FILM REVIEW OF ''THE SHALLOWS" (2016)

Spanish helmer Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed Liam Neeson in “Unknown,” “Non-Stop,” “Run All Night,” and has plans for another film with Neeson entitled “The Commuter,” must have felt that pitting his favorite Irish actor against a ferocious Great White shark would be unfair to it.  Instead, Collet-Serra has “Age of Adaline” actress Blake Lively contend with this colossal Carcharodon carcharias in “The Shallows” (*** OUT OF ****), an entertaining, often suspenseful, but largely improbable B-movie survivalist saga.  Summer movies are typically sprawling, impersonal, and larger-than-life blockbusters, about clashes between titans and extraterrestrials, such as “Captain America: Civil War,” “X-Men: Apocalypse,” “Independence Day: Resurgence,” “Warcraft,” and “Teenage Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.”  Although Collet-Serra’s film boasts a pugnacious predator roughly the size of a medium-class submarine, “The Shallows” remains more personal in scope than traditional summer fare.  The exploits depicted in this Sony/Columbia Pictures release do not pose a threat to civilization as we know it.  Indeed, the events occur in relative anonymity without television networks broadcasting commentary about them as they unfold.  Ultimately, nobody knows what is happening until the narrative concludes.  Aside from Blake Lively, “The Shallows” features only seven actors, six relatively unknown males and one female confined to supporting roles.  Not only does Lively play a sympathetic character, but also you cannot take your eyes off her while she is locked into life-and-death combat with a tenaciously toothy terrornaut that doesn’t know when to quit.  Comparably, “The Shallows” reminded me of the grim finale in Ridley Scott’s classic, 1979, sci-fi shocker “Alien.”  Virtually the entire crew of the ill-fated, space merchant vessel Nostromo had died in a fight with an indestructible space monster whose blood was as corrosive as acid.  The last survivor, sexy Sigourney Weaver, had slipped into something comfort to go to sleep for the long voyage home when she discovered to her horror that she was sharing her escape spacecraft with that fearsome fiend.  Similarly, after about fifteen minutes of watching shapely Blake arrive at a remote stretch of scenic beach, strip down to a bikini, and plunge into the bay for a little surfing, the infamous shark shows up without fanfare and turns out to be quite the scene stealer for the remaining 72 white-knuckled minutes.  Essentially, what Jaswinski and Collet-Serra have wrought amounts to a synthesis of “Jaws,” “Blue Crush,” and “Soul Surfer.” 

Nancy Adams (Blake Lively of “Savages”) has just withdrawn from nursing school.  The gruesome experience of watching her long suffering mother succumb to cancer has devastated her.  Nancy just wants to retreat and ponder her future.  She remembers her pregnant mother told her about a secret stretch of beach in Mexico that she had gone to while she was carrying her.  A friendly native gives Nancy a lift in his battered pick-up truck through the jungle to the beach, and the beach looks like a dream with its azure skies, creamy surf, and faraway islands forming a barrier against the ocean.  Initially, Nancy came with a girlfriend, but her girlfriend left her for a cute guy.  Alone but content, Nancy swims out into the secluded bay and encounters two other surfer dudes.  Their English is as inadequate as her Spanish, and they share some waves before they hang it up.  Afterward, Nancy spots a gigantic rotting whale carcass adrift and investigates it before making her final surf for the day.  As she is riding the crest of a wave, a Great White shark smashes into her like a torpedo and topples her off her surfboard.  The shark chomps on her left thigh, but Nancy finds sanctuary on a small outcropping of rock fewer than 200 yards from shore.  This sinister shark cruises in circles around her like a war party of Apaches rampaging around a wagon train of pioneers in the Old West.  Nancy uses pieces of jewelry to stitch up her chewed up thigh, but she fears the onset of gangrene if she isn’t rescued soon.  Soon, however, isn’t going to be soon enough, and she is trapped at the mercy of the shark.  Talk about a tight-spot!

