On Blu-ray/DVD: A MILLION LITTLE PIECES (2019) and CROWN VIC (2019)

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In Theaters: MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (2019)

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
(US - 2019)

Written and directed by Edward Norton. Cast: Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Michael Kenneth Williams, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, Fisher Stevens, Josh Pais, Robert Ray Wisdom, Radu Spinghel, Peter Lewis, Stephen Adley Guirgis, DeShawn White. (R, 144 mins)

If it seems like MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is the kind of film that's been frozen in ice since 2002 and is just now getting thawed, that could be because director/writer/star Edward Norton has been shepherding it through a nearly two-decade development since he purchased the movie rights to Jonathan Lethem's acclaimed novel shortly after it was published in 1999. But it's also because this is the kind of prestige piece that's becoming an increasingly rare commodity in multiplexes these days. A complex NYC noir with echoes of CHINATOWN and a generous helping of the kind of big-city corruption that's reminiscent of Sidney Lumet, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN probably would've received a more welcome reception as a period HBO or Netflix miniseries, where it would've earned significant acclaim and cleaned up at the Emmys and the Golden Globes. But in theaters, it's a different story. Warner Bros. even seemed to lose confidence in it as the release date approached, knocking it down to 1300 screens in the days before it opened, even after a relentless TV ad blitz in the preceding weeks. The sad fact is that times have changed, and in an era when everything has to be a blockbuster, this kind of modest, mid-level production doesn't bring in the crowds anymore, whether you want to call it a movie for "grownups" or one that's geared toward "older audiences," or simply, a "dad movie." There's plenty of explanations--the trend toward mega-budget franchises, the fact that it'll be on VOD and Blu-ray in three or four months, and that, let's be honest, Norton hasn't headlined a hit movie in a long time. Even though it's a top-notch "dad movie," it's still a small miracle that MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is in theaters at all.

Norton takes so many liberties with Lethem's novel that one could argue the film is its own separate thing. Two major changes: he moves the setting from the then-present late 1990s to the late 1950s (his feeling being that the use of hard-boiled dialogue in the present day worked on the page but would seem too ironic and gimmicky on the screen, and he's right, since BRICK already beat him to it), and he invents a major character exclusive to the film in one Moses Randolph, a venal political power player inspired by notorious Manhattan city planner and parks commissioner Robert Moses, whose post-Depression projects ran up debt and seemed insidiously designed to isolate black neighborhoods, thus propagating the long decline in areas that became slums and ghettos in the ensuing decades. As loose as Norton plays with Lethem's source work, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN works as a well-made, leisurely-paced, and very character-driven film that unfolds like a good book, with a memorable hero in Lionel Essrog (Norton), who has Tourette's and can't stop shouting inappropriate things at the wrong time. On one hand, this feels like another chance for Norton to do his PRIMAL FEAR/THE SCORE schtick, but fortunately, Norton the actor is kept in check by Norton the director, who's careful to avoid turning his long-gestating pet project into a self-indulgent vanity project.

Lionel works as part of the investigative crew of Brooklyn gumshoe Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who affectionately calls him "Brooklyn" and makes use of Lionel's ability to remember even the most trivial of details. The crew--which also consists of Tony (Bobby Cannavale), Gilbert (Ethan Suplee), and Danny (Dallas Roberts)--have been with Frank since they were kids, when they were all in an orphanage and he took them under his wing. When Frank is killed (aaaand...exit Bruce Willis 15 minutes in) during a dangerous meet in a fleabag hotel with some mystery men--where Frank hid a phone in a dresser drawer so Lionel could listen at a pay phone across the street--Lionel becomes fixated on piecing together the puzzle of meaningless words and phrases from the conversation to find out what Frank was up to and why he wouldn't clue them in. Lionel's pursuit of numerous disparate leads--Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a legal aid for civil rights and gentrification activist Gabby Hurwitz (Cherry Jones); a jazz club owned by Laura's father (Robert Ray Wisdom); a worldly jazz trumpeter (Michael Kenneth Williams); a disgruntled engineer (Willem Dafoe, midway through growing his LIGHTHOUSE beard) who's fallen on hard times; and Randolph (Alec Baldwin), who runs a dozen powerful city offices but remains an unelected public official with enough juice to bully the mayor (Peter Lewis) into bending to his will--eventually comes together, though he gets roughed up several times by a group of Randolph goons led by Lou (Fisher Stevens) and lets things get personal when he realizes that Laura's life is in danger.

Norton's tic-filled performance can be big but it's never hammy, and it's a welcome approach that everyone seems to understand that there's something wrong with his head that makes him act the way he does. He often has to explain that "It's like a piece of my head broke off and is just joyriding me," followed by something like "Giant faggot munchkin meat!" or "Tits on a Tuesday!" or, if he gets really worked up, a loud "IF!" accompanied by a wild head thrash. Even though the other guys in Frank's office call him "Freakshow," it's a term of endearment among them, as they demonstrably take his insights and opinions seriously. Norton's Lionel is a real character instead of a series of awards-baiting outbursts. The creation of Baldwin's Moses Randolph serves to add social and historical commentary to the story line with the dead-on Robert Moses parallels, as well as an obvious, and maybe slightly ham-fisted modern political allegory, with Baldwin's performance being a significantly less cartoonish interpretation of his SNL Donald Trump impression (Randolph even quotes him nearly verbatim at one point, arguing the semantics of rape and stating "When you're powerful, you can do anything you want"). The Trumpification of Robert Moses into Moses Randolph helps MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN become a film of its time in ways that it couldn't have had Norton made this 20 years ago, though, admittedly, die-hard devotees of Lethem's novel probably won't be enthused about these additional layers.

"Bruce, I said I'd *try* to get you out of here
in one day, but I never made any guarantees." 

At 144 minutes, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN may run a little long, but it's always engrossing, and the only weak spot is the perpetually inconvenienced Willis, continuing to give Steven Seagal a run for his rubles as the laziest actor alive. It's really something to watch the way Norton has to shoot Frank's meeting with the four Randolph goons in a gimmicky way to cover for Willis obviously not being there with Fisher Stevens and the other actors. The hotel room is dark and shadowy and the image drifts in and out of focus in an almost hallucinatory fashion for no reason, with Willis obviously doubled from the back (the guy's head isn't even shaped like Willis') and his close-ups are always just him with no one else in the shot when he's responding to someone's questions. This sequence is in the first ten minutes and it actually gets the film off to a clunky start because it looks like Norton is going for some pointless auteur wankery right out of the gate until you realize that it's this way because Willis can't even be bothered to show up for work on good movies, let alone Lionsgate's landmark, ongoing "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series. When Norton was on the dais of Comedy Central's roast of Willis last year, with MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN already wrapped, he wondered if he could get away with the things Willis does: "Could I just leave the set of a movie after my close-ups are done and have my co-stars act opposite a C-stand with a red X taped to it while a script girl reads my dialogue to them?" Gentle ribbing or spoken from experience?

