The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016) Chris Hemsworth – Review

April 26, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

On the prequel front, we find that the wicked Queen Ravenna (Theron) has a sister named Freya (Blunt), a more benevolent (at least at first) younger sibling who is seemingly always in the eldest’s shadow. Freya ends up in an affair with a handsome duke and soon has his child, but instead of starting a new life with her, the duke destroys their future by killing the baby. The resultant grief Freya fees at the deplorable act brings out latent superpowers within her to control the powers of cold and ice, which she not only uses to get revenge, but, once leaving to form her own kingdom up north, she also aims to make use of in order to raise and train many of the children of the land to not only fight for her as “Huntsmen” (who don’t hunt?), but to also forbid them dreaded thing she was denied in life through the cowardly actions of her ex: love.

Two of the children in her Huntsman training regime are Eric and Sara, not only her best warriors, but also secretly in love with ach other. Knowing they can never openly live a life together as lovers, Eric and Sara, now grown, vow to leave their responsibilities and start a life together on their own, but Freya catches wind and forces a wedge, quite literally, between the would-be couple. From there, we presume, comes the events of Snow White and her battle with Ravenna, who ends up mortally defeated, and the rest of the film continues Eric’s story as he goes on the quest to find the magical mirror, which leads him to also discover that many things he believed to be true were merely deceptions.

A Hologram for the King (2016) Tom Hanks – Movie Review

April 23, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Tom Hanks plays Alan Clay, a recently divorced IT salesman, down on his luck in both his personal and professional life, called out on a rare assignment to Saudi Arabia in order to try to peddle his company’s pricey holographic technology to the king for use in their rich country. Many missteps occur as Alan is never quite able to get his bearings there either, persistently having to call for a ride with a local cab driver named Yousef to get him to the site in a tardy fashion, often giving the American fish-out-of-water a crash course on local customs, while he has to return day after day to try to get help for his IT team to be able to set up optimal conditions for the presentation to the king who is told will be coming soon but never does. Meanwhile, Alan is lured to the possibility of something more around the corner, spending some choice time with a lusty Danish executuve named Hanne, and some flirtatious encounters with Dr. Zahra Hakem, who is treating him for a growing cyst on his back, a symbol of the woes he carries around that continue to fester, further increasing his escalating anxiety.

April and the Extraordinary World (2015) – Movie Review

April 22, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Comic book legend Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel provides the inspiration for this loose big screen adaptation from France, from screenwriters Franck Ekinci (who-codirects with Christian Desmares) and Benjamin Legrand, with graphic design work on the film by Tardi himself. It’s a steampunk alternate world where Earth’s has progressed little scientifically since the Industrial Revolution, primarily because scientists have been outlawed, and they’ve begun disappearing en masse.

Most of the film is set in that alternate Paris in 1941, under the rule of Napoleon V, where much of the power supplied to the world comes from pre-fossil fuels like coal, charcoal and wood from the rapidly dwindling forests of the world. April is an inventive orphaned woman with a smart-alecky talking cat named Darwin. She lost her scientist parents at a young age when it was discovered that they had possibly invented something called the Ultimate Serum, a chemical cocktail that makes its imbiber rejuvenated, cured of disease, and virtually immortal — something that could tip the global war for resources in France’s favor should they be able to create their own invincible super-soldiers. April is being closely monitored from several interested parties in case she happens to stumble on the potent concoction, or invent it on her own, with the tenacious French policeman, Gaspard Pizoni, on orders to observe her every move. April makes that discovery, but finds an even larger one emerges that threatens to shift the balance of world power in an entirely unexpected direction.

Criminal (2016) Kevin Costner – Movie Review

April 20, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Criminal starts with Ryan Reynolds as a CIA superspy named Bill Pope, on assignment in London, soon finding himself surrounded by murderous assassins working for an international super-terrorist from Spain named Xavier “The Anarchist” Heimbahl. Heimbahl is looking for a man named, Jan “The Dutchman” Stroop, who is a genius hacker who has managed to infiltrate American defense systems that control the launch and destination of nuclear missiles, hoping to rid the world of the governmental/corporate choke-hold that he thinks is responsible for all of the world’s ills. Pope is tortured for info, then offed, but Pope’s boss in the CIA, Quaker Wells, knows that nearly every life on Earth may hang in the balance of getting information Pope had, deciding to throw a ‘hail mary’ by bringing in a scientist named Dr. Franks to perform the first human memory transplant from one human to another.

Born to Be Blue (2015) Ethan Hawke – Movie Review

April 19, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The film starts with Baker playing himself in a film that was planned, but never actually made, about his own life. Born to be Blue utilizes this film-in-a-film approach to draw out the glamorized, black-and-white version of Chet Baker with the so-called reality of the situation, even with the very unsavory issue of his womanizing and his own addiction to heroin. Also included is the love affair he would have with a struggling but ambitious actress named Jane, who is a composite fictional character, played by Carmen Ejogo, who also plays Baker’s wife in the fictional film. He’s out of prison, but still under the close supervision of his probation officer, who wants him to get a clean and steady job and get out of the lifestyle that has too many temptations for him at the ready, knowing that the methadone he is prescribed to kick the habit will only get him so far.

