Author: Rudie Obias

Moving On: The BRWC Review. By Rudie Obias.

After co-starring together in the TV show Grace and Frankie on Netflix for seven seasons, as well as hit movies like 9 to 5 and most recently 80 For Brady, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are joining forces again in the dark comedy Moving On. The pair have proven time and time again that they have great comedic timing, as well as chemistry out the wazoo, while the movie shows that friendships can last for decades, but so can plotting the perfect revenge.

Written and directed by Paul Weitz (American Pie, About A Boy), Moving On follows Claire (Fonda), an elderly grandmother who returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to attend her old friend from college Joyce’s funeral. Once at the wake, Claire threatens to kill Howard (Malcolm McDowell), her deceased friend’s husband, who wronged her 46 years earlier. With the help of Evelyn (Tomlin), another old friend from college and Joyce’s former lover, the pair plan to get a gun and commit the not-so-perfect crime.

In a way, Moving On is an elderly coming-of-age movie—only with the time of your life that is much older than teenagers and young adults. Figuring out and navigating through life is a lifelong journey and doesn’t just mean adjusting to your adolescence, but rather adjusting to your next stages of life. In this case, Claire and Evelyn are dealing with loss, trauma, and regret—things people of all ages go through during life.

The pair both lost a good friend, their identities, and their happiness at a young age, while they both had to deal with recovering for decades afterwards. The source of their collective unhappiness is, in fact, Howard, who is smug, uncaring, manipulative, and just flat out mean (McDowell is great shortcut casting in this regard). To process this grief and trauma, they have to go on this new journey of discovery to confront the past, in this case Howard, and, in fact, move on—as the title suggests.

However, while the premise is strong and the cast is sharp, Moving On lacks a certain bite and wit to give it a complete recommendation, but rather a mixed one. Yes, the story is worth telling. And yes, the acting is superb. Even the subplot involving rekindling an old romance between Claire and her ex-husband Ralph (Richard Roundtree) is cute and poignant. The cast and themes lift the material more than the sum of its parts, while the movie as a whole doesn’t have the punch it needs to really bring everything together—especially at a mere 85 minutes it feels a bit limp.

Overall, Moving On has its moments, for sure. Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Malcolm McDowell, and Richard Roundtree are all great in their roles, while their performances truly elevate. The themes of aging and regret aren’t usually tackled in movies, so it’s a breath of fresh air that they’re being explored in such a lighthearted, albeit black and grim, comedy. While the film stumbles from time-to-time with its pacing and design, Moving On stays with you—thanks to its winning all-star cast.

The Park: Review. By Rudie Obias

A few years removed from the start of COVID-19 and we’ve seen a number of movies—especially genre movies—that were conceived, inspired by, or created because of the global pandemic. Although the reality is more horrific than a fictional movie version, the pandemic subgenre has been a staple in horror since the dawn of cinema. It’s always fun to imagine what the world would be like if a large portion of humanity were wiped out, while watching people on the big screen living through the worst of the worst puts us in the shoes of survivalists.

The horror movie The Park is the latest entry into the pandemic sub-genre and it offers up some engaging world-building and hearty scares, but ultimately, wears thin and fragile—even at a short 76 minute running time.

Written and directed by Shal Ngo (in his feature film debut), The Park takes place in post-apocalyptic Louisiana a few years after a global pandemic kills off all of the adult population. Only prepubescent boys and girls survived this plague because a mysterious illness is triggered at the beginning of puberty.

The movie follows Ines (Chloe Guidry) and Bui (Nhedrick Jabier), two scavengers who ambush unexpecting targets for food, water, and weapons. The pair come across Kuan (Carmina Garay), a young girl who lives in an abandoned amusement park. As they try to take over the park themselves and fight off a roaming band called “The Blue Meanies,” they come to find out that Kuan has the real key to survival in an unforgiving world.

