Category Archives: movie review

There and back again: Netflix’s ARQ

0
Posted on by

There and back again: Netflix’s ARQ   a review      *Spoilers*

Netflix feature, ARQ cover image

Cover image for Netflix feature, ARQ from IMDB

ARQ, a 2017 Netflix sci fi feature, entertains, but like the three-hour time loop that drives the action, remembering details is a challenge. Written and directed by Tony Elliot (Orphan Black) ARC uses the time loop plot device, similar to Groundhog Day and Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow.The protagonist relives the same events, changing his behavior to create a different outcome. Like The Edge of Tomorrow alien conquest, a different outcome for Renton, ARQ’s protagonist, means living rather than dying.

Compared to ARQ, The Edge of Tomorrow is a Cadillac of a time loop film.

Cruise’s movie sports big name co-stars, elaborate CG nasty aliens and a save-the-world ending. Experiencing the same day thousands of times via a time loop, Cruise’s character begins as a self-serving asshole and ends up as a self-sacrificing, much wiser guy.

With its single dreary setting, dinky CG and flat characters, ARQ is a stripped down 1992 sedan.

ARQ’s time loop story is an economy ride but it gets you there. Rather than fighting aliens, it’s dystopia time!   There’s global famine, nasty air quality and a pitiless dictatorship. However, no teenagers show up to save the world.

ARQ keeps you invested due to its slick editing and a no frills but smart script.

 In a darkened bedroom, Renton (Robbie Amell—The Tomorrow People) wakes next to his lover, Hannah (Rachel Taylor—Jessica Jones). Seconds later, masked men burst in and tie them up. They want Renton’s “scrips” (money). These “Bloc” rebels are fighting “Torus,” a corporation that aims to rule the world. Renton, a scientist in hiding who had worked for Torus, suspects they’re not only after money; it’s Renton’s new invention, the ARQ.

In a world depleted of energy resources and food, the ARQ is a perpetual motion machine.

When someone mentions seeing apples in another room, it has the same affect as shouting, “squirrel” to a pack of golden retrievers. After their apple break, they return to interrogate Renton. When Hannah betrays Renton, revealing the hidden money, Sonny, the oldest of the group, shoots him dead.

Okay then. We’re back in the bedroom. Renton is waking up again.

He remembers dying. He’s not in heaven so what gives? Again, the rebels break in and it’s deja vu. The same scene plays out with different details but Renton dies again. When he wakes, Renton realizes that his perpetual motion machine has another feature: it loops time. So Renton keeps looping the loop, learning what not to do, trying to change what happens. But he’s not the only one who learns what’s going on and on. Hannah remembers. Renton wants to save Hannah but is determined to destroy the ARQ. Hannah will help Renton escape but only if he lets the Bloc have the ARQ. Like Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca, Hannah believes that she and Renton “don’t amount to a hill of beans” compared to saving the world from Torus.

When Sonny, a Torus spy, becomes aware of the ARQ loop, it’s game on.

As the scene kept repeating, the story reminded me of a game. With little backstory on any character and only the thinnest sense of a bond between Renton and Hannah, the pacing takes over. Each loop is a round as the players duck and weave, trying to move ahead in the same space. Character becomes superfluous as the game plays out.

As Renton, the cutting-edge scientist, I feel Robbie Amell is miscast.

He’s too young. An older, more experienced actor might have given Renton more shading. Rachel Taylor and the rest of the cast are fine, but the game aspect of this script results in the actors becoming pawns. The only actor I found interesting was Shaun Benson (Channel Zero) who plays Sonny, the bad guy. Whenever Sonny appears, rather than a game, the character aspect dominates. My guess is that Benson is a more experienced actor than the rest of the cast.

Overall, I found ARQ diverting but forgettable.

If you love sci fi and you’re home, looking for something to watch, you might want to check ARQ out, if only to see the variables of each loop. Who wouldn’t like to redo parts of their own life? When it comes stories driven by time travel and time looping, play it Sam; play it again and again.

