"Sinners" 4K Review

A sleeper hit earlier this year was Ryan Coogler's (Creed, Black Panther) Sinners, a Depression-era story mashing up of Deep South Jim Crow business, blues music, Hoodoo, and vampires, because why not? Coogler muse Michael B. Jordan stars in a dual role playing Elijah "Smoke" Moore & his twin Elias "Stack" Moore, collectively referred to as the "Smokestack Twins."

It's 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and the Twins are back after several years working up in Chicago for Mafia families. They've returned with a stack of cash stolen from the Mob and looking to open a juke joint for the local black sharecroppers and laborers who aren't permitted to patronize the white folks establishment.

They buy a former sawmill from Hogwood (David Maldonado), who insists they won't have any trouble from the Klan (spoiler: he's the local Grand Dragon), and then split up to prepare for the opening that night. Smoke goes to town to contract food from the Chinese shopkeeper Bo Chow (Yao) and his wife Grace (Li Jun Li) and to have his estranged wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku, Loki), a Hoodoo practitioner. Stack takes their cousin Sammie "Preacher Boy" Moore (newcomer Miles Caton), an aspiring blues guitarist (something his preacher father isn't cool with) with him as he looks to round up talent including Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo, Get Shorty), and Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a married singer whom Sammie is sweet on. Stack also runs into his ex-girlfriend Mary (Hallie Steinfeld, Hawkeye), a "passing" black woman.

 Elsewhere, a man whose skin is smoking runs up to a shack and pounds at the door, begging to be left in. This is Remmick (Jack O'Connell), who tells the wary couple - Bert (Peter Dreimanis) and Joan (Lola Kirke) - he is being chased by Indians for some misunderstanding. They let him in and when the group of Lakota show up asking if they'd seen anyone coming through, deny they have. Next thing, they're vampires, too.

The opening night of the juke seems to be going well except the brothers realize early on that due to the amount of company scrip (currency paid to sharecroppers that's only spendable in company stores) they're accepting, they're not making as much real cash as they need to succeed. Problems escalate when three white folk show up asking to be let in, claiming they'd heard the music and just wanted to join in the festivities as they're musicians too. Mary goes to investigate them and at first sympathizes, then decides they need to be kept out. Unfortunately, she doesn't see Remmick take flight behind her as she walks away, Ruh-roh. Long story short, a vampire gets in, the party breaks up, then a whole lot of vampires want to get in at the few remaining humans inside.

I'm somewhat mystified as to the acclaim and success of Sinners because on one hand it's heavily...let's say "influenced" by the 1996 Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez collaboration From Dusk Till Dawn - which started off as a gritty bank robbers on the run crime film before flipping into a bonkers vampires in a Mexican strip club flick - and on the other it's hobbled by a couple of suspense-breaking storytelling choices which kill most of the suspense.

The first mistake is literally the first scene where we see an injured Sammie arrive at his father's church during a service, clutching the broken remains of a guitar neck, clearly suffering injuries, before jumping back 24 hours in a Scriptnotes Stuart Special. As with all movies told in flashback (e.g. Atomic Blonde, Haywire), if they're present before the flashback, it means they survive whatever happens next.

But the more damaging choice was to show Remmick arrive at Bert's shack and reveal what he. Without that sequence, when the trio arrive at the juke and ask to be invited in, the audience would be suspicious because why are these white folk so eager to hang out with the black folk in the 1932 Jim Crow South? Are they trying to entrap the Smokestack Twins and bring in the Klan? Or are they just friendly Irish musicians seeking to jam? Since we KNOW what they are and why they're casually asking to be invited in, it becomes just a waiting game to see who gets turned when they go out and they gets back in.

As if that's not enough, there is a lengthy coda set 50 years later as a mid-credit scene so if you turn it off when it appears the movies over, you'll miss something important.

