On Blu-ray/DVD: LONDON FIELDS (2018), THE LAST MAN (2019) and TYREL (2018)

LONDON FIELDS
(US/UK - 2018)

Based on the acclaimed 1989 novel by Martin Amis, LONDON FIELDS' arduous journey to the screen has already taken its rightful place among cinema's most calamitous dumpster fires, while also confirming every suspicion that the book was unfilmable. David Cronenberg was originally attached to direct all the way back in 2001 before things fell apart in pre-production, with Michael Winterbottom (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE) and David Mackenzie (HELL OR HIGH WATER) also in the mix over the next several years. It wasn't until 2013 that filming actually commenced, with music video vet Mathew Cullen at the helm, making his feature directing debut, from a script initially written by Amis (his first screenplay since 1980's SATURN 3) and reworked by Roberta Hanley (VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE). After a private press screening at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, where the film was acquired by Lionsgate, the planned public festival screening was abruptly canceled due to various lawsuits being filed amidst a very public spat between Cullen and the producers. These included: several of the producers suing Cullen after he missed two deadlines for turning in the finished film and they found out he was off shooting a Katy Perry video instead of completing post-production; Cullen countersuing when producers took the film away from him and recut it themselves; the producers suing star Amber Heard for breach of contract after she refused to record some required voiceovers after production wrapped and badmouthed the film to the media; and Heard countersuing, claiming the producers violated her no-nudity clause by hiring a double to shoot explicit sex scenes involving her character after she left. Deciding they wanted no part of the rapidly escalating shitshow, Lionsgate dropped the film, which remained shelved until the fall of 2018 when settlements were reached with all parties and a compromised version--assembled by some of the producers and disowned by Cullen--was picked up by, of all distributors, GVN Releasing, a small company specializing in faith-based, evangelical, and conservative-leaning fare, which the very R-rated LONDON FIELDS is decidedly not.

A movie about the making of LONDON FIELDS would be more interesting than watching LONDON FIELDS, an incoherent mess that looks like it was desperately cobbled together using any available footage, with little sense of pacing or narrative flow. Seeking any spark of inspiration, blocked American writer Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton) answers an ad to swap apartments with famed British crime novelist Mark Asprey (Jason Isaacs). While Asprey writes his latest bestseller in Young's shithole Hell's Kitchen hovel, Young works in Asprey's posh London pad and finds his muse in upstairs neighbor Nicola Six (Heard). A beguiling and clairvoyant femme fatale, Nicola wanders into the neighborhood pub wearing a black veil and mourning her own death, having a premonition of her inevitable murder--on her 30th birthday on the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes Day--at the hands of one of the three men she encounters: the dour and jaded Young; upwardly mobile investment broker Guy Clinch (Theo James, at the beginning of the apparently perpetual attempt to make Theo James happen); and skeezy, lowlife, would-be darts champ and Guy Ritchie caricature Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess), who owes a ton of money to scar-faced, bowler-hatted Cockney gangster and chief darts rival Chick Purchase (an uncredited Johnny Depp, long before his and Heard's very acrimonious split, which should give you an idea of how old this thing is). Observing near and from afar how Nicola manipulates the men in her life, the dying Young weaves a complex tale that becomes the great novel he's always had in him. It seems like there's some kind of twist near the end, but it's hard telling with what's here.

