FILM REVIEW OF ''PHOENIX FORGOTTEN" (2017)

Combine “The Blair Witch Project” with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and you’ve got the gist of freshman director Justin Barber’s found-footage, sci-fi, horror chiller “Phoenix Forgotten” (* OUT OF ****), involving an alleged UFO sighting in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday, March 13, 1997.  “Maze Runner” scenarist T.S. Nowlin and Barber have appropriated that larger-than-life incident known as “Phoenix Lights” for their superficial saga about three teens who took off into the desert to document this phenomenon with a camcorder.  Unfortunately, they vanished without a trace, but left behind their camcorder.  For the record, “Phoenix Lights” made national headlines, and experts have described as it as “the most widely seen mass UFO sighting in US history,” second only to the renowned Roswell UFO crash in 1947.  Nevertheless, I’m fed up with low-budget, found-footage thrillers as uninspired as “Phoenix Forgotten.”  They neither make my skin crawl nor make me feel sympathetic about the plight of characters too asinine to know better.  Basically, the actors and actresses play stock characters, with little aside from biology and apparel to differentiate them.  Neither the original (and extremely overrated) “Blair Witch Project” (1999) nor its abysmal 2016 remake did little to arouse either my curiosity or raise my hackles.  Mind you, found-footage movies aren’t all awful.  The Vietnam war epic “84 Charlie Mopic” (1989) was one of the best.  “The Paranormal Activity” franchise has been consistently gripping.  You may have your favorites, too. Nothing in “Phoenix Forgotten” will make you gnaw your fingernails, unless you’ve never watched a horror movie.  Furthermore, this formulaic film features pedestrian performances by unknown thespians without a bit of charisma who were cast largely for their ordinary, inconspicuous looks.  Nowlin & Barber have forged characters that aren’t interesting for their own sake, and their dialogue isn’t quotable.  Worse, the film doesn’t spring any surprises that would make you scream.  The first half of “Phoenix Forgotten” is dreary enough to lull you into a stupor.  The marginally better second half struggles to compensate for the somnambulance of its monotonous first half.  The convenient found-footage sequences are predictably designed to trouble you with lots of wobbly camera work with sporadically scrambled video imagery.   

Sophie (Florence Hartigan of “Magik and Rose”) has returned to her hometown of Phoenix. She plans to produce a documentary film about her older brother Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts of “Hail, Caesar!”) and his two friends, Ashley (Chelsea Lopez of “Novitiate”) and Mark (newcomer Justin Matthews), who got lost in the desert 20 years ago while making their own documentary about the “Phoenix Lights.”  Josh had been a videophile for years.  The first time that we see Josh, he is recording his younger sister Sophie’s sixth birthday party when mysterious lights illuminate the skies over Phoenix.  Local television stations broadcast reports about the suspected UFOs, while public officials stage a press conference with a guy masquerading as an extraterrestrial to defuse the paranoia surrounding the sightings.  The UFO coverage whetted Josh’s curiosity, and he started shooting interviews with anybody who had either witnessed or heard about the unidentified flying objects over Phoenix.  Naturally, the military discredited those UFO sightings.  Indeed, Air Force officials issued a statement that aircraft on training maneuvers had deployed flares that would have resembled a UFO. 

When Sophie comes home, she interviews her parents, who have been divorced because the search for their son devastated their marriage, as well as Josh’s friends to find closure.  Sophie and her cameraman are about to call off their documentary when a high school librarian discovers a package stashed in the school’s storage facility.  The package contains another camcorder with a cassette cartridge in it.  Sophie’s hopes soar when she learns that not only can the tape still play but also that Josh shot the footage.  All along everybody, including local law enforcement, could never adequately explain why Josh would have left behind his camcorder in his vehicle.  The revelation is that Josh had two camcorders!  Sophie lends the footage to a military official to examine.  He warns Sophie that she shouldn’t show that tape to anybody.  The remainder of “Phoenix Forgotten” concerns what Josh and his friends recorded after they plunged into the desert.  The three wind up lost, and tempers flare as they struggle to find their way back to Josh’s SUV.  After they get back on the road to Phoenix, Arizona, something with a glaring light approaches them from behind and overtakes them. Inexplicably, Josh’s vehicle conks out, and the three set out on foot on a lonely highway.  Before long other mysterious things occur, and they are swept up in turbulent winds, explosive sounds, and bright lights.