Thomas’s Guide to the Hereafter: Netflix’s The Discovery, a review

2
Posted on by

Thomas’s Guide to the Hereafter: Netflix’s The Discovery, a review      ***spoilers***

Cover image for Netflix feature, The Discovery

Netflix’s sci fi feature, The Discovery- IMDB -cover image

The Discovery is a 2017 Netflix production written by Charlie McDowell and Justin Lader (The One I Love) and directed by Charlie McDowell. Starring Robert Redford, Rooney Mara and Jason Segal, The Discovery considers what might happen if people knew for sure there was life after death. I’ve enjoyed many of Netflix’s productions. Unfortunately, The Discovery was not one of them.

Is there life after death? The Discovery leaves you with more questions than answers.

Robert Redford plays Thomas, a scientist who proves that there is life after death. What is the proof? We’re never given specifics, but the world reacts with a tsunami of suicides. On the hour, the number of people who have offed themselves in hopes of a better reality is updated. People have suicide parties.

The Discovery opens with a TV interview in progress.

The journalist (Mary Steenburgen—director McDowell’s actress mother) asks Thomas if he regrets making his research public. He doesn’t. A crewmember thanks Thomas and then shoots himself in the head.

As a species, knowledge of the inevitability of death sets us apart.

Fearing the unknown, we all want to know what comes after. The scene changes to a ferry. Will (Jason Segal), a neurologist and one of Thomas’s sons, is on his way to see Dad. The ferry is empty except for Isla (Rooney Mara) an enigmatic young woman who runs hot and cold in her encounter with Will. Although Will is opposed to his father’s research, he confides that as a child, he had a brief after death experience. The ferry lands and they part company. Then Will has a premonition. He races to the beach as Isla tries to drown herself and despite her protests, he rescues her.

Toby (Jesse Plemons, one of the best young character actors working—Black Mass, Fargo season 2) is Will’s brother.

As they drive to Dad’s new residence, Toby tells him to be prepared for Dad’s project. Dad means to prove that there is life after death.

I wish I wanted to know more about The Discovery.

There’s an emotional distance. The scenes are dreamlike and like many dreams, emotionally flat. Thomas is determined to make The Discovery. But despite his obsession, his sons see Thomas as a cold fish. Like his sons, we, the audience, have no idea what drives him. Also, I found the low-key dialogue, almost whispered at times, annoying. Does the director want to keep us at a distance. If so, why?

Thomas owns a building that was once a private school. People wearing orange jumpsuits roam the grounds.

Are they members of a cult? No, we’re told. It sure looks like one. These people are failed suicides, Thomas claims. He gives them purpose. Soon, Isla wanders in and joins the group.Besides job assignments, there’s a meeting every night and oh yes, there are experiments. Thomas wants a better look at what’s on the other side of death. He’s invented a cap that has a zillion wires attached to it. The wires connect to antiquated video equipment. The idea is to briefly kill someone and then revive him.

Maybe the brain camera will record some netherworld home movies.

After another failure, involving an honest to goodness fresh corpse, Thomas is ready to give up. Will, who hates the experiment, accidently discovers that some footage did, in fact record on the monitor. The monitor’s jumpy images made me want to find some rabbit ears (ask your parents if you don’t know what rabbit ears are) and thump the side of the monitor.

Like every soap opera character in TV history, Will decides not to reveal his discovery, especially not to Dad.

Studying the recording’s clues, he decides to find out what it means. Lots of detective work yields little until Isla joins him. Then they fall in love. She tells him more about her life, including how her son died.

As the story meandered to an end, it seemed this film, like Thomas’s wired cap, was devoid of any emotion.

An intellectual experiment, its only purpose was to yield data for analytic discussion. Jason does come up with an answer for the why of the afterlife, but it made me shrug (hint—watch Groundhog Day).

Another movie that explores the existence and purpose of an afterlife is 1990’s Flatliners, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts.

Flatliners’ plot centers on medical interns whose experiments resemble Thomas’s. Each intern dies and is brought back by the others. The results are similar to Thomas’s, however, Flatliners kept you on the edge of your seat. It had interesting characters, a dynamic conflict and sharp editing. A remake of Flatliners is scheduled for a September 2017 release.