As lukewarm as I am in general to Sinners, there is one sequence which stands out and that's when the music is playing and a narration that played over the beginning is recalled about how some musicians have an ability to piece the veil between life and death, the present, past, and future and as Sunnie plays, figures ranging from ancient African tribal musicians and dancers appear as well as what appears to be P-Funk guitarist Jimi Hazel and hip-hop DJs and break dancers as the camera swirls around the scene. Good stuff.

Jordan's performance is OK but suffers from both brothers looking the same other than different colored suits and having generally similar personalities. I couldn't remember who was Smoke and who was Stack and it didn't really matter. Part of my difficulty stems from remembering how Tatiana Maslany created over a dozen different clones for Orphan Black, even playing one imitating another so deftly you felt you were watching an imitation, not just the actor switching to the other characterization. (To be fair, though, if you asked me which Winklevoss twin was which as played by Armie Hammer in The Social Network, I couldn't really tell you when they were more differentiated than Coogler's script defines them.)

 Caton is more layered in his performance as the conflicted young bluesman; it will be interesting to see what he does next. Lindo almost steals every scene he's in and it's good to see him again after somehow missing everything he's done the past 20 years. (This scene in Get Shorty when he discusses screenwriting is gold.) I didn't recognize Mosaku because of how different she looked from her TVA Agent role in Loki and it was good to see her doing something more involving.

 The cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw (Wakanda Forever, The Last Showgirl) is rich, but for home viewing the original IMAX scenes (which only a tiny handful of theaters were able to present) is altered from the original 1.43:1 to the 1.78:1 (16:9) ratio of TVs, alternating from the 2.39:1 widescreen of the majority. Sometimes the transitions are abrupt cuts (a la The Dark Knight), though I spotted at least one slow diminishing of the black bars as used in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (when Katniss enters the arena) and Mission: Impossible - Fallout (the HALO jump and another spot that escapes me now). Compared to the widescreen bulk, the clarity and frame size of the IMAX parts made he wish the whole film was done in fullscreen. 

While Sinners has its moments and strengths, particularly in the performances, I was left with too many questions like how in the segregated South did Chinese people had a general store? Perhaps such things happened, but against the backdrop of Jim Crow it's distracting. But as detailed above, the structural choices Coogler made work against whatever points he wanted to make. Clip out the Remmick scene (or use it as a flashback after the vampire twist happens; perhaps have the Indians show up to save the day) and the racial tensions subtext could've worked more allegorically. 

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.

"The Incredible Hulk" 4K Review

If there is a forgotten red-headed (or green-skinned) stepchild of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) it's 2008's The Incredible Hulk. Opening just six weeks after Iron Man, but five years after Ang Lee's unloved 2003 take on the Jade Giant, Hulk (Hulk Dogs, anyone?), it's been seemingly Memory Holed because the role of Bruce Banner was recast by Joss Whedon for 2012's The Avengers with Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton and going on to appear in or voice over a dozen more MCU films and TV shows while Norton hangs out with Terrence Howard, the original Rhodey.

It's also not that great a movie and as the only solo Hulk film (due to distribution rights being held by Universal though Marvel could use the character in as many other projects as they wanted to), but with the villain of the 35th MCU film, Captain America: Brave New World, being someone from the MCU's 2nd film, it was time to revisit the stepchild footnote in case I ever felt like watching CA:BNW - something that considering I've only seen two of the 13 Phase 4 & 5 movies in the theater and haven't even bothered watching a couple, so precipitous has the quality dropoff been for Kevin Feige's woketarded M-She-U, which remains a coin toss. Mostly it was because I'd used Google Opinion Rewards credits to buy it 5-1/2 years ago on digital 4K and never watched it and probably haven't seen it since getting the Blu-ray in 2008.

