Buzz Blog

Deadpool & Wolverine **1/2
See feature review. Available July 26 at theaters valleywide. (PG-13)

The Fabulous Four **
I’m grateful to my friend Will Goss for coming up with an ideal term for the cinematic genre—with entries like Poms, 80 for Brady and this year’s Summer Camp—featuring ensemble casts of retirement-age actresses engaging in age-inappropriate shenanigans: “senior crass.” The formula holds true to form in this story in which widower Marilyn (Bette Midler), recently relocated to Key West, invites longtime besties Alice (Megan Mullaly) and Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) to her planned wedding; Alice and Kitty in turn take it upon themselves to bring Lou (Susan Sarandon), the fourth member of their one-time crew who has been long-estranged from Marilyn for a reason that is immediately obvious yet dragged out for an hour. As per usual for movies of this sort, the screenplay builds its laughs almost entirely around the positively absurd notion that women over the age of 50 might get high, or drunk, or have sexual desire—Mullaly’s sassy cougar is tragically lacking in literally any other character trait—until it’s time to take a break for some sentimentality about the power of friendship. Sarandon in particular, in the traditional Diane Keaton role of the straight-laced friend, gives this material much better than it deserves, treating every telegraphed plot point with utter conviction. But it remains deeply depressing to realize that “senior crass” apparently can’t graduate beyond efforts like this. Available July 26 at theaters valleywide. (PG-13)

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person ***
Quebeçois co-writer/director Ariane Louis-Seize has me wrestling with the genuinely profound coming-of-age story this never quite turned into vs. the perfectly pleasant dark-humored tale it ultimately became. There’s a promising start in the flashback that introduces us to Sasha (Sara Montpetit), a (relatively) young member of a vampire family whose personal moral sense refuses to allow her to take an unwilling life. Then she encounters Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a bullied teenager contemplating ending his own life, which may offer a mutually beneficial solution. The set-up presents a promising metaphor for kids who wind up running contrary to their families’ belief systems in any number of ways, and how far parents are willing to bend in their acceptance. That idea feels like it fades, however, as soon as the relationship between Sasha and Paul takes center stage, leaving unexplored territory just like with a potential victim who instead is turned into a vampire, trapping Sasha’s no-nonsense cousin (Noémie O’Farrell) with an idiot protégé. What remains is a gentle sort-of-romance between two isolated souls, and their misadventures are occasionally amusing without ever really crossing over to genuinely funny. It’s ultimately a satisfying spin on genre expectations, even if a full exploration of its most interesting subtext—like its protagonist—never really sees the light of day. Available July 26 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

The Last Breath **1/2
There’s a perfectly solid B-movie premise in this underwater thriller; if only it didn’t move quite as slowly as people move underwater. Off the coast of the Virgin Islands, tourist boat skipper Levi (the late Julian Sands, in his final role) and his assistant Noah (Jack Parr) locate the wreckage of a torpedoed World War II-era American battleship. When Noah’s four best college buddies—including his ex-girlfriend Sam (Kim Spearman)—arrive for a group vacation, they decide to dive into the wreck, only to get trapped there by sharks. Director Joachim Hedén and the screenwriting team go easy on the soap-opera interpersonal dynamics of the friends, even if that means the diving-masked characters rarely come through with enough personality to make them worth rooting for, allowing the ticking clock structure—can they find their way to the surface before their air tanks run out?—to do its thing. They even have the understated good sense not to make their CGI sharks monoliths, allowing their speed to be scary. It just takes too long to get to the good stuff, and even when it does—like a need for some emergency underwater surgery after a shark attack—it’s often too dimly lit to be effectively squirm-inducing, and makes a narrative choice that would be genuinely disappointing to Anton Chekhov. You could do far worse in your low-budget genre fare, but you can also ask for more than merely serviceable. Available July 26 in theaters. (R)