Abigail (2024) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

Starring:  Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Giancarlo Esposito, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Matthew Goode

Abigail begins promisingly, but then tips its hand too soon and devolves into a bloodbath with exploding bodies and blood and guts flying everywhere.   It's another tired movie about vampires with characters played by actors who try desperately to give them dimension and a reason to care about them.  They attempt with all of their might, but no dice.  It's the type of movie in which we relish when characters are knocked off one by one so we know it is that much closer to ending.  

The promise of Abigail begins when a pre-teen ballerina named Abigail (Weir) is kidnapped by six criminals who don't know each other's true identities (a la Reservoir Dogs) and taken to a remote mansion.  They are met there by a shadowy man named Lambert (Esposito), who tells them all to sit tight for 24 hours while the $50 million ransom is delivered.   They are all given fake names so they can converse with each other, but then the members start biting the dust.  The rest find they are locked in, and further find that Abigail is a vampire.   Why were these poor folks chosen to kidnap Abigail only to suffer a horrendous fate?  It turns out each has a connection to Abigail's ruthless father, who remains offscreen until the very end.  

The only member of the group who seemingly shows any kindness or mercy towards Abigail before she is revealed to be a monster is Joey (Barrera), a recovering addict with a son she lost custody of long ago and thinks the money will help her start over with him.   If, of course, she survives the night with Abigail and company.   Once the vampire angle is introduced midway through, then Abigail loses all hope of being anything interesting.  Vampires or those turned into vampires bite each other, blood splatters everywhere, and everyone is covered in blood, guts, and gore.  Who wants to witness this?  Surely not I, but there is a market for these movies which is why they continue to be made, even if they are boring and inert.  

 

Civil War (2024) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Alex Garland

Starring:  Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Jesse Plemons, Nick Offerman, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson

Civil War is a movie that thinks it can only get a little bit pregnant.  The movie focuses on a future United States Civil War in which Texas and California both seceded from the Union, join forces, and take on the rest of the states, who in turn start battling with each other over those who support the Union and those who support the "Western Forces".  The idea that Texas and California would unite on anything brings about an unintentional laugh.  But, Civil War avoids discussing ideologies and why the states are feuding in the first place.   It's a movie about a war that wants to reflect on the current political climate while remaining neutral.  That is a noble idea which doesn't translate to a compelling narrative.  There is no one to root for, or against.  

The President of the United States of Civil War is a dictator who abolished the 22nd amendment and is serving for life.  He is known to have media members killed and has a limited vocabulary, so I'm assuming he's modeled after Donald Trump.  However, I am not one who believes he would have media members killed.  Civil War involves grizzled, cynical photojournalist Lee Smith (Dunst) who has seen the horrors of war up close and took pictures of it.  She and reporter Joel (Moura) went to trek from New York (which is nearly vacant) to Washington, DC in hopes of interviewing the president before the Western Forces take over.  Joel is a reporter, so we're told, but I'll be damned if I ever see him with a notebook or a microphone.  For all I knew, he was just the guy who drove Lee around.

Accompanying Lee are amateur photographer Jessie (Spaeny), who sees Lee as an influence and mentor, and Sammy (Henderson), who works for the New York Times.  Dunst looks like someone who hasn't had much sleep.  I wanted to find her a bed to crash on.  One thing this civil war accomplished was getting rid of traffic jams.  There is hardly anyone on the road.  The one time they encounter any burnt-out shells of vehicles are on one stretch of highway borrowed from War of the Worlds.  

Civil War meanders while trying to assume its own importance, but the only scene with any dramatic impact involves Jesse Plemons (Dunst's real-life husband) who is burying a group of bodies in a pit and asks each member of Lee's team where they're from.  The wrong answer (i.e. not in the United States) would likely get you killed.   But once Plemons' cameo is over, the movie goes right back to being dull.  When Lee and company arrive in Washington for the big showdown between Western Forces and the Union forces, we have roughly six soldiers per side battling in front of what is clearly a set.  The fate of the free world rests in the hands of two small groups of soldiers.  

Civil War means to be impactful and thought-provoking, but the only thoughts I experienced were how absurd it was.  You never get the feeling there is a bigger war going on outside, but to me Civil War seems like a movie wanting to make a large point on a smaller budget, but doesn't succeed.  