In Theaters: BLACKkKLANSMAN (2018)

BLACKkKLANSMAN
(US - 2018)

Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee. Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins, Robert John Burke, Michael Buscemi, Frederick Weller, Ken Garito, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin, Ryan Eggold, Jasper Paakkonen, Paul Walter Hauser, Ashlie Atkinson, Nicholas Turturro, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Danny Hoch, Arthur Nascarella, Brian Tarantina, Ryan Preimesberger. (R, 135 mins)

As difficult as it may be to believe, Spike Lee's BLACKkKLANSMAN is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, the first black police officer hired by the Colorado Springs P.D. back in the 1970s, and the man who was instrumental in busting up a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. As a rookie hired mainly for show, Stallworth (BALLERS' John David Washington, son of frequent Lee star and close friend Denzel Washington) is immediately sent to the records department and generally dismissed and disrespected by his fellow officers. Looking for some meaningful police work, he jumps at the chance to go undercover at a rally hosted by Colorado College's black student union, welcoming civil rights leader Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), formerly known as the Black Panthers' Stokely Carmichael. Backed up by detectives Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) and Jimmy Creek (Michael Buscemi, Steve's look/soundalike younger brother), Ron doesn't see much more than rhetoric in Ture's call to arms, but he does make the acquaintance of Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), the "pig"-hating president of the black student union, though he keeps his job a secret.

Shortly after, spotting an ad for the local chapter of the KKK in the newspaper on a slow day in the squad room, Ron calls the number and pretends to be a white racist, inquiring for information about joining and, in a bad rookie mistake, giving his real name. Police chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) and Sgt. Trapp (Ken Garito) assign Ron to lead an undercover infiltration of the KKK, with Jewish Flip posing as "Ron Stallworth" while the real Ron coaches him and backs him up from a nearby location. As "Ron," Flip gathers intel by ingratiating himself with local chapter president Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold) and his two chief underlings, hot-headed Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Paakkonen) and mouth-breathing moron Ivanhoe (Paul Walter Hauser, who seems to be cornering the market on such characters between this and his role as the hapless Shawn Eckhardt in I, TONYA). The ruse can't last forever, especially with Felix's overwhelming suspicion that "Ron"/Flip looks "too Jewish" and when he looks up "Ron Stallworth" in the phone book and sees that a black man lives at the address. Ron and Flip always manage to cover themselves and explain away inconsistencies, whether it's Flip avoiding a Felix-administered lie detector test or the real Ron getting in the good graces of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) over the phone. Tension soon escalates with Duke planning a visit to Colorado Springs for "Ron"'s initiation and Felix, Ivanhoe, and Felix's wife Connie (Ashlie Atkinson), who's desperate to be accepted as one of the guys, planning to bomb a civil rights demonstration organized by Patrice.

Co-produced by the GET OUT team of Blumhouse and Jordan Peele, BLACKkKLANSMAN is Lee's best narrative film in at least a decade, maybe since 2006's INSIDE MAN. Alternately edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, funny (the great Isiah Whitlock Jr. stops by long enough to drop his signature catchphrase), satirical, and biliously enraged, the film balances its moods perfectly and satisfies on all fronts, serving as a 1970s-set police procedural and as a bitter polemic about the current state of Donald Trump's America. It's no coincidence that the film was released on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy, and Trump is invoked both in archival news footage and in the platitudes of Grace's sinister yet folksy ("You're darn tootin'!") David Duke, both in his political aspirations and his use of "America first" and the KKK"s background chatter of "making America great again." Lee even opens the film with a faux-editorial by fictional white supremacy advocate Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (Alec Baldwin), whose disturbingly prophetic inflammatory hate speech sounds exactly like the Laura Ingraham diatribe that aired on Fox News just a couple of nights before the film's release. The riveting, kinetic third act balances the thwarting of an act of domestic terrorism along with a cross-cutting of "Ron"'s induction into the Klan and a celebratory viewing of D.W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION and Patrice and her fellow black students listening to a lecture by elderly activist Mr. Turner (Harry Belafonte) as he recounts the horrifying 1916 lynching, mutilation, and burning of Jesse Washington, itself inspired by the renewed interest in the Klan following the box-office success of Griffith's film, which was praised by none other then President Woodrow Wilson.

Lee's output has been wildly inconsistent in recent years. Small, crowdfunded indies like 2012's RED HOOK SUMMER and his 2015 horror film DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS, a remake of the 1973 cult film GANJA AND HESS, were intermittently interesting curios at best, while his ill-advised 2013 remake of OLDBOY was a disaster that he disowned after the producers took it away from him in post-production (I haven't seen 2015's CHI-RAQ, which many praised as a return to form, or his barely-released, 2018 filmed play PASS OVER). But BLACKkKLANSMAN finds the 61-year-old auteur at a full fury on a level we haven't seen since DO THE RIGHT THING (or possibly BAMBOOZLED), a perfect mix of his commercial capabilities and his sociopolitical concerns. The cast is outstanding across the board, and over the course of its 135 minutes, a star is born with Washington, who turned to acting after his pro football career failed to pan out. His transformation into a leading man occurs with his character's growth over the film, and by the end, you'll absolutely see his dad in his performance. Dazzling from start to finish, and funny and frightening in equal measures, and with an utterly devastating final montage, BLACKkKLANSMAN immediately establishes itself as one of Lee's essential works and one of the best films of the year.

