"Onslaught" - How to survive a grindhouse film.

Are you a fan of grindhouse films? Are you an actor auditioning for a role in a grindhouse film? Are you a character in a grindhouse film? Are you googling "what is a grindhouse film" right now? Well, you're in luck. Here's a helpful bunch of tips to help all of you survive the latest grindhouse film, Onslaught.

Fans.

Do you really need any tips? You already know what to expect. You've seen your fair share of grindhouse movies. Heck, you've seen an entire apartment building's share of grindhouse flicks. You probably have a framed Planet Terror poster in your basement, if it's not hanging on the ceiling above your bed. You've been patiently waiting for a new grindhouse movie since people - stupidly, in your opinion - didn't flock to see Quentin Tarantino's and Robert Rodriquez's aptly named film Grindhouse back in 2007. Good news, your wait is over. Onslaught isn't a grindhouse movie hiding as a disguised action-thriller like Taken or every John Wick movie. It's loud and proud about its grindhouse-edness. It's got chainsaws, barbecues, gigantic cleavers, assault rifles, Nazi-emblazoned daggers, sawed-off shotguns, splashes of S&M, buckets of blood, and super soldiers resurrected from the dead with a single mission - kill everyone. They also have Vin Diesel's eyes from Pitch Black so they can see in the dark. HIGH FIVE!!

People who don't know what grindhouse is.

If you struggled to get through Taken, you probably want to see any other movie besides Onslaught. Well, maybe not Ice Cream Man. If children-being-turned-homicidal-by-eating-ice-cream isn't grindhouse, it's flirting hard with it. But if you got past the appalling themes of Taken (even more appalling in light of the Epstein revelations) and enjoyed the film, it was probably because of the solid plot or Liam Neeson using his certain skills to mow through some of the worst humans conceivable. There is no such luck with Onslaught. Its plot is bodies, bodies everywhere, and the majority of them are random people in a diner. Onslaught's characters don't have special skills, or a lady with a machine gun leg, or Kurt Russell, to let the audience know that it knows it's in on the joke. What it does have is a bunch of unsympathetic characters...and Reginald VelJohnson...running around a tiny, remote, desert trailer park trying not to be gruesomely murdered. Very seldomly, it makes a half-hearted attempt to wink at the audience with Reginald (playing an old Vietnam War vet) saying something snarky or a drunk sheriff named Kovacks (Eric Wareheim) doing something goofy. But the film quickly pivots back to the carnage every time, lest the audience starts enjoying themselves.

Actors

Michael Biehn - Did you even read the script before accepting the role of random corporate blowhard? Or did you just assume your character would die at some point and that's good enough for you? I get it. You're the Sean Bean of Michael Biehns. And your character died in Planet Terror, so you clearly aren't interested in surviving a grindhouse movie. But you're only on screen for two minutes in Onslaught, giving a performance best described as “If Measles Could Laugh.”

Rebecca Hall - You probably aren't on screen long enough for anyone to notice it's you, which is probably for the best. You've been raking in all kinds of positive accolades over the years for previous works, but I'm guessing doing a role where the most memorable part is a guy in a bald cap licking your high heels isn't going to keep those accolades flowing. Did you nail your part in Onslaught? Sure. Was it worth it? Ehhhhh...

Dan Stevens - You, on the other hand, are perfect for the role you took in Onslaught. You're weird and you embrace it. Playing Dr. Kimmler, a mad German scientist developing super soldiers in secret? Yes, please. I'll never understand the choice to put you in a bald cap and old man makeup, but whatever. If your career can survive playing King Kong's dentist, you'll easily survive a grindhouse flick.

Reginald VelJohnson - Honestly, I'm surprised you're still alive, let alone still acting. I don't mean that in a mean way. It's just to say I consume a lot of movies and TV series and I haven't seen you since Family Matters. But it's very good to see you again and that you understood the assignment in this movie. Care enough to not be killed off in the first ten minutes, but don't care so much you seem desperate to remind everyone that you were Sgt. Al Powell. Well done, sir.