Will there be a remake of The Discovery?

If there is, just shoot me, but make sure you bring the rabbit ears.

Let Us Prey: The God Squad

0
Posted on by

Let Us Prey:   The God Squad      A Review    ***Spoilers***

Cover Image from Let Us Prey

Let Us Prey cover image from IMDB

Let Us Prey is a UK production and a 2014 film. Brian O’Malley (first feature film) directed Let Us Prey from a script by  Fiona Watson and David Cairns (first feature). Starring Liam Cunningham (Titanic, Game of Thrones) as Six, Let Us Prey, is a blood-drenched story about the wages of sin.

As I watched Let Us Prey, I remembered Frailty

Let us Prey is similar to Frailty, a 2001 American movie starring Bill Paxton (and oh how he is missed) and Matthew McConaughey. And like Let Us Prey, Frailty is based on a “list.” In Frailty, Paxton played Meiks, a single father with two sons. Meiks has a list of names, given to him, he claims, by God. The people on the list are demons, he assures his boys. He enlists his sons  to help him. As Paxton’s Meiks kidnaps and kills, he crosses names off his list. One of his sons suffers doubts, as his father kills seemingly innocent people. Later, we discover that father knows best.

In Let Us Prey, each “victim” is a murderer. 

In Let Us Prey,” “Six” (Liam Cunningham), like Meiks, has a battered notebook. The notebook contains a list, names of the guilty.  Six will exact payment from those who murder and are cruel in the name of justice, self-hate and cowardice.

Let Us Prey begins with the rolling waves of an angry sea. 

Soon, we’re on a deserted highway leading to a small Scottish town where a woman wakes from a nightmare. After rising, she puts on a police uniform. Rachael Heggie (Pollyanna McIntosh—The Walking Dead) is the newest member of the town’s police force, which includes Sergeant Macready and officers Jennifer Mundie and Jack Warnock. 

It’s night as Officer Heggie walks to work.

As she walks on the empty streets, she sees a man standing in the middle of the road. Suddenly, a car suddenly appears and hits the man. The unrepentant driver, a young punk named Caesar, stops. But, there’s no trace of the victim. Where did he go? He must be badly injured. With the victim nowhere in sight, Heggie cuffs Caesar.

When Heggie delivers him to Sergeant Macready, Macready greets Caesar with a punch to his insolent gut.

Heggie radios Mundie and Warnock who are busy having sex in the squad car. She tells them to find the victim. When they don’t find him, they report back to the station where Caesar waits in a cell across from Mulvey, a schoolteacher arrested for beating his wife.

Unlike Frailty, there is no question of innocence in Six’s baleful stare.

Then the “victim” walks into the station. His name is Six, he tells them, and there are seven names in his book of to-dos for tonight. From his fingerprints, Macready and Heggie discover that Six is an old man, much older than he appears, and his records say that Six died years ago.  The officers call in Dr. Hume to examine the victim. As the doctor takes a look at him, Six murmurs something. Hume gasps, saying, “You know!!” Without warning, the doctor attacks Six. This results in Hume’s joining the teacher and the punk in the pokey.

The eerie tone of Let Us Prey, with its isolated streets and empty shops, reminded me of The Twilight Zone.

As the evening progresses, with the flick of a match, the sins of each character are revealed. Six calls each sinner to account. The guilty panic and turn on each other until only a crazed Macready and Heggie are left.  We learn that as a little girl, Heggie was the victim of a child predator. Unlike The Twilight Zone, the violence is graphic and bloody,  reflecting Six’s humorless character, whose disagreement with someone in power he tells them, landed him this gig.

His Old Testament stare is enough to make you think twice about leaving the cap off the toothpaste.

Despite the violence, Heggie has kept to the moral high ground. So what’s her sin?  “You’ve evolved,” Six explains after dispatching Macready to Hell. Because the others are new to Hell, he confides, and in for a rough ride. When it comes to Hell, Heggie is a frequent flyer and eligible for an upgrade.