In Theaters: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT (2018)

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT
(US/China - 2018)

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Wes Bentley, Vanessa Kirby, Frederick Schmidt, Liang Yang, Kristoffer Joner, Caspar Phillipson, Alix Benezech. (PG-13, 147 mins)

Big-budget summer blockbusters don't get much more entertaining than MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT, the sixth film in the durable, 22-year-old franchise. An incredible jolt of adrenaline in cinematic form, FALLOUT is easily the best in the M:I series so far, and it might even be the best movie Tom Cruise has ever made. Setting aside his batshit religion, Cruise may very well be The Last Movie Star and only a fool would count him out after a trio of forgettable underperformers--JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK, THE MUMMY, and AMERICAN MADE--that had all of the entertainment industry prognosticators concluding that the now-56-year-old (!) actor was washed-up and his time had passed. While we justifiably question the necessity of a TOP GUN sequel that's due out next year, FALLOUT is Cruise here and now in a series that's been on a roll, reteaming him once more with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning USUAL SUSPECTS screenwriter who emerged from an eight-year sabbatical to become Cruise's most trusted aide-de-camp in either writing (VALKYRIE, EDGE OF TOMORROW, THE MUMMY) or directing (JACK REACHER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION) capacities in the ensuing decade. What everyone was saying about MAD MAX: FURY ROAD three years ago holds true here: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT is an instant classic in the action genre.

A direct sequel to ROGUE NATION, FALLOUT is as convoluted as you'd expect, with IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), botching a mission to intercept three weapons-grade plutonium orbs that end up in the hands of The Apostles, a splinter cell offshoot of The Syndicate, the organization run by international terrorist Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who was apprehended in the previous film. Assigned to retrieve the plutonium by IMF boss Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), the team is overruled by CIA chief Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett), who orders her own operative and attack dog Walker (Henry Cavill) to tag along. The story moves all over the globe, as Hunt ends up posing as a mystery man named John Lark, set to buy the plutonium from the Apostles with a wealthy socialite and arms dealer known as The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) acting as a go-between. Things get even more complicated when The Apostles refuse to pay for the plutonium, instead insisting that if "Lark"/Hunt wants the plutonium, he has to help Lane escape from a military-fortified prison transport. Throw in MI-6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and her own assignment to kill Lane, Hunt being framed as a rogue agent once more, and a scheming Walker clearly up to games of his own, and the stage is set for one double-cross and jaw-dropping action set piece after another for a two-and-a-half hour stretch that's over before know it.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT is a movie that just doesn't quit. It's a preposterous delight and a rare instance of an action film that actually merits the comparison to the proverbial standby blurb of a non-stop rollercoaster ride. Though there's some conservatively-deployed CGI and visual effects, the abundance of practical stunt work and action choreography solidifies Cruise's standing as Hollywood's most death-defying madman. McQuarrie's puzzle-like story construction and recurring motif of "Who's really who?" recalls THE USUAL SUSPECTS, but there's also generous helpings of humor and warmth among the IMF characters who, to borrow a term from the FAST AND THE FURIOUS series, have really become family by this point (it's Hunt's unwillingness to sacrifice Luther that causes him to lose the plutonium in the prologue, something that Sloane and Walker never stop reminding him). FAST AND THE FURIOUS fans may want to argue the point, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a big-budget franchise still creatively firing on all cylinders and running better than ever six installments deep. It's impossible to pick a best scene--the HALO jump, the bone-smashing men's room throwdown, the epic boat/car/motorcycle chase through Paris, the greatest "Tom Cruise running" sequence ever, or the nerve-wracking, INCEPTION-like cross-cutting race against time in the climax, when the team tracks Lane to a medical camp in Kashmir where a smallpox outbreak caused by The Apostles has just been contained, which involves a helicopter chase, a brawl that spills over to the side of a mountain, and the defusing of two nuclear devices. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT is crowd-pleasing, edge-of-your-seat, popcorn movie perfection, the kind of relentlessly heart-pounding, balls-to-the-wall barnburner that restores your faith in the summer blockbuster.

In Theaters: RULES DON'T APPLY (2016)

RULES DON'T APPLY
(US - 2016)

Written and directed by Warren Beatty. Cast: Warren Beatty, Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Haley Bennett, Candice Bergen, Dabney Coleman, Steve Coogan, Ed Harris, Megan Hilty, Oliver Platt, Martin Sheen, Paul Sorvino, Taissa Farmiga, Amy Madigan, Paul Schneider, Hart Bochner, Louise Linton, Graham Beckel, Chace Crawford, Ashley Hamilton, Marshall Bell, Patrick Fischler, Michael Badalucco, Joe Cortese. (PG-13, 126 mins)

As an actor, writer, director, and producer, Warren Beatty has been nominated for 14 Oscars in total, winning one for Best Director with 1981's REDS. He's a living legend, and as a producer and star, one who was instrumental in ushering in the "New Hollywood" era with 1967's landmark BONNIE AND CLYDE. Beatty was never prolific even in his heyday: starting with his big-screen debut in 1961's SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, he's acted in just 22 films in 55 years, the bulk of those being in the 1960s and 1970s. Offscreen since the expensive 2001 bomb TOWN & COUNTRY, Beatty returns with RULES DON'T APPLY, a pet project about Howard Hughes that he's had in various stages of development since 1973. Beatty also wrote and directed, and the whole thing was kept under wraps as shooting began in early 2014. Granted a Kubrickian level of freedom and secrecy that very few are afforded these days, Beatty made exactly the film he wanted to make, and if the end result is what he's had playing in his head for over 40 years, then you have to wonder what he was thinking and why he even bothered.

Set from 1959 to 1964, RULES DON'T APPLY takes its time getting to Beatty's Howard Hughes (79-year-old Beatty is about 25 years too old to play Hughes in this time period), instead focusing on Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins, daughter of Phil), a virginal, small-town beauty queen and bright-eyed songwriter from Virginia, who's been given a studio contract by Hughes and is flown out to Hollywood with her overprotective, devout Baptist mother Lucy (Annette Bening). They're picked up at the airport by Hughes employee Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), a Methodist engaged to 7th grade sweetheart Sarah (Taissa Farmiga) back in Fresno and with big dreams about getting Hughes to back his real estate ventures. Hughes has over 25 starlets under contract, and despite stipulations that the drivers aren't to get involved with them, Lucy and Frank can't deny their attraction to one another, even though she feels he's essentially married since he's already had sex with Sarah.

