BLOOD FATHER (France - 2016) Directed by Jean-Francois Richet. Written by Peter Craig and Andrea Berloff. Cast: Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty, William H. Macy, Diego Luna, Michael Parks, Miguel Sandoval, Thomas Mann, Raoul Trujillo, Dale Dickey, Richard Cabral, Daniel Moncada, Ryan Dorsey. (R, 88 mins) Is it possible to cover a new Mel Gibson movie without rehashing the very public meltdowns over the past decade? Is it OK to like Mel Gibson onscreen again? To praise his acting without sounding like you're defending the man himself? After 2011's badly-received THE BEAVER, Gibson didn't seem to have much of a future as anything other than a Hollywood pariah. Aside from an occasional friend like Jodie Foster standing by him, nobody wanted anything to do with him. 2012's slight but enjoyable actioner GET THE GRINGO premiered on DirecTV before Gibson managed to score two nearly identical over-the-top, self-parodying villain roles in MACHETE KILLS (2013) and THE EXPENDABLES 3 (2014), but that appeared to be the extent to which anyone was willing to cast him. This fall brings the WWII epic HACKSAW RIDGE, Gibson's first directing effort since 2006's APOCALYPTO (the trailer just says "From the Academy Award-winning director of BRAVEHEART," never mentioning Gibson by name), but before working on that, he starred in the French-financed BLOOD FATHER, which is finally getting a limited theatrical and VOD release two years after it was completed. If you have any doubts about whether the now-60-year-old Gibson's still got it, BLOOD FATHER should put any of those concerns to rest. Lean, mean, crude, and scuzzy, the hard-R BLOOD FATHER is an unabashed old-school exploitationer.. Films of this sort are usually of the pre-fab cult movie variety, imbued with a smug sense of hipster snark and winking, entitled self-awareness. Not BLOOD FATHER. Propelled by what may very well be Gibson's most ferocious performance in a long career with no shortage of them, BLOOD FATHER is the sort of throwback B-action grinder that puts the pretenders to shame.
Based on a novel by THE TOWN screenwriter Peter Craig, who co-wrote the script with Andrea Berloff (STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON), and directed by Jean-Francois Richet (the surprisingly engaging ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 remake, and the two-part French gangster saga MESRINE), BLOOD FATHER has Gibson as John Link, a grizzled recovering alcoholic and ex-con who now lives a solitary life in a California desert trailer park. He does tattoos to make ends meet, but otherwise spends most of his time in AA meetings with his neighbor and sponsor Kirby (William H. Macy), staying focused on his sobriety, and wondering if he'll ever see his missing daughter Lydia (Erin Moriarty) again. He hasn't been a part of her life since she was a kid, but she calls him out of the blue. She's on the run after accidentally shooting and presumably killing her shitbag boyfriend Jonah (Diego Luna), the nephew of a powerful, south-of-the-border Juarez cartel boss. Link is enraged to see that scheming, unreliable junkie Lydia is indeed her father's daughter, but he's sympathetic to the fact that she was born into shit and never had any role models growing up, so he wants to help. It isn't long before Jonah's crew traces her to Link's trailer, sending Link and Lydia on the run, with cartel flunkies, cops, as well as a psychotic Sicario assassin called The Cleaner (Raoul Trujillo) always close behind.
Its plot doesn't win any points for originality, but the execution makes for one of the most gleefully and entertainingly nasty movies of the year. An explosive Gibson is a junkyard dog in this, getting angrier by the scene in ways that are alternately terrifying and funny (when Jonah's crew starts shooting his trailer, Link fires back, raging about all the parole violations he's committing), eventually going completely off the chain when he seeks the help of his old biker gang leader Preacher (Michael Parks) and his old lady Cherise (Dale Dickey, the second-string Melissa Leo), only to have them attempt to sell out father and daughter for the reward money. There's also some humorous touches throughout, like broke-ass Preacher reduced to selling his neo-Nazi swag online. Gibson's performance almost functions as a de facto confessional at times. When he's recounting the sins of his past, Link confronts those transgressions head-on and it's sometimes hard to tell where Link ends and the craggy, weathered-looking Gibson begins, whether he's talking about all the people he's disappointed and alienated, or observing Preacher's white supremacist merch and quipping "Still backing the losers, I see." The role is tailor-made for the fallen star at this point in his life and career, and it's his best work in years. Sure, there's some dumb plot points, like Lydia taking forever to figure out that she's being tracked by the GPS on her phone or being required to do stupid things to advance the story, but it doesn't matter. This is the Mel Gibson Show from start to finish. You don't have to like him and it's a certainty that he'll always remain persona non grata with a good number of moviegoers and industry insiders, but there's no way you can watch BLOOD FATHER and deny that he's still a movie star who knows how to command a screen.
HELL OR HIGH WATER (US - 2016) Directed by David Mackenzie. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham, Marin Ireland, Katy Mixon, Dale Dickey, Kevin Rankin, John-Paul Howard, Margaret Bowman, Taylor Sheridan. (R, 102 mins) A strong, character-driven thriller that emerged as a summer sleeper after being rolled out the old-fashioned way--limited release over a few weeks and expanding nationally with strong word-of-mouth--HELL OR HIGH WATER is a timely drama about family, duty, poverty, and getting revenge on the system. It does get a little ham-fisted on occasion, with characters required to give a florid speech every now and again as they look at a bank and vent their anger at everything it represents, but director David Mackenzie (YOUNG ADAM, MISTER FOE) and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (SICARIO) excel at creating very real people that the audience comes to know thoroughly over the course of the film. Unemployed gas driller Toby Howard (Chris Pine) and his bank-robbing, ex-con older brother Tanner (Ben Foster) are hitting the small-town branches of the regional Texas Midlands Bank, usually before open as an employee arrives and never taking packs of money, only the loose bills in the tills. They get away, bury the car, and move on to the next town. Meanwhile, wily old Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) is looking at forced retirement but wants to nail the robbers first ("I may have one hunt left in me"), following their criminal path with his Mexican/Native American partner Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). As they make their way across the state toward Oklahoma, the Howard brothers are almost undone by Tanner's impulsive behavior that includes a reckless, spur-of-the-moment robbery while Toby is picking up the check at a diner across the street. Hamilton is stymied in his pursuit by behind-the-times Texas Midlands, with two of the targeted branches not having an electronic surveillance system, instead relying on a VHS recorder that's not even working. The robberies are masterminded by Toby, with Tanner tagging along because he's experienced. Their mother recently passed away and Texas Midlands was threatening foreclosure even as she quickly withered away from terminal cancer. Toby's ultimate plan for the stolen cash is an inventive one, and he does it with the best intentions--to provide his two sons with his bitter ex-wife Debbie (Marin Ireland) the kind of life he and Tanner never had. He's breaking the law to break the cycle of poverty that, as is the case with so many others in these desolate nether regions of rural America, has been passed on from generation to generation.
HELL OR HIGH WATER recognizes the noble reasoning behind Toby's actions but never makes him or Tanner heroes, even though the locals questioned by Hamilton and Parker are all too happy to see Texas Midlands get screwed. The only clear villains of the piece are those in the financial sector, who are treated with scorn and condescension by everyone, even Hamilton, who arrives at one crime scene, sees a well-dressed manager and gruffly intones "Well, let's talk to this guy here, he looks like someone who can foreclose on a home." Pine and Foster are excellent as the sibling bank robbers, and even a trigger-happy loose cannon like Tanner is humanized to some degree and not played as a stock psycho by Foster. But HELL OR HIGH WATER's biggest joys are provided by the national treasure that is Jeff Bridges. It's another Oscar-caliber performance, on the same level of burned-out melancholy as Tommy Lee Jones' Ed Tom Bell in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN but given a more gregarious manner in his rapport with Parker. Indeed, the testy ballbusting between Hamilton and Parker is hands-down the bromance of the year, so much so that you could easily watch an entire movie of Bridges and Birmingham in character, just sitting around dogging on each other. Whether it's Parker getting on Hamilton about his age ("You gonna do somethin' or just relax and let Alzheimer's run its course?") or Hamilton's constant razzing about Parker's dual ethnicities ("I haven't even gotten to my Mexican insults yet. I'm still on the Indian ones."), these two have an unspoken respect and dedication to one another ("You're gonna miss me pickin' on you," Hamilton tells Parker), an ironclad bond that makes events that transpire utterly heartbreaking.
