REVIEW: “Lift” (2024)

January 22, 2024 by Keith Garlington

Kevin Hart’s lucrative partnership with Netflix seems to be working out pretty well for both the actor/comedian and the streaming service. Their latest collaboration is “Lift”, a heist comedy from director F. Gary Gray. This is Gray’s first film since 2019’s abysmal “Men in Black: International” and the results are certainly better. Yet there are a number of issues that weigh this movie down, none more than its utter lack of originality.

“Lift” feels familiar from its very first scene. And the more you watch the more you realize that the biggest heist of all is in the countless ideas that Hart and company swipe from much better movies. An equally noticeable issue is Hart himself. It’s not because of anything the actor is doing or not doing. He just seems miscast and terribly out of place. Buying into him as a suave and sophisticated professional thief ends up being too much to ask.

In “Lift” Hart plays a renowned thief named Cyrus Whitaker who leads a crack crew of fellow cons, each (of course) with their own specialty. There’s Denton (Vincent D’Onofrio), a master of disguise; Camila (Úrsula Corberó), the team’s pilot; Magnus (Billy Magnussen), the safecracker; Mi-Sun (Kim Yoon-ji), the hacker; and Luke (Viveik Kalra), the engineer. “We rescue works of art from undeserving owners,” Cyrus explains with an air of nobility (we learn he then sells them for huge profit on the black market so I’m not sure how noble that is).

Hot on their trail is Interpol Agent Abby Gladwell (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). She and her team have spent over a year tracking Cyrus and monitoring his activities. But all of her work is thrown aside when her boss, Commander Huxley (Sam Worthington) wants to make a deal with Cyrus. Huxley wants Cyrus and his team to swipe $500 million in gold from an international terrorist named Lars Jorgenson (Jean Reno). Jorgenson is moving the gold from London to Zurich to fund a huge strike on the world’s utilities.

At first Cyrus wants no part of it. But he accepts when offered full immunity for his team. Huxley assigns a reluctant Abby to accompany them. That’s made more awkward by some history she and Cyrus share. It seems they once had a romantic week in Paris together, concealing their true identities from each other. It’s a half-baked and utterly sparkless attempt at adding a romantic angle to the story. As with so many other things in “Lift”, it doesn’t work.

Gray leans on a number of heist movie tropes. There’s the gratuitous globetrotting to places like Venice, Brussels, Northern Ireland, and Tuscany just to name of few. There’s the big planning stage where the team puts together the heist, defying odds and doing what has “never been done before”. And of course there’s the heist itself, in this case an utterly preposterous mid-air job that will challenge even the most lenient moviegoers when it comes to plausibility.

It’s clear that a decent amount of money was put into “Lift”. Despite a few instances of wonky CGI, the movie looks pretty good. But the story is a stripped down reheat of the heist movie formula. The film has nothing of its own to offer – it simply follows a blueprint. What little humor we get doesn’t land, the heist isn’t thrilling, and the camaraderie between characters doesn’t feel organic. Add a boring villain, head-scratching holes in the story, and a general lack of excitement to the list of issues that make “Lift” little more than a forgettable time-passer. “Lift” is now streaming on Netflix.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

REVIEW: “Founders Day” (2024)

January 20, 2024 by Keith Garlington

Director, co-writer, co-producer, co-editor, and co-star Erik Bloomquist is the man behind “Founders Day”, a new feature that can best be described as a political slasher film that plays a little like a whodunit but is at its best as a black comedy. It doesn’t all come together particularly well, but there are some good ideas scattered throughout and fans should find enough to carry them over till the next slasher comes down the pipe.

Bloomquist sets his film in the small town of Fairwood that’s in the middle of a heated mayoral race between incumbent Blair Gladwell (Amy Hargreaves) and challenger Harold Faulkner (Jayce Bartok). The two candidates seem to be lightly modeled after Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (at least at first) which lends to some pretty good early laughs. Both are glaringly obvious phonies who have put winning above everything else including their community and their families.

