On Blu-ray/DVD: TONE-DEAF (2019) and BLOODLINE (2019)

TONE-DEAF
(US/UK - 2019)

Richard Bates, Jr. had an impressive debut with 2012's transgressive and disturbing EXCISION, which felt not unlike MEAN GIRLS re-imagined by David Cronenberg. It found significant acclaim in indie horror circles, but his follow-ups--2015's SUBURBAN GOTHIC and 2016's TRASH FIRE--didn't attract nearly as much attention from genre fans. Early buzz for his latest, TONE-DEAF, served as a reminder of Bates' existence, but you won't get far into it before thinking he may have peaked with EXCISION. A heavy-handed and ultimately toothless generation clash horror satire, TONE-DEAF had some potential to offer some insightful and cutting commentary on today's volatile cultural and political climate, but true to the film's title, Bates settles on neither a tone nor what exactly the targets are supposed to be. After Olive (SILICON VALLEY's Amanda Crew) splits with her boyfriend (Nelson Franklin) and loses her job after refusing to take any shit from her sexually-harassing boss, her besties Lenore (Hayley Marie Norman) and Blaire (EXCISION's AnnaLynne McCord) convince her to get out of town for a few days and take some time to herself to regroup. She rents an old, lavish country home in the middle of rural nowhere ("This place is boujee as fuck") from recent widower Harvey (Robert Patrick, one of a dozen producers). It isn't long before Harvey is creeping around the house, spying on pot-smoking Olive in frowning disapproval, and playing tricks like hiding a spider in her contact lens case. What we know and Olive doesn't is that Harvey has killed Agnes (Nancy Linehan Charles), an elderly neighbor and his late wife's friend because, while he's lived a good life, "killing is an itch I never got around to scratching." And he's still feeling the itch.

TONE-DEAF might've functioned as a straight two-character suspense piece, but Bates instead fashions it as a Baby Boomer vs. Millennial throwdown, thus turning it into a pointless mash-up of a home-invasion thriller and a Thanksgiving argument with your Fox News-obsessed uncle. Olive is everything that the bitter Harvey hates: young, liberal, independent, her social media profile pic shows her in a T-shirt that reads "This Pussy Grabs Back," and her arrival at the house is accompanied by Awkwafina's "My Vag" in a car with a CoExist bumper sticker. Harvey has a chip on his shoulder about millennials, Venmo, climate change, young people's sense of entitlement and perceived lack of work ethic, and how Sundays are for the Lord, and Bates often allows him to break the fourth wall to rant directly to the viewer about "brunching bimbos getting drunk off your skinny-girl margaritas and cavorting around with your jobless, fedora-clad boyfriends." It's great in theory that Bates has given Patrick a role that he can sink his teeth into as a retiree Patrick Bateman for the MAGA crowd, but the characters are painted in such broad strokes that there's no room for subtlety, nuance (Harvey changing the lyrics to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" and declaring "That's right, kids...Papa made a remix!" is embarrassing), or consistency (if his beef is with millennials, then why does he kill geriatric Agnes?). Bates also drops the ball by cutting away from the action to focus on inconsequential asides that only serve to pad the running time, like Olive's hippie mom (Kim Delaney), who joined a commune after Olive's dad (Ray Wise) committed suicide years ago, and now has a young, snowflake boy-toy (Johnny Pemberton) who can't change a tire and objects to her texting Olive while he goes down on her, a potential Olive Tinder hookup (Tate Ellington) at a townie bar, which does offer one legit surprise that goes nowhere, or Olive buying acid from a local dealer (shouldn't WHALE RIDER Oscar-nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes have better things going on than 13th billing in TONE-DEAF?) and tripping balls in the living room, where she imagines conversations with her exes and her dad. A couple of jokes land, like Harvey yelling "Jesus Christ, I didn't really think this through!" after he impulsively stabs Agnes and is shocked by the amount of blood gushing out of her, and a running gag about Olive's terrible piano-playing has a funny payoff that, of course, Bates bungles by immediately over-explaining it. But by the time Harvey and Olive have their final showdown, where he comes after her with a tomahawk and she snarkily sighs "Is that at tomahawk? Textbook cultural appropriation, man," you'll have long since lost your ability to even with TONE-DEAF. (R, 88 mins)


BLOODLINE
(US/China - 2019)

