Movie Review: Redheaded princess seeks her “Viking Destiny”

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Just my luck, a Viking movie to review and fresh out of Spam. Bloody Vikings.

And while I’ll watch most anything with Vikings in it, “Viking Destiny” gives that brand loyalty a pretty severe test. A flagon of mead could help, even if Python’s Spam theory proves insupportable.

It’s a cut-rate “Excalibur” with the Norse God Odin and trickster Loki dueling for the consciences of assorted Vikings, who were not known to have consciences.

A Viking King (Andrew Whipp) is summoned to battle as his queen struggles with childbirth. “Go,” do the battle thing, save the Kingdom of Volsung.

But, as Odin (the great Terrence Stamp) narrates, it is “a curse for a child to be born with an absent father.” The Queen (Victoria Broom) dies in childbirth, and the king, even though he’s victorious, grieves and gives up his daughter, an unacceptable heir, to his treacherous half-brother (Timo Nieminen).

“Half Prince” Bard is “planting a seed that will take 20 years and one to bear fruit,” Odin intones. Odin tends to do that.

Odin shows up, now and then, to advise the girl who grows up to be Helle (Anna Demetriou), a fiery redhead trained in the martial arts, just like Merida, the princess of “Brave.”

But fair is fair, so Loki (Murray McArthur), his eyes and forehead covered in black, hisses evil ideas into Half Prince Bard’s ear.

Sure enough, Helle turns 21 and the treachery begins. Lured into a cave to kill the Kraken (“It’s not real,” she says, citing the scientific method), surviving assassination attempts, fleeing across the seas in (mostly digital) long ships.

She stumbles into Paul Freeman (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”) who leads a “Traveler” tribe of vegetarian hippies.

“Would you care to join us for turnips? Do not worry. We will not be eating the turnips.”

A drinking joke? This MUST be Ireland.

Odin sidles up and offers pep talks and the odd profundity.

“Rain does not fall on one roof alone…No matter how dark the forest, there is always a path through it.”

That Odin.

If this reads as if I’m not taking “Viking Destiny” seriously, it’s because I’m not.

Screen newcomer Demetriou is a striking presence in metallic red hair and leather, and she and her stunt team (not always obvious) handle fight choreography, including epic brawls with twin giants (Martyn Ford), well enoughl.

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The Northern Irish locations are as lovely as they were when “Excalibur” and assorted other Viking and Dark Ages tales (“The Last Kingdom”) were filmed there.

The movie needed more out of its Loki, and as nasty as as Timo Nieminen makes Bard (murdering sex partners in mid-coitus), he’s a tad bland, too.

Stamp gives Odin an aged twinkle.

And writer-director David L.G. Hughes (“Hard Boiled Sweets”) may not be at home in the genre, but the dialogue has a chuckle or two.

Of course we don’t eat our horses. What kind of monsters do you take us for? We will eat your women.”

“Shouldn’t you be off raping and pillaging?”

“There is no greater mirror than a true friend!”

“Sleep is the cousin of death.”

“Goodbye my brother. Onwards, to Valhalla!”

In the end, “Viking” finds its destiny to be kind of a half-finished, half-financed and half-hearted Viking saga, with only the arrival of the Irish vegetarian hippies led by Indiana Jones’ nemesis, Belloq, to delight us.

Not robust and realistic, not silly enough to include Spam, it finds its own Valhalla to be more like Perdition — a mediocre middle ground it’s stuck in for all eternity.

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MPAA Rating: R for bloody violence, and some sexuality/nudity

Cast: Anna Demetriou, Andrew Whipp, Terence Stamp, Paul Freeman, Will Mellor, Martyn Ford, Victoria Broom,

Credits: Written and directed David L.G. Hughes. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:31

 

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Netflixable? “Hold the Dark,” try not to lose track of Jeffrey Wright

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Epic shootouts in the movies make you clench up, reflexively duck. They’re visceral and heart-pounding, which is why they’re an integral part of many a best-selling video game.

It’s that famous Churchill quote about being shot at and missed — “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.”

There’s a doozy or two in “Hold the Dark,” and by “doozy” I mean comically melodramatic in defiance of reason, common sense and any police procedure you ever heard of.

It gives this unfortunately uneven Alaskan thriller by the director of the bloody-minded “Green Room” (based on a William Giraldi novel) a “Wind River Botched” feel,  or would if hadn’t wandered off the reservation half an hour earlier.

