Review: 'Spiral' gives fresh blood to the 'Saw' franchise, with a timely theme and a strong central performance by Chris Rock

The nerve-jangling horror movie “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” pumps new life into the old franchise, by sticking to its bloody, twisted roots and adding an eerie timeliness.

Chris Rock stars as Det. Zeke Banks, a lone-wolf cop in the Metropolitan Police, who’s called a rat in the squad room because, 12 years earlier, he turned in a dirty cop — against the advice of his father, Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), who was then the chief of police. Screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger (who co-wrote the 2017 “Saw” offshoot “Jigsaw”) deliver Banks’ backstory in measured doses, flashbacks that pertain to the grisly murder case at hand.

Someone, Banks quickly discovers, is killing cops. And they’re doing it in elaborate and bloody methods, as if Rube Goldberg partnered up with Sweeney Todd to create machines that killed in the goriest ways possible. The killer seems to be a copycat of the infamous Jigsaw — but targeting corrupt cops, all of whom have a connection to Banks’ troubled career.

Banks has to beg his captain, Angie Garza (Marisol Nichols), to let him take the lead on the case. Capt. Garza agrees, on the condition that Banks take a rookie detective-in-training, William Schenk (Max Minghella), under his wing.

The script is as twisted as barbed wire, and just as sharp. It pulls out the classic cop-movie tropes, like Banks’ hard-won cynicism after a career watching his back, and neatly subverts them to propel the horror elements. It also delivers a stinging critique of police corruption that’s even more appropriate now than last year, when the movie was set to be released. (There are also at least two distinct “Pulp Fiction” references: Look for the words “Vincent & Jules” on a door in a key moment, and think about how Rock’s character is named Zeke — short for Ezekiel, the book of the Bible that Quentin Tarantino’s film quotes.)

Director Darren Lynn Bousman is a veteran of the franchise, having directed “Saw II,” “III” and “IV.” He knows the audience wants to see gore, delivered through greasy mechanical contraptions that ratchet up the torture by chilling degrees, and he delivers. The methods, though familiar, remain surprising and unsettling, as the killer remains many moves ahead of Banks and his fellow cops.

The strength of “Spiral,” though, is Rock, who sets aside his comedian’s cockiness to dig into Banks’ regret-filled soul. Rock respects the franchise — he has declared himself a fan, and is an executive producer here — and shows that respect with the best dramatic performance of his career, one that will make audiences think twice about him and the “Saw” universe. 

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’Spiral: From the Book of Saw”

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 14, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, pervasive language, some sexual references and brief drug use. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: In 'Army of the Dead,' a zombie heist thriller, director Zack Snyder gives in to his worst impulses and creates a bloated, humorless bore

In his latest movie, “Army of the Dead,” director and law-unto-himself Zack Snyder gets back to his roots — a satirical and bloody zombie thriller, like his debut, 2004’s “Dawn of the Dead” — but falls prey to the same narrative bloat and mindless spectacle that hobbled his DC Comics adaptations.

In the near future, America has successfully repelled a zombie infestation, with the few surviving hordes of the undead trapped behind a wall that encircles Las Vegas. (In a lurid prologue, a military convoy leaves Area 51 with a secret cargo — which turns out to be the started zombie. That’s followed with topless zombie showgirls over the opening credits, which seem to go on forever.)

Eventually, the actual plot kicks in, which involves a Japanese billionaire, Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanaka), making an offer to fry cook Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) — who’s no ordinary fry cook, because he’s played by Dave Bautista. Ward is some kind of special ops guy or mercenary or something. What matters is he has a crap-ton of weapons, and knows a lot of people who are equally well-supplied with machine guns.

Tanaka’s offer involves having Ward and his crew — including ace mechanic Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), the saw-wielding Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) and gruff helicopter pilot Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro) — walk into Vegas, slip past the zombies, proceed to a basement vault, foil some nasty defensive measures, and crack the safe to retrieve $200 million in untraceable cash. Oh, and do it within 96 hours, before the president nukes Vegas to kill the zombies roaming the Strip.