 After recapping the Hulk's gamma radiation experiment origin story during the opening credits - note to Batman movie makers: We don't need to see Bruce Wayne's parents' murder portrayed ever again; we know what happened - we join Norton's Banner hiding out in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where he works under-the-table at a soft drink bottling plant. It's been five months since he's had an "incident" (i.e. gotten all green and ragey), but he remains on the lam after injuring Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt in his first of five MCU appearances before passing away in 2022 & Harrison Ford assuming the role in CA:BNW) and his daughter, also Bruce's girlfriend, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), five years earlier. He's learning techniques to control his anger & response to stress and communicating via secure satellite with someone called "Mr. Blue" who may be able to help develop a cure for Hulkness.

 After an accident causes a bottle of pop to be contaminated with his blood, afflicting an old man in the USA (Stan The Man Lee in one of his many cameos), Ross traces the pop back to its source and sends a team led by Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) to capture him. Naturally, it goes sideways with Banner Hulking out and escaping, waking up in Guatemala. (How did he travel over 4000 miles through a half-dozen countries including the Amazonian jungle? Hey, shut up.) He then hikes up through Mexico to get back home where he hopes to retrieve the data from his experiments to send to Mr. Blue.

Despite his efforts to stay hidden from Betty, she spots him and chases him down. While she's moved on and is dating Ty Burrell from Modern Family (playing the Bill Pullman role, IYKYK), she clearly still loves Bruce. Fortunately, she saved the data he's looking for when Daddy Thunderbolt was packing up their lab after the accident. Unfortunately, when Bruce sends the data to Mr. Blue, the email is picked up by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance nets and Ross plans another attempt to trap Bruce.

This time his sleeve ace is intended to be Blonsky, who has been dosed with a version of Captain America's Super Soldier serum that they attempted to recreate the lost formula. When the mission fails again, almost killing Betty and Blonsky, the serum is the only reason he survives the blow Hulk deals him. If a little serum worked somewhat, then surely pumping a ton of it into him will make him stronger, right? Nope, as the flawed formula transmogrifies Blonsky into Abomination, a monster so strong and violent that Ross has to allow Bruce to Hulk out to fight him in the climatic battle.

It's interesting seeing how humble the MCU's earliest efforts were - if not for the Nick Fury and Tony Stark end credits cameos and the passing references to Stark Industries or  S.H.I.E.L.D. there'd be no hints Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were connected - when Marvel Studios was simply trying to independently produce their own films with the characters they hadn't licensed to Fox (X-Men, Fantastic 4, Daredevil, etc.) or Sony (Spider-Man).

 We forget that Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America were considered second-string characters compared to Spidey and Wolverine and that The Avengers wasn't a sure thing to happen, much less succeed, when the first Iron Man hit theaters in 2008. Sandwiched between Iron Man in May and The Dark Knight in July, The Incredible Hulk was in meaningfulness trouble even before the change in casting.

 Director Louis Leterrier was coming off a trio of Luc Besson-penned actioners - the first two Transporter flicks & the underrated Jet Li showcase Unleashed - and he does a good job taking the job seriously when most early-Aughts comic book movies still treated them as trifles; something that'd change with the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight which cast top-shelf actors and took the stories seriously. The first act plays more like a monster movie, especially in the first Hulk sequence which keeps him in the shadows or obscured by smoke, as he snatches the soldiers and tosses them like dolls. The aftermath of Bruce's Hulk-outs is shown as leaving him weakened, begging for alms, vulnerable. Norton's occasionally twitchy performance is leavened here. (As annoying as he is in real life, Ruffalo was a big upgrade.)

The problem is the script by Zak Penn (Elektra, X-Men: The Last Stand) is subpar and one-note, begging lots of questions like how did Bruce connect with Mr. Blue, whom he finally meets and learns is Samuel Sterns, who after exposure to Bruce's blood is shown having his head swell in a quick shot setting up a payoff that wouldn't come for another 17 years and 33 movies, returning as CA:BNW's villian, The Leader. (As bad as that seems, Blonsky didn't reappear until the woeful Mouse+ series She-Hulk in 2022 as a joke character.) What does Betty do other than look limpid, though that's due to Liv Tyler's minimal thespian skills?