But it starts so soberly, creating such a bleak, drained-of-emotion mood that makes its lurch into horror movie conventions and blunder into a bloodbath all the more disappointing.

Jeffrey Wright plays Core, a tough-minded wolf behavior expert summoned to the mid-winter wilderness, a town where wolves are taking children. The woman who writes to him read his book. She’s a military wife, Medora Slone (Riley Keough) who wants closure before her husband (Alexander Skarsgård) returns from a tour in the Middle East.

“Come help me, and kill him,” she writes. “I know you feel sympathy for these animals. Please don’t.”

Core is no ivory tower academic. He may be unused to the cold, but he knows his quarry and is willing to pull the trigger if he finds the pack that did this.

Core stays with Mrs Slone, whose grief has gutted her, turned her speech into something metronomic — mechanical. She seems off. An there’s this mask on the mantel, the silliest piece of foreshadowing this side of “Friday the 13th” movies.

Because the wolves? They’re bystanders, metaphors here.

There are father-son flashbacks, and the setting shifts to Afghanistan, where Vern Slone is seen as a murderously efficient machine gunner, coping with news of his son by searching for death.

Core struggles to understand what he’s stumbled into, tries to filter what the white locals and suspicious natives (Julian Black Antelope is scary, tough and cagey Cheeon) and James Badge Dale is the state police officer who suddenly realizes he needs “everyone” in his department in this small town, thanks to the shocking burst of violence that signals the film’s shift from the real world to the surreal.

The point of view drifts, the “hero” we follow drifts and the carnage piles up as director Jeremy Saulnier and his screenwriter/collaborator Macon Blair try to wrestle a savage beasts/savage humans allegory into shape.

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Wright is one of the great character actors working these days, and losing track of him and his character hurts the film.

It’s an almost pitiless thriller, as unforgiving as the wilderness that it is set in, another reason the “Wind River” comparison is apt.  But every time it strays from the realm of the realistic, “Hold the Dark” stumbles.

And about that big shootout. It’s hard to believe Alaska’s cops somehow missed out on the Militarization of Policing in America, even if it’s not hard to imagine police being outgunned in the land where spree killings were common many winters before Columbine.

It’s not the only scene in the movie that hobbles it, but it does put an exclamation point on a tale that gets so much right — setting, atmosphere, tone and casting — before it goes so wrong.

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MPAA Rating: TV-MA (graphic violence, nudity)

Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Riley Keough, Alexander Skarsgård, James Badge Dale, Julian Black Antelope

Credits:Directed by Jeremy Saulnier , script by  Macon Blair , based on the  ook. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:05

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Movie Review: “A Crooked Somebody”

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Here’s a knotty little thriller about a “psychic medium” with an eye for the main chance, if not the gift he’d need to take advantage of it. Because if you’re supposed to be able in touch with the spirit world, the one thing you should be able to figure out is when the hustle is up.

Richard Sommer of TV’s “Mad Men” has the title role of “A Crooked Somebody.” He plays Michael, a colorless wannabe with a book out and a gig working the paid seminar circuit, still giving “readings” to small groups when “by this point, John Edward was on TV every night of the week.”

He makes his gripe to his booker and “plant” in these audiences, Chelsea (Joanne Froggatt of “Downton Abbey), a woman he has history with, who now resists his advances.

Michael sees his work as harmless, giving comfort to the bereaved like an AA group leader or a preacher of the laying-on-of-the-hands variety.

His preacher father (Ed Harris) and mother (Amy Madigan, of course) wish he’d find work with more “honor” in it, with Dad seeing his special “gifts of persuasion” — you’ve got to be a fast talker and a faster-thinker to pull this off — as something he should turn towards sales.

But Michael’s birthday party magician years gave him a taste for applause, and the fact that he’s willing to give away his books on occasion, make him feel he’s “helping.”

“Your son loved animals, didn’t he?” he reassures grieving parents. “There’s no more pain, there’s only joy.”

All that changes when he casts the name “Jim” out into an Arizona audience. One guy who won’t own up to knowing a Jim (Clifton Collins Jr.) seems shaken.

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And he’s the fellow who clubs Michael in the parking lot and takes him hostage. Dead “Jim” “showed you what happened.” And that means Michael must die. Michael’s protestations that he’s faking it don’t cut it with Nathan.

“You don’t just stop being psychic, I know the real deal when I see it.”

