Movie Nation

“Everly” is the sort of gonzo guns and Ginsu knives thriller Tarantino made back before he discovered the joys of bloat.
It’s the sort of movie where the titular heroine (Salma Hayek) takes bullets and stabbings and keeps coming back for more.
It’s one of those films in which an apartment building is isolated by corrupt cops, and legions of bad guys are sent in to kill this lone, short sexy Mexican woman — kind of a Robert Rodriguez version of “The
Raid.”
It has the sort of bad guy who hisses lots and lots of threats as his minions are slaughtered by this lady, trapped with guns, dead bodies and a sack of cash in the apartment where the bad guy kept her as his
concubine.
“Frankly, death by my sword is an honor you don’t deserve.” Yeah, he and most of his hired killers are Japanese Yakuza, mobsters with lots of tattoos. And sure, we expect him to eat those words for lunch.
Then there are the neighbors, kept women one and all, women with killer skills which they’re obliged to try out since the woman called Everly has a high price on her head and they’ll like to kill and collect.
Christmas is coming, the movie reminds us. They all have bills to pay.
My favorite moment was the arrival of a dapper, white-haired Japanese gentleman (Togo Igawa) who only knows two words in English. He is “The Sadist,” he says with a bow as his gang of bandits get the drop on Everly. And this, he gestures to a hulking nutjob locked in a cage he’s brought with him, is “The Masochist.”
That’s for the torture sequence in this Joe Lynch (script by TV vet Yale Hannon) gore-fest. Yes, “Everly” is a good picture for the fake blood industry as our heroine spills gallons of it — but very little of her own, despite the holes in her torso.
An instantly forgotten genre picture — the dapper “specialist” character has been in so many Japanese crime movies that the convention was mocked on “The Simpsons” years ago — “Everly” has just enough novel touches to entice aficionados, but not enough to transcend the carnage and cliches. But Hayek, back in the sort of B movie that launched her career, gives good value and will make you cackle in surprise, if you’re the sort who can giggle at the old ultra-violence as it is served up in heaping helpings here.

MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, torture, nudity, sexual images and language

Cast: Salma Hayek, Togo Igawa, Laura Cepeda,Gabriella Wright
Credits: Directed by Joe Lynch, script by Yale Hannon. A Radius/Dimension/TWC release.

Running time: 1:32

“The Lazarus Effect” is what happens when hip, smart actors commit themselves to a horror movie, body and soul.
Mark Duplass (“Safety Not Guaranteed”), a mainstay of indie cinema’s microbudget “mumblecore” movement, and recent convert Olivia Wilde
(“Drinking Buddies”) ably play a scientist couple whose work has led to a serum that brings the dead back to life
And with director David “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” Gelb in charge, you can be sure this isn’t some brain-munching zombie apocalypse.
“Lazurus” is a lean and unfussy horror tale built on sharply-drawn characters and spare, uncluttered dialogue.
What the scientists and their team (Donald Glover, Evan Peters, and as their new intern-videographer, Sarah Bolger) are trying to do is
“give doctors time,” create a bigger window for coma patients and those whose hearts have stopped to be resuscitated before brain damage
sets in.
In extreme, blurred close-ups, Gelb captures early experiments in which a twitch of life is seen in this pig or that dog. Then, Rocky, an
intense and well-trained canine actor, rises from the operating table. Success! Let’s take him home!
“Are you sure you want to keep this in your house? This thing could go Cujo on you in a hurry!”
They ignore that. Not bothering with the rules is kind of the M.O. for Frank (Duplass).
Next thing they know, Big Pharma has swooped in on their university lab and seized everything. But if they can replicate their
discovery in a late night session, maybe they’ll get the credit after all.
When you’re rushed, you’re careless. And when you’re careless around high voltage, you’re asking for an electrocution.
“I thought I lost you,” Frank whispers to his love.
“Yeah, you did.”
“But I DIDN’T.”
Zoe is dead, then revived. And that’s when things turn deadly and a long night turns into a nightmare.
You don’t have to be a mere mortal male to find the gorgeous and intense Wilde scary, and she amps up the terror. Gelb zeroes in on her stare, and keeps his
camera close, reinventing visual tropes as old as the first ghost story, as familiar as Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, his experiments and his
dilemma. Should man play God?
An 82 minute movie shouldn’t have space in it to touch on the afterlife, faith (Zoe is a Catholic near-believer) and guilt. But “The
Lazarus Effect” does.
There’s no point in overselling a conventional, rarely surprising horror picture, a picture that manages one good, cheap jolt and a
solid hour of dread. But “Lazarus” reminds us that a genre overwhelmed by junk fare doesn’t need to be that way. It’s not
effects, gore or novelty that matter. It’s all in the execution, and electrocution.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of horror violence, terror