Like other recent indie films that have addressed foreclosure and those doomed to struggle in a vicious cycle of being screwed and marginalized by the system (SUNLIGHT JR and 99 HOMES come to mind), HELL OR HIGH WATER is filmed in areas that have been hit hard, augmented by a downbeat score courtesy of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Abandoned houses and boarded-up businesses line the streets. Old-timers are embittered, beaten-down, and done giving a shit (the "What don't ya want?" T-Bone waitress played by Margaret Bowman is a real crowd-pleaser) and young people just cruise around looking for fights (watch Toby handle the two meatheads blasting aggro-metal and waving a gun at Tanner at a gas station). Sheridan was best known as the ill-fated Deputy Hale on SONS OF ANARCHY before he switched careers to screenwriting with SICARIO. In between, he directed VILE, one of the worst horror films ever made, and one that was mentioned a lot on his Facebook page but mysteriously vanished from his IMDb profile and reappeared as the sole credit on another as soon as SICARIO started getting some positive buzz (c'mon, man--if James Cameron can own up to PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING, you can admit to VILE). His hapless attempts at scrubbing his past aside, Sheridan has proven himself adept at creating believable, fully-rounded characters but it sometimes comes off as a little too scripted and "messagey." It's not enough to be a huge issue, but some more subtlety would've been a good thing in these fleeting moments. In the end, HELL OR HIGH WATER is one of 2016's best, a film that doesn't let anyone off the hook, one filled with nail-biting tension when it counts most and genuine, devastating emotion when you least expect it.
DON'T BREATHE (US/Hungary - 2016) Directed by Fede Alvarez. Written by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues. Cast: Stephen Lang, Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto, Emma Bercovici, Franciska Torocsik, Christian Zagia, Katia Bokor, Sergej Onopko. (R, 88 mins) Director Fede Alvarez made his mark on the horror scene with his surprisingly well-received and better-than-expected 2013 remake of EVIL DEAD. Once again teaming with co-writer Rodo Sayagues and producer/original EVIL DEAD mastermind Sam Raimi, Alvarez is back with the home invasion-thriller-with-a-twist DON'T BREATHE. In an almost apocalyptic Detroit (some exteriors were done in the Motor City, but the bulk of the film was shot in Hungary), Rocky (Jane Levy, outstanding in EVIL DEAD '13) is fed up with her abusive, white trash mom (Katia Bokor) and wants nothing more than to take her little sister (Emma Bercovici) and run off to California. Rocky's been stashing money away by breaking into houses with her dirtbag boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto, from IT FOLLOWS) and their nice-guy friend Alex (Dylan Minnette). Alex's dad manages a home security company, so that gives them easy (a little too easy--why wouldn't his dad have all the keys and alarm codes to his clients' homes at the office instead of at his own home?). Money gets word of an inner-city neighborhood completely abandoned except for one house. In that house is a recluse who's supposedly sitting on six figures he got in a settlement from a rich family whose teenage daughter accidentally ran over his own daughter. Casing the house and observing the owner (Stephen Lang) outside, the trio of nitwits are surprised to see that he's blind, the result of a bomb blast during his military days in Iraq. They manage to get in the house in the dead of night but they're no match for the fighting and weaponry skills of The Blind Man, who can take easily take them on despite his lack of sight. He starts by killing Money and isn't aware of Rocky and Alex until his enhanced sense of smell leads him to their shoes, which they took off and left in the kitchen. Fleeing the Blind Man and his vicious watchdog, Rocky and Alex end up in the basement, where they stumble on an entirely unexpected house of horrors.
The premise of a home invasion where the invaders become the hunted isn't exactly new, as Wes Craven's THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS did it 25 years ago. But Alvarez does a great job in the early going--despite beating you over the head with some bush-league foreshadowing--establishing some serious tension in every whisper, sign, and creaking floorboard potentially giving the trio away. Alvarez and Sayagues also take a big risk in not making the trio particularly likable, even if Rocky's doing what she's doing for herself and her sister, and friend-zoned Alex is doing it because he's carrying a torch for Rocky. Killing Money off first is gratifying to the audience since he's by far the most loathsome of the three and at that point, you're sort-of expected to be on the side of The Blind Man. Other than the business involving Alex's access to the keys and alarm codes, the first half of DON'T BREATHE will have you wound pretty tight and holding your breath in suspenseful anticipation of what happens next. But what happens next is the story moves to the basement, where there's a moderately clever scene shot with a low-lit camera after the Blind Man shuts off the power and Rocky and Alex are forced to wander around in total darkness, as blind as their pursuer but without his homefield advantage.
DON'T BREATHE's utter collapse begins with the reveal of what's in the basement and why it's there. And also, how it's there, because that doesn't seem too plausible, either. There's a really demented element that's brought to the forefront involving this discovery in the basement, and it all seems to be a long, drawn-out buildup to a gross-out gag that seems more in line with something that the Farrelly Brothers would've concocted in the late '90s. From then on, DON'T BREATHE becomes an endless series of plot holes and contrivances, with one major thread left dangling at the end that, upon any scrutiny whatsoever, makes the Detroit police look completely incompetent. Yes, it may seem silly and nit-picky to gripe about implausible story mechanics in some movies (I haven't even mentioned the dog chasing Rocky through the heating ducts), but it smacks of Alvarez and Sayagues recognizing that they've backed themselves into a corner, and instead of even bothering with a ridiculous deus ex machina, they choose to simply not address it at all. And sure, maybe some moviegoers won't even think about it, but it seems so glaring that it seems impossible to not think of it. Lang and Levy do some very good work here, with Levy in particular staking her claim as one of the great Final Girls of today's horror, but other than an extremely impressive sequence involving Rocky barricading herself in Money's car to avoid The Blind Man's dog that's a small masterpiece of blocking and editing, DON'T BREATHE's second half just completely flies off the rails into total stupidity when it had a really good thing going.
When 2015's COP CAR got some festival buzz going and became a minor hit on the arthouse circuit, it was enough to bump director/co-writer Jon Watts and his writing partner Christopher Ford into megabudget circles with the upcoming reboot SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING. But long before COP CAR, Watts and Ford made their debut, the horror film CLOWN. Shot in late 2012 but kept on a shelf by the Weinstein Co. until 2016, CLOWN is a feature-length expansion of a fake trailer Watts and Ford made and posted to YouTube in 2010. The "trailer," about a demonic clown, jokingly proclaimed "From master of horror Eli Roth," which prompted a flattered Roth to meet with the pair and offer to produce an actual CLOWN movie. While Robert Rodriguez's MACHETE may have worked once--before the novelty wore off with MACHETE KILLS--CLOWN is more on the HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN end of fake trailers-turned-real movies. Leadenly-paced and feeling much longer than 99 minutes, CLOWN has dad Kent (Andy Powers) forced by a cancellation to don an old clown costume for his son Jack's (Christian Distefano) birthday party. The suit and makeup soon adhere to and fuse with his body, making it impossible to take off. After several failed and increasingly gruesome attempts to get out of the costume, a desperate Kent shoots himself in the head only to find he can't die. This drives him to madness and murder, as his wife Meg (Laura Allen) learns from Karlsson (Peter Stormare), the suit's previous owner, that it's an instrument of a demon who subsists on the sacrificing of five children a year. This leads to a repetitive series of sequences with Kent pursuing children and slowly morphing into a full-on clown demon as Meg tries to keep him from killing Jack. There's some intriguing and occasionally ballsy ideas in CLOWN--Karlsson's brother was a pediatric cancer specialist, so the pair conquered the clown curse by offering the demon terminally ill children, and when the demon offers to give Kent back for one more child, Meg isn't above leading an innocent kid to the slaughter if it means saving her family--but CLOWN just doesn't come together. It's sluggish and dull, and it needs a better actor than Powers to really feel for Kent's plight. It doesn't skimp on the gore and some occasional shock value antics, but this story is, at best, a 20-minute segment in an anthology film. (R, 99 mins)
BASKIN (Turkey/US/UK - 2016)
This Turkish import got some significant acclaim at film festivals and from the horror scenester echo chamber, which only serves as further evidence that fanboys will bestow accolades on pretty much everything. BASKIN is a tired, slow-moving splatterfest that's a veritable grab-bag of cribbed material. The crux of the plot is essentially a Turkish HELLRAISER, with a quintet of cops answering a call for backup and ending up at a long-abandoned police station off a dark country road on the middle of nowhere. There's some backstory about the father-son relationship between the in-charge Boss Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu) and young rookie Arda (Gorkem Kasal), who was more or less raised by Remzi after a traumatic childhood incident that, of course, comes into play late in the film. The dark, empty police outpost is filled with bloodied, contorted souls in a mad orgy of sex and torture, overseen by "The Father," played in a bit of FREAKS and THE SENTINEL-style stunt casting by non-actor Mehmet Cerrahoglu. The Father puts the cops through all the torture porn tropes, whether it's slowly tearing out one's intestinal tract or carving out another's eyes and tongue-kissing the socket before making him fuck a goat-masked woman from behind.
