Girl on the Train wastes talent, time

Emily Blunt stars in The Girl on the Train. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

The Girl on the Train opens with the eponymous commuter Rachel (Emily Blunt) declaring in a voiceover that she has an overactive imagination. The point of the line and the others that spill out from Rachel’s mind during the opening is to put the viewer inside the unfiltered mind of the film's featured character while revealing her unreliability as a narrator. That she immediately stops telling the story is a problematic approach to the set up, as the film shifts away from her eyes to incorporate the stories of token housewife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) and the soon-to-be missing Megan (Haley Bennett) to connect the three women to one singular narrative. It essentially took less than five minutes for this film to defeat the purpose of its introduction, along with much of the intrigue of its existence.

Alas, this isn't an unexpected flaw in a film full of them. The Girl on the Train is a silly little blunder that tries ever so hard to be lurid and dangerous but comes off instead as an above average Lifetime film with a hint more steaminess. Its central mystery is easy to resolve once the main players – the three women along with characters played by Luke Evans, Justin Theroux and Edgar Ramirez – are introduced and settled in. It features mediocre to subpar performances – even the oft great Blunt can't make the material work in her favor – and misused moments from the usually sublime Lisa Kudrow and Allison Janney, along with some perfectly preposterous dialog. The scenes are shot cold and distant as a film like this could be, but the movie lacks quality cinematography and the aesthetics are those not belonging to a film with this wide of release. Everything is so serious, and the tone is so poorly established, the movie sets itself up to be glorious camp, especially whenever Theroux enters to snack on scenery. The Girl on the Train would be a much more entertaining film had the filmmakers followed Theroux’s example and inserted a smirk in every scene.

What's truly weird about the whole experience is the heavy emphasis on motherhood among the three female characters and how the concept of being a mother effectively defines their femininity. All three women are influenced by a child in some capacity, be it having one, losing one, or being unable to conceive at all, and their personalities are tailored to what level of ability they have for it. The only one of the three granted any perception of happiness is the one willing to trade her independence and hope to be with a monster to raise her child; the other women are depicted as incomplete and empty.  The concept is inherently regressive and dehumanizing (although it does result in the best bad line of the film) and the extremes the filmmakers take it is disturbing. The Girl on the Train effectively punishes characters for their failures as mothers through characterization (Blunt's Rachel as a morose alcoholic) and through physical pain as the film progresses. That the film could serve as a criticism for society's blame in these categorizations is moot considering how often the film luxuriates in Rachel's sadness and the pain wrought to the other women.

Blunt's Rachel is the source of many of The Girl on the Train's ailments. As the key to the mystery of the missing woman, the film uses her alcoholism as a way to obfuscate the mystery while faulting Rachel for not doing more to stop the crime she eventually solves. It would work in a Memento fashion if the film constructed the narrative around her and the memories she can't recapture as it teases a possible violent streak aroused during her states of inebriation. But the incorporation of the other women and their stories negates the impact of her lost memory and the possibility of her being the person responsible for the disappearance. The audience isn't required to trust Rachel to understand the story; rather, viewers watch her stumble about and wait for the memories of the night in question to reappear again and indicate the most logical candidate for the crime. (On a side note, the film does a rather poor job employing red herrings.) Watching an alcoholic stumble through an investigation is less interesting than interpreting his or her lost memories, and the film never seems to capture this, or any concept, it aims to depict.

Rating: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 112 minutes

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Those who read and love the book.

Take the whole family?: The “R” rating is fair enough, so stick with that and keep the kiddos at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Stream to pair it with a low-priced pinot grigio.

Does this pass the Bechdel test?: I had this discussion with a woman who came with me to see it, and we couldn't really come up with a solid answer for it. Despite the film centering on three women, their discussions are either about a man or an issue related to a man. The closest the film gets to not having that discussion involves conversations Lisa Kudrow has with other women about bad restaurants, and those are more background noise than anything. That the film apparently elicited a description as a “sausage party” overheard by my fellow moviegoer underlines the aforementioned issue.

Watch this instead?: Every time I see Justin Theroux, I want to watch Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire. And because I always recommend Mulholland Drive, you should also sit down and watch Memento to see how a film can effectively work with a memory lapsing protagonist.

