“Shazam!” is the latest of DC Extended Universe films and is directed by David F. Sandberg.  Henry Gayden produced the screenplay in which he co-developed the story with Darren Lemke.  Zachary Levi and Asher Angel share the role of Billy Batson who is bestowed with the power of Shazam.  Mark Strong is cast as the villain of Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, who almost had the power when he was a child but let himself fall into the temptations of imprisoned beings known as the Seven Deadly Sins. Jack Dylan Grazer plays Billy’s foster brother and fledgling guide as Billy tries to understand his new powers.

Shazam! was not a series I followed as a kid, so I missed out on a lot of understanding of the characters and background here.  I am not sure the script did a great job to service such newbies as myself in this one.

There are a lot of really funny moments in this film, but the coherence in the story wasn’t all that consistent.  Levi did hit the mark as a child trying to get used to an adult body much as was seen with Tom Hanks in “Big”.  However, he also has to contend with rather erratic and diverse superpowers.  There was a lot of Asher Angel, who I thought was rather engaging himself as the teen-aged Billy Asher.  Actually, the kids in the foster home were rather charming.  The most charming being that of Faithe Herman as Darla Dudley.

Just as a side note, it was nice to see foster parents portrayed as people who actually cared deeply for their young charges.  Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans play the couple who take on the admirable task of fostering children who are either orphaned or come from other troubling circumstances.

Shazam! may not have a very coherent backstory in the comic books for I know , so this may have been the best the writer could do.

The visual effects were fine.  After a while, that can be reasonably expected to be the case in this genre of film.

Anyway, it’s a pretty fun movie with solid casting, but I wouldn’t expect it to make a whole lot of sense.

“Black Thursday/Power Game” is a Doctor Who audio drama double bill release from Big Finish Productions with a pair of two-part adventures with Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor. He is once again accompanied by Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson, playing Tegan and Turlough, respectively.  Jon Culshaw is voicing the shape-shifting android known as Kamelion.

“Black Thursday” is the first story and is written by Jamie Anderson.  The Doctor and his companions arrive in a Welsh village in the very early twentieth century where mining accident has occurred.  Kamelion has the rather unique problem of being overly empathetic when strong emotions are stirred up.  He bonds with a woman who has lost her husband and her son in this disaster and is consumed by the grief which causes all manner of disturbing reactions.  It’s not a terrible story but I think I liked the follow-up a little better.  I had some problems liking Tegan in this one because I sometimes found her a little more shrill than usual.  She has this way to bristle at every perceived slight to women at this time where attitudes of that nature were common.  One of the characters makes some assumption that she couldn’t be a doctor or something, and of course, Tegan has to make some retort without any consideration of the time period she is currently in for this story.  Tegan has always been one of the more impulsively brash companions in Doctor Who history, but I sometimes wish she could be written to not always fly off the handle when she is in these settings.  Perhaps there could be a more subtle or amusing way for her to note the chauvinism which seemed more prevalent in an earlier time period.  It isn’t like we all don’t know that women didn’t get a fair shake particularly back then.  I don’t think she is necessarily wrong, but I would have thought that she has seen enough through her travels with the Doctor to at least not quite sound so shocked or righteous when she encounters these moments which would have been much more common in that particular setting.  I am also thinking that I am glad Kamelion wasn’t used so much in the television series.  The whole show would have been in danger of just being about having to find him and deal with his inability to resist mind control or being swamped by intense emotion.  I may be one of the few Big Finish listeners not overly enthused by Kamelion being explored as a character more.

“Power Game” by Eddie Robson is a much more engaging idea to me.  It centers around a scavenger hunt type game show where the participants are not quite there voluntarily.  Tegan finds herself competing in this thing with no clear memory she got there.  The Doctor and Turlough, meanwhile are having to search for her and, you guessed it, Kamelion, who have mysteriously disappeared.  Tegan is back to be much more tolerable in this one.  This is where her stubbornness and indomitability become much more relevant and enjoyable to me.  Robson also seems to bring out her resourcefulness in the character which is something I can appreciate about having Tegan around.  I actually rather like Tegan for the most part, but I just had a hard time connecting with her in the first story of this release.  Once again, it starts to appear that Kamelion is at the root of these problems in this story.