It was the eye socket moment where I finally lost my patience with BASKIN. Not because of the gore or the perverse French kissing of the eye socket--that wasn't the problem at all. Even from the start, little things started rubbing me the wrong way and I was getting grouchy without really realizing it, whether it was a restaurant scene where the cops are swapping stories and one goes into a Joe Pesci "Funny how?" routine from GOODFELLAS; or the long exploration of the dark, cavernous underbelly of the abandoned police station that just seemed a little too much like SESSION 9; or the fleeting glimpse of an obviously non-human figure darting across the frame like he was trying to find his way back to THE DESCENT. Director/co-writer Can Evrenol, expanding his 2013 short film of the same name, was wearing his love of horror movies on his sleeve, but it was just getting to be too much. Too forced. By the time The Father turns up about an hour in, talking about being "one with the cosmos" and "you always carry Hell with you," he started to sound a lot like HELLRAISER's Pinhead in the days when he was simply known as "Lead Cenobite." But then the eye socket scene happened and Evrenol lost me. He accompanies it with a prominent cue from Riz Ortolani's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST score--including that synthy beeeeeew!--and the transparency was just too much to ignore. That's what I concluded to be the exact moment where those lauding the film tilted their heads back, closed their eyes, exhaled slowly and purred "Oh, right there. That's the spot. I'm yours, BASKIN." There's nothing here but Evrenol name-checking bits and pieces of his favorite horror movies, bringing nothing new to the table but fooling enough people into proclaiming BASKIN some triumphant new vision of horror. It's lazy, it's uninspired, and worst of all, it's not scary. At all. It's all smoke and mirrors, and once again, horror fans prove themselves to be the biggest genre pushovers in moviegoing. BASKIN is the most overrated horror film since GOODNIGHT MOMMY. One more time, gang: start being a little more discerning, and a little less concerned with making sure your free screeners and your convention credentials keep coming. (Unrated, 97 mins, also streaming on Netflix) THE INVITATION
(US - 2016)
While everyone was busy fellating BASKIN, another horror film was stealthily released around the same time that actually deserved the accolades but more or less fell off the radar even with the scenesters. A slow-burner that starts ratcheting the tension in the first scene and never lets up, THE INVITATION is a film where it's best to go in knowing as little as possible. It's also one of the best films of the year that you've probably heard nothing about. En route to a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) accidentally hit a coyote that Will is forced to put out of its misery via tire iron. That will turn out to be the least upsetting thing about the evening. The dinner party is at Will's old house, hosted by his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband, record producer/recovering addict David (Michiel Huisman). Several of their closest friends are there and it's been two years since they've all been together, the group more or less splintering when Will and Eden's young son died and their marriage didn't survive the aftermath. Right off the bat, Will gets a strange vibe from Eden and David, the two endlessly talking about a trip to Mexico where they embraced a self-help philosophy of grief coping known as "The Invitation." Also at the party is a friend they met in Mexico, a clingy and needy young woman named Sadie (Lindsay Burdge), who almost instantly offers to sleep with Will. There's also the ominous presence of stranger named Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch), a friend of Eden's and David's who breaks the ice by showing the group a DVD of an assisted suicide they observed in Mexico. Wounds that never completely healed are torn open as Will vehemently disagrees with the way Eden has addressed her grief. He's also bothered by Pruitt and the fact that the windows have bars on them, that David has locked all the doors from the inside, and the fact that one of the guests they're still waiting on left David a voice mail two hours earlier saying he was the first one there, yet no one has seen him and he's nowhere to be found.
FEAR CITY (US - 1985) Directed by Abel Ferrara. Written by Nicholas St. John. Cast: Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Scalia, Melanie Griffith, Rossano Brazzi, Jan Murray, Rae Dawn Chong, Joe Santos, Michael V. Gazzo, Janet Julian, Maria Conchita Alonso, Daniel Faraldo, Ola Ray, Frank Ronzio, Juan Fernandez, Tracy Griffith, Robert Miano, Frank Sivero, Neil Clifford. (R, 95 mins) Though he established himself as a critically-acclaimed filmmaker during his '90s heyday with KING OF NEW YORK (1990), BAD LIEUTENANT (1992), and THE FUNERAL (1996) among others, the always controversial Abel Ferrara got his start in the NYC exploitation gutter. His first feature film was the 1976 porno 9 LIVES OF A WET PUSSY and he followed that with 1979's scuzzy THE DRILLER KILLER, a self-explanatory splatter film where he also starred in the title role under the name "Jimmy Laine." 1981's low-budget vigilante thriller MS .45, in which a mute garment district seamstress (Zoe Tamerlis) goes full DEATH WISH on NYC scumbags after she's raped twice in the same day, was a hit on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit and even got some accolades from critics. Bronx-born Ferrara's contemporary NYC-set films of that era are among the grimiest presentations of the city in all of cinema. Like a cinematic Travis Bickle, he's from the streets, he knows them, he's lived them, and he's seen the worst they have to offer. Ferrara's always had a keen ability to bring that sleazy world to vivid life on the big screen like few others.
MS .45 got Ferrara some attention from the big studios, and it makes one wonder exactly what 20th Century Fox expected when they greenlit FEAR CITY, Ferrara's first sizably-budgeted film with actual Hollywood actors. Filmed in the spring and summer of 1983--with BLUE THUNDER, FLASHDANCE, OCTOPUSSY, and LONE WOLF MCQUADE visible on Times Square theater marquees--FEAR CITY was produced by Zupnik-Curtis Enterprises, with a good chunk of the budget and a distribution deal provided by Fox. A combination cop/mob/slasher movie, FEAR CITY deals with the hunt for a serial attacker dubbed "The New York Knifer." He's slashing strippers, most of whom work for the Starlite Talent Agency, run by childhood buddies Nicky Parzeno (Jack Scalia in his first big screen role, fresh off two short-lived TV series with THE DEVLIN CONNECTION and BERRENGER'S) and Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger, who had just been in THE BIG CHILL and EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS). Both are connected to powerful mob boss Carmine (Rossano Brazzi, quite a ways away from THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN and SOUTH PACIFIC), who's the cash behind their business. Matt is a former boxer who walked away from the sport after killing an opponent in the ring. He's also nursing a broken heart after a relationship with ex-junkie dancer Loretta (Melanie Griffith, around the same time she played a porn star in Brian De Palma's BODY DOUBLE) went south. Matt and Nicky's business starts collapsing after the wave of stripper murders, and when the body count starts rising, they're forced to team up with top competitor Goldstein (Borscht Belt legend Jan Murray, dropping F-bombs in what would be his last film appearance) as rival talent agents, club owners, and mobsters all set aside their ongoing beefs to organize their own hunt for the martial-arts madman (played by an uncredited Neil Clifford) who's killing their girls and costing them money. Matt also has to deal with perpetually irritable detective Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams), who doesn't seem to get much work done but has a big chip on his shoulder about Italian-Americans, never missing a chance to hurl slurs like "dago," "guinea," "greaseball," "goombah," and "wop" at Matt, Nicky, and anyone in the immediate vicinity who looks or sounds even remotely Italian.