So far, so good. The opening half hour of RULES DON'T APPLY isn't great, but it has a sort-of "second-tier Woody Allen" thing going on and plays a lot like Allen's similar CAFE SOCIETY from earlier this year. But once Hughes enters the picture, the focus shifts to Beatty going through the litany of every Hughes tic, compulsion, oddity, and stereotype in existence. Sometimes it's played for laughs, other times it turns strangely dark, such as an uncomfortable and frankly creepy scene where a drunk Marla gives her virginity to a befuddled, babbling Hughes. Very little in this story is based on fact, other than there was a Howard Hughes and he was a total weirdo billionaire, so it's a jarring tonal shift to have what was essentially a light, romantic comedy suddenly turn bleak, with Marla feeling used and ending up pregnant and considering an abortion. Frank can't decide if he wants to be with Sarah or Marla, and for the sake of the script, instead gets a quick promotion from anonymous driver to Hughes' right-hand man almost overnight. Beatty then spends an inordinate amount of time on Hughes' dealings with his TWA airline, various defense contracts with the US government, and trying to convince the government that his plane can fly, with his behavior growing increasingly erratic with each passing scene. Many big names joined the project, obviously for the chance to work with Beatty, but with the exception of Matthew Broderick as another top Hughes flunky, none of them are put to good use: Candice Bergen has a thankless role as Hughes' secretary; Martin Sheen has three or four brief appearances before we even get a hint of who he's supposed to be (he's either Hughes' lawyer or he runs the day-to-day operations of the Hughes empire), then his character is fired and replaced by another character played by Alec Baldwin, doing a quick "Hey, I'm here to hang with Warren" drop-by; Ed Harris and Amy Madigan have one scene as Sarah's parents; Steve Coogan plays a scared pilot riding shotgun after Hughes drops what he's doing and goes to London to fly a plane; Dabney Coleman shows up briefly as Hughes' doctor; and in a barely-there bit part, Paul Sorvino is seen chatting in the background of a couple shots, eventually getting one line of dialogue when his character is seen on a TV screen. Who is he? Why is he here? Who knows?

It's never a good sign when four editors share credit, and RULES DON'T APPLY looks like a hastily-assembled mess that wasn't so much finished as it was given up on. Characters appear and disappear with no explanation, and early scenes are presented in such a brisk and choppy fashion that you never ascertain who certain people are and what purpose they serve to the story. Beatty bum-rushes through the exposition to get to the parts he cares most about--hamming it up as Howard Hughes--and leaves a large cast mostly stranded. It just gets worse as it goes on, Hughes impulsively heading to London, Managua, and Acapulco, with Frank in tow, for reasons never really explained. Beatty assembled some cast and crew for some reshoots in early 2015 and then spent well over a year putting the movie together. He had nearly five decades to figure out what he wanted with this thing and the end result is a leaden, lifeless, self-indulgent fiasco. Collins and Ehrenreich do what they can with the material (and you have to respect future Han Solo Ehrenreich, who arrived a few years ago as an obvious Leonardo DiCaprio clone who's now getting the roles Leo has aged out of, but he's a young actor who knows his history and has jumped at the chance to work with movie legends like Beatty, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen), but they're completely defeated by the whims and indecisiveness of a director who's just maybe been away from the game for too long. Beatty hasn't directed a film since 1998's still-scathing BULWORTH (though he reportedly pulled rank on Peter Chelsom and backseat-directed most of TOWN & COUNTRY himself), and that was a movie that had things to say that remain relevant today. Whether as a director, producer, writer, or star, Beatty has historically had his finger on the pulse of current events and deftly capturing the zeitgeist, whether it's the political commentary and the hip-hop awakening of BULWORTH, the changing cinema trends exemplified by BONNIE AND CLYDE, the post-Nixon/Watergate paranoia of THE PARALLAX VIEW, or the sexually liberated '70s in SHAMPOO. RULES DON'T APPLY (you could make a drinking game out of how many times that phrase is shoehorned in via dialogue or song) is a tone-deaf vanity project that puts Beatty in with other influential auteurs--Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, George Romero, Dario Argento, to name a few--whose final or most recent works are indicative of aging legends who just don't get out much anymore. How else do you explain an extended gag about a cum stain on Frank's pants? Did Beatty just now get around to seeing a Farrelly Brothers comedy? And why is that joke in this movie? Given his sporadic work habits and his age, this is likely the last thing we're going to see from Warren Beatty. And that's a damn shame.

On DVD/Blu-ray: MILES AHEAD (2016); ELVIS & NIXON (2016); and ANDRON (2016)

MILES AHEAD
(US - 2016)

For years, Don Cheadle has been talking about his wish to make a film about jazz legend Miles Davis. He finally got the chance with this partially crowd-funded indie that also marks his debut as a writer and director. For something that he had bouncing around in his head all these years, MILES AHEAD is an almost total missed opportunity. Cheadle wanted to avoid the pratfalls of a standard-issue biopic, which is commendable, but he more or less just drops a character named "Miles Davis" into a rote buddy movie with occasional car chases and action sequences. Set primarily during Davis' reclusive late 1970s period of self-imposed exile in his Upper West Side NYC apartment, MILES AHEAD pairs him with a fictional Rolling Stone journalist named Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor), who's desperate to grab an exclusive with him. Davis is currently butting heads with Columbia Records execs who have been waiting several years for his latest record. Columbia A&R douchebag Harper Hamilton (a reptilian Michael Stuhlbarg) and his Davis-like, Next Big Thing signing Junior (LaKeith Lee Stanfield) steal the sole copy of Davis' latest recording, prompting the embittered, burned-out, drug-addled trumpeter and his befuddled sidekick Braden to turn NYC (actually, Cincinnati, where this was shot) upside-down in pursuit of it. All the while, Davis periodically reflects on his career triumphs (and, of course, sees himself in the young ingenue Junior) and his failed marriage to dancer Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi), pondering Where It All Went Wrong.

