A strange, haunting '28 Years Later'

 

  Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland return to a series they began in 2002 when they surprised audiences with 28 Days Later, a zombie movie that thrust Cillian Murphy into a post-apocalyptic dystopia. 

  That movie was followed in 2007 by 28 Weeks Later, another helping of post-apocalyptic horror with director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo in charge of a cast that included Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Renner, and Rose Byrne.

   28 Years Later begins as series fans might expect. Put another way,  the projectile vomiting of blood begins within the first eight minutes. And, yes, there are severed heads with spinal cords still attached, not to mention fast-moving zombies and the horribly infectious Rage Virus that turns people into flesh eaters.

   But Boyle doesn't wait long to let us know that the movie will be an exercise in unhinged weirdness, setting his story on Holy Island off the English coast. The mainland -- reachable by crossing a strip of land that's only available during low tide -- is populated by infectious zombies who have been kept off the island.

    Twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) becomes the movie's central character after being introduced to zombie hunting by his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who takes him to the mainland for his first kill. Spike's initiation into manhood reveals that he can be queasy about killing -- which, in this diminished world, is accomplished with bows and arrows.  

   Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle gives the forests and the sea a feeling of end-times emptiness, and Boyle makes effectively eerie use of a recording of Rudyard Kipling's poem, Boots. The movie's sound design by Johnnie Byrne and a score by an Edinburgh group called Young Fathers further suggest dread and perhaps even hopelessness.

   Jodie Comer plays a pivotal role as Spike's confused, bedridden mom. After returning from his first hunt, Spike learns that a doctor (perhaps the last one on earth) lives on  the mainland where he's noted for tending a fire in which he burns an abundant supply of corpses.

   Spike asks his mom to accompany him to the mainland in hopes that the doctor can cure the malady that seems to be killing her. En route to the doctor's camp, the two meet Erik (Edvin Ryding), a stranded Swedish soldier who joins them for a while. Mom also helps an infected woman deliver a baby who's born virus-free.

    Almost nothing feels normal in this tense, corrupted world, but the movie saves its most bizarre flourish for the moment when Ralph Fiennes appears as Dr. Kelson. Kelson coats himself with iodine to ward off the infected. 

   Looking as if he might have wandered in from the set of a Road Warrior movie or perhaps from the jungles of Apocalypse Now, Fiennes radiates an angelic benevolence  that elevates the movie and makes it clear that although  there are many ways to die, no one escapes. His motto: Memento mori, remember you must die.

    A linked prologue and epilogue provide violent punches  that remind us that we are, after all, watching a zombie movie. But Boyle and Garland approach mortality seriously, and 28 Years Later emerges as a piece of horror that speaks in a distinctive, haunting voice that one hopes will carry into two additional movies, one of them slated to be released early next year.

A loopy, discombobulated 'Kraven'

 

   I'd never heard of Sergei Kravinoff until I looked at the credits for Kraven the Hunter, the latest Sony Marvel movie to reach the screen.

  Still confused, I sought more information. Better known as Kraven the Hunter, Kravinoff, I read, is an arch-enemy of Spider-Man. That didn't help, either. Spider-Man didn't appear in the credits or, as I later found out, in the movie.

  Seeing this standalone helping of lethal action resulted in only mild clarification. Marked by R-rated violence, director J.C. Chandors's scattered origin story plays like a darkly-hued Russian thriller that occasionally stops to remember its comic-book origins.

    The story kicks off in earnest when Sergei (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) flees his corrupt father (Russell Crowe) and sensitive brother (Fred Hechinger). He’s off to the woods, where he builds a yurt-like home and communes with wildlife

   Sergei, who'll become Kraven, holds a grudge against Crowe's Nikolai Kravinoff, a big-time drug dealer who drove Sergei's mom to suicide. Dad divides the world's inhabitants into two categories: Weak and strong. Mom was weak. 

  Two villains appear. Alessandro Nivola plays Rhino, a psycho nut job whose skin can turn into rhino hide when he needs protection. The transformation is painful, requiring the insertion of a tube into a portal that links to Rhino's gut, pumping him full of whatever turns sadists into rhinos.

   Christopher Abbott plays Foreigner, a villain who can vanish in one place and reappear in another, although it's unclear how he manages this trick.

