For a long time, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES was shaping up to be the DAY THE CLOWN CRIED of found-footage. Filmed in 2007 and screened at that year's Tribeca Film Festival, the film was abruptly yanked from the schedule by MGM just a week before its planned February 8, 2008 release date (for some perspective on how long ago this was, that weekend's other major releases were FOOL'S GOLD, WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS, VINCE VAUGHN'S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW, and IN BRUGES), even though a trailer had been out and multiplexes had promo material on display for several weeks. The found-footage genre was still in its post-BLAIR WITCH PROJECT era in 2008, and THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES would've preceded the next wave brought in by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY by over a year and a half had MGM released it on schedule. While no explanation was ever given for why the studio buried this like a dark family secret, the filmmakers--writer/director John Erick Dowdle and his producer brother Drew--had a hit later the same year with QUARANTINE, a remake of the Spanish found-footage horror phenomenon [REC], before going on to make the 2010 M. Night Shyamalan production DEVIL, the 2014 Paris catacombs-set found-footage opus AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, and the 2015 Owen Wilson thriller NO ESCAPE. The Dowdles got QUARANTINE on the basis of THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, and while none of their subsequent films were blockbusters, their moderate success still wasn't enough to free POUGHKEEPSIE from the MGM shelf. It eventually got a stealth release on DirecTV in 2014, but just as word got around to horror fans that it was available, MGM pulled it once more without warning. Only now, in the fall of 2017, has the now-decade old film been made widely available, with Shout! Factory's Blu-ray and DVD release rescuing it from oblivion and finally giving it, for all intents and purposes, it's first actual, widespread exhibition.
You'd assume this must be a terrible movie, but the end result is quite surprising. It's unfortunate that the found-footage genre has played itself into overexposed irrelevance, because THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is one of the best of its kind. There's no jump scares to be had and the gore is minimal, but its violence and intensity are such that it's quite dark, disturbing, and sometimes difficult to watch. It's hard telling if that's why MGM got skittish about releasing it, but the closest comparison I can draw to illustrate just how utterly real and horrifying this film can be is the sad and heartbreaking Australian found-footage outing LAKE MUNGO. Set up as a faux talking-head documentary, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES chronicles the exploits of the east coast serial killer The Water Street Butcher, tracing his murders back to 1991 via a vast collection of homemade snuff videos found in his house in 1996. The madness begins with the abduction and murder of a little girl right from her front yard, escalates to a couple being kidnapped on their way home to Poughkeepsie from Pittsburgh, and soon, he's very intricately crafting the murder sites to deliberately mislead the investigators and misdirect the profilers when the FBI is called in. To throw them off even more, he changes his M.O. and kidnaps 19-year-old Cheryl Dempsey (Stacy Chbosky), holding her captive as a sex-and-torture slave in his basement. He even shows up at Cheryl's house and films himself talking to her mother, laughing and taunting her ("If there's anything I can do...") before running away once the mom realizes she's looking right at the man who kidnapped her daughter. The murders go on, with the killer deliberately leaving DNA behind as if he's trying to get captured, and that's when things take an unexpected and even more horrific turn, with Dowdle even working in 9/11 in a plausible, non-exploitative fashion.
THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES takes full advantage of one of the unsung ringers of modern-era horror: blurry video and garbled audio, which always gets under your skin if done right. This film excels at it, even if you have to cut them some slack that all of the VHS tapes are somehow 1.78:1. The unpredictable patterns of the murders, the rawness of the tapes that make them look like genuine snuff films, the intelligence and the patience of the killer, and the horrific conditions in which he leaves the victims (the couple is found with the man decapitated, his head surgically implanted into the woman's stomach with his face protruding like some demented tribute to TOTAL RECALL's Cuato) are the stuff of nightmares straight from the Hannibal Lecter or SE7EN playbooks. The same goes for the notes read by the investigating agents ("His genitals were removed and placed in the sock drawer of the master bedroom"), and one absolutely chilling scene that rivals the cell phone discovery in LAKE MUNGO, when an exhaustive study of the now-dead Pittsburgh-to-Poughkeepsie couple on surveillance footage from a gas station gives police their first look at the killer, a blurry image of a figure standing on the far edge of the frame, seemingly communicating to the camera in sign language in so subtle a fashion that it takes them a while to figure out that he's telling them where they'll find the bodies. There's a bit of a logic lapse later on involving the killer's fate, but it's a minor quibble in a very effective film that's so bleak and unflinching that it probably wouldn't have done well in theaters. This is grim, bleak shit that makes SE7EN look like the feel-good movie of the year. Maybe that's why MGM had no idea what to do with it. (R, 81 mins)
ARMED RESPONSE (US - 2017)
Fusing elements of a PREDATOR-type actioner with EVENT HORIZON, THE KEEP, and the short-lived, late '80s "haunted prison" craze (DESTROYER, PRISON, SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK, THE CHAIR) had some potential for some batshit craziness, but ARMED RESPONSE is a lethargic, drably-shot, ploddingly-paced bore that only comes alive in the last five minutes, by which point it's way too late to care. It's probably going for slow burn, but there's no tension, no suspense, and about 90% of the running time consists of people either walking down dark corridors with flashlights and military weapons at the ready, staring at rows of monitors, or arguing with one another. Gabriel (BROTHERS & SISTERS' Dave Annable) is still in shock over the death of his young daughter (some backstory that has no payoff) when he's visited by Isaac (Wesley Snipes), his old commander in Afghanistan. Isaac needs him to investigate some strange occurrences at "The Temple," a secret compound inside an abandoned prison. The Temple is the next stage in the evolution of the war on terror: a sentient, AI lifeforce whose technological capabilities to weed out the truth trumps all lie detectors and "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Gabriel is a former MIT whiz kid who designed the security system inside The Temple, and he may be needed to get Isaac and his team, among them no-nonsense Riley (Anne Heche) and hothead Brett (WWE star Seth Rollins), in and out of the facility. It seems the last team stationed at The Temple were slaughtered when The Temple went rogue. Security footage shows the team being attacked by unseen and apparently supernatural forces, and soon those forces start coming for them. The Temple is able to detect wrongdoings and buried secrets, and like the last crew, Isaac and his officers committed swept-under-the-rug war crimes in Afghanistan and The Temple intends to make them pay, as illustrated by such dialogue as "There's a presence in the code!" and "The Temple has judged us deserving of punishment!" and "The Temple has reached a tipping point." So will most viewers by that time.
