TRAP is the latest thriller from suspense master M. Night Shyamalan. Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a seemingly nice father. Cooper takes his tween daughter to see her favorite pop singer. Cooper discovers the arena’s swarming with police and FBI agents. They’ve locked the concert down as an elaborate trap to catch a brutal serial killer called “The Butcher.” In fifteen minutes, the movie reveals that Cooper is the serial killer. An intense, often scary, roller coaster ride ensues. Cooper engages in an incredible battle of wits with a swarm of police.

By revealing the killer’s identity early, TRAP turns upside down Shyamalan’s usual formula of waiting until the end to deliver a big twist. This change enables the knife-sharp script to dish out a treasure trove of surprises the rest of the way, especially in the third act. Josh Hartnett delivers a knockout performance in the lead role. TRAP has only a few strong obscenities and profanities. Also, much of the violence is implied and offscreen. However, the scary ending alternates between some nice moral resolutions and a surprisingly dark, disappointing final twist.

(PaPa, BB, C, Ab, LL, VV, N, AA, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Mixed pagan, moral worldview as police and others heroically try to stop a serial killer and there is a beautifully done moment of redemption for a side character, but the movie also has a surprisingly dark twist that shows bad forces winning at another moment;

Foul Language:

Five obscenities (including one “f” word), one GD profanity, 18 light profanities (mostly OMGs);

Violence:

A man trips a drunk woman so that she falls hard down some concrete steps, a man is seen in scary peril several times, and a man is tasered in a long and intense scene, but most of the other violence is just discussed or unseen.

Sex:

No sex;

Nudity:

A man is shirtless in one scene in a non-sexual context;

Alcohol Use:

Woman is briefly shown stumbling drunkenly;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A man uses deception and threats throughout the movie and has been living a double life as a serial killer while lying to his wife and children for many years.

TRAP is the latest thriller with a twist from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (THE SIXTH SENSE, SIGNS). It centers on a seemingly nice and perfect suburban dad named Cooper (Josh Hartnett), who takes his tween daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see her favorite pop singer, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) in concert. Cooper discovers the arena is swarming with police and FBI agents who have locked the concert down as a trap to catch a brutal serial killer called “The Butcher.”

The movie breaks the usual Shyamalan formula by not just having a huge twist near the end, but actually giving away a big surprise just 15 minutes into the movie. That’s when Cooper goes into a bathroom stall and looks intensely at a livestreamed video of a young man named Spencer, who’s chained up in a basement and screaming for help.

Cooper doesn’t offer help, because the movie reveals he’s actually the Butcher. So now viewers are taken along for a nail-biting ride, as Cooper tries to figure out how to outwit the cops and federal agents in numerous clever ways to try to make it out of the concert without being caught.

You may think that that’s the entire point of the rest of the movie, but it’s just the starting point for an incredible amount of twists that take the movie in new directions seemingly every few minutes, leaving viewers rattled as their expectations are upended over and over. Rather than having just one big twist, TRAP has at least a dozen of them. Some of these twists might seem far-fetched as they happen to some viewers. However, some stunning revelations and twists in the third act make everything come together.

Josh Hartnett had a few shots at stardom in the early 2000s that never quite took off at that time. He’s largely been off the radar for well over a decade. Here, however, he makes a tremendous comeback with what might be the best role of his career, as he perfectly crosses the lines between sweet family man and psychopath with ease. His too-large grin and gee-whiz attitude in his moments of trying to appear like an innocent, average dad bring some clever dark humor to the story.

Saleka Shyamalan is the filmmaker’s daughter and portrays the pop singer, Lady Raven. This might seem like an obvious nepotistic showcase, but she delivers a surprisingly strong acting turn. As her character’s drawn into the action in the third act, the young actress gives a smart and compassionate performance that helps keep the movie running strong.

Also, the movie’s pop songs fit the musical genre well. They sound like they could actually play on the radio alongside Taylor Swift. This helps give the movie some extra plausibility that was sorely lacking in the laughably bad songs in Harry Connick, Jr’s current movie FIND ME FALLING on Netflix. That said, the movie’s weak spots lie in two slow segments that drag out concert scenes unnecessarily for five minutes apiece. Despite these annoying scenes, the intensity of the main story overcomes this problem.

TRAP should be commended for having a minimal amount of obscenities. However, it does have one “f” word, a strong profanity and a bunch of light profanities. The movie is incredibly intense the further it delves into the serial killer’s battle against the police. However, much of the violence is implied and unseen. This is a truly impressive feat for a movie that’s sometimes full-on frightening.

TRAP has no sexual content or explicit nudity. However, it has a mixed worldview. Without giving anything away, the movie alternates between some nice moral resolutions and a surprisingly dark final twist. The mixed ending in TRAP makes the movie slightly excessive.

Minmini Movie Synopsis: Praveena and Sabari used to be classmates. Cut to the present: both are riding to the Himalayas in a Royal Enfield. What happens when they again cross paths?

Minmini Movie Review: How much guilt is too much guilt, asks Halitha Shameem in her newest film, Minmini. How one deals with guilt and remorse varies from person to person; Minmini takes us through the lives of Praveena (Esther Anil) and Sabari (Pravin Kishore), who have a contrasting approach to dealing with sorrow.