'Winter's War' battles against a lack of necessity

Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain star in "The Huntsman: Winter's War." Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

If you squint hard enough you can almost see the charms hidden within “The Huntsman: Winter's War.” It's more often than not light and goofy, rarely laden with that dour weight plaguing the first “Huntsman” film and seemingly happy to drift away into sub-mediocrity. It's a perfectly forgettable film that neither strains brain cells nor the viewer's patience, lasting only a few minutes longer than it ought to but still well short of interminable like, say, another recent blockbuster film featuring rodents and capes.

Any true enjoyment of “The Huntsman” – a title that is technically a misnomer – is rooted in how much one enjoys watching star and titular outdoorsman Chris Hemsworth in action. He's about as close as current cinema has to a galoot; a large, amiable enough fella who works his way through films with a smile and an admirable torso while sporting a horrendous accent that flitters away when he forgets his character has it. To be fair, employing an accent in the first place is silly enough for a movie based on a Teutonic fairy tale existing in what narrator Liam Neeson acknowledges is a fantastical world. Why the filmmakers decided to have native Californian Jessica Chastain adopt a brogue while South African Charlize Theron has nary an accent will never receive a proper answer. And at least Emily Blunt retains her natural speech patterns for once. But back to Hemsworth, an attractive actor who grits his way through a role that never quite works for him. He's never quite robotic or stiff, yet he lacks a certain lightness of being too him to be too charming, as if he's trying a little too hard to be funny to compensate for his physical excellence. Still, there's something inherently sweet about Hemsworth, whose physicality is never bulky enough to be threatening and whose persona is never too serious or self important. He's workmanlike, never strong enough to boost a film but rarely a true detriment to the final product either, the kind of leading man who could be interesting as a character actor down the line once the good looks begin to fade a little.

Hemsworth is fine, as is Chastain, as is Theron in a much weaker role than the evil queen presented in the first film, and as is Blunt as a woebegone ice queen/little sister to Theron's wicked Ravenna. Slightly less fine is everything around them, essentially a movie that never really knows where it's going or what it wants to do with itself. It starts off as a prequel to “The Huntsman,” depicting the origins of Blunt's frosty queen and her hatred of love and how Hemsworth became the eponymous character, or at least one of them along with Chastain and a whole host of child soldiers. Then it segues into a sequel, mostly eliding over the presence of Snow White (and, of course, Kristen Stewart) but still bringing back one of the seven dwarfs (Nick Frost) and eventually adding three more (Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach), leading to a net negative of three dwarfs. Goblins and faeries are tossed in as well for reasons that may or may not be related to the plot from “The Lord of the Rings” because the writers couldn't come up with a plot of their own.

“Winter’s War” perhaps might have worked as either a prequel or a sequel; combining both is sloppy and requires the frequent insertion of a rather bored Neeson to keep track of what’s happening. This is a very mismatched film, dependent on miscommunication to advance the story. A nice spot of tea would resolve most of the character’s problems, our at least hash out the idea that villains aren’t to be trusted.

And yet “Winter's War” could be much, much worse than it is. The tone is either amiable or solidly campy, especially whenever Theron pops up and excessively emotes and snarls at Blunt and Hemsworth. It's almost disappointing to say this film isn't quite a trainwreck – a complete disaster is a joy on its own – but it doesn't induce bile either, and it'll assume its fate of fading into the nether regions of the memory bank until the commercials for the DVD come out in about four months. At the least, it's not going to disappoint audiences hoping for something resembling greatness from what is slowly morphing into a film franchise; expecting an ant hill and finding a molehill instead has its benefits.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 114 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: People who like Chris Hemsworth as a leading man.

Take the whole family?: Some of the content is a little more shocking than expected, so follow the ratings recommendation.

Theater or Netflix?: Stay at home and stream it if you want to see it.

Does anything disappoint in this film?: The only thing that serves as a proper letdown is what happens to Charlize Theron's Ravenna. She's a complex figure in the first film, tragic and somewhat pitiable given her background and her ambitions. All of the nuance is lost this time though, and the movie even goes out of its way to make her even more sinister because of one truly vile act she technically commits before the start of “The Huntsman.”

Watch this instead?: This one's definitely a blast from the past, but “Ladyhawke” is a pretty fun little knight story with an interesting premise and a very young Michelle Pfeiffer. You could hit up the recent works of the three leading ladies: “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Sicario” and “Crimson Peak.”