The isolated life on an islander

Eighteen-year-old Arsa lives alone on a sparsely populated island off the coast of Sicily. Arsa’s independence anchors a story about a young woman whose attention seems to have drifted away from the outside world.

   Directed by a pair of visual artists who go by the name MASBEDO,* the movie depicts the life of a teenager (Gala Zohar Martinucci) who shows little interest in connecting with others. 

   Filmed on the volcanic island of Stromboli, Arsa — named for its main character — moves slowly as Arsa tries to process the death of her father, a sculptor whose creativity was stifled by the commercial interests of his boss.

  Another character, Jacopo Olmo Antinori's Andrea arrives on the island with two other young men. Andrea, who has also lost his father, tries to connect with Arsa; she eventually sleeps with him, but isn’t about to reciprocate his emotional outreach. 

  To support herself, Arsa collects trash that washes onto the island's shores and sells it to a recycler who visits by boat, another aspect of a movie that also shows her relating to the children of tourists.

   I was primed for an “arty” movie, meaning one reliant on richly realized, evocative imagery.  I also wouldn’t have objected to a story that did more to explore Arsa’s life, some of which is revealed in flashbacks. In other words, the movie would have benefited from more poetry or from a more conventional narrative. Instead, it resides in the unsatisfying middle, where neither feels fully realized.

 In the end, Arsa’s concerns seem abstract and, alas, remote. I welcome movies that don't pound us with plot points, but Arsa becomes lethargic and, alas, dull. Oddly, the movie can seem as isolated from its audience as its main character is from the rest of humanity.

*For the record: Nicolo Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni are the duo known as MASBEDO, an eclectic effort known for installations, performance art, sound design, and film.

A revived version of 'Resident Evil'

  Zach Cregger, the director of such respected horror films as Weapons and Barbarians, has grabbed the Resident Evil reins. Cregger's fans may wonder why a director known for giving horror a comic twist would take on a franchise that has its supporters but hasn't garnered much critical favor.

   Working from a screenplay he wrote with Shane Hatten, Cregger acknowledges the series' video-game origins, presenting the movie's unlikely main character with escalating challenges. That may sound familiar, but Cregger embraces the task with an emphatic boldness that limits references to the previous movies, staking a fresh claim in the blood-splattered literature of survival horror.

   Austin Abrams, who appeared in Weapons, plays Bryan, a delivery man who transports organs to hospitals for donation surgeries. Early on, Bryan has trouble getting anyone from a hospital to sign for one of his deliveries, a suggestion that frustration is part of his daily life.

    Supposedly done for the day, Bryan accepts another job because it pays double and involves a top-priority delivery to a hospital in Raccoon City, the fictional location of the Umbrella Corporation, which presents a normal public facade but conducts secret biological research.

     Driving a snowy road to Raccoon City, Bryan hits a woman who darts in front of his car. Immediately, we wonder why a woman wearing only a dress has braved the mountain cold. So does Bryan, who tries to save the woman’s life. 

    Things get progressively crazier as Cregger unreels new threats. Now on foot, Bryan attempts to reach the hospital, triggering a variety of set pieces that include eerie encounters at a lonely farmhouse, searching an apparently abandoned RV, and meeting an ill-fated Umbrella exec (Paul Walter Hauser). Security guard Maxine (Kali Reis) accompanies Walter-Hauser’s character.

     About the monsters.  Resulting from a lab mistake, they're made of body parts snatched from different individuals drawn by tentacles into a singular preposterous shape from which recognizable human features protrude. Cregger shows these creatures in mostly fleeting looks; they're easy to mistake for grisly sight gags. Did I mention that there are also mutants that vomit acid? 

     Unlike the "heroes'' in many survival movies, Bryan proves a novice when it comes to gunplay. Adams keeps Bryan's reactions compatible with what we might expect from a bumbling, overwhelmed "hero" who mostly mutters to himself and who occasionally tries to call his girlfriend. He's been avoiding having a conversation about her pregnancy.

     The supporting cast doesn’t have much to do, but fans of Severance will happily note a late-picture appearance by Zach Cherry, here the head of Umbrella’s research lab.

    This edition of Resident Evil seems as much about its own powers of gory invention as it is about anything else, but Cregger works with palpable commitment to providing a crowd-pleasing jolt for those who enjoy jokey, over-the-top helpings of horror, garnished with a couple of jump scares and some well-managed tension.

     If you're going to make this kind of movie, it's best to shed all pretensions and do it with fervor. It's almost as if Cregger approaches the movie like a dare. He bets that he’ll be able to top each chunk of mayhem with something that outdoes the last; it’s a bet he mostly wins.

     

Convicts on a mission in the wild

 The Weight begs comparison to the Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 French classic Wages of Fear, remade in 1977 as Sorcerer by director William Friedkin. Like his predecessors, first-time director Padraic McKinley offers a stripped-down Depression Era story about men facing perilous conditions as they transport gold through the wilds of Oregon. An action-oriented plot kicks in when the warden of a camp prison (Russell Crowe) offers Ethan Hawke’s Murphy an opportunity to win a pardon. Wrongly convicted and eager to reunite with the young daughter who has been sent to foster care, the widowed Murphy selects a gang of cohorts for a mission that will take them through rough terrain. The prisoners are accompanied by guards (Sam Hazeldine and George Burgess) who leave the heavy lifting to the convicts.  At one point, they must get the gold across a rope bridge that can only support the weight of one of them.  McKinley builds suspense into the movie’s set pieces and adds flavor with supporting characters, notably troublemaker Rankin (Austin Amelio) and a native-American woman (Julia Jones) who joins the prisoners’ foray. Played by a grizzled-looking Hawke with fierce determination, Murphy emerges as a natural leader who dominates the proceedings. Does The Weight measure up to its predecessors? Not quite, but it offers a serviceable helping of tension as its characters confront one danger after another. And, yes, when it comes to gold,  you can bet that deceit and greed will be in play.

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.