Underworld: Blood Wars (now on home video)

Review by Bob Ignizio

Plotless is a criticism one often sees leveled against action films. That's one failing  UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS certainly does not suffer from. On the contrary, there is so much plot that the film becomes a huge, incomprehensible mess. Not only do we have four previous films worth of backstory to recount in flashbacks and voice-overs, but there are multiple factions of vampires and werewolves each working to their own ends as they cross and double-cross each other. And sure, you can follow it if you pay close attention, but given how dumb and ridiculous it all is, the rewards don’t really justify the effort.

Dumb and ridiculous has always been a trademark of the UNDERWORLD series in which blood sucking “death dealer” Selene (Kate Beckinsale) has to do battle with the savage Lycans (the series name for werewolves) while simultaneously fending off scheming members her own kind. That was fine in the previous films, though, as it never felt like they took themselves all that seriously. As disposable as they may have been, they were entertaining on a B movie level, always offering plenty of well-staged action scenes and cheesy special effects. Here, the action and CGI monsters seem like more of an afterthought, with Cory Goodman’s script instead focusing on the dense mythology of the series.

 

The Only Living Boy in New York

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Simon and Garfunkel are having a pretty good year, with two movies named after their decades-old songs  “Baby Driver” and “The Only Living Boy in New York,” a tune that was a thinly veiled message from Paul Simon to Art Garfunkel, who had flown to Mexico to film Catch-22 (“Tom, get your plane right on time/I know your part'll go fine”). The erstwhile pop duo may actually hold a record for songs used in movie soundtracks.

The “boy” in THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK is Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), a recent college graduate and aspiring novelist. He lives in a squalid flat on the Lower East Side, in rebellion against his rich parents' upper Manhattan lifestyle. He is beset by young-man woes: his father, Ethan (Pierce Brosnan), an influential book publisher, is pressuring him to get his career on track; his mother, Judith (Cynthia Nixon) is depressed and dependent on pills and cigarettes; and his pretty love interest, Mimi (Kiersey Clemons), has consigned him to the dreaded “friend zone.” What's a boy to do?

Total Recall

Review by Matt Finley

Amid a mess of digital clatter and bang, the trailer for the shiny new TOTAL RECALL asks, “What is real? What is recall?” It seemed to imply that the film’s many narrative omissions – Mars, mutants and Paul Verhoeven’s devilish humor are all M.I.A. -  would be compensated for in intricate storytelling. While there’s some tossed-off adequately Dickian talk about objective and subjective realities, and physical experience versus the mind’s chemical reproduction thereof, the film fumbles the story’s labyrinthine potential into a single, endless corridor of gunfights, car chases and limp political rhetoric.

Limiting its setting to a chemical-ravaged, overpopulated Earth, RECALL splits its time between the world’s two remaining habitable regions: The WASPy, upper-crust United Federation of Britain (UFB for short), and The Colony (Australia), a working class  melting pot comprising the marginalized working class.  

Contraband

Review by Bob Ignizio

The Icelandic film REYKJAVIK-ROTTERDAM was a big hit in its native country and won a number of awards in the Icelandic equivalent of the Oscars to boot. In an interesting twist, the star of the original version (Baltasar Kormakur) is the director of this American remake. That's pretty much the only interesting thing about CONTRABAND.

The plot centers on Chris Faraday (Mark Wahlberg), an ex-smuggler renowned for his clever methods who went straight after marrying Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and having a couple of kids. When his wife's brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a smuggling job of his own, Chris has no choice but to do one last job to help Andy make good with his less than understanding employer. Ben Foster plays Chris' shady friend and former partner Sebastian, J.K. Simmons is a gruff ship's captain, and Giovanni Ribisi plays a thug with a ridiculous accent.