San Diego Reader February 9, 2017 63


tentacled blob named Creech, a flubbery, oil metabolising creature that attaches itself to the Trippmobile’s undercarriage. Originally slated for a May 2015 opening, the release date was regularly pushed back to accommodate post-production work. When Viacom took a hit in its third-quarter earnings for 2016, Monster Trucks took the blame. Too bad, because audiences could do (and have done) a lot worse than this genial throwback to a time when Kurt Russell was Disney’s #1 living, breathing attraction. With Jane Levy as Tripp’s saucer-eyed love interest. 2017. — S.M. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Moonlight — Best suited for those who found brilliance in Beasts of the Southern Wild, here comes a hackneyed tale of a young black man’s passage from childhood to maturity in a tough Miami neighborhood. Bullying, poverty, closeted sexuality, drug abuse, and racial strife combine to form an overworked agenda of cultural woes that’s more concerned with rubber-stamping issues than telling an original story. Suffocating close-ups, rocking-chair camerawork, and a few unnecessary 360-degree pans lifted from the Christopher Nolan playbook do little to elevate the visual storytelling, while the script — based on the life of playwright Tarell McCraney — is content to churn out one cliché after another. The three actors who share the lead are all first-rate, while Mahershala Ali actually manages to breathe new life into the character of a good-natured drug dealer. That’s more than can be said of Naomie Harris’s standard-issue hysterical crack mom. Here’s just what liberal-minded, visually challenged Academy voters need to make up for last year’s lily-white ceremony. I predict Oscars all around. Written and


directed by Barry Jenkins. 2016. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Patriots Day — Having lionized American Navy SEALS in Lone Survivor and American working men in Deepwater Horizon, director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg turn the spotlight on American police officers, taking the Boston Marathon bombing and the massive manhunt that followed as their occasion. It’s a gutsy move, what with that case’s suppression of Miranda rights, its request for citizens to “shelter in place” while police combed the region for the Tsarnaev brothers, etc. But the film seems comfortable with all that, and also with removing the pesky question of motive from its prime movers: it’s enough that they’re bad guys who did a very bad thing and must be brought to justice. That approach might have worked in a super-sized police procedural (and it is super-sized, starting with the recreation of the crime scene inside an enormous warehouse), but Berg has something more in mind. Something that includes an out- of-nowhere speech from Wahlberg about fighting the devil with love, because “it’s the one weapon he can’t touch.” That also includes testimonials from the real-life participants about being “ambassadors for peace” instead of victims of violence. That takes care to cast a wide net over a broad range of characters in its attempt to capture the bombing’s enormous impact. Given all that, it’s a shame that such a key dramatic element slipped through. These days, even Bond villains get a backstory. 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Resident Evil: The Final Chapter — An airborne anti-virus is set to be unleashed by the Umbrella Corporation and it’s up to Alice (Milla Jovovich) to pay a sixth and final visit to Raccoon City and save the day. Paul W.S. Anderson caps his outrageously successful video game franchise with a non-stop torrent of


action, expertly edited to take the shake out of the hand-held camerawork. Human beings back from the dead and ready to dine on flesh is horror enough; no need for the surplus of CG killer shrews. And the series’ resolution, such as it is, was pretty much telegraphed halfway through Part 3. Normally, I’d express a sadness at seeing it all end, but the last shot leads one to believe that Alice could always take up residence in a new city. And they saved the funniest line in the franchise for last. A beefy goon, suddenly taken by Alice’s ass-kicking excellence, turns and delivers the backhanded bouquet, “So I was wrong about you. Blow me.” 2017. — S.M. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Silence — Martin Scorsese’s over- inflated cross-cultural Catholic history drama focuses on a pair of fledgling 17th-century Jesuit priests, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver), who embark on a mission to Japan, hoping to rescue their absentee mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Apparently, at 74, and with almost 60 features, shorts, and documentaries behind Him, Scorsese still feels the need to impress the Academy war horses, of which he is now a silver-haired stallion. He slowly stacks His final chips of reverence, demanding that audiences look upon Him as a serious artist. What does He think we’ve been doing for the past four decades? It’s not just the source material that proves problematic, it’s Scorsese’s lumbering presentation that accounts for the instant disconnect. All of the director’s protagonists – Travis Bickle, Jake LaMotta, Ace Rothstein – are not-so thinly veiled Christ figures, yet the closer He gets to Him, the more problematically pious things become. 2016. — S.M. ★ (ARCLIGHT LA


