Movie Review Flatliners

Flatlines (2017) 

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

Written by Ben Ripley 

Starring Elliot Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland

Release Date September 29th, 207 

Flatliners is a remarkably bad movie. I love Elliot Page; he is a very compelling and charismatic actor. Why has he been marginalized so much that he felt she needed to make this bizarrely dumb movie? What compelled him and the very talented director Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to think this movie was a good idea? Why did anyone think that remaking a movie as bad as the original Flatliners was a good idea? The Joel Schumaker directed 1990 Flatliners is a terrible movie and somehow this version manages to be worse than that. I’m baffled.

Flatliners stars Eliot Page as Courtney, a medical student who is plagued by the memory of the death of her younger sister in an accident that was her fault. Nine years after the accident Courtney has become consumed by the idea of knowing whether or not there is an afterlife where she might atone for her sin. Wanting to know about the afterlife she conceives of an experiment where she will have fellow med students stop her heart and let her die for a few minutes before bringing her back with the secrets of death.

Joining Courtney for the experiment is Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) and Jamie (James Norton) a trust fund kid who Courtney assumes is just reckless enough to go along with the plan. Dragged into the experiment are Ray (Diego Luna) and Marlo (Nina Dobrev) who jump in when Sophia and Jamie struggle to bring Courtney back to life. If you bought into the idea that Courtney might not come back after her first Flatline you might just be the audience for this movie. The complete lack of suspense in this scene doesn’t prevent lots of heavy breathing and forced tension.

Of course, Courtney must come back to life because her subsequent hallucinations are the source of most of the film’s jump scares. Courtney decides to keep the jump-scare-itis she contracted from flatlining to herself and when Jamie sees her thriving, answering difficult questions, relearning how to play the piano, as if her brain has been rewired by flatlining, he decides he must do it next. The film again must give us the forced fake tension of whether he’s going to come back or not. He does and then it’s party montage time because the last thing this movie needs is to do anything we can’t predict.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review The Bricklayer

The Bricklayer (2024) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Hanna Weg, Matt Johnson 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson, Clifton Collins Jr. 

Release Date January 5th, 2023 

Published January 4th, 2023 

The Bricklayer is a remarkably banal and completely terrible movie. The film stars Aaron Eckhardt as the titular bricklayer. Naturally, he's not bricklayer, not really anyway. He does lay bricks and even builds a small wall early in the movie, but his tragic backstory is soon revealed. The Bricklayer, aka Vail, lost his family when they were slaughtered by his former friend, played by Clifton Collins Jr. This caused Vail to abandon the life of a CIA spy in favor of bricks. He believes that he had killed his former friend but now he's found out that he's wrong. 

Collins' terrorist character is back and is now murdering international journalists and framing the CIA for the kills. The CIA needs Vail to come out of retirement and finish the job of killing the terrorist. Naturally, the only person the CIA could possibly team him with is an inexperienced tech wiz who can find information that the rest of the CIA can't because their lazy and jaded and she's young and beautiful. Nina Dobrev is the whippersnapper CIA agent who will pose as Vail's wife as they snoop their way inside the high society of Greece where the most recent murdered journalist was staying. 

The cliches of The Bricklayer move fast and furious. Literally, some of these were made cliche by the Fast and Furious movies. Aside from a hero who enjoys the trade of bricklaying, there is nothing remotely original about The Bricklayer. I mean everything, right down to star Aaron Eckhardt's raspy tough guy speaking voice. In one of the first scenes in the movie, Eckhardt is shot by one of those bad guys who rarely hits anything while firing a needless number of bullets. So, Eckhardt duct tapes his gunshot would shut, and engages in a hand-to-hand fight that would put most MMA fights to shame. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Dog Days

Dog Days (2018)

Directed by Ken Marino

Writen by Elissa Matsueda, Erica Oyama

Starring Tone Bell, Vanessa Hudgens, Nina Dobrev, Adam Pally, Rob Corddry, Eva Longoria

Release Date August 8th, 2018 

Published August 10th, 2018 

Dog Days is an ensemble, family comedy, part-time romance, about people and the dogs who love them. It’s cheesy as the day is long but there is a particular charm to the direction Ken Marino brings to the film. That charm emanates from his terrific cast of comedy veterans toning down their act for the family set. People such as Tig Notaro, Lauren Lapkus, and Jessica St. Clair, make cameo appearances in Dog Days, and not just cameos, they have killer jokes to go with those cameos.

