One Movie Punch

Today’s movie is “Happy Hunting” (2017) starring Martin Dingle Wall as Warren Novak, an alcoholic running from drug runners on his way to Mexico to meet his newly discovered daughter. Before entering Mexico, Warren stops in a border town called Bedford Flats, the night before their annual community hunting festival. As the drug runners track him to Bedford Flats, Warren seeks refuge with Steve Patterson, played by Ken Lally, who heads up an addiction recovery group in town.

Warren struggles with withdrawal while hiding out, so he raids the Patterson medicine cabinet looking for a fix to take the edge off. However, the pills are spiked and Warren passes out halfway out the door. Warren awakens the following day, bound & gagged in the back of a truck with five other individuals, selected by the community to be hunted during the festival. Warren is also beginning to experience the first effects of alcohol withdrawal, often deadly when quitting cold turkey.

Joe Dietsch and Louie Gibson wrote and directed “Happy Hunting”, their first feature length film. The film draws obvious inspiration from Richard Connell’s oft-remade 1924 story “The Most Dangerous Game”, but executes with the cinematic styling of 2016’s independent thriller “Carnage Park”. The film makes use of beautiful panoramic shots for transitions, but sometimes overuses standard thriller editing techniques.

Dietsch and Gibson created an engaging script with enough twists and turns to keep the viewer engaged in what could otherwise be an oversimplified narrative. The dialogue can be hokey at times, making the characters feel more like caricatures, but that doesn’t stop a solid performance by Martin Dingle Wall, or a wonderful second half performance by Ken Lally. Fans of thriller and exploitation films will enjoy most of this film, and while I may not have always agreed with every decision, I did respect their vision and process.

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Metacritic: TBD

One Movie Punch: 7.0/10

"Happy Hunting" is currently streaming on Netflix.

Today’s movie is: “AlphaGo” (2017), a documentary about AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence program written by Google Deep Mind, and AlphaGo’s historic defeat of Lee Sedol in March 2016 in Seoul, South Korea. I used to play Go regularly at a local club and find the game fascinating, so combining the love of that game with an interest in artificial intelligence is right up my alley.

The documentary begins with quick overviews of both artificial intelligence and Go, giving you enough information to understand the basic moves, while avoiding any deep dives into thousands of years of strategy and philosophy surrounding the game. It does highlight key points using intuitive animations to explain why this attempted feat is so important, explaining Go’s hidden complexity and the current bounds of artificial intelligence.

The main portion of the documentary surrounds two games. First, an initial series of matches in October 2015 with Fan Hui, the Chinese-born French Go player, in which AlphaGo wins five games to zero. Fan Hui would join the team, helping to further develop the program’s overall Go strategy. The Go community doubted the strength of AlphaGo, and a second series of matches was set up with Lee Sedol.

Lee Sedol faces off against AlphaGo in a series of five matches, acting as a larger battle between human and machine. At first confident in his ability, Lee Sedol is forced to resign the first three matches, as AlphaGo continues to not only learn, but innovate on the game using its programming. Lee Sedol goes from confident to almost destroyed.

However, they play the remaining two matches, and in game four, Lee Sedol plays a bold move that throws off AlphaGo, claiming one victory. You can’t help but want to shout “TAKE THAT, SKYNET!” Of course, that doesn’t prevent AlphaGo from winning the final match. Lee Sedol is humbled, but also learns new strategy that he has taken back into the human Go world.

Assuming we don’t kill ourselves a species, there is a real possibility that we’ll see a future with artificial intelligence capabilities beyond the meager uses we have right now. AlphaGo’s victory will be seen as one of the more important milestones in that development, and reciprocally, AlphaGo will also teach us new things about the game of Go in the process.

Greg Kohs delivers straight-ahead, chronological storytelling surrounding the match with just enough tangential explanations to make it exciting and informative.

RT: 100%

Metacritic: TBD

One Movie Punch: 7.2/10

You can watch “AlphaGo” right now on Netflix.

