SHARKNADO 4: THE 4TH AWAKENS

(2016) Dumb as they are, once you've watched three you can hardly keep yourself from checking out number four, in what might arguably be SyFy Channel's most popular and successful homemade film franchise.  Each Sharknado film further plummets the depths of lunacy from previous efforts, and this one (opening with a Star Wars-like screen crawl of text) not only takes but beats the crap out of the cake: starting out in Las Vegas five years after the rancid part three ends, a tech wiz has found a way to stop all sharknados (a shark-infested tornado, for those of you who've not been paying attention) from occurring, when suddenly a dust storm blows up, hitting a hotel devoted to the sharknado phenomenon that, naturally, has real sharks on display in it, which are sucked up by the dust storm resulting in a ... dustnado!  Swear to God, it gets even worse even beyond this, and the standard multiple cameos from grade-Z celebrities, as our hero Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering), barely rescuing his son and new daughter-in-law from the dustnado, heads back to his farm in Kansas to make sure his young son and mother-in-law are safe ... as we viewers are treated to oilnados, firenados, hailnados, and any other kind of "nado" the film decides to throw at us, depending on what each funnel hits (my favorite: the cownado!).  Don't worry, sharks are in every one of them, but after awhile are also kind of forgotten in the name of meteorology, as the tech wiz dude (Tommy Davidson) tried to step up his game to stop the weather phenomenons again.  I have to say, this was certainly better than part three, mainly because the franchise seems to have found its own eye-winking, self-deprecating sense of humor again, which seemed missing a bit in the previous two installments - but make no mistake, like the others in the series this one is cheap and cheesy and stupid, mindless weekend afternoon fun; the kind of film a bunch of teenaged friends would get together for at a drive-in, back in the day, just to talk and laugh and only half-watch together for the experience.  And yes, God help us all, there WILL be a part five.  (rated TV-14)  2/10 stars

 

MOANA

(2016) Ancient Polynesian mythology gets the Disney treatment when the daughter of a chieftain of a prosperous island, Moana (Auli'i Cravalho), learns of the story of the demigod Maui, who many years ago stole the heart of the goddess Te Whiti, she who created all the islands.  Most of the residents of Moana's island - including Moana's father - sees the myth as only a fable, but when the fishing dries up on the island and the curse seems to be coming true, Moana discovers her people used to be ancient navigators of the seas when the sea itself calls to her as The One - the person chosen to find Maui, restore Te Whiti's heart, and bring the islands back to life.  All the Disney signatures are here - beautiful animation, funny and touching moments, a story of faith (particularly in yourself) in the face of adversity, and even a funny animal sidekick (HeiHei - pronounced "Hay-Hay" - the funniest chicken EVER).  But along with the story, what sets Moana apart is the glorious lack of a love interest; Moana, though unsure of herself initially, is a Disney Princess for the 21st century as she learns to become as strong and independent as they come - a future queen perfectly content to rule in the future without the need of a king by her side.  The musical numbers/soundtrack (by the one and only Lin-Manuel Miranda), while to me not quite as strong as past Disney contenders (with one huge exception: Jemaine Clement singing "Shiny" is worth the price of admission alone), keeps things lively and fun - as does the relationship, when they finally do meet, between Moana and Maui (Dwayne Johnson), a major highlight of a film that - after one cool epic "final battle" - ends perfectly.  One of those films I liked when it started, but had fallen in love with by its end.  (rated PG) 9/10 stars

