A crazed Korean high-seed mash-up

    Korean director Na Hong-jin's Hope plays with a variety of genres, putting a heavy emphasis on action. In some ways, Hope, which also leans toward horror and sci-fi, might be called a highly skilled helping of shlock. I mean that as a compliment. Na and an able cast add a humorous gloss to a preposterous story about monsters that terrorize a small Korean town, reducing it to rubble.

  Na waits nearly an hour before giving us a look at the monster, a large ungainly creature that runs at breakneck speeds, smashing everything in its way. Hwang Jung-min plays the local chief of police. Initially skeptical about a monster's existence, the Chief soon finds himself walking through the town, rifle at the ready. 

   Na also introduces us to a group of hunters.  Zo In-sung plays the Chief's second cousin; he leads his hunters into the forest to destroy the monster.

   The production goes full carnage when it comes to the destruction wrought on the village of Hope Harbor, which is close enough to the DMZ to create discomfort. The creature, more like a giant mutant version of a human, proves fiercely determined. It may be indestructible.

    Eventually, a deputy (Hoyeon) shows up to help, adding flavor to the proceedings that brim with invention, speeding cars, and enough bullets to stock several wars, all enhanced by cinematographer Hong Kyung-Pyo's wide-screen framing, which is a pleasure to behold even when the camera has its eye on sights that are designed for revulsion. 

   The movie isn't without its share of gook and gore. Flies buzz rotting carcasses and ... Never mind. I think you get the idea.

    After its first hour, the movie slows a bit, and it's difficult not to think Hope has lost its momentum. Na uses these scenes to flesh out the story, letting us know that there are multiple monsters and adding an absurd bit of humor in which a village old-timer recounts his efforts to hide from a monster during a severe bout of diarrhea.

    I've waited as long as I could to add another detail. The monster isn't a monster at all; it's an alien, and it's accompanied by other aliens who have arrived on Earth for reasons the movie only hints at. I've read that Na says he's working on a sequel.

    We're left to speculate. Na shows a creature autopsy. A buzz saw is needed to penetrate the monster’s thick skin, presumably a comment on the human approach to encounters with strangers.

    After this mid-picture interlude, Na again evs up the action for his finale. This closing display of action again elevates the proceedings with a white-knuckle display in which a man on horseback tries to leap into a speeding police car while a relentless alien pursues.

    By this time, it may seem as if Na, who already has demonstrated his superior action chops, is showing off. But he gives the action a few new wrinkles. 

    It's almost as if Na is saying, "Look, I know there are derivative elements here, but I'm going to prove  that I can make them fresh, urgent and cinematically alive."

     So what are we to make of this wildly conceived movie? Na tries to add a thematic boost at the end, making us wonder whether the earthlings might be less principled than the invaders, but the message is ambiguous and not entirely satisfying.

     A footnote: Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender do voice and stop-motion work toward the end when the aliens abandon their terrifying shrieks for a bit of conversation, which Na conveys with subtitles.

     I wish I could say that Hope was great, that I had  no reservations about anything in its two-hour and 40-minute length. But even if it isn't, Hope so often operates at peak levels that the movie establishes itself as a crazed entertainment with greatness in it. That's more than you can say about most movies.

A belated sequel with few surprises

 A well-matched Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman don't miss much of a beat as they revisit their performances in Practical Magic 2, a sequel to 1998’s Practical Magic, an adaptation of a novel by Alice Hoffman. 

 Despite dealing with witchcraft, Practical Magic 2 — directed by Susanne Bier — proves innocuous, a movie that unfolds pretty much as you'd expect, offering a cheerleading session for sisterhood and fan service for loyal followers of the original, a group that evidently swelled after the movie finished its theatrical run.

    Once again, Bullock and Kidman play the Owens sisters, sibling witches still haunted by the curse that drove the first installment. Men who venture into loving relationships with an Owens sister are doomed to die — and not of old age. 

    The lethal power of the curse explains the absence of Gary (Aidin Quinn), the character Bullock’s Sally paired with at the end of the first installment.

