Capsule Reviews: Stay at Home Edition

Quick Film Reviews from Inside Quarantine

Introducing a new Strange Harbors column: Capsule Reviews. I watch a lot of TV and movies, but my obsession with writing in-depth reviews and articles often gets in the way of wider and more frequent coverage. This new column will be a way to remedy that, allowing me to write shorter and more digestible reviews, reserved primarily for when I don’t have a full review’s worth of thoughts to share about a particular film. Here’s what I’ve been watching lately…

The Rhythm Section

Listless and overproduced, Reed Morano’s Blake Lively action vehicle never gets off the ground as more than a paint-by-numbers revenge film. Lively and her British accent put forth a solid performance, but The Rhythm Section is neither fun nor compelling enough to rise above its genre trappings. Centered around a woman who begins training as an assassin after her family is murdered by terrorists, there’s an interesting angle to be explored - the story of a fumbling hitman who slowly learns her new trade - but its full potential is never realized. The Rhythm Section has spirit, gumption, and the requisite visual flourish (Reed Morano is also a seasoned cinematographer), but it’s ultimately empty under the hood. C+

Onward

We’re a few years removed from the renaissance of Pixar; while the Disney animation giant hasn’t exactly fallen from grace per se, it certainly isn’t the unimpeachable golden child it used to be. Its latest adventure, Onward, isn’t likely to change any minds regarding the studio’s trajectory, but it retains much of what makes Pixar films so special in the first place: a beating emotional core. Telling the story of two elven brothers (Tom Holland, Chris Pratt) who scramble to finish a botched spell that resurrects their dead father for exactly one day, Onward is middling fantasy yarn, but its emotional beats land triumphantly: If you can hold fast through its plodding fantasy clichés, there won’t be a dry eye in the room. B

The Hunt

Watching The Hunt now, it’s hard to believe that this is the same film that was mired in controversy and delays last year due to its content. Toothless and dull-witted, director Craig Zobel aims to skewer both liberals and conservatives with a political take on The Most Dangerous Game, but instead, The Hunt occupies an ambivalent and uninteresting middle ground. Rather than delivering an incisive takedown of the current political zeitgeist, the film is content with the trafficking of stale memes and expired buzzwords, all the while delivering violence that is much less clever or fun than it thinks it is. Writers Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse have delivered some of the best television of the last decade with The Leftovers and Watchmen, but it seems that The Hunt has been stripped bare of any of the thoughtfulness or nuance that made their small screen efforts so great. C-

The Way Back

Gavin O’Connor, a filmmaker best known for telling underdog sports stories infused with an abundance of heart (the excellent Miracle and Warrior), returns to his wheelhouse with The Way Back. Ben Affleck, reflecting his real life to bring a gripping pathos to his character of Jack Cunningham, gives his best performance in years as an alcoholic construction worker recruited to coach high school basketball. The Way Back is a film of simple pleasures, hitting familiar beats and well-tread sports film conventions, but it goes through its motions with a deftness and grace that is easy to admire. And while there’s a lot to love in The Way Back, it doesn’t quite reach the highs of O’Connor’s other films, fizzling out in a final act that is as much deflated as it is abrupt. B-

Sea Fever

Director’s Neasa Hardiman’s maritime horror film Sea Fever mines its most effective suspense and terror not from its scares and body horror, but from its ethical musings and shockingly relevant parallels to our current health crisis. Centered around an introverted marine biology student (Hermione Corfield) whose vessel is ensnared by an unknown infectious entity, Sea Fever gets chilling mileage out of its atmosphere, playing up its feelings of isolation and paranoia in the open seas. During these germaphobic times, Sea Fever may get extra legs because of its timeliness, but that doesn’t change what the film is at its core: well-crafted indie horror. B