When AMERICAN PIE became a huge summer hit 20 years ago, everyone was talking about Jason Biggs fucking an apple pie and quoting Alyson Hannigan's perfectly-delivered "This one time...at band camp..." But in the relatively minor supporting role of grating goofball Steve Stifler--aka "The Stifmeister"--it was Seann William Scott who stole every scene he was in and would eventually become a major focus of the subsequent big-screen sequels (not counting the various Eugene Levy-headlined DTV spinoffs), with each successive performance going more obnoxiously over-the-top. Inevitably, Scott found himself typecast as variations of Stifler in comedies like ROAD TRIP and DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? and even into his early 30s, he was still utilizing his Stifler schtick in MR. WOODCOCK and ROLE MODELS. Though he's found steady gigs doing voice work in animated films like the ICE AGE franchise (as fan favorite opossum Crash) and PLANET 51, and enjoyed a minor cult hit with the Canadian-made hockey comedy GOON and its lesser-seen sequel, Scott, perhaps more than any of his castmates from that influential raunch comedy from two decades back, will forever be inextricably linked with his AMERICAN PIE character.

With that in mind, BLOODLINE is about as radical a departure as possible for the now-43-year-old actor. An under-the-radar Blumhouse production that only made it into a few theaters, BLOODLINE is a horror oddity that doesn't skimp on the gore, but may be a little too offbeat and cerebral for those looking for run-of-the-mill jump scares. Scott is Evan Cole, a social worker at an L.A. high school who's happily married to Lauren (Mariela Garriga) and the father of a newborn son. Parenthood is stressing both of them out, even with Evan's mom Marie (a terrific Dale Dickey) helping out. Evan isn't feeling effective at his job, where he spends day after day counseling students--including a scholarship candidate with a junkie dad, another who's come out of the closet and is regularly beaten by his homophobic father, and a 15-year-old girl who's being sexually molested by her uncle--which brings up long-suppressed memories of his own abusive father. Evan decides the best way to help these kids is to permanently eliminate the source of their troubles, so he spends his evenings moonlighting as a serial killer. Lauren begins questioning where he goes at night while Marie offers a silent, knowing understanding of her son's apparent calling. It isn't long before an incredulous and persistent detective (Kevin Carroll) comes snooping around after Evan didn't do as thorough a job as he should have in disposing of his victims, the killings having a strangely similar M.O. to an unsolved string of murders in a different city and school district in where Evan used to work before he met Lauren.

Director/co-writer Henry Jacobson, a documentary filmmaker helming his narrative feature debut, stages a few startlingly blood-splattered kill scenes while sometimes going for bizarre shock value (a close-up of a stretched prosthetic vagina as Lauren gives birth to their son seems to be a bit...much). He also deploys some De Palma split diopters and an effectively-executed split-screen late in the game (he's also got a ringer in editor Nigel Galt, a late-period Stanley Kubrick inner-circler who worked on FULL METAL JACKET and EYES WIDE SHUT), but the idea of an everyman serial killer as portrayed here owes quite a bit to the likes of DEXTER and THE STEPFATHER (and I'm willing to bet that Jacobson is also a huge fan of Donald Cammell's WHITE OF THE EYE). The surprise development at the end is something you won't see coming, but its abruptness dampens things a bit, as it hasn't been built up enough to be wholly plausible. BLOODLINE isn't a great movie by any means, but it deserved more than the dump-off of a release that it got, though I get it: it's a strange and eccentric little thriller even beyond the novelty of the against-type casting of Scott, whose restrained and very internalized performance as a homicidal maniac quietly living his life as a family man and upstanding member of the community wouldn't have delivered the wisecracking, serial-slashing Stifler that mainstream horror fans would've expected. (R, 98 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: AN ORDINARY MAN (2018) and FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN (2018)

AN ORDINARY MAN
(US/UK - 2018)

There's probably an interesting film to be made of the daily life of a most-wanted fugitive from the 1990s Yugoslav Wars in present-day Belgrade, but AN ORDINARY MAN is inert and lifeless, and in the end, just feels like a vanity project for producer and star Ben Kingsley. A hammy Kingsley does a lot of acting as The General, still beloved by many of his own countrymen but under indictment by The Hague, making him the subject of an international manhunt with a $10 million bounty placed on him by the US government. After nearly two decades of a solitary existence as he's moved from one safe house to another by his chief handler Miro (Peter Serafinowicz) and supported by donations from hardline loyalists, The General has never left home and more or less hides in plain sight. He refuses to stay put and regularly walks to the nearest market or newsstand, and is recognized by citizens who still support him and stay silent out of respect. After The General intervenes in a robbery, a frustrated Miro moves him to yet another new location and provides a maid named Tanja (Hera Hilmar) to handle all of his outside needs and errands to keep him inside. Tanja can neither cook nor clean, and it isn't long before The General is forcing her to take him places, be it shopping or at a swanky dance hall. They form a tentative bond after The General suffers a medical emergency and Tanja reveals herself to be an agent in the employ of Miro, assigned to keep The General on a tight leash and provide assurance to his benefactors--many of whom are high-profile figures in the Serbian government--that he'll behave himself.