A MAN CALLED OVE

(2015) Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is a grumpy, retired widower living in a small community over which he used to preside.  But vowing to keep order, even after being overthrown as president of the condominium association, Ove keeps things rigid in his little world, every day checking that signs are posted, doors are locked, and rules are being followed.  That and visiting his wife's nearby grave are all that's going on in his life, driving Ove to finally decide he wants to be with his beautiful Sonja forever ... even when his suicide attempt gets interrupted by new neighbors arriving (and already violating association rules) across the street, a young couple with kids who insert themselves into Ove's life and unknowingly thwart his every plan to do away with himself.  Interspersed with flashbacks of Ove and Sonja's story, and how Ove came to be who he is now, A Man Called Ove is funny, touching, sweet without the saccharine, and very romantic and real.  We've all known an Ove (or have maybe even become one), but though you may think you know how this film is going to go, it still has its charms - in its quiet, gentle way - to surprise you.  A funny, pure-hearted love story that celebrates not just romantic love but loving life itself.  (rated PG-13) 8.5/10 stars

HELL OR HIGH WATER

(2016) Hell or High Water opens with a bang, when the Howard brothers - Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) - don masks and bust into a Texas Midlands bank as it's opening, robbing the place at gunpoint.  You can tell bank robbery is a new "profession" for Toby, but viewers quickly learn that Tanner is a recent parolee with a nasty streak that can be set off on a dime (a character Ben Foster has gotten very adept at playing, period), and as the robberies continue the brothers attract the attention of Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and his deputy Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham) who quickly close in on the brothers, even as the real motivation for the robberies is slowly revealed and you start rooting for the boys even more than the rangers going after them!  At least, that is, until things take a dark turn.  Bridges, as the grizzled old ranger about to retire, leads a stellar cast, his scenes with the equally brilliant Gil Birmingham (a terrific, totally underrated actor in his own right) some of the best scenes of the film.  I'd read very little about this one before seeing it, wanting to see what the Oscar noms were all about even though I'm normally not big on westerns, but Hell or High Water is a tremendous example of how to tell a simple, linear story on film while giving it the maximum impact possible on viewers.  Really, really well-done.  (rated R) 7.5/10 stars

HIDDEN FIGURES

(2016) Hidden Figures, one of my favorite films of the year already, tells the real-life story of three female African-American mathematicians who, in the early days of NASA and the space program, were instrumental in helping to send the first man into space.  Katherine (Taraji P. Henson, who was absolutely ROBBED of an Oscar nomination), a math genius on a savant level from childhood, ends up the one working most closely on the front lines of literally getting the capsule up - while her best friends Dorothy (Oscar-nominated Octavia Spencer) and Mary (Janelle Monae) contribute equally in the areas of bringing NASA into the computer age and breaking new ground in engineering, respectively.  Further hitting home just how much these women did is in the context of their personal lives and the segregation that still existed in this country in the early 1960's; Mary has to push twice as hard to attend classes at a whites-only night school so she can qualify for an engineering position no Black woman has ever held in the first place, and Dorothy is refused a promotion to supervisor, after years of doing the work, because there is no such thing as a Black supervisor, while Katherine - having moved out of the "colored" building to work with the big boys - still has to run more than half a mile back to that building every time she needs to use the "coloreds-only" bathroom, after drinking coffee from the coloreds-only coffeepot.  In these days of a changing tide in the government, during which America seems to be going back to a country of persecution and hate under the rule of a bigoted puppet, these scenes of oppression serve as stark reminders of how backward we were as a nation just a matter of decades ago.  That said, Hidden Figures still manages to be filled with a heart and humor that will leave you smiling - not only serving as a flag-waving period piece of one of this country's greatest achievements ... but also a clear reminder that what we do best as people, we do best when we're all working together.  (rated PG)  9/10 stars

