THE WEEKEND WARRIOR 1/24/25 Reviews and Repertory Round-Up
FLIGHT RISK, PRESENCE, THE COLORS WITHIN, INTO THE DEEP, INHERITANCE
I’ve already reviewed Angel Studios’ Brave the Dark, and I’m not sure I have a ton to say about Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, and also, Flight Risk reviews are embargoed until Thursday night, so I’m not exactly sure what you’ll get this week. I guess it depends on what I get to as far as screeners, but at least those who live in the New York area will also have the repertory round-up below.
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A quick bit of housekeeping is that GKIDS will only be releasing THE COLORS WITHIN into roughly 525 theaters, so that’s probably going to open outside the top 10 with $1 million or so.
Onto some reviews…
FLIGHT RISK (Lionsgate)
Mark Wahlberg stars in this high-flying thriller directed by Mel Gibson and co-starring Michelle Dockery from Downtown Abbey and Topher Grace from That ‘80s Show. It involves Dockery playing an Air Marshal escorting Grace’s fugitive to trial where he is going state’s evidence on a mobster, while Wahlberg plays a hitman posing as the pilot sent to kill Grace’s character. And if you don’t know that very simple premise/plot element, then you’re one of the lucky few who hasn’t seen this trailer 5,000 times over the past month!
I already wrote about the movie’s box office prospects earlier this week, and reviews for this movie are embargoed until Thursday night, so that’s when the review will appear magically below.
Mini-Review: There’s going to be a lot of super-lazy advance-critiquing of Flight Risk by film critics due to it being released in January, being directed by Mel Gibson, and the fact that anyone who has been to a movie theater in the past six months has seen the trailer so many effin’ times. Some could rightfully go into the movie thinking they already know everything about it before even watching a single frame, and that isn’t necessarily true. It also doesn’t mean that the resulting movie delivers on its high-concept premise and the trailer.
We meet Topher Grace’s Winston, an accountant who has ripped off the mob, as he’s in hiding at a seedy motel in the Alaskan boonies, before he’s found and taken by Michelle Dockery’s US Marshall, Madolyn. She has to bring him to act as a witness at the trial for a mob boss, but that requires taking a shaky prop plane to Anchorage. You probably already know that Mark Wahlberg plays a vicious hitman disguised as the plane’s pilot, leading to the film’s central premise of the three of them trying to survive together on this flight and what happens when Madolyn needs to take out the only person who knows how to fly the plane.
As I noted, this is a movie that so many film critics are going to go into being particularly nitpicky of every single detail. It’s kind of unfair, because it’s not a great movie or even a very good one, but it’s also not even the worst movie coming out this week. It just has a lot of problems, and it’s not nearly as fun or entertaining as it tries to be or thinks it is. (The screening I attended was replete with what I lovingly call “seatfillers” – a captive audience enticed by seeing a free movie complete with free popcorn and drinks – and the screening was mostly SILENT the whole way through.)
Essentially, this is a three-hander with the always-funny Topher Grace (setting aside his miniscule role in Heretic) cracking wise and playing a much larger part in the proceedings than might be expected from the little time he gets in the trailer. Wahlberg is also doing something quite different, possibly even the type of role/performance we’ve grown to love from Nicholas Cage. The two of them paired with Dockery in a very different role for the “Downton Abbey” star is what drives the film that’s mostly set in one location.
The film relies solely on the tension created around whether Wahlberg’s killer might prevail, since he is clearly psychotic and willing to kill in the most gruesome manners, coming close to killing both other characters on the plane a few times. The only other characters for the majority of the movie are those on the phone with Madelyn’s satellite phone, trying to help her understand how the mission was compromised, and a flirtatious pilot helping her figure out how to fly and land the plane safely. Those phone calls constantly take you out of the mood that’s created otherwise.
Flight Risk isn’t Mel Gibson’s showiest or best work as a director for sure, but there really isn’t much to do when the majority of your film takes place in the interiors of an airplane – maybe that was part of the appeal to direct it, other than reteaming with Wahlberg. Unfortunately, they’re working from a fairly weak and obvious first-time screenplay from Jared Rosenberg that relies almost entirely on three of the most superficial characterizations possible with nothing that new or unexpected once the journey begins. (That said, it took me a few minutes into the movie before I suddenly understood the double meaning of that title – again, it’s the kind of thing that get producers and studios on board, but only if the movie delivers on it, which it doesn’t.)
Unlike many critics, I’m not going to throw the entire film under the bus, because there are moments I enjoyed– the rapport between the three actors and the more action-driven moments involving the plane–but any good will the movie garners from its more thrilling moments are countered by an immense amount of sheer stupidity and bad writing throughout.
