Barely cracking the 80-minute mark, “Lights Out” is a terse and tense horror film that relies on familiar tropes -- half-imagined spirits stalking people, especially while they’re trying to sleep -- but does so with verve and some very effective scares.
Watching it, I thought about the fact that we don’t learn too much about the backstories of the characters, especially protagonist Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), a wayward daughter who tries to protect her younger brother, Martin (Gabriel Bateman), from her psychologically unbalanced mother, Sophie (Maria Bello).
We know she’s somewhat defensive and cut off from others, seeing as how she keeps her boyfriend, Bret (Alexander DiPersia), at arm’s length -- even going so far as to deny his boyfriend status after eight months together. She favors Goth clothing and makeup, and decorates her crummy apartment with disturbing drawings and posters.
But really, in a movie like this, do we really need to know her whole life story? Rebecca’s job here is to be relatable, someone who starts out scared and grows stronger, who we can root for when the boogums come calling.
Here that spirit is a skeletal female figure who only appears in darkness. The movie’s signature scare tactic is having the lights go on and off, either by a switch or some other device, with the creature flashing closer each time the lights go off. It’s simple, but quite effective.
Director David F. Sandberg, who adapted this feature from his own short film, and screenwriter Eric Heisserer focus on the scares rather than the psychology. The result is a stripped-down, spare horror tale that is all muscle and little fat.
Bonus features are pretty scant, limited to just a few deleted scenes. It’s hard to believe there was much material to cut out, considering how lean the movie already is. Apparently, sometimes less really is more.
It’s funny how in young adult novels and their movie adaptations, young adults are always the key to saving the world.
In real-life it’s pretty rare for a teen to have a momentous impact on history -- Joan of Arc, King Tut… not many others.
Oh, well. It’s a central conceit of much popular storytelling that the audience sees themselves in the main character -- so why not tailor the character to them?
Here it’s Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie, an unremarkable kid in a normal town when alien invaders swoop in and take over. They do so slowly, in stages, targeting humanity’s technology, environment, etc. in succession. The fifth and final wave is infiltration of human hosts by the invaders’ control.
There’s a lot of similarity to both “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” franchises. The female lead is indoctrinated into a militaristic existence in which young people are expected to fight and die for the cause. And, exhaustingly, there are multiple cute boys wandering into the tale to tempt and/or betray our heroine.
Here they are Ben (Nick Robinson), a classmate Cassie was sweet on, and Evan (Alex Roe), a somewhat mysterious country boy she stumbles upon after all the youngsters are rounded up by the U.S. Army, conveniently leaving her behind.
There follows some gun fights, hand-to-hand action in which our formerly mousy protagonist suddenly becomes a badass, etc. There are a couple of large plot twists, which will only seem surprising if you haven’t been paying any attention.
“The 5th Wave” isn’t bad, but after a dozen or more of these YA movies it’s hard to enjoy something when you see everything coming.
Bonus features are pretty good. The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track with Moretz and director J Blakeson and two making-of featurettes: “Inside The 5th Wave” and “Sammy on the Set.”
Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add three more featurettes -- “The 5th Wave Survival Guide,” “Training Squad 53” and “Creating a New World” -- plus deleted scenes and a gag reel.
I think we all know the essential ingredients of these science fiction young adult book-to-film adaptions by now:
Post-apocalyptic dystopia
Female protagonist who's "not special" but is really the Chosen One
Teen (and younger) recruits inducted into military-style training and combat
Smirking adult overlord pulling the strings
Supernatural abilities/challenges
An inordinate number of dreamy boys wandering about
"The 5th Wave" isn't the worst of these, nor is it the best, but it suffers from following three "Hunger Games," and two "Divergent" movies. Not to mention five "Twilight" flicks, which eschew the apocalypse but tick everything else off the list. Or two "Maze Runner" movies, which simply swap out the gender of the main character.
It's dragged down by a glum sameness, and the sense that it's a cut-rate knockoff.