  Perhaps to keep Kraven from drowning in testosterone, the screenplay introduces Calypso (Ariana DeBose), a lawyer who allies herself with Kraven; she helps him locate the miscreants he pursues. He has a list.

   Kraven has an advantage over his foes. He possesses the keenly developed senses of a hunter who forms bonds with animals. You may not get him, but four-legged creatures view him as a friend.

   Employing a Russian accent, Crowe delivers his sparse lines with fortune cookie terseness. "Man who kill legend becomes legend,'' he tells his then teenage sons during a hunting trip to Ghana in the movie's early going.

   At one point, Demitri, Kraven's sensitive brother, opens a piano bar and lounge. Listening to his son sing, Dad delivers the movie's most unabashedly irrelevant line. He announces that he trusts no man who doesn't like Tony Bennett. 

   Enough. Chandor (Margin Call, All is Lost) tries to corral a heap of disparate characters and ingredients: a Russian drug lord who groves on Tony Bennett, a potion that brings Sergei back from the dead, action scenes in which Kraven climbs walls and scampers on all fours, and a thundering herds of CGI yaks among them.

  Oh well, as Crowe's character might describe the resulting discombobulation, "No sense in screenplay makes nonsense on screen."

'Fall Guy' doubles down on action

 

   

     Love is in the air and so are many flying bodies in The Fall Guy, an action/romcom in which Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt generate plenty of chemistry. 

   Fresh from his Barbie turn as Ken, Gosling brings shabby appeal to his role as a top stunt man going through a rough time. Blunt responds as an ambitious movie director who can control a set but can't entirely manage her emotions.

   Romance aside -- and, in this outing, it too often falls from view -- The Fall Guy comes across like prep work for summer at the movies, a time when mayhem tends to turn plots into burdensome afterthoughts.

     I had hopes, though. The Fall Guy might have been an engaging look at the lives of stunt men, those stalwarts who create heart-stopping effects that rely on human effort rather than CGI manipulation. 

   Instead, the movie comes across as an over-amped serving of action. Its most arresting footage can be seen in the clips that accompany the end credits, snippets that reveal as much about moviemaking as the movie itself.

  The Fall Guy gets off to a good start with Gosling playing Colt Seavers, a respected stuntman who’s asked to repeat a stunt involving a dizzying fall. 

 Colt works as the stunt double for Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a high-profile action star whose ego has expanded along with the box office receipts he generates. Because he thought too much of Colt's face could be seen during the first attempt, Ryder demands a do-over.

   The second fall goes badly. Colt breaks his back. His pride and body wounded, he retreats into solitude that destroys his relationship with Blunt’s Jody Moreno, who at the time was a camera operator.

   Eighteen months pass and Colt, now working as a valet, is asked to travel to Australia to do stunts in  Jody's Metalstorm. She's making her directorial debut with an action-packed picture populated by aliens and the space cowboy who fights them. 

  But wait. The film’s producer (Hannah  Waddingham of Apple's Ted Lasso) summoned Colt without Jody’s approval. Jody's still brooding about how Colt gave up on their relationship.

    And so it begins. What, you ask? 

    A cluttered story that swamps the relationship between Colt and Jody in favor of stunts that spill over into the movie's "real-life" plot, which surfaces when Colt is asked to find Ryder. The moody star has disappeared.

    A former stunt man who directed Brad Pitt in Bullet Train and who has served as Pitt's stunt double, director David Leitch provides a bit of welcome information for movie fans.

    Leitch clues us in about cannon rolls, stunts in which cars are flipped. He breaks the rules by showing us, as the saying goes, how the sausage is made when Colt is flung against a rock after being set on fire. Wires yank other folks out of scenes, and we see the exhilaration generated by the timing and teamwork that accompanies the success of a complicated stunt.

   But, oh, that convoluted storyline. 

    I half wondered whether the movie that Jody films might have been more fun than the mystery the film revolves around; i.e., what’s really behind Ryder’s disappearance? 

   Leitch sets up the action in ways that are supposed to be funny; sometimes they are; sometimes they aren't — at least that’s how I saw it. I thought Leitch did a better job in Bullet Train.

     The Fall Guy delivers action while trying (vainly, I think) to poke fun at Hollywood’s obsession with stunt-and-grunt moviemaking.