There's potential for some insightful, layered commentary here, but ARMED RESPONSE goes the generic route, offering a bunch of cliched military hardasses in lieu of characters or interesting ideas. The whole idea behind "The Temple" is half-baked and never really clearly expressed, and it only gets remotely interesting when Gabriel has to reboot the system and The Temple slowly regains its power, with its cinder block walls coming to life and reaching out to unlucky victims, yanking their arms out of their sockets. That kind of craziness would've been helpful in the 85 minutes up to that point, but director John Stockwell, a former actor (CHRISTINE, MY SCIENCE PROJECT, TOP GUN) who made some successful movies (CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL, BLUE CRUSH, INTO THE BLUE) before his post-2011 slide into the world of VOD/DTV (CAT RUN, IN THE BLOOD, KICKBOXER: VENGEANCE) just seems to be coasting through, and the end result looks like an updated and slightly higher-end version of something Roger Corman's Concorde would've released in 1989. Snipes and Heche are the big names here, and while they're in the whole movie and don't pull any Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal phone-ins, they're definitely sidelined in favor of the bland Annable. The film was produced by WWE Studios (hence, Rollins' involvement) and upstart Erebus Pictures, a production company formed by none other than KISS icon and NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE villain Gene Simmons, who also briefly appears in either a bald cap or sans wig (looking a lot like late-career Michael Ansara) in a flashback as a suspected terrorist. Simmons is also all over the accompanying making-of featurette, and if you watch that beforehand, you might think that he's the star of the movie. (R, 94 mins)
OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE (Australia - 2017)
After a ten-year hiatus, Lionsgate dusts off the OPEN WATER franchise for another go by taking an Australian shark attack movie called CAGE DIVE and slapping the "OPEN WATER 3" prefix on it. It's very similar to what they did with 2007's OPEN WATER 2: ADRIFT, where they took a sharkless German film called ADRIFT, with a bunch of people stranded in the ocean, unable to get back on a yacht after they all jumped off and no one pulled the ladder down. Neither in-name-only "sequel" has anything to do with Chris Kentis 2004 micro-budget indie hit OPEN WATER, and CAGE DIVE, is more or less a remake, with some added melodrama and the requisite found footage angle, taking advantage of the Trend That Wouldn't Die. Probably hastily prepped for VOD after the surprise success of the long-shelved Weinstein castoff 47 METERS DOWN, CAGE DIVE opens with the remains of a digital video camera found on the ocean floor, its memory card still intact. Faster than you can say "I wonder who the real sharks are," we're watching shaky, handheld footage of Americans--siblings Jeff (Joel Hogan) and Josh (Josh Potthoff), and Jeff's girlfriend Megan (Megan Peta Hill)--traveling to Australia to visit Jeff and Josh's Sydney-born cousin (Pete Valley) before heading off to a cage dive, digital camera in tow since Jeff wants to get them all on a daredevil reality show. They head out on a group excursion, and while the three of them are in the cage, a freak tidal wave appears out of nowhere, capsizes the boat, and the few survivors who weren't killed in the impact are soon eaten by great white sharks until only Jeff, Josh, and Megan remain, treading water. Of course Jeff never stops filming, even as hypothermia and delirium set in, and writer/director Gerald Rascionato (also credited with producing, photographing, editing, and casting) also makes time for turgid melodrama with Jeff finding out what the audience already knows from his camera being left on earlier: Megan is cheating on him with Josh, which really puts a damper on his plans to propose to her on the trip. OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE has some convincing shark action, but relies too heavily on characters doing stupid things (luck sends a lifeboat drifting their way, so of course Megan sets it ablaze when she freaks out and mishandles a flare) to the point where you'll eventually start rooting for the sharks, in which case, you'll get a happy ending. (R, 81 mins)
Nicholas McCarthy's THE PACT (2012) was given a completely under-the-radar VOD release and later quietly appeared on Netflix streaming where it became a legitimate word-of-mouth cult horror hit. One of the scariest films of the last decade and a reference point for slow-burn horror done right, THE PACT should've been huge, especially considering the junk that gets national theatrical exposure these days (what do you think will have a longer shelf life with fans, THE PACT or the POLTERGEIST remake?). Unfortunately, even low-budget, stand-alone horror films that become word-of-mouth Netflix sensations aren't immune from spawning superfluous sequels, and so we have THE PACT II. McCarthy is only onboard as a producer, with writing and directing tasks handed off to the team of Dallas Hallam & Patrick Horvath, the duo behind another impressive slow-burn horror gem, ENTRANCE (2012). THE PACT II centers on June (Camilla Luddington of GREY'S ANATOMY), an aspiring artist who works as a crime scene cleaner. June lives with her cop boyfriend Daniel (Scott Michael Foster) and is soon being hassled by Ballard (Patrick Fischler), an abrasive, dweeby FBI profiler who thinks she knows something about a spate of murders with an M.O. resembling that of the Judas Killer (Mark Steger), the serial killer offed at the end of THE PACT by heroine Annie (Caity Lotz). As with Annie, June starts getting paranormal warnings that danger is near, and soon, her recovering addict mother (Amy Pietz) is killed and Ballard informs her that she in fact has a very close connection to the Judas Killer, who may not be dead after all.
McCarthy left the door open for a sequel at the conclusion of THE PACT, but that didn't mean one was necessary or that he even planned on one. Though Hallam and Horvath utilize a lot of the style and ambient sounds of ENTRANCE for THE PACT II and briefly bring back Lotz (absolutely terrific in the first film) and Haley Hudson (as the oddball and now blind psychic Stevie) to establish bona fides for die-hard PACT fans, they still can't avoid the pitfalls of the most insidious paranormal activity fodder: just because it's a low-budget, navel-gazing, mumblecore slow-burner doesn't make the cliches of slamming doors, bodies being dragged down hallways by unseen spirits, and pointless jump scares accompanied by piercing music cues any less tiresome. Though lightning doesn't strike twice, THE PACT II is functional and perfectly watchable, and there's nothing really wrong with it (other than the twist ending being visible from pretty early on), but it doesn't build on anything in its predecessor and can't help but pale in comparison and exist in its shadow. Luddington is fine as the heroine, but when Lotz finally shows up around 50 minutes in for her "Charlton Heston-in-BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES" extended cameo, you just wish she was in it more. Of course, at the end, all signs point to THE PACT III. (Unrated, 96 mins)
INFINI (Australia - 2015)
To its credit, the Australian sci-fi thriller INFINI goes extremely light on the CGI and is boldly old school in its reliance on detailed sets, production design, and in-camera visual effects that provide its world with a much more organic and tangible feel than actors simply standing in front of an obvious greenscreen. As a result, INFINI's look is more impressive than films with several times the budget, and it really makes you want to like it. That's what might've caused some film festival attendees to oversell its worth, because once you look past the cosmetics, it's an incoherent disaster and the dullest space movie this side of 1987's NIGHTFLYERS. Writer/director Shane Abbess (GABRIEL) wears his influences on his sleeve, and there's so many of them that it's hard to gauge exactly what it is he's hoping to accomplish with INFINI. It's mostly a mix of OUTLAND, EVENT HORIZON, SUNSHINE, and PANDORUM (remember PANDORUM? How has that not spawned a DTV franchise by now?) set in a poverty-stricken 23rd century where those desperate for employment do grunt mining and repair work on the outer edges of the galaxy. Such travel is possible thanks to a technology known as "slipstreaming." This involves an "Apex device" being wired into someone's central nervous system, allowing flesh and matter to be converted into a digital file and essentially downloaded to its destination. It's not perfect--glitches in the transport system have been known to cause "file corruption," where people are converted back to flesh form during the slipstream home and emerge disintegrating and vomiting blood before dying. It's a risk the downtrodden and desperate are willing to take and it's a fascinating set-up that's far more interesting than the boring film that ultimately unfolds.
Infini is the most distant mining outpost in the galaxy, and one man, Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson), has been left behind after a bacterial outbreak claimed his co-workers and the first rescue team sent after him. Another crew is sent and something seems off with Whit, prompting some concern that he's been exposed to the contagion. From then on, it's anyone's guess, as multiple plot lines ensue, there's dead bodies everywhere, dead skin masks hanging in what looks like space abattoir, and you're never sure what's "real" in the film and what isn't. Abbess goes for some Christopher Nolan mindfuckery but it seems like he's in over his head and never pulls the storylines together. Most of the film is Whit twitching, staring, and getting into grating, endless shouting matches with everyone. No one in the cast really stands out (Luke Hemsworth--Chris and Liam's older brother who stayed home in Australia and somehow hasn't been forced on the American moviegoing public--is third-billed in a supporting role as one of the rescue team, and he's as magnetic as you might expect), no one sounds Australian--most are using American accents but a couple are clearly dubbed. and MacPherson, a ubiquitous TV celebrity down under and best known as the host of Australia's version of DANCING WITH THE STARS, is a boring lead. A complete waste of an interesting set-up and the work of some obviously dedicated craftspeople on the crew, INFINI unfortunately belongs with STRANDED and THE LAST DAYS ON MARS on the recent outer space cinema scrap heap, banished to the outer reaches of your Netflix queue. (R, 111 mins)
From 1987's FATAL ATTRACTION through 2001's DON'T SAY A WORD, Michael Douglas had a remarkable run as the king of the controversial, hot-button hit. Whether it was WALL STREET or BASIC INSTINCT or FALLING DOWN or DISCLOSURE and others (you could even go back further and include 1979's THE CHINA SYNDROME), Douglas' string of hits were routinely the subject of water-cooler discussion and zeitgeist-capturing debate. Douglas' star no longer shines like it once did and the movies aren't as attention-getting, but he's kept busy in recent years, even attempting to recapture some of that Gordon Gekko magic in Oliver Stone's dismal WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS (2010). The thriller BEYOND THE REACH finds him in prime "smug, entitled asshole" mode, like a fusion of Douglas' Gekko and his murderous husband in 1998's DIAL M FOR MURDER remake A PERFECT MURDER, and he seems to be enjoying every minute of it. Produced by Douglas, BEYOND THE REACH would've been a hit if it came out 15 years ago, but was only released on 27 screens in the US for a gross of $46,000--a far cry from the actor's early '90s glory days. Douglas is John Madec, a multi-millionaire insurance exec who stops in a small town outside the Mojave Desert to hire a tracker to help him bag a bighorn sheep. The sheriff (Ronny Cox) tells deputy Ben (Jeremy Irvine), "the best tracker in the state," to take Madec out beyond "The Reach," a desolate area of the Mojave. Because he calls the shots in the boardroom, Madec doesn't really care that he's total amateur hour outside the security of a canned trophy hunt, careless with his high-tech weapon and operating under the belief that wealth and privilege trump safety and knowledge. Madec is a man who gets what he wants and brazenly advertises that he's the most important guy in the room (he even parks his obscene, $500,000 Mercedes 6x6 off-road-vehicle--with an espresso machine and calibrated convection oven for perfectly-grilled steaks--across three spots outside the sheriff's office). Madec makes Gordon Gekko look humble, and when he isn't on his phone brokering the sale of his company to some Chinese businessmen, he waxes rhapsodic to Ben about his favorite subject: John Madec. An unimpressed Ben goes along to get along, even taking a bribe when he learns Madec doesn't have a hunting license, but things quickly go south when Madec impulsively shoots something moving in the distance--something that turns out to be a local prospector. Madec uses his manipulative sales techniques to cajole Ben into burying the body and buying his silence with the promise of a college education and a future career, an agreement settled with a bloody handshake. But when Ben's conscience kicks in, he tries to radio back to town and Madec decides Ben has to die--not by gunshot, but by stripping down to his boxers and walking across The Reach, barefoot and without water, in the blistering 120°F sun, with Madec following close behind to ensure he dies of heatstroke. It's like a class struggle version of Tuco's desert torture of Blondie in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.