Ward must add more people to his crew: Lilly (Nora Arnezeder), a coyote who knows the ways into Vegas; Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), an effete safe-cracker; Mikey Guzman (Raúl Castillo), a zombie-killing YouTube sensation, and his pals; and Martin (Garret Dillahunt), who is Tanaka’s security guy and apparently is following a different agenda. And there’s one more: Ward’s estranged daughter, Kate (Ella Purnell), a volunteer at the nearby refugee camp who wants to rescue some women that Lilly took into the zombie-plagued city.

So far, so good, right? A bunch of tough-talking actors chewing up the scenery and shooting every zombie they encounter, making blood fly all over the place in a shower of CGI carnage. There’s even a zombie white tiger patrolling the streets, because Zack Snyder wanted one and producers are finding it increasingly difficult to say no to a director who can call down the wrath of thousands of Twitter-adjacent fanboys.

OK, so the zombie tiger is admittedly cool, as is the social commentary about the brain-dead excess of Las Vegas — a nod to the similar excess of the shopping mall in Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake. (It’s also weirdly fascinating to watch Notaro’s performance, which was digitally inserted into every scene during the COVID-19 quarantine when the actor who originally played Peters, Chris D’Elia, was accused of sexual misconduct and became too toxic to keep in the movie.)

So why isn’t “Army of the Dead,” in its mix of “Ocean’s Eleven” plotting and over-the-top zombie gore, more fun than it is? Maybe it’s because Snyder has overloaded the movie with too many characters to keep track of, too many soft-focus views of the crumbling Vegas skyline, and too much wasted effort to make a grandiose epic out of what should be a sleek, speedy action movie.

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‘Army of the Dead’

★★

Opens Friday, May 14, in theaters where open; available Friday, May 21, on Netflix. Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout, some sexual content and brief nudity/graphic nudity. Running time: 148 minutes.

Review: 'The Killing of Two Lovers' is a bleak, beautiful look at a marriage on the rocks in a small town

Writer-director Robert Machoian’s “The Killing of Two Lovers” is as stark, intimate and beautiful as the small town, nestled along Utah’s mountains, where the movie takes place.

Describing the movie’s opening scene would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that the main character, David (Clayne Crawford), is contemplating doing something unspeakable. The rest of the movie spools out from that decision, as Machoian considers whether David can atone sufficiently for those early moments.

David is going through a rough patch. He’s recently separated from his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi), and has moved back in with his ailing dad (Bruce Graham). He’s trying to pick up odd jobs around town, while also navigating the weekends where he has custody of his and Nikki’s four kids — a moody teen daughter Jesse (Avery Pizzuto) and three rowdy small sons (played by Machoian’s real kids, Arri, Ezra and Jonah Graham).

David is working hard to win back Nikki, and gets frustrated when a planned date night is derailed when Jesse’s temper prompts Nikki to want to keep a close eye on her. David becomes even more agitated when he learns Nikki is dating a guy from her office (Chris Coy), which he takes as an assault on his manhood and a step backward on the path toward reconciling his marriage.

Machoian follows David in long, fluid takes that capture his place amid the foreboding mountains around his small town. (The movie was filmed in Kanosh, Utah.) Machoian’s penchant for letting scenes breathe leads to solid performances, especially from Crawford and Moafi, as they create deeply felt moments that are almost too perfectly real to bear. 

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‘The Killing of Two Lovers’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 14, at select theaters, including the Cinemark 16 in Provo. Rated R for language. Running time: 85 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 27, 2020, when the movie screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Us Kids' movingly shows the Parkland kids taking different paths, from activism to introspection, in the aftermath of a school shooting

Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder, our chronicler of the aftermaths of school shootings, asks an intriguing question in the fast-moving and thoughtful “Us Kids”: How does a revolution based on youth energy maintain itself when the youths get older and the cynical world moves on?

Snyder, whose “Newtown” (which played at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival) encapsulated the unfathomable grief of parents whose young children were killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, this time profiles the students who survived the 2018 mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. And while grief and depression are important emotions for these kids, the overriding one is the anger that many of the survivors channeled into action.

Snyder compiles footage of some of the teens who became famous — like X Gonzalez (who then when by Emma), David Hogg and Cameron Kasky — for speaking out, then organizing the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and other cities across America less than six weeks after the shooting. 

