FILM REVIEW OF ''COLD BLOOD" (2019)

French writer/director Frédéric Petitjean makes his feature film debut with “Cold Blood,” (** OUT OF ****) a somber but suspenseful, low-budget, crime thriller set in the snow-swept wilderness of rural Washington state.  Veteran actor Jean Reno toplines in the familiar role of a professional hitman who prefers peace and solitude to the chaos and anarchy of the city.  Nowhere near as entertaining as “Le Femme Nikita” or “Leon: The Professional,” “Cold Blood” qualifies as a cat and mouse thriller between a quarry and its prey.  Imagine a slight spin on the Stephen King movie “Misery” (1990) where a woman saved a famous author after a car crash and confined him to a bed where she maintained him in excruciating captivity.  “Cold Blood” depicts a somewhat similar storyline.  A young girl has an accident in the middle of nowhere, and a suspicious hermit--a hitman in hiding--helps her recover at his secluded cabin.  The two suspect each other of treachery, but the film plays out under different circumstances than “Misery.” 

Filmed largely on location in the Ukraine, “Cold Blood” benefits immeasurably from the atmospheric, widescreen cinematography of “Fifth Element” lenser Thierry Arbogast.  “Cold Blood” is serene looking, but beneath that serenity lurks evil.  Reno is as cold and calculating as he was in “Le Femme Nikita” and “Leon: The Professional,” but he has been cast here as the villain rather than a hero.  Sarah Lind portrays Melody, the daughter of an underworld crime czar, who plans to avenge the murder of a father whom she barely knew. Joe Anderson is a tenacious N.Y.P.D. detective who never gives up a case.  Happily, Petitjean doesn’t drag out the obvious, and “Cold Blood” doesn’t wear out its welcome before the villain receives his just comeuppance.  Nevertheless, despite its many contemplative strengths, this tense movie is neither a date night outing nor a supercharged shoot’em up.

“Cold Blood” opens with a lone figure careening recklessly through mountainous white terrain on a snowmobile.  A sudden accident launches the rider into a head over heels trajectory into the sky as if propelled from a catapult.  The rider smashes into the ground, and the impact knocks the helmet clean off, so the victim tumbling into the snow is revealed to be a young woman. When she manages to regain consciousness, Melody (Sarah Lind of “The Humanity Bureau”) finds a tree branch partially embedded in her thigh.  Mustering her nerve against the horrific pain, this dark-haired twentysomething removes a fragment of the tree branch.  During the crash, she skinned up her face, and she has blood caked on her forehead. 

Afterward, Melody crawls on her belly down a pristine white hillside, leaving a trail of bright red blood until she passes out again near a remote cabin by a lake where a solitary figure sits ice water fishing.  After Henry discovers her body inexplicably on his property, he carries Melody into his cabin and dresses her wounds as best he can, considering they are seventy miles from civilization.  Moreover, reclusive as he is, Henry isn’t prepared to accommodate guests, especially injured ones who require medical treatment. Fortunately, Henry has enough medical training and the equipment to keep Melody alive.  Mind you, the logistics of Petitjean’s plot calls for Melody’s injuries to be moderate but not life-threatening.  She is in no position to rummage around Henry’s cabin and ends up tearing open the wounds that she inflicted on herself during the accident.

At this point, Petitjean leaves the two in the cabin and flashbacks ten months earlier to the bustling metropolis of New York City, where Henry is walking on a treadmill at a fitness club.  A sleazy millionaire industrialist with organized crime ties, Kessler (Jean-Luc Olivier) joins Henry later in a steamy sauna accompanied by his two bodyguards.  Somehow, after Henry excuses himself from the sauna, one of the bodyguards notices Kessler is bleeding from a wound.  Later, at an entirely different place, Henry removes an inconspicuous attaché case crammed with currency from a coin locker. 

At Kessler’s funeral, two plainclothes detectives, Kappa (Joe Anderson of “Amelia”) and his partner Davies (newcomer Ihor Ciszkewycz), discuss the peculiar nature of the industrialist’s demise.  According to the so-called ‘criminal’s manual,’ killers are supposed to attend their victim’s funeral, but Henry knows better than to show up for the last rites.  Kappa explains to Davies that the bullet which killed Kessler was made from ice, so the police cannot use ballistics to trace the gun.  Mind you, the ice bullet gag is an old assassin’s trick dating as far back as “Corruption” (1933) where a man was shot and killed with an ice bullet to frame another fellow for the murder.  Although the case looks like a dead end for Davies, Kappa pursues it relentlessly. Anyway, everything comes full circle twenty-one minutes later as the gal who wrecked her snowmobile arrives in Spokane to rent a bike.

