Lights Out

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David F. Sandberg/Starring: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, Maria Bello and Billy Burke

Based on a short film by David F. Sandberg, Lights Out is the director's first full-length feature. Judging by his ability to chill and scare an audience, it's safe to say Sandberg will enjoy a substantial career as a horror film director. Though the film sometimes suffers from logic-deprivation (to be fair, so do most other horror films), one can't be hard-nosed about plausibility and logic when a filmmaker can create something eminently watchable. Unlike many horror films that slowly build suspense, Lights Out gets to the point quickly; as it has little time to waste at 82 minutes. It's supernatural antagonist is downright frightening, as is the film.

In the opening scene, we meet a businessman named Paul (Billy Burke); whose office resides in what looks like a mannequin warehouse. The mannequins' inherent creepiness creates an atmosphere of dread as Paul's assistant sees what looks like the outline of someone lurking in the shadows. She notices the shadow vanishes whenever she turns on the light but reappears when the light is off. Frightened, she alerts Paul to what she's seen, only to be brushed off. After she leaves, Paul hears sounds in the warehouse and enters it shortly thereafter to investigate. He too sees the shadowy apparition; noticing its peculiar preference for the dark. In trying to flee its malevolent aggression, the thing swipes at him, leaving a bloody gash in his leg. He manages to lock himself in his well-lit office, but seconds later, the lights flicker then go out, leaving Paul gripped with fear. The apparition appears shortly thereafter and quickly lays hold of him before leaving him gruesomely sprawled on the warehouse floor, dead. It isn't often we see a horror film introduce its villain so early but being so prompt means the audience is left with questions. Who or what is the thing that seems so pissed and what did it have against Paul? All questions are addressed in time.

The mystery of Paul's death becomes clearer in the following scenes when Rebecca (Teresa Palmer), Paul's step-daughter; visits her mother Sophie (Maria Bello). Sophie grieves over her husband's death but faces more immediate problems. Sophie resists her daughter's passionate pleas to take her medication, which prevent her precipitous fall into an emotional, depressive abyss. Meanwhile, Rebecca's half-brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman), finds himself contending with the phantasm that dispatched his father. As it threatens him nightly, keeping him awake, his school nurse notices he falls asleep in class. Rebecca becomes apprised of the problem, which leads her to proactively remove her brother from school; due to her lack of confidence in her mentally-frail mother. Realizing he needs rest but reluctant to have him stay at apartment, she and her boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia) take him in after she has her own encounter with the entity at her mother's house. To her dismay, she finds the entity has invaded her own apartment.

After the entity mounts an attack in Rebecca's apartment, she discovers--after combing through files she filched from her mother--that Sophie was friends with a young girl named Diana during her stay in a mental hospital in her youth. We learn Diana was committed to the hospital after having been abused by her father. A significant indignity she suffered involved being locked in the basement, in the dark. Rebecca also learns Diana had a hideous skin condition when she arrived at the hospital. Fearing abandonment, Diana attached herself to Rebecca's mother, thereby becoming dependent on Sophie. In trying to keep Sophie from leaving the hospital, Diana tried to sabotage Sophie's therapy; her abandonment issues being quite acute.

As we find in the film, the theme of abandonment is quite strong. Most, if not all the characters, experience or feel some form of abandonment. After Diana's death, Rebecca discovers her attachment to her mother continued beyond the grave; hence her presence in the family's life. Paul's death was the result of Diana's jealousy and fear of Sophie's affections being directed elsewhere.

Child Care Services eventually shows up at Rebecca's apartment to return Martin to his mother. Having no legal alternative, Rebecca relents. Having already encountered Diana in his mother's home, the viewer may wonder why Martin accepts the case worker's demand without protest. More puzzling is his veritable calm when he's at home with his mother, who never seems to notice anything is amiss with her son (I guess her shaky mental state is a good narrative alibi). And knowing Diana is a threat to her brother, why doesn't Rebecca spend the night at her mother's place?

