Hold the Dark (2018) **

 

Director Jeremy Saulnier is no stranger to dark material, having directed "Green Room" and "Blue Ruin." With “Hold the Dark,” however, he reaches even farther into the abyss, maybe too far.

The story starts with naturalist Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) traveling to Alaska at the request of a young mother. Medora (Riley Keough) wants him to hunt down the wolves who she says killed her son and 2 other children in her remote, Alaskan village. She wants this done, if possible, before her husband Vern (Alexander Skarsgard) returns from the Iraq War. Russell discovers that there is a lot more to fear in Keelut, AK than wolves.

Should you decide to watch the film, you won't want any more plot spoilers. The film is full of surprises. Unfortunately, these surprises are not so much plot twists as bizarre, inscrutable actions on the parts of Medora, Vern, and Vern's friend, Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope). The choices these characters make are inexplicable using any moral code that I have seen or heard of. We are supposed to understand that these choices are the result of a wildness and darkness in these characters that results from living in the frigid remote wilds of Alaska. Saulnier and author William Giraldi, who wrote the book, appear to be making a profound commentary on the darkness that resides within all of us, but the message is too obscure for me.

2 stars out of 5

Ava (2020) **

 

If you've already watched “Atomic Blonde” and “The Old Guard” a couple of times, and you are jones-ing for another action movie about an ass-kicking, female agent, this might be the movie for you. If, that is, you keep your expectations low.

Jessica Chastain flexes her muscles as the titular assassin, who gets betrayed by her employers and has to go on a rampage. We've seen this story before, and it has been done much, much better. The only thing remarkable about “Ava” is how much star power goes to waste here. Besides Chastain, we have John Malkovich, Geena Davis, and Colin Farrell, all doing the best they can with a cliched script and a weak supporting cast, including Common, showing why he is a musician, not an actor.

The one thing “Ava” gets right is the action. The movie sucks when the characters are talking, but when they shut up and start kicking each other's asses, it's actually "John Wick"-level entertaining. Unfortunately, unlike “John Wick,” which is full of such non-stop action that you can (and should!) watch it with the sound off, “Ava” is full of long, boring scenes of family drama and laborious, unnecessary character development. Watching with the sound off isn't going to help with this one.

2 stars out of 5

Kick-Ass 2 (2013) **

 

You can argue the relative merits of various movie sequels, but I think one thing most of us can agree on is that most sequels are unnecessary. If the original film was done right, the story is narratively complete, and it does not demand a second installment. 2010's "Kick-Ass" is one of the exceptions: a riotously fun movie that came together well, but that really did demand a sequel. Is “Kick-Ass 2” the sequel it deserves? Not really.

In “Kick-Ass,” we met Dave, high-school student by day, masked vigilante by night. Calling himself Kick-Ass, Dave would walk the streets with a couple of batons, looking for opportunities to fight crime. It didn't much matter that he wasn't very good at it. His only superpowers were a big heart and an injury that made him mostly impervious to pain, but his willingness to make a stand inspired others to don the mask. In “Kick-Ass 2” we meet some of those vigilantes. Meanwhile, Dave gets Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) to train him , but she winds up retiring from the vigilante business and trying to make a go of being a normal, teenage girl. While the heroes go through their identity crises, Chris D'Amico, whose crime-boss dad fought the heroes in the first movie, embraces his super-villain destiny.

It should all be a lot more fun than it is. The setup is fine, but poor writing drags it down, and the Hit Girl storyline, in particular, is a cringey mess. I think the explanation is a change in management. The first film was written (adapted from a comic) and directed by Matthew Vaughn, who also directed "Stardust" and a couple of X-men movies. He also wrote and directed “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” which was surprisingly good, featuring the same mix of violence and off-kilter humor that made the original “Kick-Ass” so good. For some reason, Vaughn declined to write or direct the “Kick-Ass” sequel. He is listed as a producer, which basically means they used his name to get financing, but writing and directing fell to a guy named Jeff Wadlow, who has done nothing before or since to distinguish himself. Instead of a clever, funny, action movie with heart, what we wind up with is a fairly lame sequel, coasting on the greatness of the original.

2 stars out of 5

Emily the Criminal (2022) ***1/2

 

Aubrey Plaza has been circling around my consciousness for years, appearing in stuff I liked, but never fully breaking into my awareness until, suddenly, I'm an Aubrey Plaza fan. The “Parks and Rec” alum was in 2012's underrated gem "Safety Not Guaranteed." She also appeared in the weird, charming TV special "Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine."  I really became a fan after watching Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” where her deadpan humor and unique beauty really shine. Now there's “Emily the Criminal,” an excellent, little movie about crime and economic desperation.

Plaza plays Emily, a gig worker with student-loan debt, living on the ragged edge of the modern, American economy. Delivering lunches for a catering company, she wears a uniform and has a boss to push her around, but as an “independent contractor,” she has no employment rights and no union representation. Better jobs are elusive because of a felony conviction on her record. Emily gets the opportunity to do a different kind of gig job, one that is illegal. She needs the money, and she turns out not to mind the risk or the transgression, and soon she is a full-blown criminal.

This is writer/director John Patton Ford's first feature film, and it's an excellent first outing. The are a couple of weak plot elements, but the film succeeds on the charm of its stars, Plaza and Theo Rossi, both of whom are magnetic. Thematically, the film struggles a little. Ford seems to be wanting to make a social commentary about student loan debt, service work, economic justice, and the self-fulfilling prophesy of a criminal record, but he repeatedly undermines those commentaries via the foibles of his flawed protagonist, who is not exactly an everywoman. Emily is frustrating, because she repeatedly breaks the rules, ignores advice, and sabotages herself. Then again, that's the character. If she were the kind of person who could color within the lines, she wouldn't be Emily, the criminal.

3.5 stars out of 5

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020) **

 

Writer/director Jim Cummings made a splash in 2016 with the short film, “Thunder Road,” which, with some help from Kickstarter, he expanded into a feature film 2 years later. The feature cost about $200,000 to make and earned about $400,000. In the Indy Film world, that's enough of a success to get you another chance at making a project, usually with a bigger budget. Bigger, however, does not always mean better.

In “The Wolf of Snow Hollow,” Cummings (who also wrote and directed) plays John, a Utah Sheriff's deputy. When his small, mountain town is rocked by a series of grisly murders, John must deal with a panicked populace, an ex-wife, the health problems of his dad, who is the Sheriff (Robert Forster), his own alcoholism, and a killer who might just be a werewolf.

Cummings wrote, directed, and starred in this film, and I would say that he does a poor job with all 3 roles. The script is a hot mess, bouncing around in tone from serious family drama to various attempts at horror-comedy and back again. If anything, I usually complain about movies being too long. I would normally be praising this film's 85 minute run-time, but this is one where taking a little more time to build the horror and develop the characters might have helped things. As it is, the movie lurches from scenes that are unnecessarily long to plot developments that come out of nowhere.

As an actor, Cummings attempts to deal with these tone problems by just yelling and acting really angry a lot. The rest of the cast actually try to make a go of it. Riki Lindhome is pretty good as one of the other cops, and I would say that the movie owes what success it has to her, as well as to Robert Forster, who classes up anything he appears in. The cinematography also deserves mention, with some beautiful shots of snow-covered mountains. There could have been a decent movie here, with a better filmmaker at the helm. As it is, “The Wolf of Snow Hollow” doesn't make any sense, and it isn't funny enough to work as an Evil-Dead-style horror comedy.

2 stars out of 5