Presumably, producer Ridley Scott, who directed the original “Alien,” must have felt that teen audiences afflicted with ADDH would mob the multiplexes and parlay this $2.8 million feature into a weekend blockbuster, like “The Blair Witch Project.”  The trouble with Barber’s film is that he takes too long to establish both the characters and set up the predicament. Unfortunately, the filmmakers wear us out keeping track of a lot of insignificant details about the characters and their environment designed to enhance the plausibility of “Phoenix Forgotten.” The staccato editing stresses the spontaneity of the moment, but Barber neglects to align our sympathies with those characters.  As the chief protagonist of “Phoenix Forgotten,” Sophie searches desperately to determine what became of her ill-fated sibling.  Incredibly, “Phoenix Forgotten” partially duplicates the plot of a 1989 micro-budgeted, straight-to-video epic entitled “UFO: Abduction.”  The big brother in the latter film is taping his niece’s fifth birthday with a hand-held camera when UFOs blasted out of nowhere.  Afterward, the hero and his two brothers rushed into the woods to investigate their sighting.  They located the flying saucer and encountered three aliens.  Frantically, the brothers withdrew to their house, and the aliens besieged them.  Predictably, Josh’s found footage suggests that aliens abducted the trio.  Altogether, “Phoenix Forgotten” is best forgotten as just another crackpot conspiracy theory orchestrated with little imagination.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE LAST STARFIGHTER" (1984)

“Tag: The Assassination” director Nick Castle's adventurous but derivative science-fiction fantasy "The Last Starfighter"(*** OUT OF ****) features allusions both visual and literary to "Star Wars" and "Back to the Future."  Nevertheless, this harmless, lightweight, but incidentally-romantic, PG-rated saga boasts enough originality and excitement to emerge as more than just another George Lucas clone.  Tom Hanks lookalike Lance Guest plays the eponymous protagonist with boyish charm, while Robert Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart, and Dan O'Herlihy all make impressions.  “Corvette Summer” composer Craig Safan's boisterous orchestral music heightens the heroics.  Although digital special effects were in their infancy, “The Last Starfighter” distinguished itself as the first Hollywood film to generate its own visual effects with a computer.  Some could complain about the primitive quality of the CGI, but this material was ground-breaking during its theatrical release.  Visually, Castle and “Invaders from Mars” lenser King Baggott have created some spectacular, outer space, starscapes, particularly when Centauri ferries Alex to Rylos in one breath-taking panning shot.  Honestly, the only flaw with the state-of-the-art CGI technology is that the small screen amplifies everything so that it appears too sleek, too clean, but lacking in detail.  Surely, on the big screen, the interstellar battle sequences of “The Last Starfighter” must have looked dazzling both in depth and composition.  Narratively, "My Science Project" scenarist Jonathan R. Betuel and Castle have fashioned an appealing, sentimental, but exciting actioneer that alternates between space and Earth.  

All-American, nice guy teenager Alex Rogen (Lance Guest of “Halloween 2”) lives in a rural trailer park with his mom Jane (Barbara Bosson of “) and younger brother Louis (Chris Hebert), while Maggie Gordon (Catherine Mary Stewart of “Night of the Comet”) and he date each other.  Castle and Betuel rely on Louis for comic relief; Alex threatens to tell his mom about his little brother’s secret stash of “Playboy” magazines.  The plot concerns Alex’s dexterous skill at racking up high scores on a first-person shooter video game about cosmos dogfights.  Actually, this arcade game was not supposed to be shipped to Alex's trailer park but to another location.  One evening, Alex achieves the highest recorded score, with friends and family applauding his triumphant victory.   

