F9 (2021) * *

Directed by:  Justin Lin

Starring:  Vin Diesel, John Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Charlize Theron, Jordana Brewster, Kurt Russell

You have to give the Fast and Furious movies this much:  They are always topping themselves with the cartoon action which defy the laws of physics, gravity, and sanity.   F9 features two members of Dom Torretto's crew using a rocket launcher strapped to a Fiero to propel themselves into outer space to disrupt an orbiting satellite used to spread a computer virus.   What will the virus do?   Something to do with putting nuclear systems and computer capabilities into the hands of the user...I think.

I am amused when such viruses or programs are invented and the creators "want to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands,"  Then why make it in the first place?   This is a minor quibble compared to the lunacy that follows.   Criticizing a movie like F9 for being ludicrous is like taking a cat to task for not mastering chess.   Yes, F9 is stunts, crashes, and CGI run wild, but that isn't my primary issue with it.   Even with all of the chaos and fury, it manages to feel routine and occasionally boring.   How many fights and chases can one stand in a nearly two-and-a-half hour movie?

Superspy Dom Torretto (Diesel) begins F9 in seclusion and off the grid on a farm somewhere with wife Letty (Rodriguez) and his daughter.   The peace and quiet is soon interrupted by his cohorts, who want Dom to travel to Mexico with them to find the whereabouts of their boss Mr. Nobody (Russell).   Mr. Nobody was on board the plane which was transporting Cipher (Theron) to justice and was soon blown up after Cipher was extracted by a "rogue agent".   The rogue agent is Dom's estranged brother Jakob (Cena), whom Dom blames for their father's death in a car race thirty years ago. 

Cena wears a scowl through most of the movie while Dom stares intensely at him to convey the issues between them.   Jakob is tired of living in Dom's shadow while Dom cannot forgive Jakob for their dad's untimely death.   No matter what the backstory is, their arc creaks to its inexorable conclusion.   These scenes involving Dom and Jakob are the only time the movie slows down intentionally.   The rest is balls to the wall and pedal to the metal, an assault on the senses and sanity.   When F10 is inevitably made, I could cut and paste this review and only change around a couple of names.   I would like to be surprised, but the makers of the first nine Fast and Furious movies aren't in this game for surprises.   The same is said for the audiences.   Billions of dollars in grosses can't be wrong. 

The Tomorrow War (2021) * 1/2

Directed by:  Chris McKay

Starring:  Chris Pratt, J.K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Yvonne Strahovski, Ryan Kiera Armstrong

The aliens are at it again.   They invade the Earth of the future in The Tomorrow War and wipe out all but 500,000 of the world's population.   Hopes of winning the war (in the year 2051) are so slim that, with aid of wormholes, the top military brass travels back to 2022 to recruit soldiers to fight the war which doesn't take place for another 29 years.    Recruited soldiers enlist for seven-day tours of duty in the future and if they survive are transported back to the present day.    Making it through the first moments is hard enough, if you consider that many of those beamed to the future are dropped freefalling from the sky and go splat on the ground.   The lucky ones seem to land in swimming pools.  More soldiers are likely killed this way than from the thingies which attack them.  

The Tomorrow War isn't supposed to be realistic, but it sure is ludicrous.   Questions pop up which distract us from the action going on...thank goodness.    The Tomorrow War is a two-plus hour long, mindless video game in which the giant-toothed aliens (who could be cousins of the monsters in A Quiet Place) come at you and you shoot at them with assault weapons and handguns.   You mean there aren't better weapons in the future to combat these creatures?   Soldiers shoot hundreds of rounds into one monster to kill it.   They would have to carry around thousands of rounds in order to keep their guns loaded.   Imagine how heavy that is.

The star of this mess is Chris Pratt, he of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World.   He is an Iraq War veteran with a loving wife and a nine-year old daughter drafted to fight the war and finds himself leading a squad of misfits against the aliens.   His commanding officer is a colonel (Strahovski), who acts coldly towards him.   The reasons are easy to decipher and a potentially emotional moment is stunted because the movie would rather concentrate on the violence.   The reason for her anger towards Pratt doesn't follow much logic, if you consider what she experienced hadn't happened to him yet. 

The Tomorrow War has a 145-minute running time; far more bloated than the material justifies.   Much of this time is spent with characters holding weapons and quietly walking down steps, corridors, halls, and passageways.   This all grows quickly tedious, as does the action which runs amok.   Pratt's Dan Forester has his own baggage involving an absent father (Simmons) and his own uncertainty about his own future which was interrupted by a future war.   We know as surely as night follows day that this will all be resolved by the end.   Predictability can be okay in movies.  Deadly predictability is not.

If the head honchos fighting the future war were ambitious and a tad more resourceful, they would find a way to send the 500,000 people back to the present and avoid having to put us through The Tomorrow War.  

