Movie Review: The Wolf Of Snow Hollow (2020)

Also Known As: The Werewolf  

Genre: Horror Comedy Drama  

Director: Jim Cummings  

Starring: Jim Cummings, Riki Lindhome, Robert Forster  

Running Time: 84 minutes  

Synopsis: In the small and remote community of Snow Hollow, Utah, women are being brutally killed. The local sheriff (Robert Forster) is frail, near retirement, and useless. His son Deputy Sheriff John Marshall (Jim Cummings), a divorced recovering alcoholic, investigates with help from Detective Julia Robson (Riki Lindhome). Rumors swirl that a werewolf is on the loose, but an increasingly frantic John insists that he can catch the murderer, while trying to keep his teenaged daughter (Chloe East) safe.

What Works Well: The remote small town milieu conveys a sense of isolation, where outside help is not an option and the locals are all entangled in each others' lives. The short and sharp murderous attack scenes are well-staged. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Cluttered with inconsequential interludes and hampered by a lack of polish, this small budget production never finds a groove. Attempts at humour land awkwardly next to police incompetence, clumsy attempts at spreading suspicion, and over-the-top acting (with a lot of shouting), all hampered by inelegant scripting and barely-there character definitions.

Key Quote:

Officer Robson (under her breath): Everyone laughs until she lays out the crime scene photos...

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Movie Review: Avalanche (1978)

Genre: Disaster Thriller  

Director: Corey Allen  

Starring: Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow, Robert Forster, Jeanette Nolan  

Running Time: 91 minutes  

Synopsis: Skiers, figure skaters, and ski mobile racers gather for sports activities at the luxurious Colorado ski resort built by business tycoon David Shelby (Rock Hudson) in the shadow of a dangerous mountain. The attendees include David's ex-wife Caroline (Mia Farrow), his mother (Jeanette Nolan), a television reporter (Barry Primus), a champion skier (Rick Moses), and environmentalist Nick Thorne (Robert Forster), whose avalanche warnings are ignored. When a small plane crashes into the mountain after a snow storm, a deadly avalanche is indeed triggered.

What Works Well: From among a cast of actors who ought to have known better, Robert Forster suffers the least embarrassment, and the running time is mercifully short.

What Does Not Work As Well: Low budget producer Roger Corman joins the 1970s disaster movie cycle, and scrounges enough funds to attract a couple of marquee stars. But it's unclear if Rock Hudson (channeling William Shatner) and Mia Farrow (setting a speed record between F. Scott Fitzgerald '74 and Corman '78) ever fully read the script. They conclude this disaster exchanging gooey looks over champagne while surrounded by a mountain of corpses. The laughable special effects include prominent use of feathers and Styrofoam cubes, the actors struggle with throwaway dialogue, and no characters generate sufficient interest for anyone to care who lives and who dies.

Conclusion: Swept into the abyss of awfulness.



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Movie Review: Alligator (1980)

Genre: Monster Horror

Director: Lewis Teague

Starring: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Henry Silva

Running Time: 94 minutes

Synopsis: In 1968, 14-year-old Marisa purchases a tiny pet alligator, but her father flushes it down the toilet. 12 years later, Detective David Madison (Robert Forster) starts to investigate the discovery of severed body parts, and a reporter (Bart Braverman) unwittingly reveals a huge alligator living in the sewers. Madison exposes an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company illegally dumping an experimental growth hormone, and teams up with Marisa (Robin Riker), now a herpetologist, to search for the overgrown alligator. With political pressure mounting, police Chief Clark (Michael V. Gazzo) brings in ruthless big-game hunter Brock (Henry Silva) to destroy the monster.

 

What Works Well: With tongue firmly in cheek, writer John Sayles shamelessly rips-off Jaws. Here the bad-science-gone-wrong horror explanation adds doses of wry humour, with everything from Madison's thinning hairline to victims being munched in their entirety contributing to a none-too-serious (but still gory) attitude. Director Lewis Teague has an eye for the spectacular, and finds highlights in the alligator bursting out of the sewer and then gatecrashing a wedding. Michael V. Gazzo's gravely voice reaches quarry proportions, but even he is upstaged by a stone-faced Henry Silva dressed in a safari suit and mimicking an alligator's mating call.