Cullen put together his own director's cut that got into a few theaters for some select special engagements. It runs 11 minutes longer and with many scenes in different order (for instance, Depp appears seven minutes into this version but not until 35 minutes into Cullen's cut), but the only version currently on home video is the shorter "producer's cut" that GVN released on 600 screens to the tune of just $433,000. It's doubtful, but there's perhaps a good--or at least better--film buried somewhere in the rubble, and there's some enjoyment to be had from the scenery-chewing contest going on between Depp and Sturgess, who gets a ridiculous scene where he's dancing in a torrential downpour to Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." It's an amusingly silly sequence but therein lies the conundrum of LONDON FIELDS: it hasn't the slightest idea what it's doing or what it wants to be. Is it a romantic murder mystery? A drama about manipulation and obsession? A grotesque black comedy? The climactic tournament showdown with Keith and Chick gets perilously close to turning into a darts version of KINGPIN, with both Sturgess and Depp fighting over who gets to be Bill Murray's Big Ernie McCracken. It's easy to see why there were so many conflicting intentions on LONDON FIELDS: there's a ludicrous 12 production companies, 46 credited producers, four credited editors, and even three guys credited with doubling Thornton. Heard seems game to play a seductive and dangerous femme fatale in a twisty noir thriller, but LONDON FIELDS is not that movie. Or any kind of movie, for that matter. (R, 107 mins)



THE LAST MAN
(Argentina/Canada - 2019)

The first narrative feature from Argentine documentary filmmaker Rodrigo H. Vila is a resounding failure on almost every front, save for some occasionally atmospheric location work in what appear to be some dangerous parts of Buenos Aires. A dreary, dipshit dystopian hodgepodge of THE MACHINIST, JACOB'S LADDER, and BLADE RUNNER, the long-shelved THE LAST MAN (shot in 2016 as NUMB, AT THE EDGE OF THE END, with a trailer under that title appearing online two years ago) is set in a constantly dark, rainy, and vaguely post-apocalyptic near-future in ruins from environmental disasters and global economic fallout. Combat vet Kurt Matheson (Hayden Christensen) is haunted by PTSD-related nightmares and hallucinations, usually in the form of a little boy who seems to know an awful lot about him, plus his dead war buddy Johnny (Justin Kelly) who may have been accidentally killed by Kurt in a friendly fire incident. Kurt also falls under the spell of messianic street preacher Noe (Harvey Keitel, looking like Vila caught him indulging in some C. Everett Koop cosplay), who tells his flock that "We are the cancer!" and that they must be prepared for a coming electrical storm that will bring about the end of civilization (or, on the bright side, the end of this movie). Kurt gets a job at a shady security firm in order to pay for the fortified bunker he becomes obsessed with building, and is framed for internal theft and targeted by his boss Antonio (LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE's Marco Leonardi as Almost Benicio Del Toro), while at the same time having a clandestine fling with the boss' ex-model daughter (Liz Solari).

Oppressively dull, THE LAST MAN is an incoherent jumble of dystopia and apocalypse cliches, dragged down by Christensen, who still can't act (2003's terrific SHATTERED GLASS remains the only film where his limitations have worked in his favor), and is saddled with trite, sub-Rick Deckard narration on top of that (at one point, he's actually required to gravely mumble "If you look into darkness, the darkness looks into you"). Vila's idea of humor is to drop classic rock references into the dialogue, with Kurt admonishing "Johnny! Be good!" to the dead friend only he can see, and apparent Pink Floyd fan Johnny retorting with "Shine on, you crazy diamond!" and "You're trading your heroes for ghosts!" And just because a seriously slumming Keitel is in the cast, Vila throws in a RESERVOIR DOGS standoff near the end between Kurt, Antonio, and Antonio's duplicitous right-hand man Gomez (Rafael Spregelburd). The gloomy and foreboding atmosphere Vila achieves with the Buenos Aires cityscapes is really the only point of interest here and is a strong indicator that he should stick to documentaries, because THE LAST MAN is otherwise unwatchable. (R, 104 mins)



TYREL
(US - 2018)

