Moviegoers either love or hate Zack Snyder movies. His latest, Netflix’s Army of the Dead (reviewed here), is very different from the typical movie he directs, which includes 300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League. Despite taking on a heist movie and a zombie picture in a major action movie, he wrote, directed, and took over the camera for Army of the Dead. The result was a mash-up that may appeal to regular Snyder fans or anyone else. This month to accompany the film, Titan Books releasedArmy of the Dead: The Making of the Film. If you liked the movie, and especially if you’re a fan of the horror genre and zombie films, you will want to check it out.
Zack Snyder finally did it. Despite taking on a heist movie and a zombie picture in a major action movie, he wrote a script and delivered the type of action blockbuster he has not yet been able to create. Army of the Dead is his first movie to get it right, a load of tropes, a mash-up of genre ideas, a tightly written story with a great cast, and wall-to-wall fun. Not a comedy like Shaun of the Dead or iZombie,Army of the Dead features the right amount of humor for this story, while incorporating all the expectations of any fan of the father of the genre, George A. Romero. Rivaling the incredible action and effects in 6 Underground, it also rises to become one of Netflix’s most promising productions.
Sony Pictures Animation, the studio that made Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and the LEGO movies brought its latest and greatest animated film to Netflix earlier this month with The Mitchells vs. The Machines–a sci-fi, apocalypse, coming of age story (reviewed here) about a normal but weird family that tries to dodge a planet-wide extermination resulting from the very technologies humans are so addicted to. Much of the action takes place during a cross-country trip, and it’s that imagery that is underplayed on the big screen, but really comes to life as incredible art in The Art of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, a behind the scenes book of exploration coming to Amazon here and a bookstore near you next week. Gravity Falls creators Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe wrote and directed the film, a visually stunning spectacle, with contributions by the Academy Award winning duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (both known for the LEGO movies and Into the Spider-verse). Author Ramin Zahed interviews those creators and more and shares hundreds of concept art images for this next look into the development of cutting edge animation.
Surprisingly great, surprisingly real, and surprisingly… current? Sony Pictures Animation, the studio that brought you Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse brings its latest and greatest animated film to Netflix this weekend. It’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines–a sci-fi, apocalypse, coming of age, story about a weird family that ends up being the last family on the planet to be exterminated from the planet by the very technologies humans are so addicted to. Gravity Falls creators Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe wrote and directed this story, a visually stunning spectacle reflecting life as we knew it in 2020… and may know it again, with contributions by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (both known for the LEGO movies and Into the Spider-verse). The themes are influenced by Tron and Tron: Legacy,National Lampoon’s Vacation, and the Terminator movies, leaning hard on the plot of Terminator: Genisys. It’s loud, colorful, crazy, and it gets family relationships just right, at least of the 21st century variety. It’s also the movie I was hoping for with The Incredibles 2.
The setup for Netflix’s new ghost story, Things Heard & Seen, is as classic as they come: a young family buys their dream home in the country, and it turns out to be haunted. Building on these classic bones, Things Heard & Seen is elevated by timely themes and a strong cast. The supernatural creepiness is only the surface of this disturbing tale of haunted houses and the people who inhabit them.
That strong cast includes Oscar-nominated actor Amanda Seyfried (Veronica Mars, Mama Mia, Ted 2) starring as the supportive wife of up-and-coming art history professor James Norton (Doctor Who, Black Mirror), with terrific supporting roles by F. Murray Abraham(Star Trek: Insurrection, Amadeus), and Rhea Seehorn(Better Call Saul, American Dad). Even the small players are stellar: Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Arc) and Michael O’Keefe (Caddyshack) play the local real estate agent and sheriff, and Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things) is a refreshing and layered addition to the cast. Keep an eye out for one of the best animal performances of the year.
If Chris Columbus and Steven Spielberg didn’t get paid for the screenplay for the new Netflix kids’ adventure movie Finding ‘Ohana, they should. Usually an homage borrows bits and pieces from the source material. Finding ‘Ohana is different–it is a remake (albeit unofficial remake) of the 1985 classic coming of age adventure The Goonies, updated to bring it into the 21st century and change the setting from Oregon to Hawaii. ‘Ohana, which you’ll know from previous Hawaii-themed series and movies, means family, which reflects the film’s theme of Hawaiian culture and families reunited. Ultimately the effort is a mixed bag–a movie that could be great fun for younger kids, but will make everyone else crave the movies it pulls its ideas from.
