Netflix And Chill: Eli (2019)

The more I think about his filmography, the more surprised I am by the fact that director Ciarán Foy keeps getting opportunities to helm potentially decent horror movies. His debut feature, Citadel, was solid, but nothing since then has shown him to be an assured hand. Eli is a prime example, although he's hindered by a laughably weak script.

Eli (Charlie Shotwell) is a very sick young boy, with an auto-immune disorder that makes him unable to live a normal life. His parents, Rose (Kelly Reilly) and Paul (Max Martini), pin all of their hope on one last treatment, headed up by Dr. Horn (Lili Taylor). But all is not well in the facility that they end up in, as Eli sees spirits around him, and starts to wonder if those treating him really have his best interests at heart. Perhaps he'll just end up being the latest victim of their experimental approach.

Eli just isn't all that interesting, I'm afraid to say. The way in which the main character is shown to be affected by the world around him isn't set up well enough, doesn't feel consistent, and will simply remind many viewers of one or two much better movies (such as The Others, for example). It doesn't help that you feel no sympathy, or care, for the other characters, a mix of the writing and poor casting.

Reilly can be good in the right role, and I have enjoyed her work in a number of movies, but this isn't the right role for her, especially when she's required to both turn some things around and provide some exposition in the final reel. I'm not too familiar with Max Martini, and his turn here doesn't make me want to rush to refresh my memory with his roles in other movies I have seen. Taylor is a highlight, doing her best with weak material, and almost managing to overcome it by simply being Lili Taylor. Shotwell actually does a good job, and his relationship with a young girl, Haley (Sadie Sink), who visits to talk to him from the other side of his window is another highlight, thanks to the performances of both young actors.

The cast might have fared better with a better script though. We'll never know. David Chirchirillo, Ian Goldberg, and Richard Naing have worked together to craft something absolutely risible. Not only is it a silly premise, once all becomes clear, it makes no sense and treats viewers like idiots by assuming they will just accept everything without questioning the logic of the film (important reminder, questioning the logic of a movie on the terms it is delivering material is not the same as expecting real-world logic from every movie you watch). Eli makes no sense throughout, and everything falls apart during a time when the writers obviously think they are being clever and creative.

Foy is no help. He admittedly does okay with individual scare moments, but fails to do enough to distract viewers from the failings of the script. If you're going to utilise cliches then you need to try to make other elements feel fresh. If you're going to journey into silliness then you need to either lay the groundwork from the earliest scenes or do a better job with the tone. Foy just goes along with a script that he really should have been aiming to constantly improve.

I am sure that some people will enjoy Eli. I have no idea who those people are, and I don't think many of the horror fans I know will think this one worth their time.

3/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Sabotage (2014)

Despite the addition of guns and gore, Sabotage is little more than another riff on And Then There Were None, a fine thriller by Agatha Christie. A group of people are invited to come together, their numbers start to dwindle, and everyone wonders whodunnit. I'm not sure if Christie first came up with the concept, in fact I highly doubt it, but she seemed to package everything in a way that was much more desirable to mass consumers. Unlike David Ayer, who seems to package everything in layers of unpleasantness and misanthropy. That sometimes pays off, and I actually like most of his movies, but not in this case.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the leader of a crack undercover team of DEA agents. They kick down doors where angels fear to tread. And the film opens with them setting themselves up for a nice payday. They're raiding a major drug den, containing a MAJOR pile of money, and skimming about $10M off the top for themselves. Unfortunately, the money then goes missing, the team are investigated, and nobody is happy as they are forced to spend a fair bit of time sitting on their hands, as it were. Things could be looking up, however, when the investigation is ended and the team can go back to doing what they do best. Which is when someone starts killing them off, one by one. And it must be someone good, because these guysare trained to stay alive in some dangerous situations.

Starting off strong, the first 5-10 minutes are pretty great, Sabotage quickly starts dropping in quality with each scene, all the way to a finale that it's hard to care about. That's not to say that there aren't moments of easy entertainment. The nasty deaths are a highlight, and you do (or . . . . should, hopefully) at least want to find out who the killer is. It's just a shame that the rest is such a mess, with a script, written by Ayers and Skip Woods, as weak as any I can think of in recent years. The macho posturing bullshit starts to grate after that opening is over and done, and that's pretty much all that the rest of the movie has to offer.

If you want an object lesson in how to waste a potentially great cast then this is a movie to watch with a pen and notepad beside you. Arnie is the leader of the gang, so he fares better than the rest, but Mireille Enos, Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Max Martini and Kevin Vance are just one mass of muscular douchebags waiting for their potential deaths. Enos is particularly ill-treated, especially considering what a kick-ass first impression she makes in the opening sequence. And we get poor Olivia Williams struggling, both with an American accent and the fact that she has to be a tough investigating officer one moment and then warming to big Arnie the next. In comparison, Harold Perrineau, playing her partner, comes out of the whole thing relatively unscathed. Relatively.

You get some gunfire, you get some blood and guts, you get the eye-rollingly frustrating cliche of tough men and women who work hard and play hard, and you get one or two minor twists to enjoy. What you don't get are characters that you'll enjoy spending time with. Not a one, which leads to the growing apathy that will stay with you even during those last 20 minutes or so. You may as well watch the Beastie Boys video instead, which is much more fun.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Sabotage-Blu-ray-DVD-DIGITAL-UltraViolet/dp/B00JU94ZPS/ref=tmm_blu_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1416355373