The flashbacks to the 1950s to the mid 1960s seem like Cheadle giving himself some opportunity to portray Davis in a straightforward fashion rather than the showy, coke-snorting jazz version of Howard Hughes he's playing in the late 1970s sections of the film. Cheadle is a dead ringer for Davis and it's a terrific performance that's completely let down by Cheadle the filmmaker. Cheadle is a gifted actor who could've brought much substance and complexity to a serious chronicle of the ups and downs of Davis' life. Why he--and Davis' family, who gave him their blessing--opted for a completely fictional scenario is a mystery. McGregor doesn't have much to do other than to look perplexed over Davis' wildly unpredictable behavior (like firing a gun in the Columbia offices), while Corinealdi does some good work in the more serious side of the film, even though she's tasked with little other than raging at a selfish, serially philandering Davis when he repeatedly treats her like a doormat. If Davis' family was OK with showing him in a negative light in these scenes, then why not make an honest film about him instead of this dumb movie that tries to have one foot in the arthouse and the other in the multiplex? Cheadle makes a great Miles Davis...it's just lost in a mediocre misfire of his own making. (R, 101 mins)



ELVIS & NIXON
(US - 2016)

Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon had a meeting in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970, with the resulting photo of the two cited as the most requested in the National Archives. ELVIS & NIXON purports to tell "the true story" of what went down at that secret meeting. Troubled by the direction of Vietnam-era youth--their malaise, their drug use, their music--Elvis is obsessed with the idea of working undercover for the Federal Narcotics Bureau as a "Federal Agent-at-Large," and requests a meeting with Nixon to make it happen. This story was covered before in Allan Arkush's little-seen 1997 cable movie ELVIS MEETS NIXON, with Rick Peters as Elvis and Bob Gunton as Nixon, but ELVIS & NIXON, co-written by actor Cary Elwes and directed by Liza Johnson (HATESHIP LOVESHIP), has two bigger names onboard, with Michael Shannon as Elvis and Kevin Spacey as Nixon. These are brilliant actors, and while neither does an SNL caricature, Spacey does a good job of nailing Nixon's mannerisms in the face of Elvis' increasingly absurd behavior, like an impromptu karate demonstration near the end of their afternoon together. Nixon sees being an Elvis pal as a way of appealing to America's youth, and while he's initially dismissive of the idea, the meeting puts a spring in Nixon's step--watch the way he enthusiastically asks aides Egil Krogh (Colin Hanks) and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) "Am I Mr. Cool?"--and Spacey does a very nice job with it. Shannon is a versatile actor but he just can't pull off Elvis. It makes sense that he wants to play Elvis as a person rather than the "Elvis" of his public image, but he never comes off as anything but Michael Shannon in an Elvis costume. He meets two impersonators early on and they demonstrate more life than he does. Shannon's Elvis is among the most quiet and soft-spoken in pop culture. It would've helped a little to maybe sound or act like him--Shannon is about as plausible an Elvis as Chevy Chase was a Gerald Ford. While Spacey doesn't cartoonishly mimic Nixon, he at least conveys a Nixonian presence. Shannon seems like an Elvis impersonator who's off the clock but still hasn't changed into his own clothes. And who cares about his buddy Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer) who's preoccupied with getting back to Hollywood to propose to his girlfriend (Sky Ferreira)?  The closing credits roll at 80 minutes and they still have to pad the running time with a subplot about Jerry and his girlfriend? Also featuring Johnny Knoxville for some reason, ELVIS & NIXON finds some genuine laughs in the very late-going, but for the most part, it's low-key to the point of catatonia, never recovering from a miscast Shannon's inert (though some critics really liked it) interpretation of the King. If you want an Elvis performance that's funny and heartfelt and relatively real, stick with Bruce Campbell in BUBBA HO-TEP. (R, 86 mins)

ANDRON
(Italy/UK - 2016)

From the 1960s through the 1980s, it was common to find Hollywood actors who were aging or in a career slump slumming in B-grade European knockoffs of popular American movies. To that end, there's a brief sense of nostalgia to be enjoyed with ANDRON, an incoherent Italian ripoff of THE HUNGER GAMES and THE MAZE RUNNER that somehow prominently features a visibly inconvenienced Alec Baldwin as Adam, the nefarious master of--wait for it--"The Redemption Games." It's some survival game being broadcast to a post-apocalyptic, dystopian society in the year 2154, years after "The Big Catastrophe" nuked the planet, killing billions of people and leading to The Nine Corporations assuming control of the world. Ten strangers wake up to find themselves forced contestants in The Redemption Games, which is being beamed to members of an enslaved society who have placed bets where the winners earn their freedom. You expect to see Danny Glover in something like this--he plays "The Chancellor," some Nine Corporations leader--but isn't this a little beneath Alec Baldwin? Sure, hosting a rebooted MATCH GAME is probably a fun lark, but how exactly did this script get to him? Did he see an easy payday and assumed the resulting mess would never be released? ANDRON was filmed in 2014, around the same time Baldwin had a supporting role in the fifth entry in Santiago Segura's popular Spanish-made TORRENTE action/comedy franchise, TORRENTE 5: OPERACION EUROVEGAS (the first was made in 1998 and they've turned up streaming on Amazon), so he likely did the Malta-shot ANDRON on the same trip to Europe. But why? His appearances throughout are almost Bruce Willisian in their laziness and disconnect from the rest of the movie (the DVD's making-of shows a VFX shot of Baldwin's head being CGI'd onto a stand-in's body for a scene where his character appears with Glover). He probably didn't spend any more than a day or two on the set, probably coming off like a mercurial prick at least once and maybe trying to lighten the mood by entertaining the crew by dropping some GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS bon mots or the MALICE "I am God" speech. His role primarily consists of sitting at a desk, watching The Redemption Games on a hologram and occasionally engaging in some MINORITY REPORT pantomiming as he manipulates and moves things around on a holographic screen. When the first contestant is killed, a smirking Baldwin purrs "Ten little Indians standing in a line, one toddled home and then there were nine." Other observational witticisms from behind his desk include:

• "Now things get interesting."

• "Let's liven things up a little."

• "Let's give them something else to think about."

• "That's my girl."

• "Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends!"

• "Let's shuffle this deck."

• "What the hell is that?"

• "Get them back on the grid!"

• "Shit!"