Adria Arjona - It's probably going to be awhile before the stench of Morbius is fully off you. But at least you got a trophy for it, even if it is the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress. Andor is helping you shed that stink. Though, I wouldn't say you're killing it in Andor. But you've at least taken some lessons learned there into Onslaught. I know that writing and directing are mostly responsible for how your characters come off on screen, but you might want to start portraying more sympathetic characters if you want to have more of a career than Onslaught 2 or Michelle Rodriguez's broody body double.

Characters

Dr. Hans Kimmler, mad scientist (Stevens) - It's a coin flip if you'll live through this film. Bad guys tend to end up dead by the hands of the hero, but sometimes they get to escape to try their evil again in a sequel or three. But keep your hubris in check. You might think you have everything under control, but when has resurrecting dead soldiers and science-ing them into mindless killing machines ever worked out? All I'm saying is if you specifically designed them to be all but impossible to kill, they probably aren't as dead as the machine says they are.

Hanna Kimmler, wife of the mad scientist (Hall) - Being the wife of the mad scientist is dicey. Those ladies tend to end up as collateral damage when the mad scientist finally gets his comeuppance. You're clearly the boss of him, but if you're the boss of everyone, you've got a much better chance.

Celeste, veteran army soldier (Arjona) - The main character of films usually gets to live, but grindhouse movies sometimes upend that trope. You seem to be kind of a bad ass, at least as far as one can be who is the landlord of a six-unit trailer park, who shoots jack-o-lanterns in the desert to reduce stress. But your fighting skills leave a lot to be desired. In a flashback, you beat your fellow soldier by kicking him in the nuts. That's not impressive at all. You also have a gun cabinet in your trailer stuffed with weaponry, including a fully-automatic rifle, but your first choice is a pistol when you hear gunshots? Your adolescent, estranged daughter is washing your piles of unattended dirty dishes. You don't make good choices. But you're a mom and a vet with PTSD. That character is almost contractually required to survive, even in grindhouse.

Daisy, Celeste's daughter (Blake Kennedy) - You're a kid, you have nothing to worry about. Even in a movie with indiscriminate killing machines turning a diner/gas station into a meat grinder, kids get a free pass. It'll be scary, sure. But you are walking out of that trailer park with your mom or Josiah or both.

Josiah, Vietnam War vet in a leg brace (VelJohnson) - you're probably the inexplicable survivor. If smoking isn't going to kill you, a genetically-modified, chainsaw wielding freak certainly won't. It's not a guarantee, so don't get cocky. The wizened old guy can also be the sacrificial lamb that gives his life to take out the monsters and save the hero. You have a gun, right? What am I thinking; of course you have a gun. And it'll be a grizzled kind of gun, just like you. Sawed-off shotgun, old hunting rifle, rusty-old .45-caliber six-shooter. Just survive, man.

Cryus, the fixer (Drew Stakey) - you're the wild card and we don't really know whose side you're on. Are you being sent in to take out the monsters? Or are you Tommy Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men? You know what I mean - the guy following the killer who's always two steps behind the action and shows up just in time to find the problem resolved and the credits rolling. You sure look cool, what with your sorta-mohawk, slick clothes, and assassin vibe. If you get there during the climax, you might end up a blood splatter on the side of a double-wide. Hard to say since we never see or hear what your skills actually are. If you get there after the climax, be careful what you say to the survivors. They're still on an adrenaline high and probably wielding a very deadly weapon dripping-with-blood.

Three genetically modified zombie super soldiers - You're going to die. It's just a question of how. That's how this works. Welcome to grindhouse.

Rating: You should definitely ask for some money back. Grindhouse fans less than the rest of us because you already know what to expect.

"The End of Oak Street" - The Burbs.