Six’s explanation was confusing; I thought we were in Old Testament territory, not Buddhist reincarnation land.

This highly stylized film practices what Six seeks to punish—gratuitous violence. “I’m lonely,” Six tells Heggie; would she like to be his companion? He entices her with promises of raining hellfire on the worst of humanity.

The thought of being on the God Squad, playing Hutch to Six’s Starsky makes Heggie smile.

They kiss, and after all that blood and all those body parts, the kiss seemed a little out of place. Even so, I can think of worse things than an eternity with Liam Cunningham; however, if I were Heggie, I’d remember to always put the cap back on the toothpaste.

LORD of ILLUSIONS

1
Posted on by

LORD of ILLUSIONS: Lordy what a mess! But in a good way,  a review with ***spoilers***

Cover image for Lord of Illusions

Lord of Illusions Cover Image–IMDB

Directed and written by Clive Barker, Lord of Illusions begins as many horror films do with the camera showing us all the creepy things that we know spell “time to go someplace else.” We’re in the desert and looking at an abandoned one story building. There’s an array of small animal bones, skulls, old broken dolls, dead snakes, etc.

A group of people drives up and approaches the building commando-style.

Inside, there’s a party going on and it’s obvious these gun-toters aren’t there to bring the dip. As these fun-interruptus types barge in, we see someone sitting on the steps. The androgynous figure is a character named “Butterfield” (Trevor Edmond). who is the biggest, baddest fan of “Nix.” Nix (Daniel von Bargen) is a mellow-voiced sorcerer who plans to sacrifice a young girl. The girl cowers in the corner while a large, nasty baboon bares its teeth and tries to bite her.

I think the point of the party and the sacrifice is to kill the world and hang around after and gloat. But, I’m not sure.

All the party goers are having a great time. They’re shaving their heads and looking at each other like good sex is going to happen soon. The head of the commandos is a guy named Swann (Kevin O’Connor). Things get crazy. Nix ends up dead and buried with an iron mask nailed to his head. The mask will keep the Lord of Illusions dead. In the meantime, Butterfield who survives the fracas, is getting really mad.

So we jump fifteen years. Swann is a world famous magician.

A detective (who knows the “dark-side” we’re told via a flashback and a newspaper headline) named Harry D’Amour (Scott Bakula) is on a case. When Harry stumbles on a murder-in-progress, it’s a revenge killing. Someone is stalking the people who broke up the party and nailed Nix, the Lord of Illusions. Of course Butterfield (now played by Barry Del Sherman) is involved and of course Harry decides to investigate. This takes him to Swann’s Beverly Hills mansion and Mrs. Swann (in name only we’re told), Famke Janssen.

So let’s skip ahead, shall we? Swann fakes his death.

Though Swann fools Butterfield, Butterfield still manages to dig up Nix and re-book the party with all the same folks invited. Of course, they’ll bring their scissors and razors. What fun. At the party, Swann ends up in a stand-off with Nix, who is disappointed because he had counted on Swann to help him kill the world. Afterwards, the Lord of Illusions assumed he and Swann could just hang out together. Poor Butterfield is so unappreciated. Harry shows up and there’s another stand-off. After the Lord of Illusions loses, predictably, the only people left are the best looking–Scott Bakula and Famke. The world is saved. My guess is both Famke and Scott considered firing their agents after this.

I kept watching despite the mess and confusion.

There were dangling plot lines like the client who paid Harry to investigate the unfaithful husband and the cool woman cop. Also I wondered why the Magic Castle magician  helped Harry find some perfectly irrelevant info. What about Lord of Illusions did I find compelling?

I think it was Butterfield and the party-goers.

They were so passionate, so into whatever Nix was selling, it was seductive. The movie came alive during the party scenes and whenever Butterfield showed up. Otherwise I felt as if I was watching some good actors (Bakula, Janssen, O’Conner,etc.) looking like they would rather be having a root canal. All in all, I’d opt for the Lord of Illusions rather than the root canal, but as far as that party goes, I’m not shaving my head for no one.