What Does Not Work As Well: The special effects are barely passable, and some of the horror scenes (including one involving kids and a swimming pool) don't work at all. Too many samey sequences take place in the sewers, Robin Riker struggles in an underwritten role, and an overall dedication to mania defeats cohesion. The monster-is-attacking music, again cloned from Jaws, is just too familiar.

Conclusion: This low-budget but still humongous alligator chomps with a wicked smile.



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Movie Review: Firewall (2006)

A feeble hostage drama, Firewall abandons technothriller ambitions and settles for a bland recycling of tired ideas.

In Seattle, Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) is in charge of network security at Landrock Pacific Bank. His colleagues include fellow security expert Harry Romano (Robert Forster), executive Gary Mitchell (Robert Patrick) and President Arlin Forester (Alan Arkin). With the bank in the middle of merger negotiations, tensions are high.

Master criminal Bill Cox (Paul Bettany) leads a group of armed men who invade Jack's house and hold his wife Beth (Virginia Madsen) and two children hostage. Cox wants Jack to digitally break into the bank's network and transfer $100 million into off-shore accounts. With the help of his assistant Janet (Mary Lynn Rajskub), Jack has to find a way to thwart the criminals and save his family.

A haphazard and immediately forgettable thriller, Firewall finds Harrison Ford trading on his old hits. The well-worn concept of a man forced into action while his family is held hostage is trudged out for yet another go-around. Other than a grand hilltop architectural marvel of a house that suggests Jack and Beth are well-paid indeed, writer Joe Forte and director Richard Loncraine cannot conjure up any new or interesting angles.

The initial intent to focus on the world of digital security is half-hearted and all but abandoned, with no firewall in sight. And after pairing Ford with a 19-years-younger Madsen, the script defaults to an inane climax subjecting the 64 year old to physical altercations that would challenge men half his age. Meanwhile, back at the bank Robert Forster, Alan Arkin and Robert Patrick represent a trio of utterly wasted veteran talent.

But maybe worst of all is the motiveless Cox as a crime boss who has thought of everything except the most important things, while his group of bumbling armed men have all the necessary weaponry and technological toys yet spend the movie watching television and getting outsmarted. Fox's main method of intimidating Jack is to kill his own men. 

With no one expressing any rational plans as the climax approaches, Firewall literally defaults to man chases dog. And only the dog maintains a semblance of dignity.



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Movie Review: What They Had (2018)

A routine family drama, What They Had features earnest discussions about difficulties faced by middle-aged adults dealing with aging parents and college-aged children, but introduces little that is new. 

In Chicago, the elderly Ruth Everhardt (Blythe Danner) is suffering from worsening dementia and wanders away from home in the middle of the night during a snowstorm. She is found safe, much to the relief of her husband of 60 years Bert (Robert Forster). But the incident is the last straw for her son Nicky (Michael Shannon), a bar owner who now insists Ruth should live in a care facility. Bert, who has a heart condition, disagrees and wants Ruth to stay home and in his care.

Nicky's sister Bitty (Hilary Swank) flies in from California with her 20 year old daughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga). Bitty is caught between Nicky's eagerness to place Ruth in care and Bert's resistance to any change. The trip also prompt Bitty to reassess her life, including addressing Emma's disinterest in attending college and confronting dissatisfaction within her own marriage to husband Eddie (Josh Lucas).

An independent low-key production, What They Had enjoys a stellar cast in fine form, but otherwise rarely rises above conventional fare. Falling somewhere between television-level movie-of-the-week familiarity and a small-cast stage show with the drama confined to just a couple of sets, the film replays many of the notes already heard with various intensities in films like Away From Her, The Leisure Seeker, Amour, and Still Alice.

Writer and director Elizabeth Chomko gradually shifts focus from Ruth to Bitty, and What They Had is ultimately the story of a woman stuck in the doldrums: feeling guilty about being separated from her ailing parents, trapped in a frigid marriage, unsatisfied in her career, unable to communicate with her daughter, and always bickering - or loudly arguing - with her expletives-loving brother. It's a big load for one character to carry in a 101 minute movie, and despite Hilary Swank's best efforts, most of the resolutions are flash fried.