A Quiet Place, Part II (2021) * *

Directed by:  John Krasinski

Starring:  Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Noah Jupe, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Djimon Hounsou

There wasn't much about 2018's A Quiet Place which required a sequel, except that it was a box-office smash.   The plot, about aliens who track and kill if their prey makes too much noise, is not much expounded upon here.   The aliens, who resemble Venom in appearance, lie in wait for those unfortunate souls who scream in agony after stepping into a bear trap.   The characters spend a lot of time shooshing each other.   There were kids in the audience at the screening I attended who didn't follow this advice.

A Quiet Place, Part II begins at the dawn of the alien invasion.   An ordinary little league game in a small town is interrupted by alien ships appearing in the sunny skies above.   The aliens don't waste time and invade, leaving Lee (Krasinski) and Evelyn (Blunt) to light out for the hills to safety.   Lee was devoured by an alien in the first film, and his cameo and mini-prequel opening aren't necessary, but set up his deaf daughter's hero worship of him which motivates her to find a way to destroy the aliens. 

While Evelyn and her two other children, including the baby she famously delivered in a bath tub without screaming in the original film, hide out in an abandoned factory, Regan (Simmonds) and family friend Emmett (Murphy) go on a quest to trace the signal to a faraway radio station which plays Beyond the Sea as a hint to its location.   This radio station could hold the key to the downfall (or at least the escape from) the aliens.  Why the folks don't simply speak on the radio to explain where their hideout is not the type of question one should ask if they want to enjoy A Quiet Place, Part II.

Evelyn and company continue to walk around barefoot even though one character stepped on a nail in the first film and another steps on a bear trap in this one.   Maybe shoes add a slight chance of making a little more noise, but I'd take that over a nail, shards of glass, splinters, or burning the soles of your feet on the hot concrete.   The other characters wear work boots and sneakers and appear no worse for wear.   

I suppose the minutiae of A Quiet Place, Part II wouldn't irk me if the movie itself weren't simply a high-concept horror film in which ugly creatures jump out at you, chase you, or chomp on you.  Krasinski doesn't develop the story as much as produce a retread.   It is strongly made from a technical standpoint and the Murphy and Simmonds performances stand out, but we've seen this movie before.   

When I watch the overly abundant shots of characters' bare feet, I was reminded of the joke in which two salesmen are sent to a territory in which the inhabitants don't wear shoes.   One salesman called his boss and says, "There is no opportunity here, they don't wear shoes,"   The other salesman called his boss and says, "Plenty of opportunity here.  They don't wear shoes!"

L.A. Confidential (1997) * * * *

Directed by:  Curtis Hanson

Starring:  Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin, Simon Baker, Matt McCoy

Released just a few years after Rodney King and the OJ Simpson murder trial, L.A. Confidential gives us a police department at a crossroads.   It is 1953.   Hollywood is quickly encroaching on how the police does its business.   Sensationalism replaces journalism in gossip rags like the one written by Sid Hudgens (DeVito), who tips off cops about actors engaging in illicit activity so the cop can make the high-profile arrest and Hudgens can plaster the story on the cover of his magazine ironically titled Hush-Hush. 

The detective Sid most often tips off is Sgt. Jack Vincennes (Spacey), a technical advisor on a Dragnet-like television show; a job he definitely enjoys more than being a detective.   Vincennes approaches his day job with world-weary cynicism and resignation.   Other cops like Sgt. Ed Exley (Pearce) and Officer Bud White (Crowe) operate on different ends of the policing spectrum.   Exley is a straight arrow who knows politics is an integral part of the job, while White is a brutish cop used mostly as muscle, but would love one day to actually work a case.   Then there is Captain Dudley Smith (Cromwell), who lords over his department while managing to walk between the raindrops.  

The plot of L.A. Confidential takes a while to reveal itself.   Crime lord Mickey Cohen is sent to prison, and other gangsters try to move in and take over his rackets.   This doesn't sit well with Captain Smith, who uses White to beat the hell out of any interlopers and send them back to where they came from.  Some of Cohen's lieutenants are murdered and a late-night bloodbath of a homicide at a local coffee shop tests the moral and ethical boundaries of Exley, White, and Vincennes.   Just how far are they willing to go to reach the truth?   Do they even want to know it?

Pimp Pierce Patchett (Strathairn), who operates a high-end call girl ring using prostitutes who undergo plastic surgery to make his girls resemble movie stars, is part of the game.   How does he fit in?  White encounters a Veronica Lake lookalike named Lynn (Basinger) and asks questions, but we also see he is clearly in love with her.   In an ironic twist, the most honest person in the movie is Lynn, who reveals she never underwent plastic surgery and may even be in love with White.   When she is forced to break his heart on behalf of her boss, she is saddened and torn.   Each cop, except maybe Smith, reaches a point in L.A. Confidential when he becomes riddled with guilt.   Exley, White, and Vincennes realizes they can only bend their morals so far before they can no longer look at themselves in the mirror.