MOONLIGHT

(2016) There is much to love about Moonlight.  The performances are genuine, film beautifully shot and with definite moments of raw emotion in its simplicity.  Chronicling the story of a young African-American man named Chiron growing up with only his drug-addicted mother on the rough streets of Miami, the film is divided into three parts: "Little" covers his childhood as a sensitive, small boy with few friends, often picked on and called "faggot" etc. until he finds kindness and a part-time father figure in the form of Juan (Mahershala Ali, whose Oscar nomination is WELL-deserved), a drug dealer who along with his wife treats the young Chiron better than the boy's own mother.  Section two, "Chiron" is the strongest of the three-story structure, and covers Chrion's teen years.  The bullying hasn't stopped, Chiron's mom is a full-on addict now, and only two things seem to anchor the young man's sanity: Juan, and Chiron's best friend Kevin (a terrific Jharrel Jerome, who's already been cast in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes and has a big future coming).  Ashton Sanders as Chiron turns in a beautiful, understated performance that will have you feeling every ounce of the kid's pain.  It is in this segment when Chiron's more-than-friends feelings for Kevin are briefly realized, yet followed by a betrayal that will affect Chiron forever ... leading to part three, "Black" - the name Chiron goes by now.  We see his life as a man, progressing and yet at a standstill (to say more would reveal spoilers), and to me this is where the film falls apart.  There is some minor resolution, but a chance phone call that seemingly will lead to a final answer to Black's/Chiron's biggest life question ends abruptly, leaving the audience to determine what happens after the credits - which is fine, except for me it only hit home that, like 2014's Boyhood, Moonlight (though the better of the two) is a film without plot or ending, further disappointing (to me) in what feels like a total "wimping out" on anything resembling what people call its "gay" storyline.  (rated R)  7.5/10 stars

DAVID'S BIRTHDAY

(2009) It's been a long, long time since a film ticked me off so much I wanted to throw something at the screen - but if even a meat cleaver had been the only thing handy by the time I reached the ending of David's Birthday, I'd be without anything to watch movies on now.  The premise of this Italian film held a ton of promise for drama: two very busy married couples - Diego (Alessandro Gassman) and Shary (Michela Cescon), along with best friends Matteo (Massimo Poggio) and Francesca (Maria de Medeiros), have a rare opportunity to spend the summer together when Shary rents a gorgeous home by the sea on the Italian Riviera.  Though Shary and Diego's marriage seems strained - he lives in Italy because of work, while she lives in New York City for the same reason - Francesca and Matteo couldn't be happier, with a little girl they've sent to stay with other family.  The foursome know each other well and have a great time, Shary and Diego in particular looking forward to the arrival of their son David (Thyago Alves), who's coming to visit from New York toward the end of the summer for his eighteenth birthday, his first time back in Italy in five years.  It's when their son arrives that things start to unravel, however, as David has grown into a genuine beauty of a man ... and Matteo, to his own surprise, finds himself growing increasingly - and sexually - attracted to the boy; the son of his best friends.  SO many ways this could have played out, but instead things are actually drawn out interminably, Massimo Poggio's performance as Matteo by far the standout of the film; you can almost feel him fighting the attraction, not understanding it and seemingly being pulled against his will to be near the model-like youth.  Then the film falls apart, with a horrific, insultingly stupid and melodramatic ending that seems to bear the message that if you have sex with another guy, only tragedy is in store.  The ending is so overwrought, so ... Shakespearian (but as if acted by a really bad community theater troupe), that if the anti-gay message inherent in it hadn't been so in-your-face, it would have been laughable.  As it is, the ending is only ludicrous and depressing, Massimo Poggio the film's only saving grace after all.  (not rated) 3/10

HACKSAW RIDGE

(2016) World War II is raging over in Europe, and Virginia native Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), newly-married and with a brother already enlisted, feels in his heart nothing more than the need to serve.  Against the wishes of his father Tom (Hugo Weaving), a WWI vet still suffering the trauma of his own service, as well as losing all his friends to the fight, Desmond joins the army - getting as far as the first days of basic training before his fellow soldiers and Sgt. Howell (Vince Vaughn) discover Doss's religious beliefs forbid him from so much as laying his hands on a gun.  Based on the real-life Battle of Okinawa hero, Doss was 100% on-board with serving his country as a medic - someone who saved lives, though would never knowingly take one - but was initially physically and verbally threatened for his beliefs, branded a conscientious objector, yet never compromised his beliefs and became the first recipient of the Medal of Honor, in American history, to be given the honor without firing a single shot.  Andrew Garfield's good-old-boy performance as Dobbs strikes 100% true, the first half of the film setting up who he was, his life and family, and finding love with a beautiful nurse (Teresa Palmer), before the second half depicts both the horrors of war as well as Dobbs's ceaseless bravery.  While I don't care for war movies and especially the way Hollywood tends to glamorize them, for me Hacksaw Ridge never held a false note, the time flying by as the surprising story of everything this one man did to serve his country came shining through on the screen.  Beautifully, perfectly directed by Mel Gibson, who along with Garfield easily turns in Oscar-worthy work.  (rated R) 10/10 stars

