Late-summer catch-up: ‘Detroit’

Posted on August 23, 2017 by reelentropy

Image courtesy Annapurna Pictures.

This article contains coarse language and distressing content. 

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6/10 Both delving into the past and ripped from the headlines, Detroit explores America’s explosive racial divide. But like so much mass media that addresses these issues, it shies away at some troubling moments.

The film dramatizes the Algiers Motel incident during Motor City’s 1967 race riot, in which 10 black men and two white women were found together in the hotel and severely beaten and humiliated by police, three of them killed. While guarding the Great Lakes Mutual Life Insurance building from looters, police officers and national guardsmen said they heard shooting coming from the hotel annex building one block to the south. Storming the building, they found the guests and demanded to know who was shooting at them.

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Late-summer catch up — ‘A Ghost Story’

Posted on August 22, 2017 by reelentropy

A Ghost Story manages to make its central costume thick and romantic and not silly. Image courtesy A24.

5/10 A Ghost Story is 92 minutes long, and about 20 of those minutes are spent on one shot of Rooney Mara stress-eat pie.

M (Mara) and her husband, C (Casey Affleck), are preparing to move out of their suburban home into the city when C is killed in a car accident just outside their driveway. After his cadaver is confirmed, C rises up and begins to stalk the morgue covered in his death shroud. Knowing his wife likes to leave notes in places she’s lived, the ghost returns home to watch her grieve, then recover her written message to their home.

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‘Hitman’s Bodyguard’ sloppy but fun

Posted on August 18, 2017 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Lionsgate Films.

7/10 The Hitman’s Bodyguard isn’t much of a film, but it’s a riot of a movie.

As vicious Belarusian dictator Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman) stands trial in the World Court for countless atrocities, prosecutors can’t get witnesses to the stand alive. Interpol’s last hope is Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), a notorious hitman who once turned Dukhovich down and has hard evidence linking him to a war crime. After the prison transport is betrayed from the inside, the only hope for international justice is that private protection specialist Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) can get Kincaid to The Hague before the case is thrown out.

The only problem? Bryce and Kincaid hate each other.

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Stop what you’re doing and go see ‘Wind River’

Posted on August 14, 2017 by reelentropy

Images courtesy The Weinstein Company.

9/10 Wind River is an intense, smoldering thriller that manages to be as harsh as the endless Wyoming winter and delightfully easy to watch all at the same time.

On the Wind River Indian Reservation where bodies freeze solid and evidence can be eaten by wolves or buried in snow overnight, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) discovers the body of Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Chow) beaten, raped and left to die in the cold. He alerts local police chief Ben (Graham Greene), who calls in woefully unprepared FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen). They search for Hanson’s attacker, with Banner enlisting Lambert for his tracking abilities and knowledge of the area. For Lambert, who lost his teenage daughter under similar circumstances three years prior, the case is personal.

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Fresh director can’t elevate bland horror prequel

Posted on August 11, 2017 by reelentropy

Annabelle: Creation is the prequel to the spinoff of the ripoff of the most famous movie riding Paranormal Activity’s coattails. That’s where we are right now. Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

3/10 The eminent horror production studio has started to inject real talent into its movies, but it’s clearly not always going to be enough.

In Annabelle: Creation, a group of orphans moves into the spacious, rural house of the mysterious Mullins couple, Samuel (Anthony LaPaglia), who cares for the grounds, and Esther (Miranda Otto), who is bound to her bed and covered in a creepy Phantom of the Opera mask. The group soon learns that the house is haunted by their daughter, Annabelle (Samara Lee), who died 12 years earlier after jumping in front of a speeding car like an idiot and whose malevolent spirit bound itself to the series’ iconic creepy doll.

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