and some sexual references

Cast: Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass, Sarah Bolger, Donald Glover, Ray Wise
Credits: Directed by , written byLuke Dawson, Jeremy Slater. A Relativity release.

Running time: 1:22

The girl wears elbow-length gloves and hair that hides other burn scars from her face. She’s made her way to Hollywood by bus, but knows enough to hire a limo to get around town.
Within days she’s found a job as an actress’s personal assistant — thanks to being Twitter pal of Carrie Fisher — and a boyfriend who happens to be the limo driver, but also an actor. Or actor-screenwriter.
She (Mia Wasikowska) seems a little off, knowing but naive, so the beau (Robert Pattinson) is on the mark when he says, “Look, Agatha, I think you’re a little crazy.”
But so is another Hollywood insider who sees her and sizes her up. “For a disfigured schizophrenic, you’ve got the town pretty wired.”
“Maps to the Stars” is Hollywood outsider David Cronenberg’s twisted take on Hollywood and Hollywood “types,” a depraved and despairing look at the damaged goods that make their way from the rest of the world into show business. This unblinking yet unsatisfying ensemble drama features kinky sex, ruthless opportunism, violence and psychosis. Very Cronenberg.
There’s a needier than needy actress, played by freshly-minted Oscar winner Julianne Moore. Havana is doing some seriously sick therapy to prep her for the role she hopes she was born to play — as her incestuous, child-abusing mother, a “cult figure” starlet (Sarah Gadon, seen in flashback) who died decades ago.
The town’s hot shrink/guru is played by John Cusack, who is treating Havana and married to brittle, broken stage mom Christina (Olivia Williams). He’s trying to keep his latest book tour on track as their cruel child star son (Evan Bird) attempts to salvage his career by making a sequel to the movie that made him. All Benjie has to do is stay sober (he’s 13), stay out of the tabloids and not kill the younger, cuter co-star who upstages him in every scene.
Writer Bruce Wagner, whose screen credits go back beyond “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3,” swirls these types into a toxic cocktail of dysfunction, desire, ambition and glib one-liners, a tale of incest in a hierarchy where that could be seen as a canny career move.
Cusack’s Dr. Feelgood About Yourself has many of the best lines — “If we can name it, we can tame it…No one escapes the long arm of Twelve Step.”
Moore makes Havana believably high mileage and high maintenance in a performance that is raw and manic. Her skimpy wardrobe gives away Havana’s desperation, a weepy, aging wannabe willing to dive into a threesome to close the big deal. Williams turns Christina into a shattered, guilt-ridden apologist for the monster-child she created, Bird does well in playing an ulfiltered Bieberesque creep.
The acting is generally better than the broad satiric and pervy points Cronenberg (“A History of Violence”) and Wagner want to make, though Wasikowska and Pattinson barely register, a bland protagonist who instigates all that follows (Agatha connects to one and all) and her bland reactor/suitor.
The take-away here is the sangfroid it takes to hide your schadenfreude, the fake smiles when you run into a hated rival who just won a role you covet, the power games that play out in Cronenberg’s trademark sexual ways. That’s not exactly fresh ground.
So for all the biting scenes that show Youngest Hollywood’s drinking and mating rituals (sophisticated insults, juvenile indiscretions, drugs, guns), all the sharp observations about the souls that are sold for fame and the false prophets that the Walking Soul-Dead follow, the director and screenwriter lose their way in the clutter, “Maps” or no maps.