Kamelion keeps having to apologize in these recent stories, and I have to say that the Doctor’s reluctance to tackle this problem a bit more directly is a little annoying to me.

Once again, the casting and performances do still make this a reasonably enjoyable listen.  The sound effects are still well executed.  Davison still performs quite well.  It’s hard to believe that he isn’t all that far from being seventy.  He doesn’t sound quite the same as he did in the television series, but he seems to be holding up well enough to make his participation in these episodes enjoyable.  Strickson is always a welcome return to the role of Turlough.  I would like to hear more with just him and Fielding without a third companion.  Their era on the television series was one of my favorite dynamics with the Fifth Doctor.

Anyway, I had a few gripes about this particular release, but it still was a long way from being bad.  The basic settings were quite different from each other which was nice, but the same problem of Kamelion erratic reactions to emotional stimulus made me rather glad that technical issues kept him from being realized fully onscreen.

“The Best of Enemies” is a film written and directed by Robin Bissell.  The always compelling Taraji P. Henson takes on the role of fireball civil rights activist Ann Atwater while Sam Rockwell has the rather unenviable task of playing Ku Klux Klan leader C.P. Ellis.  This movie dramatizes the conflict between these two as they are convinced to co-chair some two week committee meeting set up to finally deal with the issue of segregation which was apparently still going on in Durham, North Carolina around 1970.  It is not quite a spoiler to say the two of them ended up developing a solid friendship when it was all said and done.  The elementary school for the black children has a fire which then forces the question as to whether or not to integrate with the other schools.

I didn’t know anything about this story until I saw the advertisements for the movie.  Henson, in particular, is someone who I sort of keep an eye on because she usually has some interesting projects.  I was a little irritated about her predictable yet misguided support for her “Empire” support, Jussie Smollett, but that may be for another blog.  She’s still a consistently solid performer and is a powerful presence in this film.  Of course, the few interviews I have seen with the late Ann Atwater shows that her moniker of Roughhouse Ann was quite deserved.  Atwater was certainly in the right, but she sometimes struggled with the art of subtlety at times.  I think I would have liked her anyway if Henson’s portrayal was accurate.

Rockwell certainly is talented enough to hold his own as well.  Although his racism was indefensible, the movie shows some pretty complicated and heart-wrenching challenges that C.P. Ellis was apparently facing at the time.  Ellis was not really likeable for much of the movie obviously, but the presentation manages to avoid making him seem like a caricature. I thought the transformation of his views was pretty well depicted although there was a lot to try to cram in a two hour movie.

It was great to see Bruce McGill even if he was playing a rather despicable character in this one.  I also enjoyed the performance by an actor named Babou Ceesay.  Ceesay plays the black activist named Bill Riddick who does get the art of subtlety.  He was also the moderator for this community event called a charrette.  I got to expand my vocabulary a bit, so that was pretty cool.

I was a little surprised to see that reviews by the professional critics are rather mixed.  I am not sure why it didn’t get more of a positive reaction, but I liked it. Maybe the issues were a little over-simplified as expected, but not terribly so.  I learned a new piece of history of the civil rights fight.  It had a talented cast.  I am not sure what was embellished in the typical Hollywood fashion, but I didn’t catch anything that seemed too outlandish or distracting.

This seems like a piece of the Civil Rights Movement that is more overlooked than not, and I am glad that this story was told in an effective, concise manner with what appeared to be the right cast.

 

 

“Hotel Mumbai” is a film about the terrorist attacks that occurred in 2008 when several coordinated sieges plagued Mumbai, India for about four days.  This particular film centers on those trapped in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.  Anthony Maras is the director who co-wrote this piece with John  Collee. Armie Hammer, Dev Patel, Jason Isaacs, and Tilda Cobham-Hervey are included in the cast.

