THE GUILTY
In director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the original 2018 Danish thriller, Jake Gyllenhaal delivers an explosive performance playing a demoted LAPD cop stuck at a 911 dispatch desk who receives a call from a woman who’s been kidnapped. From there, through some pulse-pounding phone conversations – he does all he can to save a stranger while internally fighting his own impulses and individual affliction.
Unlike the original, this falls a little short of being a tightly-wound thriller, yet Fuqua and writer Nic Pizzolatto manage to gradually build up enough suspense to keep us invested in what will happen next. This is basically a one-man show and it doesn’t get any better than Gyllenhaal. His non-stop energy grabs the movie and never lets go, which is the main reason this works as well as it does.
PREY
Two brothers and their friends go hiking in the woods for a bachelor weekend, yet end up becoming target practice for an unknown shooter in this German thriller, written and directed by Thomas Sieben. It starts off strong, but the moment the mystery of who is after them and why is dumbly stumbled upon – it’s downhill from there. The survival story falls in to the typical traps of being predictable and inconsequential, and there’s no escaping for Sieben and crew once they’re there.
SCHUMACHER
Committed, competitive, and cocky, the seven-time F1 champion is each one and needed to be to do what he did out there on the track to reach the highest level of success. Directors Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns, Vanessa Nöcker, and Michael Wech take us on a quick spin through Michael Schumacher’s early years in racing, his feud with Senna, and winning his first two F1 championships. The filmmakers then change gears and spend a lot of time on Schumacher’s relentlessness in making Ferrari a championship team once again.
The racing documentary is exciting when Schumacher is in the car and fairly engaging when he’s out of it. At the same time, it feels safe in its telling of his career and limited when it comes to his life off the track with his family and after his accident. Privacy is a big thing here, which is understandable. Even so, it feels as though the brakes are being pumped a little too much in truly understanding who Schumacher was and is. All in all it’s a fulsome journey for his fans.
NIGHTBOOKS
Winslow Fegley plays Alex, a young boy who’s passionate about writing scary stories but is teased for it by his classmates who never showed up for his birthday. Not even his best friend. Yet, as much as he may want to swear off his spooky storytelling, he’s going to need it if he wants to save himself and his new friend Yasmin (Lidya Jewett) from a nefarious witch (Krysten Ritter) who is holding them captive in her lair that looks a lot like a New York City apartment!
It’s an enjoyably scary family-friendly flick that tells a familiar fairytale in a new way. The all-around performances are good, but no one is living it up more than Ritter. She wears the wickedness well. The imagination that’s on display from director David Yarovesky makes for a darkly fun adventure where the scares are decent and, fortunately for adults, not too kiddie.
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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