Humour derived from Ruth's dotty behaviour adds the occasional spark, and the film is nothing if not honest in its fidelity to the dilemmas, frustrations, and the is-this-all-there-is questions thrust into the face of the sandwich generation. But What They Had tries too hard to evoke nostalgia through fading and jerky 8mm film recreations of Bert and Ruth's glory years, the soulful past unable to compensate for the present gaps in creativity.



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Movie Review: The American Side (2016)

A neo-noir detective thriller, The American Side has stylish intentions but is over-plotted and under-produced.

In the Buffalo and Niagara Falls area, crooked small-time private investigator Charlie Paczynski (Greg Stuhr) is stunned when his partner Kat (Kelsey Siepser) is shot and killed during a seemingly routine entrapment operation targeting Tom Soberin (Harris Yulin). Charlie starts to ask questions and kick down doors, only for Soberin to turn up dead in the river. Distraught scientific researcher Nikki Meeker (Alicja Bachleda) was also looking for Soberin and approaches Charlie for help.

Charlie's investigation leads him to competing industrialists Borden Chase (Matthew Broderick) and Sterling Whitmore (Robert Forster), who are both looking for a secret design by famous inventor Nikola Tesla that could alter human destiny. Borden's sister Emily (Camilla Belle) may have her own agenda, government Agent Barry (Janeane Garofalo) is tracking down the bad guys, local police detectives are chasing shadows, and a group of Serbian thugs are just as intent on getting their hands on Tesla's drawings.

Directed by Jenna Ricker and co-written by Stuhr, The American Side is an independent, low-budget production, aiming to recreate classic noir style and mood. Attempting to breathe deeply from the Buffalo setting and the energy of the roaring Niagara Falls, the film is unfortunately just plain hokey, an almost laughably amateurish juxtaposition of 1940s attitude and dialogue with an incongruous modern setting seemingly devoid of cell phones and computers.

Borrowing heavily from films like The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly and The Third Man, The American Side never finds its own voice, and remains a mishmash of ideas barely held together by a poorly developed, derivative and over-burdened plot full of holes, inconsistencies and loose ends. Despite the presence of talent like Broderick, Forster, Yulin, Garofalo and none other than Robert Vaughn, the acting is uniformly wooden and the lines of dialogue are read with little conviction.

Some of the visuals capture the noir spirit, a few of the snarky lines do land effectively, and with better direction and a polished script Greg Stuhr can be imagined as an effective and seedy anti-hero. But here the action is clunky, good intentions slipping into the waterfall, drowning in the whoosh of an unforgiving talent deficit.

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Movie Review: London Has Fallen (2016)

A mindless action thriller, London Has Fallen is a disappointing sequel, going far beyond suspension of disbelief and into ridiculous territory.

American intelligence services destroy the desert hideout of international arms dealer Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul) with a drone strike. Two years later the British Prime Minister dies suddenly. All the world's leader make plans to attend the funeral in London, including US President Ben Asher (Aaron Eckhart). His Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett) is nervous about the lack of security planning time, and agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is entrusted with keeping the President safe. With his wife Leah (Radha Mitchell) pregnant, Banning is contemplating resigning from active duty but accepts the London assignment.

Just before the funeral is set to start at St. Paul's Cathedral, a large number of heavily armed terrorists  disguised as police officers launch coordinated attacks throughout London, causing mass casualties. Banning is barely able to extract Asher from the main attack zone, and the two go on the run. The attack is funded by Barkawi, seeking revenge for the death of his family members. With London swarming with terrorists, Banning has to keep the President alive long enough for friendly backup forces to arrive.

While 2013's Olympus Has Fallen was a laudable riff on Die Hard, London Has Fallen chucks out all that was good about the original, and leaves only brain dead action behind. After just 15 minutes of rudimentary set-up, director Babak Najafi unleashes the noise and fury of a London overrun by terrorists, and the film does not take a breath for the remainder of its 99 minutes.

