The Tomorrow War: Today's thrills

The Tomorrow War (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for relentless sci-fi action and violence, and brief profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

This certainly is the best argument I’ve heard, for accelerating our finding a way to reverse the effects of climate change.

 

Dan (Chris Pratt, second from left), Dorian (Edwin Hodge, second from right) and Charlie
(Sam Richardson, far right) cautiously make their way toward the building that
contains an upper-floor lab, where a team of scientists awaits rescue.

Director Chris McKay’s slam-bang sci-fi epic is a suspenseful blend of 1996’s Independence Day and 1997’s Starship Troopers, with a cool time travel element added. Zach Dean’s original script balances edge-of-the-seat battle thrills with a well-cast roster of appealing characters who — in between breathtaking skirmishes — enjoy welcome opportunities for emotional development.

The plot chugs along in a series of distinct acts, each ramping up the tension while cleverly leading to the next. The entertaining result is thoroughly satisfying in a way that eluded soulless, world-shattering misfires such as Godzilla vs. Kong, Terminator: Dark Fate and Pacific Rim: Uprising.

 

Dan Forester (Chris Pratt), his wife Emmy (Betty Gilpin) and their adorable young daughter Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) are hosting a World Cup soccer party, when the televised game is abruptly interrupted — in impressively dramatic fashion — by a squad of time-traveling soldiers who appear on the field. Taking advantage of the international viewing audience, they announce that they’re from the year 2051, when the entire human race is losing a global war against a terrifying alien species.

 

Our only hope lies with a most unusual conscription: transporting thousands of citizens from the present, forward in time, to join the battle. United in spirit against this common enemy, all the nations of the world participate.

 

For awhile.

 

But as months pass, and the horrific attrition rate gets progressively worse, international cooperation evaporates amid a grinding sense of helpless resignation. (Dean definitely has a bead on the uglier, selfish side of human nature.)

 

Forester, meanwhile, has his own long-simmering problems. He’s a reluctant high school science teacher dismayed by his inability to secure a more prestigious job; an Army Special Operations Command veteran with lingering traces of PTSD; and is burdened by serious rage issues involving his long-estranged father, James (J.K. Simmons). All of this has strained his marriage, which Muri morosely senses.

 

The family anxiety worsens when Dan’s draft number comes up.

 

The Hunt: Deplorably tasteless

The Hunt (2020) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for relentless profanity, gore and strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang

To coin a phrase — quite aptly, since a little porker figures in this grisly exercise in sadism — you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

The only thing worse than a gratuitously brutal horror flick, is one that attempts to “justify” its mayhem with a clunky political subtext.

Kidnapped and dumped in the wilderness for no apparent reason, a group of strangers —
from left, "Staten Island" (Ike Barinholz, back to camera), "Trucker" (Justin Hartley),
"Big Red" (Kate Nowlin), "Yoga Pants" (Emma Roberts) and Don (Wayne Duvall) —
wonder what they're supposed to do with an armory of weapons.

Rubbish is rubbish, no matter how it’s dressed.

In a better film, scripter Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s jabs at “elites” versus “deplorables” could have been suspenseful and uneasily relevant: a cheeky update of Richard Connell’s classic 1924 short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” most famously filmed in 1932 with Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks.

But director Craig Zobel’s horror-porn sensibilities are so gratuitously low-rent, that any semblance of social commentary is lost amid gore-laden blood, guts and entrails. Most of the so-called “characters” are too one-dimensional; the intended-to-be-astute remarks are too lame, obvious and random. This is filmmaking by arrested adolescents who enjoy pulling the wings off flies, and who delight in sharing the experience with us.

Let’s plunge in:

Eleven people, all with their mouths painfully collared, regain consciousness in random spots of a forest that surrounds an open meadow. They gradually assemble around a huge crate which, when opened, proves to contain a piglet in a T-shirt (don’t ask) and a weapons rack (a rather blatant swipe from The Hunger Games).

Alas, these hapless victims barely have time to contemplate whether they even know how to use such artillery, when they start getting picked off by explosive, high-powered rifle fire from a distant, well-stocked duck blind.

Not exactly sporting. Less “The Hunt,” and more “The Slaughter.”

Zobel and his scripters obviously enjoy toying with us, because in veryshort order, cinematographer Darran Tiernan’s systematic designation of such a film’s traditional survivors — the cute girl, the stalwart guy, etc. — is rent asunder. Within minutes, the group has been whittled down to just a few.

No surprise, since these poor souls aren’t even granted names, and instead are designated (but only in the press notes) as “Yoga Pants” (Emma Roberts), “Trucker” (Justin Hartley), “Big Red” (Kate Nowlin), “Vanilla Nice”(Sturgill Simpson) “Staten Island” (Ike Barinholtz) and “Dead Sexy” (Sylvia Grace Crim).