Based on Robb White's 1972 YA novel Deathwatch and previously made into the 1974 ABC TV-movie SAVAGES with Andy Griffith and Sam Bottoms, BEYOND THE REACH works when it's a tense game of cat-and-mouse between Madec and Ben. But screenwriter Stephen Susco (THE GRUDGE, TEXAS CHAINSAW) and director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti throw in a lot of inconsequential padding, like Ben moping around over his girlfriend (Hanna Mangan Lawrence) going off to college and entirely too much time spent on Madec's uninteresting deal with the Chinese. As the film proceeds, it starts relying on contrivances and gets increasingly cartoonish, with Madec sipping martinis and blaring classical music in the middle of The Reach while waiting for the right moment to shoot Ben from a distance (also, they're out in The Reach for several days--wouldn't the sheriff come looking for them at some point?). Douglas is obviously enjoying the opportunity to ham it up, but it undermines the genuine suspense of the early-going, and by the time the climax rolls around, Susco and Leonetti have completely driven things off the cliff, with a coda that's more at home in a slasher movie than it is here. Madec is a rich asshole--he's not an unstoppable killing machine. BEYOND THE REACH is entertaining enough and at just 90 minutes, it's never boring, but the additions made to the story just end up being extraneous filler that does it no favors. It's nice to see Douglas--who, at 70, is looking more like his dad than ever--sinking his teeth into the sadistic extreme of the kind of role he used to own, but BEYOND THE REACH just gets too beyond silly for its own good. (R, 92 mins) THE PYRAMID (US - 2014)
20th Century Fox planned on opening THE PYRAMID on over 2000 screens until shortly before its December 2014 release, when some studio exec must've accidentally watched it and it was abruptly scaled back to around 600, essentially a tacit admission that 600 screens would be 600 too many. Produced by Alexandre Aja (HIGH TENSION, the remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES) and the debut directing effort by his longtime writing partner Gregory Levasseur, THE PYRAMID is yet another faux-doc/found-footage time waster, centering on a bickering father-daughter archaeologist team (Denis O'Hare, Ashley Hinshaw) investigating an underground, three-sided pyramid in Egypt that's supposedly been unexplored for untold millennia. They're being tailed by a documentary crew, but Levasseur can't be bothered to establish any consistency in the way the film is shot. Sometimes it's documentary shaky-cam, sometimes it's a straight narrative horror movie, switching back and forth at random. Once inside the pyramid, they encounter feral, cat-type creatures and are picked off one by one by a larger monster, ultimately concluding that the pyramid is a) the prison of Anubis, the heart-weighing, heart-devouring jackal god of ancient Egypt, and b) probably still a more pleasant place to be trapped than inside a theater showing THE PYRAMID. Most of the film consists of screeching characters running around in total darkness, and what little you can see isn't scary or even remotely interesting. The worst film to come from the Aja camp since the remake of PIRANHA, THE PYRAMID is further evidence that this style of horror film has just run its course and should be mercifully taken off life support. Dull, uninspired, impossibly lazy, and filled with the kind of stupid dialogue exchanges where people are having things they should already know clumsily explained to them strictly for the sake of informing the audience, THE PYRAMID is so bad that it may actually induce a newfound appreciation for the similarly-set AS ABOVE SO BELOW. You're better off just listening to Mercyful Fate's 1993 song "Egypt," which essentially tells the whole Anubis/Osiris story in a more coherent fashion, with the added bonus of some killer guitar work and King Diamond's signature falsettos. (R, 89 mins)
Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (2004's BROTHERS) cracked the US market with the 2007 Halle Berry vehicle THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE, but is best known for the 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner IN A BETTER WORLD. SERENA, however, will not go down as one of her career highlights, despite the notoriety of being another Bradley Cooper-Jennifer Lawrence teaming that didn't exactly generate the buzz of SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK and AMERICAN HUSTLE. SERENA was shot in the Czech Republic in the spring and summer of 2012, several months prior to SILVER LININGS' release and before the stars moved on to AMERICAN HUSTLE, which hit theaters in December 2013. Bier displayed what must've seemed like an alarming lack of urgency to her backers, spending a year and a half tinkering with the footage while her stars went on to awards and accolades as SERENA languished in a state of perpetual incompletion. Even on the heels of Lawrence's blockbuster HUNGER GAMES success and Cooper's megahit AMERICAN SNIPER, the $30 million SERENA went straight-to-VOD in the spring of 2015 with just a 59-screen rollout following, for a gross of $176,000. You'd be correct in assuming SERENA is terrible--for all the time she spent assembling various cuts, Bier seems to have no idea what she wanted to accomplish with this film. Character behavior and motivation seem to change from scene to scene, and considering how well they worked together in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, Cooper and Lawrence just appear lost throughout. They're certainly capable actors, but neither get a handle on how they're supposed to play their characters, and both looking hopelessly out of their element in a rural period setting.
