More remake than reboot, Twisters follows the story of 1996’s original Twister beat for beat. To reflect the changing times, it adds drones, influencers and merch. Instead of merely launching those silver data-capturing balls into a tornado, these Oklahoma storm chasers shoot fireworks up its hole and, with any luck, barrels of absorbent-diaper chemicals in hopes of shrinking it.

Filling the void vacated by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton are, respectively, the British Daisy Edgar-Jones (2002’s Fresh) and the Texan Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick). She’s a headstrong meteorology expert with a preternatural sense for anticipating the weather; he’s a hotheaded YouTuber in a pickup truck whose shock absorbers probably get replaced as often as the gasoline. Will the two be able to set aside their differences, survive the suck zone and find love? Only one hour and 57 minutes know for sure.

Actually, that’s not true; everybody knows, sight unseen. And that’s fine. No one will see Twisters expecting complicated and unforeseen plot machinations — starting, apparently, with screenwriter Mark L. Smith (2015’s The Revenant), who resolves two points of non-tornadic conflict between Edgar-Jones and Powell and third wheel Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) with a sentence apiece.

And that’s fine, too, because what we want from Twisters are said twisters, right? Well … although we get them, they swoop down in sloppily staged and edited set pieces. As cheesy as the OG Twister was, its cyclone sequences felt propulsive, viewers were spatially aware at all times and the shots cut together well. Here, in a big leap to blockbusters coming off the excellent, Oscar-winning indie Minari, director Lee Isaac Chung seems out of his element. Oklahoma’s waving wheat sure looks sweet with Chung’s eye for landscapes, and he certainly brings more humanity to this sequel, but at the sacrifice of action.

I equally miss Michael Crichton’s pop-science sensibilities, if only to make the clunkiest of weathersplaining dialogue exchanges swallowable. Edgar-Jones appears particularly at unease with such material, as if she’s better than it — which she is. While I’m not yet aboard Powell’s populist brand of aw-shucksness as the rest of our nation, he knows how to modulate it to fit the vibe.

Intended or not, when the F5 bursts through the screen of a movie theater in the climax, it’s hard not to read it as Chung’s subversive metaphor for the death of cinema. Twisters isn’t the nadir of modern studio-tentpole IP, but it qualifies as a disappointing follow-up — and to a movie that, being decent at best, had set a low bar. Warner Bros.’ low-rent Into the Storm (which I’m convinced comes from a rejected Twister 2 pitch) entertained me more than Twisters, and that 2014 movie is so bad, my sisters-in-law remain irate with me to this day for playing it. —Rod Lott

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If revenge is a dish best served cold, Kill serves it up — with seconds, like it or not — delivered on a block of dry ice. In the deceptively simple Bollywood actioner, Lakshya — just Lakshya, thanks — kicks ass figuratively and literally as National Security Guard commando Capt. Amrit Rathod.

His longtime girlfriend, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala, as charming as she is beautiful), is forced into an engagement by her father, a titan of the transportation industry. So with a ring of his own, Amrit hops the Delhi-bound train she and her family are riding, in hopes of saving his beloved.

That Tulika accepts his commode-set proposal doesn’t surprise Amrit. But that it happens as money-hungry kidnappers take over the train and target her family in a full-blown terrorist/hostage situation? Yeah, that’s quite a swerve.

As Amrit slides into Everyone’s Savior mode, he lays out Kill’s killer concept: 36 bandits across four coach cars on one unstoppable train. Personally, I like his odds. I also acknowledge the setup is so mindless, a kid could write it.

But could a kid execute it as well as writer/director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat? Not a chance! Most working filmmakers in America aren’t even up to the task. Not since Gareth Evans’ stick of Indonesian dynamite, The Raid: Redemption, has an action film been this pure, kinetic, inventive and unforgiving. Not Evans’ The Raid 2, nor a single John Wick flick, any four of which Kill arguably most resembles. It plays — and for keeps — as if Mr. Wick bought a one-way ticket on David Leitch’s Bullet Train. And no dance sequence!

What Lakshya lacks in leading-man verisimilitude, he makes up for in violence. Befitting of its title, Kill is relentless in soundtrack-squishiness as Amrit and allies face a seemingly endless barrage of fist, feet, machetes, sledgehammers, cleavers, daggers, fire extinguishers, etc. etc. etc., much of it dealt by Thakur, the skeeviest of bad guys.

If you don’t hate Thakur on sight, the scene-stealing actor portraying him, Raghav Juyal, soon will take care of that. Juyal relishes the opportunity to become the Hindi Hans Gruber. This fight film’s juice is well worth the squeeze, even when your wind pipe is the one being compressed. —Rod Lott

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Basically a remake of Lucio Fulci’s The New Gladiators, Brandon Slagle’s Arena Wars also forces Death Row inmates to combat on live television in the near future. For this Mahal Empire production, that’s the year 2045 vs. Fulci’s 2072, because let’s not get too crazy. 