Sing Street (2016) John Carney – Movie Reviews

April 18, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set in Dublin in 1985, teenage dreamer Conor is a new student in a Christian Brothers school that writer-director John Carney also attended during the same year, Synge Street, whose hard-knocks with bullies and over-petulant Catholic headmasters equally as turbulent as his home life with his parents who are struggling with a lack of finances and a drift apart in their relationship. Conor soon meets slightly older local beauty Raphina, who wants to pursue a modeling career in London, and he asks her if she’d like to be in his band’s music video. The problem? There is no band. In order to win Raphina, he’s going to have to put the music where his mouth is and put one together, so he puts the word out, gets a group (a la New Romantic and synthpop bands like Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, The Cure, and Spandau Ballet) in to make the music based on his lyrics (using Raphina as his muse) and with him as the front-man, and soon, Sing Street is born.

Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016) Ice Cube – Movie Reviews

April 15, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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A much-belated comedy sequel, coming about twelve years after the previous Barbershop entry (not counting the female-centric spin-off, Beauty Shop), Barbershop 2: Back in Business, Barbershop: The Next Cut picks up mostly where we left off, even if it’s a decade later, with a barbershop/salon run by Calvin Palmer Jr. in Chicago’s South Side, serving the community with the best in style and the choicest of conversation about a variety of topics, both political and banal. No longer worried about the gentrification occurring in the prior chapter, the folks at the now-unisex shop still have major issues in Chicago to contend with, most notably in the escalating gun and gang violence running rampant in their neighborhood that has given the city the unenviable nickname of “Chi-Raq”.

Hardcore Henry (2015) Sharlto Copley – Movie Reviews

April 11, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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At the beginning of the film, we find the Henry of the title having been all but entirely killed from a brutal attack that sees his eyes, one of his arms, and one of his legs replaced by powerful robotic counterparts from a scientist who tells Henry, who is suffering from severe memory loss, that she is Estelle, his wife. After undergoing the rehabilitative operation, Henry and Estelle find themselves on the run in Moscow from a bunch of Russian gangsters, led by Akan, a madman with astonishing telekinetic powers that are never explained or even commented upon, who is out to create his own team of cyborgs resembling Henry. Estelle ends up getting kidnapped, Henry finds himself under constant assault by a never-ending array of baddies, and the only person who seems to be on his side is a mysterious man who calls himself Jimmy, who seems to have the uncanny ability to regenerate into a new variation of himself whenever he gets killed (Sharlto Copley, in his never-ending quest to see how many dialects he can annoy us hammily performing).

Midnight Special (2016) Jeff Nichols – Movie Reviews

April 9, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Midnight Special is an intriguing straight-faced science fiction-thriller which immediately shows us two armed and anxious men who’ve seemingly abducted an eight-year-old boy for reasons that are increasingly made clear as we course through the story. One of the men is Roy Tomlin (Shannon), who has a stronger bond to the odd duck of a boy, Alton Meyer, and the other is seemingly more along for the ride, Roy’s friend Lucas. The men have taken Alton from the compound of an isolationist religious cult in the West Texas run by Calvin Meyer (Shepard), who are actively seeking the return of this boy who is seen within the cult as a messianic prophet whose seemingly random utterances have formed the basis of their beliefs, including the specific time and place in which something major is about to occur that will affect them all. Also hot on the trail of the men are members of law enforcement, including a brilliant analyst working for the NSA, Paul Sevier, who is desperately seeking knowledge on how and why the young boy has been spouting top-secret information that no one outside of their organization should possibly know, becoming a risk to national security if left unchecked.

The Boss (2016) Melissa McCarthy – Comedy Movie Reviews

April 9, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Melissa McCarthy plays Michelle Darnell, an unwanted orphan who channels her despondent feelings into making something of her self as an adult, eventually emerging as a wildly successful financial tycoon (the 47th wealthiest woman in the country, according to her), a go-to guru spreading her secret-to-success in the form of arena-filling seminars with the sparkling spectacle of a metal concert. After she’s imprisoned for a few months due to insider trading, thanks to a tip from her unscrupulous rival (and former lover) Renault (aka Ronald), Darnell finds herself back outside penniless and without many allies, relying on her former assistant, Claire, to help her get back on her feet. Soon enough, Darnell goes back to her cut-throat entrepreneurial ways when she makes a connection between Claire’s yummy homemade brownies and Claire’s daughter Rachel’s box of cookies for a Girl Scout-like nonprofit organization, the Dandelions, which reap millions of dollars in sales. Starting her own for-profit troop known as Darnell’s Darlings, her next business venture is now set, although the tactics to be top dog may not sit well with the kind-hearted people around her whose feelings she repeatedly tramples on without remorse.