“The Shallows” never wears out its welcome.  “Kristy” scenarist Anthony Jaswinski and Collet-Serra observe all the standard conventions of vintage suspense thrillers.  They isolate our valiant heroine and subject her to one frightening predicament after another, and she must rely on her own savvy and stamina.  Occasionally, when Nancy cannot outwit her adversary, the filmmakers create obstacles that the shark cannot overcome in its ravenous lust to make her into mincemeat.  For example, a steel hook embedded in its jaw gets snagged on a buoy, and the Great White wallows turbulently before it dislodges itself and renews its feverish attack.  At other times, the shark deals with marine life such as a school of jelly fish and the craggy underwater terrain that thwarts its momentum.  The irony is that our heroine is--as the title indicates-- in shallow waters instead of far out in the briny blue deep.  The Great White shark appears sufficiently menacing, and computer-generated visual effects are top-notch.  The predator’s initial appearance through a wave is ominously dramatic.  If you’ve seen the trailer, the scene where the Great White lurches above the waves to gobble a surfer is sensational stuff.  The whale carcass that our heroine initially takes refuge on until the shark forces her to abandon it looks pretty realistic, too.  The shift into tone and atmosphere from dream to nightmare for Nancy is very palatable, too.  Although this woman-in-jeopardy nail-biter is set Mexico, the filmmakers lensed it on location in sunny Australia.  Of course, “The Shallows” doesn’t surpass Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” with its atmospheric music and its charismatic ensemble male cast.  In a scene reminiscent of the “Jaws” finale when Roy Schneider fires a rifle at the shark that kills it, our heroine appropriates a flare pistol and fires it at the marauding shark.  Characterization remains on the lean side since Blake Lively’s solitary surfer is the only three dimensional character on display.  Nevertheless, just as “Jaws” exploited our anxieties about splashing around in the sea without a second thought, “The Shallows” may make you think twice about wading into surf.

FILM REVIEW OF ''SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN" (2012)

Hollywood has been cranking out cinematic adaptations of Snow White since the silent 1916 version.  In 1933, vampy cartoon heroine Betty Boop played the raven-haired princess in a 7-minute, surrealistic, black & white cartoon from Max Fleischer's Studios before Disney immortalized our fair maiden.  Recently, “Immortals” director Tarsem Singh helmed an adaptation of the Snow White fairy tale called “Mirror, Mirror” with Julia Roberts as the sinful stepmom.  Now, rookie British director Rupert Sanders and freshman scenarist Evan Daugherty, along with “The Blind Side” scribe John Lee Hancock and “Drive’s” Hossein Amini, have reimagined this melodrama as a much darker chick flick.  They’ve made it palatable not only for girls but also guys.  Imagine “Joan of Arc” crossed with “The Lord of the Rings,” and you’ve got a good idea about what to expect.  As the second take on the venerable Brothers Grimm fairy tale this year, “Snow White and the Huntsman” (*** out of ****) departs considerably the 1937 Walt Disney classic.  The protagonist here isn’t the clueless maiden who cooks and cleans for a clan of cuddly dwarves.  After escaping from her depraved stepmom and stumbling through a supernatural forest with all kinds of creepy critters, “Twilight’s” Kristen Stewart makes herself over into an armor-clad, sword-wielding Amazon who saddles up with an army of troops to ride back to her father’s castle and reclaim the kingdom.  Good adventure movies require stalwart heroines who don’t necessarily play second fiddle to the heroes.  A bearded Chris Hemsworth, whose character shares little in common with his Marvel Comics alter-ego “Thor,” brandishes both a hatchet as the eponymous “Huntsman,” but he doesn’t push our heroine around for long before she whistles a different tune.  Mind you, good adventures must also boast diabolical villains.  Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron steals the show as the malicious stepmother and qualifies as the most fascist femme that you’ll ever see.  She is a succubus rolled up into a sorceress.  Aside from her brother, this despicable villainess abhors men with a passion and loves literally to stick it to them—right in the gizzard with a sharp blade.