It's hard to not think of GET OUT while watching TYREL, and that's even before Caleb Landry Jones appears, once again cast radically against type as "Caleb Landry Jones." The latest from provocative Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva (NASTY BABY), TYREL is a slow-burning cringe comedy that takes a sometimes frustratingly ambiguous look at casual racism in today's society. With his girlfriend's family taking over their apartment for the weekend, Tyler (Jason Mitchell, best known from MUDBOUND and as Eazy-E in STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON), who runs the kitchen in an upscale BBQ restaurant, accompanies his friend Johnny (Christopher Abbott) to a remote cabin for a reunion of Johnny's buddies, who are gathering to celebrate Pete's (Jones) birthday. The cabin is owned by Nico (Nicolas Arze), and it's an eclectic mix of rowdy dudebros that even includes openly gay Roddy (Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum). Tyler is already somewhat nervous as the outsider of the group and he's the only black man present, and things get off to a slightly awkward start when one of them thinks his name is "Tyrel," and Pete seemingly takes offense that Tyler doesn't remember meeting him on a prior occasion. The first night is mostly ballbusting (including casually throwing around the word "faggot" as a playful insult) and their usual drinking games that an uncomfortable Tyler doesn't feel like playing. He ducks out and pretends to go to sleep, which only earns Johnny's derision the next morning, so to put himself at ease, Tyler starts overdoing it, getting far too intoxicated over the course of the day, especially once a second group of guys, including rich, eccentric Alan (Michael Cera), show up.

Almost every comment is loaded with a potential misread, from questioning chef Tyler whether grits should be eaten with sugar or salt to someone asking "Is this a Rachel Dolezal thing...am I allowed to do this?" All of these guys are liberal and affluent to some degree, and TYREL speaks to how words and actions can be interpreted even if the intent isn't there, making the point that assumptions and belief systems are ingrained into one's psyche. No one says or does anything that's intended to be overtly offensive (Roddy brushes off the homophobic slur directed at another, because it's just guys being guys) or blatantly racist, but Tyler has been on the receiving end of it enough that his guard is always up. He frequently exacerbates the situation by overreacting in an irrational way, especially on the second day when he gets far more intoxicated than anyone else, even drunkenly helping himself to an expensive bottle of whiskey that was a gift for Pete, as Silva starts using subtly disorienting camera angles to convey Tyler's--and the audience's--increasing discomfort. TYREL is mainly about creating a mood of one unintentional microaggression after another, but Silva somewhat overstates the point by setting the getaway bash on the same weekend as President Trump's inauguration, a ham-fisted move that puts a challenging character piece squarely into "MESSAGE!" territory, especially when Alan breaks out a Trump pinata and smirks to Tyler, "Oh, you'll love this!" TYREL moves past that heavy-handed stumble, and ultimately, there's no big message to be had here, but while it seems slight on a first glance, much it will nevertheless stick with you. It's anchored by a perceptive performance by Mitchell, supported by an ensemble that's strong across the board, with a nice late-film turn by the late, great character actor Reg E. Cathey--in his last film before his February 2018 death from lung cancer--as one of Nico's neighbors. (Unrated, 87 mins)

In Theaters: 3 DAYS TO KILL (2014)

3 DAYS TO KILL
(France/US - 2014)

Directed by McG.  Written by Adi Hasak and Luc Besson.  Cast: Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen, Tomas Lemarquis, Richard Sammel, Eriq Ebouaney, Raymond J. Barry, Marc Andreoni, Bruno Ricci. (PG-13, 115 mins)

Luc Besson didn't put forth much effort in the construction of his latest Paris-based actioner 3 DAYS TO KILL.  The whole thing feels like a cut-and-paste job comprised of elements pilfered from past Besson projects like THE PROFESSIONAL (1994), TRANSPORTER 2 (2005), TAKEN (2009), and FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (2010).  Just a month after we saw him playing the mentor role to the inexperienced titular hero in JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT, 59-year-old Kevin Costner tries to horn in on Liam Neeson's aging action hero turf but it doesn't work nearly as well.  TAKEN was a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon, a surprise blockbuster that was almost sent straight-to-DVD before Fox decided to dump it in US theaters a year after its European release.  Neeson's career was in a commercial slump and nobody expected much from it.  Instead, it became a genuine word-of-mouth hit--something we don't see much of anymore--and it revitalized Neeson's career, making him more popular than ever and now, at 61, he can still be counted on for a TAKEN knockoff almost annually (NON-STOP, aka TAKEN ON A PLANE, is out next week).  With his "very particular set of skills," everything just fell into place for Neeson with TAKEN.  Costner tries, but doesn't quite pull off the "dangerous badass" bit, though with his character's gravelly voice and his grumpy, sardonic demeanor throughout, he almost approximates what might've happened if the Clint Eastwood of 20 years ago ended up in a Luc Besson joint.

