I was a big fan of the first two A Quiet Place films, and went into this one with high hopes. For the most part, it delivers. As the title states, we see more of what went down when the aliens first arrived, unlike the short flashback we got in the last film. This time too, it’s in a big city (New York) and not in a remote area, so there are way more killer aliens taking down a much larger population. The main character is Sam, who is dying of cancer and who is living in hospice when she and the others go for a day trip to a marionette show in Manhattan. Afterwards, with the nurse/director trying to get everyone on the bus amid news reports of weird things happening in the city, the group starts seeing what looks like meteorites falling from the sky. Sam is knocked unconscious when one crashes close, and when she awakens, she’s inside the theater with others urging her to be quiet. The aliens have arrived, and people have quickly learned that any noise will draw them. The rest of the movie is pure thriller. An army helicopter overhead relays a message to survivors to head to the river, where boats are awaiting (the aliens apparently can’t swim), so Sam joins the throng of people going in that direction, but of course a large group of people moving together can’t be completely silent, so it isn’t long before aliens attack and the situation becomes chaotic. In hiding after, Sam meets Eric, a young man with anxiety issues, and the two, along with Sam’s cat, start trying to work their way to the river. I do wish the film would have spent more time exploring the chaos of learning about the aliens and their abilities (Sam “slept” through all of that), but the thrills are great and just as exciting as the first two films. Nice ending too. ★★★★
I went ahead and saw The Watchers despite its terrible reviews, solely because the trailer, when I first saw it quite awhile ago, looked fantastic. Trailers aren’t movies though, and this one disappoints. Written and directed by M Night Shyamalan’s daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan, the film very much feels like one of her dad’s movies. And that’s not always a good thing. Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an American living and working in Ireland, when she is given a job to deliver a valuable bird to a remote zoo. Mina’s car breaks down in a gloomy forest along the way, and she walks until she finds a strange bunker and its inhabitants, Madeline, Ciara, and Daniel. Madeline explains that this is “the coop,” where they must take shelter each night, when the watchers come out. Inside the coop, which is just a single large room with beds, a TV, and a pot to piss in in the corner, there’s one strange feature: a 2-way mirror covering one whole wall. This allows the watchers to view the occupants every night. Madeline and the others also explain the rules: the watchers kill anyone outside the coop at night, you can’t turn your back on the mirror, and they must never enter the burrows, which are tunnels in the ground around the forest. And there’s no way out; a previous inhabitant has placed warnings half a day’s walk from the coop in every direction as a “point of no return;” going past that you can’t make it back to the coop before dark. Mina will not just accept this situation for the rest of her life, so when an opportunity arrives to leave, she grabs it. The explanation for what the watchers are isn’t awful, and there’s decent thrills here and there, but much of the film comes off as silly, and it even has some of Shyamalan’s awful dialogue thrown in (guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree). The final 20 minutes of the film just gets idiotic. ★★
The Secret Art of Human Flight is one of those absolutely great films that no one seems to be talking about. A tiny indie film, the movie follows a young man named Ben, who is dealing with the sudden tragic death of his wife. In his grief, he is browsing the web one night and impulsively sends $5k to a spiritual man named Mealworm, who promises to teach believers how to fly. A few days later, Ben gets Mealworm’s handwritten book in the mail, with weird instructions like “you must lose 18 pounds, no more, no less” and to paint his living space to resemble the clouds. Ben follows all of the instructions, and he has help when Mealworm inexplicably shows up at Ben’s front door, Winnebago parked out front (don’t called it an RV). Mealworm become’s Ben’s spiritual guide, continuing to give strange advice and guidance. Throughout all of this, a persistent police investigator is hanging around, with unfounded suspicions that Ben killed his wife for the insurance money. Lots of laughs thanks mostly to Mealworm (played wonderfully by Paul Raci, who you’ll remember from his Oscar-nominated role in Sound of Metal a couple years ago), but the film isn’t really a comedy. It’s about Ben’s journey, not to flight, but in dealing with his unfathomable grief. In flashbacks, we see his relationship with his wife, warts and all, and get to know them personally. You can tell it is a super-low budget film, but it wasn’t long before I stopped noticing and became completely involved in the story. I laughed and cried, which is all you can hope from any good movie. ★★★★½
Crossing is about a woman looking for someone who may not want to be found. Lia is a retired teacher living in Georgia (the country), and who is trying to fulfill her dead sister’s wish to find Tekla, Lia’s missing niece. Tekla was kicked out of the house years ago for being transgender, for fear of the shame that would bring to the family. First, Lia goes to a house on the edge of town, where Tekla was known to hang nearby, and there meets Achi, who used to be one of her (Lia’s) students. He remembers Tekla as “that girl that used to hang out with the tranny’s” and offers to help Lia locate her. Achi is eager to get away from home, where he lives under his older brother’s thumb. Lia and Achi head across the border to Turkey, to Istanbul, where rumor has it that Tekla has relocated. Their journey will take them to an underworld of transgender people trying to find a voice, shown by spotlight in the role of Evrim. Evrim has recently graduated from law school, but before she can practice, she has to get a group of professionals to sign off, and she’s also trying to get her new state ID as a female, both of which will take convincing with all of the prejudices still prominent in the city. But what Evrim does have is a big heart, and she does what she can to help Lia and Achi find Tekla. For much of the film, I was like, “who cares?” but it all comes together nicely in the end. While it may not satisfy people who like clean, tidy endings, it is a very emotional film and is well acted. ★★★½
I skipped The Fall Guy in theaters because it looked a little too silly for my tastes, and after seeing it on streaming now, it is pretty much exactly as I expected. A reboot of the classic Lee Majors TV series (which I enjoyed in reruns as a kid), it stars Ryan Gosling as stunt man Colt Seavers, who is in a relationship with cameraperson Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). Colt is one of Hollywood’s best stunt men and has been standing in for A-list action star Tom Ryder for 6 years, but a stunt goes tragically wrong on their latest film and Colt breaks his back. 18 months later, Colt is now parking cars for a living when he gets a call from Tom’s film producer Gail, asking Colt to come back one more time, with the incentive that Jody is getting her big chance as a first-time director. Colt and Jody had a falling out after the accident and Colt is ready to try again, so he accepts and flies to Australia for filming. Colt will be filling in for the previous stunt man who has suddenly disappeared. Also missing on set is Tom Ryder, so Jody has been filming all the stunt scenes until Tom can be found. Colt is walking into a powder keg, and it isn’t long before the previous stunt man’s dead body is found, and villains start coming out the woodwork to silence Colt too. Thankfully he knows a thing or two about how to talk a fall, and is able to get along just fine, as the mystery behind the death and Tom’s disappearance slowly unfolds. Really good action in this movie, with lots of good old (non-blue screen) stunt sequences, but as I feared, it borders on the silly and far too often comes off as unbelievable. Not all the comedy is bad, I did manage a few laughs here and there, but some of the ridiculousness was just too much. ★★½
- TV series recently watched: Battlestar Galactica (season 3), Mayor of Kingstown (season 3)
- Book currently reading: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jons Movie Takes 