But Fairwood is rocked after Faulkner’s daughter, Melissa (Olivia Nikkanen) is brutally killed and thrown off a bridge by a preposterous looking killer who wears a ghoulish red mask, a white founding father’s wig, and a long black judge’s robe. The murderer’s weapon of choice – a wooden gavel with a protracting blade in the handle. From there (as you can probably guess), the killer sets out on their own blood-soaked campaign of carnage, terrorizing the little town and sending the people into a panic.

Among the things Bloomquist and his co-writing brother Carson do well is create a diverting assortment of characters. Inevitably some are just fodder for the killer to beat or butcher. Others are there to fill our pool of suspects. No one has much depth, but they all help convey the feeling of a small town community. Aside from the politicians, there’s also the police commissioner, a loyal deputy, an ambitious campaign manager, the local bartender, a beloved high school teacher, and a loving father and daughter (who seem to be the only Black people in town).

And of course there are the fresh batch of teenagers ready to be carved. Among them are the kids of the two candidates, both of whom are forced to take back seats to their parents’ ambitions. There is the Faulkner’s other kid, Adam (Devin Druid) and there is Mayor Gladwell’s daughter Lilly (Emilia McCarthy). Then there’s Allison (Naomi Grace) who was with Melissa the night she was murdered and the lone eyewitness. As for the other teens, there is a psycho couple (Dylan Slade and Kate Edmonds) and the town bad boy (Tyler James White).

Along the way we get some utterly disposable teen drama that never registers and feels more like filler than anything else. But it doesn’t take the Bloomquists long to crank up the kills. They start rather tame but get gnarlier as the story progresses. As for the story, it’s pretty outrageous and culminates in an ending that’s too hard to swallow to have the effect it wants. Yet admittedly it’s kinda fun keeping up with the characters as Bloomquist moves them around from suspect to victim.

While it’s certainly a horror movie, “Founders Day” isn’t the slightest bit scary. But as fans of the slasher sub-genre know, it not necessarily the frights that people enjoy about them. It’s the gruesome kills, guessing the killer’s identity, seeing who survives, etc. “Founders Day” has all of that plus some unexpectedly funny touches of its own. But that’s as close as the movie gets to originality. If you’re looking for anything remotely fresh you won’t find it here. Otherwise, there’s enough bloody fun to satisfy the genre faithful.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

REVIEW: “I.S.S.” (2024)

January 19, 2024 by Keith Garlington

Hats off to the creative minds behind “I.S.S.”, the smart and inventive science fiction thriller set aboard the low orbit International Space Station. Screenwriter Nick Shafir taps into real-world fears and tensions with his taut and suspenseful nailbiter. He offers up a frightening, paranoia-soaked vision of a not too distant future where mankind comes face to face with its own self-destructive nature. And he does so through a clever premise that unfolds within a most compelling setting.

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite brings Shafir’s story to the screen with a firm control and a keen sense for tension building. She has a good grasp of the kind of movie she’s making, keeping a tight focus, skillfully managing budget constraints, and keenly utilizing the various facets of filmmaking (visual, sound, and performance more specifically). The result is a gripping sci-fi tale that resonates a lot more in our current day than we’d probably like to admit.

Following the Cold War the International Space Station (ISS) was constructed in a collaborative effort towards unity and progress between the United States and Russia. Primarily a research facility, the ISS has been instrumental in noteworthy advancements in technology, medicine, and the study of space. Pretty much all of that finds its way into the film’s story.

It opens with two United States astronauts, Kira Foster (Oscar winner Ariana DeBose) and Christian Campbell (John Gallagher Jr.) arriving at the ISS. They’re greeted by fellow American Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina) and three Russian cosmonauts, Weronika Vetrov (Masha Mashkova) and brothers Nicholai Pulov (Costa Ronin) and Alexey Pulov (Pilou Asbæk). This is Kira’s first time aboard the space station so she immediately starts learning the crew, getting acclimated to her new surroundings, and adjusting to life at zero gravity.

It doesn’t take long for Kira to take note of the camaraderie between the Americans and Russians. They’re a proudly unified group, never discussing the politics or the conflicts from the world below. But everything changes after they witness a series of massive explosions on the earth’s surface. Each group immediately attempts to contact their governments but to no avail. So as the earth burns down below, the crew aboard the ISS are left in the dark.