Rating: 5.5/10
PRESENCE (NEON)
Steven Soderbergh returns to theaters with this high-concept horror movie in which we’re watching the entire film from the perspective of a spirit haunting a house, which in this case is actually Soderbergh doing his own camera work. Sound pretty scary, huh?
In this movie written by David Koepp, Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan play the parents of two teenage kids (Callina Liang, Eddy Maday) who move into a new suburban home that seems to be haunted by ghosts from their past, particularly that of their daughter Chloe. (Note: I saw this movie over a month ago, so I’ll have to review this based on my shaky memory of why it didn’t work for me, since I have ZERO plans to rewatch it.)
Make no mistake that calling Presence “horror” would be a huge disservice to actual horror fans who may be expecting anything even remotely spooky or even supernatural, as most of this is just a family drama of what happens when they move out of a neighborhood where their daughter Chloe lost a friend, whose spirit might have followed her to their new home.
I’m generally okay with Koepp’s screenplays though he sometimes goes a bit too high concept, and that’s definitely true here, as it tries to tackle a more character-driven Paranormal Activity – and to be fair, most of those movies are pretty character-driven already – but there really isn’t much that’s scary or even eerie. I’ve never had much of an opinion on Soderbergh doing his own cinematography for his movies, but in this case, it tends to be more of a distraction since it’s supposed to represent the spirit with nothing but a few slammed doors to show any actual “presence.”
In many ways, the film reminds me of the film Silent House, which was a remake starring Elizabeth Olsen which debuted at Sundance the same year as her breakout, Martha Marcy May Marlene. That at least created the illusion of it all being in one take, whereas Presence doesn’t even offer that illusion other than having a similar way of following the characters.
I was pretty disappointed by how small a role Lucy Liu has in the movie (almost not there at all) compared to Callina Liang’s Chloe, who is dealing with the death of her boyfriend, but who is trying to also have a balanced life as a teenager, while fending off her older brother’s date-rapey friend Ryan (West Mulholland). But Chloe has a protector in the spirit delivering well-timed doors slamming closed and other more active methods of defending its adopted charge.
Like the most boring possible installment of Paranormal Activity ever, Soderbergh’s soft foray back into horror is so disappointing it never really takes off and is little more than a family drama with the slightest supernatural bent.
Rating: 5.5/10
THE COLORS WITHIN (GKids)
Japan’s latest Anime import is the new feature from Naoko Yamada (A Silent Voice: The Movie), following teenage girl Totsuko Higurashi (Sayu Suzukawa), who attends an all-girl Catholic school and has the powers to see or rather feel colors from those she meets. Eventually she runs into Kimi Sakunaga (Akari Takaisha), who had dropped out of her school but is discovered while playing her guitar. The two girls soon meet the ambitious Rui Kagehira (Taisei Kido) and the three of them form a band, which helps to solidify their unlikely friendship.
Being unfamiliar with Ms. Yamada’s work, I went into The Colors Within fairly cold, basically just knowing the central premise involving Totsuko’s powers and the formation of a band, and it took some time for me to really be interested in either aspect of the story. Maybe it’s that it’s clearly geared towards teen and younger girls more than men of my age, but mind you, I was long a fan of the anime by Rumiko Takahashi i.e. Maison Ikkoku and Ranma ½, so it’s not like I’m averse to stories about teen girls, but this one can be a bit much, especially with Totsuko’s over-exhuberance
The movie quickly forgets Totsuko’s “powers” of seeing colors, as they aren’t mentioned for a long time, only to come back rather suddenly towards the end. It’s not something that really brings a lot to the film, despite the title. Oddly, Ms. Yamada’s film also has more religion and faith elements than this week’s Angel Studios release, Brave the Dark, but that’s mainly because Totsuko is dedicated to her Catholicism.
The Colors Within is often a bit too cutesy, and it’s also very girlie, which normally I wouldn’t mind so much, but ultimately, the storytelling is there, and it eventually wins viewers over with the obligatory band performance in the last act, because the songs are pretty cool.
Rating: 7/10
INTO THE DEEP (Saban Films)
Opening in select theaters and available via VOD and digital is this new R-rated thriller from Christian Semsa (Lights Out) starring Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies) and Callum McGowan as newlyweds Cassidy and Gregg Branham, who are in Indonesia for a treasure-hunting sea dive, although Cassidy is still suffering from the childhood trauma of watching her father being eaten by a shark. Their boat, captained by Stuart Townsend, is approached by pirates looking for drugs sunken at the bottom of the sea, and they force Cassidy and the others to dive to retrieve them. More importantly, it returns the great Richard Dreyfuss to familiar territory, even though he never actually goes out to sea or faces any sharks. Either way, this sounded like my kind of jam!