Written and directed by Francesco Cinquemani, ANDRON is so muddled and incomprehensible that it feels like you're watching the fourth or fifth installment in a franchise where the previous installments were never made. Opening in medias res is one thing, but not knowing who anyone is or what's going on or why we should even care makes for a frustrating experience. Never mind the atrocious CGI and greenscreen work--it seems entirely possible that Baldwin is completely unaware of this film and his appearance in it is actually a CGI hologram--the story isn't even remotely engaging and what little you can figure out is blatantly and shamelessly cribbed from THE HUNGER GAMES, THE MAZE RUNNER, and even the cult classic CUBE. The nominal lead is Leo Howard, the star of the Disney Channel's KICKIN' IT, and Skunk Anansie vocalist Skin plays a Milla Jovovich-like badass who's been implanted with someone's memories or some such nonsense. ANDRON is a complete botch that has the audacity to leave the door open for a sequel, and if Z-grade '70s hack Alfonso Brescia/"Al Bradley" was still alive and making Italian ripoffs, he probably would've made this. As it is, it's hopefully as close to an Uwe Boll joint as Baldwin will ever get. Did he owe Stephen a favor and do this movie for him? Did Mitch & Murray send him to Malta on a mission of mercy? (R, 96 mins)

In Theaters: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION (2015)

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION
(US/China - 2015)

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Simon McBurney, Xiang Jingchu, Tom Hollander, Jens Hulten, Hermione Corfield, America Olivo, Robert Maaser, Wolfgang Stegemann. (PG-13, 131 mins)

Putting aside the fact that he's a pretty weird guy who believes in a patently crazy religion, there's no denying that Tom Cruise is perhaps The Last Movie Star, the kind of guy who, with occasional missteps (ROCK OF AGES), knows what his fans want and always delivers. The action just gets more frenetic and ambitious with ROGUE NATION, written and directed by Cruise's apparent new BFF Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar for his USUAL SUSPECTS script nearly 20 years ago. McQuarrie disappeared from sight after 2000's THE WAY OF THE GUN and resurfaced with a writing credit on Cruise's 2008 film VALKYRIE. Since then, McQuarrie wrote and directed Cruise in 2012's underrated--with a growing cult--JACK REACHER, and he co-wrote last year's EDGE OF TOMORROW. Fans of McQuarrie the writer will be happy to know that he brings some of his gift for verbiage and Keyser Soze hyperbole to ROGUE NATION, particularly when Alec Baldwin's irritable CIA chief tells one of the bad guys that Cruise's Ethan Hunt is "the living manifestation of destiny...and he's made you his mission!" As a director, McQuarrie throws all of the styles of past M:I franchise helmers into a blender in a way that's tantamount to a greatest hits package. There's a lot of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2's John Woo in the fight choreography and some generous Brad Bird in the elaborately death-defying GHOST PROTOCOL-style set pieces, plus the long Vienna Opera House sequence that's more Brian De Palma than anything De Palma did as the hired gun directing the first M:I installment in 1996. Though there's quite a bit of CGI assistance, ROGUE NATION goes the extra mile in the action sequences to make them as practical as possible. Sure, for every scene of Cruise hanging on to the outside of a plane as it's taking off, or doing most of his own driving in a high-speed motorcycle chase sequence, there's one of him being bounced around like a pinball or a really phony-looking car flip that momentarily takes you out of the movie, but these interruptions are few and far between.

After a spectacular opening sequence with IMF agent Hunt hanging on to the side of a plane as it takes off, the actions starts bouncing around the globe, first in London where Hunt, on the trail of a terrorist organization known as "The Syndicate," is ambushed by its sinister leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Hunt and his IMF team have never been able to produce any concrete evidence of The Syndicate's existence, much to the consternation of CIA chief Hunley (Baldwin), who has IMF disbanded and tells agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner) that he believes Hunt "is both arsonist and fireman, and that the Syndicate is a figment of his imagination, created by Hunt to justify the continued existence of IMF." Hunt, now off-the-grid and considered a global fugitive, enlists the aid of his former cohort, Langley-based CIA flunky Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), who meets up with Hunt and deeply-embedded British agent Ilsa Faust (a star-making turn by Rebecca Ferguson), who shows ever-shifting loyalties after infiltrating The Syndicate and constantly being put to the test by the nefarious Lane. Eventually, Brandt and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames, who probably looks forward to the M:I films to rescue him from the world of straight-to-Redbox) join the group in Morocco for an incredible car/motorcycle/SUV chase down a Casablanca highway. The action moves at a furious clip and never stops, whether it's the MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH-style sequence in the opera house or a complex plot to retrieve data from a underwater power server that requires Hunt to hold his breath for several minutes, though watching how it plays out, I'm not sure I buy the hype that Cruise himself held his breath for several minutes.

ROGUE NATION doesn't aspire to be anything more than escapist entertainment and it's one of the most enjoyable movies of the summer. At 53, Cruise seems to have stopped chasing an Oscar and instead settled into a comfort zone where he's found a niche but isn't coasting. At this rate, he won't need to do a geriatric actioner in five or six years because he'll never have stopped doing stuff like this, and that's fine. Cruise is in top form here, and he's matched by a game Ferguson, who needs to return if there's any future M:I outings. Renner, Pegg, and Rhames all have their moments in the spotlight (Luther busting Brandt's balls about handling the 4x4 during the car chase gets a big laugh). Baldwin, with his blustery GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS delivery, benefits the most from McQuarrie's gift of wordsmithing, while Harris makes a decent if one-dimensional bad guy. Like the FAST & FURIOUS franchise, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE seems to be gaining steam as it goes along, with the last two being particularly strong (I even like the much-maligned second entry by John Woo, which has achieved almost HIGHLANDER 2 levels of loathing by fans in the decade and a half since its release). In short, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION is the most no-holds-barred actioner to hit screens since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and while it isn't the game-changer that George Miller masterpiece was and the second half isn't quite as rousing as the first, it gives you almost everything you could possibly ask for in a big summer movie, with enough real stunt work--one of the highlights of JACK REACHER, by the way--mixed with digital to demonstrate the difference. Strap Cruise to a parked airplane or on a motorcycle in front of a greenscreen and this is as forgettable as any generic action movie. Cruise and McQuarrie know the difference and audiences should, too. This and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD should be case studies in why the studios need to scale back their reliance on cartoonish CGI and start using it to enhance the action rather than being the action.

In Theaters: BLUE JASMINE (2013)

BLUE JASMINE
(US - 2013)

Written and directed by Woody Allen.  Cast: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alden Ehrenreich, Max Casella, Tammy Blanchard, Annie McNamara, Daniel Jenks, Max Rutherford, Shannon Finn. (PG-13, 98 mins)

Woody Allen goes back to drama after last summer's TO ROME WITH LOVE, a botched misfire that failed to recreate the lightning-in-a-bottle sensation he had with 2011's surprise smash MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.  Whether it's NYC, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, or London, Allen has always had a knack for capturing the spirit of a city on the screen, and that's the case here as he heads to San Francisco for BLUE JASMINE.