But only a short time later the Americans receive a chilling secret message from the surface. Their orders – take control of the ISS by any means necessary and no matter the cost. Surely the Russians received a similar message, right? From there Cowperthwaite steadily yet smartly ratchets up the suspense as crew members break off into factions, torn between their loyalties to each other and their calls to duty. Suspicions lead to distrust; apprehension gives way to panic.

Shafir’s script supplies an ample amount of twists and turns, leaning more on psychological tension than action-packed, effects-driven thrills. But that’s not to say the movie doesn’t look great. The stellar cinematography from Nick Remy Matthews creates a striking sense of claustrophobia and confinement within the station while also capturing the enormity of space outside. Meanwhile Anne Nikitin’s score looms ominously in the background adding to the growing dread.

If there’s one place “ISS” falls a little short it’s with the characters. They have very little depth leaving them hard to connect with on anything beyond a surface level. But even with that, they still fit nicely into the story, offering up different personas and perspectives that morph as their situation intensifies. The performances from the six-person cast are superb, especially from DeBose who turns out to be our fresh-eyed surrogate. It’s a strong feature film follow-up for the rising young star.

“I.S.S.” thrives thanks to a clever high concept idea from screenwriter Nick Shafir and fabulous execution by director Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The movie could have easily fizzled without one or the other. But both work in unison to bring us an impressively inspired and thoroughly entertaining genre film that happens to be the first big surprise of this young movie year. Don’t miss it. “I.S.S.” launches in select theaters on January 19th.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

REVIEW: “Sunrise” (2024)

January 18, 2024 by Keith Garlington

I’m an unapologetic Guy Pearce fan. I make no bones about it. I stand by my long held assertion that he is one of the more underrated and undervalued actors working today. Throughout his nearly 35-year career, Pearce has made a name for himself playing an assortment of heroes, drifters, historical figures, and police detectives, just to name a few. And less you forget, he can also play a really good villain.

He gets to go full antagonist in the new film “Sunrise” from director Andrew Baird. While Pearce does a good job portraying a character that you’ll find easy to detest, the movie as a whole isn’t nearly as successful. “Sunrise” is a slow and messy hodgepodge of interesting ideas that never gel into anything worthwhile. The script (penned by Ronan Blaney) has enough ingredients for three or four different movies. But corralling them into one proves to be too much.

The film opens with some title cards telling us about a “sacred” forest demon in the Pacific Northwest. It’s said to have the power to grant eternal life but it be feeds on the blood of its victims to maintain that power. We’re told that animal sacrifices to the demon date back hundreds of years to the First Nations, but over time the sacrifices offered became bigger. As the mythology grew the demon became known as Red Coat.

Now that sounds like an ominous setup to a potentially creepy supernatural horror movie. Well, not exactly. As it turns out, reading those title cards is the scariest thing in “Sunrise” and the ‘demon’ is so poorly developed that it feels like an afterthought. Instead the movie spends its time hopping between genres. Sometimes it plays like a rural crime thriller. Other times it wants to be a thoughtful family drama. One minute you think you’re watching a vampire movie. The next minute you’re getting a heavy-handed critique of the American dream. If only they came together in an entertaining way.

In a small blue-collar town nestled in the mountains, a vile, greedy and unashamedly racist local business named Joe Reynolds (Pearce) has his eye on a patch of land owned by an Asian American man named Loi. In a fit of anger, Reynolds murders Loi for refusing to sign over the land rights. He then has his goons dispose of the body, leaving Loi’s wife Yan (Crystal Yu), son Edward (William Gao), and young daughter Emily (Riley Chung) not knowing what happened to their husband and father.

Three months pass and Reynolds is still pressuring the family to leave town. His numerous threats quickly evolve into violence which Yan stands up to the best she can. But then out of the blue a sickly man named Fallon (Alex Pettyfer) stumbles onto their property in the dead of night, barely able to walk and with labored breathing. Yan decides to take him in and nurse him back to health without much thought at all. Fallon is quiet but seems appreciative. He even runs off one of Reynolds’ goons who tries to stir up trouble.

But there is something weird about Fallon. He’s not into personal hygiene. He actively dodges the sunlight. Oh, and there’s the whole “I need blood” request. All signs seem to indicate that he is a (gulp) vampire. But as with so many other things, the movie doesn’t do much with it. Its attention is quickly diverted elsewhere.

