Recent Releases-March

10 Cloverfield Lane—Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as the victim of a kidnapping (Kidnapper played with wonderful ferocity by John Goodman) and finds herself locked in close quarters underground with a man who believes the world is ending. This is intense, claustrophobic stuff, even  as it gets increasingly ridiculous the more questions it answers. That’s the movie’s only real problem, which turns out to be kind of a big one: it keeps trying to one-up itself and only manages to go off the deep end. I can’t discuss specifics of most of the plot without it being considered spoilers, but I’ll just say that nothing the movie conjures up is scarier than John Goodman (That’s a compliment). Fortunately, the parts that do work, which is really the first two-thirds or so, work really well. It’s still easily recommended. B+

Zootopia—The latest Disney animated offering makes extra effort to help further close the boundary between “family” movies and “adult” ones. It’s not the kind of movie your kids will love while you grate your teeth, cause it’s, you know, actually good. It’s set in a world made up of nothing but anthropomorphic animals who mostly live in harmony because the predators and the prey keep to their own kind and do the same job that animal has always done in service of the maintained status quo. But one plucky bunny decides to become a police officer and, with the reluctant help of a sly fox, sets out to solve one of the land’s biggest mysteries and prove that little animals can do big things. It sounds mushy, but the themes of empowerment and equality (It’s offensive for another animal to call a bunny cute; that’s their word) are well-meaning and not obnoxiously overplayed. Plus, the mystery is smartly played out and has some actually funny bits to boot. If only all kid’s movies were this intelligent and entertaining. B+

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot—This is the true story of reporter Kim Barker who is assigned to Afghanistan as a war correspondent and must learn to deal with living in a bunker full of men who see very few women, while trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend in New York and actually getting some good scoops on the situation in the territory without getting herself killed. Tina Fey has always been a competent and funny comedian, often thriving with goofy, throwaway material that’s fine for a quick laugh, but doesn’t have much of a long-term effect. Which is why it’s nice to see her tackle something like this, a movie about serious business that uses an unintrusive sense of humor to keep it from being bogged down. The film as a whole isn’t so great, as it struggles with the fact that it doesn’t have much of a plot, causing it to meander more than it should. But Fey carries it well and it’s amusing enough to warrant a watch for the interested. B

London Has Fallen—Isn’t it just the worst when all the world leaders are in the same place for a funeral or something and it turns out to have been orchestrated by bad guys who want to kill all the world leaders? Bummer though that may be, the American President (In this case, Aaron Eckhart, who could probably be a more worthy candidate than the lot we’ve got now) is safe in the hands of his bodyguard (Gerard Butler, as grunty and shoot-people-in-the-facey as ever)! And…they run from the bad guys who are still trying to catch them and, uh, they shoot some people, or whatever. If there’s anything worse than an unimaginative action movie, it’s one that additionally boring. This movie doesn’t have any reason for existing and doesn’t even make up for it by being fun. Following in the already dumb footsteps of White House Down and its immediate predecessor Olympus Has Fallen, you’ve seen it all before and you really don’t have to see it again. Please don’t go. Stop now before it’s too late! C-

The Other Side of the Door—If there’s anything worse than an unimaginative horror movie, it’s one that’s additionally boring (You can do this with any genre). This one is about a grieving mother who is told about a magic Hindu door through which one can speak to the deceased. The only rule is that you can’t open the door as that would let the spirit free, and of course this lady does it. There’s a good chunk of the flick towards the end that works its way through all the usual haunted house tropes, doing so without being scary or surprising. The majority of the movie, though, isn’t even trying to be scary, and the story it’s telling is muddled at best and downright idiotic at worst. Thankfully, it flopped and I don’t think it’s even playing anymore so why am I still talking about it? C-