    This version restates the sisters' divergent approaches to magic: Kidman’s Gillian, the flighty sister, remains devoted to witchery. Sally tries to avoid it. She doesn't want her daughters (Joey King and Maisie Williams) to lead lives marred by spells, curses, and heartbreak.

    Perhaps as part of nostalgia service, the movie provides small roles for Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, who play aging witches, the aunts who raised Sally and Gillian in the small Massachusetts town where they still reside.

     Now a young woman, King's Kylie has fallen in love with genial Gideon (Xolo Mariduena). Doomed once the dreaded death beetle appears, Gideon is en route to becoming another victim of the love curse. 

    It doesn’t take long for an auto accident to leave poor Gideon in a coma. Once hospitalized, he's tended to by Williams' character, who's conveniently in the midst of her medical residency at the same institution. Hopefully, she'll have a great medical career because she pretty much vanishes from the rest of the proceedings.

     Not until Gideon's accident does Kylie learn about the witchy inheritance her mother has taken great pains to hide from her. Feeling betrayed by Mom's secrecy, Kylie jets off to England, hoping to end the curse so that she can marry Gideon.  

     Worried that inexperienced Kylie will fall prey to the dark side of magic, Sally and Gillian follow. In London, they contact a professor (Lee Pace) who’s made his academic bones studying what the movie refers to as “the craft.” Maybe he can help save Kylie while providing Sally with a potential love interest. 

   What? You thought she'd get through the movie without one?

     Before Sally and Gillian can catch up with Kylie, she meets a local (Solly McLeod) who offers to help but is so amiable we immediately suspect him of treachery.

      Add a few special effects (none particularly impressive), and you’ve got the idea, a sequel that leans heavily on the chemistry Bullock and Kidman ably generate. They don't collapse under the weight, which is about the best you can say for a movie that waves its wand lightly but can't conjures up little by way of surprise.

A rock doc charts its own course

   Now and again, a pop cultural phenomenon breaks boundaries with an energy so furious, it can be mistaken for outrage. It’s not easy to connect the throwers of such pop-cultural hand grenades to a specific agenda; it’s never entirely clear what they want or whether they want anything at all. One thing is clear, though: They are committed to assertion.

   I thought about that while watching Butt Hole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, a documentary about a raucous Texas art/punk band that caught fire in the 1980s. The doc left me wondering if it’s even possible to tell where the art ended and the punk began. 

   Whatever the case, it's clear that the Butt Hole Surfers were creative in their craziness, blurring the line between performance art and music in ways that could be both provocative and hilarious. Their show made use of surreal projections, and it's fair to say that they seasoned their weird stew with countercultural zest.

    Drummer King Coffey was known to pour lighter fluid on this cymbals and set them on fire. The band made enough use of strobe lights for the documentary to begin with a precautionary warning for those who might be subject to seizures.

   All of this becomes clear in director Tom Stern's documentary about a group that not only ignored conventional rules but stomped on them. The band formed in the late '70s when its two principals -- Gibson 'Gibby' Haynes and Paul Leary -- met at Trinity University in San Antonio. 

  Leary, who played guitar, and Haynes, who became lead singer and frontman, weren't sure where they were headed; they reflected their indecision by changing the band's name from one show to the next, eventually settling on the ... well ... you already know.

  Throughout a turbulent history, the band tended to go through bass players with the speed of hockey line changes. Eventually, they got lucky with Jeff Pinkus. He was number eight. 

   In the film, Kathleen Lynch reflects on her days as the band's naked dancer. Yes, for a time they had one. Coffey and Teresa Nervosa played dual drums in a band that once feigned sex on stage. Haynes, too, sometimes appeared naked.

   The Surfers evidently leaned heavily on the drug side of the sex-drugs-and-rock 'n' roll equation as they bounced their way through the '80s and '90s, accumulating a loyal following that became part of an underground scene. It sounds a bit old-fashioned but the effect of a Butt Hole show might be described as psychedelic.

  Stern emphasizes the influence the band had on artists such as Kurt Cobain. He also offers footage from a Hollywood period when Haynes did some heavy hanging out with Johnny Depp and other celebs.

   I found myself amused -- albeit a bit battered by a film about a band built to foster chaos.

