THE SEA BEAST
Setting sail in waves of dazzling animation, this swashbuckling adventure – featuring the voices of Karl Urban, Zaris-Angel Hator, Dan Stevens, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Jared Harris – has kid-friendly humor, rip-roaring action sequences, and a nice message of coexistence. Though, the two-hour runtime is a little much and the storytelling, while enjoyable, is overall unsurprising with quite a bit borrowed from How to Train Your Dragon.
Maisie Brumble (Hator) is a young girl living in a time where monster hunters are revered, risking their lives to put an end to sea monsters and their destruction of human civilization. She sneaks on to Captain Crow’s (Harris) famed ship and is quickly spotted by the one and only Jacob Holland (Urban), a hard-bitten hunter who’s destined to be Crow’s successor. Maisie has read about them in her history books and is ready to get her feet wet by following her heroes in their conquest to conquer the one beast who has eluded all who have come for it: the gigantic Red Bluster.
From the director of Moana and Big Hero 6, Chris Williams creates a colorful world that kids and adults will not find the least bit boring. Likewise, we might learn a thing or two about fearing what we don’t understand and how history gets slanted depending on who’s writing it.
THE MAN FROM TORONTO
If you think a buddy team-up between Woody Harrelson and Kevin Hart would be the best thing ever…think again. They’re likable dudes, but their chemistry is DOA in this lackluster action-comedy of mistaken identity between a backfiring entrepreneur (Hart) and the world’s deadliest assassin (Harrelson). Best of all, it can all be blamed on printer toner. Practically everything director Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) comes up with has been done a million times over with one exception: they are way more entertaining than what’s thrown together here. Lazy and unfunny, Hart is stuck doing his usual schtick while Harrelson is just trying to look cool by being decked out in black from head-to-toe. Whatever they do hardly matters because there’s no escaping such obnoxious material. It’s pretty painful to watch them try, too.
GIRL IN THE PICTURE
In 1990, a woman by the name of Tonya Hughes is found dead on the side of the road in Oklahoma City after a hit-and-run. But what if she’s not who we think she is? Clarence Hughes, her husband, has taken their son Michael and disappeared. But what if he’s not really Tonya’s husband? And that’s just for starters in this horrific, staggering complex, and disturbing true-crime documentary from Skye Borgman, the director of Abducted in Plain Sight. Nothing…and I mean NOTHING…is as it seems as we go down the rabbit hole to piece together a senseless tragedy that uncovers multiple identities and atrocious truths involving child abuse, kidnapping, sex trafficking, and murder.
Borgman offers up the necessary archival footage and interviews with those who knew the mystery woman, who loved her, wrote about her, and those who tried to find her killer. From those, Joe Fitzpatrick and Matt Birkbeck undeniably become enormous difference makers on solving this crazy case. Continuous twists and turns and shocking revelations will grip viewers throughout. At the same time, Borgman could have spent more time digging deeper into the parents of who was last known as Tonya Hughes. It raises more questions about how they and so many others failed her, leaving her stranded in an abyss of evil. The very thought of not knowing who you are and where you come from is unfathomable, but sadly it’s a painful reality for some. Heartbreaking and haunting, this story has us hanging on for dear life in a mind-boggling ride that goes off the rails – hurtling toward terrifyingly dark places.
Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association and the Southeastern 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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