes between the humans and removed about half of the fight scenes that were meaningless and added nothing in depth to the film. Godzilla was successful in my opinion because it was able to use people merely as the perspective and Transformers would have been more exciting had either the humans or the Transformers been the perspective. Do you always hear your friends complain about how their new baby wears them out? If so by watching this film you will understand exactly how they feel because this film well leave you physically drained by time’s end.

Grade: F

[divider]

SCRIPT
Since this is a Transformers movie, of course the script was expected to be mediocre at best. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger simply did not disappoint on that promise as this movie probably had the worst script of all the Transformer movies. Age of Extinction takes place four years after the events in the last film and the Autobots and Deceptions are merely an afterthought. An CIA unit named, “Cemetery Wind” led by Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) is intent on riding the world of Autobots with the help of transformer bounty hunter, Lockdown. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is a struggling robotic inventor and single father to the beautiful yet willing to get dirty teenager Tessa (Nicola Peltz). Cade buys an old semi-truck and later finds out it is actually Optimus Prime. Cemetery Wind and Lockdown travel to Texas to catch Optimus Prime and the Yeager’s are rescued by Tessa’s boyfriend Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor).Optimus and the remaining Autobots (Bumblebee, Hound, Drift, and Crosshairs) are set out on bringing down all people responsible for slaying the Autobots.
Cade learns that Kinetic Solutions Incorporated (KSI), headed by Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) is building his own Transformers. Cemetery Wind and KSI want to rid the world of transformers by using a transformer (Lockdown) in order to create transformers. Sounds stupid right.

Several issues that ruined this film were: Several of the humans get tossed around like a terrible Michael Bay film (woops) and do not die or do not even suffer any broken bones? How the hell can Bumblebee and Hound take on like 50 deceptions on their own? How the hell is a giant spaceship able to sneak up on people? The biggest flaws come from the Autobot leader himself in Mr. Optimus Prime. In this film Optimus is ready to kill the human responsible for the death of his comrades. This is all fine and all but this is totally out of character for Optimus Prime. Speaking of Optimus Prime, in the end he leaves earth via rockets. WTF? You were in several situations in thus film the rockets could have helped the situation and cut down the damn running time for this movie. The absolute biggest script issue is the handling of the damn Dinobots. The “legendary warriors” as they are called are only in the last 30 minutes of the movie and by the time they appear you simply do not care. The Dinobots do not say a word and they are pretty much useless except of course to sell toys. Grimlock you are a badass and you do not deserve this treatment and I suggest that you call your agent.

Grade: F

[divider]

RELATED: Transformers: Age of Extinction Video Review

[divider]

PERFORMANCES
The human characters had zero depth and there was scene that validated an adult dating a minor that was very odd. Mark Wahlberg takes over for Shia as the human lead and he did a decent job playing the role. The only other performance worth mentioning is Stanley Tucci performance as the KSI leader Joshua Joyce.

Grade: C-

[divider]

SCORE
Steve Jablonsky’s score is easily one of the better parts of the film. While it’s different than the first there, the music adds some nice touches to the action and blends in music from the Imagine Dragons, which was pretty good. It’s not Jablonsky’s best work, but it more than serves it’s purpose among the rest of the film that’s just….well you know.

Grade: B

[divider]

FINAL THOUGHTS
Michael Bay does do a few things great with the special effects and action scenes. If you only care about robots fighting each other and care about nothing else than this movie is for you. If you care about all phases of a film than you will regret watching this disaster of a film that is entirely too long. I will leave you with this: One supporter I know of this fan series says that to go into a Transformer movie expecting a sensible plot or character development is pointless. Furthermore, to criticize this film based on those facts is unjust. You cannot say this about this film and then hold different films to different standards because you are a fan. I am a huge comic book guy and I hold those views to a high standard, but I still judge the film like another film.

Overall Grade: F

Director: David Michôd
Writers: David Michôd, Joel Edgerton
Stars: Guy Pierce, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy

Synopsis: Ten years after a global economic collapse, a hardened loner pursues the men who stole his only possession, his car. Along the way, he captures one of the thieves’ brother, and the duo form an uneasy bond during the dangerous journey.

[/info]

DIRECTION
After the release of Animal Kingdom, David Michôd has proven himself to be a modern director to look out for, due to his gritty style and dark take on crime and violence. With The Rover, he fills the screen with that same raw grit, which really adds weight and power to the film’s dystopian setting. The film looks great, it’s wonderfully paced, and Michôd presents some really tense but fascinating character interactions. This may sound like high praise, but unfortunately the film’s first half focuses too hard on the madness and terror of this dystopia, that I personally found no connection between this setting and character dilemmas, and ultimately nothing to drive home the film’s themes and poignancy; for a while I didn’t feel like the film’s post-apocalyptic setting served much of the purpose to the story. In fact, we probably could’ve had even more scenes of listening to these characters just talk to each other, there just wasn’t enough of that. None of this is the case with the film’s truly emotional climax, where we are finally presented with the heart of this story, it’s just too bad it was quite a frustrating struggle to get to this point.

Grade: B-

[divider]

SCRIPT
Much of the film’s lack of focus in the first half can also be attributed to the script, but overall Michôd’s writing is particularly strong. While the story itself is fine, mirroring similar conflicts such as Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and even Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger”. But it’s the film’s dialogue that is the script’s strong point. Character interactions feel natural and authentic, and are beautifully bleak in contributing to the film’s setting. Quite honestly, the film’s dialogue between characters is the best part of the entire movie, and the only fault, as I already stated in the Direction, is that there just isn’t enough of that. More of these exchanges would’ve helped drive home the film’s themes and connection with the dystopian setting, and would have essentially helped create a nice build to the film’s wonderful climax, a build that felt sorely lacking. But the strong points here truly are incredible.