   Oh well, sometimes all you can do when confronted by non-stop craziness is laugh. Made with ample amounts of humor, Butt Hole Surfers employs animation, puppets, interviews, archival footage, and in-your-face boldness to capture the spirit of the band's music. 

  To add perspective, Stern interviews director Richard Linklater, who knew the band from its early Austen days. He also includes comments from Flea and Dave Grohl. If you don't know those names, you're probably not part of the movie's target audience. 

  In sum, Stern offers a comprehensive look at the band, highlighting its don't-give-a-shit daring,  balancing things with contemporary interviews with band members who have matured. Haynes, turns 70 in September; Leary is 69. 

  At one hour and 46 minutes, the film tends to wear out, but Stern saves a big reveal about Haynes for the final going. 

  I'll leave it to others to judge the band's music, although I know that Leary's guitar work has been praised and that the band received acknowledgement for its invention and originality.

   Some of their albums -- Locust Abortion Technician -- were recognized for contributions to experimental rock, which has something to do with a willingness to expand the rock soundscape to include sounds not typically thought of as musical. They liked feedback from amplifiers. 

   To me, the movie seemed a chronicle of a long-running band that presented an unruly front -- part tantrum and part creative explosion -- that eludes easy explanation. 

   So rather than being reductive about it, I’m left to say,  "Hey, it was the '80s," and leave it at that.

   The documentary had a limited run at some Alamo Drafthouse venues and probably will turn up again. Maybe. I suppose. Who really knows?

Bucking the tide in Edwardian England

Virginia Woolf's 1919 novel, Night & Day, has been brought to the screen by director Tina Gharavi, who benefits greatly from actress Haley Bennett's spirited performance as a woman who’s ahead of her time. Bennett's Katherine wants to deepen her study of math, physics, and astronomy but is hampered by constricting tradition and a grumpy father (Timothy Spall) who wants her to marry. Dad's beau of choice: an amiable sap of a suitor (Jack Whitehall) who lights no sparks with Katherine. The closest Katherine comes to romance arrives when she meets Ralph (Elyas M'Barek), an editor who's helping Katherine's mother (Jennifer Saunders) finish a 30-year project, a book she's writing about her late father, a celebrated poet. Nicely mounted and benefiting from a light touch in its opening scenes, Night & Day is burdened by obviously declared intentions about the importance of allowing capable women to find places in male-dominated institutions and, of course, to win the right to vote. After Katherine applies to Cambridge, a university that isn't likely to admit her, we wind up with a message-driven movie that feels as if it's preaching to a contemporary choir. Still, a well-chosen cast and period-piece pleasures shouldn't be discounted. Put another way: Woolf's novel isn't regarded as a masterpiece, but it receives something akin to Masterpiece Theatre treatment nonetheless.

Rifles, chainsaws & cleavers, oh my

 Judging by movies, it’s almost impossible to believe there’s anything left to blow up. 

 That didn't stop director Adam Wingard from finding plenty of targets in Onslaught, a thriller that not only relies on pumped-up gunfire but also makes room for horror-style killings, notably referencing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

  A minimal plot turns three combat veterans into brain-altered, genetically engineered warriors the movie deems  as "the human equivalent of heat-seeking missiles."  

 These lethal automatons are part of a conspiracy concocted by Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens), a German (make that holdover Nazi) scientist who’s introduced when he crawls across the floor of his sleek digs to lick the stiletto-heeled shoe of his equally evil wife (Rebecca Hall).

   Nothing like a little marital affection to warm things up.

   Dr. Kammler's happy degradation primes us to expect that a bit of additional kink will season this boldly presented but depthless hunk of blood-splattered mayhem. 

  And that’s the trouble: You can almost feel the movie straining to hit notes that will make an audience gasp at its audacity. 

    Although Onslaught can be viewed as an extended set piece, it tells a story of sorts. A battle-scarred former soldier -- Adria Arjona's Celeste -- presides over a rundown desert trailer park that's invaded by the movie's three super-warriors. 

  To augment the looming sense of threat, Celeste's  young daughter (Blake Kennedy) has been left with Mom when her ex-husband, also a former soldier, turns up with daughter in hand. It's Mom's turn to take care of the kid.

