city Dennis, county Harvey: Last News

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Located halfway between the coming-of-age nostalgia of “Stand by Me” and the horror content of … well, nearly every other Stephen King-derived movie, “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” ends up too mild on either count to make a memorable impression. Still, John Lee Hancock’s adaptation of the same-named novella (which led off King’s 2020 collection “If It Bleeds”) handles the rather thin source material adeptly enough to make for an entertaining middleweight drama tinged with the supernatural. It premieres on Netflix Oct. 5, getting Halloween month off to a moderately creepy start.  Craig (Colin O’Brien) is still a child when his mother dies of cancer in 2003, leaving him alone in his Maine small town with an equally bereft father (Joe Tippett). It is a welcome distraction, then, when his Scripture recitals in church attract the attention of Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), a billionaire financial tycoon who’s retired to this nondescript burg in order to spend his twilight years out of the spotlight. His eyes are failing, so he offers Craig a regular after-school gig of reading aloud from literary classics — starting, rather inappropriately, with “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but soon embracing Dickens, Conrad, Dostoevsky and so forth.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Jalmari Helander hasn’t made a feature since 2014’s “Big Game,” then the most expensive Finnish film to date. It was an unabashed, bombastic, good-humored action crowd-pleaser that indeed pleased crowds — at festivals, while mysteriously failing to catch on with general audiences. Presumably his concept was just too “high” for mainstream viewers to swallow: Though they don’t have any problem with Gerard Butler or Will Smith doing similar honors, it seemed too much to accept a 13-year-old Finn boy singlehandedly rescuing the president of the United States from an obstacle course of assassination peril.  That failure must have hurt; Helander has spent the interim on episodic work. His new “Sisu” is, in many ways, cut from the same cloth as “Big Game” as a splashy popcorn action piece unconcerned with credibility, pushing well-worn ideas to outlandish, and outrageously entertaining, ends. But the writer-director has hedged his bets by moving one key piece in the game to the opposite end of the board. This time, instead of a juvenile protagonist that made viewers wonder whether they were watching a movie for kids or for grown-ups (the answer “both” apparently confused them), we get a crusty coot quite spry enough to take on all foes. Which bad guys might pretty much be termed “the entire Third Reich.” 

Dennis Harvey Film Critic “Tough guy with heart of gold” is the cliché that provides the gist to “The Enforcer,” and nothing much turns up to refresh or complicate that hoary hook. This criminal-underworld thriller benefits from Antonio Banderas’ star charisma as a veteran mob strong-arm who turns against his own organization in order to rescue an imperiled teen. Richard Hughes’ feature directorial debut also elevates matters somewhat with a slick and stylish presentation. But the results remain too hogtied by original “Point Break” scribe W. Peter Iliff’s routine, elemental screenplay to rise above the level of disposable genre fodder.  Cuda (Banderas) is just out of prison, having dutifully taken the heat for deeds done in service to Miami syndicate boss Estelle (Kate Bosworth). He hopes to restore relations with his 15-year-old daughter, but she’s wary after his long absence, his ex-wife outright hostile. Perhaps as a regretful result, he takes a fatherly interest in Billie (Zolee Griggs), a foster-home runaway who’s also 15. He prevents her getting in trouble for shoplifting, securing a motel room so she’ll be off the streets he’s all too aware are unsafe. Yet Billie is soon abducted from that short-term haven, presumably by sex traffickers, and it doesn’t take Cuda long to figure out that the perps are very likely tied to his own employer. 

Dennis Harvey Film Critic The odds are not good for “V/H/S” — which is to say it’s the even-numbered entries in this horror omnibus franchise that have been by far the best to date. As No. 5, “V/H/S/99” unfortunately maintains that pattern, providing an uninspired extension of the series that had rebounded after a seven-year lull with last fall’s “V/H/S/94.”  That installment was typically uneven, but the better segments were terrific. Here, nothing stands out: The best episodes are merely good enough, and the worst just tiresome. Nonetheless, this brand has proven viewer appeal for genre streaming platform Shudder, where it should do well when launched in various territories on Oct. 20. Set in 1999 — the tail of the titular format’s commercial reign, since DVDs were introduced two years prior — the film is unlikely to be the series’ last.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic “Nobody messes with my family!” shouts Queen Latifah, aiming a revolver at baddies during a late moment in “End of the Road.” It is one of several points in this Netflix thriller where the blatancy of undiluted cliché has an effect rather more comical than intended. Taking a brisk route from the pedestrian to the preposterous, Millicent Shelton’s slick but silly film diminishes its social-commentary edge by painting an African American family’s cross-country trip in cartoonishly broad terms, imperiled by crazy and/or criminal “crackers” at every junction.  Director and cast do their best — well, maybe not their best, but their competent professional duty — with a formulaic, contrived screenplay. Still, the results do no one much credit, landing closer to overripe cheese than taut suspense, or even guilty-pleasure terrain. “End” launches on the streamer Sept. 9. 