MPAA Rating: R for strong disturbing violence and sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some drug material

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Julianne Moore, Evan Bird, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams

Credits: Directed by David Cronenberg, written by Bruce Wagner. A Focus/eOne release.

Running time: 1:51

The trouble with movies about “The Big Con” is that they condition us to not believe anything we see up on screen — relationships, who is conning whom, deaths, etc.
“Focus” one-ups that by pushing a romance to the fore, one that is supposed to be fun, sexy, cute and believeable. And when we don’t buy the veteran con man (Will Smith) in love with the hot young acolyte (Margot Robbie), well, what is there to cling to? They generate about as much heat as John Travolta and Menzel managed on Sunday night.
Chemistry, or the lack of it, burns a big hole in this supposedly romantic, unconvincingly tense, feebly comical caper picture from the guys who gave us “I Love You, Phillip Morris,” Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. It’s got an “Ocean’s 11” sheen without the requisite snap, a “Grifters” without a sexual spark.
Smith is Nicky, a third-generation hustler who runs a team of pickpockets, grifters and thieves who show up at major sporting events and ruin a lot of peoples’ vacations. When Jesse (Robbie) throws herself in his path in a swank restaurant where she’s just lifted the wallet of a mark, Nicky sizes her up, shoots her down and inspires her plea.
“Teach me.”
So the script has Nicky unleash every Big Con cliche about a “touch,” what to do with a “poke,” what the “Toledo Panic Button” is, etc.
“Die with the lie,” he preaches. “You never drop the con. You never break.”
Jesse gets in on his “Big Game” operation at the Super Dome, which provides the film’s first actual surprise. But how can this love connection work out when nobody can ever trust anybody else?
Robbie is a pretty — no, gorgeous, stunning, perfect face. And a fairly bland actress. Smith should have developed some romantic comedy chops, and he’s OK with a one-liner. But seriously, these two in the clinches? It’s like Neil Patrick Harris is in the room — dying, all over again.
“Focus” is stolen by two supporting players, the only actors to give it the colorful characters it needs for that breath of life. B.D. Wong is an amusing, super-rich gambler who gets into a competition with Nicky. And Adrian Martinez chews it up as the sarcastic, crude-talking, walking sight gag, Farhad — the team’s tech whiz.
Weak villain, a couple of eye-rollingly unlikely cons and dead stretches that make 105 minutes play like 145 and you’ve got “Focus,” the last dog of February, where comatose con job movies are released to the sounds of silence.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual content and brief violence
Cast: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Rodrigo Santoro, B.D. Wong, Gerald McRaney, Adrian Martinez
Credits: Written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:44