Cate Blanchett delivers one of the best performances of her already-sterling career as Jasmine, a divorced woman of wealth and privilege whose world of lunches, yoga, shopping, and dinner parties collapsed with the arrest of her Madoff-like Wall Street investor husband Hal (Alec Baldwin).  Humiliated, ostracized, and with no one to turn to in her NYC social circle, Jasmine goes to San Francisco to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a plain woman who Jasmine has always dismissed (both of the sisters were adopted, and their adoptive mother always said Jasmine "had the good genes").  Divorced from her contractor husband Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), Ginger lives in a small apartment above a store with her two rambunctious young boys and is getting serious with mechanic Chili (Bobby Cannavale).  Jasmine can barely stomach being in such confines, claiming she's broke but mentioning she flew first class in the same sentence.  Jasmine talks of going back to school and lowers herself to get a job as a receptionist for a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and sees her situation taking a turn for the better when she meets widower Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), who works for the State Department and has political aspirations.  Meanwhile, Jasmine's presence irritates Chili and causes a rift between him and Ginger, which sends her off with nice-guy sound engineer Al (Louis C.K.).

Even in his comedies, Allen is a master of exploring relationships--romantic, familial, etc--and even without revealing every detail about their lives, you pick up on where people have been and what makes them tick just through his dialogue and through the performances.  Watching Blanchett's Jasmine tell her whole "what brings me to San Francisco" story to the woman sitting next to her on the plane and it's clear that this is a story she's rehearsed and told countless times and it really doesn't matter to her if anyone's even listening.  She's one of the most narcissistic characters Allen's ever written, oblivious to the concerns of everyone around her and often not even cognizant of where she is.  Note how many times we hear her telling a story only to have Allen reveal she's just sitting in a public place talking to herself.  And as long as her social standing was upheld, she more than content to not concern herself with Hal's illegal business dealings ("His business isn't my concern...if he asks me to sign something, I sign it") and ignore his numerous affairs, which was known to everyone but her.  It's a complex character, and Blanchett not only nails it, but she makes you feel sympathy for someone who doesn't always deserve it.

Though it's Blanchett's film and she has the title role, everyone gets to shine here.  Fine performances from people like Baldwin, Hawkins, and Sarsgaard shouldn't come as a surprise, but the biggest coup Allen pulls off here is the stunt casting of one-time shock comic Clay as a blue-collar schlub.  He fits into the role of Augie beautifully, inhabiting the mannerisms and the demeanor so well that you almost instantly forget the whole "Dice" persona.  Augie still resents Jasmine because she talked him into investing his $200,000 lottery prize into one of Hal's shady ventures and lost everything, including Ginger (Jasmine tells someone that "Augie used to hit her," but many of her comments are unreliable at best).  Paunchy and graying, Clay only has a few scenes but makes every one of them count (and Allen helps with little details like Augie's best clothes including a Members Only jacket).  Don't be surprised if Dice ends up with an Oscar nomination.  He's really that good.  And as he's shown on FX's LOUIE, Louis C.K. can handle serious acting, but of this ensemble, he's left with little to do.

BLUE JASMINE is a fine turnaround from TO ROME WITH LOVE, which was easily one of Allen's worst films.  The relentlessly busy filmmaker, pushing 80 and still cranking out a movie every year, has frequently succumbed to an element of sameness as time's gone on.  Many of his more recent films are fine enough while you watch, but instantly forgettable after, but they're almost annual comfort food at this point (the opening credits with the Woody Allen font, an old jazz tune, and the inevitable "Production designer Santo Loquasto").  I've felt no urge to revisit films like SCOOP, VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER, and WHATEVER WORKS, which were worth seeing but not really worth seeing again.  I enjoyed MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, but not as much as most people did.  Allen rarely challenges himself anymore and frankly, at this point, he doesn't have to.  It's just that having a new Allen movie each year (the last year without one was 1981) gives devoted cinephiles some peace of mind in an ever-changing filmmaking landscape.  If Woody's still getting something out every year--even something as uninspired as TO ROME WITH LOVE--then things are OK.   Given the sheer quantity of his output, is BLUE JASMINE a top ten Allen?  No, but it's his best dramatic work since MATCH POINT (though I also like the underrated CASSANDRA'S DREAM), and gets a major boost from the performances of Blanchett and Clay.

On DVD/Blu-ray: TO ROME WITH LOVE (2012), DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO (2013), and ABOUT CHERRY (2012)

TO ROME WITH LOVE
(US/Italy - 2012)

The annual Woody Allen movie is practically cinematic comfort food at this point, always there regardless of the familiarity of the most of the films and the sometimes paltry box office, and even when they aren't always top-tier Allen (it's only been three years, but does anyone remember YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER?), they're always worth seeing because he's Woody Allen, he's still cranking them out, and we're gonna miss him when he's gone.  Allen had a lightning-in-a-bottle blockbuster with 2011's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, which came out of nowhere to become his biggest hit in 25 years.  His follow-up, TO ROME WITH LOVE, didn't enjoy the same fawning reception from mainstream American moviegoers (it did better overseas), and there's a reason for that:  it's one of the weakest films of Allen's career and a definite indication that perhaps he's cranking these things out a bit too quickly.  Sure, he's directed somewhere around 40 movies over the last 45 years (incredibly, 1981 was the last year without a new Allen film, and some years, he directed two) and simple logic dictates that they can't all be winners, but any hope of Allen being on a late-career roll are immediately dashed with the rambling and disjointed TO ROME WITH LOVE, a lovely-looking travelogue that boasts a great cast, but it's too long and filled with too many half-baked and frequently obvious ideas that go nowhere.  Allen's always had a gift for dialogue and characterization, but you can see him just spinning his wheels here.  He doesn't seem invested in it from any standpoint:  directing, writing, and for the first time since 2006's SCOOP, acting.  And look, I get it.  I don't want to sound like a jerk, but he's 77.  People get old.  They maybe lose some of that spark and maybe miss more beats than they did even five or ten years earlier.  Woody Allen is one of the greats, but he just doesn't look good here.  Not in an unhealthy way, but just in an aging and fatigued way.  His performance is lethargic, his timing seems off and he looks distracted and bored in his own movie.  It's great to see him again, but after one or two scenes, I found myself feeling bad about wishing he'd just stayed behind the camera for this one.