Of course, whether she wants to admit it, Melody doesn’t have a clue about what she is letting herself in for when she stalks a career assassin who carefully plans everything.  Indeed, as we learn later, Henry knew the odds were outlandish a pretty damsel-in-distress would show up conveniently near his front door with injuries which weren’t fatal but required immediate care.  Petitjean ignores pesky reality.  Naturally, Melody needed an excuse to justify her presence.  Apparently, however, it never occurred to our heroine that she might have killed herself and accomplished nothing. 

“Cold Blood” amounts to a thinly plotted stalemate between these two characters for most of its 91 minutes.  They treat each other with extreme caution and utter few words.  They behave like two predators circling each other, biding their time for the right moment to catch the other off-guard.  Melody has no idea Henry is prepared for virtually any contingency.  Simultaneously, Henry cannot imagine the unsatisfying surprise ending that catches everybody—heroine, villain, and audience--napping.  Altogether, “Cold Blood” is a little too anemic for its own good.

FILM REVIEW OF ''IRON SKY: THE COMIING RACE" (2019)

You can’t enjoy some sequels unless you’ve seen the original film that inspired them.  Finnish director Timo Vuorensola’s imaginative sci-fi, fantasy farce “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” (*** OUT OF ****), the follow-up to his earlier epic “Iron Sky” (2012), illustrates this maxim.  If you’ve never heard of “Iron Sky,” don’t be surprised.  Vuorensola’s original film made its greatest inroads into the American market with its home video release.  Coining less than $123 thousand at the box office, “Iron Sky” received a limited domestic release for a two-month period in only eight theaters.  Internationally, “Iron Sky” grossed $11.5 million, surpassing but not tripling its seven million Euros production budget.  The Asylum’s ridiculous mockbuster parody “Nazis from the Center of the Earth,” which would make Jules Verne cringe in anguish, skewered it with little success.  Since the sunset of World War Two, Nazis had been fodder for European zombie sagas, such as “Dead Snow” (2009) and “Dead Snow: Red Vs Dead” (2014) as well as “Outpost” (2008), “Outpost: Black Sun” (2012), and “Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz” (2013).  Not only is the $17 million budgeted “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” a sequel to “Iron Sky,” but it also qualifies as a prequel, since it takes us back to the Mesozoic Era: the Age of Dinosaurs.  Indeed, just as pungent with its witticisms as its predecessor, “Iron Sky 2” picks up the “Iron Sky” narrative thread and considerably expands it in different dimensions.  Timo Vuorensola doesn’t cover the same conflicts as he did in his hilarious original film that thumbed its nose at political correctitude.  A brief recap of “Iron Sky” shows the Sarah Palin-esque U.S. President (Stephanie Paul of “Crazy Love”) going toe-to-toe against the madcap Moon Nazis and triggering the nuclear annihilation of the Earth  This Armageddon forced the human race to abandon Earth.  Ironically, these fortunate survivors wind-up relocating on the dark side of the Moon, the same place where the Nazis had established their base 70 years after World War II!  

“Iron Sky: The Coming Race” occurs 20 years after the destruction of Earth.  If you saw the original, Nazi school mistress Richter (Julia Dietze of “Iron Sky”) and captured U.S. Astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby of “The Matrix Reloaded”) started out as enemies and then became lovers. They had a daughter, Obianaju 'Obi' Washington (Lara Rossi of “Robin Hood”), and she has grown up to serve as a jack-of-all-trades at Neomenia, the former Nazi moon base station.  Sadly, Götz Otto could not reprise his role as the second Führer, because he kicked the bucket in the original “Iron Sky.”  Nevertheless, Wolfgang Kortzfleisch (Udo Kier of “Melancholia”), who took an awful beating from Otto, returns from the dead in one of the film’s several surprises. Obi’s wizened mother Renate governs life on Neomenia where Nazis no longer rule. Meanwhile, Obi struggles to maintain the deteriorating moon base facilities against the ever-present threat of moon quakes. Watching her scramble about the grungy, industrial factory interiors with breathless abandon to tackle problems establishes Obi as a heroine who refuses to wait for problems to repair themselves. Basically, Neomenia has degenerated into a ghetto because of overpopulation and a shortage of supplies.  Were things not complicated enough, a Russian spaceship blunders in from out of nowhere, and Renate must contend with asylum seekers.  Initially, Renata had decided to obliterate the spacecraft.  Obi thwarted this atrocity by shutting down Neomenia’s weapons system.  Later, she takes a romantic interest in the handsome but goofy Russian pilot, Sasha (Vladimir Burlakov of “Lost in Siberia”), because she argues that humanity must migrate to Mars. A cannibalized space shuttle offers their only avenue of salvation. Along the way, Vuorensola gives us time off from the doomsday prospect, so Obi and Sasha can flirt with each other.  Later, Obi collides with the treacherous Kortzfleisch, and he tells her about a fantastic element at the center of the Earth that will save mankind and provide endless fuel for the space shuttle.

