Shudder Saturday: Abraham's Boys (2025)

I have liked some of the previous directorial work of Natasha Kermani. I have also liked a lot of the writing of Joe Hill (including his collection, 20th Century Ghosts, that contains this story, although I cannot say that I remember it). Titus Welliver being in a main role will also get me to watch something. Which makes it all the more frustrating that Abraham's Boys was such a disappointing work. There's an interesting idea somewhere in the middle of it, but Kermani isn't able to explore it in the best way.

Welliver plays the Abraham of the title, and he's one Mr. Van Helsing. He's now married to Mina (Jocelin Donahue). They have two sons, named Max (Brady Hepner) and Rudy (Judah Mackey). Things might be good for them, but the work of a Van Helsing is never done, which is something the sons need to learn as they start to worry about their parents.

Here are the things I liked about Abraham's Boys. The performances from Welliver, Donahue, Hepner, Mackey, Aurora Perrineau, and Jonathan Howard (playing Arthur Holmwood). That is all. Okay, maybe I enjoyed some of the last scenes, but not half as much as I expected to. The strength of this film lies in the performances, and I think it would be very interesting to see this adapted into a one-man show, with someone as capable as Welliver carrying the entire thing on his shoulders.

That doesn't mean that I disliked everything else here. I just didn't find anything else very interesting or impressive. The visual style throughout is sparse and quite dull. I get that it is aiming to reflect the rudimentary way of life apparently preferred by the main patriarch, but it doesn't do anything to improve the weak and disappointing screenplay. Kermani seems to have too much faith in the central idea, but it's only good enough if used as a starting point for an actual journey. There's no journey here. In fact, it feels as if it spends 89 minutes going absolutely nowhere.

The strangest thing about this is that I can't see why Kermani was drawn to it. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe she viewed it as an interesting challenge, but was subsequently undone by it. Or maybe she just wanted to try something different. It's hard to see see any connecting threads between this and her previous two features though (note: I've not seen Shattered, the 2017 film she directed), and I would argue that she clearly works better when it's a screenplay with more of an overt female view of certain subject matter. Whether or not any of my theorising is correct, I can at least opt to blame Joe Hill for this. That way I can still look forward to whatever Kermani decides to do next.

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: Gone Baby Gone (2007)

The feature directorial debut of Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone allows the actor to come out swinging. Hard. Having also worked on the screenplay with Aaron Stockard, adapting the Dennis Lehane novel, Affleck has a controlling and steady hand all over this. He may have helped himself by casting his younger brother, Casey Affleck, in the lead role, with the two apparently bringing out the best in one another.

The plot revolves around the disappearance of a 4-year-old girl, Amanda McCready. The police, headed up by Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), want a positive outcome, but the odds of that happening diminish with every passing day. Desperate relatives hire Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck), a street-smart private investigator who may be able to get information from people who wouldn't talk to the police. Kenzie works with his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), and the two of them quickly seem to make a bit more progress than the police.

Almost as much a study of a place as it is a murky crime drama chock full of memorable characters, Gone Baby Gone sometimes comes perilously close to feeling like some kind of parody. Most of the cast have worked hard on their accents, but they're also people we don't normally hear speaking with that particular Boston drawl. The strength of the material helps them overcome that though, as well as their commitment to their roles (most notable in the strong atypical turn from Amy Ryan, playing the mother of the missing girl).

Although arguably not as cinematically ambitious as his next feature, The Town, this benefits from a script that mixes neo-noir cool with a load of unsavoury characters. The twists and turns are gripping, but none of them feel completely unbelievable. And the third act is one superb moment after another.

There isn't really anyone here I could single out as letting down the rest of the cast, with fairly flawless performances (wavering accents aside) across the board. Affleck is perfect for the lead role, always being underestimated due to his youthful appearance, but always sizing up every bad situation as quickly as possible to find the best way out of it. Monaghan does fine, playing a vital character who almost provides another entire facet to Affleck's character. As well as Ryan giving a great performance, sterling support is provided by the likes of Morgan Freeman (as good as ever), Titus Welliver (another one here with one of his very best film roles), and Ed Harris (on top form). Michael Kenneth Williams has a couple of decent little moments and Edi Gathegi makes a strong impression as a criminal who may or may not know the whereabouts of the missing child.

Grounded with a very real blanket level of pain and trauma, and positing one hell of a moral quandary in the third act, Gone Baby Gone is a mature and thought-provoking work that also manages to be consistently captivating.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Shaft (2019)

You know the name. Shaft is the cool cat that we've been digging since he first appeared in cinemas back in the early 1970s. Richard Roundtree played the role, and memorably. A reworking of the bad mother (shut your mouth . . . but I'm talkin' 'bout Shaft) appeared in 2000, with Samuel L. Jackson taking on the main role. And now we have a film that features both of those actors playing the role, although the former isn't onscreen for long, while introducing a new member to the family (played by Jessie T. Usher).

Usher is JJ Shaft, a young man who hasn't seen his father in many years. That's because his mother (Maya, played by Regina Hall) decided to leave, in order to keep her son safe from the kind of trouble that his father would attract. But when JJ needs help to investigate the death of a good friend, he ends up tracking down his father, John Shaft (Jackson). Bones are broken, bullets fly, women start to find the danger arousing, and Shaft and Shaft Jr hurtle towards a grand finale that will require the help of someone equally capable. Grandpa AKA John Shaft, Sr (Roundtree).

