By Debbie Schlussel

Some decent new movies in theaters today (I did not see Monster Trucks, as the screening was on the Jewish Sabbath and Sleepless was not screened for critics) . . .

* Patriots Day – Rated R: This re-telling of the Boston Marathon Islamic terrorist attack is much better than I expected, and that’s probably because director Peter Berg says he’s tapped into the Trump voter by making patriotic movies like this and “Lone Survivor” (read my review). Berg also wrote the screenplay (with another writer).

I expected this to whitewash Islam. It doesn’t.

In fact, there’s are a couple of scenes in the movie that does what I did, but the mainstream media still won’t: showing that Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, widow of jihadi Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in on the whole thing. We know she was, but she’s been painted as some sort of innocent victim. Not in this film. In fact, she lectures an interrogator about how her participation in the plot that murdered several and wounded hundreds, is just a matter “balancing” the “duties” of being an Islamic wife.

The film also shows the disproportionate concern that then-Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers (he was Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI before that) had for Muslims and the usual fictional, non-existent “backlash” against them. DesLauriers (played here by Kevin Bacon) doesn’t want to call the Marathon bombing a “terrorist attack,” because he says it will harm Muslims. Then, when his agents and other law enforcement personnel locate the bombers’ mugs on video, DesLauriers doesn’t want to release the photos to the public for quick help in identifying and locating them, wasting valuable time and costing more lives. Again, he’s worried about putting Muslims under suspicion. (After all, the two brothers who did these attacks were not Muslim immigrants, but native-born Christians, right?) The photos were only released after someone on the team leaked them to FOX News and the network went with them. DesLauriers vowed to find the leaker, seeming more intent on that than actually finding the terrorists. Kudos to Peter Berg for showing us the FBI’s deadly political correctness.

(FYI, DesLauriers is now employed as Vice President of Security at the Penske Corporation in swanky Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. If what is in this movie is true, Richard Penske and his minions aren’t safe in this dhimmidiot’s hands. Since DesLauriers appeared here in the Detroit area to promote this movie, I can only assume he’s proud of his portrayal in the film as putting Muslims first before America’s national security, which probably cost the MIT police officer his life.)

The movie is pretty close to the real story, in terms of depicting the trail and activities of the Muslim Tsarnaev brothers, from their bombing of the Marathon to their murder of a young MIT police officer to their carjacking of a Chinese student and his Mercedes to their last stands in Watertown (a sanctuary and gun control city–facts not mentioned in the movie). And even though we know everything that happens already, it’s still pretty suspenseful and well done.

Mark Wahlberg plays a Boston cop who is at the Marathon. The problem is, he’s also everywhere else that the Tsarnaev brothers show up. . . as if he’s the only competent cop in all of Boston and its surrounding suburbs for the next three or four days. It’s like watching Forest Gump Investigates Terrorism. Wahlberg’s Boston cop shows up everywhere, from the Marathon to the FBI investigation to the carjacking aftermath, to the Watertown shootout with Tamerlan, and then to the boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is finally captured. Not believable. Not even close.

There are a couple of other things I could have done without. When the Tsarnaev brothers are about to leave to the Marathon to wreak their carnage, Dzhokhar hesitates, asking his brother, “But what about Martin Luther King, Jr.?” PUH-LEEZE. As if that ever happened. There’s no evidence of it, and we don’t need a movie to soften his image and act as if he’s down wit da civil rights struggle. He’s a cold-blooded, black-hearted mass murderer. Nothing less.

I also had no use for speeches by the real life survivors at the end, chanting empty slogans like, “Boston strong,” and “we will defeat hate with love,” or “we will be the ambassadors of peace.” Um, how has that peace, love, and Boston strong BS working for the victims of Pulse in Orlando or of the Christmas party in San Bernardino? The carnage and torturous wounds will stop when victims stop being victims and call out who took their legs: MUSLIMS. It’s hard to watch a woman who lost both her legs and her husband who lost one of his refusing to face that Muslims did this and that preaching, “we are the ambassadors for peace” will not stop that from happening to someone else.

Other than that, though, I thought the movie did a very good job of telling a story–a real-life story–and not lying about who did it and why.

TWO-AND-A-HALF REAGANS

Watch the trailer . . .

* The Bye Bye Man – Rated PG-13: This horror movie is getting mostly horrible reviews from other critics. But for a thriller, I enjoyed it and thought it wasn’t bad. It’s not the greatest supernatural thriller, but it’s okay. And I’ve seen a lot worse. This is scary and suspenseful, if not that much different from other haunted house movies. I enjoy movies that focus more on scaring you psychologically than with blood and gore. This tries to do that, though there is ample blood and gore. It’s not for kids. I screamed a couple of times, and it’s good until nearly the end (when I started to laugh at points that probably aren’t aiming for a laugh, like when some silly-looking animal crawls in from a door in the bedroom).

Also, this has a cameo by a completely unrecognizable Faye Dunaway (who turns 76 tomorrow). Remember her? In other trivia, the female lead in this movie is played by Cressida Bonas, ex-girlfriend of Prince Harry, who hasn’t acted much. Gee, I wonder how she got the job.

The movie starts out by showing us a seemingly crazy man in 1969 Madison, Wisconsin literally hunting down, shooting, and killing various friends at their homes. He asks each of them if they told anyone “the name,” then guns them down with a shotgun. Then, things flash forward to the present day.