The lightweight humor in “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” will either get you to howl hoarsely or grin at its skewered ingenuity.  The lookalike Sarah Palin president, which was a great sight gag in “Iron Sky,” is still a hoot to behold.  She spent most of her time in “Iron Sky” on a treadmill, but here she mutates into a monster with other infamous demagogues, such as Stalin, Hitler, and Idi Amin. One cheeky scene shows all of these dastards arranged around an oblong table in a tableau that imitates Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned late 15th-century mural painting of "The Last Supper." Tongue-in-cheek humor lurks in every frame.  Timo Vuorensola is a gifted visual storyteller with an impeccable sense of pacing and pictorial composition. Like “Iron Sky,” “Iron Sky 2” doesn’t wear out its welcome at 90 agile minutes.  The larger-than-life shenanigans are nimble, flavorful, but sometimes surprisingly violent.  Hitler straddles a T-Rex like a cowboy at a rodeo, and the beast gobbles up the body of a man in its gigantic jaws.  Happily, his demise is bloodless.  Vuorensola and company borrow from other blockbusters, including a Hans Solo type Russian pilot as well as a harrowing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” cliffhanger caper.  A gigantic molten boulder tumbles after our heroes as they struggle to control chariots drawn by rampaging Triceratops dinosaurs! Fortunately, the CGI imagery passes muster, just don’t bother to freeze-frame the images. Clearly, Vuorensola conjured up some picturesque ideas that his crowd-funded budget couldn’t accommodate. 

The warped but inspired artistry of the “Iron Sky” epics is Hollywood didn’t forge them.  The original movie’s Nazi plot isn’t the kind of comic material Hollywood would have sunk multi-millions into for a movie that “culminated in Armageddon.”  These two Finnish satires provide refreshing but audacious commentary.  Incredibly enough, while “Iron Sky: The Coming Race” was awaiting home video release, director Timo Vuorensola had already embarked on a third installment in the franchise: “Iron Sky: The Ark” with a release date set for 2020!

 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE FAST AND FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS AND SHAW" (2019)

Villains make a movie memorable.  If the villains are smart, you’ve got “Die Hard.”  If the villains are stupid, you’ve got a comedy. A stand-alone spinoff of the “Fast & The Furious” franchise, “Hobbs & Shaw” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) suffers from mediocre villains with too much money.  These villains shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly from fade-in to fadeout.  Basically, our heroes worry more about the ticking clock than these anemic adversaries.  The sloppy villains spoil half of the fun in this white-knuckled, high-octane, adrenalin-fueled race against time to avert a global apocalypse.  Brawny action icons Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Jason Statham reunite as heroic co-stars in this exciting but implausible science fiction escapade. Johnson and Statham deliver adversarial charisma as they compete with Idris Elba in this overblown, 137-minute, PG-13 rated, demolition derby.  Our heroes must thwart an evil United Kingdom corporation named Eteon from recovering its own bio-engineered super virus. Benignly codenamed ‘Snowflake, the virus liquidifies your internal organs.  

Surprisingly, apart from celebrating family unity, this souped-up apocalyptic outing shares little connection with the Vin Diesel franchise.  Although Johnson and Statham reprise their roles from “The Fate of the Furious” (2017), you need not have seen “Fate.” “Atomic Blonde” director David Leitch & “47 Ronin” writer Chris Morgan, with “Iron Man 3” scribe Drew Pearce have rehabilitated Statham’s Shaw character.  Polishing off his rough, abrasive edges makes Shaw more sympathetic.  Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson of “Skyscraper”) and soldier of fortune Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham of “Crank”) abhor each other.  The C.I.A. dragoons them into an uneasy alliance. Meanwhile, Eteon’s cybernetic super-soldier, Brixton Lore (Idris Elba of “Pacific Rim”), tracks down the stolen CT-17 virus.  Not only must Brixton contend with Hobbs and Shaw, but also Shaw’s sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby of “Jupiter Ascending”), an intelligent, resourceful British MI6 field agent.  Actually, as the leading lady, Hattie doesn’t typify your traditional damsel-in-distress.  Providentially, British MI6 had intercepted the Eteon plague before the villains could deploy it. After Brixton single-handedly eliminates her five-man unit, Hattie has no option but to embed the doomsday virus in her bloodstream!  No sooner has Hattie stolen the virus than Hobbs’ nabs her. While our quarrelsome trio struggle to evade Brixton, Hattie develops a fondness for Hobbs, much to Shaw’s chagrin.