In the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina in 1929, timber magnate George Pemberton (Cooper) marries the unpredictable Serena (Lawrence) after a whirlwind courtship, or at least Bier's depiction of a whirlwind courtship: they meet, introduce themselves, screw, step off a train as man and wife, and she's immediately running his business, all in about 75 seconds of screen time. George's business is in trouble, he's been cooking the books, and the stock market crash has rendered his holdings worthless. On top of all that, he has an illegitimate son with dirt-poor Rachel (Ana Ularu), secretly supporting the boy behind Serena's back. Their marriage deteriorates after Serena miscarries and begins manipulating the clearly insane Galloway (Rhys Ifans), a glowering employee who gets his hand hacked off and believes Serena has been prophesied to him as he swears to do her bidding, whether it's killing a disgruntled employee (Sean Harris) who provided the irate sheriff (Toby Jones) with evidence of George's corruption, or killing Rachel and her son as George slowly comes to realize that his wife is a sociopathic shrew. Of course, George is no angel either, whether he's callously breaking Rachel's heart or killing his business partner (David Dencik) when his plans don't gel with what Serena wants to do with the company. It's hard to get behind George as a hero when he's not, and we never know enough about him or Serena to get a handle on either of them. There's stretches of the film where Bier seems to be assembling scenes at random, with no consistent time element whatsoever. Screenwriter Christopher Kyle took significant liberies with Ron Rash's 2008 novel, but that doesn't explain the poorly-defined characters and their vague and often nonsensical motivations. Bier just seems actively disengaged from the story and her actors, and instead demonstrates an almost Cimino-like fixation on the look and the atmospheric background details. Indeed, the only real positive of SERENA is the marvelously picturesque production design and period detail, which bring the era to vivid life in the same way that HEAVEN'S GATE did with its late 19th century Wyoming setting for the Johnson County War. If nothing else, SERENA looks like it costs a lot more than $30 million, but that's all it has going for it. It's under-the-radar enough that it'll likely be a minor footnote in the careers of its stars, but I'm still willing to bet that their publicists will be erring on the side of caution and instructing media types and TV talk show hosts to avoid bringing it up for the foreseeable future. (R, 110 mins)
MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT (UK - 2015)
2010's MONSTERS, a monster movie that seemed to go out of its way to spend as little time as possible dealing with the titular tentacled creatures, nevertheless received much acclaim and vaulted writer/director Gareth Edwards to the big-time, winning him the job of last year's GODZILLA reboot. Edwards' GODZILLA utilized his MONSTERS ethos by sidelining Godzilla to a point where he was virtually a minor supporting character in his own movie. Edwards is onboard as an executive producer for MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT, which is more of a spinoff than a sequel, taking place ten years after the events of the first film, with clusters of the giant creatures now scattered all over the globe. Director/co-writer Tom Green (not the FREDDY GOT FINGERED Tom Green, though that undoubtedly would've been more interesting) is even less concerned with making a giant monster flick than Edwards was, and both strike me as the kind of guys whose favorite Frankenstein movies are the mid-1940s Universal monster rallies where Glenn Strange's Frankenstein monster doesn't even get off the table until the last two minutes of the movie, when he stands up, stumbles over some electrical equipment, and blows up the lab. The End. If these guys remade JAWS, the opening hour would be devoted to Sheriff Brody dealing with the karate school kids who keep "karate-ing" that old islander's fence down. If they remade THE EXORCIST, they'd spend the first 90 minutes of the film focusing on the trials and tribulations of Chris MacNeil and Burke Dennings ironing out the script details for the movie they're shooting in Georgetown. If they made a ROCKY reboot, it would focus on Adrian working at the pet store, with Rocky occasionally mentioned and maybe dropping in once or twice to say hello. These guys are so actively against giving the audience what they came for that they wouldn't even have Rocky say "Yo, Adrian."
MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT focuses on a trio of Detroit guys who are part of a military unit deployed to the Middle East, where they're taken under the wing of battle-hardended Sgt. Frater (Johnny Harris, in an intense performance) and captured by insurgents after numerous combat sequences. The monsters are offscreen for long stretches, and when they're seen, they're just sort of doing their thing in the background, now an accepted part of the scenery after a decade of migrating over the world. With a few CGI touch-ups to remove shots of the monsters, this could just as easily be called THE HURT LOCKER II: DARK CONTINENT. Green's insistence on keeping the monsters--you know, the title of the movie--offscreen and out of the action is initially baffling and ultimately infuriating. Edwards' minimalist approach to the monster element with the overrated first film was annoying, but at least he got to them eventually. Green doesn't even give us that, instead letting the whole film build up to a showdown between a crazed, shell-shocked Frater and young soldier Parkes (Sam Keeley), while a couple of skyscraper-high creatures dick around in the background, seemingly as confused as the viewer as to exactly what they're doing here. Green is clearly more interested in making a war drama than a sci-fi/horror film, and while the dramatic elements aren't bad (and Harris is very good), it still begs the question: what is the point of this movie? Is there some allegorical, "I wonder who the real monsters are" statement about the American military presence in the Middle East? Green neither knows nor cares. If he's not interested in making a giant monster movie, then why is he wasting his time and ours? Green made an ostensible sequel to MONSTERS, with the word "monsters" in the title, but what he's got is a Middle East-set combat movie with very sporadic shots of creatures lingering the background, having no effect on the story whatsoever. I'm sure there's apologists out there prepping bullshit MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT think pieces about "subverting genre expectations" in a hapless attempt to defend this pathetic sham of a movie, but here's the deal: rarely in modern cinema has a film so stubbornly refused to live up to its end of the bargain. (R, 119 mins)
ASMODEXIA (Spain - 2014)
On the surface, the Spanish horror film ASMODEXIA is yet another in a seemingly endless parade of possession potboilers, with aging exorcist Eloy (Lluis Marco) traveling around Spain with his 15-year-old granddaughter and partner-in-exorcism Alba (Claudia Pons). They're drawn to possession victims and perform exorcisms on their way to an unspoken destination in the days leading up to 12-21-12, the Mayan calendar end of the world. There are parallel storylines involving an institutionalized woman (Irene Montala), and that woman's sister (Marta Belmonte), a Barcelona detective who's frantically searching for Eloy and Alba, as well as a hooded figure and a black van that also make sporadic appearances. Screenwriters Marc Carrete (who also directed) and Mike Hostench (who scripted a couple of Brian Yuzna's Spanish horror films a decade ago) take a pretty much in medias res approach to the story and it's a good 45 of the film's 81 minutes before all of the pieces are in place and things start making sense. The demonic possession angle is a bait-and-switch as Carrete and Hostench just start throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. There's some Fulci, there's some of THE SENTINEL, there's a little of THE KEEP, and there's a great twist late in the film that up-ends everything, but Carrete has some serious pacing issues, the script is entirely too convoluted, and the filmmakers try to take it in more directions than 81 minutes will allow. There's some good ideas in ASMODEXIA but the execution is lacking. The script needed another draft and the film could actually use maybe five or ten more minutes to give it some breathing room to flow and maybe clarify some plot points to eliminate some of the confusion that dominates the sometimes frustrating opening half. As it is, ASMODEXIA is constantly taking one step forward and two steps back. There's something here, but it really could've been a lot better. (Unrated, 81 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
TWO MEN IN TOWN (US/France/Algeria/Belgium - 2014; US release 2015)
A low-key, deliberately-paced character piece, TWO MEN IN TOWN is a remake of a 1973 French film by Jose Giovanni, with Alain Delon as an ex-con trying to stay straight with the help of an elderly social worker (the legendary Jean Gabin in one of his last films) and a new girlfriend (Mimsy Farmer). He finds this difficult thanks to a variety of obstacles, chief among them an angry cop (Michel Bouquet) with a serious grudge against him, and a former criminal associate (a young Gerard Depardieu) who keeps trying to pull him back into his old life. This new version, directed and co-written by French filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb (DAYS OF GLORY, OUTSIDE THE LAW), moves the story from France to the sparsely-populated southern-most area of New Mexico, right along the US/Mexico border. Paroled after serving 18 years of a 21-year sentence for killing a deputy sheriff, William Garnett (Forest Whitaker) has a dark past as a vicious criminal and a drug dealer, but has found peace while incarcerated. He's converted to Islam, is devoutly religious, he's taught himself to read and earned his GED, and worked as a tutor and counselor to his fellow inmates. A model prisoner who has fought his demons and wants nothing more than to start his life over and get it right, Garnett gets some support from his sympathetic parole officer Emily Smith (Brenda Blethyn), gets a minimum wage job at a cattle farm, and starts dating nice bank teller Teresa (Dolores Heredia). But flashes of the old Garnett occasionally pop up, whether he arrives home from work to find Emily inspecting his room at a local halfway house, or smashing his neighbor's TV when he won't turn the volume down. His temper is egged on by big-shot, five-term sheriff Bill Agati (Harvey Keitel), who shows legitimate concern over a local vigilante group's unlawful treatment of illegals crossing the border, but extends no such goodwill toward Garnett. It was Agati's deputy that Garnett murdered, and he has no intention of letting him off the hook. Agati follows Garnett, harasses him while he's having dinner at a restaurant, shows up at Teresa's house to embarrass him, has him held overnight for a speeding violation, and even goes so far as to bully Garnett's boss into firing him. On top of that, Garnett's old criminal cohort Terrance (Luis Guzman) keeps turning up, endlessly hounding and threatening him about picking up where they left off and, like Ben Kingsley in SEXY BEAST, refuses to take no for an answer. With no one but Teresa and his parole officer allowing him to lead the quiet life he wants to lead, it's only a matter of time before Garnett explodes.