Praveena and Sabari meet as adults while riding to the Himalayas in their Royal Enfield. While Praveena soaks in each moment of the trip and pauses to marvel at what she sees, Sabari keeps riding and focuses on reaching the destination. In contrast to Praveena, he values the destination more than the journey.

Quite early in the film, while Sabari is in school, a teacher asks the class what they want to be. The answers range from fashion designer to singer but the only two answers that cannot be limited to just naming one profession were Sabari’s and Pari’s. Pari is the popular boy at school, whereas Sabari is the studious one. Both of them do not instantly get along due to them being so different from one another and their interests being different. But, along the way, Halitha takes us through the mind frame of two teenagers.

Minmini is one of those films that has a first and second half that are so tonally different from each other. It is already well known that the schooltime portions of the film were taken in 2015, while the portions where the characters have grown up have been shot more recently. So, it benefits the flow of the film that the story is told in a linear format rather than cutting between the past and the present.

Will the film have the same impact if the same actors hadn’t played their grownup versions? Maybe yes. But the tonal change in the second half would have been more evident if other actors had been cast for those parts. But Halitha doesn’t rub it in our faces that she has shot with the same actors over a period of years. Rather, the story naturally unfolds along the way in an understated way.

While the school portions are more out there and animated, the grownup portions are soothing. Also soothing is Khatija Rahman’s understated music, which goes well with the tranquil nature of the film. All in all, Minmini is a refreshing film in the current Tamil cinema setup. It’s both emotional and humane and except for a few forced humour scenes consisting of the character of a Malayali teacher, Minmini has a novelty that we hardly see in films nowadays.

The film explores an otherwise unexplored topic like survivor guilt and calls for pursuing our passion and being ourselves. But it does so without seeming preachy or draining. The film comes into its own in the second half when the seeds planted in the first half are delved into. Just like Praveena and Sabari, we, the audience, also feel like we have been through a journey by the end of the film, as we travel from a secluded boarding school to the soaring heights of the Himalayas.

Esther Anil, Pravin Kishore and Gaurav Kalai make us care for their characters. The former two actors’ fun banter is amplified by the natural chemistry that they share with each other.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems the variety of movie options in theaters this summer is as barren as my love life. So the superhero comedy Deadpool & Wolverine has appeared like an oasis in a bland, monotonous desert this season for a lot of people (including me). Now that I’ve reached this oasis, it didn’t totally quench my thirst.

After the excitement of the first two Deadpool films from 2016 and 2018, Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy, 2021) is back in the red & black costume playing the wisecracking mischievous mercenary. This second sequel starts with our swearing, sarcastic anti-hero working at a used car dealership and wearing a toupee. But his ordinary civilian boredom stops when he’s recruited by a government office called the Time Variance Authority to travel through the multiverse and save another universe from destruction. But instead of following orders, Deadpool decides to save his own universe from approaching oblivion and goes to a few other universes to recruit a Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, Logan, 2017), who’s still alive, for some reinforcements.

So let me be honest, that explanation might not be totally accurate. I’m still hazy on some of the details in this film, because the exposition at the beginning is so long and so convoluted. There’s special technology for Deadpool to travel through the multiverse. There’s a naturally dying timeline that can’t be reversed. And one of the bad guys has built a machine called a “time ripper” capable of destroying entire universes! It felt like the team of five screenwriters (which includes Mr. Reynolds) was desperately grasping for an interesting story to even allow this film to exist. So with the horribly shoddy premise to work from, Deadpool & Wolverine is almost dead on arrival.

But Ryan Reynolds’ spirited performance keeps this film somewhat fun. Like the two previous films, he gives perfectly timed jokes filled with raunchy bluntness, sexual innuendo, and real-life jabs at the 20th Century Fox and Disney movie studios. But, of course, this style of humor is not new for this film. All Deadpool fans have seen these sorts of jokes before. This film’s biggest boast, or biggest draw for viewers, is its long list of surprise appearances by famous actors playing mostly forgotten comic book characters. That part is entertaining, and the dirty adult humor had me laughing, or silently in shock, multiple times in the movie theater.

Hugh Jackman, sadly, is given nothing to do but repeatedly grumble unhappily, kill lots of people, and look tiredly in every direction. Maybe because Ryan Reynolds has worked with this director before on the action films The Adam Project (2022) and Free Guy (2021), they had too strong a rapport with each other to let Hugh Jackman in on more fun. (This director I’m referring to is the Canadian, Shawn Levy.)

By the time the fourth, large scale, extended, bloody fight scene started near the film’s climax, I thought, “Okay, boys. I’m ready for my lobotomy now.” With a runtime of two hours and eight minutes, this one could easily have been a minimum of 20 minutes shorter. As the 34th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I walked away from this one thinking it was just okay. Not a disaster….but merely satisfactory. And aren’t we done with the MCU now? Is anyone else ready to move onto new frontiers?

And earning $211 million in its opening weekend has reminded us there’s apparently still an audience for these flashy, bro-centered, R-rated, superhero adventures. But not for viewers under 17 of course. (Wink wink!)