Dangerous Animals, Picks and Piques, Hollywood Film Review, Johnson Thomas

Hollywood Film Review
Johnson Thomas
This survival thriller hooks you like no other
Film: Dangerous Animals
Cast: Hassie Harrison, Jai Courtney, Josh Heuston, Ella Newton, Liam Greinke, Rob Carlton, Ali Basoka, Michael Goldman
Director: Sean Byrne
Rating: * * *
Runtime: 98 min

Sean Byrne’s Dangerous Animals is a shark attack movie with a double bite. The opening pre-credits interlude itself sets the stage for some attention grabbing series of sequences. Here sharks are only the second biggest threat to Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). The sharks just do what you’ve seen in countless movies but it’s one particular man who emerges more dangerous than them.

Bruce Tucker (Jai Courtney), seems like a good-natured captain of the boat that takes tourists into the ocean for cage diving experiences. It’s only when they are in the water that his true nature surfaces. He overpowers the tourists, feeds them to the sharks as live bait while videotaping the whole despicable act. Zephyr a tough surfer, is his latest victim. But she has no intention of becoming shark dinner. As soon as she goes missing her boyfriend, Moses (Josh Heuston), starts looking for her.

The tension increments as the cat and mouse games between Zephyr and Tucker get played out. Zephyr is not an easy prey. She attempts to outwit Tucker, fights back by using her brain to survive. The protagonist’s fighting spirit and never say die attitude is what helps her escape from being chained to a bed and a locked room.

Nick Lepard’s screenplay is sharp and smart, making every moment in the narrative count. For most of this film’s run time, it is Tucker vs. Zephyr, with sharks circling around. Bryne’s direction does the rest. The narrative is lean and tight with not many characters distracting from the main battle. The action is crunchy and has visceral power. Michael Yezerski’s score keeps you attentive and involved.

Courtney as Tucker is suitably demented. His Jekyll and Hyde personality makes for a fascinating turnaround when it counts most. He’s a cold-blooded psychopath, but also quite pathetic. Courtney and Harrison’s performances keep you glued to the tableau that unfolds. Bryne shows himself to be a master at old-fashioned thrills. This movie really makes you sit up and take notice of his exceptional genre skills. Johnsont307@gmail.com

The Strangers: Chapter 2, Picks and Piques, Hollywood Film Review, Johnson Thomas

Hollywood Film Review
Johnson Thomas
Hollow recompense
Film: The Strangers: Chapter 2 Two Towers
Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Richard Brake, Rachel Shenton, Brooke Lena Johnson, Froy Gutierrez, Florian Clare, Janis Ahern, Pablo Sandstrom
Director: Renny Harlin
Rating: * *
Runtime: 98 min.

Renny Harlin’s second instalment of his intended three chapter universe of The Strangers is quite a let down. “Two Towers” merely exist as a stepping stone for the third chapter and there’s neither logic or sense going in.

This middle chapter has nothing new to depict. The masked figures are there but their appearance is drawn on past memory. We get a segment of flashbacks telling us what happened previously. Maya has survived the attack from the first film, and begins to wonder if everyone around her might be one of the masked figures who killed her fiancé and tried to kill her. Even the Sheriff (Richard Brake), acts shady and is made out to be a suspect here.

Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is in a state of perpetual flight. Her shift from a dark cabin to a sterile hospital room is not without its demons either. Her ordeal doesn’t seem to have an end. So Maya ends up stalked by the strangers again. And its an ongoing never ending nightmare where she escapes repeatedly and finds herself at the mercy of Strangers and a giant CGI wild boar.

The film opens with statistics about random violence and then goes on to contradict that by giving the menacing strangers a sociopathic back story that hints at being somewhat connected to Maya. Harlin is obviously trying to juice up the narrative by throwing in red herrings along the route.

Harlin orchestrates a brisk tempo and has a visual style that is brighter, less mean and leaner than that of the original film. The atmosphere doesn’t drum up anxiety or fear in the audience. Maya’s nightmare unfolds across the hostile environments of the hospital, the Oregon woods, and the confines of an ambulance. It’s all presented in a harried style mimicking a sort of frenzy but it fails to connect emotionally. Harlin’ shots vary between impressive and mediocre and the inconsistencies in this telling make it a hard to watch movie.

Madelaine Petsch’s sincere effort is in vain here. There’s not much dialogue to lend sense, instead the focus is on Maya/Petsch’s ability to communicate her fears while she goes from victim to active survivor. The performance comes across as hollow because there’s nothing in the narrative to hold on to.



The film is impressively mounted, Renny Harlin’s direction is reminiscent of his big budget action films but it’s not enough to grab your attention and hold you in thrall.

Johnsont307@gmail.com

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Hollywood Film Review, Picks And Piques, Johnson Thomas

Hollywood Film Review
Johnson Thomas
Film: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Cast: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lucy Thomas, Billy Magnussen
Director: Kogonada
Rating: * *
Runtime: 109 min.