Diana's war against everyone not-Sophie continues and her antagonistic campaign of terror leads to a showdown with Rebecca, Martin and Bret. While staying at Sophie's house, the three are attacked individually. Bret takes flight after narrowly escaping Diana's clutches (his escape is rather cleverly executed with his car keys). Though his act seems wildly craven, Rebecca reassures Martin of his return--though she (and we) can't be sure. Diana manages to trap Rebecca and Martin in the basement. While Rebecca feeds a basement stove fire to provide crucial light, Martin finds a black light tube, which they immediately activate. The black light allows Sandberg a terrific visual opportunity, which he exploits beautifully. The light casts an eerie glow, which adds atmospheric drama to the visuals. Unfortunately for Martin and Rebecca, the black light doesn't keep Diana at bay; allowing her to grasp and lunge at the two from behind shelves. Question: if the black-light doesn't have any effect on Diana, why doesn't she just attack them directly rather than reach for them from behind a shelf?

We see Bret return with police (hooray, the cavalry!) but they are ill-prepared to deal with Diana and are dealt with themselves, forthwith. It is almost comical how long it takes for Sophie to respond to Diana's murderous mayhem but she does eventually; begging her "friend" not to harm her kids.
I won't give away the end but a tragic sacrifice is made as we learn Diana only exists because of her disturbing attachment to Sophie (geez, talk about a co-dependent!).

One could spend an hour or so pointing out the film's flaws and inconsistencies or the bewildering behavior of the characters but its strengths allow us to happily overlook its shortcomings. Sandberg shows he has a veteran horror director's touch with mood and atmosphere. For a film that is so short, exposition isn't hurried along or overlooked. He is quite comfortable with is material (as well he should be).

I was pleased the film didn't set up an obvious sequel but given Hollywood's franchise mania, I wouldn't rule it out. The film is doing well enough to keep that option open but I hope it doesn't happen. I wouldn't mind seeing Sandberg tackle something different. We'll see what they allow him to make.

Lights Out won't astonish but it will definitely entertain. It's chilling and the performances are sound, so it has nothing to be ashamed of. I found it more enjoyable than both Ghostbusters and Star Trek: Beyond, which isn't saying much but it doesn't surprise me that the film's $5 million budget pales next to two films that cost $140 and $185 million respectively. Give a hungry, talented director a small budget and more often than not he or she will never abandon your expectations.
Oh, there's that abandonment thing again.

The Fifth Wave

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: J. Blakeson/Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Alex Roe, Maika Monroe and Nick Robinson

The Fifth Wave, based on the story of the same name by novelist Rick Yancey, is a hodgepodge of sci-fi movie plots welded together that work story-wise but is incapable of making the audience forget any of the films it shamelessly borrows or steals from. Films that immediately come to mind when watching Blakeson's film are: Independence Day, District 9 and the various movies about young people uniting to resist oppressive overlords, such as The Maze Runner and Divergent series. There isn't anything inherently wrong with a pastiche but The Fifth Wave (the title kept reminding me of The Fifth Element. Maybe someone will make a sci-fi movie called The Fifth of Jack Daniels) doesn't fuse what it plunders into anything original or thrilling. And what's worse, the movie seems like another greedy producer's calculated attempt to create a franchise cash-cow. And to give this franchise-manque credibility, some considerable talent was recruited; Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber and Maria Bello; who have all acquitted themselves better elsewhere.

Has anyone noticed that in ALL alien invasion movies these days, we seem to see the same kind of massive spaceships floating menacingly in the skies above Earth? We see the same here though I noticed Blakeson was very sparing in how he deployed shots of the alien ships. Maybe the producers are saving more detailed images for the sequels they hope to mid-wive from this flick.

The whole plot can be summarized succinctly: aliens, referred to as Others, invade Earth, wreaking havoc in successive waves. One wave knocks out electricity and power, another visits Biblical-scale destruction across the planet in the form of literal waves; tidal waves, which is followed by the lethally mutated spread of the Avian virus, which is in turn followed by the alien infiltration of the human species while the last involves the use of children to carry out the mass extermination of humanity. A young woman named Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz) struggles to survive after her parents die in the initial waves. Her attempts to reach an air force base where her brother and other children have been taken for battle-training meet with danger, as she befriends a young man who displays superhuman fighting skills. Cassie manages to unite with her brother and the other children after they discover their military leaders are in fact Others who have recruited them for their plans of global conquest.