   Looking more like a junkyard than a place to live, the trailer park is occupied by a hand full of former soldiers, many suffering from their wartime experiences.

    Mom, for example, seems burdened by PTSD flashbacks. Her hand shakes when she tries to pull a  trigger, something revealed early on when she fires at carved pumpkin heads she's propped up on spikes. 

   Additional kink arrives when we meet Cyrus (Drew Starkey), a twisted government official assigned to clean up the messes left by the soldiers, who try their skills at a highway rest stop before heading for the trailer park.

     I’m not going to describe all the mayhem, but I will say that a sequence in which a cleaver-wielding soldier crawls under a truck as he chases Kennedy’s character struck me as a step too far. These soldiers are ruthless killing machines, and we already knew the kid was in danger.

      Not to worry, though. As Onslaught progresses,  Celeste becomes the ultimate protective mom, and a few additional  relationships temper the relentless action, notably Celeste's ties to Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson), an older trailer park resident who adds his weapons stash to the fight.

     Continually abetted by Matthew Pusti’s industrial-strength score, Onslaught includes an opening montage that suggests thematic depth, but even a countdown clock warning of the impending invasion can’t convince us that the stakes involve more than demonstrating a dialed-in capability for delivering rock, shock, and carnage.

  

     

Fleeing Russia during the Cold War

 

   

In Mayday, Ryan Reynolds plays a Navy pilot shot down while flying a spy mission at the height of the Cold War. In Russia, Reynolds’ Troy is saved by Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB agent living as a backwood recluse in the Russian wilds. Ustinov regrets his KGB past, obsessively watches Top Gun, and wouldn’t mind moving to the US. After an opening full of swaggering top-gun bravado, the movie begins to temper its view of US-Soviet relations, adding a bit of nuance. All-American Troy seems shocked to learn that ordinary Russians are capable of kindness (big reveal, no?). Mayday quickly moves into hybrid territory: part action movie, part buddy comedy, and part road movie as Troy and Ustinov try to escape the Soviet Union. A KGB official (Marvin Dorocinski) doggedly follows in close pursuit, but  Nikolai is no pushover. His KGB fighting chops haven't entirely eroded. Maria Bakalova signs on as Nikolai's  daughter, and David Morse has a small role as Troy’s ailing father. Writer/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) give Mayday the kind of big-budget look we expect from such thrillers. Still, the mix of humor and action doesn’t quite click, and Troy’s penchant for wise-cracking hardly budges the needle on the wit meter. The story picks up for a big finish, having set itself apart by leaning on what looks like novelty casting. Branagh doesn’t seem the most likely choice for kick-ass action, but there he is, trying to inject a touch of Russian melancholy into Ustinov's dialogue. In sum: I won’t give this one a resounding “Nyet,” but I can’t give it an unqualified  “Dah!” either.

Plenty of fun in ‘Coyote vs. Acme’

 Someone once told me that the two key questions  people most ask about movies are 1) Who’s in it? and 2) What’s it about?

  If that’s true, I offer the following:

  Who’s in Coyote vs. Acme, a mix of live action and animation that brings a rich trove of Looney Tunes characters back to the screen with a level of humor that’s difficult to resist?  

   Well, Wile E. Coyote and his nemesis, Road Runner, have major roles. But you’ll also find appearances by Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety Bird, and John Cena.  

   Oh, wait. Cena is one of the movie’s  human characters. Displaying the right amount of cartoonish exaggeration, Cena plays the chief attorney of Acme Corp., a company that makes destructive devices for cartoons. If something blows up, you can be sure the blast arrives courtesy of Acme.

   Now, for part two: What's it about?

   Wile E. Coyote wants to file a suit against Acme for giving him a defective pair of rocket skates that went blooey while he was chasing the Road Runner down a desert highway.

    Coyote enlists Kevin Avery (Will Forte), a small-potatoes Albuquerque attorney, to battle a corporate titan. Think Better Call Saul without the larcenous streak. Ill-prepared for a high-profile case, Avery bungles his way toward the courtroom and eventually an appearance at a congressional hearing presided over by Elmer Fudd. 