This is a pretty gripping cinematic experience.  It’s pretty intense.  Although it is hard to say if I enjoyed this movie considering the tragedy and bloodshed depicted, I will judge it as being pretty well put together.

There are several moments of courage and nobility by many of the people trapped in this thing.  The actors playing the extremists who initiate this attack are quite convincing in their brutal and loathsome behaviors.  The performances of those portraying the guests and staff of the Taj gave a genuine impression of how that fear and faint hope of survival must have looked during the real event.

I thought the choreography came off as pretty authentic.  The depiction of the utter brutality of those perpetrators was quite shocking as well.

Although I am sure much of the individual actions and characters in this film were fictional, I do believe there were genuine moments of bravery and nobility in the real attack.

Anyway, this seems to be a pretty important film in many ways.  I would recommend that it be seen but be prepared to be a bit rattled.

“Horrors of War” is a Doctor Who audio story from BBC Audio.  Justin Richards follows up the temporal mystery that was introduced in “Men of War”.  Katy Manning lends her vocal talents to the presentation of this particular installment.

A young nurse serving in Belgium in 1914 has noticed a peculiar tendency of patients to up and disappear.  She comes across an eccentric man with a mane of white hair wearing something similar to a fancy cocktail suit complete with a cloak.  A young, pretty girl named Jo Grant is accompanying the Doctor as he explores alterations in the history of the First World War, most notably the survival of Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assassination was credited as to sparking that horrendous conflict.

Richards once again makes the decision to have a supporting character narrate the story. Annie Grantham is the nurse who is drawn into the Doctor’s investigation.

It’s an interesting idea but not really one of Richards’ most riveting of works.  It’s not really bad, but it provokes just a little better than mild curiosity as to how this will all conclude in “Fortunes of War”.

“The Selachian Gambit” is a Doctor Who audio play from the Companion Chronicles range released by Big Finish Productions.  Frazer Hines returns to perform as Jamie McCrimmon, narrator, and his rendition of the Second Doctor, who was originally portrayed by the late Patrick Troughton.  Anneke Wills helps out as narrator and reprises her role of Polly.  Steve Lyons concocts a new adventure revisiting the alien shark-like Selachians.

The Doctor and his companions need to pay off a fine to retrieve the TARDIS after a parking violation.  A trip to some kind of cosmic bank is in order, however they arrive in time to get involved in a heist conducted by the Selachians.

The performances are typically engaging.  Hines continues to honor his deceased friend, Troughton, with a great impression.  I also thought the voice modulation was quite effective when Hines had to perform as the Selachians.

There is nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a fairly enjoyable episode.  The Selachians were first created by Lyons several years ago for a couple of original Doctor Who novels. They later appeared in a previous audio release with the Seventh Doctor entitled “The Architects of History”.  They are not the most iconic of Doctor Who villains, but an occasional appearance isn’t unwelcome.

“Ravenous 1” is a Doctor Who audio boxset from Big Finish Productions and is the beginning for four sets in this saga.  Paul McGann returns as the Doctor’s eighth incarnation.  As usual there are four episodes in this collection and follows on from the series know as “Doom Coalition”.

The creature known as the Ravenous doesn’t really make a profound appearance, but this set is a pretty engaging set-up so fans can explore what the latest threat will entail.

Writers John Dorney and Matt Fitton once again split credit for this series.  They are Big Finish’s more reliable scribes and once again prove why they get consistent work.

When “Doom Coalition” ended, one of the Doctor’s companions, Helen Sinclair, had been whisked off into time and space with the deranged Time Lord known as the Eleven.  So, this series starts off with the Doctor and Live Chenka on the standard mission of trying to retrieve her.  As any fan would expect, of course, the Doctor gets somewhat distracted.