There is a fine line between a far-fetched premise and just a lazy idea. Olympus was a far-fetched premise very well executed. London lands with a thud on the wrong side of that boundary. The script requires a massive number of police officers -- even Buckingham Palace guards! -- to be secretly replaced with an army of bad guys armed to the teeth with machine guns and grenades in the run up to London's biggest ever security operation, without anyone noticing.

And after the initial attack things get worse, with hordes of terrorists on motorcycles, in cars and with stinger missiles having free run of the city, and no genuine enforcement types of any stripe even attempting any sort of intervention. Of course the same terrorist leaders who carefully planned this secret but massive operation consisting of thousands of undetected attackers will now be stupid enough to be defeated by a single secret service agent.

Despite all its faults and some cheap special effects, London Has Fallen occasionally captures the freewheeling spirit of a third-person shooter console game, Najafi at least staging his numerous action scenes with some panache. And in Gerard Butler he has an actor willing to grit his teeth and get on with all the killing necessary to save his President, while almost giving the impression that he is taking it all seriously.

In addition to Eckhart and Basset, the supporting cast also includes Morgan Freeman in another throwaway performance as the Vice President, while Melissa Leo and Robert Forster are utterly wasted in tiny roles.

London may have fallen, but the quality of this franchise fell faster and deeper.

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Movie Review: Jackie Brown (1997)

A crime film saluting the blaxploitation sub-genre without exploiting it, Jackie Brown offers the promise of provocative characters and a compelling plot but takes too long to eventually not achieve much.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a down-on-her-luck flight attendant for a low-cost airline operating between Mexico and Los Angeles. To make ends meet she acts as a courier for gunrunner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), importing his overseas cash in $50,000 increments. Ordell's friends include surfer girl Melanie (Bridget Fonda) and the none-too-bright ex-con Louis Gara (Robert De Niro), who are both often stoned into uselessness. Ordell's operation hits trouble when Beaumont (Chris Tucker), another of his couriers, is arrested. To silence him, Ordell uses the services of bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) to spring Beaumont and then summarily kills him.

But Beaumont had already alerted cops Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) and Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) that Jackie is another of Ordell's couriers, and she is also arrested. Ordell tries to pull the same trick, using Cherry to release Jackie in order to silence her, but she is one step ahead of him. Jackie instead offers to help Ordell bring all $500,000 of his money in from Mexico in one shot under the noses of Ray and Mark, while at the same time striking a deal with the cops to deliver Ordell to them. With Max developing an attraction towards Jackie, a convoluted plot of cross and double cross unfolds, sucking in Max, Melanie and Louis, with Jackie in the middle of it all playing the most dangerous game of all.

Jackie Brown finds writer and director Quentin Tarantino at his most retrained. An adaptation of the Elmore Leonard book Rum Punch, Jackie Brown stays away from the blood and gore orgies of excess that define many of Tarantino's works. The film is also an unexpectedly calm appreciation of blaxploitation, more a stylistic nod to the music and aesthetics of the early 1970s trend and less a recreation of the in-your-face, all-mindless-action-all-the-time compositions that defined the genre.

What remains is a long running time of over 150 minutes reliant on character and plot to generate and maintain momentum. Both elements are adequate but not fully successful. The preponderance of characters appears to be more about populating the film with plenty of sidekicks, and few of the players are fleshed out to any meaningful degree. Melanie and Louis (despite two terrific performances by Bridget Fonda and Robert De Niro) get plenty of screen time but remain a shallow sideshow, while the detective Nicolette drifts in and out of the movie with no conviction.

The main characters offer more, but not by much. Ordell's defining trait is an endless stream of profanities, Max is suitably tired and circumspect after a life spent handling scum, and Jackie is juicing the odds for the first time in her life. But despite the film riding on their shoulders they also remain surprisingly opaque as individuals worth investing in. Instead of character definition, the film offers endless and slow-moving facial close-ups, style failing to mask the absence of script insight.

As for the plot, it maintains a modicum of interest but eventually starts to collapse under its own weight. After an inordinately long set-up, the plotting and counter-plotting to transfer envelopes and bags stuffed with money among criminals at a suburban mall all gets to be too intricate given the less than sympathetic characters.

In the final third of the film Tarantino does a nice job showing the same scenes from different perspectives, sometimes revealing surprises with just the slightest shift of angle. But ultimately there is too much peripheral detail and not enough core depth.

