JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2017) *** ½

The original Jumanji involved some kids playing a jungle-themed board game that caused a bunch of wild animals to spring out of the game and wreak havoc.  Since that was twenty-two years ago, Welcome to the Jungle updates things for the modern era.  This time around, the kids get sucked into the Jumanji video game.  The filmmakers were wise enough not to update things too much.  Since the game system is clearly modeled on ‘90s 16-Bit technology, the non-playable characters recite their pithy dialogue again and again until the players decide what to do.  It’s a small touch, but a welcome one for people who remember (and still play) those old games.  

In fact, the whole movie is like that.  It’s a little better, funnier, and more heartfelt than it really needed to be at just about every turn.  Because of that, it’s not only a worthy sequel to Jumanji, it manages to be even better.

Given the fact that the cast includes The Rock, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black as the video game characters pretty much guaranteed this was going to be fun one way or another.  Even if the script was weak, the chemistry between the leads could’ve easily pulled it off.  Since the teens are stuck inside the characters’ bodies, it opens to door to a series of endless comedic possibilities.  The Rock, Hart, Gillan, and Blark gleefully have fun externalizing the teenage characters that inhabit them, which leads to several big laughs throughout the picture.  (The Rock and Gillan have a kiss that undoubtedly will go on to win Best Kiss at the next MTV Movie Awards.)

While director Jake (Orange County) Kasdan milks the premise for all its worth, he also does something unexpected:  He makes the body-switching stuff surprisingly sweet.  I mean Black could’ve played the part of a teenage girl trapped inside a middle-aged man’s body sophomoric and crude (and yes, there is some of that here), but he manages to make the transformation seamless and dare I say, endearing too.  By the end of the movie, you even begin to care about him/her, which is something I definitely wasn’t expecting.  This is simply some of the best body-swapped acting since Face/Off.  

Kasdan does a fine job with the various animal attacks and motorcycle stunts, and has fun with playing around with the concept of being trapped in a video game (the players only have three lives).  The only debit is the boring and thoroughly one-dimensional villain.  The fact that the villain is played by the usually gregarious Bobby Cannavale makes it that much more disappointing.  Still, you have to love the random Tim Matheson extended cameo.

RED WATER (2003) **

Oil drilling in the Louisiana bayou causes a hungry bull shark to get loose and chomp down on a bunch of swimmers.  A down-on-his-luck fisherman (Lou Diamond Phillips) is hired by his ex-wife oil executive (Kristy Swanson) to do a survey of the area.  They cross paths with a drug dealer (Coolio) who’s looking to recover some stashed loot from a deal gone sour.  He takes them hostage to look for the money and soon they run afoul of the hungry shark.

Red Water starts off with a bang when a beautiful bathing beauty gets eaten by the shark.  Director Charles Robert Carner (who also wrote Gymkata, Blind Fury, and Christmas Rush) delivers a decent jump scare during this sequence, which lead me to believe this was going to be a better than average SYFY Channel Shark movie.  Once the dull drug dealer subplot (not to mention the even duller oil drilling subplot) takes over, things get awfully tedious.  I guess Carner is trying to say that humans are just as deadly as man-eating sharks, but the way he does it his ham-fisted at best.  

When the shark is front and center, Red Water is a watchable effort.  Although the shark attacks are few and far between, the shark effects themselves are pretty good and Carner knows how to set up a severed hand gag with the best of them.  Sadly, the stuff on dry land is interminable.  

The cast is better than the film deserves.  Phillips plays things very seriously, which feels a little out of place.  It’s as if no one told him he was starring in a SYFY Channel movie.  Swanson does a fine job in the thankless role that requires her to be both Phillips’ ex AND the face of the corporate villain.  Coolio gets by from basically playing himself, although you wish the script gave him more zingers.

TURBO KID (2015) ***

Grindhouse wasn’t an out-and-out financial success, but it was popular enough to inspire a wave of faux ‘80s exploitation movies.  This subgenre has a tendency to be maddingly uneven though.  For every classic like Hobo with a Shotgun, there's bound to be more than a few Manborgs.  Thankfully, Turbo Kid is one of the good ones. 