Grade: B

[divider]

RELATED: The Signal Movie Review

[divider]

PERFORMANCES
Guy Pierce is a natural in these kind of roles, and his performance here is absolutely mesmerizing. His mystery and personal struggle is quite fascinating, and he certainly keeps the audience engaged; it reminded me a lot of his performance he gave in a film called The Proposition, a vastly underrated film. This is both a praise and a critique, because for how good it is, it also distracts from the other performances in this film, and for me the rest of the cast are merely functional in their roles. Robert Pattinson has been getting a lot of acclaim for his performance here, and while it is certainly good I wasn’t quite blown away, nor does he compete too well with the weight of Guy Pierce’s performance. Pattinson portrays Rey as a very simple-minded fellow, almost channeling what Leonardo DiCaprio gave us in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. It’s a good performance but one I had a difficult time wrapping my head around, and I still think Pattinson has trouble acting in different dialects and accents. But ultimately, it’s Guy Pierce at the forefront, and his fascinating struggle only feels limited with the character of Rey to tag along with; it feels like it takes away from Pierce’s internal struggle.

Grade: B

[divider]

SCORE
Antony Partos scores this film and creates a frightening ambiance for this film’s post-apocalyptic setting, and this really works during the quieter moments in the film’s second half. He also gives us some loud and dissonant cues, particularly in the film’s first half, used to drive the tension of the film; in many ways it reminded me of Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood. But it is INCREDIBLY overused in the film’s first half, to the point that it was headache inducing. As a result, a lot of the tension was just ruined for me, and I would’ve preferred more quiet and diagetic sounds to drive the tension and create a natural sense of horror. Instead, a lot of the music early in the film is just downright annoying, but does improve in the quieter climactic scenes.

Grade: C+

[divider]

FINAL THOUGHTS
The Rover has an intriguing story and an incredible central performance, and even has some wonderful direction with a real sense of grit. But the film’s lack of focus between character conflict and setting fails to create a building connection with the heart of the film, and it’s a head-scratching struggle waiting for that delivery in the film’s final minutes, a climax that truly does work.

Overall Grade: B-

Director: James Gray
Writers: James Gray, Ric Menello
Stars: Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner

Synopsis: In 1921, unfortunate circumstances drive newly arrived immigrant Ewa into a life of prostitution, and a complex, volatile relationship with two men – her conflicted pimp and his romantic cousin.

[/info]

DIRECTION
James Gray’s The Immigrant is visually beautiful, creating what appears to be a pseudo 1921 aesthetic full of dark colors that parallels the story presented here. Every shot is detailed and the camera work moves fluidly while being creative with his lighting choices. The last frame of the film is a fantastic money shot and it works extremely well…visually. However, the narrative that builds up to that moment isn’t quite as earned and reduces the potency it could’ve had. The premise of the story is a solid one but it feels as if Gray wasn’t sure what to do with the characters that was written for this film. He took the “Michael Bay” approach to this film; Focus on the visuals and let the characters and story come second. All in all though, not a terrible effort.

Grade: B-

[divider]

SCRIPT
The story begins with Ewa Cybulska (Marion Cotillard) and her sister Magda (Angela Sarafyan) in 1921, who have migrated to the United States from Poland looking for a new life. However, as they arrive at Customs, doctors hold Magda in quarantine, thinking she may have tuberculosis or some lung disease and have ordered Ewa to return to Poland. However, before she’s able to leave, she runs into Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix), who eventually pays off Customs police, so that she could stay with him in the U.S. illegally. Ewa eventually starts to work at the theater Bruno manages dancing provocatively and trying to earn a living. The theater is also a front for an illegal prostitution house, which Bruno forces Ewa into despite her resistance. You also see that it’s Bruno’s first choice either and inner conflict builds as he falls in love with Ewa. Ewa eventually meets Orlando the Magician (Jeremy Renner), who also falls in love with her and wants to give her a better life. As you can imagine, a three-way drama unfolds, which is intensified when you find out that Bruno and Orlando are cousins. The script’s premise is fine but the character’s lack the kind of emotional pull that this film really needed. The focus is lost toward the third act and some scenes even come off a bit goofy at times. The inner conflict of Ewa and Bruno is interesting but needed some further exploration.

Grade: C+

[divider]

RELATED: The Signal Movie Review

[divider]

PERFORMANCES
Marion Cotillard is incredible and nailed her character of Ewa. She’s scared and nervous, yet strong and motivated at the same time. Cotillard was able to navigate through her different languages fantastically and you believed every moment she was on screen. Phoenix was also great in his role, although it didn’t feel 1920’s but rather a great actor who’s fantastic at showcasing inner struggles and conflicts they may be going through. If there’s any criticism to Phoenix’s performance, it’s that it lacked the period piece aspect. Jeremy Renner on the other hand, is full out miscast for this role. He not only lacked the 1920’s aesthetic, but he wasn’t believable as this magician either. Renner is a great Hawkeye, and not to typecast him, but this isn’t him. The rest of the supporting cast is fine and work for the film as need be.

Grade: A-

[divider]

SCORE
Chris Spelman was nodded to score for The Immigrant, which is actually beautiful at times and adds some nice layers to the melodrama, which is a significant piece of the film. The score is as subtle as you’d want it to be here but absolutely serves the film okay enough.

Grade: B

[divider]

FINAL THOUGHTS
The Immigrant features some great performances from Cottilard and Phoenix and the visuals are gorgeous, but it’s not enough to elevate this film to any significance due to a muddled and overly melodramatic script. And the miscasting of Renner is pretty distracting as well. Again, the inner conflict of these characters was compelling on the surface but needed further exploration for the conviction to really hit hard. The film just didn’t quite have the emotional potency it was going for.

Overall Grade: C+