Shot entirely on location and setting the mood with the theme song "New York Doll" by New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, FEAR CITY effectively captures the grimy filth and the neon sleaze of early 1980s NYC. The story structure in regular Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St. John's script is rather formulaic--of course Matt and Loretta will rekindle their love, and of course the horror of her friends being murdered will send her back to the needle--but the fascinating cast (also featuring Joe Santos, Michael V. Gazzo, Rae Dawn Chong, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ola Ray from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, and, as Loretta's dealer, a typically reptilian Juan Fernandez, best known to trash movie fans as "that shitbag Duke" in KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS) and various quirks keep things interesting. Ferrara goes off on a bit of a tangent near the end, invoking the kind of recurring Catholic imagery that was so prominent in MS .45 and would be again in later films like BAD LIEUTENANT. The momentum is sidetracked a bit in the late going as Ferrara and St. John explore Matt's tortured soul as everything haunting his conscience comes to a head: the murders he's witnessed as a mob flunky since being a neighborhood shoeshine boy in his youth, killing a man in the ring, Loretta using again, Nicky ending up in a coma after a near-fatal encounter with the Knifer. It all leads to not just a confessional with a sympathetic priest but also a Tom Berenger shadow-boxing/workout montage as he prepares to take out the Knifer himself. There's another interesting character element in that African-American Wheeler and his Hispanic partner Sanchez (Daniel Faraldo) are far and away the biggest racists in the movie. Its killer (dubbed "The Karate Killer" by FEAR CITY fans even though he's only referred to as "The New York Knifer" in the movie), who attacks with ninja-like precision and often practices his martial arts moves in the nude, could be a close relative of Gene Davis' legendary in-the-buff serial killer in the Charles Bronson classic 10 TO MIDNIGHT.
With its gratuitous nudity and graphic violence, FEAR CITY didn't endear itself to the top brass at Fox. Even after Ferrara trimmed some of the violence and nixed a kissing scene between bisexual Loretta and soon-to-be-victim Leila (Chong), the studio still wasn't happy and refused to release the film. After sitting on it for over a year, Fox finally sold it back to Zupnik-Curtis, who decided to release it independently through their own Maryland-based Chevy Chase Distribution (which may have led some moviegoers to believe Chevy Chase was involved in it) while selling the New York rights to Terry Levine's Aquarius Releasing, an outfit best known for driving a Butchermobile around Manhattan to promote DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (the uncut version of FEAR CITY was eventually released on Blu-ray in 2012 by Shout! Factory, but the reinstated shots were lesser-quality standard def). Though it was released in Europe in 1984, FEAR CITY didn't start hitting US theaters until February 1985. Berenger would get an Oscar nomination for the next year's PLATOON and Ferrara went on to direct a couple of MIAMI VICE episodes and the pilot for the acclaimed NBC series CRIME STORY in 1986. He moved on to two mishandled Vestron releases with the warring street gang ROMEO AND JULIET redux CHINA GIRL (1987) and the Elmore Leonard thriller CAT CHASER (1989) before the now-classic KING OF NEW YORK and BAD LIEUTENANT cemented his status as a key figure in the '90s indie explosion.
FEAR CITY opening with little fanfare or print support in Toledo, OH on 4/19/1985
Actual layout of the above shot, demonstrating how much
advertising support FEAR CITY was getting.
IMPERIUM (US - 2016) Written and directed by Daniel Ragussis. Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Sam Trammell, Nestor Carbonell, Burn Gorman, Chris Sullivan, Seth Numrich, Pawel Szajda, Devin Druid, Linc Hand, Adam Maier, Roger Yawson. (R, 108 mins) It's hard not to be reminded of 1998's AMERICAN HISTORY X or 2002's THE BELIEVER while watching IMPERIUM. It's another chronicle of white supremacy, but while it provides insightful commentary on the nature of fascism, its primary concern is being a straightforward thriller. It's also yet another example of the changing nature of film distribution. Headlined by an actor known the world over, it's a sad commentary that a solid, crackerjack nail-biter like this is relegated to a few screens and a VOD dumping. It didn't cost much to make and it's not an offbeat art film. It's a smart movie that would've been a hit 10-15 years ago, and it's depressing that there's no place for IMPERIUM in today's blockbuster-obsessed, franchise-driven distribution model. It's also a very topical film considering the rhetoric of a major American political party's Presidential nominee, a man whose words and opinions have frequently been termed "fascist." IMPERIUM looks at the motivation behind fascism and what really drives it ("it's about looking for someone to blame"), and does so without being overtly political. There's no liberal vs. conservative soapboxing here, but it does provide a sometimes terrifying look inside the white supremacy culture, much like AMERICAN HISTORY X did. The stereotypes are there, but they don't always apply. White power meetings take place at suburban homes in IMPERIUM. The ugly rhetoric is discussed at backyard barbecues while children play, and where housewives bake cookies decorated with swastikas. These are people you know, and you don't know them at all.
Young FBI agent Nate Foster (Daniel Radcliffe) is a quiet outsider among his colleagues, riding along on raids but spending most of his time at his desk combing through surveillance material. It's his introverted and analytical nature that attracts the attention of Agent Angela Zamparo (Toni Collette). When six sealed barrels of radioactive cesium go missing from an overturned chemical transport vehicle outside of Washington, D.C., Zamparo is convinced it's part of a plot by Richmond-area white power radio host Dallas Wolf (Tracy Letts) to detonate a dirty bomb in the nation's capital. She wants Nate to go undercover as a skinhead and infiltrate Wolf's inner circle. Passing himself off as an embittered vet just back from Iraq, Nate gets his foot in the door by getting chummy with low-level dirtbags like Vince (Pawel Szajda) and Roy (Seth Numrich), guys who talk loud and are always looking for a fight. This introduces him to the more connected Ohio-based religious militia figure Andrew Blackwell (Chris Sullivan) and engineer Gerry Conway (Sam Trammell). While Blackwell is the standard-issue, swastika-sporting skinhead, albeit with more drive, focus, and a seemingly intelligent demeanor than clowns like Vince and Roy, Conway is an upper-middle class suburban husband and father with a successful career. Of course, he's taught his kids that their playhouse needs to be fortified in case "the mud people" attack, but Nate is caught off-guard by how far from the stereotype Conway and his associates present themselves. Conway even tells Nate "You seem a little mature for a skinhead," as they observe the drinking, fighting, and carrying on of Vince and Roy. Nate is eventually introduced to Wolf, by spinning a story about being backed by an investor who wants to take Wolf's show nationwide but needs assurance that his plans are coming to fruition. When a small Geiger counter indicates high levels of radiation in Wolf's house, Nate and Zamparo are convinced that the cesium is on the premises and set in motion a plan to take down Wolf and his followers.
Things don't go according to plan, but little does in IMPERIUM. It's a film that never plays out how you expect it to and adds unpredictable little asides that sometimes border on black comedy: witness the cringeworthy moment when a humiliated Vince, who talks a big game about "going way back with Dallas," isn't even recognized by the radio host when he introduces Nate to him. Or, even funnier, when Nate visits Wolf at his nondescript house in an average neighborhood and finds that this white power hero is a middle-aged man who still lives with his mother. It's her house and the much ballyhooed radio show is broadcast from a tiny den in the basement ("This is just temporary!" Wolf keeps adamantly insisting). Wolf spouts a lot of ideas online and in his speeches ("Diversity is a code word for 'white genocide!'"), but the early signs that he's little more than a shit-stirring troll who regards his followers as little more than useful idiots are telling. It's a very subtle performance by Letts, a veteran playwright and screenwriter (BUG, KILLER JOE, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY), who's only recently been gaining ground as an actor in films like THE BIG SHORT, ELVIS & NIXON, and an acclaimed turn in INDIGNATION. Radcliffe is credible and believable throughout, though director Daniel Ragussis' script, inspired by a true story involving now-retired FBI agent Michael German, sometimes abandons key figures and plot points. It's stated that "a lot of these white supremacist guys are all talk," but as the true threat presents itself, we never see what happens to some of the others, and this is after Blackwell makes it quite clear something about Nate doesn't gel. But then we never see him again. The audience might also like to know more about the African-American protester at a white power rally who recognizes Nate and asks him what he's doing there (staying in character, Nate has to respond by shouting "Shut the fuck up, n----r!"), but we never see him again.