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Czech folk hero Jan Zizka’s story has been dramatized — and mythologized — in various forms many times, including a mid-1950s celluloid trilogy by Otakar Vavra that was arguably the local industry’s most ambitious production in those somewhat stodgy, pre-New Wave days. Purportedly the Czech Republic’s most expensive feature to date, Petr Jakl’s new “Medieval” portrays the same legendary figure in what’s anything but an old-school costume epic. Instead, this robust, assured enterprise offers a distant past in the brutally combat-driven action mode of “Gladiator” and “Braveheart,” its patriotic sentiments steeped in mud and blood. The economic realities for such a costly spectacular require a degree of formulaic creative decisions in line with current international audience tastes, while the casting of American and British actors in primary roles further waters down a distinctive regional character. Nevertheless, “Medieval” succeeds as a lively, handsome chunk of history (however freely imagined), with nary a dull moment between densely-packed intrigues, chases and battles. The Avenue will release this English-language spectacle on nearly 1,200 U.S. screens Sept. 9, simultaneous with rollout in several other territories.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticNazi ghouls have figured in plenty of horror movies, whether preserved (1966’s “The Frozen Dead”), newly bioengineered (1978’s “The Boys from Brazil”) or zombiefied (too many to list). Edging close to that terrain, “Burial” revolves around a corpse — the corpse, as far as WWII’s end was concerned — that does not reanimate or otherwise come “back to life,” but poses a grave threat nonetheless.Not-quite-horror despite its macabre theme and mood, this sophomore directorial feature for Ben Parker is a handsomely produced period thriller that delivers in terms of action and atmospherics, even if his somewhat convoluted story doesn’t maximally pay off. IFC Midnight is releasing the Estonia-shot U.K. production to limited U.S. theaters and on-demand platforms Sept. 2.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe isolation and helplessness some people felt during the prime days of COVID lockdown is utilized to good effect in “The Harbinger.” Andy Mitton’s second solo feature (following two co-directed with Jesse Holland) is a spooky tale in which vulnerable individuals find themselves prey to a malevolent spirit that worms into their dreams, dislodging them from grounding reality.More eerie than terrifying, with strong performances and atmosphere pushing past some fuzzy plot aspects, this Fantasia premiere should please more discerning genre fans in XYZ Films’ release to limited theaters and VOD on Sept. 1.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe femme fatale is alive and well in Los Angeles-set indie “No Way Out,” an old-fashioned noir dressed up in the steamy decadence of an erotic thriller. Trouble is, veteran producer Keith Kjarval’s debut solo screenplay doesn’t provide the kind of memorable characters or sharp plotting needed to punch across a dark crime melodrama.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterRebel Wilson is getting ready to serve as the star of “Double Fault,” a tennis comedy in development at Paramount Players.Jim and Brian Kehoe, the brothers who wrote the 2019 high school comedy “Blockers,” are in talks to pen the screenplay. The logline is being kept under wraps.“Double Fault” will be produced by Wilson and Todd Garner (“Senior Year”), with Brad Jenkel (“The Matador”) on board as executive producer.Wilson recently starred in Netflix’s teen comedy “Senior Year,” in which she played a 37-year-old who wakes up from a coma and returns to high school to get her diploma.In Variety’s review of “Senior Year,” Dennis Harvey praised Wilson as “a naturally gifted comedian” who pulls together the movie “through sheer force of personality and riffing performance chops.” Prior to “Senior Year,” Wilson hadn’t starred in a movie since 2019’s “Isn’t It Romantic,” a romantic comedy that parodies stereotypical Hollywood meet-cutes.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic“Hypochondriac” informs viewers right away that it is “based on a real breakdown,” which certainly provides a new wrinkle on the now-wildly-overused “true story” proviso. Nonetheless, clarity of hindsight is not a major virtue in this adventurous first feature by writer-director Addison Heimann.The offbeat indie drama features Zach Villa as a Los Angelean whose troubled past threatens to unravel his domestic partnership and his very sanity.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThough it’s been consistently overshadowed by more dramatic breaking news stories, few issues have dealt 21st-century U.S. society such a crippling blow as the opioid crisis.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticSticking to the thriller genre that’s been his stomping ground on both the big and small screen, Stephan Rick’s second English-language film “The Good Neighbor” is a remake of his 2011 German-language debut feature of the same title. The setting has changed (to Latvia, presumably for financing reasons), but the story remains largely untouched.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe resurgence of neo-fascist movements and authoritarian rule around the world has unsurprisingly coincided with a ramping-up of hostility against press freedom. Assassinated U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is the most notorious single example, but hundreds in his profession have been murdered in recent years, with many more assaulted, detained, harassed and so forth.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticHistory currently repeating itself lends a particular frisson to Latvian theater, opera and film director Viesturs Kairiss’ “January.” It takes place in early 1991, when the nation’s push for independence (alongside other Baltic states) met with armed Soviet resistance even as the U.S.S.R. was falling apart. Those historical events are interwoven with vaguely autobiographical fiction revolving around a mildly nonconformist Riga film school student, one admittedly drawn much as the director was himself in that time and place.With Moscow leadership again hawkish toward retaining and/or regaining territories of a former empire, this flashback has particular resonance, amplified by the use of archival news and activist-shot footage.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThough the term “Islamophobia” may seem of relatively recent vernacular vintage, such sentiments have been aggressively popularized — and politicized — for over three decades in the American consciousness. Nausheen Dadabhoy’s “An Act of Worship” chronicles that trend and its impact on Muslims in the U.S., while focusing on several individual activists combatting related discrimination, hate crimes and related woes.This Tribeca-premiering documentary provides a gracefully crafted, persuasive portrait of communities demonized for the acts of an extremist (and mostly overseas) minority with whom they share a religious identity, but little ideology.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticOne of the most enjoyable South Korean action movies in recent years, 2017’s “The Outlaws” was a deft mix of brutal gang-warfare thrills and Keystone Cops comedics. It provided an ideal vehicle for Ma Dong-seok aka Don Lee (“Train to Busan” and “Eternals”) as the police investigator whose hit-first-ask-permission-later methods regularly got the job done while infuriating his superiors.That burly protagonist and his sidekicks are back in “The Roundup,” which despite a different directorial (newbie Lee Sang-yong replacing the prior edition’s Kang Yoon-seong) and writing crew, maintains the original’s strengths.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticTraveling with strangers can be hard, but traveling with strangers and a murderous alien parasite proves considerably worse in “The Passenger.” This sharply executed, good-humored horror opus represents a promising first dual directorial effort for Fernando Gonzalez Gomez and Raul Cerezo, each of whom has a number of shorts under his belt. While not quite a slam-dunk, it’s more than skillful enough to please genre fans looking for a fun ride, and to raise expectations for their next collaboration (“Viejos,” aka “The Elderly,” another horror already in post).

