BABY DRIVER (2017) *** ½

Writer/director Edgar Wright tries his hand at the crime genre with the enormously entertaining and frequently thrilling Baby Driver.  

Ansel Elgort is the titular “Baby”, a fresh-faced getaway driver who drowns out his constant tinnitus by popping in his ear buds and listening to his iPod.  Naturally, the hardened criminals that comprise his crew don’t trust the seemingly meek kid, but he always manages to surprise them with his savant-like mastery behind the wheel.  Things get complicated when Baby falls in love with a waitress (Lily James) and tries to make his next job his last job.  As we all know from watching heist movies, the “one last job” usually winds up going south.  

Wright puts together a number of rousing action sequences.  The stunt work is terrific and the constant car chases are among the best in recent memory.  He also keeps the pace going as fast as Baby’s driving, so you never have to wait long in between the various shootouts and chase scenes.  Wright’s use of pop music at first seems a bit too cool for school, but that feeling dissipates once we discover Baby’s relationship to his playlist.  Seeing how the various getaway sequences synch up to the music is one of the many joys of the movie.  

It also helps that the cast is stacked with talent.  Kevin Spacey is quite good as the coolly sinister mastermind behind the heists.  Jamie Foxx has a lot of menace as the distrusting bank robber who doesn’t take kindly to Baby’s quirks.  Jon Hamm is also aces as the seemingly laid-back member of the crew who eventually shows his true nature.  It was also fun seeing Paul Williams show up in a cameo as an arms dealer.  

If the movie has a flaw, it’s that the love story between Elgort and James rings false.  It’s your standard Hollywood Meet Cute and all their scenes together feel hollow and manufactured.  In fact, the outrageous car chases are more believable than their lovey-dovey scenes.  James does what she can, but her character is almost painfully one-dimensional.  That’s a small qualm in the long run because when Baby Driver has its foot on the gas, it’s a lot of fun.  

DOGVILLE (2004) ****

A seemingly fragile woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman), on the run from gangsters during the Depression, seeks solace in the small mountain town of Dogville.  The tight-knit community is at first wary of her presence, but the town philosopher (Paul Bettany) asks the residents to allow her to stay on a trial basis.  He suggests she can perform tasks for them in exchange for their silence.  Grace is agreeable to this, but little by little, the town begins taking from Grace until there is nothing left for her to give.  

I know that plot summary seems vague, but the way the townsfolk of Dogville (pardon the pun) slowly show their teeth is one of the most effective parts of the movie.  At three hours, it would at first seem like a slog, but writer/director Lars Von Trier keeps things moving along at a steady clip.  If this was a quick ninety-minute flick, then Grace’s rise and fall in the community wouldn’t nearly have as much power.  The lengths the residents go to dehumanize her is often shocking and appalling, and yet, the slow descent into depravity is a real doozy of a ride.

The reason the film is so powerful is because of the overly theatrical presentation.  The set-up is very similar to Our Town.  Everything happens on a bare stage, with the houses in the town outlined in chalk.  That way you can see everybody going about their day.  Without the comfort of walls and doors, the secrets of the town are out in the open, and because of that, it’s only a matter of time before the townsfolk reveal their true self to Grace.  There is no way Dogville would’ve had the same impact if it was shot in a traditional manner.  The fact that the repugnant and shameful acts happen to Grace on a barren stage for all to see hammers it all home and heightens her humiliation.  

What Von Trier seems to be doing here is a clever facelift of Our Town.  While Our Town was about the kind of town Americans would like to think of as their home, Dogville, with its many secrets, pent-up hate, and malevolent aggression, is about the town we’re ashamed to talk about.  The flipside of Americana and warm apple pie.    

It helps immensely that Von Trier assembled a murderer’s row of talent to populate the town.  Bettany is good as the “aw, shucks” freethinker who is slowly revealed to be full of shit.  We also have Lauren Bacall as the lady who loves her gooseberry bushes, Patricia Clarkson as the schoolmarm, Chloe Sevigny as Bettany’s former flame, Ben Gazzara as a blind man, Phillip Baker Hall as Bettany’s dad, and John Hurt as the narrator.  As an added bonus, James Caan plays the sinister gangster and none other than Udo Kier is his right-hand man!  However, it’s Kidman’s brave performance that holds everything together.  The way she faces cruelty, abuse, and depravity, and still manages to keep on trucking is a sight to behold.  

A sequel, Manderlay, followed with Bryce Dallas Howard in Kidman’s role.

BLACK HORIZON (2004) *

A Russian-American space station that was built by the lowest bidder is now slowly heading into an unscheduled reentry.  Further complicating matters is a looming meteor shower that threatens to pummel the station into oblivion.  It's up to Michael Dudikoff to head a rescue mission and intercept the station before it meets with disaster.  