Hey, do you like neo-exploitation films that utilize mature themes, brutal violence, and a protagonist in a continuous downward spiral? Well, then I have just the film for you: “Brawl in Cell Block 99” (2017).

Vince Vaughn stars as Bradley Thomas, a former boxer and recovering alcoholic trying to do right by his life and his marriage. After losing his job and learning his wife Lauren (played by Jennifer Carpenter) was cheating on him, Bradley decides to take a job running drugs to make a better life for them, and to hopefully bring a child into this world.”

However, after a drug run goes bad with a new client, Bradley is sent to prison for seven years, just 90 days before the birth of their daughter. Intending to live his life quietly in prison, a representative of the new client visits him in jail, threating his wife and their unborn child unless he gets transferred to a specific maximum security prison and cell block, run by Warden Tuggs, played by Don Johnson, to kill an inmate.”

“Brawl in Cell Block 99” (2017) is a deceptively simple movie full of surprises, both subtle and direct. Writer and Director S. Craig Zahler creates a slow burn, taking his time getting to the prison, building the characters and suspense, and then finally delivering on the carnage, all backed by classic and modern soul tunes.”

I loved nearly everything about this film, but there are some really bad practical effects that made their way into the film, which once seen cannot be unseen. Perhaps this was intended as a further homage to the exploitation genre, and their sometimes gaudy practical effects, but it remains the only major problem with the film, and one I am more than willing to look over. 

RT: 92% (CERTIFIED)

Metacritic: 79/100

One Movie Punch: 8.0/10

“Brawl in Cell Block 99” (2017) is available for purchase wherever you enjoy movies.

“Bright” (2017) is a convoluted genre mashup film, combining the fantasy and buddy cop genres with mixed results. The film is set in an alternate modern reality, where classic fantasy species like orcs and elves have existed with humans since the dawn of time. The elves run the world, representing the moneyed class, while the orcs are confined to the ghettos, economically victimized for actions taken two millennia ago.

The film opens with Will Smith, playing Officer Daryl Ward, a human, waiting for Joel Edgerton, playing Officer Jakoby, the world’s first orcish police officer. Officer Ward takes a shotgun bullet to the chest, while Officer Jakoby fails to capture the suspect, which creates additional tension on top of the latent racism between humans and orcs. The officers later respond to a call involving an elf with a magic wand.

Ward and Jakoby spend the rest of the film keeping the magic wand away from the renegade elf owner, their fellow officers, a latino street gang, an orcish street gang, and pretty much everyone else. The setting and concept for the film leave so many questions regarding the history of this world and how it operates, except in the most visually superficial of ways, like the admittedly excellent costumes and make-up.

Officer Ward comes off as an unconvincing, conflicted racist. Smith’s strength is in playing a lovable smartass, but his lines make him sound like a total asshole. Joel Edgerton is awful as Nick Jakoby, with idiotic lines that cover up the passing mentions of the nobility of orcs. The relationship between Smith and Edgerton lacks chemistry, which should be essential for the buddy cop genre, and their banter feels forced or falls flat.

And Noomi Rapace, as Tikka, is extremely reminiscent of Leela from 1997’s “The Fifth Element”. The film becomes a series of badly executed scenes, where even the amazing fighting style of the elves is hard to take seriously in person versus car fight in a convenience store, for example. Extra elements, like a dragon flying in the sky during a transition, tend to pull the viewer out of the experience, while others scenes hit you over the head with their allegorical significance.

Overall, I think “Bright” has too many elements to make a solid film, which is similar to David Ayer’s work on “Suicide Squad” (2016). The film could lose a half hour of content and a few sub-plots... and still effectively tell the story. Alternatively, the universe developed in this film would make for an excellent police procedural television series, allowing more time to reveal the history and to help develop the characters in meaningful ways. 

Rotten Tomatoes:    28%

Metacritic:          29/100

One Movie Punch:    4.4/10

“Bright” (2017) is available for immediate streaming on Netflix.