I won't reveal much about where the plot goes.   It seems labyrinthine at first, but one of the sheer joys of watching L.A. Confidential is watching the puzzle assembled piece by piece.   When all is said and done, you are amazed by how simply everything fits together.   Another reason to enjoy L.A. Confidential is the complexities of the characters.   We think have a line on Exley, White, Vincennes, and the others and predict how they will act.   Then, the movie upsets our expectations with curve balls.   Everyone operates in the gray areas of police work and Hollywood.   L.A. Confidential understands how the two seemingly unrelated professions work hand-in-hand.   There was a line between what the Los Angeles Times would report about actors and what tabloids like Hush-Hush would report.   In voice-over narration, Sid can barely conceal his glee as he types his stories about the latest sleaze on to a blank sheet of paper.   Hush-Hush will move copies and cops like Vincennes will profit simply by ensuring he drags a B-list actor out of his home in the middle of the night and poses in front of a lit-up movie theater.   The officers themselves cannot escape becoming celebrities themselves.   Exley is told more than once to lose his glasses because they make him look like a bookworm, which won't play well for the cameras.

L.A. Confidential made stars out of Pearce and Crowe, the latter would win a Best Actor Oscar three years after this movie's release.   Spacey stands out as usual.   Cromwell gives us a 180-degree swing from his Oscar-nominated performance in Babe from two years earlier.   Basinger won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Lynn.   She isn't simply a beautiful presence or a cliched hooker with a heart of gold.  Basinger gives us depth and the most self-assured person in the whole movie.   Guys like Exley, White, and Vincennes could take some tips from her on how to be true to themselves.  

Titanic (1997) * * * *

 

Directed by:  James Cameron

Starring:  Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Frances Fisher, Billy Zane, Bill Paxton, Gloria Stuart, Kathy Bates, Bernard Hill, Victor Garber, David Warner, Jonathan Hyde

James Cameron's legendary epic Titanic beautifully meshes a technically superior action movie with a romance between people we care about.   In many cases, the latter is usually forfeited in favor of the visuals.   The first half of Titanic sets up a doomed love between Jack (DiCaprio) and Rose (Winslet), both of whom had the unfortunate fate of sailing on the Titanic.   Even before the iceberg made its grand entrance, Jack and Rose have to endure obstacles to their happily ever after, including their differences in wealth, social status, and the fact that Rose is engaged to marry the snooty Cal Hockley (Zane).   The engagement is more of a business transaction, but there are times when we realize Cal may love Rose after all. Naturally, Rose's mother (Fisher) disapproves for reasons other than Jack being poor. 

We hear of how Titanic is unsinkable.   The captain removed lifeboats in order to ensure more deck space.  In his mind, why would they need all those lifeboats if the ship won't sink?   Anyone associated with the design, manufacturing, and the sailing of Titanic was tempting fate.   The captain orders the ship to sail full steam ahead at the urging of the ship's builder.   When icebergs are sighted, it is already too late.  Titanic doesn't open in the past, but the present.  The wreckage of the Titanic is examined by an undersea exploring team led by Brock Lovett (Paxton) on the ocean floor, as are the treasures locked inside.   A drawing of a naked woman wearing a priceless diamond necklace is found in a watertight safe.  The drawing is of Rose, who is now close to 100 years old, but still living an active life in Arizona.   Rose sees the drawing on television and soon is aboard the underwater vessel seeing the wreckage for herself and telling her story to Brock.   The rest of the story is told in flashback from Rose's memory as crisp as if it happened yesterday.

Rose described Titanic as "the ship of dreams,", but to her it was a "slave ship" which was taking her from England to New York where she is to marry the loathsome Cal.   Jack wins a steerage ticket on Titanic in a poker game which is both the best and worst thing that could've happened to him.   Jack saves Rose from a suicide attempt when she threatens to throw herself overboard.   From there on, the two people from different worlds find common ground and soon fall in love.   Their love is passionate and fleeting.   Maybe they would've made it if the Titanic reached New York safely, but we will never know. 

Cameron captures the awe-inspiring scope of the ship down to its last detail without overshadowing the characters.   When the Titanic strikes the iceberg, the ship's architect Andrews (Garber) must break the bad news to ship builder Ismay (Hyde) and the crew Titanic will sink.   This goes against all Ismay believes and, as legend has it, he doesn't go down with the ship.   With more people aboard than the lifeboats can handle, Titanic builds suspense as the people race against time to escape before the ship plunges into the icy North Atlantic.   The mathematics are clear:   Many will die.   We watch this all unfold with precision and efficiency, even at a three-plus-hour running time.   DiCaprio and Winslet became mega-stars following the success of Titanic.  Their chemistry is a huge part of what makes Titanic more than just steel and visual effects, but a movie with a real heart and stirring emotions.  