Utilizing some of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS' fantasy elements, TO ROME WITH LOVE focuses on four parallel storylines that don't have any ties other than taking place in Rome.  Because of this structure, the stories never seem to gain any momentum.  Perhaps an anthology film with four self-contained stories would've been a better way to go.  Allen is a retired opera director visiting Rome with wife Judy Davis to meet their daughter Alison Pill's Italian fiance (Flavio Parenti), whose mortician father (tenor Fabio Armiliato) has a voice that only shines in the shower.  Mild-mannered office worker Roberto Benigni becomes an instant celebrity overnight for no reason and begins to adore the media attention.  Architect Alec Baldwin meets a younger version of himself (Jesse Eisenberg), advising him to stick with his loyal girlfriend (Greta Gerwig) and not succumb to the temptation of her phony, narcissistic visiting best friend (Ellen Page).  Naive, small-town newlyweds Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi get separated when she tries to find a hair salon and, through a complicated set of circumstances, he ends up passing off a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) as his new bride to his judgmental relatives.  Allen's always been a master at juggling multiple storylines and many characters, but with no real connection between the characters and no real reason to become invested in their issues, TO ROME WITH LOVE just never catches fire the way the great Allen films do.  Think ANNIE HALL (1977), MANHATTAN (1979), HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986), CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989) and his suspense thriller MATCH POINT (2005), probably his all-around best film of the last decade.  Even episodic Allen films like RADIO DAYS (1987) had engaging characters and compelling consistency to their story elements.  TO ROME WITH LOVE feels like a first draft that he didn't bother revising, almost like a film he made simply because he just had an unexpected hit involving one beloved European city, so it'll just as easily work a second time.  Except that it doesn't.  As a filmmaker, Allen is well beyond needing to prove himself to anyone, but TO ROME WITH LOVE is one of the emptiest and most forgettable films of his long and legendary career.  (R, 112 mins)


DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO
(South Africa/Germany - 2013)

The second DTV sequel to Paul W.S. Anderson's 2008 reimagining of the 1975 cult classic DEATH RACE 2000 is an improvement over the uninspired DEATH RACE 2.  Anderson has a producer and a story credit, once again leaving directing duties to DEATH RACE 2 helmer Roel Reine, a DTV vet with a couple of Steven Seagal vehicles under his belt.  DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO is easily Reine's most accomplished work yet and the film does a convincing job of looking a lot bigger than it really is, both in scope and budget.  Tony Giglio's script is mostly pretty standard stuff, complete with cliched dialogue like "Let's do this!" but there's a legitimately well-constructed twist late in the film that puts a different spin on the chronology of the franchise. 

Picking up where DEATH RACE 2 left off, Terminal Island inmate Frankenstein (Luke Goss, the straight-to-DVD Jason Statham) needs to win one more race to gain his freedom.  That plan is stymied when Death Race is taken over by billionaire douchebag Niles York (Dougray Scott), who envisions a global Death Race franchise and loans Frankenstein out to Kalahari Prison in South Africa for a Cannonball Run through various deserts, dangerous territories overseen by warlords, and heavily-populated shantytowns (think a more apocalyptic version of the 1982 David Carradine/Christopher Lee African racing comedy SAFARI 3000...or better yet, don't).  Reine and the stunt team stage some truly spectacular crashes and explosions, which is really what this is all about, but it looks and feels unusually accomplished and large-scale for a DTV effort.  Danny Trejo (as the improbably named "Goldberg"), Ving Rhames and Tanit Phoenix return from the previous film, and franchise mainstays Robin Shou (as 14K) and Fred Koehler (as Lists) are once more the only people from the 2008 DEATH RACE with nothing better to do, though you do see a photo of Ian McShane and a freeze-frame of Joan Allen on a monitor which, oddly enough, exceeds her screen time in THE BOURNE LEGACY.  Also, thanks to this film, I've now seen Danny Trejo's ass.  (Unrated, 105 mins)


ABOUT CHERRY
(US - 2012)

This barely-released indie (total theatrical gross: $3000) tries to be a BOOGIE NIGHTS for the modern-day internet and streaming porn industry but offers surprisingly little insight despite being co-written by veteran adult film actress Lorelei Lee.  Lee and director/co-writer Stephen Elliott (not to be confused with THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA director Stephan Elliott) want to convey an insider's look at "the life," but get sidetracked by bland, predictable melodrama and it doesn't have much to say other than the obvious.  It also tries to sugarcoat the industry by making everyone in it an earnest, misunderstood misfit just trying to make an honest living despite the objections of their appalled friends and family, and with the exception of a couple of characters, almost everyone not in the porn industry is a judgmental asshole with substance abuse or other psychological issues.  Ashley Hinshaw (who looks a lot like a young Teri Polo) is the not-very-subtly-named Angelina, who escapes a dysfunctional household complete with an alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) and an abusive stepdad by moving to San Francisco with her platonic male "like a brother" best friend Andrew (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE's Dev Patel), who--does it even need to be said?--silently carries a torch for her.  Having already done a nude photo shoot back home at the urging of her shitbag guitarist ex-boyfriend (Jonny Weston), Angelina finds a job with upscale internet porn company Bod, adopts the stage name Cherry, and starts doing nude photo shoots and then solo masturbation videos directed by veteran adult filmmaker Margaret (Heather Graham). 

As Cherry gains notoriety and moves to girl-on-girl films and eventually straight penetration, the people in her life--from her alcoholic mother to Andrew to her new boyfriend, cokehead lawyer Francis (James Franco)--start to resent her for her "disgusting" career choice.  The script argues that these people sold out their dreams either to raise kids or to punch a clock (Francis wanted to be an artist) and are taking it out on Angelina/Cherry, and it feels disingenuous.  How can it be that none of Cherry's colleagues are there out of desperation?  It's a squeaky-clean, Pollyanna-ish environment that just doesn't ring true.  Nobody's on drugs, everybody's clean, and it's all about the art.  Lee stacks the deck in favor of Angelina/Cherry, and in the process of trying to make her an independent young woman forging her own path in life, instead seems intent on canonizing her and it comes off as overly defensive.  BOOGIE NIGHTS did a terrific job of realistically conveying the world of porn while still making the characters a strangely-appealing, loving "family" of sorts that presented them flaws-and-all and didn't alienate the audience.  Here, it just feels forced and contrived, like the filmmakers are trying too hard to get us on Cherry's side.  Graham does a very good job despite the hackneyed character arc she's forced to play (falling for Cherry and jeopardizing her relationship with a real estate agent played by Diane Farr), almost coming off like a mature, middle-aged version of her Roller Girl from BOOGIE NIGHTS.  (R, 102 mins)