“Hobbs & Shaw” crosses genres from gravity-defying car stunts into sci-fi absurdity.  Director David Leitch and his writers trot out many familiar tropes from earlier doomsday sagas, such as “The Satan Bug” (1965), “The Cassandra Crossing” (1976), and “Shaker Run” (1985). Even if these clichés lack appeal to you, Johnson and Statham have a field day amusing us with their endless verbal repartee.  A wrestling match in every respect, “Hobbs & Shaw” has our hot-tempered heroes egging each other on with hilarious insults. Some will discover sooner than others that “Hobbs & Shaw” amounts to little more than a game of one-upmanship, with our heroes spending more time fighting against each other than their collective foes. Like any good wrestling match, “Hobbs & Shaw” builds to a crescendo, with a Samoan faceoff where our heroes regroup for the big finale.  Estranged from his family for many years because of a criminal patriarch, Hobbs approaches his Samoan clan with contrition so he can enlist their aid.  Armed with nothing more than a flip-flop, the grand Hobbs matriarch Sefina (Lori Pelenise Tuisano) rushes to Luke’s defense when her huge family refuses to help him.  Later, she is ecstatic when Hobbs introduces her to Sam (newcomer Eliana Sua), her nine-year old granddaughter. 

The chief flaw in “Hobbs & Shaw” is its error prone antagonists.  The formidable and affluent Eteon Corporation with its huge army is reminiscent of billionaire owner Carlton Drake’s corporation in “Venom” (2018). Like the Drake corporation, Eteon espouses a similar agenda: humanity must undergo augmentation.  Although the man behind Eteon sounds every bit as ominous as Darth Vader, Leitch and his writers never reveal the dastard in the flesh, and this undercuts his omniscience.  Instead, Brixton serves as Eteon’s point man, and he commands legions of disposable black-clad henchmen.  Brixton careens around on a bizarre motorcycle which resembles a Decepticon from a “Transformers” movie because it can alter itself physically.  Sheathed in a bulletproof body suit, Brixton boasts electronically enhanced eyesight so he can duck each blow before Hobbs and Shaw can land them. A glimpse of his cybernetics when he submits to a painful upgrade is intriguing.  Literally, the technicians have to split open Brixton’s back to tinker his metallic spine.  Egotistically, Brixton hails himself ‘the future of mankind. After building up Brixton as an indestructible, Eteon treats him as expendable.  Why wasn’t Brix guarding the plague device in the first place?

As in “Deadpool,” “John Wick,” and “Atomic Blond,” Leitch indulges his wizardry as a grand master of chaotic pyrotechnics.  He stages dozens of wildly improbable stunts. One of the first has Brix miraculously weaving his shape-shifting smart-cycle beneath the churning wheels of two eighteen wheelers as they crisscross in front of him at a London intersection. Later, Brix crashes through a London double-decker bus and creates two gigantic holes in the vehicle.  Naturally, Brix suffers nary a scratch, and no passengers were injured.  Brix may remind you of the bungling Wily E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons as he survives one calamity after another.  Leitch saves the best stunt for the finale when Brix’s helicopter winds up towing a string of cars along a winding cliffside road.  Idris Elba makes a memorable villain. Motormouth Kevin Hart springs up  in a cameo as a nosy sky marshal who wants a piece of the action.  Luke’s former partner Locke (Ryan Reynolds of “Deadpool”) annoys him before and after the mission with his goofy antics.  The scene following the end credits is sidesplitting stuff, especially Locke’s B-positive gag.  Happily, the incompetent villains in “Hobbs & Shaw” aren’t big enough to overshadow Leitch’s audacious stunts and the wattage of the Rock, Statham, and Idris Elba.

FILM REVIEW OF ''ROCKETMAN" (2019)

Taron Egerton delivers an electrifying performance as Elton John in "Eddie the Eagle" director Dexter Fletcher's "Rocketman," (*** OUT OF ****) a 'warts and all' musical biography about the British singer, songwriter, pianist, and composer who has sold reportedly as many as 250 to 300 million records since his debut on the charts in 1970 with "Your Song." Mind you, Elton's debut studio album hit the racks in 1969, but it wasn't released in the U.S. until 1975. Occasionally inspired, often conventionally straightforward, but hopelessly costumed, this cinematic greatest hits revue epitomizes the proverb 'money cannot buy happiness.' This hoary cliché finds refreshing relevance with the eponymous musician's own confession early on in writer Lee Hall's screenplay. Elton boasts that he has done everything, but he has never experienced true love. Now, if you're wondering what he felt about this off-delayed, somewhat contrived jukebox musical fantasy, it should come as no surprise that the five-time Grammy winning piano prodigy adores it. Indeed, Elton produced this two-hour plus extravaganza, with his husband, Canadian filmmaker David Furnish.