That is the story in its semi-concise form. The story does come with romance. Cassie is the focus of a triangle that includes her classmate Ben Parish (Nick Robinson) and Evan Walker (Alex Roe); said young man with extraordinary fighting abilities. The other burgeoning romance involves Ben and a tough, goth-ish girl named Ringer (Maika Monroe); who handles a gun as well as her army instructors.

About half-way through the film, it becomes clear the filmmakers want to ride the Hunger Games/Divergent/The Maze Runner wave of films about young people fighting totalitarian forces. I guess this attempt to draw young viewers makes sense but it really seems like a cheap and easy way to market future installments. I have to say I can't stomach many more of these films but then again, only young tastes count here, I guess.

It seems pointless to expect a movie like The Fifth Wave to be logical or uniformly plausible since the movies it sometimes mimics, like Independence Day, can't be troubled to play by the same rules. What bothers me about the aforementioned movie and Blakeson's film is what I call the Bumbling Advanced Civilization Syndrome. An alien race masters interstellar travel; overcomes all the paradoxes and problems of Einsteinian physics, arrives on Earth with superior weapons and the means to destroy the planet; only to suddenly become thwarted by the relatively primitive human race. If one has the power to create tidal waves that tower above coastline hotels and London Bridge and the means to knock out power world-wide, why does it suddenly have problems wiping out a survivalist village, particularly when it knows its location? Instead, it sends Others-controlled army soldiers to gun down the inhabitants of said village. Very sloppy and inefficient for an advanced alien race, que no?

One character says destroying the Earth isn't part of the Others' agenda, as they need our planet mostly intact. Okay, but if you've already wiped out most of the human race without destroying ALL life on the planet's surface, how hard would it be to wipe out the survivors? It does make sense that an invading alien race would employ an electromagnetic pulse to knock out our power, inundate the planet with quasi-natural disasters and create a pandemic to wipe out humans but I don't think it would suddenly be troubled by those same creatures when the resistance cells are comprised of children and teens.

Suspending disbelief and every mental faculty, one should still find the story thrilling but it didn't take an alien intellect to see where everything was headed and how it would get there. The movie became dull and I did little to resist the sleepy fairy that coaxed me into a brief state of drowsiness.

Mr. Blakeson, you'll forgive me if I don't bother seeing the sequels. The Hunger Games series satisfied any and all desires I had to see films like yours. But I'm sometimes stubborn and if a movie weekend happens to be painfully wanting, I just might pay to see A Fifth Wave sequel. But then again, I resisted The Maze Runner and Divergent follow-ups so I know my will power hasn't weakened.

The key word here is resist. If a determined unit of tykes can resist an alien invasion, I can resist a franchise. And I won't even need an M-16.

McFarland, USA

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Niki Caro/Starring: Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Carlos Pratts, Morgan Saylor, Johnny Ortiz, Hector Duran, Rafael Martinez, Ramiro Rodriguez and Diana Maria Riva

Director Niki Caro, best known for her film Whale Rider, is back with McFarland, USA. Whether the film can be called Caro's or Disney's is a question not easily answered.

The film does have Disney written all over it. In recent years, the company has assumed ownership of the weepy sports-movie genre and has done well with it. Last year's Million Dollar Arm fell into this category and proved to be quite entertaining. I can say the same for Caro's film, which, like last year's Disney sports flick, also features minority athletes overcoming reduced economic status, racism and their own lack of cultural self-esteem to not only succeed but excel. Both films are also based on real people and events and though tethered to reality, they also share the Disney sports film formulae that even an accomplished director like Caro can't overcome or evade. Somehow that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Though much of McFarland USA is highly predictable (in spite of being a true story), it manages to be charming and entertaining.

Of course it helps to have an actor with Kevin Costner's charisma and sports film credibility. Costner, who just turned 60 in January, is still a powerful and welcome presence in films; even in a factory product like this late-winter movie offering. It also doesn't hurt to have Maria Bello; an actress who always seems real and can make the most of even the wispiest of roles.

Set in 1987, Costner plays real-life Jim White, a football coach who has been dismissed from several high school coaching jobs due to differences with administrators and colleagues. His latest transgression involves throwing a shoe at a player during a halftime pep talk after the individual dissed White repeatedly. The incident leads to his dismissal from his job and the uprooting of his family; a situation they find too familiar and too exasperating.