Black Horizon is one of those Fred Olen Ray movies where he was credited as “Ed Raymond”.  You know, the kind where he takes a bunch of action sequences from other movies (mostly Get Carter and Scorpio One) and THEN wrote a story around them.  That explains why there’s an unrelated car chase with Ice T before the credits roll or why Dudikoff suddenly decides to hop in a jet.  These bits are mostly there to pad out the running time.  Unfortunately, they are the best thing about the film.  Once the focus shifts to the astronauts’ fight for survival, it becomes a dull slog.  You can spot the sequences Ray was responsible for because they’re cheap looking.  I’m thinking specifically of the scenes where the astronauts try to repair the ship by doing a spacewalk, and the wires on their suits are painfully obvious.  

Even as a big fan of Ray, it pains me to say this is one of his weakest efforts.  At least some of his familiar cohorts like Richard Gabai and Robert Donavan are on hand.  They don’t alleviate the boredom or anything, but it is fun spotting them when they turn up.  (Ray himself even has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as a gunman who gets iced by T.)

Dudikoff does what he can with the thin material.  Although he gets the “AND” credit, he’s really the star of the show.  If anyone deserved the “AND” credit, it was Ice T, who mysteriously gets top billing.  Despite the aforementioned opening action sequence, all he really gets to do is spy on some shady Russians who don’t want the rescue mission to be successful.  Incredibly, these earthbound scenes are even more sluggish than the stuff in outer space.  

AKA:  Stranded.  AKA:  On Eagle’s Wings.  

QUICKSAND (2002) **

Michael Dudikoff stars as the new psychiatrist on a military base.  On his first day on the job, a patient babbles on about some big conspiracy before blowing his brains out.  Duds is then assigned by the general (Dan Hedaya) to make sure his wild child sexpot daughter (Brooke Theiss from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Master) gets a Section 8 so she doesn’t embarrass her brother’s political aspirations.  Naturally, when the general is found dead, it isn’t long before Dudikoff becomes the prime suspect.  While trying to clear his name, he also must see to it that the general’s daughter doesn’t become the next victim.  

Quicksand reunites Dudikoff and his American Ninja 1 and 2 director Sam Firstenberg.  Those hoping for another potentially potent pairing will probably be left disappointed as this is more of a military whodunit with shades of a political thriller than an out-and-out action flick.  There isn’t much here in the ways of fisticuffs (Dudikoff gets jumped by a bunch of bad guys who steal his briefcase) and the big car chase basically devolves into Dudikoff spinning donuts in his Jeep in the middle of the desert.  The finale is weak too and would feel more at home on a Lifetime Movie than a Dudikoff/Firstenberg team-up.

Dudikoff isn’t his usual ass-kicking self, which is kind of the problem.  He more of the guy-on-the-run type of thriller leading man.  I’m glad the film offered him an opportunity to stretch his acting muscles a bit, but it would’ve been nice to see him at least punch/kick/shoot his way out of a jam or two.  Richard Kind fares better as the detective in charge of the case.  Kind isn’t the first guy you’d think of for a role like this, and his inspired casting helps to inject some humor into what would’ve otherwise been a boring and cliched character.  Hedaya is usually fun to watch, but he doesn’t stick around long enough to make much of an impression.  Thiess has a couple of nice moments as his mixed-up daughter, although the plot doesn’t really allow for her and Dudikoff to generate many sparks.  

ROBOT WARS (1993) * ½

In the future, a giant robot scorpion is relegated to being used as measly public transportation.  On one outing, the head of robot affairs stupidly allows a foreign dignitary to pilot the robot, and he predictably hijacks the automaton to use for his own sinister purposes.  In order to stop it, the robot’s original pilot Drake (Don Michael Paul) and a reporter (Barbara Crampton) have to find another giant robot that’s been hidden somewhere in the desert.  

Although Robot Wars is only seventy-one minutes long, it feels much longer than that.  It’s a sequel to Robot Jox, a movie I haven’t seen, but if this flick is any indication, I’m not missing much.  Most sequels would at least leave a couple of breadcrumbs to fill in audience members who haven’t seen the first movie.  This one doesn’t.  It just throws you into the deep end and expects you to swim.  I sunk to the bottom pretty quickly.

It also suffers from a bargain basement budget, a thin plot, and a hero who’s one of those arrogant, douchebag assholes that were all-too common at the time, which makes him hard to root for.  The whole thing feels like they started filming on a Monday and had it on video store shelves by Friday.  The crappy costumes, shoddy sets, and paltry plot wouldn’t have really mattered if the robot stuff was tip top.  The stop-motion effects are pretty good when you take into consideration the meager budget the special effects team had to work with.  However, the title Robot Wars is really misleading as there is only one robot battle in the entire movie and it is really brief and anticlimactic.  Robot Skirmish is more like it.  

At least Barbara Crampton and Lisa Rinna are around as eye candy.  Since this was strictly a PG-rated deal, their futuristic jump suits stay firmly on, and aren’t revealing in the slightest.  I’m not saying a little skin here and there would’ve won the Robot Wars, but it certainly would’ve battled the boredom.

AKA:  Robot Jox 2:  Robot Wars.  AKA:  Steel Robot 2.  

MORBIUS (2022) **

After suffering from a rare blood disease all his life, Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) performs an illicit experiment mixing human DNA with that of vampire bats.  Naturally, he tries the serum on himself and although at first it seems to be the cure he’s looking for, it has one nasty side effect:  It turns him into a CGI-faced vampire with a thirst for human blood.  