Genre pictures tend to be formulaic, but these YA sci-fi movies literally seem to be built on an identical formula from which filmmakers seem afraid to diverge.
In all of them, though, what's constant is that young people hold the key to the world's salvation. And that love will find a way to insert itself into the proceedings, whether it belongs there or not.
Chloë Grace Moretz, one of the most interesting film actors under age 20, plays Cassie Sullivan, a self-described ordinary kid in an ordinary town. Then a giant alien spaceship appears over the Earth one day, uncommunicative and mysterious. The intentions of "The Others" -- really original name, idn't it? -- are soon made clear by a series of attacks aimed at wiping out humans while preserving the planet.
First an electromagnetic pulse takes out all our tech. Then rising waters flood the cities near the coast or major lakes. Then a super version of avian flu. And so on, until not that many people are left, struggling to survive -- and competing to do it. A shocking opening scene shows Cassie blowing away a wounded guy.
"How do you rid the world of humans? First your rid the humans of their humanity," she narrates.
The fifth and final wave is the most devious: the Others, which are described as bug-like parasites, infiltrate human hosts and send them out to kill remaining survivors.
Luckily, the Army has finally gotten its act together and come to the rescue. They arrive at the refugee camp where Cassie and her family are living, with promises of shelter, protection and training for the final fight to come. It seems kids make the best recruits because it's easier to detect whether they've been infected than adults.
Maria Bellow plays a hardcase sergeant with a deathly pallor who shows the youngsters the ugly face of the enemy. The commander is the stern but charismatic Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber). Cassie herself gets left behind during the roundup, but her young brother Sammy (Zackary Arthur) is taken. She's determined to be reunited with him but there are... setbacks.
Nick Robinson plays Ben Parish, who was Cassie's big crush back in high school before the Others came. Now he's selected as squadron leader, though he butts heads with headstrong emo ragegirl Ringer (Maika Monroe).
Meanwhile, Cassie is wounded and nursed back to health by Evan Walker (Alex Roe), whose dimples blow away even Ben's. He's living in the woods by himself, but has some secrets for Cassie to discover.
There's a big twist about two-thirds of the way through the film, which I guessed pretty early in the going, and you probably will, too. Also a somewhat smaller twist... which is also telegraphed in a major way.
Director J Blakeson -- that's sic; he's too cool for punctuation, apparently -- and a trio of screenwriters keep things moving at a brisk pace, and manage to present reasonably distinct characters. Moretz is the strong point, able to reflects aspects of vulnerability and determination without seeming like a two-dimensional movie construct.
The kissy stuff is just death, though, interrupting the plot just as it's getting into third gear.
I haven't read the novel by Rick Yancey upon which it was based, but it's no surprise that it is a trilogy like its YA sci-fi brethren. So that means if you're looking for a satisfying conclusion to this story, we're just getting rolling here.
Assuming, that is, "The 5th Wave" does well enough to recoup its $38 million budget -- about half that of the first "Hunger Games" and "Divergent" movies -- and post a reasonable profit. Which isn't a sure thing: just in the past three years cinematic adaptations of "Mortal Instruments," "The Host" and "The Giver" all had modest-to-weak debuts that doomed the chance of sequels.
Based on this movie, I'd put the chances of a 6th wave at 50/50 at best.
"McFarland, USA” is about as formulaic as movie can be. But despite the fact that every single step of the plot seems preordained, it’s a well-made film with some genuinely moving moments. This falls firmly into the “inspiring sports drama” category, with Kevin Costner playing a coach who takes a ragtag bunch of misfits and turns them into a championship cross-country team.
It follows the “Hoosiers” template pretty closely, with the coach being a down-on-his luck type whose past transgressions have banished him to the remotest outpost to ply his trade. There’s a Jimmy Chitwood type, the gifted standout who has to be wrangled into joining/not quitting the team. And the one kid who has a lot of heart but not much talent, and the lippy student who comes to respect the coach, and so on.
