The Rise of the Beast<\/em><\/strong> (VOD and DVD December 6):<\/strong> The lumbering title character doesn\u2019t do much rising in this tedious creature feature, which mostly involves people traversing dank corridors. A group of activists infiltrate a secret research facility where they believe a pharmaceutical company is experimenting on animals, only to become the subjects of experiments themselves. Both the activists and their captors are stalked by a giant mutant gorilla, the result of lab testing gone awry, while one activist spends most of the movie slowly and unconvincingly transforming into a sort of were-gorilla after the monster attacks her. Thanks to the janky CGI, the monster can\u2019t really interact with anything else onscreen, so it mainly just roars and waves its arms. There are some perfunctory efforts to build character relationships and formulate social commentary, but those are about as effective as the flailing monster. Nothing about the killer gorilla is scary, and the incoherent story doesn\u2019t make an impact, either. Grade: D<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n #Float<\/em><\/strong> (VOD December 9):<\/strong> The occasional social media-style videos in writer-director Zac Locke\u2019s forgettable horror movie don\u2019t exactly justify the annoying hashtag in the title, and he doesn\u2019t have anything worthwhile to say about modern dependence on online validation. He does occasionally generate some creepy atmosphere as a group of friends take a river-floating trip to honor their late buddy, who died of a drug overdose along that same river. A clich\u00e9d hillbilly weirdo warns them away from the river with vague threats, but they quite reasonably ignore him, until they start suddenly dying. After teasing the mysterious danger on the river, Locke never bothers explaining or even properly depicting it, and the movie ends up as vague and repetitive as that weirdo who keeps popping up. The acting, especially from lead Kate Mayhew, is solid, but the heartfelt bonding moments are out of place amid the supposed terror. Locke fails to make the river itself menacing, leaving merely wan bickering about interpersonal drama. Grade: C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dragon Eats Eagle<\/em> (VOD December 13):<\/strong> Writer-director Noah Marks\u2019 abysmal political \u201csatire\u201d is really just a sketch-comedy take on standard conspiracy-theory talking points. It isn\u2019t remotely clever or funny, and its running time is padded out with stock footage and clips from vintage public service announcements. The central characters are a pair of apparently immortal wanderers who\u2019ve been in the background of important historical events for thousands of years, and now work for the movie\u2019s Hillary Clinton analog. They engage in meaningless, circular philosophical banter, while carrying out the plan of \u201cMadam Evergreen\u201d to unleash Covid as a political tactic. Donald Trump is depicted as a harmless buffoon, while Clinton is colluding with China and rigging the 2020 election for an addled Biden figure. There are no actual jokes, just paranoid delusions played out on underdressed sets with stilted writing and acting. It makes the likes of conservative Bernie Sanders biopic parody Free Lunch Express<\/em><\/a> and Covidsploitation quickie Corona Zombies<\/em><\/a> look like brilliant cinema. Grade: F<\/strong> This week’s straight-to-VOD mini-reviews include “I Am D.B. Cooper,” “Dragon Eats Eagle,” and “Renegades.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":19238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1426,340],"tags":[1436,1427],"class_list":["post-19236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vodepths","category-movie-reviews","tag-reviews","tag-vodepths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21815,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19236\/revisions\/21815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/D.B.-Cooper-1024x512.jpg\")
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I Am D.B. Cooper<\/em> (VOD and select theaters December 9):<\/strong> The story of D.B. Cooper is one of the most enticing and enduring American legends, so it\u2019s not surprising that some low-level criminal claims to be the man who hijacked a commercial airliner in 1971 and parachuted out over the Pacific Northwest wilderness with $200,000 in cash, never to be seen again. It\u2019s slightly more surprising that filmmaker T.J. Regan indulges this man\u2019s delusions for so long, documenting a pair of bounty hunter brothers as they dutifully follow Rodney Bonnifield on his alleged quest to recover \u201chis\u201d money. Regan intersperses real-life interviews with mediocre re-enactments of Bonnifield\u2019s story, which also includes involvement in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and an affair with singer Rita Coolidge (whose music soundtracked a 1981 movie about Cooper). Rather than an Errol Morris-style interrogation of an American eccentric, Regan\u2019s documentary is dull and conventional, while the narrative segments are competent but unexciting. It\u2019s two underwhelming movies in one. Grade: C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
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