Before Alex realizes it, an eccentric ne'er-do-well, Centauri (Robert Preston of “The Music Man”), cruises up in a DeLorean and extends Alex an intriguing offer.  Alex's record-breaking score has qualified him to serve as a pilot in the Star League an alien space fleet that is waging a rebellion against a greater evil. Centauri's DeLorean transforms into a spacecraft, and they chart a course for the stars.  At the same time, Centauri has provided Alex with a Beta Unit that masquerades as our hero while Alex joins the good guys.  Mind you, Alex constitutes a reluctant hero.  During the briefing scene, Alex is alarmed when his new colleagues rant about “Victory or Death” against their adversaries.  Initially, he doesn't want to sacrifice his life in what he sees as a lopsided battle that pits the Rylan Star League against the “Black Terror” of the Kodan Empire.  Indeed, the gigantic, disembodied noggin of the opposition leader, Xur (Norman Snow), appears as a holographic image at Rylan Headquarters, and we learn Xur is the son of Ambassador Enduran (Kay E. Kuter) and that the Star League exiled him because of his Xurian cult.  “I have returned for the good of all Rylans,” the outcast Ur proclaims to Enduran.  Moreover, he assures his father, “There are some Rylans who would welcome me, Father.”  He displays nothing but contempt for his father as well as Rylos and calls it, “A refuge for weak worlds not worthy to be our equals.”  The evil Kodans launch a pre-emptive strike against Rylos and wipe out all the starfighters. 

 

Meanwhile, Centauri has taken Alex back home so our hero can confront his Beta Unit.  He discovers the evil Kodans have learned that he is the last starfighter. Unwilling to leave any loose ends, the aliens dispatch killers to eliminate Alex. Of course, Alex is the underdog who saves the good aliens from the evil ones and reunites with his girlfriend. Castle keeps the action moving with no loss of momentum. Sure, Alex is no more than a Luke Skywalker clone, but Guest makes him a nice guy. In his final film performance, Robert Preston stands out as the finagling Centauri. The aliens resemble those in the cantina scene from George Lucas' "Star Wars."  Some minor profanity crops up, but nothing truly offensive.  

"The Last Starfighter" ranks as a lot of fun.

FILM REVIEW OF "LOOPER" (2012)

“Looper” (* out of ****) qualifies as a sordid science fiction thriller about time travel with an awful ending.  Stir a little H.G. Wells in with some Stephen King and add a pinch of “The Sopranos,” and you’ve got the basics of “Brick” director Rian Johnson’s contrived, unconvincing chronicle.  Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are cast as one in the same character in this disappointing actioneer that pits them against each other with a no-win outcome.  Furthermore, both protagonists emerge as more anti-heroic than heroic.  If you dismiss the fact these talented thespians bear scant resemblance to each other, you must still consider the scarcity of information about a distant future as well as a warped premise.  These shortcomings constitute the chief flaws in this imaginative but predictable sci-fi saga that unfolds in an erratic manner, lacks quotable dialogue, and features one character with no qualms about shooting innocent adolescents. By the time this uninspired, R-rated, 118-minute, spectacle has worn out its welcome; you have no reason to care about anybody, including an obnoxious telekinetic tyke who doesn’t know when to keep his trap shut.  Mind you, the future has never appeared more dystopian.  Some people are born with a mutation that enables them to levitate objects, and these fellows find that they can lure facile-minded babes into bed by making quarters float above the palms of their hands.  The economy has hit bottom, and vagrancy has become epidemic. Citizens can execute vagrants on the spot if they feel so inclined.  Any time Hollywood undertakes a time travel tale, the filmmakers conjure up some of the ugliest vehicles.  While the cars and trucks look hopelessly tacky, the motorcycles resemble something Luke Skywalker wouldn't ride.  Basically, you see a guy straddling a cylinder with handle bars.  Computer-generated special effects blur everything beneath his feet so he appears to be cruising on a cushion of air. 