It takes quick thinking to get that knife away from his throat, and even quicker thinking for Michael to figure out a way to turn this situation  — Nathan committed an infamous murder years ago — to his advantage.

Michael has to improvise, wing it, make it up as he goes. “Jim is FURIOUS with you,” gets the killer’s attention. And a road trip at knife-point gives Michael ideas for how he can “solve” this case and get that “Crossing Over” level of success he’s dreamed of.

Sommer plays Michael straight, so there’s no hint of the lovable con artist about this grifter. He’s an “Ace in the Hole” cynic, a “Leap of Faith” hustler not above risking his neck and his manager’s to work this situation to his advantage.

“There are still moves to make here,” he says, repeatedly plotting his course as he goes along.

Collins, an old hand at playing a gullible murderer (“Capote” was his breakthrough film), carries murderous naivete around like baggage. Sommer gives Michael a paper-thin bravado born of desperation.

Director Trevor White is more known as a producer (“Wind River” and “Ingrid Goes West”), and he’s not bad at maintaining suspense in producer/screenwriter Andrew Zilch of Youtube’s “Good Mythical Morning” somewhat predictable script.

One thing good producers have an eye for is casting. The right actors can save directors and make passable scripts something extra. Even when we know where it’s going, really good actors make that stroll down the primrose path an entertaining one.

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MPAA Rating: R for language and brief violence

Cast: Richard Sommer, Clifton Collins, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan

Credits:Directed by Trevor White, script by Andrew Zilch. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:42

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Ferrell and Reilly, funny and funnier, “Holmes & Watson”

Reliably hilarious together, master improvisers, the Kings of One-Upping Each Other, do Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly have another buddy farce hit in them?

Hell, the world’s been WAITING for a Ralph Fiennes version of Professor Moriarty. And in a farce?

Kelly Macdonald, Hugh Laurie and Rebecca Hall are bystanders to the silliness, not a bad sign.

Seems a bit late for the lads to be getting around to re-teaming, but Reilly always delivers fair value and Ferrell has had an amazing run in buddy pictures. Amazing.

Nov. 9, “Holmes & Watson” are on the case.

 

 

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Preview, “The Long Dumb Road” gives the road comedy a little color

Put hotheaded, just-quit working class mechanic Jason Mantzoukas (“The Dictator,” “The House”) in a car with child of privilege Tony Revolori (“Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Spider-Man”)  and send them into desert Southwest America.

Laughs see sure to follow.

Pamela Reed, Taissa Farmiga (“The Nun”) and Ron Livington are in the supporting case.

“The Long Dumb Road” opens Nov. 16.

 

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Preview, Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old” doc about “The Great War”

I’ve interviewed Peter Jackson a few times over the years, and often as the conversation was winding up, he’d talk of the war movie he wanted to make — a version of WWII’s “The Dam Busters,” about RAF pilots who trained and engineers who engineered a “bouncing bomb” mission that would destroy the dams in Nazi Germany’s Ruhr Valley, crippling the German war effort.

He talked about doing this for years.

What’s he’s gotten to first is “They Shall Not Grow Old,” this British documentary about WWI, a sort of Ted Turner colorization and speed correction, with sound, of footage of The Great War as the soldiers  — all dead and gone, now — experienced it.

One night only in the UK, but you can bet it’ll make BBC or Netflix or somebody else. Looks extraordinary.

 

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WEEKEND MOVIES: Decent reviews for “Smallfoot,” pans for “Night School” and “Hell Fest,” “Little Women”

Film Title: Night School

TIFFANY HADDISH stars in “Night School,” the new comedy from director Malcolm D. Lee (“Girls Trip”) that follows a group of misfits who are forced to attend adult classes in the longshot chance they’ll pass the GED exam.

The bar has been set high for Kevin Hart comedies, and adding new star Tiffany Haddish to the mix should prove a boon for “Night School,” an indifferent star-comedy with little to recommend it — a few laughs, widely scattered over two rather leaden hours of running time.

Remember, Kevin got his first decent break on “Freaks and Geeks.” He’s Apatow trained to keep his comedies going and going and going, even when they’re not working.

Box Office Mojo looked at Thursday night’s numbers and hasn’t adjusted its $32 million predicted opening for this one. Average for a Hart comedy, but there’ll be trouble if Thursday’s $1 million and small change doesn’t pan out to a big Friday and bigger Saturday. Reviews overall were a lot like mine — “meh” to “ugh.”