Those kids went even further, going on a nationwide tour to encourage young people to register to vote, and to vote against politicians in the thrall of National Rifle Association donations. (Utah viewers will note that the tour stopped in Salt Lake City, targeting then-Rep. Mia Love — and that the youth vote in Utah went up 200 percent in 2018 compared to 2014.)

Snyder captures moments on the tour that might have gone unnoticed, like how Hogg and Gonzalez in some cities tried to engage with the pro-gun counter protesters who showed up at some stops. The film also talks to Kasky about the emotional strain that caused him to snap along the way.

Intercut with the tour, Snyder follows another Parkland survivor on a more solitary journey. Sam Fuentes was shot in both legs, and still has shrapnel scars on her face. She talks less about that than about watching a classmate, Nicholas Dworet, die in front of her.

Fuentes became instantly famous at the March for Our Lives (which happened on Dworet’s birthday, by the way), when she threw up in the middle of her speech. Snyder lets Fuentes explain why: She was terrified that she would be killed while standing on that stage.

“Us Kids” melds the personal with the political in the most moving ways possible. The juxtaposition of Fuentes’ story with that of the more famous Parkland kids, along with Kasky’s candid comments, are stirring reminder that there’s no rule book to trauma. Each survivor processes their grief their own way, whether it’s art or activism or smashing stuff. It’s up to us non-kids to listen. 

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‘Us Kids’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, May 14, on the Salt Lake Film Society’s virtual cinema, SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for brief strong language, and descriptions of gun violence and trauma. Running time: 98 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 31, 2020, when the movie screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie reunite for 'Wrath of Man,' a heist movie with an overflow of testosterone

The gangster heist drama “Wrath of Man” is a reunion of sorts for star Jason Statham and director Guy Ritchie — and it’s been too long since these icons of British machismo mixed it up.

The two got their start together, more than 20 years ago, with the one-two combination of “Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch.” Both were movies where Statham’s bulldog physicality and Ritchie’s penchant for tough-talking dialogue played perfectly against each other, until the one-liners and machine guns were firing almost in sequence.

There’s some of that rat-a-tat, of both the verbal and armor-piercing variety, in “Wrath of Man,” but it’s folded into a frustratingly convoluted timeline and a script that labor too hard to mess with the audience’s head with not enough payoff.

Statham plays Patrick Hill, who’s just applied for a job with an armored truck company, Fortico. The guy training him decides Hill’s new nickname is “H.” The guy, who goes by Bullet (and is played by Holt McCallany, who make the nickname fit), runs H through the paces: Physical tests, target practice in their gun range, and the protocols of moving large supplies of money without getting killed if someone decides to rob the truck.

H passes the tests, and soon is riding along with Bullet and a younger driver, Dave (Josh Hartnett). On the first day, Bullet gets kidnapped by thugs (led, for no adequately explored reason, by the musician Post Malone), who want to exchange the money in the truck for Bullet’s life. H has a different idea, which involve coldly and precisely shooting and killing all the robbers.

Then, just as the other drivers and guards at work are trying to piece together who H is, Ritchie and co-screenwriters Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson (adapting a 2004 French heist film, “Le Convoyeur”) cut ahead and explain it. H, it turns out, is a crime lord whose college-student son Dougie (Eli Brown) was killed during a robbery of one of Fortico’s trucks. H wants revenge, so he takes a job undercover and a list of possible suspects provided by a shadowy FBI boss (Andy Garcia) who knows H’s methods are more effective than the Feds. “Let the painter paint,” Garcia’s character tells some junior G-men investigating how H took down Post Malone’s crew.

Having established two realms — the culture at Fortico, and life in H’s criminal operation — Ritchie throws in another. This one involves another heist crew, all former military who served in the same unit in Afghanistan. How these guys, a team that includes Jeffrey Donovan and Scott Eastwood, fit into the rest of the story would be considered a spoiler.

The dialogue and atmosphere are fueled by testosterone, with insults in the locker room and tough-guy staredowns. The only woman in Fortico, Dana (played by Irish actress Niamh Algar), turns out to be the toughest in the room — which is this movie’s idea of gender equity.