Another stumbling point is the visual effects. The 2003 Hulk suffered from poor VFX, especially the shade of green on Hulk - reportedly it looked great in black & white and for a time they considered doing the comics' Gray Hulk - and rubbery Gumby physics, but while the effects here are an improvement they still look plasticky and weightless like a videogame cutscene, especially the final battle with Abomination. Just a year-and-a-half later Avatar would nail realistic-looking skin complexion and by 2012's The Avengers and the Ruffalo-based Hulk, the quibbles about how it looks were gone.

One arguably better aspect is the moody, intentional cinematography. Recent VFX-laden films are often criticized for flat, washed-out color palettes. This often gets blamed on the predominance of digital cameras, but it's more often due to so much of the frame being filled with pixels added months later, live elements are shot in manner mimicking bright overcast with minimal shadows and flat contrast so they can composite in the backgrounds. The downside is that it looks and feels artificial.

Because so much of the film is film practically on locations - hilariously, Yonge Street in downtown Toronto is used to represent Harlem by hanging an Apollo Theater marquee off a building next to famed Toronto strip club Zanzibar (which inspired the club in Flashdance!); it's also the same block in the first Suicide Squad where Joker and Harley are driving the purple Lamborghini - with extras and wreckage and explosions, only having Hulk and Abomination added, the 4K HDR10 presentation has really deep contrast and rich colors, at times bordering on noirish. Night scenes look better than daylight, especially the Hulk battle against the army at the college where daylight doesn't do the CGI many favors.

Audio wise, in addition to no Dolby Vision there is no Dolby Atmos audio, but the DD+ track has good bass extension to lend a whallop to the gunfire and Hulk smashing. For some reason there are zero extras included with this release. I checked both iTunes and Movies Anywhere and all the commentary, deleted scenes, BTS content, etc. that came on the Blu-ray is omitted here. 

While I'm lukewarm on The Incredible Hulk as a movie, it's a very good digital 4K release. However, the deeper color and HDR comes at the expense of a barebones movie-only release. Frankly, I'd recommend the Blu-ray over this if you can get it for the same price under $10 because of the better audio physical has over streaming and extras.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on streaming/cable.

The first scene in the trailer isn't even in the movie.

"Fountain of Youth" 4K Review

 In my review of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare I recapped Guy Ritchie's wildly inconsistent and of late dull cinematic output, so I shant recapitulate it here, but suffice to say he's continuing his streak of bland, tonally incorrect content creation with his direct-to-Apple TV+ effort for Memorial Day, Fountain of Youth, which fancies itself as a globe-trotting version of National Treasure. (International Treasure?)

John Krasinski (The Office) stars as Luke Purdue, whom we meet in an extended chase scene through Bangkok, Thailand, as he is pursued by various forces intent on recovering a painting he's stolen from their boss. While on a train, he encounters a Esme (Eiza González, last seen in Ash), whom he seems to have a history with (which is never really explained), who also wants the painting back. He manages to give everyone the slip.

His next stop is at a London museum where he surprises his sister, Charlotte (Natalie Portman, Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace), a curator who is somewhat estranged from him. Their father was an archeologist and the siblings used to go along on his adventures, but she settled down into an unhappy failing marriage with a precious musical prodigy child, Thomas (Benjamin Chivers), who turns out to be so magical that I was surprised they didn't make him autistic. In order to get her on board with his LAteST crusade (hint hint) he steals a painting from the museum and gets her fired. 

Luke then clues her into what's going on: He's looking for the Fountain of Youth (roll credits! *ding*), which their father had sought as well, and he's being funded by billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson, Star Wars: Episodes VII-IX), who is terminally ill and hopes to save his life with the healing waters. While a secret society called the Protectors of the Path (was Knights Templar not available?), of which Esme is a member, was dedicated to keeping the Fountain hidden, a group who disagreed with that mission hid clues in a half-dozen master artists' works to indicate where it is. (Spoiler: Under the Great Pyramid of Giza.)