The plot centers on a universe of people beginning with Elizabeth (Nina Dobrev), the host of a popular daytime TV show. Elizabeth is so close to her dog that she leaves her TV on while she’s not home so her pup can laze around and watch mom on TV. Sadly, the dog is there when Elizabeth catches her boyfriend cheating on her and is apparently so broken up about the break up that he has to go to doggy therapy.

Elizabeth would like to be alone but that’s not going to happen as she is then given a new co-host for her talk show, Jimmy played by Tone Bell. Jimmy is a former football player and fellow dog lover who credits his pooch with saving his life after his football career ended abruptly. His style of winging it on the job flies in the face of Elizabeth’s buttoned up, very prepared style. Naturally, this means they are meant to be together.

There are four parallel plots in all in Dog Days. The next biggest involves Vanessa Hudgens as a coffee shop worker who begins volunteering at a dog shelter. Initially, she’s trying to impress a handsome but vacuous veterinarian but soon she begins to find purpose in working with the animals. This leads to a friendship and budding flirtation with the shelter owner, Garrett, played by the always awkward John Bass, last seen embarrassing himself deeply in Baywatch the movie.

Next up are Rob Corddry and Eva Longoria as a married couple who have adopted a young girl named Amelia. The child is sullen and distant despite the attempts of the couple to soften her up but things change when they find a lost pug. The pug becomes Amelia’s best friend and she begins to warm up to the new parents who’ve given her the dog. Unfortunately, we know where the dog came from, plot strand number 4.

Plot number 4 involves Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard as a pizza delivery boy with a bad attitude. When he delivers a pizza to an elderly man, played by Ron Cephus Jones, the elderly man’s dog gets out of the house only to be rescued by Amelia and her new family. The old man is kind and the dog belonged to his late wife. The emotional pull of this part of the story is surprisingly strong, even as it is quite admittedly pulling hard on the heartstrings.

Did I say there are four plots in Dog Days? I meant 5, there are 5 plots in Dog Days. Adam Pally plays a shiftless wannabe rocker who is tasked with dog-sitting for his pregnant sister, played by the brilliant Jessica St. Clair and her husband played by Thomas Lennon. Not allowed to have pets in his apartment, Pally is saddled with a running gag about hiding his dog inside an music equipment box and people thinking he’s transporting a body or a kidnapped person.

It’s not a particularly good gag, it earns mostly groans, though the payoff physical gag isn’t bad. Pally is terrific at playing a slothful layabout, a moocher with charm to spare. His part here is mostly as filler to the other plots but Pally is likable enough and his big puppy is cute enough that the plot doesn’t get in the way of anything and kind enhances the charm of Dog Days thanks to Pally’s inherent appeal.

There is a whole lot of plot here but it works for the most part. Many have, rather unfairly compared Dog Days to the work of the late hack Garry Marshall with his sprawling cast and nebulous plotting but that’s a rather significant insult to this movie. Marshall’s cloying, manipulative, holiday-based dreck were sloppy and earned a consistent series of ever-deepening groans before sloughed off the screen in a heap at their laugh-free conclusion. Dog Days is tighter, smarter and has actual laughs, something the Garry Marshall films only dreamed of having.

I did not expect much of Dog Days and it’s that low bar that likely has us here right now with me recommending the movie. That said, rather backhandedly, I do recommend this movie. The cast is charming and funny, the dogs are cute and it has legitimately big laughs in more than one scene. Given the landscape of modern comedy, Dog Days is a minor miracle as it provides a modern PG comedy with real laughs that don’t all require the sacrifice of one’s dignity via pratfall or bodily function humor. I personally want to give Ken Marino an award of some sort for this modest achievement but I am in the minority of positive opinions of Dog Days.