Deadline.com figures $30 million is a safer bet. In any event, this one should win the weekend with ease.

The significant competition will come from the cartoon comedy “Smallfoot,” which I thought was cute, with a science-over-superstition message that’s logically hard to beat. Most critics agreed. Both Deadline and Mojo are predicting a $24-27 million weekend for this one, not being a “brand” name Pixar franchise or anything of the sort. I am guessing it will make a race of it with Mr. Hart’s farce — both of them coming in around $30.

I saw “Hell Fest” with a pretty good sized audience Thursday night, so the horror audience could lift this one out of the hole everybody predicts it will be digging out of ($3.5-4 million). It’s terrible. 

Pitiful reviewed greeted the Pure Flix version of “Little Women,” but it could manage as much as $4 million, Deadline.com figures.

“The House with a Clock in its Walls” should finish its second weekend in the $12-15 range,

 

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Documentary Review: “Studio 54” comes to life again in this remembrance

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There’s been so much written, said and filmed about New York’s famed disco era icon Studio 54, that filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer was hard-pressed to find anything new for his documentary, “Studio 54” (Oct. 5).

What he settled on was the tactile glitz of the facility, the cultural watershed moment the discotheque represented and the fellows who ran it.

Nobody particularly famous is interviewed for the film, none of the survivors of the Liza/Bianca/Halston/Warhol/Liz/Michael set speak anew, they’re just seen in archival footage or in tiny snippets of vintage TV interviews.

The Fall of Rome hedonism is given its due — sex and sexuality, seeing and being seen — all that. But so is the mad rush to build in the joint, the genius “adult theme park” design, the stunning lighting and sense of “event” created there for $40-65,000 per night — wind machines and balloons, confetti and snow, ballet interludes and high-wire acts and not-quite-stripper performances.

An army of ex-employees, from the manager to the bouncer and on-call makeup and hair stylists, join surviving partner Ian Schrager in laying out the logistics of how the whole mad scene worked.

And it’s fascinating, even if the “revelations” are few and far between, even if the nostalgia seems a little misplaced for a club built on decadence, hedonism, cocaine and the premise of almost-accessible exclusivity.

Young college pals on the make Steve Rubell and Schrager “worked” their way up to the massive facility on 54th and Eighth by scouting the underground gay nightclubs where models would show up on the arms of their gay fashion designers. Rubell (closeted at the time) noticed that straight men wanted to go where the models were.

And after getting a start in Queens with the Palace Garden, they rounded up the cash to get hold of the art deco Gallo Opera House, later an abandoned CBS TV studio that they turned into Studio 54.

Tyrnauer, who did “Valentino: The Last Emperor” about the Italian fashion magnate, is the first filmmaker to lose himself in the glories of the building itself, its ornate, high done ceiling and vaulted entryways, and in the way competing club moguls blackballed Rubell and Schrager and kept club designers from helping them.

So Schrager, a lawyer by training, took on conceptualizing the place, and Tony winning stage and lighting designers came in with Broadway crews and created a permanent spectacle — using the gorgeous bones of the building, tapping into its opera and TV past, filling the place with lights, and pools of darkness, neon and mirror balls and accomplishing this in a mad “get ready for opening night” Broadway sprint

Rubell envisioned a club where gay and straight worlds would meet on equal, non-threatening footing, a club where the pre-AIDS/post-Pill and Vietnam promiscuity had a place, as did the sense of a “show” that the audience — “cast” each night — put on.

Rubell is seen, barking at folks behind “the velvet rope” — “You didn’t shave. Don’t come here if you can’t be bothered to shave.” “Go home and change your shirt.” Couples were broken up (beautiful women allowed in, their dates often refused entrance).

And from the chaotic, front-page news opening night in April of 1977, celebrities were courted, “wrangled” by publicists, giving the place both cachet and a chance for the not famous but good looking to mingle with the glitterati.

“You have to build a nice mousetrap to attract the mice” a glassy-eyed Rubell said in a TV interview at the time. As cub reporter Jane Pauley asks him another question, Michael Jackson strolls into the office in all his high-voiced pre-“Thriller” glory, making another Rubell dream come true.

Celebrities and others felt “free” there, Schrager and others declare. The paparazzi were let in, “but only the ones who played by our rules.” Closeted celebs and bankers could “be themselves” and gay and straight hookups and furtive couplings were the norm.