It wasn’t that long ago.
The streets were littered with barricades, and at night, you could see the bonfires scattered all along the religious fault lines of the city.
Graffiti covered the walls — an “I.R.A.” slogan here, a “No Pope Here,” there.
And the hatred just seethed, turning husbands and fathers into bomb builders and gunmen, sons into cold-blooded murderers.
Yann Demange’s “71” takes us back to the swirling maelstrom of the peak of the civil war in Northern Ireland. Set just three years after “The Troubles” began and a year before “Bloody Sunday,” it’s an intricate, intimate thriller about a single soldier’s nightmare day and night on the front lines.
Jack O’Connell of “Unbroken” stars as Gary Hook, a working class recruit into a British Army still divided along class lines. Hook is shipped to Northern Ireland, where he’s exposed to an idealistic, posh upper class lieutenant (Sam Reid of “Belle” and “Anonymous”) and the depths of animosity between Catholic “republicans” and Protestant “loyalists” in Belfast.
Lt. Armitage has some sort of “win their hearts and minds” delusion about the Army’s “peacekeeping” role there. It’s why he orders riot gear left behind as they accompany heavy-handed cops on a raid on the apartment of I.R.A. sympathizers.
A riot ensues, and when circumstances separate Hook and another recruit from their unit, one is summarily executed and Hook flees for his life, through the bowels of the Catholic stronghold, a day and a night of terror, bloody entanglements, wounds and confusion.
Demange, working from a clever, gritty Gregory Burke script, hurls obstacles aplenty at this frightened boy. This last incarnation of “The Troubles” had plenty of infighting, so bloody-minded young turks (Killian Scott plays their leader) are hunting Hook just to execute him, while older, cooler I.R.A. heads (David Wilmot) try to find the lost soldier just to calm the situation.
The foppish but humane Lieutenant wants to ameliorate his blunder and recover his missing man, but the brooding, brutish head of undercover operations (Sean Harris) has other motives.
The journey here is a one in which Hook, if he lives or dies, has his eyes opened at the nature of the fight and his place in it.
“You’re just a piece of meat to them,” a kindly civilian (Richard Dormer) warns him. Catholic women try and protect soldiers, a small loyalist boy (Corey McKinley) spews such hatred that we and Hook wonder if he can be trusted and how long it will be before he becomes a killer.
O’Connell keeps fear close to the surface of his performance, even as flashbacks suggest a tough background that may play a hand in whether Hook lives or dies.
The violence is immediate and personal. Demange, keeping his camera hand-held through the chases through alleys, backyards and apartment blocks, makes this film as visceral an experience as Paul Greengrass’s breakthrough movie, “Bloody Sunday.”
Demange’s movie isn’t nearly as moving as that one. It’s more removed, observing and casting blame for that awful conflict far and wide even as it remains fixed on this one young man’s fate, making us care about that fate. But “71” is rare enough and good enough to make us long for more thrillers with context and consequences, something sorely missing from your average Hollywood action picture.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, disturbing images, and language throughout

Cast: Jack O’Connell, Sam Reid, Sean Harris, Charlie Murphy

Credits: Directed by Yann Demange, script by Gregory Burke. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:39

If you’re a film buff — and seriously, if you’re reading, stumbling across movie blogs, etc., why not? — you may have a ready question or two you’d love to ask the great John Boorman.

He did “Point Blank” and “Hell in the Pacific.” He made “Deliverance” and “Zardoz” And “Excalibur.”

There was “Beyond Rangoon” and “The General,” “The Tailor of Panama” and, one of my all time favorites — the semi-autobiographical “Hope and Glory.”

“Queen and Country” is his sequel to that film, and I’ll be asking him a few things about coming back to those characters 27 years later for a story about a young man’s years in the Korean War era British military.

But what about you? Got a question? Comment below, and thanks for the suggestions.