“Snow White and the Huntsman” follows the Brothers Grimm story when Queen Eleanor (newcomer Liberty Ross) pricks her finger on a blooming rose in the dead of winter and watches three drops of blood splatter in the snow.  Eleanor bears a child but then not long afterward dies.  Snow White’s grieving father King Magnus (Noah Huntley of “Your Highness”) rides into battle against a mysterious enemy that his army hacks into heaps of obsidian shards. Afterward, they discover a poor damsel-in-distress chained up like a slave in a wagon on the battlefield.  This unfortunate woman, Ravenna (Charlize Theron of “Monster”), seduces the monarch and later they marry.  During their wedding night, Ravenna stabs the unsuspecting king to death with a large knife thrust into his chest.  “Snow White and the Huntsman” skirts blood and gore as much as possible.  Nevertheless, the inventive Sanders shows some flair by having a pitcher of wine spill at least a quart of its dark red contents on the floor as a metaphor for the king’s loss of blood.  Ravenna wastes no time with the king’s daughter and locks young Snow White up in a tower.  No sooner has this incident transpired than Ravenna has her servants hang a mirror so she can admire her beauty.  Of course, this mirror is no ordinary mirror.  Everybody knows that the wicked stepmother-turned-queen has conversations with it.  The difference is that before the mirror replies to her, it behaves like the Robert Patrick terminator in “Terminator 2.”  The mirror oozes out onto the floor into a pool and then assumes the shape of a figure in a cloak.  This ingenious touch and the many others that ensue make “Snow White and the Huntsman” into an imaginative, above-average yarn with surprises galore.

After Snow White has grown up, Ravenna realizes that she has a problem.  She is beginning to age.  She sends her equally wicked brother her Finn (Sam Spruell of “Defiance”) off to fetch fresh flesh.  Finn brings her a young maiden, and Ravenna literally sucks the beauty of her mouth without touching her lips.  Indeed, Ravenna imitates the infamous Countess Báthory who slashed up young women and bathed in their blood.  Eventually, Ravenna learns that she must dine on Snow White’s heart and sends Finn off to get her.  A couple of birds fly up to Snow White’s window in the tower and she finds a loose nail.  Later, when Finn tries to dally with our heroine, she cuts him up and escapes from the castle.  The furious Ravenna enlists the aid of a drunken lout, the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth of “The Cabin in the Woods”) and he sets out to find Snow White.  Sensing something amiss, the Huntsman alters his allegiance and helps Snow White elude Finn and his henchmen.  About an hour into the action, our hero and heroine encounter eight dwarves who are thieves.

Future filmmakers will have to struggle to surpass what Sanders and his scribes have done both with the nefarious stepmother and the other elements.  If some of those dwarves that associate with Snow White look familiar, they are.  Sanders and company haven’t cast genuine dwarves.  Instead, they have pasted the heads of notable real-life actors, including Nick Frost of “Shaun of the Dead,” Ian McShane of HBO’s “Deadwood,” and Ray Winstone of “The Departed,” onto the bodies of these little people.  You’ve got to see these gritty little guys to believe them.  The scenery, the sets, the wardrobe, and the computer-generated-special effects are all fantastic.  Unfortunately, the chemistry between Kristen Stewart and her two suitors, Chris Hemsworth as the eponymous Huntsman and her childhood friend Sam Claflin, frizzle rather than sizzle.  Meanwhile, “Snow White and the Huntsman” has coined almost $100-million domestically and another $83-million overseas so Universal Studios is talking about a sequel.  Ironically, the studio was counting on “Battleship” to deliver, but it sank and “Snow White” has replaced it.  “Snow White and the Huntsman” qualifies as an unforgettable fairy tale with an edge. 

FILM REVIEW OF "TENTACLES" (1977)

Solid production values, Nestore Ungaro’s exemplary underwater photography, a name-dropping cast of vintage Hollywood stars, and a terrific fight between an octopus and two killers whales makes “Beyond the Door” director Ovidio G. Assonitis’s “Jaws” horror movie rip-off “Tentacles” (**1/2 out of ****) worth watching about a giant squid terrorizing a coastal American town. This octopus doesn’t discriminate when it comes to his diet. You can be an infant, an adult with a peg leg, a beautiful bikini clad dame, or an entire yacht itself and the eponymous predator will dine on you. Incidentally, though we don’t get to see the octopus that often, the octopus looks believable, not like the octopus in the Ed Wood classic “Bride of the Monster” (1955) that Bela Lugosi flailed around with in a hilarious scene. The octopus was clearly phony just as it was clear Lugosi was making all of its moves for the octopus. Additionally, this octopus looks better than the “Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea” octopus. Happily, “Tentacles” isn’t laughable and Assonitis and company maintain a straight-faced, serious attitude toward these shenanigans and refrain from camping up the plot.