Magnolia (1999) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Melora Walters, Julianne Moore, Jason Robards, Philip Baker Hall, Melinda Dillon, William H. Macy, Jeremy Blackman, Michael Bowen

Magnolia is Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to the masterful Boogie Nights (1997).  The structure of Magnolia is similar in how it juggles a menagerie of characters, but while Boogie Nights focused on the 1970's porn industry, Magnolia tells interlocking stories of wounded people who come across each other by fate, chance, and a deus ex machina which will likely never be employed in a movie again.  When I first viewed Magnolia, I was puzzled by frogs falling from the sky like rain.   Upon second viewing, I realized this event was a necessity from the heavens to provide clarity, understanding, and healing.  Something had to give and it couldn't have occurred at a more proper time.

The people involved in the crossing stories are:  Jim (Reilly), a lonely cop who wants to do some good on every shift, Jimmy Gator (Hall), a dying game-show host whose producer Earl Partridge (Robards) is on his deathbed from cancer, Earl's estranged son Jack (Cruise), who goes by the name Frank T.J. Mackey and is a self-help guru whose program "Seduce and Destroy" aids men in their quest to dominate women, Linda (Moore), Earl's second wife who feels guilty about the way she has treated him now that he is near death, and Claudia (Walters), daughter of Jimmy Gator who despises him for reasons made clear later.  There is also Donnie (Macy), a contestant who many years ago won a boatload of money on Gator's show, only to have it stolen from him by his parents.  He has fallen on hard times and wants to rob his former boss' safe to pay for braces which he hopes will make him more attractive to the man he is in love with. 

With the exception of Jim and Phil Parma (Hoffman), Earl's nurse who carries out his deathbed request to see his son one last time, most of the characters in Magnolia are troubled and wounded, while Jim and Phil try to right wrongs and perhaps bring healing to those wounds.  They need help doing so, and they receive it in the most extraordinary and insane way possible.  

Magnolia is difficult to define except as an anthology of interlocking stories and characters in which these people are fated to be a part of each other's lives, whether they want to or not.  But there is a driving dramatic force which propels Magnolia into something unique and special.  This is among the best performances of Tom Cruise's career, playing someone so angry he invents a persona to mask his hurt.  His father left when his mother was dying from cancer, causing him to endure the pain and burden of watching her die by himself.   His final contact with Earl is equal parts resentment, pure hatred, anger, followed by regret and then love and acceptance.  It's quite a scene.   The rest of his scenes show him giving a lecture to equally hurt men who are trying to one-up women in the battle of the sexes.  Cruise was nominated for Best Supporting Oscar, which I believe he should have won, and it shows how multi-faceted he is as an actor.  This is something that could be said for the movie itself, and that gives us an emotional, riveting experience.  

Monkey Man (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Dev Patel

Starring:  Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Sikander Kher, Sobhita Dulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Pitobsh Tripathi

Monkey Man, the directorial debut of acclaimed actor Dev Patel, is John Wick using fists of fury instead of guns.   It's a revenge picture in which a poor man named Kid (Patel) infiltrates the upper echelon of the New Delhi underworld to avenge his mother's death at the hands of corrupt police and politicians.  At the end of all of the fisticuffs, you wonder how Kid's hands aren't swollen or broken along with other body parts.  

I also wonder why movies are filming so many scenes in poorly lit areas or in the dark.  Trying to follow the fight sequences are a fool's errand as daylight emerges as a welcome relief.   The fights are no less action-packed than any other movie's, but eventually they come off as overchoreographed and simply absurd.  Patel, a superior actor who also wrote the movie, alludes to Bruce Lee and other action heroes of his childhood when staging the action.  However, these allusions aren't as fun as the real thing.

The movie follows a familiar superhero pattern of the hero getting thrashed, retreating to a remote place to heal and reload, a training montage, and then he returns to finish the job.  The villains aren't given much depth for us to want to see their destruction.   Kid himself is more of a symbol than a hero.  We are expected to care through osmosis, but that doesn't happen either.   Monkey Man is a passion project of Patel's which took years to finally come to the big screen.   For that, we applaud him, but the finished product is hardly distinguishable from countless other revenge movies. 

Dr. Dolittle (1998) * * *

 

Directed by:  Betty Thomas

Starring:  Eddie Murphy, Oliver Platt, Richard Portnow, Peter Boyle, Kristen Wilson, Kyla Pratt, Raven Symone, Paul Giamatti, Ossie Davis, voices of Chris Rock, Norm Macdonald, Jenna Elfman, Gilbert Gottfried, Albert Brooks

Dr. John Dolittle (Murphy) is a well-off San Francisco doctor with a thriving practice about to be sold for millions, a loving family, and a gift (which he thinks is a curse) of being able to hear and talk to animals.  He was able to do so as a child, but found a way to repress this until one day, he hears a dog named Lucky (Macdonald) give him hell for nearly running him over.  