White, his wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and his two daughters; Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elsie Fisher), find themselves in the small farming community of McFarland, California. When they arrive, they see the population is made up of mainly Mexican-Americans. They also find their home is a shabby place in a shabby neighborhood where poverty is the norm.

Put off a little at first with their new digs and surroundings, the family decides to venture out for dinner; settling on a taco place where the menu is something to which they are unaccustomed. When the family leaves the restaurant after dinner, they see a column of low-riders approaching, which immediately sets them on edge. When one of the riders accosts the family, another rider intervenes, thus averting a confrontation. In time, White learns he may have misconstrued the incident. Feeling unwelcome in the town, the family barely suppress their eagerness to leave.

White's new coaching position is also fraught with discord as he and the incumbent head coach butt heads. An incident involving White preventing a concussed player from entering a game sets him at odds with the head coach and becomes another threat to White's troubled career.

Unhappy with his position as coach and faced with the possibility of uprooting his family again, White finds he has few options.

While observing his student's running prowess, particularly one named Thomas Valles (Carlos Pratt), White conceives the idea of forming a school cross country team in spite of never having coached the sport.

Granted approval to start a team, White finds the sport a tough sell to the students he hopes to recruit. The fact that most rise as early as 4 a.m. to work in the fields then attend school during the day, only to return to the fields after school, presents a major obstacle. He eventually forms a team--made up of all Mexican-Americans--who are all a little skeptical of White's venture. Though eager to pursue his goal, White recognizes the plight of the families in the farming community and how their condition keeps them bound to the fields, making it difficult for them to to free themselves from an inextricable economic holding pattern. To help remedy the problem, he hands out SAT booklets to his athletes, emphasizing their potential to attend college.

It becomes fairly clear where this story will lead. We know White and his family will embrace the local culture and become part of the community; even sharing some of its rituals. And of course we know what will happen with the cross-country team.

I give Disney credit for exploring the culture of the community and the families themselves. We see Valles' family contends with a fatherless home and they, like many other families in McFarland, have family members who have been in and out of jail, whose sad proximity to the school is a sobering fact.

Of course what Disney film would ignore its sacrosanct view of family? We see the critical role of family in the community but White comes to learn something about his own obligations to his wife and daughters when he forgets the cake for Julie's 15th birthday party. To make amends, he enlists the help of townsfolk and borrows one of their rites of passage to fete the occasion.

But the focus of the film is White's team and how they emerge from nothingness to become a state power, which is great fun to watch, especially since it is real.
Adding a wrinkle to the drama is the offer White receives to coach at an upscale school in Palo Alto after his team begins to ascend the ranks of the state's elite cross-country teams.

As I mentioned earlier, I liked the movie. It doesn't make any profound, artistic statement but it entertains. If that seems like a rickety rack on which to rest one's coat, then consider the other multiplex offerings of late. If McFarland, USA traffics in cliches, it also does so with considerable heart and it tells it with a relatively modest $17 million dollar budget. 50 Shades of Grey was a snoozer at more than twice that and refuse like Jupiter Ascending couldn't even approach mediocrity with a $175 million dollar price-tag.

There aren't many surprises in the film but you may not care. It tells a story worth telling and one that says something about a place one wouldn't expect to find in a country with the world's leading economy; somewhere where even a minimum wage job seems like a fantasy. I hope McFarland's fortunes have changed significantly since 1987. I'm glad a corporate behemoth like Disney has the guts to tell such a story.

New Zealander Niki Caro has proven she has a deft touch with cultures not her own. Her Whale Rider focused on the Maori culture and in North Country, she addressed the sociopolitical climate of a working class community in Minnesota. Here again she shows sensitivity and insight into another culture.

I left the theater feeling quite satisfied. I wasn't in the presence of masterful cinema but I was entertained, which in the much-maligned Season of Swill, constitutes a small miracle.