Schrager, the surviving partner, is here to define the business model — “A club is all about capturing the moment.” Never forget what you’re selling because “you have no discernible product except for the magic you create.”

And Schrager is here to accept his part in the sudden fall of the club and its leadership — tax and drug problems, jail time. He dodges questions if not responsibility.  “I don’t remember. All I know is I got the benefit and I was a co-conspirator.”

The flood of photographs and miles of film and video tape exposed in Studio provide ample proof of what made it special. And a lengthy third act gives us the film’s few revelations about that downfall, the greed, arrogance and unsavory practices that ended 54’s run after just 33 months.

The club is long gone — I’ve seen plays at the Roundabout Theatre Company there, and I recall seeing movies in the building (in a once-seedy neighborhood that the club helped bring back to life) in past decades.

But Tyrnauer makes a good case for this disco Parthenon’s place in American history, the role it played in moving gay lifestyles towards more mainstream acceptance and its status as cultural watershed — flaming out in the ’70s, with Reagan. AIDS and “Greed is good” pushing it into the dustbin of history in the ’80s.

Funny, few people have fond things to say about the decade that followed. But Studio 54 they want to remember, or hear about if they were too young to get a gander at it in its glory. “Studio 54” gives them their most thorough look back yet.

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MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Steve Rubell, Ian Schrager, Jack Dushey,

Credits:Directed by Matt Tyrnauer. A Zeitgeist release.

Running time: 1:39

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Movie Review: “A Star is Born” again

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Musically sharp and dramatically flat, the latest version of “A Star is Born” starts impressively and falls off suddenly, a sudsy, overwrought remake that drowns in its abrupt, perfunctory emotional leaps.

All this hype around Lady Gaga’s big screen debut? She’s imitating previous “Star” Barbra Streisand (without the comic timing or pathos) for the first 40 minutes, going through the motions for the next 90.

Bradley Cooper displays solid musical chops and takes his best shot at acting smitten. But he’s the least convincing self-destructive drunk of any of the four versions of “A Star is Born.”  High-functioning? There’s barely a slur or stagger to him, and exceptong his looks, musical talent and a hint of courtliness, where’s the attraction for a hip, talented younger woman? Aside from “He’ll be good for my career?”

As a director, Cooper leans heavily on the 1976 “Star” with Streisand and Kris Kristoffersen, artfully capturing musical performances with the camera literally on stage and up close, contrasting the hard work and bedlam of making country rock in arenas with the lonely quiet of the limo ride with a bottle afterwards, the hotel rooms, which are for passing out in until the next show.

There are gimmicks and story beats from that sad Streisand “Star” revived here — bubble baths to make the ladies swoon. But the story jerks along, never quite convincing us that this jaded superstar would take all that interest in a 30ish big-voiced belter, the only “real” woman singing (“La Vie en Rose,” in French) at a drag bar lip-sync show he drops into after his own concert to wet his whistle.

We never can figure out why Jackson Maine puts the laid-back, drunken moves on Plain Jane Ally, or what triggers the fight she starts in the next bar they hit after the drag bar closes. Gaga isn’t a good enough actress to let us see her fall head over heels, though I did buy her impulsive quit-her-job-and-accept Jackson’s offer to join him at his next show. She doesn’t give that the mercenary “This could be good for my career” edge it needs, either. Not fashionable in our #MeToo era, I suppose.

But that first moment he drags her onstage works, as Gaga’s Ally strains to summon up the guts to sing a new song composed in a super market parking lot the night before to an audience of thousands. The clips of the film used in the trailers pre-sell the songs and those early moments, which are the best scenes in a movie that peaks far too early for its own good.

Cooper stages several comically intimate exchanges between Jackson and his older brother/manager (Sam Elliott), face grabbing, nose-to-nose chats that suggest not just brotherly love, but tough guys with issues and camera blocking that wants every shot to be an extreme closeup, whenever possible. Real Western brothers like their personal space, like everybody else.

Elliott is magnificent of course, but pushing them this close together is jarring, unnatural. Dave Chapelle has a single sequence, an old friend from “the old days” who somehow knew Jackson in childhood in Arizona and who now lives in Memphis. It plays sentimental enough, and the scene at least leads to a wedding with Eddie Griffin (Remember him?) officiating.