    The result: a noisy, sometimes battering mashup of romance and action that shortchanges the former to serve the latter. For all its stunts, flash, and glamor, The Fall Guy feels undernourished, a blaring helping of commotion sans much of anything resembling sustenance.

'Bullet Train' runs on blood and attitude

     

   A big-screen adaptation of a 2010 Kotaro Isaka novel,  Bullet Train makes no bones about feeling familiar. With Brad Pitt headlining, director David Leitch (Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw) evokes thoughts of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, to name only two directors who have made predecessor movies.

     The movie also has a clang/bang quality that recalls the work of premiere cartoonist Chuck Jones. Perhaps that reference is more apt  because Bullet Train can be viewed as a 126-minute cartoon that seldom tempers its slash/dash editing with anything resembling emotion or complex character development.

      Normally that would be a drawback, but it's clear from the outset that Leitch's adaptation of a Japanese hitman novel plans to say close to the surface, building interest with sight gags, physical comedy, action, and enough flippant attitude to stock a freight train.

       Does it work?

       Sometimes.

       Pitt plays an assassin code-named Ladybug. Shaggy-haired and possibly careless, Ladybug believes he's cursed by bad luck. He's sent on a mission by his handler,  a woman who communicates with him via an earpiece as he boards a bullet train that leaves Tokyo for Kyoto.

       Once on board, Ladybug encounters a stream of characters with whom he fights. 

      Notable among them are Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who present themselves as twins. Lemon, by the way, maintains an obsessive interest in Thomas The Tank Engine, presumably one of his childhood favorites and another example of a screenplay that spews quirkiness like a car speeding through a puddle.

       Also onboard: Prince (Joey King), a vicious assassin who sheds little-girl tears on demand and generally poses as an innocent. She's called The Prince because she was supposed to carry on a male lineage. Oops.

      Wolf (Benito A. Martinez Ocasio) and The Hornet (Zazie Beetz) join the battle, each with motives to kill.

      A whisper of a plot blows through a story that hiccups flashbacks to shuffle the deck of time and provide background on the movie's parade of characters. The story centers on a suitcase full of money that's supposed to be used to pay ransom for the kidnapped son of the movie's major evil figure, White Death. 

     Best to find out who plays White Death in a theater, but know that the actor gives the movie a big lift toward the end.

     The story begins when a six-year-old boy is pushed off a Tokyo roof. The boy's grandfather (Hiroyuki Sanada) blames the boy's father (Andrew Koji) for not protecting the kid. Duly chastened,  Kogi's Kimora boards the bullet train with vengeance in mind.

      Did I mention that at a poisonous boomslang snake gets loose on the train, adding one more reason for characters to shed blood, this time from eyes that bleed like tiny waterfalls?

      Pitt totally commits to a role that makes him a kind of ringmaster for a circus that includes plenty of free-flowing plasma.

      There's talk of fate, luck, destiny, and a conclusion that speeds its way over the top.  I guess that makes sense, considering that we're  watching a mega-cartoon. 

      Look, keeping movie like this on track isn't easy. I'd say Leitch gets more than half way to his destination, not a disaster but less than a triumph for a movie that seems to have big-time summer box-office ambitions.

       

'Avengers' strikes again -- but not as deftly

Still, summer's first comic-book movie probably will connect with fans.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is the first of summer's bona-fide comic book movies. As such, it surely will score with fans of the series, as well as with those who've awoken from winter's hibernation hungry for another helping of their cherished Marvel superheroes.

Here's a list for those keeping score: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).

These are the same actors who helped turn director Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012) into an entertaining megahit.

This time out, Whedon and company provide a demonstration of what happens when a culture begins replicating itself, doling out the latest version of the same-old-same-old. The movie plays like an echo of its predecessor -- albeit a very loud one.

Also directed by Whedon, this edition alternates dull exposition with slam-bang action, some of it spectacularly created by the movie's welter of CGI geniuses. For my money, these unseen artists qualify as the movie's real stars, although they probably have been called upon to create more battles than any single movie needs.

The movie opens with an action-packed prologue set in the fictional eastern European country of Sokovia. The commotion has something do with invading the headquarters of Hydra. If you're an aficionado, you need no further explanation. If you're not, you probably don't care anyway.

The story's stakes, of course, are both high and par for the comic-book course: Our superheroes square off against Ultron (voice by James Spader), a super-intelligent robot (or at least some sort of metalic creature) created by Tony Stark, who's also Iron Man.