It's around this time that IMPERIUM pivots from AMERICAN HISTORY X-type statement to a domestic terrorism thriller along the likes of ARLINGTON ROAD or the little-seen UNTHINKABLE. The shift is smooth enough that it isn't awkward or a major disruption, but it's noticeable. And it still works. Though its antagonists differ, IMPERIUM actually has a lot in common with UNTHINKABLE, a terrific film that should've received more exposure than it got, but maybe that's the issue right there. It would be one thing if Radcliffe were paired up with, say, Bruce Willis in a quipping, mismatched buddy actioner about two FBI agents out to stop a white supremacist outfit...if they don't kill each other first! That's a film that would get a wide release. But think back to ARLINGTON ROAD's release being delayed for several months in 1999 because of the Columbine tragedy. 2010's UNTHINKABLE and now IMPERIUM are two smart yet multiplex-ready, commercial thrillers that take a completely serious and uncompromising approach to their subject. Maybe the potential for controversy is too much of a headache. Maybe movies like this just make studios uncomfortable. They wouldn't have 20 or 30 years ago. This is not to imply that IMPERIUM is some kind of classic or anything, but it is a good film that deserves a much better rollout than it's getting.
EMANUELLE IN AMERICA
(Italy - 1977) Directed by Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi). Written by Maria Pia Fusco. Cast: Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Paola Senatore, Roger Browne, Riccardo Salvino, Lars Bloch, Maria Piera Regoli, Matilde Dell'Aglio, Stefania Nocilli, Giulio Bianchi, Efrem Appel, Lorraine De Selle, Salvatore Baccaro, Renate Kasche, Pedro the Horse. (Unrated, 100 mins) The most notorious of the tenuously-connected BLACK EMANUELLE series--at least in its uncut version--EMANUELLE IN AMERICA is, for the most part, another globe-trotting travelogue with freelance photojournalist Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) engaging in the usual spontaneous sexcapades. Made as a direct response to Just Jaeckin's X-rated, 1974 global phenomenon EMMANUELLE with Sylvia Kristel, 1975's BLACK EMANUELLE (note one less "m"), directed by Bitto Albertini, showcased 25-year-old, Indonesian-born Gemser in the title role (around the same time, she had a small part in the 1975 Kristel sequel EMMANUELLE: THE JOYS OF A WOMAN). Combining the erotic elements of EMMANUELLE with a nod to blaxploitation, BLACK EMANUELLE was successful enough that Gemser was soon starring in all sorts of softcore erotica that were often exported as EMANUELLE movies even though she sat out the first official sequel. 1976's BLACK EMANUELLE 2, also directed by Albertini, saw Gemser replaced by the George Lazenby of the series, one-and-done Israeli actress Shulamith Lasri, credited as "Sharon Lesley." Gemser, meanwhile, was headlining a slew of unofficial follow-ups that were often shot under one title but released as EMANUELLE movies, like Brunello Rondi's BLACK EMMANUELLE, WHITE EMMANUELLE (1976), which paired her with French actress Annie Belle and reinstated the extra "m" to the title; Enzo D'Ambrosio's boring EMANUELLE ON TABOO ISLAND (1976), which featured five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy at an all-time career low; Giuseppe Vari's nunsploitation outing SISTER EMANUELLE (1977); Mario Bianchi's sex comedy EMANUELLE IN THE COUNTRY (1978); and the Greek-made drama EMANUELLE'S DAUGHTER (1980). In 1978, perennial D-list producer and later serial Bruno Mattei enabler Franco Gaudenzi (STRIKE COMMANDO, ROBOWAR) tried to get a piece of the action, taking an unreleased mondo documentary and having Gemser host introductions to its segments, releasing it under the title EMANUELLE AND THE EROTIC NIGHTS, which received a US release in 1983 as an early acquisition of Bob and Harvey Weinstein's fledgling Miramax Films. So popular were these EMANUELLE films that Albertini would even be hired to direct Chai Lee as an Asian Emanuelle in the 1977 offshoot YELLOW EMANUELLE.
1976 saw a BLACK EMANUELLE reboot of sorts, with a returning Gemser and veteran cinematographer and journeyman director Aristide Massaccesi (better known as "Joe D'Amato") starting a long partnership that extended beyond just the BLACK EMANUELLEs. 1976's EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK was released around the same time as BLACK EMANUELLE 2 and more or less ignores it, with Emanuelle once again an independent, respected, and sexually-liberated journalist (Lasri's Black Emanuelle was a famous model) sent off to investigate something in some semblance of a plot that's just an excuse for a plethora of sex scenes. Gemser and D'Amato would make five of their own EMANUELLEs, with BANGKOK followed by three in a busy 1977: EMANUELLE IN AMERICA, EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD (released in the US in 1980), and the cannibal horror hybrid EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (released in the US in 1984, after the craze had passed, as TRAP THEM AND KILL THEM, presumably to draw in the MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY crowd). The final installment, 1978's EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE, was a quickie padded with significant amounts of recycled and redubbed footage from previous Gemser EMANUELLEs. Another Gemser/D'Amato collaboration, BLACK COBRA WOMAN (1976), co-starring a slumming and probably shitfaced Jack Palance, was sold in Japan as an EMANUELLE film, and several years later, Gemser would resurrect the Emanuelle-as-crusading-reporter act without D'Amato for a pair of Bruno Mattei women-in-prison movies, 1982's VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON (released in the US in 1984 as CAGED WOMEN), and 1983's immortal WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (released in the US in 1985).
Gemser and offscreen husband and frequent co-star Gabriele
Tinti. They were married from 1976 until his death in 1991.
Fans generally cite EMANUELLE IN AMERICA as the high point of Gemser's EMANUELLE run, but that seems most likely due to its shock value. It's rough going for the uninitiated, especially on Blue Underground's 2003 DVD release, which presents the film in its uncut, 100-minute version (VidAmerica's VHS ran somewhere in the vicinity of 82 minutes). It's a typical Gemser/D'Amato EMANUELLE set-up: moonlighting as a fashion photographer in NYC--with ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT PART 2 visible on theater marquees, Gemser riding the Roosevelt Island tram, and Big Apple pedestrians predictably gawking at the camera--Emanuelle is almost killed by a model's crazed boyfriend before calming him down the best way she knows how: with a blowjob. She then gets a hot tip about a sex trafficking ring involving wealthy asshole Eric Van Darren (Lars Bloch). Armed with her sneaky pendant camera with a seemingly endless supply of film, Emanuelle infiltrates his group of Zodiac-named women and going by "Virgo," she's privy to all sorts of high society, EYES WIDE SHUT transgressions, including one of the women (SALON KITTY's Paola Senatore), jerking off Van Darren's prized horse Pedro in a scene of explicit bestiality that was obviously cut from most releases. From there, Emanuelle follows Van Darren's duke friend (Gabriele Tinti, Gemser's husband and frequent co-star--they met on BLACK EMANUELLE and married in NYC around the time of EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's shoot, becoming the Bogie & Bacall of Italian trash cinema) to his villa in Venice, where she witnesses an orgy that includes some onscreen fellatio in shots that never involve Gemser. From there, she goes to an island where D'Amato stops the film cold for a solid ten minutes of hardcore sex scenes and money shots involving previously unseen actors (one of whom is Nazisploitation regular Salvatore Baccaro, best known for his credit "and Boris Lugosi as Ook the Neanderthal Man" in 1973's FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS). While on the island, Emanuelle witnesses a copulating couple carrying on as a brutal snuff film plays in the background. An investigation of the snuff film leads her to the nation's capital (why didn't they call this EMANUELLE GOES TO WASHINGTON?), where she's seduced by a corrupt senator (Roger Browne, a Cincinnati, OH native who spent his entire career in Europe) with a penchant for LSD and getting off on the kind of filmed torture tactics that would make him the ideal target for Videodrome. Then it all ends with a wacky, fourth-wall breaking finale involving Emanuelle and her boyfriend (Riccardo Salvino)--yes, she has a boyfriend--and some comical stereotypes of island natives.