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS

(2016) A difficult film to review without revealing any spoilers, The Girl with All the Gifts - based on the bestselling novel by Mike Carey, who also wrote the film's screenplay - is set in the now all-too-familiar "dystopian future" where humanity has been pretty darn thinned out due to a fungal virus that turns people into sleepwalking, zombie-like "hungries".  A young girl named Melanie (newcomer Sennia Nanua) may hold the answer to a cure, but before Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) can act on it, the military installation they are holed up in is overrun by hungries and they are forced to flee along with Melanie's favorite teacher (Gemma Arterton) and a few remaining military personnel, including the cynical Sgt. Parks (Paddy Considine), who recognizes that Melanie poses just as much a potential threat as potential cure, and would just as soon do away with her.  The film actually takes what feels like a fairly fresh approach to the "zombie" film genre, but a bit more than halfway through it started committing one of the most heinous crimes any horror/suspense film can commit - characters suddenly doing dumb, stupid things in the movie that a real human being with a half-ounce of brains would never have done in real life - and as those kept coming and then the massive downer of an ending played out, I felt a bit played out as well.  More curious than ever to read the novel now, though, to see how it differs.  (rated R) 6/10 stars

THE HANDMAIDEN

(2016) It's pretty universally acknowledged that some of the best films made today are coming out of South Korea.  The Handmaiden, receiving rave reviews across the board from critics and audiences alike, is a prime example: in 1930's Korea, during the Japanese occupation, an heiress of Japanese descent living with her (possibly sexually) abusive uncle, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) - who has never stepped from her extravagant home in the country since arriving as a child - hires a new handmaiden, Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ri), a poor girl whose never known such opulence, and the two women become close quickly.  But things aren't what they seem - nor, indeed, are people (boy, is THAT an understatement), and as the twists and turns and true motivations become apparent, amidst it all something happens that no one involved could have foreseen: the lady and her handmaiden falling in love.  Highly erotic and acted to perfection, The Handmaiden is an intricate puzzle that - just when you think you know where it's going - goes upside your head with another twist, sending the film in a wholly different direction.  Directed by the one and only Park Chan-wook (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Thirst), The Handmaiden is one of those few "instant classics" that actually deserves the title.  (not rated) 8/10 stars

LONG WAY NORTH

(2015) Sasha would make an awesome Disney princess.  Set in 1882 Russia, Long Way North is about the young aristocratic teen whose family's reputation was sullied when her grandfather set out on an expedition in a great ship - the Davai - commissioned by the king to find the North Pole ... and never returned.  Sasha has counted her grandfather out, and after finding new information that suggests he may have traveled a different route than where the search party looked for him, to save her family and their reputation with the palace and community, when her father rebuffs her claims she sets out on a quest to find passage to the same are of the sea alone, to learn what really happened to the man and his great ship.  Simple animation and a story of bravery, love and loyalty all sounds corny, but this is a beautifully-constructed, heartfelt film that doesn't (to the film's credit) have the Disney gloss and marketability - though (again) Sasha has the independent spirit, courage and fire of the best of the Magic Kingdom's heroines (and would never wait for some prince to come and save or marry her, either).  Sweet film, lovingly told.  (rated PG) 8/10 stars