Eventually, the shooting starts, and Ritchie’s talent for staging an energetic gunfight comes through. The action scenes are brutal, but in their own way balletic, the mayhem smartly choreographed to precision. “Wrath of Man” isn’t pretty, but it gets the job done.

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‘Wrath of Man’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 7, in theaters where open. Rated R for strong violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexual references. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'Here Today' is Billy Crystal's mushy valentine to the fear of dementia, enlivened by the byplay of Tiffany Haddish

It’s been two decades since Billy Crystal has directed a movie, and the creaky comedy-drama “Here Today” is a sharp reminder that moviegoers weren’t missing anything.

Crystal directed, stars and co-wrote (with Alan Zweibel, who gave us the infamously bad “North”) this semi-digestible stew of Borscht Belt zingers and heart-tugging drama. The one thing Crystal does right here is casting the live wire known as Tiffany Haddish to be his foil.

Crystal plays Charlie Burnz. who, like Crystal, is a 70-something with a long career in comedy, and a shelf full of trophies to how for it. (Crystal graciously let the filmmakers borrow his Tony and one of his Emmys.) Crystal lives alone in his Manhattan house, which is a short walk away from the studio of the “Saturday Night Live”-like sketch-comedy show where he punches up jokes and serves as an oracle to the other writers, all of whom are half his age.

He meets Haddish’s character, nightclub singer Emma Payge, through a silly contrivance: Her ex won a lunch with Charlie in a charity auction, and she’s using it up to get back at the guy. The lunch goes badly, when Emma learns the hard way she has a shellfish allergy, and Charlie ends up footing the bill for her emergency-room trip. Emma vows to repay Charlie, one singing gig at a time, and soon a friendship develops. How deep a friendship, and whether it comes with benefits, are topics Crystal’s script handles with all the finesse of a hippo — which is to say, the same subtlety as everything else.

Emma learns that Charlie is working on a book about his family, namely his late wife Carrie (played in flashbacks by Louisa Krause) and their now-adult children, Rex (Penn Badgley) and Francine (Laura Benanti). Emma notices the pictures of his children and grandchildren on a bulletin board, with their names on Post-its — and deduces, as the movie has been practically yelling at us to say, that Charlie is in the middle stages of dementia.

Crystal works overtime giving Charlie’s character a dream career — including cameos by Barry Levinson, Sharon Stone and Kevin Kline playing themselves at a Lincoln Center retrospective for a movie they made from one of Charlie’s scripts. And he paints Charlie as something of a saint, doting on his granddaughter Lindsey (Audrey Hsieh) ahead of her bat mitzvah and encouraging an awkward sketch writer (Andrew Durant) toward comedy gold. Even when his dementia causes a manic episode, Crystal turns it into shtick.

With “Here Today,” Crystal — as writer, director and actor — falls into every melodramatic trap one can expect in a film about dementia. Those pitfalls are even more glaring in comparison to Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning performance in “The Father.” But contrasting those films is like saying “The Graduate” and “Animal House” are the same because they’re both about college.

So why endure “Here Today”? For Haddish. She starts big and brassy, turning the shellfish allergy into full slapstick, and is a belter of a singer, performing Fats Waller and Janis Joplin with spirit. She settles down a little once Emma’s friendship with Charlie finds its level, and shows a flair for drama that will serve her well when she finds better material.

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‘Here Today’

★1/2

Opens Friday, May 7, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for strong language and sexual references. Running time: 117 minutes.

Review: 'Mission Stories' is an uneven anthology that is strictly for the Latter-day Saint faithful.

The made-in-Utah movie “Mission Stories” is very direct about what it wants to do: Tell about the experience thousands of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have experienced — going on a mission for the church.

Director Bryce Clark tells three stories, each centering on a story that begins with Latter-day Saint missionaries in the field. And, being an anthology (and an introduction to a web series), the episodes vary greatly in quality and focus.

The story that starts and ends the film, “Full Circle,” begins with a missionary, Darren (Tanner McKay), meeting with one guy, Bruce (Hassan El-Cheikh), and ending up converting Bruce’s beer-drinking buddy, Mike (Seth Pike). Time passes, and Mike (played as an older man by Adam Colvin) is trying to help Darren (played in his older years by Nick Mathews), who has fallen away from the faith and become a drug addict. (A disclaimer: Mathews used to work at The Salt Lake Tribune, where I’ve been for the last 30 years.)