Turbo Kid is like a cross between an Ozploitation post-apocalypse actioner and a low-budget rip-off of an Amblin movie.  It even feels like an ‘80s flick as it utilizes many of the fads that were so popular back in that glorious decade.  It may be “the future” (1997 to be exact), but Power Gloves, arm wrestling, and BMX bikes somehow managed to survive the apocalypse.  

In the futuristic wasteland, a teenager (Munro Chambers) ekes out a meager existence by reading comic books and scavenging.  His solitary life is thrown for a loop when he happens upon an energetic android (Laurence Laboeuf) who is all-too eager to become his best friend.     When she is kidnapped by the evil Zeus (Michael Ironside), the kid uses his magic turbo suit (which he found inside an abandoned UFO) to save her.

There are bits here that steal from Mad Max, Rad, and Laserblast.  Directors Francoise Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell could’ve easily relied on a making pastiche of ‘80s films and called it a day.  However, they imbue it with just enough heart to make you care about the characters.  Chambers and Laboeuf make for a great team and Ironside (who looks like he’s having a ball) is enormously entertaining as the heavy.  

The filmmakers have fun staging the action.  Imagine Mad Max, but with BMX bikes and that should give you an idea of what they were going for.  They blow the gore up to cartoonish heights too.  Try to keep track of how many times someone is blown in half.  Sure, Turbo Kid has trouble sustaining its premise over an entire feature, but I guarantee fans of ‘80s post-apocalyptic action movies will walk away with a big-ass grin on their face after watching this one.

KINDERGARTEN COP 2 (2016) ***

26 years later, along comes a sequel to Kindergarten Cop that no one asked for.  Having Dolph Lundgren as the star was a nice touch though.  I mean if you can’t get Arnold, you might as well grab the first nearest Expendable you can get your hands on.

Dolph plays a Fed who arrests a big time Russian mobster.  One year later, there is a data breach at the Witness Protection Program’s computer system.  Dolph goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher at a fancy prep academy to find a flash drive that contains the names of people in the Witness Protection Program before the mobster can get his hands on it.

Dolph is pretty funny in this.  There’s a scene where he’s having a bad day and the candy machine won’t give him a candy bar, so he pulls his gun on it.  Later, he body slams the machine onto a bad guy and the candy bar finally falls out.  Bill Bellamy is Dolph’s wisecracking partner who seems to be doing a Martin Lawrence impersonation the whole movie.  They have good chemistry together and I hope they get paired up again real soon.

If you’ve been in a classroom setting lately, you’ll enjoy how Kindergarten Cop 2 sends up the ultra-P.C. atmosphere of the modern-day school system.  The expression on Dolph’s face when he realizes he can’t say “sit Indian Style” anymore is priceless.  (There’s also an announcement that the school is taking the word “Holiday” out of their “Holiday Play” as to not offend the agnostic students.)  There are also some funny jabs at the expense of the spoiled, pampered rich kids.  The scene where Dolph eats a peanut butter sandwich in a “peanut-free zone” is good for a laugh as are the jokes about kids who need to eat gluten-free diets.  

Maybe it’s because I went in with low expectations, I found Kindergarten Cop 2 to be pretty damned funny.  I laughed about ten times as much as I expected.  It’s definitely a worthy sequel to the original and is easily the best Dolph Lundgren in a School movie since Detention.

BOOK OF NUMBERS (1973) ***

The ‘70s was the highwater mark for Blaxploitation movies.  It was also the heyday of period gangster pictures that were inspired by the success of Bonnie and Clyde.  Book of Numbers represents one of the few times the two genres intersected.

Raymond St. Jacques (who also directed) and his protegee Philip Michael (Miami Vice) Thomas come into a small southern town and set up a numbers operation.  It’s an overnight sensation and that of course, makes the white gangsters take notice.  Naturally, a war starts between the two factions.