Baird tries to add some backstory and depth through constant flashbacks to ten years earlier. Unfortunately these scenes do more to convolute things that offer any compelling layers or revelation. It’s a shame because there are some good pieces here including the ruggedly immersive setting and a seemingly able cast. But the overstuffed story proves to be too much to manage. And despite its ambition, we’re left with big ideas that never get the attention they need. “Sunrise” opens January 19th in select theaters and on VOD.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

First Glance: “Spaceman”

January 17, 2024 by Keith Garlington

Now here’s an unusual pairing – cerebral space drama with Adam Sandler. Those aren’t things I ever expected to say in the same breath. Yet that looks to be what we’re getting in “Spaceman”, the upcoming film streaming exclusively on Netflix. The film is based on the 2017 novel “Spaceman of Bohemia” by Jaroslav Kalfař. This good-looking adaptation was written by Colby Day and directed by Johan Renck, the Emmy winner for the acclaimed miniseries “Chernobyl”.

The first trailer is interesting to say the least. Sandler plays an astronaut named Jakub Procházka who is sent on a solo mission to the edge of the solar system. But back home his life has been crumbling. The most exciting piece is Carey Mulligan playing Jakub’s pregnant wife, Lenka who provides glimpses into their troubled marriage. Struggling to cope on his own, Jakub finds help where he least expects it – from a strange creature (voiced by Paul Dano) lurking in his ship. I have no idea how Sandler is going to do in this, but I love the premise and I’m excited to see if he can pull it off.

“Spaceman” streams March 1st on Netflix. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

REVIEW: “T.I.M.” (2024)

January 17, 2024 by Keith Garlington

There have been countless variations of the A.I./Robot going haywire idea. Just last year we got everything from “M3GAN” to “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”. Now you can add the new film “T.I.M.”, a science fiction thriller that actually dropped last year in the UK but is now getting its release here in the States.

“T.I.M.”, the feature film debut for director Spencer Brown, fits more in the “M3GAN” mold than “Mission: Impossible”. Rather than an AI-powered doll for little girls, T.I.M. (which stands for Technologically Integrated Manservant) is a butler, housekeeper, cook, and personal assistant all wrapped into one creepy synthetic body (he’s eerily played by Eamon Farren). As for the story, it drifts into some pretty familiar waters. Yet Brown does a good job tapping into the already existing unease about artificial intelligence.

The film gets a boost from its cast, namely a really good Georgina Campbell. She plays Abi, a prosthetics engineer recently promoted to a department head position at the tech company Integrate Robotics. As part of her promotion she and her husband Paul (Mark Rowley) are provided brand-new fully integrated, state of the art ‘smart home’ complete with its own “T.I.M” unit. T.I.M. isn’t available to buy yet, but her company’s ambitious CEO (Nathaniel Parker) is determined to be first to market. So what better way to test their signature product than to have each department head give it a whirl?

T.I.M. immediately connects with the home’s network and even requests Abi and Paul’s passwords to help manage their various accounts. Paul is (understandably) hesitant while Abi quickly consents. “I have nothing to hide”, she asserts, hinting at a tension in their relationship. It turns out that Paul has a track record of infidelity and mending their marriage was a big reason she took the promotion. Perhaps a new setting will them get a fresh start.

But as you can probably guess, things don’t go precisely as planned. Over time T.I.M becomes strangely infatuated with Abi. Paul sees it which makes him more and more uncomfortable. The engineer inside of Abi is quick to dismiss it. “He’s just a computer”, she reasons. From there the film pretty much stays true to formula, following a track laid by similar movies before it. But to Brown’s credit he has a lot of fun with the premise. He develops a growing sense of unease yet adds dashes of dark humor that keep it from taking itself too seriously.

“T.I.M.” is part cautionary tale that taps into the current-day fears of many people who are still trying to fully understand what it is that frightens them. The story is a bit of a slow-burn, but it holds your attention despite not being the slightest bit scary and not delivering a single surprise. But these movies are resonating right now and Brown shows us why. He shapes an undoubtedly silly premise into something fun, entertaining, and weirdly timely.