Elton's biopic qualifies as an important first in movie history for its depiction of gay male sex. Essentially, however, most of these flagrant affections amount to little more than kissing and groping. Sadly, despite the musician's participation behind the camera, "Rocketman" has yet to achieve the lunar trajectory of Queen's comparatively prudish PG-13 release "Bohemian Rhapsody" (2018), with its phenomenal $900 million plus box office haul. Reportedly, audiences criticized "Bohemian Rhapsody" for sterilizing Freddy Mercury's love life. After watching this rise and fall and then phoenix-like rebirth of the British superstar's life, it seems miraculous that Elton has emerged from the pandemonium of his life and appears now to be at peace at age 72. Elton's second autobiography due out in print October 15th will undoubtedly prove more illuminating.

Watching "Rocketman" is like watching Elton's greatest hits. The first time we see the superstar, he storms into a twelve-step AA meeting, presumably fresh from a concert, decked out as he is like the supernatural monster "Hellboy" from the Dark Horse Comics. Detaching the horns from his headpiece, Elton collapses into a chair and regales them with his woes. "Rocketman" chronicles Elton's rollercoaster life, including his bouts with his eating disorders, shopping sprees, and alcohol-fueled orgies energized with prescription meds as well as illegal substances. At one point, as he is topping the charts, Elton realizes he must hush up his secret life as a homosexual. When he outs himself on a pay phone to his serenely aloof mother, Shelia (Bryce Dallas Howard of "Jurassic World"), she smirks: "Oh, for God's sake, I knew that. I've known for years." Like Queen's front man Freddie Mercury, Elton survives a harrowing same sex encounter with a villainous manager, John Reid (Richard Madden of Disney's live-action "Cinderella"), who warns Elton--whether the latter lives or dies-that he will still reap his 20 percent of the profits. Perhaps a message lurks within for prospective rockers about confusing love with sex. Incidentally, a different actor played the same promoter in "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Naturally, "Rocketman" eavesdrops on Elton's early years in flashback when he was shy Reginald Kenneth Dwight and discovered an affinity for the piano at age four. By age eleven, he had landed a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. Clearly, Elton suffered at the whims of his parents who withheld their love and affection. No, they didn't abuse him physically, but the emotional toll was just as devastating to the youngster. The first genuine friendship that he forged turned out to be with his long-time musical collaborator but heterosexual male, Bernie Taupin ( Jamie Bell of "Defiance"), who penned some of Elton's best lyrics. Apart from a brief hiatus between 1977 to 1979, Elton and Taupin spent more than 30 years together writing songs. Elton boasts that they had only one argument during all those years!

Unlike most celebrities who shun the spotlight when it threatens to become too revealing, Elton John told director Dexter Fletcher that he wanted to see as much 'honesty' as possible about his trials and tribulations. At no time did the rock star admonish Fletcher and Hall about unsavory episodes in his life. Predictably, the sexual improprieties have been held to a minimum, but Elton's faithful heterosexual fans have probably resigned themselves to this revelation in a career that has been splashed across the tabloids for almost fifty years. The inevitable turning point in any rock star's life occurs when suicide rears its ugly head in their thoughts. One of "Rocketman's" insightful scenes takes place during such an instance. During a pool-party orgy with scores of oblivious spectators carrying on without a clue, a bleakly depressed Elton plunges headlong into the surreal blue depths and sinks like a rock. At the bottom of his pool, he finds young Reginald Kenneth Dwight playing his tiny piano. Mind-blowing accurately describes this unforgettable scene.

"Rocketman" doesn't cover the entirety of Elton's life. Ostensibly, the last of his greatest hits "I'm Still Standing" marks not only the conclusion of the film but also the end of a life over 'troubled waters' as he comes to grips with his homosexuality, terminates his heterosexual marriage after two years, and emerges from rehab with a new lease on life. Of course, purists will argue that Fletcher and company have tampered with the chronology of Elton's life. Of course, they have! Nevertheless, they have tried to make his life as sensational as it is tall-all, while eliminating other events which did not contribute to the film. Taron Egerton's vocal performance as well as his bizarre wardrobe changes closely imitate Elton. Altogether, "Rocketman" qualifies as a blast!