Book of Numbers could’ve been content being a black action movie, but it’s much more than that.  It also functions as a slice of African-American life during the Depression era.  There are little touches like seeing the characters have family dinners and attending church that a white filmmaker might’ve forgone in favor of more plot and/or action scenes.

It’s also pretty funny too.  I liked the part when D’Urville (Dolemite) Martin and his pals dressed up in KKK attire to ransack a place.  Of course, they wind up running into the real deal and a fight breaks out.

Even at a relatively-scant 81 minutes, there are a few lulls here and there.  Thomas’ narration is a bit extraneous in some scenes too.  However, the dynamic between St. Jacques and Thomas is endearing enough to make up for a lot of its shortcomings.  There’s a scene late in the picture where St. Jacques must humiliate himself in front of a white courtroom to save his operation that drives a wedge between him and Thomas.  Their interaction in the next scene is an interesting depiction of not only race relations in the south, but also of the generation gap between African-Americans as well.   

THE BEGUILED (2017) *** ½

Sofia Coppola wrote and directed this beautiful and haunting remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 classic.  It’s a case where the remake works just as well, if not better than the original film.  That probably owes more to the strong source material than anything, but Coppola does a marvelous job on all fronts.  

Colin Farrell is in the Clint Eastwood role as a wounded Union soldier who is nursed back to health by the headmistress (Nicole Kidman) at an all-girl school in Confederate territory.  Confined to his bed, Farrell makes eyes with just about any girl he can while his leg heals.  Naturally, he makes time with one of the girls, which makes Kirsten Dunst jealous, so she throws his ass down the stairs.  With his leg busted up even more, Kidman has no choice but to chop that baby off, which turns Farrell into a goddamn madman.

Coppola is gentler in her approach than Siegel.  She tackles the material from the female perspective, which changes the impact slightly.  When Kidman amputates Farrell’s leg, it’s out of necessity rather than spite.  While it lacks the gut-punch feeling of Siegel’s film, it nevertheless works on an emotional level.  The way Coppola slowly builds Farrell’s relationship with the women is expertly done.  I liked seeing how the usually plain ladies started doing their hair and wearing their best brooches in an unconscious effort to impress their captive.  Coppola also does a wonderful job at creating a slow burn atmosphere within the house.  Once things catch fire, the tension truly smolders.

This also happens to be the best remake Farrell’s starred in recently.  It’s much better than the crummy Total Recall, the unnecessary Fright Night, and the unwanted Miami Vice remakes.  Heck, I even liked it more than S.W.A.T.  

THE COMMUTER (2018) **

Liam Neeson is a man with a particular set of skills.  He knows how to open an action movie in the dead of winter.  His new film, The Commuter shamelessly borrows elements from his previous efforts.  It’s basically Non-Stop, but on a train instead of a plane.  We also have someone playing mind games with him a la Unknown.  Oh yeah, and what would a Liam Neeson flick be if his wife wasn’t in danger, just like the Taken series?  As a fan of Neesonploitation, I’m sad to report that even with his long-time collaborator, director Jaume Collet-Serra aboard (heh), this is by far his weakest wintertime actioner. 

Collet-Serra gives us two nifty sequences.  The opening scene that shows Neeson’s character’s mundane existence of boarding the same train every morning is expertly done.  I also liked the long tracking shot that shows not only the geography of the train, but the list of potential suspects as well.  These two scenes would make Hitchcock himself proud.

Hitch would have scoffed at the thin plot, weak script, and predictable plot twists though.  He would’ve also sent the shitty CGI train wreck sequence back to the shop for a touch-up.  Heck, he probably would’ve insisted on using models.  That way, it wouldn’t have looked like something out of a goddamn video game.  

Despite the less-than-stellar material, Neeson refuses to phone it in.  His performance of an Everyman trying to find a certain passenger in a short amount of time in order to save his wife is easily the best thing about the movie.  I honestly thought he’d given up action movies after the excellent Run All Night.  The Commuter is proof he should’ve quite while he was ahead.

 AKA:  The Passenger.