With the exception of a handful of times Miro is seen, AN ORDINARY MAN is largely a two-person show, with Hilmar's Tanja mostly left in a reactionary role as writer/director Brad Silberling (CITY OF ANGELS, CASPER), helming his first big-screen work since 2009's LAND OF THE LOST, lets Kingsley take over. The General talks a lot, and Kingsley probably loved the idea of having long, verbose monologues and scenes where his character gets to sarcastically harangue Tanja about her cooking, her fashion sense, and everything else ("I've seen detention cells with more character!" he says of Tanja's apartment, to which she replies "Well, you'd know"). There's little dramatic tension or any kind of story development or forward momentum. If she's supposed to be an agent assigned to keep The General on his best behavior, Tanja proves to be a bumbling incompetent almost immediately: a naive maid would go along with going to a dance hall, but would a trained agent? Silberling seems more concerned with showing the human side of a monster whose atrocities and war crimes are the stuff of legend, but we still don't learn enough about him to care about his inevitable and undeserved redemption (nor does the film explore the implications of The General still having so much love and support from the locals). Hilmar works well with Kingsley when their characters are on the same level and Kingsley isn't dominating the proceedings (they also co-starred in 2017's THE OTTOMAN LIEUTENANT, both shot back in 2015 and logging some time on the shelf before being seen by no one), and there's some occasionally effective location work in gray, foggy Belgrade. But this is just a tedious, pointless exercise that feels like a transparent attempt by Silberling (who's been busy in TV, most recently producing the CW's DYNASTY reboot) to establish some arthouse cred by crafting the most boring drama about a fugitive you'll ever see. (R, 91 mins)



FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN
(US - 2018)

Every bit the piece of cinematic magic you'd expect the directing debut of a NYC promoter and club owner to be, FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN plays like a glossed-over highlight reel of Scorsese, SCARFACE, CARLITO'S WAY and every other gangster movie from the last 30 years, with production values around the level of a late '90s Master P rapsploitation joint. It's co-written, produced, directed by and starring Danny A. Abeckaser, known as "Danny A" in the Manhattan club world, who's been hanging around the VOD action scene for a few years now, landing bit parts in some Lionsgate/Grindstone releases like FREELANCERS and MARAUDERS and taking a stab at respectability by co-producing Michael Almereyda's little-seen 2015 Stanley Milgram biopic EXPERIMENTER. He also produced and co-wrote the semi-autobiographical CLUB LIFE, with Jerry Ferrara as a Danny A-type club entrepreneur named Johnny D. As an actor and filmmaker, Abeckaser is a great club owner, starring here as Mikki Levy, who's in an Israeli prison, 18 years into a life sentence for murder handed down when he was a teenager. His sentence is overturned after consideration of his age at the time, and a long-stashed envelope from his dead mother includes a wad of cash and a note telling him to go to Brooklyn to visit his Uncle Dudu (Eli Danker) and Aunt Gale (Kathrine Narducci). Dudu associates with some shady types and helps move merchandise of the "fell off the back of a truck" sort. He also runs a gambling den in the back of a bar owned by Avi (Guri Weinberg), who's being hassled by Russian gangsters in the employ of the ruthless Anatoly (what are you doing here, Harvey Keitel?), who's forced his way into the business as a 50% partner. It isn't long before hot-tempered Mikki makes his presence known, and when Anatoly's goons almost beat Uncle Dudu to death after being dissed by Mikki, he becomes a powerful drug and gun dealer over what appears to be a single hip-hop montage, naturally intercut with shots of Mikki nodding while counting Benjamins.