FILM REVIEW OF "CRAWL" (2019)

Hollywood has been making movies about ravenous alligators as far back as "Sparrows" (1926) when Mary Pickford guided a group of innocent, young orphans through a gator infested swamp. Twenty years ago, "Lake Placid" (1998) and its three sequels featured a large alligator with a voracious appetite. The first "Lake Placid" remains the best, so avoid the rest. Last year, Dwayne Johnson tangled with a supersized alligator in "Rampage." The Asylum has churned out its share of home video schlock about alligators, specifically "Mega Python vs. Gatoroid" (2011), as well as the gator's distantly related cousin the crocodile. Numerically, sharks reign as Hollywood's alpha predator in more than 50 movies than either alligators or crocodiles. The latest gator epic is "Piranha 3D" director Alexandre Aja's "Crawl," (*** OUT OF ****) a weather-beaten disaster saga co-starring Barry Pepper and Kaya Scodelario as father and daughter trapped in the basement of a southwest Florida house during a Category 5 hurricane. Reportedly, an incident involving an actual gator attack on humans during Hurricane Florence inspired this film.

"Crawl" reminded me of "The Shallows" because it takes place in one location. Meantime, this atmospheric, white-knuckled, nail-biting yarn will keep you just as alert, poised on the edge of your seat, as you wait for the next gator strike. Aja & "Dark Feed" scenarists Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen have done an exemplary job of establishing the characters, the setting, and the conflict. Ignoring evacuation warnings, a daughter risks her life to save her father from dying in an isolated community that has been evacuated under the worst possible weather conditions. No sooner have the filmmakers confined father and daughter to a hopeless position than two, hideous, heavily scaled, twenty-foot-long carnivores scour the basement for them while more circle outside it. Most of the action occurs beneath the house as the flood waters rise ominously, and our hero and heroine bide their time patiently before they try to break out.

Naturally, horror movies exaggerate evil because you're supposed to be frightened. Aja and his CGI wizards have forged some flawless gators that look remarkably believable. These gators are as ferocious as the gator in the crime thriller "Eraser" (1996) that a Witness Protection Specialist (Arnold Schwarzenegger) encountered. These reptiles act like black mambas. They see you. They devour you. At the very least, they snack on you, and the scary thing is how often father and daughter keep getting bitten but never shirk from their filial duty to fend for each other. Of course, real-life gators would be inclined to vamoose, but these melodramatic gators display no fear and hunt in groups. An overhead drone shot of a first responder in the water with gators approaching from all directions depicts their teamwork. The gators appear every bit as vicious as they sound when they crunch on the bones of their victims.

Lately, life hasn't been a picnic for Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario of "The Maze Runner"), and her performance on the swim team at the University of Florida at Gainesville hasn't been what she expected. Haley's older sister Beth (Morfydd Clark of "Love & Friendship") rings her up because she hasn't been able to reach their father. Haley tries to contact him, but she fares no better. Finally, she ignores the stern warnings of the authorities, and she strikes out on her own. She finds her father at their childhood house which evokes memories of happier days with her mother and sister. Dave Keller (Barry Pepper of "Saving Private Ryan") was repairing the house when an alligator blundered into the basement and took a bite out of his shoulder. Dave has taken refuge behind a series of pipes that the gator can neither squeeze through nor destroy with its jaws. Imagine Haley's shock when she is confronted by one of these huge critters after she trotted down the stairs into the basement. Miraculously, she evades the big lizard, but loses her cell phone, and must risk her neck to retrieve it.

Aja and his writers knew that cornering our hero and heroine under such circumstances generates spine-tingling suspense, but to concentrate strictly on them as they await their fate would exhaust our patience. When disasters strike, looters take advantage of the predicament, and "Crawl" has a family of brothers and sister looting a convenience store. They arrived by boat, and they are the only living beings that a desperate Haley sees as she struggles to come up with a plan-B. Little do these looters know what awaits them as several gators cruise in for a killing. The looters confiscate a money machine, but they never get to see the rewards of their crime. When these gators attack, they are fearless, and they swim in groups to maximize their attacks on humans. Naturally, the looters and later the authorities have no clue what lurks beneath the trembling flood waters, and they pay a tragic price for their ignorance. The threat of death lurks constantly around Haley and Dave, and matters worsen throughout its scanty 87 minutes. Aja wrings considerable suspense out of Haley's desperate bursts of swimming to dodge the gators. Dave warns her not to swim out through a pipeline beneath the house because the gators entered the basement through it. Nevertheless, Haley finds no alternatives as the waters rise and swims cautiously along it until she glimpses a huge gator cruising past the opening. Like all stomach-churning chillers, "Crawl" knows when to spring unexpected jump scares on audiences. One of the scariest is a tree which bursts through a kitchen window with such spontaneity that it catches you off-guard. The cat and mouse game between Haley and the increasing number of gators heightens the horror and tension. At one point, she has her hand trapped in a gator's mouth and must free herself without losing her fingers.

