After “The Last Airbender” (2010) and “After Earth” (2013), films that did not see the north side of a 5 user rating on IMDB (out of 10), one might have thought M. Night Shyamalan done. A near one-hit-wonder with the clever ghost story “The Sixth Sense,” Shyamalan enjoyed limited successes with followups “Unbreakable” (2000) and “Signs” (2002), but for the man known for enigmatic eeriness and devilish plot twists, things took a drastic veer into the inept with the misguided “The Happening” (2008), in which photosynthesizing trees conspired to rid earth of man.
“The Visit,” Shyamalan’s latest, is a minor rebound of sorts. It’s laughably silly at times, but in a campy, good way – though I’m not convinced Shyamalan’s always in on the gag. One such curio is the old-timer named Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) who shits his adult diapers and stores his accidents in the shed out back of a farm house in rural PA. Pop Pop and his Nana (a lithe grand-matronly Deanna Dunagan), while estranged from their daughter (Kathryn Hahn) who left home at 19 for an older man and winds up dumped and a single mother, get their first visit from the grandchildren in 15 years. Mom’s happy about this arrangement too, which lets her jet off on a cruise with a boyfriend who likes to enter hairy-chest contests.
The kids, 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge), who’s toting a videocamera to chronicle the epic family meet-up (think “Cloverfield” or “The Blair Witch Project”), and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), figure something’s amiss the first night in when they find Nana cruising the halls projectile vomiting. They’re told Nana sundowns and that it’s best to stay in their room after 9:30 p.m. Nana’s an odd one – she can bake up delicious goodies, but when roving the house at night or playing hide-and-seek with the kids under the house, she moves like something from “The Ring” or “Insidious” films, disjointed and pale with the hair draped across her face and all the vigor and speed of an attacking croc. Then there’s her naughty nakedness. Sometimes it’s just a left cheek sneak, other times a full-frontal freakishness.
The one thing that’s for sure is the kids are in peril, and grandma and grandpa are definitely not the two kind souls who caretake down at the rehabilitation center. The beauty of “The Visit” isn’t so much the concept, but the execution. Shyamalan seems like he’s back from a long vacation and in perfectionist mode. The ambiance is spot-on eerie and tense, and a huge up-sell of the flimsy undercarriage. The cinematography by Maryse Alberti (she’s filmed many respectables, including “The Wrestler,” “Crumb” and “Happiness”) is artily shot and lushly dark, elevating and sustaining Shyamalan’s staging. But the real key to “The Visit,” holding us rapt throughout, are the four principals. Becca’s the most off-the-shelf, but DeJonge manages to make her deeper than her labels. Oxenbould gets the juicer role as the less serious one, cocky and an aspiring rapper who decides to drop the word “ho” and four-letter words from his vocab and replace them with random female pop stars (ie “Katy Perry, that hurts!”). As Pop Pop, McRobbie is adequately grizzled and intimidating enough, but the real glue to “The Visit” is Dunagan, mostly a stage actress, who imbues Nana with soulfulness and genuinely creepy malevolence even when serving up a cookie or playing Yahtzee!. “The Visit” probably won’t register as a comeback hit, but it should bode well for what’s next for all the players on both sides of the lens.
Out of the earth rises a needed jolt when Tim discovers a gun and a bone poking out of a hillside. Is it human or animal? Without an active case, the police aren’t all that inclined to investigate, but Tim, ignited by his imagination and his need for a tax-filing procrastination, keeps digging. Lee doesn’t share Tim’s curiosity and, despite some killer house parties and much merriment, the two drift further apart, so Lee is doing her own thing while Tim hosts digging parties with his immature, boozed-up posse. Eventually, each principal ends up with a fetching member of the opposite sex. For her, it’s the charming Orlando Bloom, who should’ve been doing more films like this long ago; for him, it’s a nubile waif (Brie Larson) hanging out at one of the house gatherings.
In a bold turn, Meryl Streep plays the Ricki of the film’s title, a middle-aged woman with half dreads and jingle-jangle jewelry since long ago leaving her family in middle America to become a rock star in California. She didn’t, mind you; she plays as the lead of a house band in a local roadhouse dive playing covers of classics and newer stuff such as Lady Gaga and Pink to draw in the younger set. By day she works at Total Foods, where she is reminded constantly to smile for the customers who have shopping bills bigger than her weekly salary (yes, it’s a dig on Whole Foods) and she’s just filed for Chapter 11.
Abe gets himself into a love triangle faster than he can down a shot of bourbon or spout a lazy line about “mental masturbation.” On the faculty side he’s got Rita (Parker Posey, digging into the role nicely), semi-unhappily married and dreaming of wine and roses and dirty sex with a kindred miserable spirit. Rita’s counterbalanced by the fawnish Jill (Allen’s muse du jour, Emma Stone, so good in “Birdman” and proving that inclination correct here), a student with a jockish beau. Things go from mentor-student banter to inappropriate friendship even with clothes on. Abe, in all his louche self-loathing, has become the black hole of the campus. But then, near the nadir of his pontificating wretchedness, he finds an up.
And while that old dog might not want to learn a new trick, he might like to witness one, which is why “Southpaw” nearly disappoints – it’s about as clichéd a retread as you can ask for. The plot feels like something right out of a middle “Rocky,” with the champ on top before he loses it all in a single stroke and has to go toe-to-toe old-school in a dingy gym to get back to his regal perch. But because of the sharp partnering, “S’paw” dances around a lot more nimbly and entertainingly than its pat regime would otherwise indicate. It opens with a bouquet of roses for Billy Hope (Gyllenhaal) and his wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams). They grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, met at a home for wayward kids and now he’s the light heavyweight champion of the world and they live in a spacious New York manse. Not to give too much away, but there’s a serious tumble that happens early on, and the people who were around Billy and getting paid large scatter, pretty much leaving him for dead in the aftermath. It’s the perfect spot for the venerable Forest Whitaker waltz-in as the reluctant Titus “Tick” Wills, a boxing gym owner and former pro trainer who now works only with troubled youth. To get an “in” with Tick, Billy’s gotta get back to the basics – no, not bobbing and weaving or defense (he never had much, and his face looks like a tomato at the end of most of his battles), but cleaning the toilets and getting clean and sober. That’s the launching point for a shot at the guy who took his belt and fairy-tale life (Miguel Gomez, trying hard to channel Mr. T’s menace). 
For What it's Worth 