Shaft is an enjoyable comedy, with some decent action beats that don't skimp on the gunfire and bloodshed, but that is something that will upset a lot of fans. It's not something that bothered me, however, mainly because the main incarnations of the character that we have seen before were rarely the butt of any jokes. Usher plays a man brought up in a very different world, and with a very different attitude, but the secret to getting things done is usually adding on a bit of that patented Shaft badassery. And it's fair enough to highlight the fact that the classic traits of the character wouldn't necessarily be as appreciated today as they have been in previous decades (although they're only really unappreciated here by other people who have not spent a decent amount of time in Shaft's world).

Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow have put together a decent script, allowing the leads to have some very entertaining moments together, and peppering many scenes with dialogue that both works for the characters and also proves amusing enough. It feels like a good pairing, with Barris having a few more movies under his belt and Barnow having a decent selection of TV shows under his.

As just mentioned, Jackson and Usher work well together. The former is his usual persona, Usher spends a lot of the movie playing catch up (although he does have one or two tricks up his sleeve, and has more skill than is immediately apparent). Roundtree still has his full serving of charisma, which makes his limited screentime all the more frustrating. The villains are decent enough, and Titus Welliver delivers a great little turn as The Man, the immediate boss to JJ who doesn't ever give him an opportunity to reach his full potential. The ladies may be sidelined for a lot of the runtime, but that doesn't stop both Hall and Alexandra Shipp (playing Sasha, a good friend to JJ) doing their best with what they're given. Both manage to stand out in a fill overflowing with testosterone, as does Luna Lauren Velez, in the role of a potential lead/criminal named Bennie Rodriguez.

Director Tim Story keeps everything moving nicely. This is a 110-minute movie that whizzes by. There's a great soundtrack (although it's missing one classic cut), some entertaining set-pieces, and a central investigation with a couple of twists and turns, despite the fact that most viewers will be able to point to at least one of the main villains within their first few scenes. And Shaft is still also very much Shaft. As is Shaft. JJ, on the other hand, well, he needs a lot of work. But he might be able to find his own Shaftiness by the time the end rolls around.

There are already mixed reviews appearing for this, and just as many advising viewers to stay away. Don't listen to The Man. Give it a watch and make your own mind up.

7/10

Get yourself a funky soundtrack here.
Americans can get a Roundtree triple-bill here.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction (2014)

Feel free to check out my overview of the other Transformers movies right here.

And so we get to the fourth live-action Transformers movie from director Michael Bay, and anyone believing that this outing will be oh-so-different from his previous outings may well find themselves angry at being suckered once again as the end credits roll. Of course, those knowing exactly what they're letting themselves in for should come out smiling. I'm not saying that anyone WILL believe that this robo-flick is going to be any different from the others. I'm just giving fair warning.

Set some years after the events of the last movie, both Autobots and Decepticons are being treated as hostile aliens by shady government types (namely Kelsey Grammer and his right hand man, played by Titus Welliver). They're also being researched by Stanley Tucci and his many workers, in an attempt to make the best use of that incredible technology, and to make lots of money. Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg is an inventor who hasn't made any breakthrough in the years that he's spent chasing his dream, leaving him with a seriously unhealthy bank balance and a seriously exasperated daughter (Nicola Peltz). All that looks set to change when he finds a run-down truck that turns out to be Optimus Prime, bringing the potential for great reward, and also great danger.

Love or hate the guy, and so many fall into the latter camp, it's hard to think of anyone who does BIG action set-pieces as well as Michael Bay. Why choreograph a fight between some robots when you can choreograph it in mid-air while the robots are transforming to overcome obstacles? Why put your main characters in some mild peril when you can put them through some physics-defying trauma that works the stunt performers and FX team to way beyond normal? Bay always thinks big, which is why these movies work well, for most of the time.

I've enjoyed all of the Transformers films, to some degree, because they all supply what I want to see, when it comes to large robots battling one another and transforming in cool ways. Ehren Kruger, back on the script-writing duties here, doesn't fix a formula that ain't broke. The human characters are still pretty thin, although Grammer, Welliver and Tucci all fare much better than John Turturro did in the previous movies, and the focus is on the spectacular set-pieces, as it should be.

Wahlberg isn't too bad in the main role, it's just a shame that the inventor side of his character is overshadowed by the single dad side. He's over-protective of Peltz, and that becomes more noticeable when they're joined by her boyfriend (Jack Reynor). Oh, and Reynor is playing an Irish lad for no discernible reason that I can think of, apart from allowing Wahlberg to then call him "Lucky Charms" throughout the movie. Seriously, either allow the guy to use his own accent or get, hmmmm, an Irish actor. T.J. Miller is good fun in a small role, Binbing Li gets to kick some ass, and Sophia Myles is underused, but always worth having in any movie, in my opinion (dear Hollywood, put Sophia Myles in more movies).

Optimus Prime is meaner than he has been previously, with good reason, and he's joined by Bumblebee, Hound, Drift, Crosshairs and Brains in his latest battle with Galvatron (essentially Megatron in a different guise), all while avoiding the attention of a robo-bounty hunter named Lockdown. Yeah, most of these names mean very little to me either, but I thought I'd mention some of the main robo-characters for fans who know much more about this universe than I do. And there are dinobots. How could I almost forget to mention the glorious dinobots? They may not get too much time on screen, about 15 minutes at most, but they're pretty damn impressive when they appear.

There are moments in which things pitch over into the ridiculous, including a high-wire sequence that proves that Wahlberg may be the most well-balanced man on the planet, literally, but this is a movie that's never too far away from another fantastic bit of eye-candy or impressive stunt work, or both. It's a bit overlong, at over two and a half hours (the longest entry in the series), but it's almost perfectly paced, meaning that it doesn't overstay its welcome. Well, not by too much.

And there are dinobots.

7/10

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