Mikki also hooks up with sexy bartender Esther (AnnaLynne McCord, who I thought would be going places after her remarkable and fearless performance in 2012's EXCISION) after killing her asshole boyfriend, a partner of the Russians. As Mikki and Avi gain power in the Brooklyn underworld (cue more hip-hop montages with money and sped-up shots of Brooklyn neighborhoods in lieu of actually, you know, constructing a story) by whacking Anatoly's goons, a showdown is inevitable, along with trite dialogue like Avi being told, re: Mikki, "You've created an attack dog. They attack...that's what they do." It's also inevitable that it won't involve Harvey Keitel, who looks to have worked on this for a day, tops. He has three or four brief scenes where he's sitting in a restaurant giving orders or getting a manicure, and one where he takes a call that his nephew's been killed and it appears he may break out the legendary Keitel Cry, but he obviously concluded that a Danny A. vanity project wasn't worthy of the effort. Abeckaser's obviously a successful and wealthy guy in his field, and as a producer, he can afford to bankroll someone experienced like David Lynch protege Almereyda for something like EXPERIMENTER. But FIRST WE TAKE BROOKLYN just has an amateurish, student-film, shot-on-digital, slapdash cheapness to it, right down to the trailer misspelling Abeckaser's name as "Abekacser," which would be unacceptable even if Abeckaser's name wasn't all over the movie. Abeckaser can't act and tries to do a lot of Al Pacino bellowing but ends up sounding like Charlie Day. The only thing that really separates this from any run-of-the-mill DTV D-list gangster saga is that Abeckaser tries to go for some authenticity with probably half of the film being in Hebrew with English subtitles. It ends up being all for naught, since the characters would be cardboard cutouts in any language (and like his recent turn as a shady Greek businessman in LIES WE TELL, a slumming Keitel can't even be bothered to attempt an appropriate accent for his Russian crime lord and apparently just showed up for the free mani), but it indicates some degree of sincerity on Abeckaser's part, for whatever that's worth. It just had to be difficult for producer Danny A. Abeckaser to convince director Danny A. Abeckaser and star Danny A. Abeckaser that they were liabilities to whatever producer Danny A. Abeckaser was trying to accomplish. (Unrated, 90 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE CONGRESS (2014) and GUTSHOT STRAIGHT (2014)

THE CONGRESS
(Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/Belgium/France/India - 2013; 
2014 US release)

Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008) was a unique, gut-wrenching animated documentary with Folman addressing traumatic, long-suppressed memories of his time serving in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War. It was powerful enough to be banned in Lebanon, and Folman immediately began conceiving his next film, THE CONGRESS. Shot in 2011 and loosely based on Solaris author Stanislaw Lem's 1971 novel The Futurological Congress, THE CONGRESS is split just about evenly between live-action and animation, a hard sci-fi mindbender headlined by Robin Wright as a fictionalized, alternate-universe version of herself. A single mother of two--snarky daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and mildly autistic son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who suffers from a rare disease that's slowly robbing him of his hearing and vision--who lives in a refurbished hangar next to an airport, Wright has been out of the Hollywood scene for some time and has a reputation as an unreliable, temperamental diva with an abundance of burned bridges in her wake. Her concerned, fatherly longtime agent Al (Harvey Keitel) laments the squandered potential after THE PRINCESS BRIDE and comes to her with an offer from Miramount Pictures: sell her digital likeness for a massive, one-time lump sum payment and have that likeness function as an undetectable CGI "Robin Wright" for 20 years worth of acting while she's free to live her life and never worry about working again ("Keanu Reeves and Michelle Williams just did it!" Al insists). Miramount head Jeff Green (Danny Huston, clearly basing his performance on what we imagine Harvey Weinstein to be) lays it on the line for Wright: she's got a bad reputation, she's not getting any younger, and her son has some serious health issues that will require her attention.  "You gotta be what, 45? 48?  You can be 34 forever!" he promises. Wright agrees to have her body and the gamut of her emotional responses scanned and captured and then Folman jumps ahead 20 years. An aged Wright is venturing to an event known as "The Congress," which takes place in a world where one must morph into animated form to visit. Six other "Robin Wright"'s are at The Congress, and she learns that the digital manifestations of herself that have been used in movies also "exist" in this animated realm. She finds she's been the star of a blockbuster sci-fi franchise called REBEL ROBOT ROBIN, and that the powers-that-be at Miramount have another plan for "Robin Wright."  Movies are done, she's told by the animated recreation of Green. Miramount has gotten out of the movie business to become a pharmaceutical empire. Celebrity is a substance to be consumed. "Robin Wright" will now be available to her fans in liquid form.