The painting turns out to be a fake, but Charlotte knows where the real one should be. Unfortunately, that would be in a safe in the Lusitania, sunk by the Germans in 1915. Fortunately, Carver is super rich and the ship laid in *only* 300 feet of water a dozen miles off the coast of Ireland, so they're able to send robots down to saw free the part of the ship the safe was located and float it to the surface to be looted. Unfortunately, Esme shows up with armed goons to take the painting. Fortunately, the siblings escape with their lives and the painting.

Further complicating matters is an Interpol inspector, Abbas (Arian Moayed, Succession), who is also chasing them because stealing art is a crime, mmmkay? The race to find the Fountain or prevent it takes them to Vienna, then Cairo, with various red shirts getting killed culminating in the final act taking place in Egypt at the Pyramids where the filmmakers made damn sure that it's blindingly obvious they copied every beat of the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and if you've seen that, you'll be able to predict pretty much everything that happens and why. And yes, the kid is the smartest of them all.

 As with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Ritchie simply cannot manage the tonal balance here. On one hand it's played as a light comic romp, but on the other there are red shirts being killed and la de da, it's all so fun. Pick a lane, bro. Is finding the Fountain of Youth serious business or just a trifle-slash-sibling bonding exercise?

Another problem is Krasinsk's performance. He's a fine actor (and should've been Reed Richards in The Fantastic Four: First Steps), but Ritchie has him playing every scene as if it's a light comedy and he doesn't have a trace if Indiana Jones bravado or the underlying compulsion to follow in their father's adventuring footsteps. Portman doesn't fare much better, though she got the one laugh out of me with a funny line reading.

The ending clearly tries to set up sequels, but I'm not sure how much money Apple wants to burn producing slick, globe-trotting adventure movies that clearly aren't cheap to make (reported budget: $180M) then don't generate a dollar of box office revenue - unlike other forays such as Ridley Scott's Napoleon or the upcoming Brad Pitt-starring F1 which received big theatrical releases - especially when they're not that good.

While not offensively bad, Fountain of Youth isn't particularly good, which makes it all-too-typical for Hollyweird entertainment content product these days. You won't hate yourself for watching it that much, but you probably won't feel any positive emotions either. It's just another "may as well watch since I'm paying for the service" movies.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on Apple TV+.

"Ash" Review

Opening with one of the most played-out tropes in movies and videogames - the protagonist waking up in a situation where everyone is dead and they have no memory of what happened or who they are - Ash is a dumb, dull sci-fi-horror flick which makes pulpy throwback B-movies disreputable again.

Eiza González (Three Body Problem) is Amnesia Girl Riya Ortiz who awakes in a structure filled with several dead people who died violently as evidenced by the smashed heads and knives protruding from their bodies. The lights are flickering, a computer voice is announcing system failure, it's basically the aftermath of a Diddy freakout party. (Hiyo!) She wanders out of the structure and finds herself on the surface of an alien world with a kaleidoscopic sky. She begins to choke on the atmosphere and barely manages to make it back to the structure. She doesn't realize you need an space suit to go outside.

She begins to stabilize the base functions and experiences flashback jump scares of the violence that occurred as well as calmer times where she and the box-checkingly diverse crew joked about their mission. Then there's an alert that someone is in the airlock. She lays in wait and when the intruder enters she pounces. This is Brion (Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad) and he claims to be the astronaut who was in orbit and came down when contact was lost.