The twist is that it takes place in a dreadfully poor California town made up almost entirely of Mexican-Americans who toil in the fields as pickers. These boys get up at 4:15 in the morning to go pick vegetables for a few hours, go to school, and then pick some more. Everyone they know is a picker, they assume they will be too, and thus a high school diploma is the only thing that’s ever been demanded of them.
Winning? It’s a foreign concept.
Costner plays the new football coach, Jim White -- and boy, does he get ridiculed for that name because, y’know, he’s white! The kids dub him “Blanco” and he soon loses his football job to a rival. But White notices that these kids who work in the sun all day can run fast and long, and pitches the idea of a cross-country team.
At first the boys deride cross-country as a sport for rich white schools, but eventually they come around because, of course, otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie. Niki Caro directed from an original screenplay-by-committee (Christopher Cleveland, Bettina Gilois and Grant Thompson are credited) based on a true story.
Carlos Pratts is solid as Thomas, the best runner who has trouble at home from an abusive father who thinks sports are a waste of time. Maria Bello plays Mrs. White, in a conventional sort of role in which she rides her husband for not spending more time with his family. And Morgan Saylor plays their teen daughter, Julie, who struggles to adapt to her new circumstances.
The movie is as much about the White clan assimilating into a community in which they are the outsiders as it is about sports. At first Coach White is dismissive of the school and his prospects of finding success there, and xenophobic about the young men in bandanas and low-riders whom he assumes to be gangbangers. He’s desperate to get out, but eventually settles into the rhythms of the neighborhood. Costner is his usual steady, assuring self.
In a sense, this movie has much in common with another famous Costner film about a representative of white mainstream society getting lost in a foreign culture and discovering he belongs there -- “Dances With Corredors,” perhaps?
“McFarland, USA” won’t win any points for originality. But it’s got comfortable, naturalistic performances and a few stirring moments to tickle your tear ducts.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the heads of a company would be ashamed to show their faces if it performed so poorly they were forced to let workers go. CEOs were well paid, but did not earn 700 times his or her average employee. When times were lean, sacrifices were shared around -- as were the fruits when money rolled in.
Now, companies still making a decent profit lay off 30-year employees to jigger the stock price a little bit higher. The top dogs demand and receive bonuses that could've paid the salaries of hundreds of people let go. Executives decorate their offices in mahogany and Degas paintings, while working stiffs watch as their houses are foreclosed.
"The Company Men" is about the big and the little guys. It's a searing portrait of a corporate culture utterly lacking in human values and the people who are rolled over by it. It's an effective drama, even if writer/director John Wells is occasionally a bit heavy-handed with his us-versus-them shtick.
But in these dark times a lot of people who have lost jobs will see this movie, and recognize those feelings of resentfulness, anger and -- most excruciatingly -- sudden anonymity.
"You know the worst part? The world didn't stop," one canned veteran wails. "My life ended and nobody noticed."
Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is a rising star, the regional sales director for GTX, a former shipbuilding company that has diversified into a behemoth. He is 37 years old, makes $160,000 a year, drives a Porsche, has the prototypical mini-mansion in the Boston suburbs and a wife and two kids.
Bobby thought he'd be safe from the latest round of cuts, after having been given the personal assurance of a patron high up in the company. But he gets pink-slipped, and the scene where he carries his belongings to the parking lot, and sees a dozen others holding the same cardboard boxes, is a punch in the gut.
At first, Bobby is in denial about his situation. He thinks he'll have another job lined up long before his severance runs out. He insists on paying exorbitant golf club fees and dry cleaning bills while the mortgage teeters because, as he tells his wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt), "I need to look successful."
But the hiring market is a bleak slog of unreturned phone calls, long waits in waiting rooms, and interviewers who don't even bother to stop eating while they talk to you.
"The Company Men" is sprinkled with a raft of strong supporting performances. Tommy Lee Jones give an Oscar-worthy turn as Gene McClary, who helped built GTX from the ground up but has become disillusioned by its dehumanizing slide. His partner, James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), insists they're not responsible for employees losing their jobs because the market demands it.