There's some heady themes running throughout THE CONGRESS, a trippy and wildly ambitious film that unfortunately gets lost up its own ass time and again. The idea of "experiencing" your favorite celebrity recalls--and predates, considering it was conceived before--Brandon Cronenberg's ANTIVIRAL, but it's not really explored by Folman, and the notion of the digital actress is straight out of Andrew Niccol's underrated and virtually forgotten Al Pacino bomb S1M0NE, while the ability to traverse real and animated worlds owes a bit to Ralph Bakshi's COOL WORLD. As Wright enters the world of The Congress, the film incorporates numerous animation styles that alternately channel Bakshi, Rene Laloux (FANTASTIC PLANET, LIGHT YEARS), the 1981 cult classic HEAVY METAL, and the work of PINK FLOYD: THE WALL animator Gerald Scarfe. Folman is aiming at so many targets that THE CONGRESS eventually collapses in on itself and becomes a ponderous, patience-testing slog. He has some pointed observations about the banality of modern pop culture, the struggle of aging actresses in an industry that worships youth, and a sense of societal disconnect in the way that the world of The Congress is ultimately shown to be the product of Wright's subconscious. There is no reality--only what people construct in their mind after taking a pill available to everyone in the dystopia of 2033--everyone literally lives in their own world. The film looks superb--the production design of the live-action sequences is eye-catching and the animated sections have some surreal, midnight-movie appeal--but Folman has a pronounced lack of discipline and focus here and can't really decide what his film is about. Genuinely emotional moments are scattered here and there, and there's a good performance by Paul Giamatti as Aaron's sympathetic doctor, but a second-half subplot with animated Wright falling in love with activist Dylan Truliner (voiced by Jon Hamm), and joining him in a rebellion to break out of the animated world goes nowhere, and while Wright is fine, her casting makes no sense. Do we know all that much about the real Robin Wright?  The idea of presenting herself as this horrible Hollywood asshole who closed every door that was opened for her seems pointless without comedic motivation, like seeing Ted Danson or Michael J. Fox playing boorish versions of themselves for laughs on CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. Usually, in those instances, the whole reason is to play off and have fun with a celebrity's image (like, say, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH). What's the point of Wright playing this scripted, dramatic version of Robin Wright, unlikable and with a fading career, if it says nothing about the real Robin Wright?  Has anyone ever read a negative Robin Wright story in a tabloid? She may as well be playing a faded actress named "Jane Smith." This is the kind of meta role that could've used an 45-or-older actress with a history of being difficult on a movie set, like a Sharon Stone or a Madonna, or maybe an actress like Catherine Keener, by all accounts a nice woman who's great at portraying cold, brittle bitches and it could've made a statement about the pitfalls of typecasting. As it is, THE CONGRESS is a stylish and extremely well-made film but in terms of story, it's just blowing a lot of hot air and it's ultimately a long, slow road to tedium. A major disappointment after Folman's triumphant WALTZ WITH BASHIR. (Unrated, 123 mins)


GUTSHOT STRAIGHT
(US - 2014)

There's enough intriguing, quirky touches and flashes of a legitimately interesting film in GUTSHOT STRAIGHT to make you wish it was something more. Its biggest fault is that there really just isn't much of a story, and what's there has been done countless times in the past. But director Justin Steele commendably avoids going for yet another belated Tarantino knockoff and does a really nice job of capturing the seedy side of Vegas that you don't see much of in movies anymore. He catches a lot of location footage on the fly, as evidenced by tourists looking at the camera in a welcome throwback to the old-school guerrilla tactics on the mean streets of Times Square in the '70s and '80s, and he has scenes take place not in the flashy, tourist-friendly establishments, but in the aging and past-their-prime Vegas casinos that have seen much better days. The film stars CSI's George Eads (also one of 30 credited producers) as Jack, a perpetual Vegas small-timer in a porkpie hat who tries to pass himself off as a high-roller but always loses big. He's $10,000 in the hole to loan shark Paulie Trunks (a surprisingly well-cast Steven Seagal) and sees no way out until a chance meeting with rich gambler Duffy (Stephen Lang). Duffy presents Jack with a business opportunity that happens to be worth $10,000: "I want you to fuck my wife," Duffy says, adding "$20,000 if you let me watch." Understandably skeeved out by the proposition, though he's tempted once he sees Duffy's wife May (AnnaLynne McCord), Jack declines and when he rejects $50,000, a scuffle ensues and Jack ends up killing Duffy in self-defense. May takes charge of the situation, telling Jack that Duffy was abusive, that she was a prisoner, and she'll deal with disposing of the body. Jack goes about his business until he realizes he left his wallet at Duffy's house, and when he tries to sneak back in the next night, he encounters the outwardly gregarious but incredulously sinister Lewis (Ted Levine), who wants to know where his brother Duffy has gone.

