Midnight Special is just great

Posted on April 21, 2016 by reelentropy

With sparse marketing that was cryptic to the point of being confrontational, Midnight Special’s trump card is how instantly recognizable it is, from Alton’s piercing eye glow to the film’s uniquely relaxing piano theme. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

In Midnight Special, the cult surrounding supernatural child Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) frequently takes communion by looking into his glowing eyes. When asked, members can’t describe what they see, only that it feels peaceful and they want to see it again.

That’s more or less the impression the movie leaves you with.

At the film’s start, Alton has been abducted from his adoptive father, Calvin (Sam Shepard), who leads the cult around the boy, by his biological father, Roy (Michael Shannon) and Roy’s childhood friend, Lucas (Joel Edgerton). The cult formed around Alton because of his many powers, one of which includes compulsively picking up and decoding satellite signals, which the cult takes as his gospel. Followers of Alton’s fits have determined a specific date, four days from the movie’s start, to be significant. Naturally, they’ve assumed it’s the apocalypse. However, Roy and others have determined that a specific location in Florida is also significant, and believes Alton needs to be there on the day in question. Roy, Lucas and Alton travel from the West Texas ranch to Florida pursued by the FBI, which has started investigating the cult at the same time, and two of the cult’s hit men.

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Beautiful Jungle Book movie can’t handle its meaty themes

Posted on April 17, 2016 by reelentropy

Among its other themes, The Jungle Book as an interesting refrain of authority figures. Every animal the child Mowgli (Neel Sethi) meets represents a different kind of adult influence. There’s the wolf Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o), his loving mother figure; the panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), a disciplinarian father figure; the tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba), a fascist who upholds the law of the jungle through fear; the snake Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), a sexual predator; the bear Baloo (Bill Murray), an aloof hippie; and the orangutan King Louie (Christopher Walken), a mobster. Photos courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

The Jungle Book follows Mowgli, a man-cub raised by the ruling pack of the jungle. But when Shere Khan, a giant antagonist cat with a scarred left eye, discovers his presence, Mowgli is driven away. After a scene involving a stampede through a ravine in which his guardian father-figure cat is presumably killed, Mowgli escapes the jurisdiction, and his scar-faced pursuer returns to claim the throne for himself. Mowgli is adopted by a fat stoner animal, and they sing a catchy jingle about nihilism. Mufasa Bagheera returns, and Mowgli learns that Scar Shere Khan is wreaking havoc on his home. He returns for vengeance, and the whole place conspicuously catches fire. The scar-faced cat is eventually thrown into a pit of flames and Mowgli is cleared of all wrong-doing.

In short, things are going to be pretty awkward between this movie and the live-action Lion King revamp that’s inevitably coming down the pike.

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Hardcore Henry more video game than movie, damn good video game

Posted on April 16, 2016 by reelentropy

Photos courtesy STX Entertainment.

Most of the time when a movie is sold around a new or unestablished camera gimmick, the entire movie is formed around that gimmick. But Hardcore Henry is a little more, well, hardcore.

The movie puts viewers in the perspective of Henry (more than a dozen cameramen and stuntmen, including director Ilya Naishuller), a cybernetically reconstructed super soldier with a wiped memory. Henry awakens to Estelle (Hayley Bennett) putting the left side of his body together and telling him she’s his wife, but the scene is quickly interrupted by Akan (Danila Kozlovsky), a telekinetic warlord who funded Estelle’s work only so she could build him a cyborg army to rule the world. Henry escapes, but Estelle is captured. Aided and directed by the apparently immortal Jimmy (Sharlto Copely), Henry all but tears down the Russian backwater he finds himself in to rescue her.

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Melissa McCarthy is quickly becoming the next Adam Sandler

Posted on April 15, 2016 by reelentropy

In a movie full of sight gags, one of the worst wigs in cinematic history is apparently meant to be taken seriously. Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

Find a religious text, put your hand on it and read this out loud:

“Melissa McCarthy isn’t funny. She never was funny. Unless her films undergo dramatic changes, she never will be funny.

“I will never pay money to see one of her movies again.

“If I am exposed, by happenstance, to one of her movies, I will not laugh at the scenes centering around her bodily functions, nor will I laugh at the scenes that center on excessive profanity, nor will I laugh at the scenes in which she uses her sexuality as a grossout gag. None of these are actual jokes, and none of them are funny. I wouldn’t laugh at a person on the street doing any of these things, so I will not laugh when McCarthy does it.

“I remain open to laughing at her movies if they ever have a scene with actual humor, but I recognize that this is exceedingly unlikely.”

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Spoiler alert: He was dead the whole time

Posted on April 13, 2016 by reelentropy

The ironic part of evangelical filmmaking is they promote far less discussion about religion than regular movies with religious themes, of which there have been a bevy this year. Hail, Caesar!, The Witch, 10 Cloverfield Lane and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are all mainstream movies that require intense religious introspection, and that trend looks to continue with X-Men: Apocalypse in late May. Photos courtesy Pure Flix Entertainment.

One of the primary functions of movies, and art in general, is to preserve the culture from which they developed. Human philosophy has evolved rapidly over the years, and movies provide a clear record of ideologies that have fallen out of viability with seminal films like Birth of a Nation, Terminator 2 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. Following this great tradition of reflection on broken ideals is Pure Flix Entertainment’s biting satire God’s Not Dead 2: Electric Boogaloo. 

In the movie, persecution becomes prosecution when high school history teacher Grace Wesley (Melissa Joan Hart), who’s name was picked at random out of a hat, is sued by the aetheist parents of Brooke Thawley (Hayley Orrantia) for quoting scripture in class in answer to Thawley’s question. Thawley’s parents are being used by aetheist lawyer Pete Kane (Ray Wise) and his hair-based satanic powers. Wesley is represented by ACLU appointed lawyer Tom Endler (Jesse Metcalfe), even though he isn’t Christian. Inept heathen that he is, Kane makes a mistake in the jury-selection process, allowing a man of God, Reverend Dave (Pure Flix co-founder David A.R. White) onto the jury.

Despite clearly having the case in hand because of this, Endler and Wesley are ravaged by Kane’s suave character assassination, and are forced to shift tactics mid-trial and call several real-world apologists to the stand to forensically prove that Jesus of Nazareth existed, despite repeated arguments that this case is actually about faith.

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