Considering what happens to the latter, her label is beyond offensive.

Stuber: Stoo-pid

Stuber (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for relentless violence and profanity, sexual candor, and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.12.19

Good grief.

I haven’t seen this much contrived, gratuitous and pointless destruction of property since the inane Disney comedies of the 1960s, when a bear would “accidentally” stumble into somebody’s garage and wreak havoc with scores of spilled paint cans.

Stu (Kumail Nanjiani, right) objects strongly when Vic (Dave Bautista) insists on giving a
ride to a dog they've just rescued. Stu should be more tolerant; this pooch is far more
entertaining than most of the rest of the film.

The bear in this case is Dave Bautista’s Vic Manning, a rogue cop with serious anger issues, thanks to a violent, over-the-top prologue dominated by his protracted, dog-nuts fight with gleefully sadistic bad guy Oka Tedjo (Iko Uwais). Alas, the villain gets away, fueling Vic’s rage during six subsequent months of frustrating, futile investigations.

Director Michael Dowse’s Stuber is one of the most uneven action flicks ever unleashed by Hollywood: at times genuinely funny — mostly when Bautista’s hulking Vic trades verbal barbs with Kumail Nanjiani’s meek and mild Stu — and then atrociously violent and/or needlessly vulgar. 

Dowse doesn’t have the faintest idea what sort of movie he’s making, which is no surprise; Tripper Clancy’s clumsy excuse for a script doesn’t give anybody much to work with. Absent Bautista and Nanjiani’s inherent timing and camera presence, this flick would be a total bomb.

Which is a shame. Bautista and Nanjiani aside, Dowse’s lame effort also wastes the time and talent of solid co-stars Natalie Morales, Karen Gillan and Mira Sorvino. This is an abysmally stupid movie, and Clancy’s script is strictly from hunger.

The result is the sort of tasteless, mean-spirited mess that delights in introducing innocent civilians who hang around long enough to make an impression, before being needlessly snuffed.

On top of which, the publicity campaign is quite misleading. The lovably slobbering dog featured so prominently on the poster art has two fleeting scenes, and plays no part in the action.

A Dog's Journey: A slightly milder tail-wag

A Dog's Journey (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for brief peril and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.19

Utterly shameless.

Relentlessly manipulative and sentimental.

Also adorable and poignant.

CJ (Kathryn Prescott) remains oblivious to the fact that best friend Trent (Henry Lau)
has been sweet on her since they were 10 years old; her far more perceptive dog,
Molly, wonders why they don't simply lick each other and get it over with.

Author W. Bruce Cameron has made quite the cottage industry of his Dog books, with two core novels having blossomed into an additional four one-offs, half a dozen young reader Puppy Tales, and an entirely separate story trilogy, all during the past decade.

Director Lasse Hallström transformed 2010’s A Dog’s Purpose into a cinematic charmer two years ago, with a writing assist from Cameron (and rather a lot of co-scripters). He and most of the same writing team have collaborated anew on the script adaptation of that book’s sequel, A Dog’s Journey, this time placing their faith in indefatigable, Emmy Award-winning TV director Gail Mancuso (everything from Scrubs and 30 Rock to Man with a Plan and Modern Family).

Her touch doesn’t quite hit the sweet spot of compelling pathos and gentle humor that has characterized Hallström’s career — notably in Chocolat and The Cider House Rules — and gave his Dog its special radiance. He has an affinity for heightened reality that makes it seem not only credible, but reasonable. Mancuso is a sitcom director: Her approach is broader, with supporting characters who feel more like exaggerated burlesques than actual people, and a more obvious reliance on comedy (particularly with respect to canine one-liners). 

This film therefore leans in the direction of TV’s fast-paced artifice, rather than the naturalistic verisimilitude of its predecessor. The emotional content isn’t as authentic, and a few elements have a whiff of calculated contrivance.

In fairness, that’s also because Cameron’s sequel novel isn’t nearly as fresh as its predecessor. It’s hard to pull off the same clever trick twice.

The gimmick is that Cameron’s alpha canine is a regenerative soul that remembers all of its past lives and responsibilities. This begins in the first film when 8-year-old Ethan gets his first dog: a rambunctious Golden Retriever puppy dubbed Bailey, who becomes his best friend. Dog’s lives being so cruelly brief, Bailey soon leaves a heartbroken Ethan behind; ah, but after a series of subsequent bodies and owners, Bailey is reunited with an older Ethan (Dennis Quaid), now as a Australian Shepherd/St. Bernard cross.