There have been quite a few very bad shark movies in recent years, and I’m not even talking about studio movies like Meg 2: the Trench (which I quite liked) but more The Requin, starring Alicia Silverstone, and last year’s The Last Breath (not to be confused with the movie with a similar title coming out next month). The plot for Into the Deep is close enough to the latter that I went into it slightly worried, not to mention knowing the general quality of Saban Films’ mostly-VOD releases to not be very good. The involvement of pirates forcing tourists to dive and retrieve a large quantity of drugs does add something new, but even that could have gone horribly wrong.
I haven’t seen Taylor-Compton in much besides those Halloween movies, which were bad but not due to her acting. She actually brings more to the character of Cassidy than we might normally get in this sort of VOD release even if her backstory of watching her father killed by a Great White shark is a little obvious. The best moments end up being the ones with Dreyfuss as Cassidy’s oceanographer grandfather, regularly warning Cassidy since she was a girl about the dangers of the ocean. He also has a huge influence on her becoming an oceanographer herself; this is the type of characterization we rarely see in a VOD movie like this. The film’s weakest link from an acting standpoint is Jon Seda as Jordan, the head of the pirates, and even he isn’t that bad.
Many might appreciate the clear stunt-casting of Dreyfuss, because even 50 years later, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws may be the movie he’s forever most associated with, and he brings much gravitas to his role. (There’s even a touching end credit sequence with Dreyfuss advocating about the importance of protecting sharks.)
Semsa is a capable enough filmmaker, although some of the CG sharkwork is a bit sloppy and much of the gore relies on just water being filled with red “blood,” which could have been done with CG as well.
Shockingly, Into the Deep ends up being a better shark movie than it should have been, much of that due to Dreyfuss’ presence, but also because it offers enough twists and surprises from the surplus of other recent shark movies.
Rating: 6.5/10
INHERITANCE (IFC Films)
Filmmaker Neil Burger (The Illusionist, Divergent) returns with this spy-thriller, starring Phoebe Dyvenor from Bridgerton as Maya, a woman who reconnects with her father Sam (Rhys Ifans) at her mother’s funeral, only to discover that he’s a spy, dragging her into the business with a trip to Egypt.
I’m a pretty big fan of Burger–both as a filmmaker and as a person–and I feel the same way about Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, so of course, I was going to watch this one with interest. Sadly, this might be the dullest and most frustrating spy thriller I’ve ever seen for many reasons. The first reason is that most of the film basically follows Dyvenor around as she travels from one country to another, spending a lot of time in airports and at custom checkpoints, basically trying to locate a hard drive while also trying to find her father, who has seemingly been kidnapped for his involvement in various international conspiracies.
Burger co-wrote this screenplay with Olen Steinhauer, author of the book on which the similarly staid spy movie, All the Old Knives, was based. I’m not sure if the two of them worked on that script together or Burger got involved in writing when he decided to direct it, but that screenplay is just so weak and derivative that it almost seems to have been written using AI.
The camerawork is jarring to the point of being annoying, seemingly shot mostly on GoPro or similarly shaky handheld iPhone camerawork. Watching this after watching Presence almost made me want to forgive Soderbergh for his camerawork in that movie.
Having yet to have seen “Bridgerton,” my only opinion of Phoebe Dyvenor as an actor was from Fair Play a few years back, which I found to be a decent drama from seeing it at Sundance two or three years back. That gave her much more to do than this one, where she’s just walking around and talking on the phone. Ifans also gives a surprisingly slipshod performance with a terrible American accent, also disappointing after great, he was in NYAD a few years back and even his funny role in Venom: The Last Dance.
The whole thing builds to a really lazy finale where the title is finally explained in such a matter-of-fact way that it made me want to throw something at my screen that I had to sit through all of this movie just to get to that.
Inheritance is mostly a dud that some people might enjoy, but considering the talent involved, it is indeed the dullest spy thriller I’ve seen in a very, very long time.
Rating: 5/10
Inheritance is playing in select theaters, but if you’re in New York, you can catch a special Friday night screening at the IFC Center with filmmaker Neil Burger doing a QnA afterwards.
ROSE (Cohen Media Group)
Opening in New York (at the Quad Cinema) and L.A. is this French drama, the directorial debut by Aurélie Saada, starring Françoise Fabian (My Night at Maud's) as the 78-year-old title character, a widow who decides to live her fullest life possible despite the disapproval of her adult children. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to this one in time to review in the column.
A few other movies I didn’t get to…
MA MÈRE (Kimstim Films)
GRAFTED (Shudder)
CREEP BOX (Quiver Distribution)
MYTH OF MAN (Double Edge Films)
MARKED MEN: RULE & SHAW
LIZA: A TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY (Zeitgeist Films)
REPERTORY
Unfortunately, this week’s installment might be slightly truncated, since I’m running so late for some reason.
