Home Video Picks & Passes 11.13.16

The latest movie releases

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Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) — PASS

The Shallows (2016) — PICK

 

In a poor movie summer, one of the brighter offerings was a movie that came billed as “the best shark movie since Jaws.” The Shallows stars Blake Lively as a surfer attacked by a shark 200 yards from shore. She somehow manages not to be eaten in the first act and spends the rest of the movie trying to keep it that way. Less a horror film than a survival story, with echoes of Gravity and 127 Hours, The Shallows is about problem-solving: not only Lively’s efforts to stay one step ahead of the shark, but also those of director Jaume Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski to keep the material interesting and at least popcorn-movie credible. Along with spectacular scenery, the film’s key asset is Lively’s performance in realizing the emotional and physical ordeal her character must endure. The Shallows is a kind of movie I’d like to see more of: one that just wants to captivate viewers for 80-odd minutes, with a heroine whose intelligence and knowledge are the key to her chances of survival.   

Meanwhile, pass on Independence Day: Resurgence, a sequel no one was asking for to a movie that wasn’t that great in the first place.  

Yes, Independence Day was fun, with a charismatic lead in Will Smith and enjoyable turns by Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman and others. And, yes, Goldblum and Pullman are back, along with Brent Spiner and Vivica Fox as the former love interest — now widow — of Smith’s character, with whom any sense of fun has also died. Twenty years after the first film’s near-apocalypse, Resurgence is set in an alternate history, bringing humanity together in an unprecedented way just in time for the aliens to come back for a rematch. Global unity could have been an inspiring vision for our conflicted present, but the filmmakers don’t seem interested. Would you believe the ending sets up a threequel? “We had twenty years to prepare,” says the tagline. I would have liked more time.

Bonus pick: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (new Blu-ray edition).

 

Caveat Spectator: The Shallows: Scary, bloody shark-attack sequences, intense menace, wince-inducing field-medicine imagery and other traumatic incidents; skimpy swimwear; a few curse words. Teens and up.