An ideal outing for either a rainy day or night, "Crawl" delivers thrills and chills galore with creatures that will make your skin crawl.

FILM REVIEW OF ''NAZI OVERLORD" (2018)

Abysmal best describes "Nazi Overlord," (* OUT OF ****) another of the Asylum's dreadful knockoff movies that desperately lacks humor. This 91-minute, straight-to-video release amounts to a particularly pale imitation of J.J. Abrams' "Overlord," with Jovan Adepo and Wyatt Russell. Naturally, the two pictures share obvious similarities. Each occurs during the historic D-Day landings at Normandy, France, in 1944. Technically, you can classify this World War II movie a secret mission deep in enemy country. Here, an Army Unit is ordered to Romania to bring back a rogue Allied female scientist who has been collaborating with the Nazis. You can also classify "Nazi Overlord" as bare-bones, low-budget, and it looks as if "Fortune Cookie" director Rob Pallatina lensed this movie with a camcorder. An animated graphic displays the fast progress of our heroes make across Europe to their destination. This was transitional device is acceptable because some American, World War II movies used similar transitions. The next time we see them, they are cruising around in a half-track, personnel carrier. This is a far cry from where things started. For a couple of minutes at the beginning, "Nazi Overlord" shows American G.I.s tangling face-to-face with German soldiers on the beach. Undoubtedly, this ranks as the strongest scene in this woebegone World War II travesty. Soldiers start out wielding rifles and pistols, but wind up killing each other with their bare hands, down and dirty, with savage rage. Sadly, for a moment, this knock-off captured the pugnacity of war.

Captain Rodgers (Andrew Liberty of "Sex Tax: Based on a True Story") survives the brutality on the beach, and General Forrester (Tom Sizemore of "Saving Private Ryan") assigns him to lead his unit, with some deserters to locate and bring back the scientist, Dr. Eris (Dominique Swain of "Face/Off"). Incidentally, Swain bares her booty in one scene and her breasts in another. Although she shows up only in the last third, her crazy scientist character breathes a modicum of fresh air into this stale saga. Rodgers confides in Forrester that he feels the least qualified to lead the mission. Nevertheless, the Colonel sends him ahead. After all, the best heroes are always the reluctant ones.

The clueless people that produced "Nazi Overlord" must have never seen an episode of television's "Combat." The American soldiers here stand in the open and make easy targets for Nazi snipers. The M1 rifles look bigger than some of the Americans. There is no sense of camaraderie among these fellows. Few of the characters on both sides make a lasting impression. Fortunately, whoever supplied the firearms knew the range of guns well. Nobody carried anything that wasn't period correct. However, the captain and the lieutenant run around with officer's insignia emblazoned on the front of their helmets. Officers never displayed rank insignia for fear that snipers might exploit this advantage. The dastardly Dr. Eris is working on a Biblical plague and uses locusts to spread it. Unlike "Overlord," none of the German soldiers turn into psychotic zombies. Dr. Eris gets the drop on Captain Rodgers, and they have to witness the atrocities that she performs on her human Guinea pigs. Neither knee-slapping nor disgusting, these scenes simply look idiotic with the victims spurting blood, eventually exploding, with locust swarming around them.

Monotonous from fade-in to fade out, "Nazi Overlord" earns a star for not making the egregrious error of showing an integrated, black & white Army Unit as in "Overlord." Tom Sizemore takes top billing, but he isn't around long. You see him at the outset when he recruits Captain Rodgers and then at the end when he escorts our hero to meet the President. The idea of creating a plague using locust struck me as trivial. The experiments were mediocre and the blood effects were bland. Beware of "Nazi Overlord."