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe mild initial curiosity stirred by Zoom-shot movies died quickly, because so few of them were watchable, and because filmmakers quickly found workarounds to create more fluid entertainments while still observing COVID precautionary measures. Thus “Zero Contact” arrives as a novelty that’s already more than worn out its welcome, aiming for dubious additional distinction as “the world’s first star-powered feature film NFT.” (It was released in that form last September — whether anyone actually purchased it as such is unknown.)We’ll just gingerly step around that factoid, as the aptly named “Zero Contact” has plenty of more tangible ways in which it is a steaming pile of nada.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThough few members of the public were still denying a link between smoking and cancer at the time, it was still nonetheless rather startling when the extent of the tobacco industry’s deliberate disinformation campaign on that subject got exposed about a quarter-century ago. The déjà vu runs thick watching Jennifer Baichwal’s new documentary, “Into the Weeds,” which provides another illustration of coldblooded corporate denialism in the face of widespread harm.Here the culprit is agrochemical giant Monsanto, and their product Roundup, purportedly for some time the world’s most popular herbicide.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticSpare parts of high school comedies from “Peggy Sue Got Married” to “Mean Girls” and beyond have been torn asunder, then sewn back together to create “Senior Year.” In other words, this vehicle for producer-star Rebel Wilson isn’t organic even as a genre homage; its Frankensteinian assemblage always feels more imitative than inspired. Nonetheless, if Alex Hardcastle’s effortfully high-spirited Netflix feature isn’t exactly good, it’s still good enough to provide reasonable throwaway fun, thanks much less to the material than to a cast that elevates it when they can.Introduced as “just some average boring invisible girl who had no friends” in 1999, Australian émigré Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) determines on her 14th birthday to start doing better.