"We work for the stockholders now!" he thunders.
Chris Cooper has an almost feral energy as an upper-level exec who clawed his way up from the factory floor, only to face professional extinction. A job placement consultant coldly advises him to dye his gray hair and omit any mention of his Vietnam military service from his resume.
Maria Bello plays the seemingly heartless human resources chief, who main job seems to be telling people theirs no longer exists.
I especially liked Kevin Costner as Jack, Bobby's brother-in-law. A blue-collar contractor who used to needle Bobby about assisting in the corporate migration of jobs overseas, it's the sort of small, un-showy role that forms the connective tissue of movies like this, and which stars usually take a pass on.
Will people be too depressed this winter to go see a movie that depicts what a soul-crushing affair it is to lose your job? If a solid, worthy film like "The Company Men" fails to get hired by audiences, we're all doomed.
"Grown Ups," the new Adam Sandler comedy, is about what you'd expect. A quintet of childhood buds reunite 30 years later to recapture a bit of their glory days, in between hassling with their wives and kids and razzing each other mercilessly.
There's potty humor, there's sexual put-downs galore, there's inappropriate ogling of each other's daughters and/or wives. The humor is crude and broad, the hearty laughs few and far between.
In other words, it's another thingamajig stamped out by the Sandler assembly line.
You'll note I call it an Adam Sandler movie, despite the presence of co-stars Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider -- all "Saturday Night Live" alums like Sandler, except James, who had his own lowbrow TV show. Sandler wrote the screenplay (with Fred Wolf) and brought along his pet director, Dennis Dugan.
It's not very funny, but as the mob tough in "The Untouchables" said about their illicit booze, it's not supposed to be good, it's supposed to be bought. Sandler has a built-in audience that will show up for anything he does. Occasionally, something decent ("50 First Dates") slips past the machine.
Sandler plays Lenny, the leader of the 1978 summer basketball champs who've gone their separate ways. When their old coach dies, it brings them back for his funeral and a weekend at the old lake house.
Lenny's a Hollywood super-agent, married to Roxanne (Salma Hayek Pinault), a famous fashion designer. Their two sons are borderline brats addicted to their Playstation and ordering the nanny around.
The rest of the crew: Eric (James) is the funny fat guy, married and with a couple of kids of his own. Rock plays Kurt, a house-husband who receives a daily tag-team henpecking from his wife (Maya Rudolph) and her mother. Marcus (Spade) is the boozy swingin' single dude. And Rob (Schneider) has gotten all New Age-y and uptight.
They're stale, unimaginative parts, but let's face it: Spade, Schneider and Rock's film careers have gone ice cold lately. It's almost sad how they always run home for supporting roles in Sandler's lame flicks.
(If that's not bad enough, fellow SNLers Colin Quinn and Tim Meadow are trotted out for walk-ons in the obligatory rematch of the big game. Meadows' part is so small, I actually felt sorry for him.)
I found a handful of chuckles here and there. I liked Maya Rudolph, very pregnant, doing a little booty-and-belly dance and chanting, "Baby got front!" And there's some doofy slapstick scattered about.
But mostly the jokes are one-note, or quickly grow tiresome with repetition. Some examples:
Rob's wife (Joyce Van Patten) is much older than him, and their constant sexual fervor for each other grosses out the rest of the gang. It's funny because she's old!
Eric tries to water ski, but the boat can't budge his heft. It's funny because he's fat!
Rob's giving his (old!) wife a heated-rock massage, and burns his hands on one that stayed in the steamer too long. Then he drops it on her back and she screams. It's funny because it's hot!
Eric's improbably gorgeous wife (Maria Bello, slumming) still breast-feeds their son, even though he's four years old. It's funny because it's boobies!
I could go on, but let's save each other the trouble. We both know "Growns Ups" is the very definition of a critic-proof movie. But I'll bet the $9 you're thinking about plunking down for this moronic flick that there's something better playing at the cinema.