 

 

It’s a film of impressionistic sketches for scenes, and jolting transitions between them. There’s a brief, grudging warmth between older brother Bobby (Elliott) and Ally, whom he accepts after raising an eyebrow — “Think maybe he drinks a bit much?”

The “warmth” between Ally and her dad (Andrew Dice Clay) and his gang of elderly limo drivers is goofy, with an edge — “He’s a drunk,” she says of her new beau. “You know all about drunks.”

Cooper’s intensely likable in the early scenes, and meant to be a lot less so later on. Not really. I like his world weary “Take it all in” sermons to Ally as her solo career takes flight. He gives Jackson a clinical depression (and tinnitus) back story, but doesn’t play those in ways that point in the direction (dead-end rehab scenes) the film meanders into.

The script has Gaga’s Ally going all “ugly duckling” about her looks, with other characters (particularly Jackson) constantly reassuring her she’s beautiful. That’s the message in more than a few of Gaga’s pre-“Star” pop hits, but here it comes off as needy and pointless puffery, “contractually obligated.”

I expected to be dazzled by this thing, with all the hype surrounding it. But I lost heart in it as clunky scenes clunk together, and actors manfully (and womanfully) soldier on through blown lines to achieve a “natural” feel (Ally tells her dad “Eat your dinner” in one breakfast moment, and covers for it haphazardly. This happens a few times).

“A Star is Born” is supposed to be a great, tragic romance, a Hollywood opera. I didn’t believe them as a couple, didn’t fear for their future together and didn’t mourn the laughably abrupt climax that Cooper, finally remembering the movie he was remaking, forced into the finale.

Download the soundtrack, just don’t expect too much from the movie.

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MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some sexuality/nudity and substance abuse

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Dave Chapelle, Sam Elliott

Credits:Directed by Bradley Cooper, script by Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, Will Fetterman, based on the earlier “Star is Born” films. A Warner Brothers/MGM release.

Running time: 2:15

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Movie Review: Halloween goes off the rails at “Hell Fest”

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“Hell Fest” falls on the “Why’d they even bother releasing this one?” end of the horror film spectrum.

Then you look around at the late Thursday preview audience and see a theater half-full for a movie that was so crappy it wasn’t previewed for critics, that arrives with so little marketing only the horror faithful know about it and will show up. For a day or two, anyway.

It’s a about a spree killer who shows up at a “Halloween Horror Nights/Howl-o-Scream/Haunted House” traveling expo, an impressively staffed and elaborately staged immersive horror experience.

The last thing you’d expect in a place with a Zombie Maze, Deformed School, Deadlands and other hellish hands-on frights is an actual nut with a knife stalking and killing people.

He did it a couple of years ago in a distant town, which we see in the opening credits. How he’s out to create more dead teenagers in this deathly dull “dead teenager movie.”

Three couples — Brooke and  Asher (Reign Edwards and Matt Mercurio), Taylor and Quinn (Bex Taylor-Klaus, Miss Tries Too Hard,and Christian James) and first-date crushes Nat and Gavin (Amy Forsyth and Roby Attal) get VIP passes for “Hell Fest.”

It’s a vast set-up (entirely too big to be a traveling troupe), and they’re not alone. Thousands have shown up. So has one guy in a hoodie. He brought his own mask, and he knows where to cadge a knife.

The stalk is on, the “What is WITH this guy?” questions, the taunting and then the one-by-one killings of characters so colorless describing them is pointless.

Horror-phobe Nat witnesses the first murder, and doesn’t believe it’s real. “Just DO it,” she says, getting into the spirit of things. “We came here to be SCARED.”

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The killings aren’t particularly gripping, there’s little suspense in the earliest ones and the menace is pretty watered down for much of the movie.

There are two pretty tight sequences though — one involves a guillotine and an MC played by horror legend Tony Todd (“Candyman”). The other doesn’t. Don’t bother calling the cops, either.

“You came here to be scared. I can’t arrest people for doing their job.”

Aside from that, we have to get our jollies out of the detail in the various rooms (the grope-a-torium is a favorite). What must admission the admission price be, with all these buildings, all those employees and all that neon and technology?

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MPAA Rating:R for horror violence, and language including some sexual references

Cast: Bex Taylor-Klaus, Reign Edwards, Amy Forsyth, Tony Todd

Credits:Directed by Gregory Plotkin, script by Seth M. Sherwood and Blair Butler. A CBS/Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:27

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