‘Day Shift’ silliness, a brief Marvel rant and the abysmal ‘Uncharted’

With so many of Netflix’s larger budget original movies, a certain “house style” becomes apparent. Their average action movie typically features bright, crisp frames bordering on artificiality, chase sequences dominated by less-than-comprehensible editing and an overreliance on overhead drone footage, and a detached, flavorless approach to plotting and characterization (See “The Gray Man” and “Red Notice” as the most notable examples).

With the vampire-hunting action flick, “Day Shift,” that house style endures in a visual sense, however, the pure ridiculousness of the premise and its bloody execution provides respite from the usual Netflix doldrums.

Jaime Foxx plays Bud, a family man who secretly works as a low-rent vampire hunter, selling the fangs of his targets to stingy pawn shops. Needing a big score to keep his estranged wife and daughter from moving across the country, Bud decides to hunt a more dangerous clientele, which requires oversight from a stuffy vampire-hunting union rep (Dave Franco).

“Day Shift” also tosses in Snoop Dogg as a cowboy hat-toting veteran hunter who is, well, bringing a very Snoop Dogg vibe to the proceedings.

The scripted humor between Foxx and Franco can be hit-and-miss, though “Day Shift” doesn’t really require an additional injection of lightheartedness. It’s got goofiness to spare from numerous hunter vs. vampire battles, all of which come with wild, acrobatic fight choreography and an extremely liberal usage of gore.

Just consider the average fight scene in a “Blade” movie and amplify it to a thousand. Sure, the visual palette remains uninspired (as per Netflix house style), but one can’t help but appreciate the absurd ways in which Jamie Foxx dispatches various gymnastic-obsessed vampires.

Is “Day Shift” a good movie? No, but at least it’s diverting and distinctive from the streaming pile.

‘I Am Groot’ peaks in its opening seconds

Disney+ recently released five shorts focusing on Baby Groot, all of which taking place between the events of the two “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies. The shorts themselves are cute enough, obviously catering to a younger crowd not yet ready for the PG-13 carnage and story beats of the “Guardians” films.

By far the best part of “I Am Groot” is the Marvel Studios opening titles (the same ones that drag on for soooooo long at the start of every Marvel movie and TV show). Because the shorts themselves rarely run more than four minutes, “I Am Groot” opens with a speedier version of the title reveal, with Groot himself fast-forwarding the sequence with a remote control.

Attention Marvel: Please keep this version of the title sequence. The long version is repetitive, self-congratulatory and all-to-grating at this point.

‘Uncharted” proves bad movies go to theaters as well

As fun as it can be to dump on all the generic Netflix action movies, it should be noted that other studios can make plenty of their own turds.

Sony’s “Uncharted,” an adaptation of the popular Playstation game series, opened in theaters to biggish numbers this past winter. It’s now streaming on Netflix (where it fits right in), and, well, it’s much worse than even the lowliest of cheap streaming options.

Generic CGI action drowns this half-baked “Indiana Jones” ripoff that also suffers from ill-defined characters, lousy performances and clunky plotting. Current Spider-Man Tom Holland plays the roguish thief/sometimes adventurer Nathan Drake, though the actor can’t shake the awkwardness that works so well when he’s playing Peter Parker. Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, an actor who hasn’t attempted a real performance in several years, treats every line of dialogue like a punchline to a terrible joke.

Look, maybe people have a point about “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” being a blurry CGI shell of the better “Indiana Jones” movies, but “Crystal Skull” is an (expletive deleted) masterpiece compared to “Uncharted,” a movie that can’t even top the worst cut scenes from the Playstation video game series in which it derives.

• • •

Tyler Wilson is a member of the International Press Academy and has been writing about movies and pop culture for Inland Northwest publications since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at [email protected].