Sadly, the chief flaw in the screenplay by a quartet of scribes--Steven Carabatsos, Tito Carpi, Jerome Max, and Sonia Molteni--for this atmospheric creature feature is the shortage of sympathetic characters. Most of the suspense is undermined because only one of the stars winds up in jeopardy. Assonitis tastefully handles the death of an infant before he moves along with the usual victims of seagoing predators. Nevertheless, any movie that opens with an infant in a baby carriage serving as the initial snack for a gigantic squid cannot be one-hundred percent bad. Indeed, Assonitis and his scenarists do a splendid job of setting up the storyline, better than Spielberg did with “Jaws.” Underwater construction and the use of radio in the resort town of Solana Beach is what prompted the squid to prey on humanity and once it has had a taste of blood, it cannot assuage its appetite. The stalking scenes from the octopus’ perspective forge a sense of unease and eventually the sight of the squid traveling on top of the water like a submarine is kind of creepy. In fact, this “Jaws” rip-off anticipates “Jaws 2” by endangering a fleet of young boaters during a regatta. Unlike “Jaws,” “Tentacles” provides a reason for the appearance of the cannibal octopus.

After a baby in a carriage and a peg-legged sailor vanish in the ocean in separate incidents, Sheriff Robards (Claude Akins of “Return of the Seven”) and newspaper reporter Ned Turner (John Huston of “The Deserter”) investigate their disappearance. The bodies for the most part have been reduced to skeletons. A horribly decayed corpse washes up out of the drink at one point to scare a couple necking on a boat, but the rest of the victims have had their flesh peeling from their bones and the marrow sucked out of them. Sheriff Robards warns Turner not to sensationalize the story until they obtain more information. Perceptively, Turner observes that it all adds up to a nightmare.

Meanwhile, Mr. Whitehead, President of Trojan Construction (Henry Fonda of “The Grapes of Wrath”) reminds Turner to not draw hasty conclusions unless he can furnish the facts to back them up. Turner believes that Whitehead’s company and their underwater construction are to blame. Of course, Turner is right, but he doesn’t get an opportunity to bask in his beliefs. Whitehead discovers that overzealous engineer John Corey (Cesare Danova of CBS-TV’s “Garrison’s Guerrillas”) in an effort to accelerate the construction violated regulations. Whitehead orders Corey to stop his illegal activities in this California beachfront community.

Turner goes out of town to consult with Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins of “The Wild Bunch”) who is a scuba diver and marine biologist. Gleason informs Turner that the tentacles of an octopus are worse than the claws of a tiger. He has trained two killer Orcas and sends two underwater experts to the town to investigate for him. The giant squid attacks them when they go down to check out the ocean floor. Eventually, Gleason arrives in town with his wife to conduct the investigation himself. The day that he is not on his yacht, the octopus attacks the yacht and sinks it. In the middle of all this mayhem the squid eats Gleason’s wife. Gleason brings in his two whales. The last half-hour of “Tentacles” depicts the struggle between Gleason and his two Orcas with the huge octopus. Watching the Orcas tangle with the squid is like watching angry dogs tear into a bear. During the fight, the octopus touches off an underwater avalanche and Gleason is trapped.

Assonitis has made a better-than-average octopus opus, but the film lacks the general air of terror and enough scary scenes to make it a goose-bump inducing horror chiller. Largely, Assonitis’s claim to fame is his screamer “Beyond the Door.” “Beyond the Door” was an “Exorcist” style, satanic possession thriller that coined $40-million internationally while scaring up $10-million in the United States. Fonda confines himself to his house, while the Huston character and the Winters’ character are brother and sister. The major set-piece that “Jaws 2” appropriated, but on a smaller scale, is the regatta. “The Stranger Returns” composer Stelvio Cipriani employs a harpsichord for suspense in his imaginative orchestral soundtrack.