Third Person

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Paul Haggis/Starring: Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Adrian Brody, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Maria Bello, Kim Basinger, Loan Chabanol and Moran Atias

I wasn't a fan of Haggis' Oscar-winning film Crash; I found it overrated, over-cooked and underwritten and I have to say I had the same reaction to Third Person. Both boast show-offy multiple character plots which occasionally intersect but seem forced and often phony. His new film has an impressive cast and exciting locations: Rome, Paris and New York. Beautiful people in beautiful locations. Should be enough, right?

Liam Neeson plays Michael, a Pulitzer-prize winning author who is having an affair with a beautiful, younger woman named Anna (Olivia Wilde) who is both repelled by and attracted to the writer. As a writer herself, her interest in Michael isn't relegated to romance; she also seeks his authorial approbation, which he is reluctant to give after reading a short story she has submitted to him. Meanwhile, Michael is estranged from his wife Elaine (Kim Basinger) though he talks to her almost daily. She is well-aware of his affair with Anna but refuses to abandoned the marriage.

Another story is set in Rome, where a shady businessman Scott (Adrian Brody) steals fashion designs from top Italian designers for knock-offs manufactured in sweat-shops. He becomes involved with a gypsy woman (a culture known more appropriately as Roma) named Monika (Moran Atias), whose daughter is being held by Romanians. To get her daughter back, she must come up with 5,000 euros or risk her 8 year-old becoming a prostitute. Scott offers to help and in doing so, becomes hopelessly entangled in the dangerous effort to recover her daughter. As the story develops, it becomes increasingly clear Scott may be the target of an elaborate scam though he has fallen in love with Monika.

In yet another story, Mila Kunis' Julia is battling James Franco's Rick for visitation rights for her son, whose life she unintentionally imperiled when she demonstrated how he could possibly suffocate playing with a sleeping-bag. Though Rick is adamant about Julia not seeing the boy, Rick's girlfriend Sam sympathizes with the mother and eventually aids in her attempt to see him. Julia is her own worst enemy, as she can't hold a job for any period of time and is generally a mess. Assisting her legally is Theresa (Maria Bello); a tough, pragmatic lawyer who has little patience for Julia's irresponsibility.

You know Haggis will somehow have the various storylines and characters mingle in many contrived, unnatural ways. When Julia, working as a maid, scribbles an important address of where she is to meet her lawyer and Rick for a custody hearing, she accidentally leaves the paper in the hotel room, which just happens to be Michael's. He uses the same paper to write down his wife's phone number, which falls into Anna's hands then ultimately, back into Julia's later. Haggis works hard to make all this seem seamless, but like Crash, it screams overwrought plotting.

It also becomes strange when we know Julia is working in the Parisian hotel where Michael and Anna are keeping rooms though her custody hearing is in New York. This isn't a filmmaker's embarassing flub but another plot device too clever for its own good. How she can be in two places at once becomes clear later in the film, as does the other oddities in the story. What also is brought to light is why the stories all share a common theme of children in extremis.

It is Michael and Anna's story that serves as the sun in this solar system. Michael's head-games, in which Anna is a willing participant, begin to grow tiresome as the two lovers are on again, off again while his wife pleads for his return. We also learn Anna has been hiding a secret; one that offers a cliched explanation as to why she prefers older men like Michael. It comes off as cheap Freudian fallback and is an eye-roller.

Eventually everything and everyone is absorbed in the denouement which is one more Haggis-ism I couldn't endure. I guess I give him points for the attempt.

Because the stories are labored, many of the actor's performances appear over-boiled, but the the final scenes may explain that as well. Noone in the cast comes off as all that sincere though they try hard to sell their characters. Neeson, a very skilled actor, has trouble playing a convincing writer. Though his publisher informs him the quality of his writing has declined and finds his latest work unpublishable, he writes a chapter of new novel, which shamelessly co-opts his lover's personal life as content. This is all fine and good, but Michael's prose is so hackneyed, it couldn't even pose a qualitative challenge to Judith Krantz, though his publisher doesn't seem to notice.

I think Haggis would like to manage the multiple character/storylines with the skill, precision and power Altman once did in films like Nashville or Short Cuts. Unfortunately he lacks that directors unerring instinct for character and plausible, multiple plot streams.

When everything wrapped and the credits scrolled, I left the theater thinking how stunning Olivia Wilde looked, then I thought about what I needed from the A&P.