    Lana Condor plays Kevin's niece, an intern at his firm, Avery, Jones & Maltese, a name derived from Looney Tunes icons Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. Condor's Paige does most of the heavy lifting as Avery suffers through a perpetual crisis of confidence.

   Director Dave Green assembles this cartoon mashup in clever ways that make sense out of the outlandish, mixing cartoon and human characters with skillfully applied wit. Wisely, the animated and human characters live in the same world, which frees the story from having to alternate between realities.

   Better yet, the movie doesn’t feel as if it were concocted solely to ride a swelling wave of nostalgia.

   Screenwriter Sam Burch broadens the fun by adding a layer of satire about corporate greed that leads to negligence. Acme has an ulterior motive for exploiting cartoon characters. Applied with the same buoyantly cartoonish spirit that ripples throughout, the message adds a contemporary flourish.

    No need to oversell Coyote vs. Acme. For Looney Tunes fans, the movie provides an engaging helping of colorful fun. Besides, you won't want to miss Foghorn Leghorn’s courtroom oration about Acme’s devious Project Sisyphus.

    If you follow movie news, you know that Coyote vs. Acme had difficulty reaching the screen after Warner Bros. shelved it. It was eventually bought and released by Ketchup Entertainment. I won’t reiterate the whole story. Google away if you want to know more.

     Maybe it doesn't matter how Coyote vs. Acme reached the screen. I'll remind you, though, that the movie's message about refusing to accept defeat in the face of inevitable failure has existential relevance that still can strike home. These days, it might be the comic relief we desperately need.

    

Travelers on the road to nowhere

  In It Ends, director Alexander Ullom gives the road-movie genre a mind-bending twist.

  Ullom tells the story of four characters stuck on a road that never ends. They drive and drive, but can never find an exit from this road to nowhere.

  If they leave the car, they're quickly surrounded by hordes of people who seem intent on harming them, but whose motives aren't made clear. Eventually, the travelers determine that they can exit the car for about 90 seconds before an attack begins. That allows them (and the movie) to stretch a bit. 

   Then, as the Willie Nelson song goes, it's on the road again. No longer a symbol of mobility and freedom, the car becomes a cage.

   Ullom relies on his actors -- Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, Mitchel Cole, and Phineas Yoon -- to create characters who understandably are baffled by their situation. None of them knows why they've been assigned to a perpetual limbo in a car that never runs out of gas, always passing through the same wooded area.

   By refusing to dot every “i’ or cross every “t,” Ullom encourages us to wring some meaning from the ambiguous absurdity of the situation the movie depicts.

   Still, there's only so far Ullom can get with a movie that measures itself in miles, at one point showing us that these travelers have covered 186,000 miles. At another point, they discover an abandoned car with an odometer that's approaching one million miles. Others apparently have shared this horrific fate.

  Some see the movie as an expression of Gen Z frustration among recent college grads who are poised to enter a society that has rendered them pointless. 

 As an exercise in low-budget, indie creativity, It Ends earns a high score, but the movie continues to the point where we, like the characters, begin to feel beaten down. That takes some of the edge off what has been a canny little slice of contemporary horror, a foray into a world in which no option seems to make much sense. 

  Happy travels.

 

'Marching Band' sounds the right notes

Not every formula movie can be counted a failure. Consider The Marching Band, an amiable French offering that tells the story of two men who learn they are brothers when it becomes necessary for one of them to locate the other for medical reasons involving a bone marrow transplant. Both were adopted by different parents as young children. Neither knew of the other until the medical crisis that brought them together. A successful conductor, Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) benefited from a privileged upbringing, but is shaken when he learns he has leukemia. Brother Jimmy (Pierre Lottin) lives in a small town where life revolves around a factory; he plays trombone in the town’s marching band. The movie flirts with becoming a familiar tribute to small-town pluck as the band prepares to enter a contest. Additionally, though, the story deals with the relationship between brothers who contemplate what their lives might have been given different rolls of the dice. Director Emmanuel Courcol contrasts the town band’s amateurish efforts with Thibaut’s accomplished work as a classical musician, and the movie builds toward an ending centering on Ravel’s Bolero and sounding the right chord for a small-scale crowd-pleasing effort.