GUTSHOT STRAIGHT is the sort of indie-noir that filled the new release shelves of video stores 20 years ago in the wake of sleepers like RED ROCK WEST and THE LAST SEDUCTION. There's bits of HARD EIGHT mixed with BODY HEAT and INDECENT PROPOSAL and the cast is populated with colorful character actors and recognizable faces (there's also Vinnie Jones, doing his patented "fookin' 'ell, mate!" shtick as a Paulie Trunks strongarm, and a useless one-scene bit by WAYNE'S WORLD's Tia Carrere), but there's just not much here and Jerry Rapp's script is lacking. The climax doesn't make much sense, Jack is too arrogantly full of himself and too stupid for the audience to really get on his side, and it's painfully obvious from the start that May is your standard-issue femme fatale. The film plays out as if the actors are working from a checklist rather than a script, which may explain why it never feels like Jack is in serious danger, and that overwhelming, crushing feeling of there being no way out is essential for a film like this to really work. There are worthwhile elements to GUTSHOT STRAIGHT--where most films today hold off any credits until the end, this has got one of the best opening credits sequences of the year, a total homage to the fun and catchy opening credits of the 007 franchise. I'm not sure why it's in this movie, but it works beautifully. Levine and Lang are always effective at playing creeps, and Seagal, in rare character actor mode, steals the few scenes he's in, breaking out a not-bad Vito Corleone voice as the feared mob figure with an inexplicable soft spot for the hapless Jack. If you watch enough of Seagal's recent starring vehicles, then you know it's a small victory if you can get him to simply show up for work awake, let alone turn in an actual performance. According to Eads in the DVD's making-of segment, Seagal was only on the set for one day, so maybe he was excited about not having to stick around, but he's very good here. He gets a terrific monologue about why he's called "Paulie Trunks" and has a few genuinely funny, possibly ad-libbed lines and though his screen time is limited, he makes every moment count. GUTSHOT STRAIGHT has a lot of positives in its favor, and there's much here for Steele to build upon, but it just needed a stronger foundation than the weak script provides. (R, 89 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE PAPERBOY (2012) and OFFICER DOWN (2013)

THE PAPERBOY
(US - 2012)

Already guaranteed a spot in film history as "that movie where Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron," THE PAPERBOY is a miserable fiasco based on a Pete Dexter novel and scripted by Dexter and director Lee Daniels.  Daniels gained some industry respectability for co-producing 2001's MONSTER'S BALL and directing 2009's PRECIOUS, but THE PAPERBOY is more in line with his mindblowing directorial debut, the 2006 cult trash classic SHADOWBOXER, a film that offered Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren sex scenes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mo'Nique as a couple, and Stephen Dorff strutting around wearing nothing but a condom.  SHADOWBOXER is a terrible movie, but it's a great terrible movie, and one where something jawdroppingly insane can happen at any moment.  THE PAPERBOY wants to be as thoroughly batshit as SHADOWBOXER, but Daniels is torn between a desire to sleaze up the screen and be Taken Seriously, and proves himself absolutely unable to reconcile the two.  The result manages to somehow be both grotesque and boring, and it's easy to see why Cannon cover band Millennium/Nu Image only put this on 76 screens at its widest release, grossing just $700,000 despite a big-name cast and all the golden shower hype.

In a long, hot summer in the swamplands of Moat County, FL in 1969, local crazy-ass Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) is convicted of murdering the sheriff.  Big-city Miami reporters Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) and Yardly Acheman (David Oyelowo) arrive in Moat County to interview Van Wetter, causing some tension with Ward's father W.W. (Scott Glenn, sporting ludicrous sideburns that are more 1869 than 1969), who owns the local rag. Ward's younger brother Jack (Efron) accompanies them, along with area floozy Charlotte Bless (Kidman), who wrote to Van Wetter and intends to become his bride.  While Ward and Yardly investigate the possibility that Van Wetter is innocent, Jack, the titular paperboy, a college dropout who whittles away most days lounging around in his tighty-whiteys and flirting with the housekeeper (Macy Gray), becomes obsessed with Charlotte, who spends most of her time teasing him but is there to urinate on him when he gets stung by a jellyfish.  Ridiculous twists abound, most of which are predictable and none of which are interesting, before Daniels sets up a finale that seems more fitting for a horror film.  He's clearly gunning for this to be some overripe, campy melodrama, but he doesn't have the courage of his convictions.  The screen fades to black just before Jack and Charlotte finally get busy, as if to say, "Well, we want to make this sweaty, panting potboiler, but we're not asking Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman to get naked."  You can't fault McConaughey for going all out, allowing himself to be filmed nude and hog-tied in one scene that's almost on the "Dorff condom" level of outrageousness, and there is one amusing BAD LIEUTENANT-esque bit during a prison interview where a handcuffed Cusack masturbates while, across the room, Kidman spreads her legs and mimes fellatio...with McConaughey, Efron, and Oyelowo sitting right next to her (and Daniels, in a classy move, fails to exhibit the restraint of Abel Ferrara and pans the camera down to show a big wet spot on Cusack's drawers, clarifying any mystery as to whether or not the character came.  SPOILER ALERT: he did).  This ridiculous, over-the-top scene happens early enough that it makes one hopeful for some pulpy, hard-R histrionics to follow, but ultimately, THE PAPERBOY is as big of a tease as Kidman's character.  It's all talk and no payoff, filled with embarrassing performances, particularly Kidman (did she really get a Golden Globe nomination for this?) and Cusack (who's trying to be Nicolas Cage), and filmed with jittery hand-helds in an ugly, grainy, washed-out, fake '70s look, making the resulting film just as hideous as the script.  Pointless, endless, pretentious, and nothing close to the trashy fun that it thinks it is, THE PAPERBOY is a total misfire.  (R, 107 mins)


