Ouija: Origin of Evil

This is so close to being a Lifetime Channel movie it’s uncanny. A widowed mom and her 2 kids struggle to make the house payments. An evil man (in the form of a ghost) shows up to wreak havoc on their lives. Only the fact that it’s a period-piece and the acting is pretty good distinguishes this from those Saturday M.O.W.s. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. Until the final moments, when a dogpile of twists undermines the skillfully rendered plot thus far, it’s pretty creepy. It almost feels like the final moments were filmmaking by committee -- lawyers or uncreative executive types forced ridiculous twists and sequel set-ups into a fairly solid story to squeeze every last dollar out of the project. It’s like a cake with way too much frosting. Be that as it may, this movie accomplishes exactly what I’m sure it aspired to do: scare 13-year-old girls and not embarrass itself in the process.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

There was a time when I couldn’t WAIT for the next Tim Burton movie. But I wasn’t that excited about this one, and I’m not sure why. Maybe because I never read the book? Nevertheless, it feels like someone copied the style of Tim Burton, but it doesn’t feel like Burton, and again I’m not sure why. The characters, the children in the home for peculiar children, all seem very similar: Polite, well-dressed, well-spoken, and very British. They’re not peculiar as much as they’re horribly deformed, but are trying their best to fit in by dressing nicely. I think the “X-MEN: mutants are okay” theme gets a little lost, which is too bad. There’s a jumpy, time-travel plot, which always means the stakes are pretty low, since all setbacks can be corrected. And there are some MAJOR logic holes. But Eva Green is good, so there’s one in the win column. The bottom line is: special effects have peaked. We can do anything now FX-wise, so to fill a movie with visuals just isn’t enough. We need a return to storytelling. I felt very “meh” about this, which is not the way I want to feel about a “Tim Burton movie.”

Hell or High Water

Texas. Beer. Guns. Throw in a couple of well-meaning bank robbers and you got yourself a movie. The cast is great here. The pace is brisk. The action is tense. And there’s no bad guy. The bad guy is the bank that low-balls sick people and repos their houses. So it’s not even that the story is so original or that the plot is so strong. These are pretty conventional pieces. It’s the THEME that makes this so good. It makes you want to rob a bank.