A Stephen King adaptation with heart

          

    Hardly a fright fest, The Life of Chuck -- a big-screen adaptation of a Stephen King novella --tells three interrelated stories in reverse order, beginning with the final chapter and working its way back to the start. 

    Life of Chuck might be classed with such big-screen King adaptations such as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. The Life of Chuck isn't as memorable as either of those, but it makes room for scenes with heart, even if it tends to wear its sentiments on its sleeve.

    The stories are connected by a character named  Chuck Krantz, a fellow who appears on TV and billboards during the first segment. "39 Great Years ! Thanks Chuck!," the ads read. Sounds important, but no one knows who Chuck Krantz is. A politician? A salesman? A banker? 

    Director Mike Flanagan, who directed King's Doctor Sleep, reveals more about Krantz as the movie progresses, but The Life of Chuck is less a mystery than a collection of small moments played against a doom-laden backdrop.

     Life of Chuck rests on a thematic cushion that includes stuffing from Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar (an encapsulation of the history of the universe in a single year) and Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.  The signature line from  Whitman's poem ("I contain multitudes") is introduced by a teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the character who anchors the film's opening chapter.

    Like everyone else, Ejiofor's Marty Anderson is puzzled by the Krantz billboards. Marty also tries to cope with an escalating variety signals that suggest a possible end to ... well ... everything: the demise of the Internet, abandoned cars lining the streets of vacated cities, and massive power outages.

    Blame a mixture of man-made issues and cosmic comeuppance for the fraught condition that threatens humanity. But causes matter less than the way characters behave in the face of impending doom.

    Ejiofor and his estranged wife (Karen Gillan) eventually share a tender scene under a vast night sky, two lonely people facing a looming finality neither can comprehend. 

    The second story features a lively dance number (no, I'm not kidding) in which Tom Hiddleston, as the title character, sheds Chuck's buttoned-up  demeanor. Contrary to what the opening suggests, we learn that Chuck is no man of mystery: An otherwise anonymous accountant, he serves as the film's everyman.

     While attending a convention, Chuck passes a street drummer (Taylor Gordon), a Juilliard dropout who lays down some infectious beats. Chuck begins to dance. Annalise Basso plays a woman who joins the dance, a stranger Chuck pulls from the small crowd of gathered spectators. She becomes his partner in what might be the crowning moment of his life.

    The movie becomes more King-like in the first chapter, really its last. We meet Krantz as a boy, played at various ages by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak, and Jacob Tremblay. Chuck's parents died in an automobile accident, leaving him to live with his grandparents (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill). 

    Not long after arriving in Chuck's grandparents' home, the movie introduces a mystery centered on the cupola that Grandpa, otherwise genial but a bit too fond of alcohol,  keeps locked. The cupola opens the door to a bit of supernatural woo-woo.

     In keeping with the film's more grounded aspirations, Grandma teaches Chuck to dance; later, he must overcome his inhibitions to take the floor at a school dance, the kind of triumph that recalls too many other teen movies.

     I don't want to oversell the Life of Chuck. An over-explanatory narration delivered by Nick Offerman sometimes falls short of eloquence, and the movie loses steam during its coming-of-age conclusion.

     Moreover, The Life of Chuck can't quite bring off its ambitious juxtaposition of cosmic-scale extinction and personal mortality. But in the movie's best moments, Flanagan wisely encourages us to accept the inescapable while still mustering enough spirit to dance.

        

A cop who has lost his memory

I can watch Russell Crowe in almost anything and not feel cheated. And, yes, I've seen The Pope's Exorcist. Crowe has traveled a long way from his Gladiator days; he now seems immersed in pure character work with little emphasis on heroism. In Sleeping Dogs, a jumbled noir thriller, Crowe plays a retired homicide detective who's suffering from Alzheimer's. Crowe's Roy Freeman has been given an experimental treatment to help jar his memory back to life. The story kicks in when a death row inmate (Pacharo Mzembe) asks Roy to revisit a case in which he helped get a conviction. The former detective struggles to rebuild long-ago events involving the murder of an academic (Marton Csokas) who had a sexy femme fatale research assistant (Karen Gillan). Roy asks his one-time partner and drinking buddy (Tommy Flanagan) to help. Some of the story is told in flashbacks that introduce us to an aspiring author (Harry Greenwood) who falls for Gillan's character.  Crowe gives the movie a solid center but it's not enough to keep incredulity at bay. A surprise twist of an ending fails to shock (you probably will see it coming) and Sleeping Dogs winds up squandering Crowe's efforts. 