It’s one thing to make a film about a notably B-level filmmaker and arrive at a success like the 1994 acclaimed black and white biopic Ed Wood. But when you try the same thing about one of the best films ever made, you’re practically set up for failure. It would take some kind of miracle to take Jack Fincher’s clunky, meandering script for the new Netflix film Mank and make it work. A hodgepodge of character study and Hollywood quotes, plucking half-truths and grand real-life names of Hollywood’s past, Mank misfires from poor directing decisions and camera work, a lack of understanding or attention to re-creating the magic of black and white film in the color era. What could have been a love letter to one of America’s greatest celebrated films paints a picture of a screenwriter who, rightly or wrongly, comes off as an unlikeable drunk who couldn’t possibly deserve our attention.
If you’re asked to zip off a list of the best Jennifer Lawrence movies, it’s probable you’re not going to include the 2012 teen suspense-thriller, House at the End of the Street. And yet, as modern efforts at PG-13 teen horror are concerned, director Mark Tonderai (Doctor Who, The Five, Locke & Key) will keep viewers guessing which trope the film will hang its genre hat on. What’s exactly up with the guy in the house where his sister murdered the rest of the family years ago? One constant for the Academy Award-winning Lawrence is she rarely disappoints, whether as a bow-wielding survivor (The Hunger Games series) or a shape-shifting X-Woman (X-Men: The Days of Future Past, etc.). Even back to young Allison on Medium, Lawrence delivers, and this time she takes viewers for a ride into that terrible place called teen angst–near a creepy house in the woods. And its streaming for your Halloween month pleasure on Netflix.
The setup is classic and intriguing: Ruth Wilson (His Dark Materials, Luther) plays a hospice nurse tending to elderly horror author Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss, The Stepford Wives), who comes to mistake her for the main character in her most famous novel—the ghost of Polly Parsons. Parsons supposedly haunts Blum’s historic Massachusetts home and once dictated her own dark tale–save for its ending–to Blum. In writer/director Osgood Perkins’s hands, this classic setup turns into a dark study of isolation and mystery, and showcases the range of Wilson’s talent as an actor. Netflix’s 2016 original production I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the Housemight make for good Halloween viewing for some fans of spooky, atmospheric, and cryptic ghost stories.
What appeared via advance marketing like it was going to be another film from the back side of the video store rack or film school-level sci-fi movie actually ends up as an acceptable sci-fi/superhero B-movie. Code 8, which just arrived on Netflix, began back in 2016 as a short film project by Canadian cousins Stephen Amell, famous as CW’s Arrow, and Robbie Amell, who played CW’s Firestorm. The project then went on to accumulate nearly $3.5 million of crowd-funding to make this feature length film, from first time writer-director Jeff Chan. Ambitious is a fitting description of the film, which has overall low production levels, yet at points it offers some quality sci-fi tech via android cops and superpowered humans. But its best feature is the promising young lead, as the more popular Stephen Amell takes a backseat to his cousin, Robbie Amell (ARQ, The Tomorrow People), whose charm and authenticity have him upstaging everyone scene after scene, including his cousin.
Robbie Amell plays 26-year-old Connor Reed, one of a rare breed of superpowered humans in a near-present day alternate Earth, with the story set in the fictional Lincoln City, some 90 years into a world of X-Men-inspired superhumans, all with varying types of powers. Connor is a Class-5 “electric” meaning he can wield incredible jolts of power to use as a carpenter or to defeat high-tech security in a heist taking the form of android cops. Connor’s mother, played by the versatile Kari Matchett(A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Leverage, Wonderfalls), is dying, and so he makes the decision to use his powers for evil to earn tens of thousands of dollars in gang money for a needed operation. Class struggle is a theme handled here similar to District 9 and Elysium, with the discrimination beats of AlienNation and Bright, and the superpowers presented here bring out the vibe of Brightburn (minus the horror).
The town has its own gangsters, centered around a drug called Psyke, including a mid-level, up-and-comer played by Stephen Amell named Garrett, who takes on Connor when he needs the extra power (literally) for a job. The real-life cousins’ chemistry is instant, and Connor joins a crew of characters, one with the power to melt metal played by Locke & Key’sLaysla De Oliveira, a deaf superhuman with incredible strength played by Vlad Alexis(X-Men: Apocalypse), and a young woman with the power to heal played by Kyla Kane(Channel Zero). Levels of crime lords mean power plays, and that makes everything messy for everyone. Crime requires crimefighters, which sets the stage for the second best part of the movie, The Fast and the Furious’sSung Kang with his always cool vibe, this time as the key cop on the case.