“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is about how memory of past issues, grief, and loss guide us to shape our future. The film is meant as a soul trip leading to romance. But writer Seth Reiss’ fanciful expectations fail to find a match in Kogonada’s helming. It’s an interesting experiment even though it fails to fulfill engineered expectations.

The concept has some merit. Imagine two commitment phobic singles meeting at a wedding and going on a weird GPS engineered road trip that helps them come to terms with their personal demons? That’s exactly what happens here.

David ( Colin Farrell), is forced to rent a vehicle to get to his friend’s wedding, from two chatty agents (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) working in an agency that has two identical cars with strange GPS. David drives away in one of the cars… and Sarah (Margot Robbie) coincidentally takes the second. They are both going to the same wedding.

Sarah and David meet at the venue called “La Strada” and carry on a minor flirtation while discussing who would hurt the other one first in case of a romantic involvement. Next we know Sarah’s car has broken down and she gets a lift in David’s car. The vehicle’s bizarre GPS with a sensual voice helps them come to terms with their fears and foibles while serving as a matchmaker of sorts between the solo travelers.



The GPS directs them through doors (indicating unresolved issues) en route, providing Sarah and David opportunity to come to terms with defining moments of their past. Premature births, parental abandonment, missed connections, young heartbreaks, and other issues that have led them to becoming commitment phobic flit through. Sarah and David thus get a chance to smooth out their lives and become unafraid to commit to new relationships.

David and Sarah tell each other about themselves -their past and present, foibles et al, but it’s not interesting at all. Their issues feel minor so the audience begins to feel cheated. The magical intervention feels totally unnecessary.

This movie is about falling in love and has “Let My Love Open the Door” on the soundtrack. It’s too in your face so the effect is lost. Everything we see feels distant and lacking in emotion. The plotting feels entirely implausible and artificial because at no point in the film do Sarah and David question their current circumstances.

The script is fanciful, the direction feels mediocre, and the editing rather inconsistent. What should have been a magical, mysterious, mystical experience becomes a self-conscious, idiosyncratic, boring fantasy that fails to touch you in any way.

Johnsont307@gmail.com

The Surfer, Hollywood Film Review, Picks And Piques, Johnson Thomas

Hollywood Film Review
Johnson Thomas
Sketchy thrills, disaffecting psychobabble
Film: The Surfer
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Justin Rosniak, Alexander Bertrand, Rahel Romahn, Nicholas Cassim, Finn Little, Charlotte Maggi
Director: Lorcan Finnegan
Rating: * 1/2
Runtime: 100 min.

In this film Nicholas Cage tackles a similar role to ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ which he did in 1988 and it’s not a pretty sight. The director Finnegan and Martin, the scriptwriter, have admitted in an interview that this film is partially inspired by the classic 1968 film The Swimmer, an adaptation of a John Cheever short story. But this film inspired or not, doesn’t achieve any great heights.

Cage plays a man who grew up in a small town on the Australian coastline and since has been living in the U.S. for several decades. The opening scene has him return home to Australia with his son (Finn Little) and attempt to venture out to the coastline to surf the waves and also negotiate to repurchase his family home. The moment they arrive at the beach trouble erupts with the Bay Boys, a group of self-styled surf punk bullies who prevent his attempts to surf the waves claiming “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” His attempts to convince local bigwig Scally (Julian McMahon) that he is actually from there, fall on deaf ears. From thereon the picture just goes berserk in outlandish fashion. His life spirals out of control in bizarre and grotesque ways and his mind begins to unravel under the hot, unrelenting Australian sun. The extremes match those experienced by the lead character in ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ but validating or justifying it becomes difficult.

The blazing heat, tormented by various Bay Boys, persecuted by locals, and stripped of his money, possessions, and dignity, eating scraps from the waste bin, and drinking brown water from a bathroom tap, he becomes a vulnerable pawn for the bullies. There’s worse to come and it’s better left unsaid. He could have just left but the writers and the director want us to believe that this man in a near feral state still wants to confront his oppressors. Sketchy, campy and extreme the masculine angst bit has nowhere to go.

Thomas Martin’s screenplay touches on financial desperation and toxic masculinity but there’s no meaningful uptake from it. The humiliations heaped on the lead character feel manufactured and lacks purpose. The conclusion also falls flat. Cage is often cast as a lonesome man in films of late, and it is getting quite tiresome. The cinematography by DP Radek Ladczuk, is stylish and manages to convey the desperate situation quite well though.

Director Lorcan Finnegan who has had a bizarre track record with films like “Vivarium” and “Nocebo” continues in that vein but it’s not sustainable. This is a terrible attempt at psychological thriller as the writing lacks depth and the helming lacks focus. The attempt at creating claustrophobia is also quite hollow. The frequent zooms into the surfer’s eyes, sudden flash backs and forwards, zooms, jump cuts etc fail to create an atmosphere to reckon with. Cage’s performance is as over-the-top as the script expects of him and though competent, it’s not something worth cheering about.

Johnsont307@gmail.com