Jackie Brown is a rich attempt at a cerebral crime thriller. It enjoys a steady stream of quality, but lacks the essential spark of imagination to ever properly take off.

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Movie Review: Me, Myself And Irene (2000)

A simply atrocious comedy, Me, Myself And Irene is an ugly stain in Jim Carrey's repertoire.

Charlie (Carrey) is a mild-mannered Rhode Island state police trooper. His new wife Layla (Traylor Howard) cheats on him with a midget black limousine driver. Even when Layla gives birth to black triplets and subsequently abandons the family, Charlie refuses to show any negative emotion or display anger. Years later and with his sons now foul-mouthed grow-ups, Charlie's bottled up anger snaps out in the form of a split personality. Hank is Charlie's alter-ego and his polar opposite, and emerges at unexpected intervals. Hank is rude, crude, and stands up for himself, seeking revenge on everyone who has disrespected Charlie.

Commanding officer Colonel Partington (Robert Forster) gives Charlie an assignment to transfer prisoner Irene (Renée Zellweger) to upstate New York. Irene is wanted on trumped up hit-and-run charges, but in reality she may have information that endangers the criminal activities of sleazy businessman Dickie (Daniel Greene) and corrupt police officers Gerke (Chris Cooper) and Boshane (Richard Jenkins). Charlie is attracted to Irene, and so is Hank but much less politely. Charlie struggles to contain Hank and soon finds himself on the run with Irene, trying to protect her from the bad guys.

Directed and co-written by the Farrelly brothers Peter and Bobby, Me, Myself And Irene is a lazy, almost insulting excuse for a parade of tiresome jokes directed at the pre-puberty immature boy market. With almost every attempted laugh involving the anus, dildos and combinations thereof, the film wallows in the misery of constipated minds who seem to genuinely believe that this material is funny.

There is no effort to explain the basic mechanics of the plot involving Irene, as the entire road trip is just a sorry backdrop for set-pieces that were not good enough for other movies. The best opportunity for a good laugh, in the shape of an encounter with a cow that refuses to die, could have been funny but is botched into a stupid wrestling match. Elsewhere, midgets, blacks, albinos and Rhode Islanders are mercilessly targeted with tasteless jokes, and its all delivered with a barrage of profanity that underlines the witless writing.

Carrey tries to emerge from the dross and does as best as he can with quick switches between Charlie and Hank, but even he is no match for the ghastliness of the material. Zellweger is generally wasted, while in barely defined roles Forster, Cooper and Jenkins appear mortified to be associated with the project.

Incomprehensibly overlong at close to two hours, Me, Myself And Irene is a nauseatingly interminable bungle.

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The Movies Of Robert Forster

All movies starring Robert Forster and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Reflections In A Golden Eye (1967)

Avalanche (1978)

Alligator (1980)

The Delta Force (1986)

Jackie Brown (1997)

Me, Myself And Irene (2000)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Confidence (2003)

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

Firewall (2006)

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

Cleaner (2007)

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past (2009)

The Descendants (2011)

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

London Has Fallen (2016)

The American Side (2016)

What They Had (2018)

The Wolf Of Snow Hollow (2020)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Reflections In A Golden Eye (1967)

A train wreck of weird characters behaving badly, Reflections In A Golden Eye goes off the rails early and never recovers. The story of suppressed homosexuality on an army base teaming with lust and madness spirals into self-imposed chaos.

Major Weldon Penderton (Marlon Brando) commands a US army base in the south. He is stiff, unhappy, suppressed and not interested in sleeping with his wife Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor). She enjoys riding her horse Firebird, and finds sexual satisfaction with willing neighbour Lieutenant Colonel Morris Langdon (Brian Keith). Langdon's wife Alison (Julie Harris) is deeply depressed following the death three years earlier of her newborn child. Alison is only happy in the company of the effeminate and extroverted Filipino houseboy Anacleto (Zorro David).

Also on the base, Private Williams (Robert Forster) looks after cleaning the horses and stables, and has the habit of riding horses in the nude. Penderton starts to get attracted to Williams, who in turn starts stalking the the Penderton household, and invading Leonora's room while she sleeps. With Alison's condition worsening, Penderton growing ever more enamoured with Williams, and Williams developing the unhealthy habit of sniffing Leonora's underwear, the boiling emotions finally erupt.