Every scene is magical, every image a work of art in “Song of the Sea,” the latest Oscar-nominated feature from the folks who gave us “The Secret of Kells.” “Sea” is an Irish folk tale, a modern day account of selkies, fairies and elves in Ireland, full of adult concerns and sadness, childhood wonder and delight. It’s one of the best children’s cartoons of the past few years.
A pregnant mother sings her little boy, Ben (voiced by David Rawle) to sleep, telling him stories of the magic creatures that once roamed Ireland and reassuring him that when his sister is born, “You’re going to be the best big brother in the world.”
That’s important, because mom, tragically, leaves the picture. It’s just lighthouse keeper dad (Brendan Gleeson, of course), tiny, speechless Saoirse. Dad still mourns Mom, and Ben resents the sister who cost him his mother. Ben is a fearful boy. Living in a lighthouse on a storm-tossed island, he wears 3D glasses, the cape of a would-be super hero, and the life jacket of a child scared of the water.
He calls his sheep dog his best friend, and tries to ignore the toddler in his care. But Saoirse is drawn to the sea, lured by the friendly faces of the seals that beckon her into the deep. Ben needs to do a better job of watching over her.
Granny (Fionnula Flanagan) lectures her son about the proper place for his children, and takes them ashore, to the city. “I know best,” she says. But she leaves Ben’s beloved dog behind, and when he resolves to follow his own hand-drawn map back home, Saoirse tags along.
Ben remembers the tales his mother told, and is shocked to run into fairies, most of whom have had their “feelings” torn from them, turning them into stones. The fairy stones are everywhere. And the few fairies still alive need a selkie to sing her song to set them all free.
Menacing owls track the kids. They are in the employ of Macca (Flanagan, again), an owlish witch who only wants to protect us all — magical creatures and Ben, the “human child” — from pain.
“Kells” director Tomm Moore concocted this story (with Will Collins writing the script) from the legend of Mac Lir, an Irish giant who suffered a terrible loss. “Such was his anguish that he cried a whole ocean,” Ben remembers Mom telling him. Mac Lir’s grief turned him to stone, an island. What will wake him up?
In an age when 3D computer-animated films dominate this corner of the medium, Moore makes films defiantly hand-crafted. Every setting has an exaggerated, 2D expressionistic edge — fanciful cliffs and mountains, houses and seals, sea captains and fairy storytellers.
“Song of the Sea” covers some of the same ground as the John Sayles live-action fantasy “The Secret of Roan Inish,” and is every bit as engaging, a child’s fantasy in which a destiny must be fulfilled, a boy must grow up and everyone — adult and child — learns that losing your grief, your “feelings,” is the most tragic destiny of all.

MPAA Rating: PG for some mild peril, language and pipe smoking images

Cast: The voices of Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, David Rawle, Jon Kenney

Credits: Directed by Tomm Moore, screenplay by Will Collins. A GKids release.

Running time: 1:33

There’s something chilling about thrillers that put a child in jeopardy. And from the minute we meet Hannah (Pixie Davies) in “Out of the Dark,” she’s being menaced.
Her parents (Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman) have just moved with her from London to rural Colombia, where granddad (Stephen Rea) owns and operates the town’s big paper mill. Mom is to manage it while kids’ book illustrator Dad stays at home with Hannah, who looks about five.
“We’re going to be happy here,” Mom opines.
“Of course we will,” Dad chimes in.
But this is a creepy place for kids, starting with this local celebration — “Fiesta de los ninos santos” — Festival of the Saints’ Children. Local urchins are rare, and some seem to run about with their faces swathed in costumes — apparently in tribute to villagers massacred by Conquistadors hundreds of years ago.
Superstitious locals hint that this long ago tragedy is behind the mysterious shadows and faceless gangs of children that go bump in the night around here. The rational Americans scoff, but they’re a little antsy every time Hannah is out of their sight. And she’s always wandering off in the market, into the woods around their huge house, climbing into the old, disused dumbwaiter.
“Out of the Dark” is an old school ghost story, with a supernatural cause-and-effect story and modest and modestly effective effects — watery footsteps, creaking stairs, shadows glimpsed through a window. Director Lluís Quílez and cinematographer Isaac Vila conjure up nothing special in terms of mood-setting lighting or surprise frights.
Stiles has a few moments to get across the terror of losing one’s child, but isn’t that convincing. Speedman is more interested in letting his character come off as under-estimated, a man of hidden resources and courage. There GHOSTS after your kids, guys. Confusion and terror are what we’re looking for.
It’s more a reflection of our jaded, horror-hardened tastes that the film doesn’t manage much more than the occasional hair raising moment. Modern horror audiences still prefer nubile coeds under assault in various stages of undress to ghost stories about supernatural retribution. And frankly, this isn’t “The Orphanage.”
But the kid is cute and we fear for her safety, even as the film reveals its secrets in its pat and seemingly pre-ordained payoff.

MPAA Rating: R for some violence, terror and disturbing images

Cast: Julia Stiles, Stephen Rea, Scott Speedman, Pixie Davies
Credits: Directed by Lluís Quílez, screenplay by Javier Gullón, David Pastor, Alex Pastor. A Vertical Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:32