Narratively speaking, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA is a mind-boggling mess with little flow and even less logic. But nobody's watching this for storytelling. The more conventional sex scenes are well-handled--a sweaty steamroom hook-up between Emanuelle and Gemini (Lorraine De Selle) is nicely done--and while it's not quite "Run Cheetah Run" from EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE, it's got a great catchy, "English-as-second-language" Nico Fidenco-penned theme song in "Celebrate Myself." But D'Amato just goes too far for the audience that watched these softcore Euro imports on late night Showtime back in the early '80s. Of course, the hardcore elements would've been trimmed (and were only shot by D'Amato as alternate takes for different territories in the first place), but while I see the demand for cum shots if there was potential for this on the XXX circuit, who other than Pedro really wants to see Paola Senatore (who, big surprise, was doing porn a decade later) give a horse a two-handed tugjob? Between that and the disgustingly graphic and very convincing snuff film snippets that D'Amato shot, I question EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's definition of "entertainment." Gemser is as lovely as ever here, but the enjoyment is significantly hampered by all the extraneous shit going on. I'll take the drag queen bowling alley brawl in EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE any day. D'Amato would continue dabbling in all sorts of genres (zombies, cannibals, CONAN and ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs) before his death in 1999, spending the final years of his career in hardcore porn. Gemser would be an exploitation staple well into the '80s, with appearances in 1976's VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED, the 1981 Rankin/Bass period epic THE BUSHIDO BLADE, and an unlikely co-starring role with Michael Landon in the 1983 NBC TV-movie LOVE IS FOREVER (where she was credited as "Moira Chen" when producers didn't want her sexploitation notoriety to be a distraction) representing her only attempts at mainstream crossover. A devastated Gemser would retire from acting when 59-year-old Tinti died of cancer in 1991, though she worked behind the scenes as a costume designer on a few more D'Amato productions (including the legendary TROLL 2) before withdrawing from movies altogether in 1993. Now 65, Gemser lives completely out of the public eye. She gave an audio interview for EMANUELLE IN AMERICA's 2003 DVD release, but her last on-camera appearance to date was in an interview for EMMANUELLE: A HARD LOOK, a 2001 British TV documentary about Sylvia Kristel's EMMANUELLE films by REPO MAN director Alex Cox.
ANTHROPOID (Czech Republic/UK/France - 2016) Directed by Sean Ellis. Written by Sean Ellis and Anthony Frewin. Cast: Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan, Toby Jones, Charlotte Le Bon, Anna Geislerova, Harry Lloyd, Sam Keeley, Jiri Simek, Marcin Dorocinski, Jan Hajek, Alena Mihulova, Bill Milner, Pavel Reznicik, Vaclav Neuzil, Mish Boyko, Andrej Polak, Jan Budar, Roman Zach, Detlef Bothe. (R, 120 mins) It's probably difficult to bring anything new to the WWII genre after 70+ years worth of movies, and ANTHROPOID doesn't really try. Despite a title that sounds like some kind of ALIEN spinoff, the film tells the story of Operation Anthropoid, the 1942 plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich--#3 in the Nazi chain of command after Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, and who chaired the Wannsee Conference that laid the groundwork for the "Final Solution"--in Czechoslovakia. It's an event that's been depicted in movies going back to when it was still breaking news in 1943, as Fritz Lang's HANGMEN ALSO DIE! and a pre-tearjerker Douglas Sirk's HITLER'S MADMAN were loose chronicles of Operation Anthropoid filtered through the lens of patriotic, crowd-pleasing Hollywood war effort propaganda. The 1964 Czech film ATENTAT and 1975's OPERATION DAYBREAK (from three-time 007 director Lewis Gilbert) also told the Anthropoid story. Director/co-writer/cinematographer Sean Ellis (CASHBACK, THE BROKEN, METRO MANILA) is able to bring more bleak brutality to this than films from the 1940s could and, contrasted with the glossy feel of big WWII epics, his use of handheld shaky-cam brings a gritty, in-your-face immediacy to the proceedings despite frequent overuse. While ANTHROPOID doesn't reinvent the wheel as far as WWII programmers go, and there's a couple of hoary cliches and obvious symbolism in the finale (a candle extinguishing just as someone's life ends? Really?), it's well-acted, the period detail is excellent, and Ellis nails several intense and nerve-shredding set pieces throughout.
Parachuting into German-occupied Czechoslovakia as part of the Anglo-Czech Allied operation, Josef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubis (Jamie Dornan) meet with Czech Resistance leaders Uncle Hajsky (Toby Jones) and Ladislav Vanek (Marcin Dorocinski), who arrange for them to be sheltered by the Moravecs (Alena Mihulova, Pavel Reznicik) and their 15-year-old violin prodigy son Ata (Bill Milner). Their orders are to assassinate Heydrich (Detlef Bothe), the head of Nazi forces in Czechoslovakia, and while the plan is in the works, they manage to blend into their surroundings by being seen with two local women, Marie (Charlotte Le Bon) and Lenka (Anna Geislerova), who are also part of the Resistance. When word comes down in the final days of May 1942 that Heydrich is being reassigned to France, Gabcik and Kubis immediately go forward with the plan on May 27, with the help of other officers and Resistance members. It almost immediately flies off the rails when Gabcik steps in front of Heydrich's car to open fire and his machine gun jams, leading to an explosive battle erupting on a busy Prague street. Kubis blows up Heydrich's car with a bomb and the Nazi takes a few rounds in the ongoing crossfire. Heydrich would die from his injuries a week later, but in the immediate afterward of the execution of Operation Anthropoid, Gabcik, Kubis, and the others are under the impression that they failed. Upon Heydrich's death, an enraged Hitler sends more troops into Czechoslovakia. The hunt for Heydrich's killers begins at Lidice, where any male over the age of 16 is executed and the women and children are rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Gabcik, Kubis, and five other Czech officers take refuge in a crypt underneath the Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Prague, where they remain undetected for two weeks until Czech Resistance member Karel Curda (Jiri Simek), fearing for the safety of his family, rats out the Moravecs, which leads to the Nazi siege of the cathedral on June 18, 1942, where the seven Czech soldiers--three in the church and four down below in the cavernous crypt--manage to hold off the Germans for six hours.
Ellis' handling of the attempt on Heydrich's life on a crowded street and the final siege at the cathedral are masterfully done. It's edge-of-your-seat suspense, even when you know the outcome. Prior to that, Ellis and co-writer Anthony Frewin, a trusted member of Stanley Kubrick's inner circle from 1968's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY to 1999's EYES WIDE SHUT, and the writer of 2007's COLOR ME KUBRICK, don't really delve too much into the characters other than what we need to know. The filmmakers make a concerted and unflinching effort to stay close to the facts, even if it paints the heroes in negative light. Murphy's Gabcik is driven and obsessed, while Dornan's Kubis is more emotional and prone to choking at clutch moments, such as an early anxiety attack that prevents him from shooting a fleeing traitor and his allowing himself to fall in love with Marie (cue a disdainful Gabcik inevitably calling him out with a "Why are we here?" lecture). They also don't shy away from depicting the kinds of psychological and physical torture the Resistance members endured, particularly in the horror inflicted on young Ata Moravec. There isn't much here you haven't seen in any number of WWII movies, but it's a riveting story and the pace is relentless. Considering the season and the depressing glut of franchises, brands, and regurgitated remakes out there right now, ANTHROPOID is a welcome bit of grown-up counterprogramming that probably won't get much attention in theaters, but will undoubtedly find a larger audience on streaming and cable down the road.
A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING
(US/Germany/France/Switzerland/Mexico - 2016)
There isn't much of a sense of urgency in this occasionally obvious and heavy-handed midlife crisis/culture clash drama based on the 2012 novel by Dave Eggers. It's a rare instance of a Tom Hanks movie not getting much of a push, with Lionsgate getting it on just 520 screens at its widest release. Hanks' durable, everyman persona makes him perfectly cast in this fish-out-of-water story centering on a skidding sales rep who's seen better days, being offered One Last Chance to Close the Sale of His Life. Alan Clay (Hanks) hasn't really liked himself much since selling out an American Schwin plant to China, a deal that put several hundred people--including his dad (Tom Skerritt)--out of work. His marriage fell apart and though he feels like a failure, his relationship with 21-year-old daughter Kit (Tracey Fairaway) remains strong thanks to her dislike of her mother. Now working for a tech company, Alan's been handed the plum contract of setting up IT service for Saudi Arabia's royal family. Once on site, he's constantly given the runaround, the wi-fi doesn't work, and he's so bogged down by jet lag that he repeatedly oversleeps and misses his shuttle to the work site. He forms a tentative friendship with Yousef (Alexander Black), a buddy of the hotel concierge, who drives him to the palace grounds every day in his beat-up clunker. A rapidly growing cyst sends Alan to a local doctor, Zahra (Sarita Choudhury), for whom an attraction is mutual, but societal customs initially prevent any moves from being made.