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE PROFESSOR" (2019)

Johnny Depp is cast as a strait-laced English academic at a prestigious New England liberal arts college in director Wayne Roberts' wannabe tragicomedy "The Professor" (* OUT OF ****) who discovers he has terminal lung cancer. He is warned he has a year, perhaps a-year-and-a-half, if he commences appropriate medical treatment. If he waives treatment, however, he may last six months. Alas, Professor Richard Brown has never smoked cigarettes, and one of his closest friends finds it ironic that lung cancer will claim his life. Initially, he tries to break the news to his wife Veronica (Rosemarie DeWitt of "La La Land") as well as his teenage daughter Olivia (Odessa Young of "Assassination Nation") over dinner. Instead, Richard finds them obsessed with their own alarming revelations. Veronica reveals she has been cheating on Richard with his snobbish boss, Henry Wright (Ron Livingston of "Office Space"), the chancellor of the university, who happens to be married, too. Meantime, Richard's daughter admits she is gay. At this point, their dinner table conversation spirals. Veronica shows little empathy for her daughter's admission, and the two excuse themselves without waiting for Richard's bombshell. Eventually, he will tell them. These two scenes are about as spontaneous as "The Professor" gets for a movie which advertised as a whimsical comedy about cancer. Anybody who has either survived cancer (in whatever form) or has supported a loved one through the ordeal may find this woebegone misfire appalling. Basically, "The Professor" is neither clever enough to be genuinely funny nor impertinent enough to be darkly satirical. Roberts comes up nothing new about life with cancer except his own pathetic lack of imagination. Whatever attracted Depp to this shallow soap opera, originally entitled "Richard Says Goodbye," must have been discarded on the editing room floor.

Cancer charts a different course for Richard Brown than he would have taken. We learn the same time Richard does that malignant tumors in his upper back account for the pain he has suffered for quite some time. Indeed, nothing about his condition has changed. Mind you, Doctor Barron (Michael Kopsa of "Countdown") spells out the awful truth. The cancer has now spread to Richard's spine and adrenals. Inevitably, Richard will die, and nothing can save him from this dreadful fate. Nevertheless, Brown keeps his troubles to himself, so he can teach for another quarter and then obtain a sabbatical. Eventually, he confides in his oldest friend, Peter (Danny Huston of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"), who breaks down in grief-stricken anguish at the news. The odd thing about "The Professor" is the supporting cast is more captivating than its simple-minded protagonist. Richard demands a sabbatical. Peter doesn't think he can grant the request.

Meantime, the quarter semester commences. Suddenly, Richard has a momentary, last-minute meltdown in the university millpond with a distraught duck. Afterward, he shows up in class for what constitutes one of the film's better scenes. College professors know what the first day is like. Most have an inkling about how everything will play out. Richard takes one look at his packed class and shocks them. Separating the wheat from the chaff, he offers anybody who wants to skip class for the entire quarter a grade of C. Eventually, Richard whittles the student population down to the size of a cozy graduate seminar. No longer does Richard want to contend with students whose classroom attendance is spotty. He runs off three kinds of students: those in sweat pants, those who've never read a book, and those who're business majors. Finally, the remainder must arrive punctually and read Herman Melville's classic "Moby Dick." The diverse supporting cast comes to the fore, and each forges believable student characters for themselves.

"The Professor" breaks down into various teaching scenes. Richard indulges in liquor by convening class in a bar. He counsels his student to never squander one second of life, but to plunge into it for the sake of adventure. During the class in the bar, Richard escorts a bar maid into the men's room where they enjoy standing room only sex. Presumably, Richard and Veronica's marriage withered after Olivia's birth, and husband and wife drifted apart. Later, in clear sight of everybody at the university, including Chancellor Henry Wright, Richard shares a joint with a male student who earlier had given him a bag of pot brownies in exchange for oral sex. Remember, it's an R-rated movie with no frontal nudity. Richard defies the rules for the sake of it, and his status as a tenured professor shields him from any repercussions. Henry tries to take Richard down a couple of notches, but our hero outsmarts him. Since he is carousing with Richard's wife, Henry realizes that discretion is the better part of his valor. This showdown between Richard and Henry marks Depp's most heroic moment as he gains the upper hand.

Sadly, Depp generates little charisma as he struggles to maintain a straight face and welcomes cancer as an excuse to create his own bucket list. He proclaims himself a libertine open to any new experience. Afterward, apart from a night in the hospital and some recurring bouts of illness, Richard remains immaculate. When he hurts, he clutches his sides and collapses on the floor. Never in "The Professor" does our protagonist soil his apparel during a seizure. Never does he let his fashionably combed hair to dishevel. Richard's friends treat these moments as life threatening and rush to him. Essentially, our hero changes little over the course of the film's 90-minute running time. He treats Olivia with positive fatherly love and counsels Veronica to keep her sexual escapades discreet. At one point, encouraged to attend a therapeutic self-help group, Richard retreats in contemptuous defiance to a bar drown his distress. Don't worry about the ending. Nothing traumatic occurs. Our hero cruises serenely into the dark night without a regret. Melancholy at best, dreary at worst, "The Professor" thumbs its nose up at cancer as if it were a trifle.