As Riya tries to piece together what's real and what's not, it becomes a guessing game for the audience as well because it's one thing to have an unreliable narrator, but the movie keeps showing contradictory versions of what happened to the point I stopped caring because it felt as if the script by Jonni Remmler was just making things up as it went along with no consistent narrative logic then director Flying Lotus just slathered John Carpenter stylistic tributes all over the mess. I pretty much figured out the main twists in the first half-hour, leaving another hour for them to play out plus the random spins they attempted.

 If not for the presence of the main stars, if you'd told me this movie was made in the early-1980s I'd almost believe you but for the presence of flat-screen displays. The lighting is mostly lurid reds and blues, reminiscent of Creepshow though that was mimicking EC Comics pulp style.

The production design has that cheap movie look with bizarre set decorations like the freaking upright piano sits in the common area. Wait, what? A PIANO?!? A critical mission with the future of humanity hanging in the balance and they ship hundreds of pounds of wood & metal furniture? Not a lightweight electronic keyboard, but a full piano? We see a character playing a trumpet (silently) in a flashback memory, but never is the piano but decoration. That's the level of dumb Ash is operating at along with the Alien inspired space suits with helmet glass so fragile a single punch from a woman cracks them.

González is OK in her performance considering the role gives her little to do but be confused and sad. Paul is equally adrift with nothing to do. The rest of the cast is just there to appear in flashbacks and die.

As a Shudder title, it will eventually show up on that service, but don't bother. Watch Event Horizon instead.

Score: 2/10. Skip it!

"Locked" Review

 As the back half of tonight's High Concept Double Feature (ooooh-ooooh-ooooh) which began with Drop we watched a movie I'd never heard of despite its cast until it popped up on the high seas, the taut 1-1/2-hander Locked.

 Bill Skarsgård (IT, the terrible remake of The Crow) stars as Eddie Barrish, a scuzzy lowlife and deadbeat dad who we meet trying to get his van from the mechanic's, but he's as with most things in his life, he's short on what he owes. While walking around the rundown parts of his city, looking for things to steal, he happens upon an unlocked luxury SUV in parking lot. After climbing in and rummaging around, he discovers he can't get out as the doors are locked. Ruh-roh.

The entertainment system's phone rings and after realizing that ignoring it isn't an option, he answers and makes the acquaintance of the vehicle's owner, William (two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins?!?), who informs Eddie that this is a very special car with armored panels, soundproofing, and bulletproof glass which proves itself when Eddie tries to shoot it and the bullet ricochets into his leg. There are hidden cameras, electric prods which can shock him if he swears or annoys William and the climate control can be cranked up to sweltering heat & bone-chilling cold. And the stereo can play yodeling music at deafening volume.

After passing out from his wounds, Eddie wakes up to find them bandaged. Turns out William is a doctor and isn't about to let his captive escape this bizarre form of honey trap justice that easily. Over several days, this standoff proceeds as William explains why he's doing this while Eddie tries to negotiate his way out so he can see his daughter again.

A remake of a 2019 Argentinian film called 4x4 the direction by David Yarovesky (2019's Brightburn, the "what if Superman was a pyscho kid" flick produced by James Gunn) manages to keep the story exciting despite the literal bottle episode nature of the setting. (It's reminiscent of Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth where Colin Ferrel was stuck in a you know on the phone with Keifer Sutherland.)

I'd really like to see a making-of feature about how they executed some of the shots like an early lengthy one where the camera keeps orbiting around Eddie as he tries to find a way out of the car and it occurred to me that the camera had to be outside the bounds of the car's interior. (It's similar to this scene from Spielberg's War of the Worlds.)

 While Skarsgård seems to be in every movie Pedro Pascal isn't in, he does a good job with his unsympathetic character as he makes clear that he may be a lowlife, he's not a monster. It seems odd that Hopkins would seem to be slumming in a mostly voiceover role, but he still shows up to play and classes up the joint.