Anchored by a Ry Cooder-esque score by Eric Neveux, TWO MEN IN TOWN often has a PARIS, TEXAS-era Wim Wenders feel to it. Like Wenders, Bouchareb is a European filmmaker who manages to convey a unique view of the American Southwest. The cinematography by Yves Cape (HOLY MOTORS) effectively captures the sun-drenched surroundings and the desert highways that Europeans seem to have a special knack for achieving, because as outsiders, Bouchareb and Cape see the unique things that Americans in their positions might miss. This environment is nothing new to Bouchareb, who has an affinity for the region, having shot 2012's JUST LIKE A WOMAN in New Mexico as well, plus he produced Bruno Dumont's 2003 cult film TWENTYNINE PALMS, a desert road trip slow-burner shot in the title city and in Joshua Tree. A lean and intense Whitaker, who's been dismayingly terrible in pretty much everything he's done for the last several years, turns in his best performance in a long while as the tightly-wound Garnett. Keitel does some fine work as Agati, who, despite his early concern for some illegals before turning them over to the border patrol, is every bit the asshole that you expect an apparent sheriff-for-life in a small town in the middle of nowhere to be. Ellen Burstyn turns up for one very well-played scene as Garnett's adoptive mother, who couldn't bring herself to visit him even once while he was in prison. Blethyn seems miscast, and her performance is uneven, as the folksy tone of her line delivery seems more to mask her British accent than to convey the down-home, tell-it-like-is sass of her character. The conclusion leaves a little to be desired, and Bouchareb has no idea what to do with Keitel's character, instead turning the primary antagonist role over to Guzman while Keitel basically disappears from the film. Still, it's an interesting drama that flopped in Europe and only managed a VOD and scant US theatrical release here over a year after it played the Berlin Film Festival. It's flawed, but worth seeing for fans of Keitel and Whitaker, who hasn't been this good since his Oscar-winning turn in 2006's THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND. (R, 117 mins)
EXTRATERRESTRIAL (Canada - 2014)
Though the generically-titled EXTRATERRESTRIAL is not intended to be a remake of the 2011 Spanish film by Nacho Vigalondo, they do share the idea of a couple's relationship issues being put on the backburner by a sudden alien invasion. That wouldn't be the only derivative element of the latest film from the GRAVE ENCOUNTERS team of Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz, who work under the name The Vicious Brothers. Their EXTRATERRESTRIAL is more concerned with being a blatant ripoff of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, with five archetypes--brain, nice guy, dude-bro, stoner, and blonde ditz--only here, they encounter UFOs and not-very-friendly aliens. April (Brittany Allen) is planning on a weekend at her parents' cabin with boyfriend Kyle (Freddie Stroma), but it turns into a blowout party when he invites their friends Seth (Jesse Moss as the dude-bro), Melanie (Melanie Papalia as the stoner), and Lex (Anja Savcic as the blonde ditz). April's rejection of Kyle's sudden proposal sours the weekend, but things go from bad to worse when a UFO crash-lands in the woods. Grabbing her dad's shotgun, April blasts one of the E.T.s, which doesn't bode well with its alien friends.
Diverting but not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, EXTRATERRESTRIAL doesn't really get the whole "meta" thing down like CABIN IN THE WOODS did. Like CABIN, it also has unseen puppet masters secretly calling the shots, in this case it's exposition supplied by Travis (Michael Ironside), a pot-growing, conspiracy-theorist Vietnam vet who lives in a nearby cabin. He knows what's the alien visitors have been up to in the woods and tells April and the others of a secret treaty between the US government and the aliens that dates back to Roswell: the government agrees to leave the aliens to go about their business of abducting yokels if they do so quietly and in limited numbers so as not to draw attention. In exchange, as Travis puts it, "We get to keep acting like we're running things down here." It's an interesting concept that gets a lot of mileage out of a terrific performance by Ironside, but the Vicious Brothers err in taking him out of the film far too early. Gil Bellows is also very well cast in a haggard, beaten-down-by-life way as the beer-gutted sheriff who hasn't been able to get past his wife's disappearance a decade earlier, and when these kids start talking about UFOs and aliens, coupled with a shell-shocked local mom (GINGER SNAPS' Emily Perkins) telling the same story where her husband and son were taken away, he starts seeing an explanation for what happened to her. EXTRATERRESTRIAL opens strong and for a while, it has the feel of an old-school '80s crowd-pleaser, but with its two major assets--Ironside and Bellows--not getting enough screen time, we're left with mostly uninteresting leads (Allen is a strong, appealing heroine, but the rest range from forgettable to, in Moss' case, excruciating). Connoisseurs of alien invasion films may enjoy what's easily cinema's nastiest anal probe scene, but there's little consistency: if the aliens can establish a psychic link strong enough to force one character to blow his own head off, then why can't they find Perkins' character, who's hiding in plain sight? And if the aliens are supposed to be keeping things on the down-low, why are they spending so much time and abducting so many people in this neck of the woods? The film really stumbles with an overdone, maudlin finale that leads to a downbeat NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD ending that it doesn't earn, instead coming off as unnecessarily mean-spirited. Though it's rather unrestrained in its CABIN IN THE WOODS worship, there's a good film desperately trying to break out of the merely average EXTRATERRESTRIAL. As far as recent alien invasion pics go, it's at least preferable to the Milla Jovovich con job THE FOURTH KIND and the unwatchable SKYLINE, one of the worst major-studio releases in years. (Unrated, 101 mins)
MORTDECAI (US - 2015)
After a string of misfires that saw former actor Johnny Depp's stock plummet with fans (THE RUM DIARY, DARK SHADOWS, THE LONE RANGER, TRANSCENDENCE, and his incognito supporting role in Kevin Smith's pathetic TUSK), it seems as if the world put its foot down with MORTDECAI. After at least two months of the most relentlessly pushy ad campaign in recent memory, moviegoers actively revolted and let it bomb hard in theaters. On its own terms, it could've been an amusing throwback to double entendre-filled '60s comedies, like something Peter Sellers might've made around the time of THE PINK PANTHER, WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? or AFTER THE FOX. But the world made it known that it's clearly sick of Depp's constant crutches of pancake makeup and whimsical vocal affectations, and seeing him in the MORTDECAI trailers with a waxed mustache and a forced British accent trading randy and sassy quips with Goop publisher and vagina-steaming advocate Gwyneth Paltrow was where everyone drew the line, took a stand, and emphatically declared "No more!" The $60 million MORTDECAI, based on a series of 1970s comic adventure novels by Kyril Bonfiglioli, grossed just $8 million in the US and took a beating from critics, making it a safe bet that this won't become another PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise for Depp. The wasteful budgets of today's movies often border on criminal, but it seems especially offensive here. Other than paying a bunch of big names to jerk themselves off (Depp got paid $10 million), nothing here warrants pissing away $60 million. Think what $60 million could've done for people in need. Who the fuck needed MORTDECAI?