Three college students–a boyfriend and girlfriend (Bonas) and their male friend–rent an old house together. Soon, strange and creepy things begin happening. They hear weird sounds, see visions that aren’t real, and have doors open and close by themselves. On top of that, the woman becomes very sick. The boyfriend, Elliott, suspects something is wrong with the house, that it’s haunted. But it turns out that the haunting is caused by uttering, “The Bye Bye Man,” the name of a demon who pushes people to murder others. Every time the name is repeated, the person who hears it becomes afflicted and also tries to kill people. “Don’t think it, don’t say it” is the oft repeated mantra of this movie (could also be the mantra of Obamacare–don’t think it, don’t say it).

Elliott investigates to try to find out why this is happening and how to stop it, before more people get killed. What could go wrong?

I laughed when Dunaway’s character nonchalantly hands Elliott a gun and matter-of-factly tells him that all he has to do is kill his friends and himself, and then all of his problems will be solved. I also thought it was weird that a giant three story house is rented to just three kids and that on the inside it appears to only have about five or six rooms. What happened to the rest of the house? They don’t tell you, and it’s not part of the plot, just bad location selection for the exterior shots.

There’s nothing new or different here. But it’s supposed to be a low-budget horror flick. And for that, it does the trick.

ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS

Watch the trailer . . .

* Live By Night – Rated R: This silly gangster movie was written by Ben Affleck, and it shows. (He also directs and stars.) The story is long, stupid, and pointless. Or, rather, I should say the stories. There are so many things going on in this jam-packed waste of time (that exceeds two hours for lack of proper editing), that it’s hard to keep track. So many characters, so many killings, so many damsels in distress (at least three). So many cities–Boston, Tampa, Miami. Oh, and soooooo many bad accents. Not the least of which is Ben Affleck–who is from Boston–doing a horrible Bostonian accent. Just awful. Oh, and by the way, this movie has every single cliche from every mob movie you’ve ever seen. Yaaawn.

The only cool thing about this movie–and it’s not actually cool, but something that reminded me of my youth and how fast time flies–is the cameo by an old fat guy who reminded me of someone I know. No, someone I’ve seen. Is that really the guy from “Sixteen Candles”? Anthony Michael Hall? Nah, can’t be. So I waited until the credits rolled, and sure enough, it’s him. Damn, he got paunchy. And speaking of has-beens from the ’80s and ’90s, Max Casella–Vinnie from Doogie Howser, M.D.–also makes an appearance. You wouldn’t recognize him either. Nor would you recognize any semblance of a plot, though there are may half-assed attempts.

Ben Affleck is a Boston bank robber and crook. And his father is Boston’s . . . head cop. Affleck’s father knows what he does for a living and doesn’t do much to stop it. Affleck is in love with a beautiful blonde Irish chick, but she’s the girlfriend of a big-time Irish mobster, so she’s supposed to be off-limits. Affleck is solicited to work for the head of the local Italian mafia, but he explains that he’s not a mobster, just an independent criminal. But the Italian guy tells on him to the Irish mob chief, and then the Irish mob chief gets mad that Affleck is sleeping with his girlfriend. Affleck is about to be killed by the mob boss when he’s rescued, but he thinks the girl got killed.

Affleck gets jammed up and sent to prison for cops dying after a botched bank robbery. When he gets out of prison, he decides to join the Italian mobster boss and bootleg alcohol during the depression, when this takes place. He moves to Tampa to do this and he marries the sister of a Black cuban who is helping in their bootlegging and cigar racket. As if that’s not enough, there’s also an easily-bought-off police chief, the police chief’s drug-addict-turned-Christian-preacher daughter, and the Ku Klux Klan–all getting in the way of business.

The whole thing is such a waste of time–mine and yours.

TWO MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .

* Silence – Rated R: Martin Scorsese picks a very noble and important subject for this movie. But he does the topic a disservice by making a movie that is waaaaay tooooo loooong–nearly THREE HOURS!, too slow and boring, repetitive, and extremely brutal. The topic is Japanese mass murder of Christians in the 17th Century. Based on a fact-based, historical novel, the movie tells the true story of Japanese intolerance to the existence of Christian converts in the country in the 1600s.

The story follows two Jesuit priests (played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who leave the Vatican to go to Japan in search of a lost priest (Liam Neeson). The lost priest went to Japan to minister to Catholic converts there. The two men spend most of the movie hiding in bushes watching as Japanese Christians are tortured and brutally murdered by the Japanese rulers and their minions. That’s on top of the persecution the Christian Japanese have already endured. Those who refuse to denounce Christ and Christianity are beheaded, crucified, drowned, starved, and endure a number of other very brutal methods of killing practiced by the Japanese. Occasionally, the two priests minister the Japanese Christians, but mostly they are hiding and watching. Their true mission is to find their missing colleague.

Eventually both priests are captured and dealt with even more brutally. And eventually, the priest played by Neeson is also located.

While Garfield is very good in his role as one of the priests, his dedication and faith well acted, I didn’t care for Adam Driver, whom I think of as a comedic, screwball actor and also as a Star Wars figure. I couldn’t help but laugh each time I saw him, despite the somber, serious tone of the movie. Also, he does a terrible foreign accent.

Scorsese and his editor failed in this exercise. Either he should exercise brevity . . . or stick to making mob movies. He’s good at depicting the mafia on film and garnering our edge-of-the-seat interest in them. Religion, not so much. It’s great if you’re having trouble sleeping. I dozed repeatedly while watching this and missed nothing.

This is supposed to be Scorsese’s “passion project” and an ode to his religion. He met with the Pope recently and showed him the film. But this is the same guy who made 1988’s “Last Temptation of Christ,” which depicted Christ imagining himself in sexual situations, predictably drawing outrage from Christians. Now, it seems, he’s trying too hard to cover that up and make Christians forget.

To no avail.

HALF A REAGAN

Watch the trailer . . .