The Call (2013) * *

 

Directed by:  Brad Anderson

Starring:  Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Michael Eklund, Morris Chestnut, Michael Imperioli, David Otunga, Roma Maffia

If The Call remained a movie which depicted the daily grind of a 911 operator and how the stress can chip away at your soul, we might have had something special here.   But The Call doesn't have such lofty goals.  It is a thriller in which 911 operator Jordan Turner (Berry) becomes materially involved in not one, but two abductions of teenage girls by a twitchy creep with serious issues, such as building a shrine to his late sister which should have inspired at least some suspicion from his wife and kids.

Jordan responds to a 911 call in which a teenage girl is hiding in the house from an intruder.   The girl is eventually found and killed.   Jordan blames herself and loses her nerve to answer any more 911 calls.  Six months after the murder, Jordan is now a trainer of up-and-coming 911 operators.   A 911 comes in while Jordan is giving a tour of "the hive", the control center for 911 which looks like something you might see at NASA. I have no knowledge as to whether a 911 call center looks this pristine and sterile.  A teenager named Casey (Breslin) is kidnapped in a mall parking garage and thrown in the trunk.   Casey calls 911 with her friend's burner phone from the trunk and Jordan finds herself assisting the girl in hopes what happened six months prior won't happen again.

Because the GPS couldn't be tracked on the burner phone (again, I don't know if such a thing is possible or not), Jordan relies on her own cleverness and resourcefulness to assist Casey in knocking out the rear tail light, sticking her arm out to wave at other cars to attract attention, and even spill some paint from the trunk out of the car to create a makeshift trail.   This attracts another motorist (Imperioli), with deadly consequences.   

This is all at first suspenseful, but soon we are sucked into ludicrous plot developments in which Jordan conducts her own investigation and finds an underground lair (a la The Lovely Bones), in which the killer drags his victims.   The secret entrance is found with very little trouble by Jordan, and one has to wonder how the killer was able to construct such a place.   How did he move furniture down there?   I assume he didn't have help.   How long did it take him to build it?    Where did he find the time?  The mind doesn't just boggle, it melts down.   

Berry does as much with an underwritten character as she can.   I don't know how realistically The Call presents the daily goings-on in the life of a 911 operator, but for a while it works until it decides to switch course and morph into a gruesome, bloody slasher picture.   What happens to Casey and other victims is shown in gory detail.   Blood is everywhere.   This is one messy killer.   The Call begins well enough, but soon becomes drudgery in which the killer can't seem to die no matter how many times you hit him in the head with a heavy object or how far he falls down a ladder.   Maybe he's related to Michael Myers?  

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Patrick Hughes

Starring:  Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Salma Hayek, Morgan Freeman, Frank Grillo, Antonio Banderas

It's hard not to feel sorry for Michael Bryce (Reynolds), who spends more than half of The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard with someone else's blood splattered on him.    He recently was stripped of his bodyguard license after the death of a client and has nightmares about winning a Bodyguard of the Year award.  His therapist tells him to take a vacation in Capri (the city, not the pants) for some R and R.  That lasts only a few moments.   He is soon pressed into duty by Sonia (Hayek), who if you recall is the wife of Darius Kincaid (Jackson), the hitman who Michael reluctantly guarded in The Hitman's Bodyguard.   

Michael, Darius, and Sonia are soon on the run from thugs who work for the powerful Greek zillionaire Aristotle, who is plotting to bring the European economy to its knees following the European Union's economic sanctions against his country.   Something about a drill which can bore into a tungsten box which would cripple Europe's computer infrastructure.   No matter.   The plot is what it is:  An excuse to hold plenty of fights, chases, and shootings within the movie's running time.   More heads are blown off in the Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard than in your average zombie movie.  

The original film was loud, wall-to-wall action with a buddy comedy waiting to emerge that never did develop.   The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard manages to be a little more fun.   Ryan Reynolds is John Ritter-esque in his delivery and how he is acted upon by everyone and everything else in the movie.   If a Ritter biopic is ever made, Reynolds should be the only actor considered for the role.   His likability quotient is increasing with each comic role.   Jackson is having a blast amidst the chaos surrounding him.   Hayek has nice chemistry with her often co-star Banderas, with whom her character has a Past.  And then we have Morgan Freeman as Michael's father, himself a legendary bodyguard whom Michael idealizes who shows where his loyalties lie in a crucial moment.   

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard is not a superior example of the buddy/action picture.   The violence becomes numbing after a while and the actors can only take the material so far.   However, it is an improvement on the original strictly because it allows itself to have at least somewhat of a good time.