In John Dorney’s “Their Finest Hour”, the first interruption comes in the form of one Prime Minister of Britain Winston Churchill, with a welcome reprisal from Ian McNeice. Nicola Walker has also returned as Liv Chenka, the med tech from Kaldor on the far future.  It seems that Polish squadron of fighter pilots have discovered a gap in the sky which is a clearly cloaked spaceship.  The Doctor finds an alien race with a rather unique of settling way waging war as well.  I guess fans would dub this a fairly traditional Doctor Who plot, and they would be right.  It’s pretty fun overall.  It can be interesting to see or rather hear Churchill encounter the Doctor’s earlier incarnations before the McNeice version came on the scene in the television series when Matt Smith had the lead role.  Of course, the nature of the series opens all kinds of doors there and has in other releases I have yet to hear.  So far, an entertaining start to this particular collection.

Dorney then takes a more darkly comedic turn with “How To Make A Killing In Time Travel”.  The Doctor and Liv haven’t quite caught up to Helen and the Eleven yet.  They instead find a dangerous experiment in time travel financed by a rather odious character named Cornelius Morningstar.  I think I would be rather odious with a name like that.  Roger May brings Morningstar to bombastic auditory life.  Beth Chalmers, Christopher Ryan, and Judith Roddy are included in the cast of this one.  It’s an effectively amusing addition to this series.

Matt Fitton finishes the last two episodes starting with “World of Damnation” in which the Doctor and Liv arrive on a planetoid which houses the most insidious criminals in the galaxy.  Mark Bonnar is back as the Eleven, who has some Time Lord version of a multiple personality disorder.  Hattie Morahan has returned as Helen Sinclair, who seems to have been given some kind of troubling psychic powers that cause some trepidation among the prison staff.  Nicholas Rowe has been cast as the Kandyman, in a very different guise from what was seen in the television serial “The Happiness Patrol”. Some of the encounters I was anticipating happened.  I did struggle a bit with understanding what was going on with some of the action sequences with all of the explosions and gunfire.  Sometimes, Big Finish does not make it apparent at least when I first listen to it.

Finally, “Sweet Salvation” brings this set to a close.  Here lies the glimpse of the Ravenous, whatever that will turn out to be.

Anyway, I found this collection to be pretty good.  I wasn’t really blown away by some of the twists and revelations.  Of course, this really does serve as more of an introduction, so hopefully there will be much more to salivate over in future releases.

“Mystery House” is a 1938 film directed by Noel M. Smith.  Sherman L. Lowe and Robertson White adapted the script from a novel written by Mignon G. Eberhart. It was apparently one of a series that featured a nurse with a nose for murder named Sarah Keate and her boyfriend, detective Lance O’Leary.  Dick Purcell and Anne Sheridan are the leads.  The novel was originally entitled “Mystery of Hunting’s End”, if anyone is interested.

It’s a pretty short film with a running time of 56 minutes, so it’s a pretty straight-forward plot without that much originality.  A banker is murdered after announcing to his partners or underlings that he has discovered the embezzlement of $500,000.  The authorities have come to the conclusion that it was suicide, but Sarah Keate suspects something more sinister and calls on the aid of her detective boyfriend, Lance O’ Leary.  The suspects return to the hunting lodge where that has all happened just in time to be pinned in by a snowstorm.

Other than the sheer amusement of watching movies from a long ago era, there isn’t much to remember here.  The characters of Sarah and Lance do appear in other films from that time. Eberhart apparently has quite the collection of works which was interesting to find out.  I actually was more interested in the background than the actual film.

This one just seems to be pretty typical of the genre and the era.  A mystery with people trapped together is kind of fun but was probably overdone even by 1938.  Poor Lance doesn’t have much going to have him stand out from other silver screen detectives of that time.  The performances of the other cast members worked well enough.  William Hopper, of “Perry Mason” fame, is in this one, so that was kind of fun.

There is some entertainment to be found here, but I doubt there will be much to remember for long after the viewing.