Johnson’s screenplay is as amoral as his narrative premise is warped.  Imitating the best Mafia movies of director Martin Scorsese, Johnson relies on the voice-over narration of his lead character to acquaint us not only with his unusual profession but also with the seedy world where he thrives.  Kansas in the year 2044 serves as the setting.  Presumably, Johnson is making an ironic “Wizard of Oz” joke with his futuristic fable.  The premise of “Looper” is that a guy can live the high life by killing individuals from the future who have been sent back to the past.  Joseph Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of “The Dark Knight Rises”) is a killer who was brought up the ranks by his boss, Abe (Jeff Daniels of “Blood Work”), to do his dirty work.  Actually, Abe was beamed back from the future to coordinate the equivalent of Murder Incorporated.  In the 1940s, the Mafia relied on hired gunmen from out of town to ice enemies on their own turf.  For example, if the New York Mafia wanted to dispose of an adversary, they contracted a Chicago gunsel to eliminate him.  The rationale was that the authorities always sought a motive.  What motive would a Chicago mobster have for killing New York mobster that he didn’t know?  This remained standard operating procedure until the authorities figured out the connection.  

Mobsters in the year 2074 cannot murder their adversaries because humans have become too easy to track.  Since the mob cannot kill their own, they contract hits out to mobsters from the past.  Gunman designated ‘loopers’ kill and dispose of these victims that the mob has beamed back so nobody can find them.  Our hero wields an exotic shotgun called a ‘blunderbuss,’ and the looper waits near a cornfield in the middle of nowhere with his weapon and a tarp spread on the ground.  Eventually, a bound man with a bag over his head and silver ingots strapped to his back materializes.  After he murders his prey, Joseph incinerates him so no traces remain. When a gangland assassin in the future has worn out his welcome, however, the mob sends him back to the past so he can kill himself.  They call this ‘closing the loop.’ After Young Joe botches the job of killing Old Joe, he has to dodge the bullets of his former associates—known as ‘gat-men’--until he can corner and kill himself. Losing one’s older self is referred to as ‘letting his loop run.’  Joe’s quick-witted alter-ego from the future (Bruce Willis of “Twelve Monkeys”) escapes and searches for a mysterious person code named the ‘Rainmaker.’  This enigmatic individual wants to eradicate any trace of the loopers.  Older Joe has been given a map with three possible addresses for this ‘Rainmaker.’  Joe wants to wreak vengeance on the ‘Rainmaker’ because the ladder dispatched trigger-happy gunmen who accidentally murdered his Asian wife. 

Instead of keeping things simple, Johnson complicates matters with a subplot about a kid with telekinetic powers.  Cid (Pierce Gagnon of “The Crazies”) lives on a sugar cane farm with his mom, Sara (Emily Blunt of “The Adjustment Bureau”), who runs the place by herself.  One of the locations that the Old Joe has is Sara’s farm.  He suspects Cid may be the reason that assassins are knocking themselves off.  Essentially, what we have here is a good assassin and a bad assassin who share the same body from drastically different decades.  Young Joe stakes out Sara’s farm so he can terminate Old Joe with extreme prejudice.  This uneven, poorly-plotted, high body count stinker doesn’t flow well and is often confusing, too.  Moreover, the logic is questionable.  Wouldn’t it be easier for the future mob to kill their enemies and send the remains back to the past for disposal?  Furthermore, what would happen if the victim that they sent back managed to escape like Old Joe and gum up the works?  As far as that goes, how does Abe know when a man is going to be sent back to the past. In most movies, you look for a character that you can either love or envy.  Nobody is lovable in “Looper” and parts of this movie are just plain downright dull.