And that's about it. There's a health scare and Alan starts drinking to excess in an attempt to counter his malaise, and in his interactions with both Yousef and Zahra, he learns to appreciate life and pull himself together, while doing what he can to help his new friends in their assorted plights (Yousef's involvement with a married woman and Zahra's pending divorce and a life lived as a second class citizen, even though she's a brilliant doctor). A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING is an unusual project for director Tom Tykwer, normally a more rambunctious filmmaker best known for the innovative 1999 cult classic RUN LOLA RUN. Tykwer directed Hanks in 2012's underappreciated CLOUD ATLAS, and Hanks, a huge fan of the Eggers novel, was likely instrumental in ensuring Tykwer could make this film at all. But even Hanks' involvement didn't generate any Hollywood interest, as the film was an independently-financed, five-country co-production, with extensive location work done in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco. It's easily Tykwer's most low-key film to date, and somewhat European in its pacing and style, probably why Lionsgate didn't see much potential for it at US multiplexes, instead relegating it to its Roadside Attractions arthouse division. It really only starts gaining momentum very late, when Alan and Zahra start to admit their feelings for one another, after the symbolic removal of the cyst on Alan's back is the literal weight lifted off of his back. Tykwer more or less abandons Yousef, who's such a prominent character that you expect him to be there by the end, and a potential love interest for Alan in Danish contractor Hanne (THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY's Sidse Babett Knudsen) is a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere. Skerritt's brief performance looks phoned-in from his living room, and Ben Whishaw, a Tykwer semi-regular since 2006's underrated and insane PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER, has even less screen time as the titular hologram, designed as a long-distance meeting facilitator for the Saudi king. It's got some expectedly rock-solid work by Hanks, who gets strong support from Choudhury and a very likable performance by Black, but A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING is a harmless trifle that just never really catches fire. (R, 98 mins) FATHERS & DAUGHTERS (US/Italy - 2016)
The warning signs are all there if you look closely: a movie you've heard nothing about, featuring a star-studded cast with several Oscar wins and nominations between them, debuting on VOD in 2016 courtesy of the Redbox-ready B-movie genre outfit Vertical Entertainment with no fanfare, still sporting its 2014 copyright. Yes, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS has spent some time gathering dust on a shelf, a bad movie that's so earnest and self-serious that is occasionally feels like an act of cruelty to be bagging on it. A maudlin, overwrought tearjerker that will have even the most easy weepers rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, and calling bullshit, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS is directed by Italian filmmaker Gabriele Muccino, who had some success in Hollywood several years back with a pair of Will Smith dramas, THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (2006) and SEVEN POUNDS (2008), before tanking with the instantly forgotten Gerard Butler flop PLAYING FOR KEEPS (2012). Muccino fashions FATHERS & DAUGHTERS as a shameless weepie, telling two intercutting, parallel stories taking place in 1989 and 2014. In 1989, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jake Davis (Russell Crowe, also one of the producers) is behind the wheel when a tragic car accident takes the life of his wife, leaving him to raise their seven-year-old daughter Katie (Kylie Rogers) alone. Jake's grief is overwhelming and, coupled with a head injury he sustained in the accident that causes random seizures that threaten a psychotic break, he's institutionalized for several months while Katie stays with his late wife's wealthy sister Elizabeth (Diane Kruger) and her high-powered lawyer husband William (Bruce Greenwood). Once Jake is out, Elizabeth, still bitter over her sister's death, wants custody of Katie. Jake's latest book becomes a critical laughingstock and commercial bomb, and he's running out of money to fight the impending court battle. In 2014, adult Katie (Amanda Seyfried) is a grad student and social worker attempting to break through to a troubled girl (BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD Oscar-nominee Quvenzhane Wallis) when she isn't trying to LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR her way through her daddy and abandonment issues, frequently picking up random men at bars for public quickies (Jake isn't around in 2014, so it's obvious he's died at some point in the 25-year interim). She meets an aspiring writer, Jake Davis superfan, and all-around good guy in Cameron (Aaron Paul), and their tender lovemaking is a stark contrast to numerous scenes of Katie getting drilled from behind in the backseat of a car or in a men's room shitter at a bar. Of course, nice-guy Cameron is exactly like her father and therefore, the film posits, exactly what she needs, so she repeatedly tries to sabotage a potentially good thing with her inability to commit and face all the trauma in her past with her mother's death and her father's breakdown.
Never mind the cliche of a woman resorting to promiscuity over unresolved parental issues--Muccino and debuting screenwriter Brad Desch have no notion of the concept of storytelling subtlety. They floridly hammer everything home in an overbaked fashion both in dialogue and filmmaking techniques, with one Katie/Cameron argument pointlessly played out in a long, dizzying single take down a NYC street, into a cab, and back out on the street again for no reason other than Muccino trying to make something out of nothing. Or there's clumsy exposition drops like our first look at adult Katie, when one of her fellow grad students runs up to her and exclaims "I can't believe you're about to get a graduate degree in Psychology!" It just grows more laughable as it goes on, in the 1989 scenes with an increasingly distracted Jake repeatedly trying to make amends with young Katie by referring to her nickname "Potato Chip," the two of them singing along to a Michael Bolton cover of Burt Bacharach's "(They Long to Be) Close to You," and Jake being hit by seizures at all the predictable times, like a major book signing (he has pills for this condition--why doesn't he take them?). In the 2014 scenes, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS turns into an all-out howler by the end, with Katie about to leave a bar to partake in an orgy with some strangers when the Bolton cover of the Bacharach song comes on the jukebox, prompting a total meltdown. This is a non-descript little dive bar in NYC that's playing alternative music at the beginning of the scene. Not even the most insufferable Williamsburg hipster douchebag would play a Michael Bolton song. And why is that song even a choice on a jukebox in this bar? And when a night out is ruined by the drunken appearance of one of Katie's one-nighters from a year ago ("I fucked you on your kitchen floor!" he yells), she tries to explain her past to Cameron, a guy so nice and sensitive that a never-played acoustic guitar is visible on a rocking chair in his apartment, with "You thought you were getting Potato Chip, and you ended up with some cheap piece of ass." What else? Oh, during an argument between Jake and William over the looming custody fight, a sneering Greenwood is actually required to bark the line "I've got more money than God!" The film completely strands its capable actors with unplayable roles, whether it's Crowe slipping in and out of a broad Noo Yawk accent or Kruger delivering a shrill, wine-swilling performance as the boozy, bitchy control freak Elizabeth. Younger actors Wallis and Rogers manage to escape unharmed, but there's also nothing supporting roles for Octavia Spencer (an Oscar winner for THE HELP) as Katie's boss, two-time Oscar-nominee Janet McTeer, wasted in one brief scene as Katie's therapist, and Jane Fonda in a small role as Jake's caring agent who can't bring herself to tell him he's washed up. Ludicrous, manipulative, and completely over-the-top, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS definitely has some potential to be an audience participation camp classic down the road. (R, 116 mins)
HELLHOLE (US - 1985) Directed by Pierre De Moro. Written by Vincent Mongol (Aaron Butler), Lance Dickson and Mark Evan Schwartz. Cast: Ray Sharkey, Judy Landers, Marjoe Gortner, Mary Woronov, Richard Cox, Terry Moore, Edy Williams, Robert Darcy (Robert Z'Dar), Marneen Fields, Martin Beck, Cliff Emmich, Martin West, Dyanne Thorne, Lynn Borden, Lamya Derval, Natalie Main, Ann-Elizabeth Chatterton, Carole Ita White. (R, 95 mins) A women-in-prison take on THE SNAKE PIT and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, the wonderfully sleazy and boundlessly stupid HELLHOLE was the first and last film distributed by the short-lived Arkoff International Pictures. Formed by Samuel Z. Arkoff (1918-2001) after his American International Pictures was acquired by Filmways in 1979, Arkoff International Pictures allowed the B-movie legend to keep the AIP abbreviation, but lightning didn't strike twice. Arkoff's new AIP produced a handful of genre titles that were acquired by others--UFDC released 1982's Q, Comworld released 1983's THE FINAL TERROR, and Orion released 1984's UP THE CREEK. But HELLHOLE, which played in theaters over the spring and summer of 1985, was also distributed by Arkoff and his son Louis, and it promptly brought the curtain down on Arkoff International Pictures, quickly and quietly closing a largely forgotten chapter of the famed drive-in and exploitation icon's storied career.