An appalling, obnoxious vanity project for star/producer Depp, MORTDECAI is every bit as awful as you've heard, which is tragic because there's a surplus of squandered talent. This is a film with an alarming contempt for its audience. It's obvious the actors are having a much better time than the viewer and you soon realize you're paying to attend a party where you're deliberately being excluded from the fun. Eccentric, jet-setting--and broke--British art dealer Lord Charlie Mortdecai (Depp) gets roped into a plot by his friend and M.I.5 agent Martland (Ewan McGregor) to recover a rare stolen Goya painting. So begins a globetrotting adventure that finds Mortdecai and his faithful, hulking manservant Jock (Paul Bettany) tangling with Russian mobsters, vacuous Californians, and the nympho daughter (Olivia Munn) of a shady L.A. art figure (Jeff Goldblum, cast radically against type as "Jeff Goldblum"). Meanwhile, Mortdecai's wife Johanna (Paltrow) also gets pulled into the pursuit of the Goya, providing Martland with an opportunity to steal her away from Mortdecai, which he's been trying to do since their college days. There's very little in the way of comedy in the script by Eric Aronson, whose lone previous writing credit is the 2001 Lance Bass/Joey Fatone vehicle ON THE LINE. It's too bad director David Koepp, a veteran screenwriter whose credits include JURASSIC PARK, CARLITO'S WAY, and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, didn't write it as well--perhaps he could've brought something to the table other than Aronson, whose approach seems to have been scribbling "Johnny Depp, British accent, mustache" on a piece of scrap paper, crossing his fingers, and hoping everything would work itself out. As it is, MORTDECAI's idea of comedy is Depp's overdone accent and the fact that he has a mustache and his character is a pompous dolt who still calls America "The Colonies." That's it. Every joke is based on one or a combination of those things. There's one legitimate AUSTIN POWERS-style laugh--Mortdecai at a men's room urinal as a Russian gangster grabs him from behind, injecting a sedative into his neck as Mortdecai quips "Oh! I've read about this!"--and that's it. There's nothing here. One of the emptiest films of the year, MORTDECAI is what happens when a movie star is too rich and out of touch for anyone to tell him no. Depp hasn't tried in years because he doesn't have to, so he enjoys another fat payday, amusing himself by mugging shamelessly with a wacky accent and a fake mustache. Well, I guess that means at least one person found MORTDECAI amusing. (R, 107 mins)
Since his 1988 breakthrough HIGH HOPES, Mike Leigh has become one of the most distinctive voices in British cinema. In the years since, his credits read like a list of essential British films of the last quarter century: LIFE IS SWEET (1990), the shockingly misanthropic NAKED (1993), SECRETS & LIES (1996), TOPSY-TURVY (1999), VERA DRAKE (2004), HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (2008), and ANOTHER YEAR (2010) are generally considered great films to varying degrees, and even comparatively minor Leigh works like CAREER GIRLS (1997) and ALL OR NOTHING (2002) are very much worthwhile. I guess every great filmmaker has to have an off day, and with MR. TURNER, Leigh has delivered his first genuine misfire, though considering its current 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm clearly in the minority with that sentiment. A lethargic, coma-inducing biopic that focuses on the last 25 years in the life of famed British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and feels like it's being told in real time, MR. TURNER offers the great character actor and Leigh regular Timothy Spall the opportunity for the role of a lifetime, but after 30 or so minutes, his endless grunting, snorting, and harumphing in lieu of actual sentences--and when he does talk, you can barely understand him--gets old and there's still two tedious hours to go. Leigh has a method to his filmmaking that works for his small, intimate character studies: he brings his cast together for weeks or even months of improvisation and workshopping, collaborating as a team to develop the characters, their backstories, and their arcs, and from that, Leigh constructs a script and then the film is made. It's a system that has always worked but utterly fails him here. All Spall has is the tics and the mannerisms and they become a crutch because there's no narrative drive to MR. TURNER whatsoever.
It opens in the middle of the action and it's a good 45 minutes before you've worked out who's who and where they fit in Turner's world. It's all for naught because all Leigh presents is a series of vignettes and snapshots, jumping around the last two decades of Turner's life as characters drift in and out of view. It should be a perfect showcase for Spall, but it always ends up with Turner finding some inspiration for a landscape painting, then treating people like garbage--he has two children he doesn't acknowledge with a former mistress (Ruth Sheen) he ignores, and that mistress' psoriasis-stricken niece (Dorothy Atkinson) works as Turner's housekeeper and is routinely mounted from behind by her grunting, slobbering boss when he feels the urge. Turner has fleeting moments where he's a sensitive, caring individual in his own peculiar, grunty way, whether in his close relationship with his father (Paul Jesson is very good) or later, when he falls in love with his widowed landlady (Marion Bailey), but generally, he's a bastard, and maybe Leigh wants to make a point about the divide between the beauty of his art and the darkness of his soul. Unfortunately, it's lost amidst a guttural cacophony of snorts and gurgles that turn Spall's performance into a hammy and constipated embarrassment, regardless of how accurate the portrayal may be, and once Turner's father dies around an hour in, the film loses Jesson and its biggest source of warmth and humanity. Turner may be a great artist, but there's little here to suggest--at least in Leigh's unbearably monotonous presentation--that he's an interesting subject for a two-and-a-half hour film. By contrast, Turner's clashes with rival painter Benjamin Robert Haydon--and Martin Savage's performance in the role--bring a too-infrequent spark to the proceedings and definitely lead one to conclude that perhaps Haydon would've been a more interesting and cinematic subject for Leigh to pursue. Despite the beautiful, Oscar-nominated cinematography by Dick Pope--Academy Awards president Cheryl Boone Isaacs mispronouncing his name "Dick Poop" at the announcing of the nominees is more memorable than anything in the actual film--MR. TURNER is a shockingly empty and unfocused work from a great filmmaker, a tortuously, frustratingly dawdling 150-minute endurance test whose maddeningly molasses pacing is slower than any Merchant-Ivory film. (R, running time: endless) WINTER SLEEP (Turkey/France/Germany - 2014)
WINTER SLEEP is 45 minutes longer than MR. TURNER, and while it actually feels shorter than Leigh's film, it's still too much by at least an hour. The Palme d'Or winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival--a decision that suggests the Jane Campion-led jury was possibly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome--WINTER SLEEP, loosely based on the Chekhov short story "The Wife," is the latest from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan and demonstrates very much the same visual aesthetic of his 2011 masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA. It's also more self-indulgently bloated than it has any reason to be, with significant stretches of time devoted to escalating arguments between characters who make their point and keep circling back and restating those points for no other reason than to pad the film's absurd length, coming in at just under 200 minutes. In a performance with a demeanor and mannerisms that frequently recall Robert De Niro, Haluk Bilginer is Aydin, a one-time actor and now de facto town leader, landlord, and owner of the Hotel Othello, an unusual hotel carved into the side of a mountain. He fancies himself a benevolent and important figure but his arrogance is alienating everyone, including his much younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sozen). He owns all the property and writes a newspaper column that nobody reads, and tries to horn his way into Nihal's charity work for a local school, which she resents, accusing him of ignoring her requests to help improve the school for the last year and then swooping in to take all the credit at the end. He also claims to be busy working on a book about the history of Turkish theater, even though there's no demand and his blunt sister Necla (Demet Akbag) says he's only writing because he pontificates and loves the sound of his own voice. It's essentially a three-plus-hour horse pill that follows a not very likable person with an inflated sense of self-importance, both subtly and overtly denigrating everyone, and while there are some undeniably strong moments, both visually and with the work of the actors, it's just an exhausting experience. Riding high on the acclaim bestowed upon ANATOLIA, Ceylan just lets WINTER SLEEP go on and on and on to the point where he's like Michael Douglas' Grady Tripp in WONDER BOYS--he just doesn't know where to stop. You can probably zone out for several stretches of the film and still not miss anything in the way of plot development. By the interminable last hour, where Aydin leaves and Nihal tries to make amends with a local drunkard (Nejat Isler) who clashed with Aydin and his employee Hidayet (Ayberk Pekcan) early on, I have to admit that I was pretty much over it. WINTER SLEEP is well-made, beautifully shot, powerfully acted, and Ceylan is obviously a major international talent, but maybe he shouldn't read so much of his own press next time. (Unrated, 197 mins)
Writer/director David O. Russell has been on a hot streak with THE FIGHTER (2010), SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012), and AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013), and that's probably what finally got his long-shelved NAILED released as ACCIDENTAL LOVE. NAILED was shot in South Carolina during the summer of 2008 and co-written by, among others, Russell and former Vice Presidential daughter Kristin Gore, based on Gore's 2004 novel Sammy's Hill. The film's primary backer was the financially-strapped Capitol Films, who ran out of money on this and several other films shot at the same time, including Taylor Hackford's LOVE RANCH (ultimately released in 2010) and AMERICAN HISTORY X director Tony Kaye's BLACK WATER TRANSIT (still unreleased). NAILED shut down production on at least eight occasions over that tumultuous summer, despite an initial budget alleged to be in the area of $25 million. One shutdown was caused when the crew revolted over not being paid, and another occurred when stars Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal followed suit and walked off the set over similar money issues. Production was halted permanently by the end of 2008 with all of the post-work still needing to be done and at least one major scene--one that all parties agreed was completely essential--still unfilmed. By early 2010, Russell ran out of patience and washed his hands of it. He publicly distanced himself from NAILED, moved on to THE FIGHTER, and never looked back. In 2013, co-producer Kia Jam corralled enough funds to cobble as much of the missing scene together as possible and complete post-production, but Russell wanted no part of it. Now carrying the generic title ACCIDENTAL LOVE, the film was acquired by Millennium and given a VOD dumping in February 2015, with the non-existent "Stephen Greene" shouldering the blame after Russell successfully petitioned to have his name removed as both director and co-writer.