Guarding the Galaxy one more time

 

 Watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, I slouched in my seat, looking upward at the screen, wondering whether reality hadn’t played a trick on me. Had I regressed into an alternate reality that resembled a slightly demented version of Saturday morning TV?   

   As the characters in Vol. 3 appeared, I felt as if I were being reintroduced to a tired crew that needed a plot — or something resembling a plot — to jolt it back to life.

    Director James Gunn finds one — or more accurately several. 

     Gunn stitches a movie together from a variety of story threads, a principal one revolving around the need to battle a fiendish villain called The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji). 

   An intergalactic criminal, The High Evolutionary wants to give the various creatures he cruelly imprisons genetic upgrades. He tries to create an environment in which perfect beings can live perfectly. 

  Of course, he’s the one who gets to define perfection, a power that turns him into a genocidal maniac. He tends to wipe out populations he regards as "mistakes."

  The screenplay, also by Gunn, ties the main battle into an origins story for Rocket (Bradley Cooper), the wise-cracking badger who keeps reminding everyone that he's not a raccoon. 

  Gravely wounded in an early-picture raid on Knowhere, the sadly depleted Guardian headquarters, Rocket spends most of the movie in a coma while Pratt’s Peter Quill races through episodes built around the search for a device that can save his friend.

  Time to wave a Guardians thematic flag: The Guardians may be disorganized and even dissolute but friendship still means something.

   Quill also pines for his girlfriend, Zoe Saldana's Gamora, who reappears but not as the green-skinned beauty of Quill's memory. She looks the same but her personality has been altered. I leave it to series aficionados to explain how this happened.*

   Despite his leadership role, Quinn doesn’t dominate the movie; he’s one more cog in the many-spoked Guardian wheel.

    Other familiar characters turn up, notably Vin Diesel's Groot, who wears out a joke in which he repeatedly announces, "I am Groot." Pom Klementieff reprises her role as Mantis, the sweet Guardian with antennae springing from her forehead.

     New characters include Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a warrior who flies through action sequences like a guided missile.

      A surfeit of characters fosters confusion, but, hey, simplicity never has been a Marvel virtue.

     At times, Guardians functions as a parade of creatures -- Cosmo, the Talking Dog included -- that are spun from the narrative, sort of in the way Marvel spawns movie after movie from its own DNA. 

   Watch for bulbous creatures with teeth who, at one point, reconsider their destructive nature. 

    Gunn summons the movie’s better angels whenever he can. One such moment finds expression in a conflict between lovable strong man Drax (Dave Bautista) and Nebula (Karen Gillan).

   Does Drax's capacity for empathy outrank Nebula's warrior intelligence? Take a guess.

   Despite splashes of profanity, a PG-13 rating, and a fair measure of destruction, Vol. 3 seems intent on taking a sentimental journey that synchs with the idea that some of these characters are taking their leave. 

   At two hours and 29 minutes,  Guardians can be accused of bloat. But Rocket’s origin story settles the movie down, building toward what many will regard as an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

   So to get back to the Saturday morning TV experience of it all; I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I wasn't sometimes tempted to change the channel, but I felt a jolt of mood improvement as the movie worked its way toward a feel-good finale that helps conquer resistance.

     I guess this could be described as the third-act redemption that makes Guardians 3 tolerable. 

*Sure enough, one such aficionado provided an explanation:

"Gamora was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and brought back to life in Avengers: Endgame in the form of an alternate universe version of herself who has no memory of their relationship."

As for me, I've always found it a bit of a burden to try to keep track of all the connections among characters in the MCU movies. 

Women kick butt in 'Gunpowder Milkshake'

 

     I didn't think that I'd be even a little impressed by another violent comic book of a movie that makes the phrase "over-the-top" seem understated. 

    Credit director Navot Papushado with making a movie that boasts a strong female cast and blasts its way into summer with gusto, style, and a surfeit of butt-kicking pleasures.

    The movie begins when an assassin (Lena Headey) shares a milkshake with her 12-year-old daughter. Crosswise with her employer, an outfit known as The Firm, Mom flees.

     The story then leaps ahead 15 years and the daughter (Karen Gillan) -- now a young woman -- has gone into the family business. She, too, works for The Firm,  taking assignments from Nathan (Paul Giamatti), an "executive" who consults with a board composed of men cut from corporate cloth. 

    Gillan's Sam, who hasn’t seen her mother since that fateful day at the diner, attracts trouble when an assignment puts her at odds with the evil Jim McAlester (Ralph Ineson). A furious McAlister vows vengeance because his son was among Sam's victims.