If I'm ranking all of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, it would go like this - Jurassic Park, The End of Oak Street, tie between Jurassic Park 2 and 3, fifty feet of crap, and then a four-way tie at the bottom by the Jurassic World movies. No, The End of Oak Street is not a Jurassic Park/World movie. But it has the same plot (people trying to not get eaten by dinosaurs), minus that whole cloning thing. If nothing else, it's a spiritual cousin.

When creating a dinosaur chase movie, the key is to come up with a good premise that answers the question - how do the humans find themselves being chased by extinct animals? Not one of the sequels to Jurassic Park offered a premise that can be described as good or interesting or thoughtful or not Jurassic Park's premise warmed over; they all sprinted in the opposite direction. Oak Street took that lesson to heart and landed on "random time bubble swaps chunk of 1982 Detroit suburb with same chunk of land from dinosaur times." Ok...it's nowhere near as clever as cloned-dinosaur theme park, but it's also nowhere near as stupid as mutant dinosaur military auction. But it's easily good enough for us to suspend our disbelief and enjoy the show.

That show centers on the Platt family. They are seemingly the ideal middle-class nuclear family consisting of husband Greg (Ewan McGregor), wife Denise (Anne Hathaway), teenage daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), and teenage son Brian (Christian Convery). They even have a scruffy, troublemaking dog named Starbuck. So, when the proverbial (dino)shit hits the fan, we're preprogrammed to root for them. There's no reason to introduce family strife, right?

Wrong. I'm sure there's a narrative reason for all families in all movies to have family issues, but I have yet to hear one that actually matters. And all is definitely not right with the Platts. Greg has lost his job with one of the big auto companies, kept it secret from the family, drinks too much, and has resorted to delivering pizzas to make money. Denise is angry and frustrated with Greg because she's not stupid and has eyes. Brian accidentally broke a kid's arm and is anxiously hiding out from the kid's vengeful older brother. Starbuck keeps digging holes in the neighbor's yard and that neighbor has a gun. Audrey wants to go to college to study astronomy and is a lesbian – neither of which is inherently a problem.  But it's 1982 and society gave extra side-eye to a smart, motivated female who doesn’t fit the misogynistic mold. The point is that none of that stuff matters once the running and screaming begins.

Oh, that stuff comes up again, but none of it furthers the plot at all. It's good for a little character building, but mostly just serves as annoying little sidetracks when there's a break in the action. For example, that older brother does find Brian (well after the time bubble swap) and beats him up a little bit. But his little brother gets him to stop and they run away, never to be seen by cameras again. We don't know if they get eaten, find another time bubble and escape, or accidentally step on a butterfly which leads to a future where Earth is ruled by cyborg octopi. And since they aren't used as a plot device to grant Brian absolution, or allow the Platts to escape being a T-Rex snack, why introduce this subplot at all?

The good news is that's the extent of this film's problems. And they are truly small problems, particularly considering they consume precious little time of the film's brisk ninety-nine-minute runtime. In fact, the film as a whole is quite good and very entertaining. You see the thoughtfulness of the filmmakers early in the excellent pacing of the film. The family dynamics are set up rather quickly, then a solid amount of time is spent building up to the reveal of their situation. The film does an excellent job of feeling like a slow burn without making the audience think "get to it already." And the thoughtfulness shows itself throughout the film. Action scenes that don't come off as contrived. Excellent CGI of the dinosaurs and surrounding environment. Subtle displays of Denise's strength and Greg's weakness (Denise is always driving when they jump in cars). Great camera work, one example in a living room scene where the Platts are discussing their plight and the camera angles nudge us through each character’s perspective.

But perhaps my favorite examples of the thought and care put into the film are a bunch of tongue-in-cheek winks at the audience that the movie is not that serious about itself. Nothing so direct as quipping or breaking the fourth wall. Instead, we have karma rearing its head on multiple characters to resolve earlier conflicts in fun and relevant ways. The film almost intentionally ignores early setups (Audrey's Carl Sagan fandom and general nerdiness do not lead her to the eventual solution to their problem). And a scene where Denise asks Greg to pose for a photo in front of a couple of non-threatening creatures so she can "remember this absurd situation forever." I see what you did there, Denise. Well played.