It's hardly praise, but as far as abandoned clusterfucks go, ACCIDENTAL LOVE isn't as bad as Alec Baldwin's doomed directorial debut THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, shot in 2001 and ultimately aired on Starz in 2007 as SHORTCUT TO HAPPINESS, with director credit going to one "Harry Kirkpatrick." Biel stars as Alice, a small-town Indiana roller-skating carhop who gets shot in the head with a nail gun at a restaurant just after her cop boyfriend Scott (James Marsden) proposes. Uninsured Alice can't afford the brain surgery required to extract the nail, and it's deemed a pre-existing condition when she tries to get on Scott's insurance. Concerned about future medical issues, Scott bails and Alice goes to Washington to meet with her district representative, freshman Congressional newbie Howard Birdwell (a mannered, bug-eyed Gyllenhaal), to bring attention to her plight and plead the case for health care reform. Birdwell is a nebbishy type with great political ambition but he's kept under the thumb of lobbyists and powerful Rep. Pam Hendrickson (Catherine Keener, cast radically against type as a cold, brittle bitch-on-wheels), a former astronaut whose primary goal is getting the government to fund a military base on the moon. ACCIDENTAL LOVE vacillates between screwball comedy, with Alice's condition frequently causing spontaneous outbursts, speaking in a foreign language, or demonstrating insatiable lust, and political satire, which comes across as forced and rather toothless. It shouldn't come as a surprise or edgy insight to see that politicians are frequently corrupt, self-serving, and beholden to special interest groups.
"Stephen Greene"'s ACCIDENTAL LOVE obviously isn't as polished as David O. Russell's NAILED would've been, but what's here is almost all Russell's work, and it wouldn't have been his finest hour any way you cut it. There's some amusing bits here and there, and Kurt Fuller does a nice job as a priest with Viagra issues, but the more it goes on, the more shrill and heavy-handed it becomes. It's the kind of movie that ends with the whole cast gathered for a feelgood dance number, with the added bonus of closing credits bloopers, as if anyone had a good time making this thing (given the chaotic production, wouldn't footage of the Capitol money men telling a pissed-off crew they aren't being paid make for a much more entertaining blooper reel?). Other familiar faces lost in the quagmire include James Brolin as the Speaker of the House (a last-minute replacement when James Caan quit over "script disagreements," probably the film's liberal bent being at odds with the far-right Caan's politics); Tracy Morgan as Alice's friend Keyshawn, but he's essentially playing himself; Paul Reubens as Hendrickson's aide; Bill Hader as the snide ER doc who shuts down the surgery and grabs a burger when he's told Alice is uninsured; Beverly D'Angelo as Alice's mom (D'Angelo, in what must've been a frustrating summer in 2008, was also in BLACK WATER TRANSIT); and Kirstie Alley (her name misspelled "Kirstey" in the closing credits) as Alice's aunt. Perhaps NAILED could've been a sharp and prescient satire on pre-Obamacare politics, but ACCIDENTAL LOVE is a dated misfire best forgotten by all concerned. (PG-13, 101 mins)
EVERLY (US - 2015)
The idea of Salma Hayek spending an entire movie slicing, dicing, and blowing away a crew of yakuza goons in an apartment building sounds a lot more fun than EVERLY turns out to be. A reverse RAID of sorts, EVERLY has Hayek as the title heroine, a prostitute holed up on the sixth floor of a yakuza-owned slum where other women are pimped out to wealthy Japanese clients and other assorted perverts and sadists. Everly has secretly been working with the cops to bring down crime boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe), who owns the building and the women who live in it. Taiko knows what she's been up to and has a price on Everly's head as other prostitutes, Taiko flunkies, and her neighbors try to get into Everly's apartment and take her out while she frantically tries to reunite with her estranged mother (Laura Cepeda) and young daughter (Aisha Ayamah). Director Joe Lynch (CHILLERAMA, KNIGHTS OF BADASSDOM) manages to pull off a couple of fairly well-executed sequences involving long tracking shots and uninterrupted takes, but for the most part, EVERLY just never finds its groove and feels significantly longer than 90 minutes. When it was screened at the 2014 Fantastic Fest in Austin, it got an overwhelmingly positive reaction from participation medal-awarding scenesters who no doubt have Lynch among their Facebook friends, but what's here is in many ways reminiscent of Alexandre Aja's atrocious PIRANHA remake, another lazy grindhouse poseur of an exploitation flick that thinks showing up and making the references are good enough. There's a lot of Takashi Miike in the over-the-top bloodshed and a bit of Tarantino, not just in the adoring shots of Hayek's feet as Everly constantly goes from high heels to barefoot, but also in one Japanese john (Akie Kotabe) spending his entire screen time bleeding out from a gunshot wound on Everly's couch, just like Tim Roth in RESERVOIR DOGS right down to his wardrobe. As she demonstrated 20 years ago in DESPERADO (has it been that long?), Hayek, still stunning at 48, is more than game as a kick-ass action heroine, but EVERLY just isn't up to her level. It's an endless fanboy circle jerk that exists in an insulated, prefab cult movie echo chamber. Hayek could use a hit, and in better hands, EVERLY could've easily been her JOHN WICK. Instead, it's her HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN and nobody needs that. (R, 92 mins)
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (US - 2014)
There's a strong early-Jim Jarmusch vibe to this hypnotic vampire film from writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour, perhaps the most inventive of its kind since LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Co-produced by Elijah Wood and shot in black & white in and around Bakersfield, CA, GIRL is set in the fictional Bad City, Iran and is in Persian with English subtitles. Amirpour and cinematographer Lyle Vincent do a tremendously effective job with the widescreen framing and using things like smokestacks and pumpjacks to present Bad City as a depressing industrial wasteland where drugs and crime rule above all. Nice-guy Arash (Arash Marandi) is forced into settling the debts of his junkie father Hossein (Marshall Manesh) to ruthless drug lord Saeed (Dominic Rains) when Saeed decides to take the only thing that matters to Arash--his pristine '57 T-Bird--as repayment. Saeed is soon slaughtered by a strange, silent woman (Sheila Vand) who turns out to be a vampire. The remarkably expressive, sad-eyed Vand is one of the most memorable vampires to hit the screens in some time. Portraying The Girl as one those melancholy sorts doomed to a life of loneliness, Vand doesn't even utter a word until nearly 40 minutes in, and almost like a holdover from the silent era, lets her face do much of her acting. When she tells prostitute Atti (Mozhan Marno) "You're sad, you don't remember wanting, and nothing ever changes," she's really talking about herself. GIRL is largely a triumph of style over substance, but there are numerous parallels and dualities at work throughout, like flip sides of a coin--between The Girl and Atti, Arash and Saeed, and The Girl and Hossein, perhaps the biggest monster of all when he shoots Atti full of heroin and prompts The Girl to take on the role of avenger. The Girl longs for love and humanity--watch the small, subtle smile she allows herself in really great scene the first time she's alone with Arash and plays White Lies' "Death"--in a world where empathy and feeling simply have no place with the likes of Saeed and Hossein around. A fascinating thematic companion piece to Jarmusch's recent ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT has its tedious bits that scream "art house pretension," especially with a long scene of Reza Sixo Safai's Rockabilly dancing with a balloon, but overall, it's a unique and visually arresting addition to vampire cinema. (Unrated, 101 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
A hired-gun gig for PERSEPOLIS graphic novelist and director Marjane Satrapi, THE VOICES is a dark splatter comedy with Ryan Reynolds as Jerry, a socially-awkward but generally nice and eager-to-please guy who works at a small-town bathtub and sink factory. Jerry has a history of mental illness and was institutionalized when he was a teenager and may have had a hand in his schizophrenic mother's death. Jerry lies to his psychiatrist Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver), telling her that he dutifully takes his meds every day, but he's not. As a result, his home life is a fantasy world where he spends his evenings in his apartment above a vacant bowling alley, carrying on conversations with his cat Mr. Whiskers and his dog Bosco (Reynolds voices both animals--a sarcastic, foul-mouthed Scottish brogue for Mr. Whiskers and an aw-shucks, Cecil Turtle voice for Bosco). He has a crush on Fiona (Gemma Arterton) in accounting and through a convoluted chain of events, ends up accidentally killing her. He dismembers the body and stores her head in the fridge, where she whines that she's lonely and wants a friend. Lisa (Anna Kendrick) also works in accounting and likes Jerry, even sleeping with him before making the mistake of dropping by his place uninvited just as Jerry is most vulnerable to caving to the horrible suggestions made by Bosco and Mr. Whiskers.