OFFICER DOWN
(US - 2013)

Released on one screen in the US four days before its DVD/Blu-ray release (where it may get some accidental sales thanks to confused shoppers who mistake it for END OF WATCH), the hopelessly muddled cop thriller OFFICER DOWN boasts an interesting cast of familiar movie and TV faces, none of whom are put to good use in a film that simply tries too hard for its own good.  Director Brian A. Miller, a sort-of lower-budgeted DTV version of L.A.P.D. cop flick specialist David Ayer (TRAINING DAY, STREET KINGS, END OF WATCH), previously helmed the atrocious Chris Klein/50 Cent dud CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE, and while OFFICER DOWN may have better performances than Klein and Fiddy could offer, it's entirely too convoluted with too many extraneous, meandering plot threads that either go nowhere or get abandoned altogether.  Miller and screenwriter John Chase get some points for trying something a little more ambitious than the usual DTV cop outing, but the film just collapses under the weight of its aspirations, with Miller more concerned with style and technique than telling a remotely coherent story.

Supposedly based on a true story, the film cuts between the present and two years earlier as it follows Bridgeport, CT detective David Callahan (Stephen Dorff), a reformed bad boy cop who used to go full-on TRAINING DAY and pal around with Russian mobsters and strippers, and had a drinking and drug problem.  He cleaned up his act after getting shot trying to shake down some thugs for drugs and refocused his energy on his family (wife Elisabeth Rohm and teenage daughter Beatrice Miller) and his job, and while he drinks Diet Coke, he still orders a bourbon when he goes to a bar and just lets it sit there, because that's apparently what cops on the edge do.  He's presented with a diary that belonged to a murdered stripper (EXCISION's Annalynne McCord) who worked for a former criminal associate with Russian mob ties (Dominic Purcell), and may have been killed by a regular customer known as "The Angel" (Walton Goggins), a creepy type who used to sketch the dancers on napkins at his usual table.  The film continues to cut back and forth from the current, honest Callahan (in color) to the corrupt, asshole Callahan (in black & white), as his old demons resurface and he kills someone in cold blood, tries to cover it up and then--wait for it--is assigned to investigate that very murder. Chase's script veers all over the place and is overpopulated with far more characters than it really needs and only serves to pad the flimsy story.  Was there really a need to show McCord's character so extensively in flashbacks?  David Boreanaz turns up for a few scenes to yell and pound his fist on some tables as a cop who hates Callahan.  There's also Stephen Lang as the gruff lieutenant, Tommy Flanagan as an Irish priest, Johnny Messner as a serial rapist, Richard Brooks as his lawyer, rapper Soulja Boy as the thug who shoots Callahan, Oleg Taktarov cast radically against type as a slow-witted Russian mobster named Oleg, and James Woods, looking mildly annoyed as the hot-headed, preserve-the-department's-image-at-all-costs police captain prone to barking warnings like "If I go down, you will be the one to break my fall!" which is probably the same thing his agent heard when he presented Woods with this script.  (R, 97 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: EXCISION (2012) and BRINGING UP BOBBY (2012)

EXCISION
(US - 2012)

When you subject yourself to enough crappy straight-to-DVD titles (or titles that get released on five screens before being dumped on DVD), it's all made worthwhile when you're rewarded with a genuine overlooked sleeper that manages to sneak in when no one's looking.  EXCISION is an audacious and inventive teen horror film that seems destined for a DONNIE DARKO-like cult status.  In a bold, uninhibited, and often startling performance, 90210 star Annalynne McCord is 18-year-old Pauline, the kind of gawky, awkward, slouched, pimply, and just plain odd high school outcast who makes Carrie White look like the most popular girl in school.  She has vivid sexual fantasies about surgery and mutilation while trying to survive her domineering, religious mother (Traci Lords) and her spineless father (Roger Bart).  She does have an almost-normal relationship with her younger sister (Ariel Winter), who's suffering from cystic fibrosis.  As her mother tries to make her more "ladylike" by forcing her to go with a bunch of younger girls to a cotillion class, Pauline grows increasingly obsessed with death, disease, self-mutilation, and bodily functions ("I want to lose my virginity while I'm on my period"), while engaging in rebellious acts like guzzling ipecac to vomit on a bitchy classmate and blurting out anything to rile up her uptight mother ("I'm going to marry a black guy!"), until of course, the film takes a dark and horrifying turn. 