If, like me, you're tired of an endless string of garbage Jurassic sequels, The End of Oak Street is the cure. It's entertaining, it's clever, it's exactly the kind of popcorn flick on which to end the summer. Even if it doesn't end with an octopus with robot arms.

Rating: Don't ask for any money back. The "absurd" scene is worth it alone.

"The Odyssey" - The OG.

Did you know Homer's The Odyssey was originally written as twenty-four books? Maybe you had to read The Odyssey in a class back in school and that factoid just dusted some cobwebs off a decades-old memory. So, you can honestly answer yes, you did know that. But I'm betting you didn't read the whole thing, did you? It's written in a style called dactylic hexameter. If that's even half as obnoxious as iambic pentameter, you probably just vomited in your mouth a little bit when recalling trying to read something in dactylic hexameter. The good news is Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey has translated the story from whatever-meter into good old-fashioned epic blockbuster movie.

Full disclosure, I've never read The Odyssey either. If you're like me, you've heard of at least some of the elements in the story. The Trojan Horse. Odysseus' ten-year voyage home after the end of the Trojan War. Odysseus' wife Penelope and son Telemachus enduring a host of suitors trying to woo Penelope into marriage. The cyclops. The sirens. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure I knew Odysseus encountered the sirens, but am actually remembering the sirens from Jason and the Argonauts. At least I've got the correct civilization's mythology.

This being a Nolan movie, it shouldn't be surprising to learn that the story isn't presented linearly. Don't worry, there's no time travel or dreams within dreams to melt your brain. Instead of depicting a straight timeline of Odysseus' voyage home and the events that occur during that voyage, we get the highlights in a series of flashbacks. Odysseus (Matt Damon) has been trapped on an island without his crew for seven years and his only company is a sea nymph named Calypso (Charlize Theron). Parallel to that, we jump every so often to Odysseus' palace in Ithaca, where Penelope (Anne Hathaway) has been humoring suitors for nearly two decades. Her now-grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) is aware that the suitors are looking for any reason to kill him, given he's the heir to the throne. Among the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who definitely has murder in his eyes.

The jumping back and forth between Odysseus (and Odysseus' flashbacks) and Penelope/Telemachus does a great job of building tension toward a climax. The drama of the film is in if Odysseus can make it back to Ithaca to reunite with his queen, prevent his son's exile/murder, and resume his place as king of Ithaca. The journey to get there is all of that other stuff. And all of that other stuff is just as exciting and tense to sit through, but for different reasons.

And that's the reason you should watch The Odyssey - the hero's journey. Yeah, that's where the hero's journey came from. Odysseus is THE hero. Practically every fiction movie ever made is based on the hero's journey (even a lot of non-fiction movies use the structure). Same goes for most books. And once you know that, you can't help but map other movies using The Odyssey. One of my favorite examples of this is my wife's breakdown of The Natural. It has a hero, a hero lost for many years, a cyclops, suitors trying to usurp a king, sirens, and more. As I've said in other reviews, my wife is a genius.

The other reason you should watch The Odyssey is...every other film reason that exists. You want great characters and character development? All of the above, plus John Leguizamo (Eumaeus), Lupita Nyong'o (Helen of Troy), Samantha Morton (Circe), Jon Bernthal (Menelaus), Himesh Patel (Eurylochus), Zendaya (Athena), and Elliot Page (Sinon). Do you like great visuals? Nolan blends CGI with practical effects (filming exclusively with IMAX cameras) to perfection. And the way he presents such things as Charybdis, the Cyclops, the Laestrygonians, the Trojan Horse, the underworld, and even Agamemnon (Bennie Safdie) is the sweetest of eye candy. I could go on about the sound, the costumes, the cinematography, the pacing, the everything else that makes this movie so very, very fantastic. But words can't do it full justice. Not even in Greek dactylic hexameter.

Rating: Worth twice the cost of IMAX tickets and you should see it at least twice.