But Costner's not the problem with 3 DAYS TO KILL.  With the possible exception of WATERWORLD, he's never really done the "indestructible action hero" thing and seems to be enjoying himself and his paid Paris vacation.  Costner is Ethan Renner, a covert CIA operative with a nagging cough who lets a pair of targets--Eurotrash terrorist The Wolf (Richard Sammel) and his right-hand man The Albino (Tomas Lemarquis)--slip away during a botched assignment in Belgrade.  While hospitalized, tests show that Ethan is terminally ill with brain cancer that's spread to his lungs.  Given three months to live, he decides to quit the business and spend what little time he has left reconnecting with his estranged wife Tina (Connie Nielsen), who works in Paris, and teenage daughter Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld, from the TRUE GRIT remake).  It's easier said than done, since they're not pleased that he essentially abandoned them for his job five years earlier (Zooey thinks he's a salesman), but especially when he's hounded by sultry CIA assassin Vivi Delay (Amber Heard), who demands that he finish the job.  She even offers him an experimental cancer treatment that might extend his life.  The Wolf and The Albino tried to set off a dirty bomb in Belgrade and Vivi has tracked them to Paris, conveniently enough.  But when Tina goes away on business for the weekend, Ethan is left to take care of Zooey for three days, which really interferes with his ability to knock off this One Last Job.

Brainless action flicks can be a blast when done right and for a while, under the direction of CHARLIE'S ANGELS hack McG, 3 DAYS TO KILL zips along just fine.  But then it starts exhibiting some of the same problems that plague many recent Besson works (especially last year's THE FAMILY) in that he can't settle on a tone or style and the whole thing ends up feeling like a patched-together jumble.  3 DAYS TO KILL is an action thriller, a slapstick comedy, disease-of-the-week melodrama, and sappy daddy/daughter weepie all awkwardly crammed into one.  Costner's crankiness provides some amusement (when confronted with one intentionally trite bit of dialogue, he growls "Did you really just say that to me?"), but his scenes with Steinfeld feel forced and never ring true.  Sloppy editing doesn't help--after they have a huge blow-up, there's a cut to him showing her how to ride a bike like nothing ever happened.  A lot of time is devoted to Ethan shaking down a pair of Wolf flunkies--driver Mitat (Marc Andreoni) and accountant Guido (Bruno Ricci)--with ripped-off armpit hair and car battery-cables-on-the ears torture scenes played for laughs.  There's also a "heartwarming" subplot that has Ethan bonding with a family of squatters led by wise patriarch Jules (Eriq Ebouaney, best known as the killer Black Tie in De Palma's FEMME FATALE) who have taken up residence in his Paris apartment.  There's also time for Ethan rescuing Zooey from an attempted gang rape at a rave where McG winkingly restages a famous image from THE BODYGUARD, plus a strange scene where Ethan teaches Zooey how to slow dance to Bread's "Make it With You" in a moment that invokes the kind of squirming discomfort not seen since Michael Bluth and Maeby Fünke sang "Afternoon Delight" on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