Based on a 1941 novel by Carson McCullers, Reflections In A Golden Eye is just too close to an unintended comedy. Five of the main characters belong in a mental asylum, rather than a military base, and without a sensible core to hold the film together, it resembles more of a farce than a drama.

Penderton is dour, preens at himself in the mirror, mumbles his incomprehensible military teachings to the bewilderment of his students, gets into a fight with a horse, and stalks his men around the base. Leonora is wild-eyed, over-sexed, and happy to humiliate her man, including whipping him across the face at a swanky party. Alison is deep into depression, operating at the edge of reason, while Williams is a voyeur, an intruder, a lingerie-sniffer, and rides horses while naked. And finally there is Anacleto, floating, dancing, singing and smiling for his own entertainment in an astonishing display of flightiness.

The performances match the characters in a theatrical display of exaggeration. Brando mutters, rambles and stares, while Taylor sticks either her rear end or her cleavage in Brando's face at every opportunity. Harris mostly just looks into the non-existent distance, and Forster, in his debut, wears a single fixed look of anguish and hardly says anything. Zorro David, in his first and mercifully last movie appearance, is in a world on his own, doing something that on a bad day may resemble acting, but even that is debatable. Brian Keith is left with the only semi-rational character, and he is naturally overwhelmed.

It is all supposed to represent suppression and lust, but director John Huston never finds the fine line where normal behaviour is strained by unresolved internal conflict, and settles instead for a large serving of outright battiness. Huston adds to the air of melodrama-run-amok by tinting the movie with a golden hue, creating a gold-and-black film with just the odd object per frame maintaining its colour. According to the peerless Anacleto, it's all supposed to represent the reflection of what a golden peacock's eye can see, but the effect is that of basic nausea. After the film bombed, normal colour was restored to later prints, but the film's awfulness is most appreciated with the original pee-coloured vision.

Forget the military base: Reflections In A Golden Eye is a certifiable cuckoo's nest.

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Movie Review: The Delta Force (1986)

One of the more ambitious Cannon Film efforts, The Delta Force teams veteran Lee Marvin with expressionless Chuck Norris, throws a lot of once-famous names at the screen, and achieves some engagement by taking its time to develop a story and a dose of drama prior to the machine guns opening up. But once the shooting starts, it quickly disintegrates into the mind-numbing excesses that made most Golan - Globus productions infamously bad.

Two terrorists led by Abdul Rifi (Robert Forster) hijack an American Travelways flight from Athens. The plane is diverted to Lebanon, where terrorist reinforcements arrive to bolster the hijackers. The Jewish passengers (including Martin Balsam and Joey Bishop) are taken off the plane and held captive in Beirut prison cells. Also on board are three US Navy sailors who are singled out for rough treatment, with one eventually killed. Throughout, flight attendant Ingrid (Hanna Schygulla) does her best to calm the tense situation and avoid further violence. After some traipsing across the Middle East, the plane returns to Lebanon and all the hostages are taken off the aircraft and stashed in a Beirut terrorist stronghold.

The elite counter-terrorist Delta Force, under the command of Colonel Alexander (Marvin) and Major McCoy (Norris) is dispatched to mount a rescue. Alexander and McCoy were part of the shambolic 1980 operation that spectacularly failed in an attempt to extract the American embassy hostages in Iran. Determined to make amends, the Delta Force launches a daring mission within Beirut to rescue the hostages and retrieve the hijacked plane.

Inspired by the true 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner (the real Delta Force was readied but not deployed), The Delta Force may have represented the peak of achievement for Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Directed by Golan, it was the first major Cannon production filmed at the GG Israel Studios in Jerusalem, and it also turned out to be the only high profile film to make use of the facility before the company collapsed. Shelley Winters, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Bo Svenson, and Susan Strasberg are among the once somewhat famous actors who get smallish parts in The Delta Force, and despite triggering a game of spot the has-been, they collectively add interest to the film.

