The Dark Tower
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
So, there’s this tower, see. And it sits at the center of all the parallel worlds of the universe and as long as it stands, it keeps the monsters away. Why? How did it get there? No time!
Anyhoo, an evildoer (Matthew McConaughey) wants to knock it down, let in the monsters and rule it all. But there’s this kid – you know what, let me not summarize what amounts to little more than a summary in the first place. Suffice it to say, The Dark Tower is not very good.
There are a lot of bad Stephen King movies. But even Dreamcatcher, The Night Flier and Sleepwalkers (three of the worst) offered a sort of B-movie charm. The Dark Tower is not even the fun kind of bad. It’s tedious, lumbering and schmaltzy, visually unappealing, narratively embarrassing and a woeful waste of Idris Elba.
McConaughey, on the other hand, makes the most of his time onscreen as Walter – which is a much funnier name for the prince of darkness than Man in Black. As the antagonist, he brandishes a restrained evil and moves with a little swagger, plus there’s that wig. Glorious! Real Shatner – heck, even Travolta-esque.
But McConaughey and Elba – true talents, no doubt – are hamstrung from the beginning by the production’s meat-cleaver-and-band-aid approach to screenwriting.
Nobody is more convinced than I am that Stephen King uses too darn many words. Too many! Succinct he will never be. But to believe you can boil his multi-volume, many-thousand-page Dark Tower series into a coherent 90 minutes is just brazen idiocy. No offense to the team of writers working on the adaptation – some of whom have talent; the other one is Akiva Goldsman.
Director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair– also credited with writing) is zero help, managing to take this Cliff’s Notes version of King’s prose and still produce something bloated and slow.
I remember reviewing the Tom Cruise debacle The Mummy earlier this year and thinking, this isn’t even any fun, it’s just bad. Dark Tower makes The Mummy feel like a rollicking good time.
But, hey, the trailers for It look great, don’t they?
Detroit
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Detroit burns with a flame of ugliness, rage and shame that simmers well before it burrows deep into you. It is brutal, uncomfortable, even nauseating. And it is necessary.
Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning duo behind The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, bring craft and commitment to the story of Detroit’s infamous Algiers Motel Incident.
In July of 1967, during days of rioting from civil unrest, a riot task force raided an annex of the Algiers amid reports of sniper fire coming from the building. After hours of beatings and interrogation, three young African American men were dead.
Bigelow and Boal wrap this tragedy in their meticulous brand of storytelling, and it bursts with an overdue urgency. Layering timelines, characters, and bits of archival footage, the filmmakers achieve the stellar verite effect that has become their calling card. We become part of these events through an authenticity that brings terror to you, takes the breath from you and quickens your pulse. In conveying atrocities now decades old, the film builds its lasting power from how it makes us confront our present while depicting our past.
John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) carries the film’s soul with thoughtful nuance as Melvin Dismukes, the black security guard at the scene for assistance. In one of the film’s most quietly powerful scenes, the gravity of his situation begins to hit Dismukes, and he quietly trembles. It’s one of the many instances the film deepens its feeling by letting events speak for themselves.
Ironically, it is precisely the subtle and organic nature of Detroit’s truths that call attention to the few moments of heavy-handed overreach, more from surprise than their effect on the overall narrative.
With a chilling, award-worthy turn, Will Poulter (The Revenant) makes the sadistic Officer Krauss all the more terrifying for how casually his violence erupts. There is excellence throughout Bigelow’s ensemble cast, and from Anthony Mackie’s embodiment of African American veterans denied the very rights they fought for to Algee Smith (The New Edition Story) as an aspiring R&B singer whose life is forever altered, sharply defined characters are revealed regardless of screen time.
Concerns about the voyeuristic nature of running this brutality through a white filmmaker’s lens are legitimate, but Bigelow also delivers a level of sensitivity that is palpable and frankly surprising for a tale so inherently savage. The strive to get this right is felt in nearly every frame, down to the end title card explaining the need for dramatic license.
Intimate in scope but universal in reach, Detroit shows a shameful part of the American experience, one rooted in white power and black fear, that continues to be perpetuated.
It is not a pleasant film, but it is necessary.
Kidnap
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Let me admit this from the start – I may have liked Kidnap better than I should have. Why? Well, I saw it immediately after The Dark Tower, and it is Citizen Kane compared to that festering pile.
In this film, Haley Berry plays Liam Neeson. It’s her second time in the role, actually.
Back in ’08, Neeson – with help from the pen of Luc Besson – revolutionized film with the (wildly over-appreciated) genre flick Taken. Mid-budget “I have a particular set of skills” thrillers have littered the cinematic landscape since, wreaking righteous vengeance and prolonging the careers of middle aged actors everywhere.
In 2013, Berry made The Call, which was not a bad B-movie thriller and her first turn as Liam Neeson. Kidnap sees the Oscar winner playing a loving mother whose 6-year-old (a very sweet Sage Correa) is nabbed from a busy park. Mom sees the napper shoving her son into a car, she jumps in her minivan and the pursuit begins.
The film amounts to a 90-minute car chase with one unreasonably attractive mom behind the wheel. Several of the action sequences are interesting and flashy (for a film with this level of budget – do not go into this hoping for Fast and the Furious: Minivans).
Writer Knate Lee can’t really justify the lack of cell phone or police presence, but he does what he can. Meanwhile, director Luis Prieto ably assembles car chases and panicked driver close ups, then competently shifts tone for a final act that toes the line between thriller and horror.
There’s nothing exceptional about Kidnap. Not one thing. You’ll forget it existed as quickly as you forgot The Call was ever made. But for a getting-the-phone-bill-paid flick, it’s not too bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Ht8VRPRvU
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Plenty of movie sequels hit theaters every year, and plenty are unnecessary. Too bad this isn’t one of those.
If the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth sounded a dire alarm over ten years ago, Truth to Power conveys how vital the climate change crisis still is, while channeling its most prominent spokesman to remain ever hopeful in the face of gut-wrenching setbacks.
Taking the reins from Davis Guggenheim, co-directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk (producer and director, respectively, of another stirring climate-based doc The Island President) shift the format to one less about filmed lecture and more focused on Al Gore’s daily commitment to the cause he has championed for over two decades.
We still see the charts, the data, and the photographic evidence, all never less than bracing and some frequently stupefying. But this time, we also see how vast the political and bureaucratic roadblocks have grown, as Gore laments the “democracy crisis” now looming large over any progress toward climate change reversal.
Are Cohen and Shenk preaching to the choir? Is their shared admiration for Gore constantly evident? Yes on both counts. But the sermon is darned persuasive and the man has earned it.
Gore’s commitment, often appearing both tireless and lonely, might be most evident while under pompous questioning by ardent climate change denier Jim Inhofe. Gore’s exasperated olive branch to Inhofe is both patient and sincere, revealing an eye for the long game he continues to fight.
And yet, even as the rise of Donald Trump threatens every inch of hard-won climate progress, Gore’s meeting with a staunchly conservative mayor shows common ground is still possible.
In what the mayor calls “the reddest city in the reddest county in the entire state of Texas,” they’ve made the switch to renewable energy because it not only makes economic sense, it makes common sense. Imagine that.
Supreme Court decisions have consequences, and while Truth to Power might make you hopeful for another presidential run from Gore, it never lets you forget he’s right where he needs to be.
