In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)

In the Shadow of the Moon is about a uniformed police officer named Tom “Locke” Lockhart.  He responds to a rather unusual death wherein the victim hemorrhaged blood and has an unusual mark on the back of their neck.  There are three other similar deaths around Philadelphia, leading Locke to think they’re connected.

Lo and behold, they find the woman who committed.  The bad news is that she meets the front end of a subway train and dies.  On the same day, his wife gives birth to their daughter, Amy.  Unfortunately, mother dies during childbirth, leaving Locke to raise Amy alone.

Cut to Amy’s ninth birthday.  Locke is supposed to take her to the zoo, but gets interrupted by several other murders similar to the ones on Amy’s birthday.  Locke is now a detective who has become obsessed with the case.  There were no connections between the three original victims and now he has several more.

It’s not until nine years later (Amy’s 18^th birthday) that Locke makes a connection.  He’s now a private detective and still working on the case.  He’s been repeatedly told to let it go and move on with his life.  The obsession has not only caused him to lose his job, but Locke is now estranged from Amy.

It’s not until nine years after this that it all falls into place for Locke.  You’ll probably see many of the plot twists coming.  You may already have guessed a few already.

The movie moves very slowly.  It’s almost like it isn’t moving.  It’s not that there isn’t action.  There is.  It’s just that it’s very subdued.  I came to realize that it was more drawn out than anything.  The running time is almost two hours, which is maybe four to five times what it needs to be.  Had this been a 20-30 minute production, it would have been much better.

There was a joke I heard once:

Q:  What do you get when you play a country song backwards?

A:  You get your dog back, your job back and your wife back.

There’s a certain element of that here.  Locke loses everything in pursuit of answers.  You’d like to see him take a step back and maybe let it go.  And the sad part is that he knows.  It’s not like no one told him.

The whole nine-year thing also bothered me.  It’s not really explained why time travel is tied to the moon or why tying it to the moon produces nine-year intervals.  I wouldn’t expect lunar cycles to match up with a solar calendar like that.

This seems like a very basic time-travel movie to me.  It’s like someone tried to write it with very minimal effort.  There’s no worrying about the effects of time travel or if the killer is screwing things up more by doing this.  There are no ripple effects.  It’s a very simple story that doesn’t effectively use what it has.  If you’re going to make a feature-length film, at least put some effort into it.

IMDb page

 

Game Night (2018)

Some people long for adventure while others seem content to fall into a rut.  Max and Annie both have a love of games.  They met while competing.  Eventually, they married and now host game night for their friends.   Kevin and Michelle are also husband and wife.  Then, there’s Ryan, who’s a little on the slow side.  He seems to have a revolving door in terms of his dates.  For the duration of the movie, Ryan’s date is Sarah, a woman way better than he deserves.

The main story begins when Max’s brother, Books, comes back to town for a while .  Brooks has always been more successful than Max at pretty much everything.  Max tries not to let it show, but Brooks knows which buttons to push.  For instance, Brooks comes through the front door when Max and Annie had specifically asked everyone to come in more discretely.  The idea was to not attract the attention of their neighbor, Gary.  You see, Gary’s the annoying neighbor everyone else is trying to avoid.

One week, Brooks decides to put on a special game night.  He’s hired a company that specializes in faking a kidnapping and having the group of friends follow clues to find the faux victim.  If you’ve seen the coming attractions, you may remember that Brooks is actually kidnapped while the would-be players watch in amusement.  When the actual actors show up, the hunt is on to get Brooks back.

I once heard a good definition for what separates a comedy from a drama:  In a comedy, no one dies.  While this isn’t always true, it does serve as a good rule of thumb.  When Max gets shot, it doesn’t seem to slow him down much.  He and Amy stop to tend to it, but it would ultimately seem to be a minor inconvenience.  I would imagine that most people would have died in that situation, or at least have been lightheaded.

The movie is somewhere between The Game and Clue.  On the one hand, it has several layers of what might be real or fake.  The audience knows that Brooks is actually being kidnapped, but we don’t know why or by whom.  There are several reveals along the way, such as what Brooks did that might warrant such attention.  (Minor spoiler alert:  Not everyone is what they seem.)

This is one case where I’d say that the trailer was pretty accurate in terms of giving a good impression of what the movie is about.  It’s not a question of if something will go wrong.  It’s a question of when and how.  This can be difficult to pull off, but it works here.  The situations aren’t over the top.  Well, maybe the scene where they steal the Faberge egg was over the top.  But most of the scenes are more moderate.

IMDb page