All of this could be entertaining if Besson could settle on what movie he was telling McG to make.  The film often feels like it's been edited at random and may very well have been victimized by post-production reshoots and restructuring.  There's a few scenes where the pitch of actors' voices change and the dialogue doesn't match their lip movements.  Heard sounds dubbed in a lot of her scenes.  She's pretty terrible here in the latest failed attempt to make Amber Heard happen.  It doesn't help that Besson and McG have no idea what to do with her, so they just let her periodically drop in, preen, and strut in a variety of wigs and provocative outfits and flirt with Costner.  She's basically another incarnation of Kate Nauta's memorably lethal killer in TRANSPORTER 2, but Heard isn't believably intimidating, has no screen presence, and is all vamping and smirks.  She looks stunning but there's nothing else there (imagine how much fun someone like Besson's ex-wife Milla Jovovich would've been in this role). You could argue that she doesn't feel like she belongs in the film, but you could say that about every subplot that's randomly inserted by the filmmakers.  McG also gets careless when it comes to covering Costner's stunt double, including one badly-blocked fight scene where "Costner" is only shown from the shoulders down with occasional cuts to close-ups of his face in what feels like an homage to the last decade of Steven Seagal's career.

Despite some good work by Costner, it's doubtful 3 DAYS TO KILL will lead to future endeavors for him as a Neeson-esque asskicker for the Social Security set.  He's credible in the part and looks much younger than a guy pushing 60, but Costner is an actor whose heroic characters have always been more the pensive, earnest, introspective sort.  3 DAYS TO KILL gives him a nice change of pace but it fails to play to his strengths (though, to its credit, an establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower isn't accompanied by the caption "Paris").  Of course, Neeson wasn't an action guy either until TAKEN happened to make him one, but by this point in time, it's a formula that's getting too predictable to even function as time-killing comfort food.  From the moment 3 DAYS TO KILL's trailer bowed a few months back, it was obvious that this was "Kevin Costner's TAKEN."  The busy actor (who was also very good in last year's disappointing MAN OF STEEL) will next be seen as the beleaguered general manager of the Cleveland Browns in Ivan Reitman's football saga DRAFT DAY, due out in April, putting Costner back in his familiar BULL DURHAM/TIN CUP/FOR LOVE OF THE GAME sports stomping ground that's always been a proven winner with his fans.  But second-rate action movies with Amber Heard?  He's getting too old for this shit.

On DVD/Blu-ray: Special "Late Summer Box-Office Bombs" Edition: GETAWAY (2013) and PARANOIA (2013)

GETAWAY
(US/UK/Switzerland/China - 2013)

It took four countries, location work in a fifth, and 25 credited producers to shit out this borderline-unwatchable car crash porno that leaves no stale cliché unutilized while wasting some death-defying work by an apparently insane Bulgarian stunt crew.  Director Courtney Solomon (DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AN AMERICAN HAUNTING) hyped the film's "real" car chases and crashes and the absence of CGI.  I'm calling bullshit on the "no CGI," but yeah, most of the crash stuff is real.  The problem is that it's shot and edited in the most anti-entertaining, headache-inducing way imaginable, using multiple cameras with varying image quality (don't worry, that's written into the plot), and it's such a garbled, noisy blur that it's impossible to get a feel for any of it.  Solomon wanted the crash and stunt work to be real, but I suggest he take a look at John Frankenheimer's RONIN.  I've seen John Frankenheimer films.  I've studied John Frankenheimer films.  Courtney Solomon--you're no John Frankenheimer.