That TV show is called — surprise! — Arena Wars. Despite being co-hosted by a most grizzled, most hair-dyed Michael Madsen (Mahal Empire’s Death Count), it’s a nationwide smash. But with ratings not what they used to be, one of the rich white men behind it asks, “How do we make death exciting for the masses again?” 

The answer involves pitting seven Death Row inmates with QR-code neck tattoos against the show’s seven costumed killers. Sporting names like Meat Wagon, each villain has a concept: Mr. Smiles is a homicidal clown; Master Blaster wields a chainsaw; Cutie Pie, the lone female, slings a mean machete.

Meanwhile, on the prisoners’ side, our hero is former Marine and current innocent man Luke Bender (John Wells, Mahal Empire’s Bermuda Island), who looks like every guy you’ve ever seen wearing a shirt from Tapout and/or Ed Hardy. They progress through seven rooms, like Bruce Lee in Game of Death, only horizontal.

These futuristic bread-and-circus pics number greater than events in the Olympics — summer and winter combined. Unlike most, which are funny only in the ways the filmmakers did not imagine, the script by Slagle (House of Manson) has an actual sense of humor — a Mahal Empire staple. For instance, the opening scene’s titles orient us in “THE BIG FUCKING CITY,” while Madsen comments on one contestant’s grisly fate, “I’d hate to be the underpaid janitor who has to clean that up.” 

Brothers Sonny and Michael Mahal’s story hits the basic beats without playing notes to connect them. Thus, fight scenes constitute the bulk, which gets tiresome … unless you’re the kind of person who watches WWE Raw, likely the intended audience anyway. —Rod Lott

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Mere months after Tim Burton’s Batman dominated not just the box office, but American cultural consciousness, ABC responded with Chameleons, a pilot movie for a new superhero series directly influenced by the Dynamic Duo. Just swap out Batman for one Captain Chameleon, replace Robin with the Paraclete of Justice, trade in the Batmobile for the Car-meleon and, well, there’s a reason you’ve never heard of this. 

Dozens, actually — only one of which has the nation wondering what a goddamn Paraclete is. 

In his last feature, swashbuckling legend Stewart Granger (1950’s King Solomon’s Mines) plays elderly publishing magnate Jason Carr, who moonlights as the Paraclete of Justice … but not for long, as black-robed, computer-voiced cult members kill him, staging his death as a heart attack “in bed with a sleazy hooker.” 

Carr’s sanitarium-patient granddaughter, Shelly (Crystal Bernard, Slumber Party Massacre II), investigates with the occasional help of Captain Chameleon (Marcus Gilbert, Army of Darkness). To justify his name, CC dons an invisibility cape and changes his costume’s color with the turn of a belt buckle that looks like a Trivial Pursuit piece with all six wedges filled. Presumably unrelated to lizard camouflage, he also ziplines to jaunty harpsichord music. Meanwhile, Shelly conducts undercover work posing as a prostitute. 

From prolific TV creator Glen A. Larson (Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, The Fall Guy, et al.), Chameleons is woefully out of touch. It’s like Larson’s knowledge of superheroes began and ended with Archie Comics’ Pureheart the Powerful. Bernard’s Shelly is all curls and homespun homilies, like a proto-Reba. 

As a result, no one cared; a series did not follow. Karma, Chameleons. —Rod Lott

As often happens to the sightless in the movies (Blind Fury, Daredevil, Don’t Breathe, et al.), a positive side of the disability manifests: a preternatural sense of hearing. Such is the case for former Special Forces Capt. Dong (Andy On, Black Mask 2: City of Masks) after he’s blinded by a grenade flash in a courthouse siege. That complicates Dong’s first civilian mission: Rescuing his kidnapped daughter, a violin prodigy, from auction on the dark web. Villains number many, with Jane Wu (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows) sexing things up and standing out in a too-brief role as the Dragon King.

Frequent On director Suiqiang Huo (Demon Sealer Bureau) appears to relish in the potential of the script’s setup. It’s Taken ripped from the pages of the Braille book of revenge. However, he fails continuously to give consistency to Dong’s aural power. The guy can dodge bullets by listening for the slightest trigger click … yet somehow fails to notice the oncoming van speeding toward him in an enclosed parking garage. 

Blind War can’t its find way to a satisfying whole. The action sequences can delight, but not all do. Among the most memorable involve a chain-and-dunk-tank contraption that could come straight out of Saw and, at the end, the ol’ ticking bomb our visually impaired hero must defuse. On the downside, not enough story beats exist to fill the gaps, and the back-half inclusion of a bumbling detective (a debuting Dao Dao) sits way too far on the Inspector Clouseau end of the comic-relief spectrum.

All in all, the Chinese film is a case of the blind leading the bland. It’s not the fault of its star, who brings his easy likability and striking physicality to the role. Selfishly, I just wish he’d brought his gorgeous wife (and Zombie Fight Club co-star), Jessica Cambensy, too.  —Rod Lott

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