    You needn’t know much more about the plot which quickly lands Sam at a “library” where three women (Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, and Angela Bassett) lend weapons to a select clientele. They know Sam's mom, who once was a fellow "librarian."

   As the story unfolds, Sam finds herself looking out for Emily (Chloe Coleman), an eight-year-old whose father had the misfortune of being shot by Sam. Realizing that she probably shouldn't have shot Emily's dad, Sam takes the kid underwing. Emily starts referring to herself as Sam's "apprentice."

    Emily also insists on reminding folks not to shortchange her age: She's actually eight and three-quarters.

    Papushado understands that movies such as Gunpowder Milkshake live or die with their set pieces. For the most part, he delivers.

    Among the best action: Sam engages in combat after her  hands have been paralyzed by a fiendish doctor (Michael Smiley). To up the preposterous ante, Papushado has Sam battling three thugs who are stoned on laughing gas.

    As the story barrels along, Emily receives what might be the wildest driving lesson in movie history, sitting on Sam's lap as the movie burns rubber in a nifty sequence that takes place mostly in a parking garage. Where else?

    Gillan makes a strong impression and Gugino (bookish), Yeoh (reserved), and Bassett (censorious) give brief but pointed performances that don't disappoint when the chips are down. 

    Reminiscent of the best of old-fashioned Hong Kong-style action and lots of other predecessors, the movie's finale pits the women against what seems like a legion of angry men.

   Clever and engaging, this wild goof on exploitation cinema is lifted by a kick-ass female cast that easily could turn up in a second helping. Worse things could -- and probably will -- happen at the movies.

Those guardians of the galaxy return

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 boasts both lulls and amusements, but does nothing to tarnish the franchise.

The original Guardians of the Galaxy took the market by storm in 2014, providing a refreshing antidote to the self-seriousness that infiltrates many parts of Marvel's vast comic-book repertoire. Unexpected and slightly bizarre, the movie featured Rocket Raccoon (voice by Bradley Cooper), a snarky animal who delivered the movie's best wisecracks, and a diminutive creature named Groot (voice by Vin Diesel), a mini-tree of an alien who added an element of off-kilter cuteness.

Now comes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 sporting a name that makes the movie sound as if it aspires to find a home in The Library of Congress catalog. Not Guardians 2 or even Part II, but "Volume 2."

This is not to say that the movie, written and directed by a returning James Gunn, mires itself in big themes. Gunn tries to replicate the self-aware attitude of the first installment, something along the lines of recognition that joyfully teeters on the rim of the pop-cultural toilet without falling in.

If that's too abstract for you, let me put it another way: The first movie was fun. The second movie? Sometimes it's fun.

A creative application of special effects and CGI help keep Vol. 2 from tarnishing the franchise, even as it falls prey to a typical second-helping problem, overcrowding in just about every department.

Vol. 2 plunges viewers into a self-referential universe that makes room for musical and TV nostalgia from the 1980s, one of the fascinations of a Guardian played by Chris Pratt; i.e., Quill. The movie's 1980s nostalgia trip also includes a recurring reference to David Hasselhoff of TV's Knight Rider and Baywatch fame.

I'm always amazed at the pop-cultural knowledge that aficionados bring to these movies. Without prompting, they can tell you all about Drax (Dave Bautista), the muscular man with the hearty laugh that always sounds forced to me, like he has to think about it before letting loose with a guffaw.

During this episode, Quill meets a character who claims to be his father. He's Ego, played by Kurt Russell. If you had any doubts, Ego's name serves as a clue about the character's intentions. Ego wants to enlist Quill's help in fulfilling a long-standing ambition. Trouble, of course, looms.

In what amounts to a glut of characters, Michael Rooker stands out as Yondo, the alien who raised Quill.

You'll also find a cameo appearance by Sylvester Stallone, and we meet Mantis (Pom Klementieff), a creature with an antenna that enables her to function as an empath. Mantis touches people and instantly knows what they're feeling.

Zoe Saldana returns as Gamora, who this time faces off against Nebula (Karen Gillan), a cyborg with blue skin who began her life as Gamora's sister. Hey, a little sibling rivalry never hurts.

Additional female power emanates for Ayesha, a golden-skinned character played by Elizabeth Debicki.

One of the movie's better bits involves a character named Taserface (Chris Sullivan), a brutish fellow whose descriptive but preposterous name prevents his victims from taking him seriously. If you're keeping score, Taserface belongs to a group called the Ravagers.