In the second story, “Chuck,” two sister missionaries — Sister Washington (Nadia Sine), who’s shy and devout, and Sister Zeller (Monica Moore Smith), a spoiled young woman more concerned with her boyfriend back home than the job at hand — put aside their differences to help a biker (Joshua Michael French) who works to give up his vices to join the faith.

In the third story, “Hermanos,” a missionary (Brendon French) is given an assignment with a Spanish-speaking mission — even though his Spanish skills are spotty.

Clark wrote all three interlocking stories, co-writing the story “Chuck” with Crystal Myler. The stories fall into familiar patterns. Each story includes, at some point, a convert being baptized. And each is very clear that the act of performing a mission is, despite hardships and setbacks, a generally positive experience.

The best of the three is “Chuck,” which focuses on the human side of missionary work, and the personality friction between young people assigned to work and live together for months on end. “Full Circle” has its overwrought moments, and gets pretty dark, but is largely heartfelt. “Hermanos” feels underdeveloped, and a reminder that miracles make for good sermons but weak screenwriting. 

There’s no doubt that “Mission Stories” is a movie for the faithful, not the skeptical. Viewers who don’t adhere to the Latter-day Saint faith, or have been members of the church but left with no intention to return, can find their entertainment somewhere else. Those who do believe will find some inspiration.

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‘Mission Stories’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 7, in theaters where open. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for depictions of substance abuse and suicide. Running time: 87 minutes.

Review: In 'Without Remorse,' Michael B. Jordan faces assassins in his house and hamfisted writing in the script

Before watching “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,” I was dubious of the idea of trying to kickstart another franchise based on Clancy’s stories of espionage and military strikes. After watching it, I’m still not convinced — but I know that casting Michael B. Jordan as the protagonist is a step in the right direction.

Jordan plays John Kelly, who we meet as a Navy SEAL, one of an elite squad who can go into any combat situation with precision, stealth and lethal efficiency. The problem Kelly and his team face, while on a mission in Syria that kicks off the movie, is that their weaselly CIA liaison, Ritter (Jamie Bell), hasn’t told them what the real objective is. Even so, Kelly and the team kill the apparent bad guys and, mostly, make it home alive.

Home, for Kelly, means his wife, Pam (Lauren London), who is eight months’ pregnant. But Kelly’s hopes for domestic bliss and fatherhood are dashed one night, when assassins get into his house and murder Pam. That same night, some of Kelly’s SEAL teammates are also killed — leading their boss, Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), to suspect a link to that last mission in Syria.

Kelly wants revenge, and applies his SEAL skills to attack a Russian diplomat (Merab Ninidze, last seen in “The Courier”) to get the information he wants. This puts Kelly in prison — but that’s a short side trip, because the powers that be, including Ritter and Defense Secretary Lacy (Guy Pearce), see the value in setting a vengeance-seeking weapon like Kelly loose on their apparent common enemy.

Italian director Stefano Sollima (“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) stages some brutally effective combat and one-on-one sequences. He understands the importance of establishing the geography of an action scene, and using the space to let the combatants attack and defend.

But when the characters have to talk? Oh brother. Clancy was never a subtle writer, between the armaments and machismo, and writers Taylor Sheridan (“Hell or High Water”) and Will Staples (whose credits are mostly in video games, like “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3”) do little to rein in those impulses.

Jordan, however, elevates the film with his intensity and screen presence, even when some moments in the film feel like an alternative origin story for Erik Killmonger, Jordan’s villain character in “Black Panther.” “Without Remorse” was intended to be one of Paramount’s 2020 tentpoles, before COVID-19 shuffled every studio’s movie plans — and was designed as a franchise starter, the bloodier counterpart to Clancy’s Jack Ryan books. It’s unclear if Amazon, which is streaming this film, has sequel aspirations for John Kelly, but if they did, Jordan would be a strong, charismatic actor to build a franchise around.

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‘Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse’

★★1/2

Available for streaming, beginning Friday, April 30, on Prime Video. Rated R for violence. Running time: 110 minutes.