Acting as if he arrived on set and never shook the jetlag, Ethan Hawke is the improbably-named Brent Magna, a former racing wunderkind who bombed out on the circuit and fled to Europe to become a wheelman-for-hire.  He's looking to settle down with his Bulgarian wife Leanne (Rebecca Budig), but he arrives home to find she's been...taken.  Faster than you can say "Liam Neeson," Magna is being harangued on his cell phone by a mystery man (a mostly-unseen but heard-too-much Jon Voight, who sounds like he's doing an Armin Mueller-Stahl impression), who orders him to steal a tricked-out Shelby Super Snake and go around Sofia following his instructions (leading cops on chases, driving the car through crowded parks, etc) or Leanne will be killed, all the while taunting Magna and boring the audience with such hackneyed bad-guy zingers as "We're just getting started, my boy," and "You're running out of time...tick tock, tick tock."  Magna is soon joined by The Kid (Selena Gomez), who actually owns the car and is the key to the mystery man's plot:  Magna and The Kid are pawns in his plan to steal computer files from an investment bank whose CEO is The Kid's dad.  With a dozen cameras in and out of the Shelby, the mystery man is constantly watching them, but The Kid manages to hack into the mystery man's server through her tablet and fool him with the old "same footage looped" trick, crossing her fingers and hoping he's never seen SPEED.  In a truly magical happenstance, The Kid is whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment:  whiny rich kid, gearhead, ace hacker, and expert in international investment law.  Bravo, screenwriters!  I guess if you like crashes, shattering glass, screeching tires, a complete void of logic and suspense, and zoom-ins to Ethan Hawke making constipated faces as he pretends to drive a car, GETAWAY might be entertaining.  But for everyone else, it's an incoherent jumble with a dumb twist ending, and for all the work that went into the car chases, you can't make heads or tails of what's going on.  Also with Paul Freeman and PASSENGER 57 villain Bruce Payne in tiny roles, GETAWAY opened Labor Day Weekend and tanked in ninth place.  Offering nothing worthwhile and looking cheaper than any Bulgaria-shot DTV NuImage production, it's amazing that this actually made it to theaters at all.  (PG-13, 90 mins)


PARANOIA
(US/France - 2013)

Can we just admit that no one gives a shit about the Hemsworth brothers despite Hollywood doing its damnedest to make them happen?  Sure, Chris is a decent-enough actor who lucked into THOR and THE AVENGERS and got to co-star in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (made long before THOR, but released after), but elsewhere, audiences haven't really warmed up to him:  no one cared about the RED DAWN remake and Ron Howard's racing drama RUSH flopped.  But Chris is a mega-star next to little brother Liam, who's in the HUNGER GAMES franchise, co-starred in a Miley Cyrus vehicle, and got killed early in THE EXPENDABLES 2--all films that don't depend on him--but has been met with crickets and tumbleweed everywhere else:  LOVE AND HONOR and EMPIRE STATE barely got released, and his big summer headlining splash with PARANOIA fizzled badly, opening in 13th place to become one of the biggest DOA duds of the summer.  The franchise gigs are good for them now, but does anybody really care otherwise?  When's the last time you heard anyone say "Man, I gotta see that new Chris Hemsworth flick!"?  PARANOIA is bad, but it's not all Liam's fault.  Sure, he's got no presence as a leading man and is really out of his league sharing scenes with three legends in the "just pay me and I'll ham" phase of their careers, but it's just a dumb, predictable, clichéd thriller that's so bored with itself that it never really tries to be anything more than a time-killer.  If ever a movie was made to fold laundry and balance your checkbook by, it's PARANOIA, and as such, it fits right in with auteur Robert "Still coasting on LEGALLY BLONDE" Luketic's other triumphs, like 21 and two Katherine Heigl rom-coms (THE UGLY TRUTH and KILLERS).