“Slumber” is a horror film that was released in 2017.  Jonathan Hopkins directed this thing which he co-wrote with Richard Hobley.  I don’t know who these guys are, but I do know of some of the cast members such as Maggie Q and Sam Troughton.  I definitely know who Sylvester McCoy is, and was it was pretty fun to see him.  McCoy, of course, is best known as the Seventh Doctor in “Doctor Who”.

Maggie Q plays a sleep doctor who lost her brother in her childhood under some very unusual tragic circumstances.  A family come in to consult her after their son faces some terrible nightmares.  The other family members start sleepwalking and doing other disturbing things.  So there is this demon or entity called a nocnitsa, which can be found in Wikipedia believe it or not, that’s really the cause of this family’s bizarre sleeping woes.  It also is the cause of the sleep doctor’s tragic past.

McCoy plays some eccentric old man who turns up in the movie who has a history with this thing known also as a Night Hag.   He overacts a bit, but I am used to it.  It’s still great to see him.

It’s a horror film, so there is a lot to overlook and forgive here a bit to gain some kind of enjoyment.  It’s actually not too bad.  It’s not any sort of must-see either, unless you’re a hopeless Doctor Who enthusiast.  For some of us who find some amusement out of B horror flicks, it works just fine.  If you just stumble across it on a slow evening, it serves its purpose as a meaningless diversion especially with a friend who has strange tastes as well, but no need to go out of your way to watch it unless, of course, you’re the aforementioned “Doctor Who” fan who gets a kick out of Sylvester McCoy showing up in surprising projects.

“Us” is the latest horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele.  Lupita Nyong’o stars alongside Winston Duke as a married couple who are taking their children on vacation that turns into a bizarre encounter with deranged and distorted versions of themselves.

The films starts off with a flashback to 1986 where Adelaide Wilson has a very troubling encounter when out with her parents at a carnival on the beaches of Santa Cruz.  Adelaide has grown up, married, and has her own family but is still haunted by her experience over thirty years before.

This is a film with quite a bit of clever originality to it but still leaves some loose threads. Lupita Nyong’o does put in a pretty convincing performance on the lead role as both the protective yet terrified mother as well as the doppelganger.  I get that she was the lead role, but I think the father, played by Winston Duke, could have been created as less of a doofus.  He has his moments of courage, I suppose, but sometimes he just stumbled his way through whatever peril he encounters by dumb luck.  Duke’s role is supposed to be kind of an everyman, but I would have liked to have something there where I was better convinced as to how Adelaide fell for this guy and started a family with him.

There are some of the standard moments designed to startle, and I was often quite startled.  I thought the two children played by Shahadi Wright and Evan Alex were pretty well cast.  Wright’s Zora Wilson had just the right amount of teenage sass without being unlikeable.  Even the young Jason Wright got some moments to show some courage and cleverness throughout the film.  Both performed their darker roles quite well.  Wright  had an appropriately creepy grin when playing the doppelganger.

One of the other issues I had was that some of the gallows humor Peele tried to inject throughout didn’t quite land right at the moment it was being delivered.  I wasn’t sure if he was trying for some kind of black comedy or what at times.  Not all of it missed the mark though, in my view.  There were times I was sort of in on the joke.

There was this other family with whom the Wrights were friends that seemed a little odd to me.  Tim Heldecker plays the patriarch of the Tyler family and just seemed to be more of an obnoxious caricature.  He just seems to be the obligatory buddy who really wouldn’t have been missed. I just didn’t care about the family’s fate when it came about.

There’s a lot in this movie that works well enough even if it is a strange one.  I also think this is a hard genre to play in at times.  I do appreciate that Peele is going for something with more originality than what we viewers usually get, so he should continue that effort.  For the most part, he does succeed in being interesting and stoking some curiosity when he has something else coming out.

The film does have a pretty solid cast and some creativity in the storytelling.  In spite of some annoying flaws, I would still count as one of the better horror films I have seen in recent years.