Gunn provides enough explosions to satisfy action-hungry audiences, and after a third-act dip, the movie picks up for an ending that tempers the obligatory mayhem with a bit of emotion that stems from the self-sacrificing act of one of the movie's characters.

You may be getting the impression that the movie virtually bursts with characters, effects, action and amusements. Some hit; some don't. But Vol. 2's mixed bag won't keep it from reaping a box-office bonanza. I can't say that Vol. 2 matches the enjoyment of the first movie, but, boy, can you see it trying.

Avoiding the worst horror pitfalls

Oculus tries for more than jolts and gore

The idea is both creepy and familiar: A 300-year-old mirror might be the home of an evil spirit that destroys the lives of anyone who owns it.

Oculus -- a movie that director Mike Flanagan expanded from a 2006 short film -- revolves around just such an antique mirror. But Flanagan's movie has sense enough to create mild ambiguity about whether a brother and sister are encountering demonic evil or are simply out of their minds.

Happily, Flanagan avoids many of the worst genre traps, and if his movie doesn't quite scale the highest peaks of terror, it can be seen as a legitimate attempt to add heft to a genre in which the currency of imagination too often is squandered on special effects.

Early in the movie, Tim (Benton Thwaites) is released from a mental institution. He's a young man who experienced a terrible trauma when he was 10.

Upon re-entering the sane world, Tim reunites with his older sister Kaylie, played by Karen Gillan of Dr. Who fame.

Kaylie acquires the mirror that once belonged to her father, and brings Tim to the home where their parents (Rory Cochrane and Katee Sackoff) died. Better to discover the rest in a theater.

Tension arises because Tim, having been prepped by his psychiatrist, thinks everything has a rational explanation. Kaylie, on the other hand, is determined to prove that the mirror was responsible for the violence that became part of her family's increasingly twisted life.

To make her case, Kaylie sets up cameras in the home where the mayhem occurred. She hopes to capture the evil spirit on tape.

From that point on, Flanagan mixes scenes from the past and present. Vivid flashbacks spring to life as Tim and Kaylie remember their earlier lives.

Flanagan doesn't entirely eschew gore, but he earns props for leaving some of the horror to our imaginations and for gaining increasing command over the movie's flashbacks -- segments from the past in which Garrett Ryan and Annalise Basso play young Tim and Kaylie.

If you're bothered by seeing children in danger, Oculus may not be the horror movie for you.

The idea of using demonic forces to explain evil can be comforting. Demons put evil outside the human realm, creating an opportunity for supernatural rationalization: "The demon made me do it."

I'm not sure that Oculus moves far enough away from that sort of thing to make it truly distinctive, but much of the time, it's headed in the right direction.

A few words with Mike Flanagan


Q: Oculus represents your second horror movie after 2012's Absentia. What's the attraction of the genre?

Flanagan: For a movie to really connect with a wide audience, it has to tap into something universal. There's hardly an emotion that isn't present in horror.

Also, when we look at the world and experience evil, we have an intense need to try to explain it.
We mediate evil in our fictions. That's what appeals about horror. It's a safe laboratory in which to explore these kinds of issues. We need that space. At the end of the day, it's more about feeling safe than feeling scared.
Q: How difficult was it to expand a short into a full-length feature?
Flanagan: It was incredibly daunting. It took us seven years to get rolling on the feature.
Q: Can you say something about influences on your work?
Flanagan: For me, it was The Shining and The Ring. I'm a big fan of The Eye (a 2008 thriller about a woman who begins seeing supernatural phenomenon after an eye transplant.) That movie used sound to great effect.
Q: In this movie, the parents eventually pose a threat to their kids. I don't want to give away too much, but could you comment on what seems to be a total reversal of the current tendency to indulge children?
Flanagan: Inverting something that's so protective and safe (parenthood) creates a sense of discomfort that goes against our basic instincts. That's way more frightening than torture and gore.
Q: Did dealing with siblings -- both as kids and adults -- and with their parents make for difficult casting?
Flanagan: The first person we cast was Gillan and that made for a red-head requirement with the girl who would play her character in the flashbacks and with the mother. We wanted them to look like a plausible family, but that didn't take precedence over performance.
Q: Was working with kids difficult?
Flanagan: You hear people talking about the difficulty of working with child actors. I didn't have that experience at all. These kids blew me away in their auditions. Intuitively, they snap into a fearless commitment to make believe.
Q: Are you planning to make more horror movies?
Flanagan: I want to play around with other genres, but I think I'll always find my way back to horror.