JOLLA; REGAL ESCONDIDO)


Sleepless — Working undercover to crack a dope ring, a Vegas cop (Jamie Foxx) unknowingly endangers the life of his 16-year-old son (Octavius J. Johnson) in this subtitle-free Americanization of the 2011 French thriller Sleepless Night. It starts menacingly enough, with ace scumbag-magnet Scoot McNairy dangling a double-dealing relative over home plate before setting the pitching machine on high and aiming it in his direction. Alas, Andrea Berloff ’s screenplay has more holes than a trawlerman’s net, none bigger than a gut-cut Foxx nursing a gaping wound for two-thirds of the picture while still managing to dodge bullets and roll with the punches. (To camouflage the excess bleeding, Foxx


submits to more costume changes than Cher in concert.) A game-changing third act reveal was telegraphed early on, but no one could have predicted the ludicrous source of the day-saving final shot. Michelle Monaghan deserves better than a quintessential internal affairs officer, but audiences looking for unintentional laughs will strike gold. 2017. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


Split — or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Dissociative Identity Disorder. Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan reminds everyone why folks used to associate him with Alfred Hitchcock, swiping a mental condition from Psycho, a sympathetic shrink from Spellbound, and a bold theorist from Rope. (Oh, and there’s some good use of the


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camera as eye, both looking and looked into.) But he’s also happy to borrow from Thomas Harris’s mother-abused, often-used Tooth Fairy (Manhunter, Red Dragon,, TV’s Hannibal) and his talk of Glorious Becoming. (Shyamalan juggles all these borrowed balls with grace and skill; it’s only when he adds in some of his own that he falters. Viz. the big-idea talk of transcendence through suffering.) As in the Fairy’s case, the Becoming of James McAvoy’s superman requires sacrifice: in this case, three pretty teens in gradually increasing states of undress. But one of these girls — Anya Taylor- Joy’s Casey — is not like the others: for one thing, she listened when her father taught her about deer hunting, and that listening begets a watchfulness that proves most useful. For another, she… well, there’s no sense spoiling the surprise Shyamalan so carefully reveals. It’s all quite engrossing (thanks in no small part to the committed performances) until the end, when what played like a queasily fun (read: overheated and at least a little exploitative) psychological thriller record-scratches its way into becoming something else, something rather more franchisey — and, once the initial whoa fades, rather less interesting. 2017. — M.L. ★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)


They Call Us Monsters — Only in Los Angeles are prisoners afforded the luxury of a two-picture deal. Inmates Antonio, Jared, and Juan sign up for a 20-week screenwriting course and wind up not only writing a short, but starring in their own documentary feature! Ben Lear’s documentary never once questions the guilt of its subjects, three teens facing life sentences, all of whom were between the ages of 14 and 17 when their violent crimes were committed. Nor do I have any disagreement with the film’s ultimate conclusion that minors tried as adults deserve a chance to parole after 15 years. The concept is so sound that in 2014, around the time Lear — son of premier sitcom merchant Norman — began work on the documentary, California Senate Bill 260 became law. But Lear is guilty of stacking the deck in favor of his trio of killers and/or attempted murderers. Friends and family profess on-screen loyalty; meanwhile, Lear is not particularly concerned with putting a human face on the victims. Only one, a paralyzed young woman, is given ample screen time, and the pullback to reveal the wheelchair necessitated by a drive-by shooting will stay in the memory long after the boys’ 15 minutes of combined fame (not to run concurrently) has faded. 2016 — S.M. ● (DIGITAL GYM)


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