Written and directed by Richard Bates, Jr., EXCISION is surprisingly ambitious, with some hypnotically beautiful shot compositions, stunning use of color, and some dream sequences that are almost Jodorowsky-esque in their surrealism. The 25-year-old McCord has done a lot of TV work, but I've only seen her in a pair of terrible 50 Cent movies. She turns in a star-making performance here, and even Lords, never mistaken for a good actress, knocks it out of the park. There's a few recognizable faces in some small supporting roles, like Ray Wise as the principal and Marlee Matlin as the cotillion instructor, but if EXCISION has any problems, it's that it's a little distracting and disruptive to the film's mood to see Malcolm McDowell as a high school math teacher and, even more intrusive, John Waters as a minister (though I get his presence here, as a few of the film's more shocking transgressions--one involving a bloody tampon--wouldn't have been out of place in an old-school Waters film, but he still doesn't exactly disappear into a serious role). But overall, EXCISION is dark, disturbing, and frequently uncomfortable and gross, but it's also very funny (Pauline asking the health teacher if you can contract STDs from dead bodies, Matlin signing to an ASL-illiterate Lords that "seeing you and your daughter argue makes me grateful for my hearing loss"), and refreshingly devoid of snarky teen cliches. It's a smart and unique film that sometimes feels like MEAN GIRLS if remade by David Cronenberg, and one of 2012's biggest surprises. Highly recommended, but admittedly not for all tastes. (Unrated, 81 mins)

BRINGING UP BOBBY
(US/UK/The Netherlands - 2012)

Milla Jovovich has an engaging screen presence and some legit acting chops, but she hasn't had a lot of luck recently outside of the RESIDENT EVIL franchise.  She turned in an Oscar-caliber performance in 2010's barely-released STONE, managing to steal the film from both Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, but nobody saw it or several other disappointing films she's done that got shuffled off to the DVD scrapheap.  The appallingly bad BRINGING UP BOBBY is a near-total disaster that marks the writing/directing debut of veteran character actress Famke Janssen.  Sure, as far as reliable character actors debuting behind the camera in 2012 go, this isn't nearly as horrid as Vincent D'Onofrio's DON'T GO IN THE WOODS, but there's still nothing to recommend about it.  Jovovich is Olive, a Ukrainian con artist in Oklahoma with her 11-year-old son Bobby (Spencer List).  Together, the pair steal used cars, shoplift, and try to scam insurance companies.  It all catches up to Olive, who gets arrested and loses Bobby to Kent (Bill Pullman) and Mary (Marcia Cross), a rich couple they met after Kent accidentally hit Bobby with his car.  Kent and Mary have never recovered from the death of their own son, and grow to genuinely love Bobby and even welcome Olive to be a part of his life after she gets out of jail.  But her presence proves disruptive when Bobby starts acting out and Olive faces temptation to restart her old criminal life as numerous heart-tugging montages ensue, set to the likes of Cat Stevens and Jorma Kaukonen.

Everything about BRINGING UP BOBBY comes off as forced and phony, starting with its sitcom-worthy title, the grating performances of Jovovich, List, and Rory Cochrane (incredibly annoying as Olive's not-so-bright partner in crime) and the transparent stabs at precious indie quirk (Olive's retro wardrobe, Bobby's ridiculous habit of wearing two different-colored socks with one pulled all the way up to his knee).  The mother's a criminal and the kid is a completely obnoxious, thoroughly unlikable little shit, and Janssen gives us little reason to care about either of them.  It starts off like it might be wacky and "fun," but soon turns maudlin and manipulative, and it just doesn't work.  The abrupt ending is one of the laziest examples of a quick, convenient wrap-up in recent memory.  After "irresponsible mom" roles in two terrible films (this and the equally unseen DIRTY GIRL), it's time for the completely capable Jovovich to start finding better projects to explore her serious side.  Janssen based this film on her own childhood experiences as a Dutch immigrant, but I don't see the film having anything at all to do with the immigrant experience other than making Olive from Ukraine and allowing Jovovich to use a hammy accent that's more fitting for Natasha Fatale. Any statement or observation Janssen intended on making got lost somewhere along the way to being a Lifetime movie with intermittent profanity.  BRINGING UP BOBBY was shot in 2010 and opened in September 2012 on one screen, ultimately opening wider to...three screens, for a total theatrical take of $4600.  (PG-13, 95 mins)