When Jerry is off his meds and happily conversing with his cat, dog, and Fiona's head, we see his apartment through his eyes: clean, colorful and pleasant. When he tries going back on his meds, the pets are silent, Fiona's head is rotting, he has no one to talk to and is confronted with the reality that his home resembles an abattoir, with blood-splattered walls and floors and Fiona's body parts and entrails stacked in countless Tupperware containers. Satrapi and screenwriter Michael R. Perry (a veteran of TV shows like THE PRACTICE, MILLENNIUM, and LAW & ORDER: SVU) dutifully keep the film on track when it could easily fly off the rails and become a high-end Herschell Gordon Lewis film. Satrapi wisely has Reynolds underplay it, even when he's having imaginary conversations with a severed head, and they succeed in actually generating sympathy for an obviously sick person who feels tremendous guilt over his actions but can't stop himself, is too hesitant to make new friends because he's concerned his mental problems will scare them off, and is terrified to take his meds because then the voices go away and he has nothing to keep him company. It's a difficult performance that could've veered toward Jim Carrey in maximum "Allllrighty then!" mode, but even amidst the black humor and the buckets of gore being spilled, Reynolds--an underrated actor who can't seem to shake his VAN WILDER image with critics and audiences alike--is grounded and believable. It's too bad that Satrapi lets things bog down in the home stretch, the film runs about 15 minutes too long and it probably could've done without ending with a musical number. But THE VOICES is a quirky and interesting comedy/drama/horror mash-up that was an undeniably tough sell (shot in Berlin in 2013, it played at Sundance in January 2014 and only got a small theatrical release in February 2015), but has "future cult movie" written all over it...in blood. (R, 104 mins)
PRESERVATION (US - 2015)
A sort-of YOU'RE NEXT GOES CAMPING, this survivalist horror film has a few moments of credible suspense (the creepiest being one character taking a selfie at night, with the flash revealing a split-second glimpse of a masked figure in the trees behind him), but it too often falls victim to contrivances and outright stupidity. On no less than four separate occasions, characters carelessly turn their backs on someone they thought was dead only to turn around and find them either gone or very much alive and ready for the kill. Anesthesiologist Wit (Wrenn Schmidt of BOARDWALK EMPIRE) and her stockbroker husband Mike (Aaron Staton of MAD MEN) were supposed to have a romantic camping getaway but Mike invited his war vet brother Sean (Pablo Schreiber, best known for his recurring role as a serial rapist on LAW & ORDER: SVU) along. Right from the start, things seem off: Mike keeps fondly reminiscing of sadistic childhood pranks, Wit seems distracted, and Sean, still psychologically scarred from his time serving in Afghanistan, obviously has feelings for Wit. They illegally enter a closed state park to go deer hunting and after one drunken night, they awake to find their guns, gear, food, water, shoes, Sean's dog, and Mike's cell phone gone and "X"'s Sharpie'd on their foreheads. Irrational, braying jackass Mike immediately accuses Sean of having a PTSD breakdown and wanting to sleep with Wit, and as the parties split up--Wit and Mike go off to the find their SUV while Sean looks for his dog--it soon dawns on them that they're being stalked by three masked murderers--actually teenage boys--intent on slaughtering them.
Actor Christopher Denham (ARGO, SOUND OF MY VOICE) wrote and directed PRESERVATION, and while there's intermittent instances of directorial skill, his script is really dumb. It's not just the way the characters constantly turn their backs on lethal threats, but in the predictable way everything plays out. Of course, hot-headed bro-type Mike is going to blame his brother for what's going on, and of course he's too preoccupied with taking calls from work to have time to talk to Wit, who secretly buys a home pregnancy test at a convenience store on their way to the state park. Of course, the old-school trap Mike sets in the woods will ultimately trap (wait for it) Mike, and the way Mike (notice what a dick this guy is?) carelessly leaves the necks of broken beer bottles near a rest area park will come into play much later. And how does Wit have time to set off a bunch of flares and decorate the ranger station with paraphernalia to taunt the killers in a way that references something that happened between the killers and Mike and that Wit, separated from the dead Mike (oh yeah, spoiler alert) couldn't possibly know about? It doesn't get much dumber than Mike (this guy again) hiding in a Port-a-John while one of the killers is trying to kick the door in. Mike kicks the top off the Port-a-John and climbs out, kicking and grunting the whole way, then sneaks from the back around to the front to find the killer still looking at the door of the Port-a-John to figure out a way in, as if he could somehow miss all the noise Mike was making while climbing out of the top. Denham also tries to say something about technology and interpersonal disconnect in the way Mike and Wit can't find time to talk and in the way the killers take a break on the edge of a lake and don't talk, but rather, sit down and text one another in silence. Oh...because people don't communicate! Get it? These kids today with the texting and the video games and the stalking and the murder. Do yourself a favor and stick with RITUALS instead. (Unrated, 88 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant).
LATE PHASES (US/Mexico - 2014)
An unusual if not altogether successful werewolf movie, LATE PHASES distinguishes itself from the CGI crowd by relying on practical effects that recall the nearly 35-year-old transformation work of Rick Baker on AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and Rob Bottin on THE HOWLING. There's only one big transformation sequence, and Spanish filmmaker Adrian Garcia Bogliano (HERE COMES THE DEVIL) errs in showing too much of the werewolf in the attack scenes, as it looks as if the producers scoured eBay for the cheapest, rattiest werewolf costume they could find. LATE PHASES really gets a boost from an excellent performance by cult actor Nick Damici (STAKE LAND, COLD IN JULY), playing about 20 years older than his age as Ambrose McKinley, a blind, widowed Vietnam vet being taken to a retirement community by his son Will (Ethan Embry). On his first night in his new residence, Ambrose's dog Shadow and his neighbor Dolores (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER's Karen Lynn Gorney) are killed by what's thought to be a giant dog. The useless local cops dismiss it ("This kind of thing happens all the time...old people can't defend themselves") but Ambrose, his other senses heightened with the loss of his sight, rightly feels something is off here, and not just because he dislikes the concept of retirement communities in general ("People don't come here to live...they come here to die," he tells Will's wife). Still a crack shot even without sight, Ambrose quickly alienates his chatty neighbors who want nothing to do with him (among them are GILLIGAN'S ISLAND's Tina Louise, AMITYVILLE II's Rutanya Alda, and HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE's Caitlin O'Heaney), but finds a mutual understanding in his philosophical conversations with local priest Father Roger (Tom Noonan), who has enough sympathy for old Ambrose that he arranges for church employee Griffin (THE LAST STARFIGHTER's Lance Guest) to transport him on outings when the other residents refuse to ride the bus with him.
With the coughing, wheezing werewolf having a distinct smell that Ambrose picks up on when he talks to two different coughing, wheezing characters, it doesn't take long to figure out who the werewolf is (and much like THE HOWLING's "The Colony," the werewolf situation seems to be an open secret, at least with the cops and the community staffers), but LATE PHASES is less about werewolfery and more a character study about an old man trying to find purpose and dignity in a bad situation (LATE PHASES referring to both the lunar cycle and Ambrose's life). It's an odd mix--imagine GRAN TORINO if Clint Eastwood's neighbors were werewolves instead of Hmong immigrants--that stays mostly interesting thanks to the outstanding work of Damici, who brilliantly channeled William Smith in STAKE LAND and here seems like a somber and even more stoical Charles Bronson. Only when Bogliano goes full throttle horror near the end does the film start falling apart, starting with a confusingly-shot sequence where the werewolf (one of them, at least) makes its presence known and explains itself as it transforms. Moody and character-driven, LATE PHASES has a few generous gore scenes but isn't really scary or particularly suspenseful, but when Damici is onscreen, he commands your attention. Plus, that supporting cast (Tina Louise and Karen Lynn Gorney sightings?!) is pretty fascinating. (Unrated, 96 mins)
