Quick takes on 5 films

Peninsula is the followup to the critically and commercially successful zombie flick Train to Busan a couple years ago. After a quick intro to the new characters, on the day of the virus breakout, the film jumps ahead 4 years to the present. The entire South Korean peninsula has been quarantined off and the rest of the world has moved on. Scavengers have started to try to get into the former South Korea though, knowing that people died leaving gold and jewelry and US dollars just sitting around. Former Korean citizen and marine captain Jung-Seok has been eking out an existence in Hong Kong, but the public there distrusts people from Korea, obviously scared of the zombie virus. He and his brother, Chul-min, are recruited by a scavenger group to sneak into the former South Korea and get out with a truck full of money. The big reward (should they survive) will set them up for life. Does the film suffer from “sequel-itis?” Of course! The villains are off-the-walls unbelievable, the car chases are straight out of The Fast and the Furious, and cliched plot elements abound, including a deus ex machina, but damn if it still isn’t entertaining. If you love the absurdity of the Mad Max films (including the sequels), you’ll enjoy the ride here too. ★★★★

Run is a suspense thriller starring Sarah Paulson and Kiera Allen as mother Diane and daughter Chloe. Chloe was born with a multitude of physical disabilities, including heart problems, asthma, diabetes, and paralysis of the legs, leaving her tied to a wheelchair. As a teenager, she’s grown very bright and is looking forward to college, waiting every day for acceptance letters. Somehow it is this waiting that first makes her start to have suspicion that her mom Diane is hiding something from her, as none of the expected letters ever come. Chloe also finds that a medicine she’s been taking all of her life actually is prescribed to her mom, and when she sneaks into the pharmacy without her mom’s knowledge, Chloe learns some life-shaking news. When Chloe awakes the next day, she’s been locked in a room and Diane isn’t around, leading Chloe to attempt her escape. There’s some great thrills and tight suspense, even from early in the film, but unfortunately most of it’s been done before. The one great aspect of the film is that actress Kiera is herself really in a wheelchair, which is extremely uncommon to see a lead role in any film or show. Kudos to her and the filmmakers for making it happen, but the film itself is just average, and the ending is pure cheese. ★★½

About 5 minutes into Alone, I thought, “This is very familiar.” It’s because I just watched this movie last month. Well, not exactly this movie, but the Korean version. Both movies used the same source material, and while #Alive was released first, Alone was actually made first, but its release was delayed because of COVID. Being in English doesn’t make this version any better. There are a couple differences. Our male hero is the real star and badass and the girl is just a damsel in distress, which makes sense since Tyler Posey has some name power and Summer Spiro is a relative newcomer. Also, the virus here spreads through any blood contact, not just bites, and the zombies continue to repeat phrases they were saying when they died, so that ups the freakiness factor. Other than that, I disliked this movie for all the same reasons I disliked #Alive. Nothing new for the genre, rough acting, worse dialogue, and uneven execution. Better to go back and watch the Busan zombie films. ★

It seems like ages ago when I first saw the trailer for The New Mutants (filming was done way back in 2017). But then Disney bought Fox and the X-Men series fell under Marvel Studio’s purview. And The New Mutants went into post-production hell. Now it has finally been released as the last in Fox’s X-Men film series, before they will be rebooted later under Marvel’s umbrella. When I first saw that trailer, it looked super exciting, as a dark, almost horror film. The final cut, whether due to re-writes or editing, is more like horror-light, with a fair amount of super hero action. Danielle Moonstar is the sole survivor from a catastrophe at her Native American town, and is brought to a facility with young teenage mutants who have also faced tragedy. She’s the only one there who doesn’t know what her powers are, and the others, with the exception of Rahne (who can turn into a wolf), don’t take kindly to her. The group of kids are under the watchful eye of Dr Reyes, a seemingly kindly person but with a Nurse Ratchet undertone. Upon Danielle’s arrival, bad things start happening to the others: their nightmares become very real and very dangerous. As the nightmares more real incessant and Reyes’ motives become clear, the teens need to band together to fight. This movie has a lot of detractors, and some of those bad reviews have a point. Character development is very poor, which is the most glaring problem, but honestly I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would. Could it have been better? Yes, definitely, but I was entertained, and it is a much better conclusion to the X Men series than the awful Dark Phoenix. The New Mutants was originally planned as the start of a new trilogy, which will now obviously never happen, but it would have been exciting to see where it could have gone. ★★★½

Another maligned recent release is Disney’s live action Mulan, and unfortunately, this time I have to agree. The original Disney cartoon came out when I was 18, so no longer young, but still young at heart, and I enjoyed it. This remake is a pale shadow of the original. The story is relatively unchanged: there’s an uprising headed by an evil man, who wants to take down the Emperor of China. A call goes out for every family to supply one male, and in Mulan’s family, that means her ailing father must go, as they have no sons. Mulan is a tomboy and despite her parents’ repeated entreaties, she longs to be treated as an equal to the men in the village. She clandestinely takes her father’s place in the army, disguising herself and pretending to be a young man. She is able to keep the subterfuge up through training and into battle, when she unmasks herself and goes on to show everyone what women are capable of. What should be a rousing tale lands with a huge thud. All of the characters in this film are paper thin with no dimension or fleshing out, and sadly that goes for Mulan too. Also, especially with how the world is now as compared to 1998, more could have been done to show the culture and uniqueness of the Chinese people, but you can take this film and put it in any setting, and no one would know the difference. The battle scenes are OK I guess, in their heavy CGI way, but even those became boring after awhile. It’s a “pretty” film but that’s about it. ★★