While the ending was a bit anticlimactic, overall Locked is a solid chamber thriller that manages to properly fill its 95-minute runtime.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"Drop" Review

Tonight brings a double-feature of short high concept thrillers: Locked and the lead-off hitter, Drop, directed by Christoper Landon (Freaky) from a script by Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach (the Lucy "Sex Muppet" Hale-starring Fantasy Island and Truth Or Dare).

Meghann Fahy (The Bold Type) stars as Violet Gates, a therapist who specializes in abuse survivors owing to her status as a widowed single mother as hinted at in the uncomfortable prologue where her husband is savagely beating her.

But now it's five years later and it's time to start dating. She leaves her myopic son Toby (Jacob Robinson) in the care of her younger sister Jen (Violett Beane, CW's The Flash) who comes over and advises her to go for a sexier look for the big date.

Violet arrives ahead of her date at the ritzy top floor restaurant, Palate, and while waiting at the bar she is approached by Richard (Reed Diamond, Dollhouse) asking if she was his blind date. Since she isn't, they chat briefly until his date does arrive and we can tell it's not going to go well for him. We also meet Cara (Gabrielle Ryan, Power Book IV: Force), who seems more of an intuitive therapist than the therapist.

Her date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar, It Ends With Us) arrives toting his camera bag because he didn't want to leave it in the car in Chicago. He's one of those guys who seems so perfect that it's hard to believe he needed a dating app what with all the women throwing panties at him on the street. But she finds it hard to get lost in his dreamy eyes because her phone keeps blowing up (figuratively) with Digi-Drops, a fictitious social media game where people in close proximity can send memes and messages.

At first it's merely distracting, but then it gets serious when a message tells her she needs to kill her date. When she pushes back, she is told check her home security cameras where she sees a masked man in her kitchen, staring at the camera there, holding up a silenced pistol. Ruh-roh! She tries various ways to let someone know, but the mystery messenger has microphones conveniently planted everywhere and seems to be ahead of her every move. Due to the range of the drop app, the culprit has to be in the restaurant, but with everyone on their phones all the time, it's hard to tell which one it is. Hijinks ensue.

The premise of Drop is pretty cool, but the execution is wanting because there are single points of failure in the scheme beginning with the first demand of Violet that she swipe the memory card from the camera and destroy it. If Henry hadn't brought his camera bag, the scheme fails; if he took the card out and put it in his pocket, the scheme fails; if he swapped the card out and put in a fresh card, you get the picture. (I'm a photographer and whenever I've done events, I've always had multiple cards prepared so I could shoot each night on its own card and not risk losing everything. I also don't format the cards until I've transferred and made backups of photos.)

Then there's the matter of how weird she's acting. Most guys would've run for the hills, no matter how hot the woman is and while Fahy is actress attractive, she's not Don't Care How Crazy, Must Smash hawt, though she manages to keep Snaps McDreamy around long enough for the plot to happen. However, the finale begins to test the limits of going along with it as it jettisons what remaining scraps of realism it barely possessed.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"Another Simple Favor" 4K Review

 I have somehow failed to ever post a full review of 2018's snappy camp-trash classic A Simple Favor any of the three times we've watched it - first at the theater, then twice more on 4K digital - but it's one of our faves and each time I've logged it it crept up in its score, starting at 7.5/10 and currently at 8.5/10. It's a blast and made us reevaluate Blake Lively after years of clowning on her in Gossip Girl. (She was also good in the Girl vs Shark movie The Shallows.) So when word that a sequel was coming, great joy happened in Xanadu. So how does Another Simple Favor, sent straight to streaming on Amazon Prime Video because studios hate money, fare? It's OK.

We open with what listeners of the terrific Scriptnotes podcast will recognize as a Stuart Special with mommy vlogger/true crime solver Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick, A Simple Favor) streaming from her hotel room in Capri, proclaiming her innocence from killing frenemy Emily Nelson's new husband. Ruh-roh.