Hemsworth is Adam Cassidy, an ambitious cubicle drone at tech giant WyattCorp.  Driven for success and saddled with medical bills that insurance won't cover for his sick father (Richard Dreyfuss), Adam is convinced he's designed the next big thing in social networking.  When he bombs the presentation to sneering CEO Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman) and he and his team lose their jobs, Adam treats them all to a $16,000 night at the club on his still-active corporate credit card.  An irate Wyatt then threatens to press charges unless Adam agrees to partake in some corporate espionage and infiltrate Eikon, another tech megapower owned by Wyatt's rival and former mentor Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford), to steal trade secrets so Wyatt can run Goddard out of business for good.  You know you're in for some cutting insight when Adam and Wyatt are shown playing chess (SYMBOLISM!) and Wyatt snottily declares "Checkmate!" (See! Adam's a pawn!  Get it?).  Of course, Adam becomes pupil to the master Goddard and falls for his top marketing exec Emma (Amber Heard), and they have no idea he's Wyatt's plant.  Or do they?   Hemsworth is bland enough on his own, but he and Heard are one of the most chemistry-impaired screen couples you'll ever see.  The film only really comes alive in the two instances where Oldman and Ford are onscreen together, but it's hardly the highlight of either actor's career.  If anything, it may well prompt you to watch AIR FORCE ONE again.  Oldman plays the pompous ass to the hilt in a performance that sounds like a tribute to Vinnie Jones ("Yaw ay-out when oy sigh yaw ay-out!  Oy eewn you!"), while Ford is indifferent and seems vaguely annoyed that he was talked into being in this.  For all the shit Robert De Niro takes about phoning in his performances and coasting on his past accomplishments, it seems we've let Ford off the hook.  There's a younger generation of moviegoers who see Ford as the guy who used to play Han Solo and Indiana Jones but is now just a grumpy old fart with an earring on talk shows.  Ford hasn't challenged himself in years (and this is his second bad tech flick, after 2006's absurd FIREWALL), though he does seem to relish the moment when he tells Hemsworth's Adam "Shut up...you're nothing but a convenient tool, an empty vessel."  Scripted line or Ford ad-lib?  Discuss.  (PG-13, 106 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE (2013) and THE FUTURE (2013)

ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE
(US - 2013)

A cult movie simply by virtue of an absurdly belated US release, the slasher thriller ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE was shot in 2006 and shown at that year's Toronto Film Festival, where it was acquired by Dimension Films and promptly shelved by the Weinsteins following the disappointing box office reception of GRINDHOUSE.  It was released in most of the rest of the world in 2008 and Dimension sold the US rights to the doomed Senator Entertainment, who went bankrupt not long after that, leaving the film in legal limbo.  Years later, the Weinsteins re-acquired the film--long available in bootleg circles--and finally dumped it on VOD and in a few theaters in September 2013.  Debuting director Jonathan Levine, who has since gone on to make THE WACKNESS (2008), 50/50 (2011), and WARM BODIES (2013), and first-time screenwriter Jacob Forman really try to fashion a sort of self-referential slasher film, but unfortunately, the end results aren't all that different or any deeper than any random post-SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER knockoff.  The story centers on a group outing at an isolated ranch where, among the expected group of unlikable teenagers, is one Mandy Lane (Amber Heard), an unattainable virgin who's lusted after by all the boys, from the jocks, to the stoners, to the dorks.  Nine months earlier, one such boy--an overconfident football star looking to impress her--drunkenly took a dive off of his roof at the goading of Mandy's platonic best friend Emmett (Michael Welch, who went on to the TWILIGHT films).  The in-crowd blames Emmett for his death and even Mandy distances herself from him.  Meanwhile, out at the ranch, someone is offing the group--which includes Luke Grimes, who was recently cast in FIFTY SHADES OF GREY--one by one in various gory ways in an apparent quest to prove their love for Mandy Lane.

MANDY LANE takes forever to get going and by the time it finally finds some momentum in the home stretch, it's too late to really care.  The killer's identity is so obvious--and Levine and Forman don't keep it a secret very long--that you'll have plenty of time to figure out the inevitable twist long before it's revealed.  The filmmakers wanted to make a John Hughes homage in the form of a slasher film, but with one foot in the art-house and the other in the grindhouse, it doesn't really work as either, and by the time Levine breaks out the '70s-style freeze-frames in the climax, you might find the hipster cred-pandering more annoying than anything.  There's an admirable nastiness to some of the brutal murders, and the camera does indeed love Amber Heard, but there's really nothing here--certainly not a long-buried cult classic waiting to be discovered.  Were it not for its bumpy ride to a US release, ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE (a great title, by the way) would be a long-forgotten straight-to-DVD title cluttering $3 DVD bins at Big Lots locations nationwide by now.  Instead, it'll be there by spring. (R, 90 mins)