While The Park certainly has an intriguing high concept—a world run by survivalist children during a deadly global pandemic—the film itself doesn’t live up to it. The Park is really messy balancing the world of the film and the characters who live inside of it. In some ways, it feels as if it would work better as a novel or novella instead of a feature film. It has good bones, but nothing to keep it together like an amusement park without any working rides or attractions. It’s no fun at all.

The character Kuan spends most of the time trying to resurrect an abandoned amusement park to give kids an outlet to be kids again instead of being burdened with the responsibilities and grimness of survival. It’s an admirable feat. However, much like the amusement park, the idea of fun being a kid gets abandoned, as The Park shifts into a save a world narrative with nothing tying the two themes together. It feels small with a large ambition.

At its core, The Park is a story of redemption and trying to regain your childhood. Throughout the film, Ines’ journey is at the center. She navigates through a bleak world with cunning and ruthlessness, but with a surprisingly sympathetic quality, as a kid trying to be an adult. However, it just doesn’t seem to be fully realized in the film itself with so many shortcomings. The story feels flat and limp on the big screen, which is why, considering the concept, it would feel better and more alive, if we left it to our imaginations on the page in a novel or short story. As it stands, The Park is no walk in the park.

Bunker: Review. By Rudie Obias

From Star Wars to From Dusk Till Dawn, mashing up movie genres isn’t new. You can get a lot of great concepts by blindfolding yourself, walking into a video store (hey, remember those), picking two random titles from the different shelves, and letting your imagination run free. Or for younger readers, playing Netflix Roulette with the first two spins.

Case in point: Bunker is a World War I movie wrapped inside of a paranoid thriller/horror movie that offers some really good genre elements like scares, tension, and gore. However, its ambition quickly outweighs its execution, while the movie doesn’t completely live up to its promise.

From director Adrian Langley and screenwriter Michael Huntsman (in his debut film), Bunker follows a group of World War I-era British and American soldiers who attempt to claim a German bunker after its soldiers unexpectedly abandon it. Once the Brits and Americans cross “No Man’s Land,” they discover that only one German soldier is left behind, while everyone is trapped underground after the Germans bomb their own bunker. The soldiers start to dig their way out and radio for help, but they are trapped with a mysterious entity waiting for them in the shadows.

While the premise alone is worth the price of admission, Bunker falls very short and isn’t at all as deep as once perceived. From the start of the film, it kicks off with an impressive opening credits sequence with a fantastic marching score from Andrew Morgan Smith that feels like a mix between composers Frank De Vol and Ennio Morricone (in their war and western films). It’s the big standout of the movie, while it signals to the audience that this movie is going to be a thrilling, genre-heavy film. While the film is small in scope, it feels larger-than-life—thanks to the score. However, that feeling is short-lived as the movie plays out.

One of the biggest problems is once the soldiers are trapped inside and the tension is stretched more and more, it feels as if the movie has no place to go. While the claustrophobic tone apes elements of John Carpenter’s The Thing or Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, as the soldiers start to go mad and lose trust with each other, it doesn’t seem to add up to anything much. The tension seems to be broken about 40 minutes in, which is unfortunate because Bunker is 107 minutes long.

In many ways, Bunker feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone with characters in an extraordinary situation questioning the reality that they found themselves in. Those elements appear in the movie too. Once the soldiers are trapped and start to go mad, they start to question religious convictions, loyalty, and even patriotism during wartime, but overall, it feels disappointing. Any goodwill that the film received at the beginning of the movie is nearly squandered as it unfolds, simply because it goes in circles to pad out its story and runtime. In addition, The Twilight Zone benefits from being only 30-minute episodes, while Bunker has to have the weight of a movie behind it—which, sadly, it just doesn’t have.

Rudie Obias lives in Brooklyn, New York. He’s a freelance writer and editor who is interested in cinema, pop culture, music, NBA basketball, science fiction, and web culture. His work can be found at Fandom, TV Guide, Metacritic, Yahoo!, Battleship Pretension, Mashable, Mental Floss, and of course, BRWC.