HELLHOLE was written by Aaron Butler, using the pseudonym "Vincent Mongol," with separate "additional dialogue" credits going to both Lance Dickson and Mark Evan Schwartz, an almost certain sign of script revisions during a troubled shoot. As "Mongol," Butler also wrote the incredible 1983 trash classic CHAINED HEAT, so that should give you some idea of what to expect with HELLHOLE. Aerobics instructor Susan (Judy Landers) witnesses her mother (Lynn Borden) being strangled by psychotic Silk (Ray Sharkey), who's after the location of some papers Mom had stashed away. Said papers go into all the details of the evil experiments taking place at Ashland, a sanitarium for women. Silk has been hired by Monroe (Martin Beck) and Rollins (Martin West), two corrupt members of the state board of examiners trying to cover up what's going on at Ashland. Suffering from amnesia after surviving a head injury escaping from Silk, Susan is transferred to--wait for it--Ashland, where kinky lesbian Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov) is using the scantily-clad patients as guinea pigs in an abandoned building on the grounds--referred to as the "Hellhole" by those in the know--for some brain serum/chemical lobotomy nonsense that apparently has a 0% survival rate. It's not a well-kept secret that Fletcher's up to some shady shit--crusading medical board chief Sydnee Hammond (Terry Moore, a long way from MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, her COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA Oscar nomination, and being Howard Hughes' alleged secret wife) already has an inside man, Ron (CRUISING's Richard Cox) conducting an investigation while working as an orderly. Also improbably brought on as an orderly is Silk, who's there to kill Susan after finding out what she knows about the location of her mother's papers. To pass the time, Silk manages to seamlessly blend in by acting like a complete psycho, sexually abusing some of the women, and using an empty room to create his own workplace S&M fuck pad (what do you expect from the same writer who gave us a warden with a jacuzzi in his office in CHAINED HEAT?) while somehow avoiding any kind of disciplinary action whatsoever from either Fletcher or the more altruistic, level-headed Dr. Dane (Marjoe Gortner). Just to give you an idea of how sordid HELLHOLE is, Marjoe Gortner plays one of the relatively nice characters.
Director Pierre De Moro (SAVANNAH SMILES) does a workmanlike job getting the film in the can, but HELLHOLE is definitely worth seeing for fans of the 1980s women-in-prison revival that gifted us such B-movie favorites as THE CONCRETE JUNGLE, CHAINED HEAT, CAGED WOMEN, WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE, THE NAKED CAGE, and REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS. The unusual cast gives it some cult movie cache, from the likes of Gortner, Landers (then a TV favorite with her older sister Audrey), buxom Russ Meyer muse/ex-wife Edy Williams, future MANIAC COP star Robert Z'Dar (billed as "Robert Darcy") as a hulking orderly, ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS' Dyanne Thorne in a small role as a crazed patient, and Moore, a fading '50s actress who, a year earlier at 55, became the oldest Playboy centerfold in their August 1984 issue. However, HELLHOLE is dominated by two competing batshit performances from Woronov and Sharkey. Woronov, who's interviewed on Shout! Factory's new Blu-ray release, clearly knows this is campy silliness and just has fun with it, as evidenced by the long, slow, wet kiss she gives her latest failed experiment (Marneen Fields) after torturing her to death.
But it's Sharkey who wins the overacting honors for HELLHOLE. Whether he's singing nursery rhymes or perpetually smirking or just standing there looking like a brainless dipshit, you can't take your eyes off of him, usually for all the wrong reasons. How many bridges did Sharkey burn to go from winning a Golden Globe for his breakout performance in 1980's THE IDOLMAKER to rolling around in a mudbath threesome with Edy Williams in a sleazy women-in-prison potboiler from the makers of CHAINED HEAT a mere five years later? Sharkey had a career year in 1980, with starring roles in THE IDOLMAKER, HEART BEAT, and Paul Mazursky's JULES & JIM remake WILLIE & PHIL, followed by a 1981 hosting gig on the ill-fated Jean Doumanian-led sixth season of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, but his momentum stalled and things quickly derailed when he opted to become a cautionary tale. Sharkey began using heroin not long after his Golden Globe win, and the downward spiral was depressingly apparent in the rapidly declining quality of work he was getting. By 1984, his career completely crashed and burned, and he was reduced to a supporting role in the Lorenzo Lamas breakdancing bomb BODY ROCK. And did anyone see the same year's patchwork clusterfuck DU-BEAT-E-O, a barely-released look at the L.A. punk scene from WELCOME BACK KOTTER co-creator Alan Sacks that starred Sharkey and Fear bassist Derf Scratch, along with a prominently-billed Joan Jett in six-year-old footage from an unfinished 1978 documentary on The Runaways? Relative to the projects he was being offered at the time, Sharkey probably saw a top-billed starring role in HELLHOLE as a step up.
Ray Sharkey (1952-1993)
He managed occasional guest spots on TV shows like MIAMI VICE, THE EQUALIZER, and CRIME STORY, and was lucky to score small roles in Brian De Palma's little-loved gangster comedy WISE GUYS and the Richard Gere-Kim Basinger thriller NO MERCY (both 1986), but it took several stints in rehab before he finally kicked his heroin addiction. His marriage ending in divorce over his drug use and multiple overdoses, Sharkey enjoyed a brief comeback with an acclaimed recurring role from 1987-1989 as mobster Sonny Steelgrave on the CBS series WISEGUY, and was such a prominent face at the network that he even did a drunk driving PSA for them after being involved in four drug-related car accidents a few years earlier. But offscreen, he replaced his heroin addiction with even more reckless and grossly irresponsible behavior. Though he managed to keep it secret for several years, he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in the late '80s after years of heroin use and shared needles. In complete denial of his medical condition, Sharkey continued having unprotected sex with scores of women--well over 100, according to his manager. By 1992, with his WISEGUY gig long gone and his career in the toilet, Sharkey was back on drugs and was busted by Canadian customs when a routine cargo inspection uncovered a package of cocaine and heroin being shipped to him from Los Angeles to Vancouver, where he was working on the CBS series THE HAT SQUAD. Vancouver police searched his hotel room and uncovered more heroin and he was arrested and fired from the show. The same year, his second marriage ended because of his drug abuse and his condition progressed to full-blown AIDS. When it became known that he was aware of his HIV-positive status and didn't tell his partners, he was sued by three different women who accused him of knowingly exposing them to infection. One of the women was model Elena Monica, daughter of Borscht Belt comedian and third-string Rat Pack member Corbett Monica. Elena Monica won a $52 million settlement against Sharkey's estate after he died in June of 1993. The ruling was essentially worthless, as the actor was broke by the time of his death, not living long enough to face judgment in any of the lawsuits filed against him. The 40-year-old Sharkey was reportedly down to 90 lbs when he died, and he looked gaunt and tired in his final film appearance as the bad guy in the Burt Reynolds kiddie comedy COP AND A HALF, released two months before his death. A gifted actor--even in junk like HELLHOLE--unable to control and conquer the demons that destroyed his life and forever changed the lives of at least three women, Sharkey's legacy is a tragic one: in 2015, his only child, Cecelia Sharkey, born in 1988 to Sharkey and his second wife, was charged with murder, accused of bludgeoning her boyfriend's mother to death with a baseball bat.
HELLHOLE opening in Toledo, OH on 6/14/1985
HELLHOLE playing at two local malls
James Spader sandwiched between DEF-CON 4
and NIGHT PATROL. This kid's goin' nowhere.