Uninspired by what he sees of humankind, Ultron decides that he wants to wipe out all of humanity.

Although it has been engineered to give each superhero time in the spotlight, the movie ultimately delivers a message about the importance of team work. The superheroes must use their unique individual skills to accomplish a joint task; i.e., rid the world of Ultron -- while delivering one-liners, of course.

The movie introduces several new characters, two of them twins played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen. Taylor-Johnson's Quicksilver is lightning fast; Olsen's Scarlet Witch has some kind of out-sized mental powers.

A few subplots also peek through the action, notably a digression into Hawkeye's civilian life and suggestions of romance between Hulk and Black Widow.

Paul Bettany shows up late the movie as a character named Vision: He reassures us that an invention with artificial intelligence can appreciate humans, despite not being one of them.

All of this tumult results in a somewhat confusing entertainment that still manages to wring a bit of sentiment out its finale.

Before the screening, I was mentioning to a companion that I'm starting to wear out on Robert Downey Jr.'s smart-and-smug act. Ultron did nothing to change my mind.

I enjoyed some of the big set pieces, but at 2 1/2 hours, my biggest reaction upon conclusion of Ultron was relief.

I also wondered whether Whedon and some the principal cast members might not feel the same way. These mega-productions definitely can wear you out.

'Godzilla' stomps into theaters

A monster movie that provides the right kick.

The new Godzilla -- though far superior to Roland Emmerich's 1998 edition -- offers plenty of room for criticism and carping.

Let's get that out of the way first.

-- As an engineer working in a Japanese nuclear plant, Bryan Cranston seems so agitated you half wonder whether his character has been doing some of Walter White's meth.

-- Juliette Binoche is in the movie, but doesn't make it much past the first reel.

-- The movie's human hero (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) seems so generic, he might have wandered in from the set of another action movie.

-- Wisdom? Only if you think the 1954 original can help you unlock the key to successful living. The biggest lesson you can take from Godzilla is an admonition: Don't get crushed.

Problems, yes, but damned if Godzilla isn't full of monumental fun, a major helping of B-movie entertainment that's presented with so much seriousness, it can't possibly be taken seriously.

Credit director Gareth Edwards with understanding B-movie tropes, as well as with a willingness to trash several American cities in a movie that builds (or rather stomps) toward a climactic battle in which Godzilla takes on two hideous-looking creatures known as Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms -- MUTOs for short.

Think of them as skyscraper-sized bugs.

Sure Godzilla could be more careful about where he puts his feet down, but we feel more empathy for the Big Guy than for most of the humans in the film. And let's face it, some of the people are simply there to be squashed, human sacrifices en route to what's bound to be a box office epiphany.

The movie opens in 1999 with Cranston's Joe Brody working in a Japanese nuclear facility that's threatened by increased seismic activity. Disaster hits, and Joe suffers a big loss.

Fifteen years later, Joe -- fueled by grief and obsession -- still lives in Japan. He believes a massive coverup is concealing the true cause of the nuclear meltdown.

Brody's grown son (Taylor-Johnson) -- now a Naval officer -- leaves his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and young son to travel to Japan. He hopes to help his "nut-case" father who has been arrested for entering the quarantine zone that was ravaged when the nuclear plant blew.

Young Brody soon learns that his father is right in his suspicions.

Edwards (Monsters) doesn't so much tell a story as he hammers together bits of narrative, but he hammers loudly and with resolve, creating a suspenseful atmosphere until he unleashes the wanton destruction that gives the movie its real kick.

Two schools of thought emerge about how to deal with the rampaging monsters. David Straithairn plays an admiral who thinks that the solution may involve luring the creatures out to sea and going nuclear on them.

Ken Watanabe plays a scientist who opposes the military solution. He seems to have a strange concern for Godzilla.

Noisy, senseless and fun, Godzilla saves most of its gargantuan thrills for its finale.

A special nod to Alexander Desplat, whose score ripples through the proceedings like an eerie warning of terrors to come, sometimes sugesting more than the movie's able to deliver.

Not surprisingly, Edwards leaves the door open for a sequel, but he seems to know what's essential about the 60-year-old franchise. He works with enough brio to satisfy genre fans while underplaying grand thematic pronouncements about humanity's fatal arrogance.

That's probably a good thing.