I like these comic book movies probably more than I should, but even for a dyed in the wool comic book fan like me, Morbius was pretty bad.  It seems to be a throwback to the cheap comic book flicks from the early ‘00s.  Even viewed through those rose-tinted glasses, it still comes up short.  If you enjoyed Elektra, Blade:  Trinity, and Ghost Rider:  Spirit of Vengeance, you’ll probably barely tolerate Morbius.  

It’s one thing for a comic book movie to be inspired by the ‘90s/’00s, but it still kind of has to do its own thing.  Look at The Batman, which came out just last month.  It was clearly ripping off the David Fincher thrillers of the ‘90s and ‘00s, but it had its own fresh spin.  Morbius on the other hand looks like a lost comic book film from the ‘00s that you might drunkenly catch at two in the morning on TBS.  There are bullet-time shootouts that look like they came out of a Matrix-inspired ‘90s action movie, a gratuitous villain dance montage that looks inspired by Spider-Man 3, a sequence where Morbius uses some sort of sonar superpower that’s right out of Daredevil, and even a moment that lifts directly from The Usual Suspects, but it’s like a hundred times less effective.  (Then again, there is a scene where he controls hundreds of bats, which makes him more of a Batman than The Batman, so there’s that.)

It doesn’t help that the superhero action sequences are lackluster.  The scenes of Morbius and the villain bouncing off buildings and punching each other in mid-air get old fast, and the finale is so woefully anticlimactic, you’re left wondering, “Is that it?” even well past the customary post-credits sequences (which are just hollow imitations of post-credits sequences we’ve seen in other Marvel movies).  The whole movie is like that though.  It rushes headlong into the next scene before it’s even properly developed an idea.  In fact, there’s a subplot where Morbius is treating a little girl who has the same blood disease as he does, and he is forced to put her into an induced coma to save her life.  However, we never find out what happened to her.  There’s no scene later on where he brings her out of it.  Heck, he doesn’t even mention her again.  It’s just another subplot that gets lost in the shuffle of the generic superhero action.  

It’s a shame too because Leto is committed enough to the overall Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vibe of the character.  The best scene comes when he takes over a low-rent counterfeiting operation and turns it into his own underground science lab.  The part where he confronts the ringleader is entertaining, and if the movie had him fighting more street-level crime, it could’ve been fun.  As it stands, Morbius is one of the weakest post-MCU comic book flicks in recent memory.    

RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY (2021) ** ½

Milla Jovovich is one of my all-time crushes.  Because of that, I find the Resident Evil movies to be immensely rewatchable thanks to the fact that she spends most of her time in the franchise scantily clad and kicking ass.  Which is why rebooting the series without her seems so confounding to me.  It’s kind of like making Terminator without Arnold Schwarzenegger or Rocky without Sylvester Stallone.  Needless to say, I went into Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City with a sense of trepidation.  Much to my surprise, I found a few things to enjoy about it, even if it was frustratingly Milla-free.  

This reboot takes place in the late ‘90s (which means people use beepers and say things like, “What’s a chatroom?”) in the decaying titular city.  The skeevy Umbrella Corporation is about to pick up at take their multi-billion-dollar operation elsewhere, leaving the town a hollow shell.  Those left behind are forced to deal with the remnants of Umbrella’s latest experiment:  A bunch of zombies.  Soon, the infection spreads, and the last remaining human survivors must find a way out of the town before the company bombs it back to the stone age.  

Writer/director Johannes (The Strangers:  Prey at Night) Roberts brought a real John Carpenter vibe to the proceedings.  (Right down to the Carpenter-esque font.)  Unlike Paul W.S. Anderson’s frenetic action-heavy approach, Roberts favors building up a sense of dread.  While letting that marinate, he’ll occasionally pepper in a couple of humorous sequences set to pop music, which helps to alleviate the tension and keep the audience on its toes.  His assured camerawork combined with the classy cinematography helps to create a real air of atmosphere.  Even though the film drags its feet in places, it always looks and feels appropriately creepy.  Too bad the unwieldy running time (107 minutes) and lackluster third act ultimately prevent the film from really cutting loose.  Also, for a zombie flick, it’s seriously lacking in the gore department, so I’ve got to take points off for that too.

The younger members of the cast are rather interchangeable and forgettable.  Fortunately, Donal Logue is great as the asshole Yelling Police Captain.  He effortlessly steals the movie and injects the film with a little zest whenever it threatens to bog down.  I also liked seeing Neal McDonough (no stranger to video game movie reboots after starring in Street Fighter:  The Legend of Chun-Li) pop up as the evil scientist guy/Final Boss.  

I was never a big fan of the Resident Evil video games.  I was always more of a House of the Dead kind of guy.  I can’t really say how faithful this version is in comparison to the Anderson’s films (although it seems like they took some liberties with the characters), but taken on its own terms, it's a decent outbreak/zombie flick.  If Milla had been in it, it probably would’ve been in the middle of the pack of Resident Evil movies.  As it stands, it’s probably the fourth or fifth best one.