The movie does exhibit an increased level of professionalism and care. Scenes and characters are given appropriate time to breathe and develop, and the earlier part of the hijacking saga hits some promising notes in building the on-board tension between assailants and victims. But the final third of the film retreats to the Neanderthal cave where most of Cannon's action films dwell. Norris' McCoy character in particular contributes to an elevated amount of nonsense, killing hordes of terrorists on a motorcycle filled with an endless supply of lethal rockets, and an uncanny ability to never miss a single target.

But saddest of all is Lee Marvin's frail appearance in The Delta Force. In his farewell performance, he undoubtedly elevates the movie with an injection of distinguished talent and sheer presence. But he is also undeniably fragile and too old for the role, going through the motions in almost visible discomfort.

The Delta Force is not without its point of interest, but the production's limited tool set confines the experience to the cramped economy class, near the dank rear of the plane.

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Movie Review: The Descendants (2011)

Families can be torn apart by accident or on purpose. In the soulfully moving The Descendants, both calamities befall Matt King (George Clooney), and he needs to confront and pacify his tortured emotions while learning the basics of parenting to try and stitch together a family survival plan.

Matt is a lawyer based in Hawaii, and the family trustee for a large and valuable piece of pristine real estate. Matt's life is knocked out of balance when his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) suffers severe head trauma in a boating accident and enters a coma from which she will not recover.

Matt suddenly finds himself the sole parent of two girls. Ten year old Scottie (Amara Miller) is acting all bratty as a reaction to her mother being close to death. 17 year old Alex (Shailene Woodley) has more significant reasons to be upset: just before the boating accident, Alex discovered that her mother was having an affair with real estate agent Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard).

Alex brings in her laid-back friend Sid (Nick Krause) to help her cope, and he is inadvertently a stabilizing influence on the struggling family. Matt breaks the news of Elizabeth's impending death to her father Scott (Robert Forster), and tracks down Brian, whose wife Julie (Judy Greer) is the other victim of the affair. Despite losing a wife and a marriage, Matt must hold on to the remnants of his family and come to grips with a real estate transaction that will have far reaching consequences for his family and Hawaii as a whole.

Every character in The Descendants is dealing with severe loss. Alex and Scottie are losing their mother and the facade of a happy marriage between their parents. Brian, once exposed, is in danger of losing his family and a big commission. Scott is losing his daughter to an accident and his wife to a disease. Julie is losing her marriage. Matt's cousins, who stand to benefit from the land sale, are in danger of losing the opportunity for a big pay day. Even Sid is suffering the after effects of his own family loss.

Matt, at the centre of the maelstrom, is facing losses in every direction: losing his wife, suddenly realizing that he has already lost his marriage, fighting to avoid losing his daughters, losing the respect of his father-in-law, and about to lose his family heritage through a pressure sale. Matt will need to stumble his way out of a maze of sorrow to find a life that holds any remaining meaning, and The Descendants becomes a journey of salvation for a man who refuses to stop looking for life's fire escape.

George Clooney is excellent as a father befuddled by what fate has decided to simultaneously dump on him, and ever so gradually rising to the challenge of making the difficult decisions required to retake control.  Clooney is surrounded by a colourful supporting cast with some sharp edges. Shailene Woodley as Alex demonstrates some evolution to graduate from a rebel terrorizing her father to his greatest ally. It's a tender, if relatively jarring, transition.

Judy Greer briefly - but memorably - appeared with Clooney in Three Kings. Her appearance in The Descendants is also relatively brief but most compelling, as the other injured party in a sordid affair. Greer conveys through her eyes a woman's instinct to sense the sharks moving in to kill her marriage long before she can see their beady eyes.

The rest of the characters in The Descendants do their part in full Hawaiian shirts and sandals glory, Beau Bridges (as one of the cousins) and Robert Forster particularly dominant in their scenes but not bothering with any attempts at nuance.

Director Alexander Payne, who allowed a seven year gap to pass since his celebrated Sideways, keeps life's realities at the core of the film. Humour mixes with pathos, fun with frustration, love with fury, family with business, and nature with human legacy. The Descendants ultimately gets on with what families are meant to do: overcome to the best of their imperfect abilities the most immediate challenge; emerge stronger from the experience; and await the inevitable next test.

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