Multiplex Madness
Gran Turismo
⭐⭐1/2
Genre: Drama, Sports
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Archie Madekwe, David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Djimon Hounsou
This flick was supposed to open this week but was bumped back later in the month, but it has so many preview showings at my theater that you wouldn't know it. So technically this is a pre-release review.
The film tells the true story of Jann Mardenborough and how he won a Gran Turismo video game competition for a shot at being a real life race car driver, Gran Turismo's experience is like a race car itself. It wants speed, precision, and it wants to be so quick you'll feel like you're right on the track yourself. The consequence is that the film moves so fast that its detail gets left in the dust. The film shoots from one event to the next very rapidly, without any time to feel the weight of any of them, even some of the heavier ones. When it does stop for a breather, it's usually to meander with characters telling Mardenborough that he's "not ready for this" and "video games aren't reality." I get it. I don't need the majority of the film's drama to be this. There's even a slight love interest subplot, but her character is has so little screentime that you might wonder why they bothered leaving her in the movie at all. But the movie's rhythm is something some people might not care about, just wanting to get swept up in the adrenaline. Gran Turismo will be a great time for those looking for that, even if it falls short of a full experience.
Jules
⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Science Fiction
Director: Marc Turtletaub
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris, Zoë Winters, Jade Quan, Jane Curtin
We've all wondered what it would be like if E.T. were an indie dramady, so...oh, nobody? Okay, well here's Jules. The film stars Ben Kingsley, doing his best Judd Hirsch impression, as an aging battling dementia who finds that an alien has crash landed in his backyard, and those around him dismiss him as he tries to tell people about it. He then befriends the alien and lets him live in his house. Probably the test for how amusing one may find this movie is that the alien spends a section of the film just wearing a shirt that says "I'm not a lesbian, but my girlfriend is." and if you think that idea is funny, then Jules is worth checking out. It's a soft and quaint movie that embraces its own oddness with a gentle touch and a dry wit. It's not a particularly well plotted movie, as it hits several speed bumps that it seems to knock it off-kilter (the alien needs dead cats to fix his spaceship. Why dead cats? Who knows.), while the ending is open in understandable respects, it also lacks proper resolution in other, less thematic areas. But Kingsley is pretty great in this movie and it is charming enough.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
⭐⭐1/2
Genre: Horror
Director: André Øvredal
Starring: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosci, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian
Based on an idea from the novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the story of the boat that brought the legendary vampire to London, where there were no survivors upon arrival (apart from Renfield, who is not present in this movie, likely because he's busy in group therapy). The tale of the doomed vessel is an intriguing idea for a film, because it's mostly dismissed as a "what you don't see is scarier than what you do" event to showcase how dangerous Dracula can be. The movie proves its worth in some areas, but doesn't quite fully get itself to gel. The movie is endearingly earnest about its melancholy folktale tone, and it's commitment to gothic theatricality keeps it constantly vivacious. Its horror doesn't hit home, though. It goes for both sublime chills and overbearing bombast, often in the same sequence. I found myself wishing the movie would pick a lane, even if it's not necessarily bad at either. It works well enough to be an entertaining diversion for horror hounds, because it is dark, it is stylish, and it goes for the jugular, but it's not the movie it aims to be, and that's a shame.
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