Dolittle adopts Lucky, but soon after, all different types of wildlife descend on his home looking for treatment for various maladies.   Dolittle reluctantly and covertly aids the animals, but finds it to be very rewarding.  This doesn't prevent him from being briefly institutionalized under the "care" of Dr. Blaine (Giamatti), an envious medical school rival who makes it his mission to keep Dolittle at the institution.  The animals themselves are voiced by familiar actors who are mostly delivering amusing wisecracks and insults.  

Murphy himself used this role as a springboard to varying success as a family-film leading man.  In Dr. Dolittle, he finds the right mix of sympathy and humor in his predicament.   It takes him time to process the idea that he can communicate with animals.   Yes, they conveniently all speak English, except for one who speaks Spanish.   But Dr. Dolittle exhibits a sweetness with its protagonist and its cute animals who all only want a little help from someone who understands them.   

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Adam Wingard

Starring:  Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle

I couldn't pass a test on what happens in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.  There is a plot, one which numerous cast members helpfully took time out to explain, but my memory remains foggy.  I know Godzilla rules the surface, while Kong finds his dominance in the lower world (someplace between the surface and the Earth's core) under siege by another race of massive, giant Kongs.  There is a little gorilla, who I will call Donkey Kong Junior, who turns on his own tribe and aids Kong in his quest to defend the worlds against these other giant gorillas. 

Godzilla is brought in not as an enemy, although he and Kong fight once, but as an ally.  I can't recall with any certainty why this is, but it's all simply a backdrop for CGI run amok and battle scenes as incomprehensible as the plot.  There isn't much to root for or against.  The actors are here primarily to witness or explicate the happenings as they unfold, but are mostly pushed to the sidelines.  The visuals are the stars, and those are a mess.  We have difficulty following the action and we find we don't much care anyway. 

I watched some of Kong: Skull Island again recently, which is the best of the recent Godzilla and Kong movies.  Yes, it had lots of CGI and action, but there was a central human tug to the story and Kong himself was fleshed out.  In this latest film, both Godzilla and Kong are there to fight and destroy whole cities and worlds with not much else going on to compel the viewer to keep watching.  It's a free-for-all.  The more the plot is explained, the more confused we become. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) * *

 

Directed by:  Gil Kenan

Starring:  Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, McKenna Grace, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton, Emily Ann Lind, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Annie Potts

Ghostbusters is out of gas.  No amount of cameos or callbacks to the initial films will revive it.  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire strains mightily, but even with the remaining original Ghostbusters (Aykroyd, Murray, and Hudson) lending a hand, it dies on the vine.  This version of the Ghostbusters aren't as funny or interesting as the previous incarnations while the plots are recycling the latest evil spirit that wants to destroy the world. 

I've often contended that villains who want to conquer or destroy the planet will find themselves very bored once they achieve their goal.  They should thank the Ghostbusters for thwarting them, so they will always have a dream to chase.   The malevolent force in this movie is contained in a metal sphere and when unleashed it will freeze everyone in New York.  Will it be today, New York? Tomorrow, the world?  We don't know, nor do we much care.   

Rudd, Coon, Grace, and Wolfhard are appealing actors not given much to do.   Phoebe, the youngest child and the closest to her grandfather Egon Spengler in terms of intelligence, develops a friendship with a ghost (Lind) which crosses over into attraction.   While it is a momentary thrill to see Aykroyd, Hudson, Murray, and Potts return to their original roles, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire feels overcrowded, especially squeezing in the Ghostbusters' enemy from the first film turned mayor Walter Peck (Atherton), who 40 years later is still a douchebag.  Tack on new characters in the form of a conduit (Nanjiani) and a parapsychology professor who understands the history of the sphere (Oswalt) and we're looking for a traffic cop to keep everything straight. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire even features the green slimer ghost from the first film, who is now a fan favorite, but the movie itself is a series of allusions and references to the first two films with a threadbare plot to hang them on.  The all-female Ghostbusters (2016) is left out.  I recall enjoying that one when it was released (I was definitely in the minority), although I haven't seen it since.   I figure you may as well invite Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and company to the next Ghostbusters sequel.  Why not?