THE FUTURE
(Chile/Germany/Italy/Spain/Switzerland - 2013)

Based on a novel by the late Chilean literary icon Roberto Bolano, THE FUTURE is an always-interesting but curiously empty art film that often feels like a present-day update to classic Italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.  Taking place in an economically uncertain Rome, writer/director Alicia Scherson often channels the aura of Antonioni ennui and disconnect with its power lines, cell phone towers, and emphasis on artifice, while one of the central characters lives in the kind of decaying mansion-doubling-as-a-tomb that seems to come straight out of a Luchino Visconti/Burt Lancaster collaboration.  The film is called THE FUTURE, but everyone is haunted by the past, as 19-year-old Bianca (Manuela Martelli) and her younger teenage brother Tomas (Luigi Ciardo) find themselves orphaned in Rome when their Chilean immigrant parents are killed in a tragic car accident.  Given an orphans' pension, the pair continue to live in their family apartment as Bianca is declared Tomas' legal guardian.  The money isn't as much as they'd hoped, and Bianca is forced to get a job as an assistant in a hair salon, while Tomas, when he isn't picking up sex tips from watching porn courtesy of their illegal cable hookup, frequently skips school to help clean up at a local gym.  It's here where Tomas meets two new "friends," personal trainers Libio (Nicolas Vaporidis) and Bolones (Alessandro Giallocosta), a pair of dubious meatheads who basically move into Bianca and Tomas' place and take turns sleeping with Bianca.  As money gets tighter, Libio and Bolones hatch a get-rich-quick scheme:  have Bianca pose as a prostitute and ingratiate herself into the life of Maciste (Rutger Hauer), a blind and reclusive former Mr. Universe and '60s muscleman actor who's rumored to have a safe filled with a large amount of cash.  Maciste, who adopted the name of his character ("They changed it to Hercules in America," he explains), lives alone in a massive, decrepit mansion, surrounded by workout equipment and relics of his past, and becomes a sexual mentor to young Bianca, who finds herself falling in love with the worldly old man ("Don't be silly," Maciste grumbles) and wanting to back out of the plan to rob his safe.

Plotting isn't Scherson's primary focus with THE FUTURE.  It's more about mood and feel, with a mournful, elegiac sense of Rome's cultural history (Bianca takes a tour of Cinecitta and visits the sets of Maciste's old movies, and footage from 1962's THE FURY OF HERCULES has Brad Harris being passed off as a young Hauer/Maciste).  Bianca never feels at home in Rome, which gives her a spiritual kinship with Maciste, who came to Italy to work and simply never left, shutting himself off from the world after a car accident that cost him his sight.  Martelli is good in the lead and her frequent nude scenes, as Maciste drenches her in massage oil, should make her popular on Mr. Skin.  Hauer, so awful in Dario Argento's recent DRACULA, gets to display some genuine star power here.  He's done so many money gigs and C-grade trash over the years that it's easy to forget how terrific he can be.  As Maciste, Hauer gets to sink his teeth into a strong late-career role that any aging actor wants (it probably didn't hurt that he'd have a nude, oiled-up Martelli--30 but playing 19--straddling him for a good chunk of his screen time), and he delivers his best performance in years, even with a ridiculous line like "What's the color of my sperm?"  THE FUTURE is well-acted and lovely to look at it (have I mentioned the massage oil and the nudity?), and it's rare to see something these days that harkens back to the likes of Antonioni and Visconti, but it's not a particularly deep film, which is surprising given the complexity of much of Bolano's writing.  The few attempts at significance in some of Bianca's narration only succeed in coming across as hackneyed and pretentious.  Still, there's a lot to appreciate in THE FUTURE, and it should be required viewing for Rutger Hauer fans.  (Unrated, 99 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: LOVELACE (2013); SYRUP (2013); and INAPPROPRIATE COMEDY (2013)

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