The American Cinema Editors (ACE) are back at Metrograph on Satursday to show Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins, starring Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, was part of the regular “Filmcraft ACE Presents” series.
Starting this weekend is “Zhang Ziyi in 35mm,” showing Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (2004), Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Wong Kar-Wai’s The Grandmaster, and at least the latter is already sold out its two weekend screenings (with more screenings next week), and House of Flying Daggers also seems to be sold out on Sunday
Also showing this weekend in a similar bent is Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair (1993) as part of the Brigitte Lin series. Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux (2008) will also screen on Saturday night (late!) as part of that series.
“15 Minutes” continues this weekend with one of my all-time favorite Scorse/De Niro movies, The King of Comedy (1982) but that’s about it.
“Amongst Humans” continue with Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013), and the movie I’m most looking forward to seeing… John Sayles’ The Brother From Another Planet (1984), which was one of the movies that convinced me I should live in NYC. (Scorsese’s After Hours was the other one, ironically.)
“The Many Lives of Laura Dern” temporarily shifts away from her David Lynch collaborations (don’t worry, there are more to come in February) to show PT Anderson’s The Master (2012) and Joyce Chopra’s 1985 film, Smooth Talk, in which Dern plays a teenager, because she was one back then.
Besides a few more screenings of Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which I quite enjoyed, “Delphine Seyrig: Rebel Muse” will show Seyrig’s own 1981 documentary Be Pretty and Shut Up, where she speaks to other legendary actors like Ellen Burstyn and Jane Fonda, and Seyrig’s earlier 1975 documentary, Maso & Miso Go Boating, preceded by her 1976 short, SCUM Manifesto, which Seyrig co-directed. Note that the latter three are all on the Metrograph digital platform if you’re a member, so you can watch those without being in New York.
Tartakovsy’s Mirror will play one more time on Thursday night as part of “Raise Ravens and They Will Pick Your Eyes Out.”
A couple Michel Rohmer films screen this weekend, a new 4k restoration of Dying (1976), and also 1982’s Pilgrim, Farewell on 35mm. This Sunday’s Film Forum Jr. movie is the 1962 movie musical, The Music Man.
Playing as part of “Late Night Favorites” this weekend is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining from 1980 and “Waverly Midnights” is Karyn Kusaman’s 2009 horror film, Jennifer’s Body, written by Diablo Cody.
This week’s series is called “Wild Child” and it includes a screening of Joel Schumacher’s 2010’s 12, starring Emma Roberts, who will be on-hand for a QnA with Karah Preiss.. That’s tonight! (Thursday) They’re also showing Rian Johnson’s Brick, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on Thursday and Friday, as well as the 1972 boxing movie, Fat City, on Saturday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, you can watch a 35mm screening of Brian de Palma’s 1989 film, Casualties of War, starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn.
Sunday’s “Skipped a Beat” musical is Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine from 1998!
This weekend, the Alamo is starting to show Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies, beginning with The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings this weekend, although at least a couple screenings in Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn are sold out, and even Staten Island tickets are selling fast!
On Friday night, they’re showing David Lynch’s Blue Velvet as a tribute to the late auteur, and then on Monday, you can see the hit musical, Grease!
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
Tonight’s “Ridiculous, Sublime” at Prospect Park is 1994’s Dark Angel: The Ascent. Saturday and Sunday’s “Classic Pictures” brunch offering (also at Prospect Park) is Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959).
Robert Altman’s terrific California Split (1974) will be shown on Saturday and Sunday afternoon at Prosect Park as part of “All About Altman” OR you can go to Williamsburg and see Altman’s 3 Women (1977). On Tuesday night, Williamsburg is showing his 1975 film, Nashville.
Monday night’s “80s Invaders” movie at Prospect Park is Tobe Hooper’s 1985 film, Lifeforce, while Clouzot’s 1953 film The Wages of Fear will be shown next Wednesday night at Prospect Park after its lengthy run at Film Forum.
“See It Big: Let It Snow” continues this weekend with The Ascent on Friday evening, and Kubrick’s classic The Shining (1980) on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 film, The Gold Rush, is playing on Saturday afternoon as part of “Silents, Please!”
Saturday night’s “Cult Café” are two NEW horror films, so not repertory. On Sunday afternoon, you can see Buñuel’s Belle de Jour and Monday night’s “Film Noir Classics” offering is 1953’s Crime Wave.
I should have at least an Early Edition column next week with box office stuff, but I’m also beginning to cover Sundance virtually on Wednesday, so not sure how many reviews I’ll get to. I’ve already reviewedCompanion and the other wide release is the DreamWorks Animation film, Dog Man.