We then flashback a few days to get caught up on where we are five years after the events of the first film. Stephanie has written a book about those events and built a large following with her amateur sleuthing. At a book reading she is shocked by the arrival of Emily (Blake Lively, A Simple Favor), sprung from prison pending appeal by the powerful lawyers of her new fiance, Dante Versano (Michele Morrone, Subservience), an old Italian boyfriend. Emily is there to ask Stephanie to be her maid of honor and if she doesn't there will be lawsuits, etc. So it's off to Capri she goes, accompanied by Vicky (Alex Newell, Glee), her literary agent whose hoping for another book to come from it.

Stephanie is on edge because she feels Emily wants to kill her for wrecking her life, shagging her husband Sean (Henry Golding, A Simple Favor), leaving her son Nicky (Ian Ho, A Simple Favor) without a mother, etc. Emily's mercurial nature doesn't put her at ease even as she somewhat reassures her.

At the rehearsal luncheon, the surprises continue as it appears Dante's family business is in the vein of The Godfather with another family, the Bartolos, being antagonists and Dante's mother, Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci, all Italian movies), none to happy with this blonde interloper so she ups the ante by springing that he'd brought Emily's estranged borderline senile mother, Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins, Big, taking over from Jean Smart, A Simple Favor), and her aunt Linda (Allison Janney, The West Wing), to the party, much to Emily's consternation.

After much snarky banter, the story shifts into a darker gear as the men in Emily's life begin getting dead and for some reason Stephanie is the prime suspect to the local police and they place her under house arrest. Fortunately, she has a FBI agent (Taylor Ortega, The Four Seasons) following her to protect her. Too bad she's very incompetent and not on the case very long. (Nudge wink.) It all leads to some twisty-turny hijinks that require more suspension of disbelief than how Emily's wardrobe manages to cover her naughty bits like the beads on the Na'vi in the Avatar movies.

 While I enjoyed Another Simple Favor overall, the screenplay by Jessica Sharzer (co-writer of A Simple Favor) and Laeta Kalogridis (Terminator: Genisys, Alita: Battle Angel) is simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked with too many scenes and/or characters which could've been trimmed or eliminated completely. It feels like 15-20 minutes more material got trimmed out when it should've been either left in, the overall runtime cut back from 120 minutes, or different choices made; the FBI and literary agents could've been omitted entirely.

 The tone also gets too dark in spots; we don't need to see a beloved character's grisly demise so graphically portrayed and then a family member seemingly totally unaffected mere hours later. And the denouement relies on something being used that there is absolutely zero way it could've been present; deus ex machinas don't get more deusy than this even when it is so foreshadowed that I called it at about the 20-minute mark. And the supposed big twist wasn't much of a surprise, though I'll admit another twist was news, though it also raises questions the movie isn't interested in answering; just go with it.

 That said, if you're here for some sparky, bitchy back-and-forth between Kendrick & Lively, Another Simple Favor delivers enough of the goods to carry the day. There is a stretch where Lively is offscreen and she's missed. Perkins is a poor substitute for Smart, playing Margaret's dementia too broadly. (I'm guessing Smart was too busy filming Hacks to come back.) Morrone has little charisma, same as in Subservience, so I'm not sure why Hollywood is trying to hard to give him the Cam Gigandet treatment.

Amazon's 4K HDR10 presentation is nicely bright, capturing the luxurious details of the Capri setting like a tourism board commercial. Why so many movies refuse to use contrast and color these days sucks, but this isn't a disappointment.

The end of Another Simple Favor hints at a sequel and I am here for it. Ignore the haters who are "Team Justin" are are review bombing the movie online because they're jealous bitches envious of Lively's life or the film critics who didn't see the first one, don't understand the humor, and called it the worst movie of the year (as if it was a threat to film, ahem) and settle in for a messy, but still entertaining visit with the pair whose ideal of "family relations" gets pretty twisted at times. If you haven't seen the first one, it's currently on Netflix and MUST be seen before this to appreciate it properly.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on Prime Video.