On Blu-ray/DVD: VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY (2017); THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM (2017); and GUN SHY (2017)

VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY
(US - 2017)

Though the title and the poster would indicate this is another by-the-numbers, Redbox-ready Nicolas Cage VOD actioner--and it gets off to a dubious start with video-burned opening credits straight out of a TV show-- VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY is a peculiar outlier in Cage's filmography, at least for this stage of his career. Cage originally planned to direct, something he hasn't done since 2002's little-seen SONNY, but at some point before shooting began, he handed the job off to veteran stunt coordinator and second-unit helmer Johnny Martin. Given Martin's pedigree, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY is very light on action and stunts, which one might expect once you know it's based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2003 novel Rape: A Love Story (not hard to see why they went with a slightly more marketable title for the movie). For a while, after a shaky opening and the obvious budget deprivation on display, the Georgia-shot, Niagara Falls-set VENGEANCE does alright as a melancholy, low-key character piece until it gives way to overwrought, deck-stacking melodrama before the "vengeance" element kicks in. Taking a shortcut through the woods at night on their way home from a 4th of July barbecue, single mom Teena (Anna Hutchison of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) and her 12-year-old daughter Bethie (Talitha Bateman) are attacked by four sub-literate, hillbilly yokels who physically assault Bethie and gang-rape Teena. Glum, burned-out (we know this because he moves pieces on a solitary chess board in his living room) cop and Gulf War PTSD case John Dromoor (Cage) catches the case and gets emotionally invested in it, still shell-shocked and trying to fill a void after the recent death of his partner during a botched arrest.

It looks to be an open-and-shut case, as the four rapists--all brothers--leave ample fingerprint and DNA evidence and are all identified by Bethie in a lineup, but their bitter, white trash mother (Charlene Tilton sighting!) makes her husband mortgage the house to hire slick, high-priced, Harley-riding defense attorney Jay Kirkpatrick (Don Johnson). At a preliminary hearing, Kirkpatrick tries to establish that Teena seduced the brothers, launching a town-wide smear campaign to slut-shame the victim, even questioning her competency as a parent. Kirkpatrick is also friends with the judge (Mike Pniewski), who overrules every objection from Teena's lawyer (Kara Flowers) and takes petty offense to grammatical errors in Dromoor's testimony ("It's 'my partner and I,' detective...not 'me and my partner'"). The brothers are released on bail and begin terrorizing Teena and Bethie, kill Teena's mother's (Deborah Kara Unger) cat, and intimidate witnesses, and then the judge moves the trial date up to give Teena's lawyer as little time to prep as possible. Seeing that Teena is getting a raw deal, Dromoor does what lone wolf cops in formulaic movies with the word "vengeance" in the title do. It takes about 75 of the film's 99 minutes for the vengeance to commence, but even after that, Cage turns in maybe the quietest performance of his career. He never even smiles. Johnson, who's become a great character actor in recent years (COLD IN JULY, BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99), delivers another terrific performance in a movie seen by no one. Hutchison and young Bateman are very good, at least until the script by TV vet John Mankiewicz (a writer on MIAMI VICE, a producer on HOUSE M.D. and HOUSE OF CARDS, and creator of the short-lived 1990s Jeff Fahey series THE MARSHAL) starts asking the audience to buy too many implausibilities. There's no way a judge would behave like this one does, and there's no way a defense attorney would sit there and let his clients leer at and threaten someone who's accusing them of the crime for which he's defending them, right there in court. By the end, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY never lives up to its potential. It's too hokey and lacking in nuance and subtlety to be taken seriously, but it's too restrained and slow-moving to work as a dumb action thriller. It's earnest and well-meaning, but it can't reconcile its goals and decide what it wants to be. Cage and long-retired ONION FIELD and VISION QUEST director Harold Becker, who hasn't made a film since 2001's DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE, were among the producers. (Unrated, 99 mins)



THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM
(UK - 2017)

Based on Peter Ackroyd's 1994 novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, the Jack the Ripper-inspired British mystery THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM falls victim to some tedious stretches in its first half, but it gets better as it goes on. Even during its slow spells, it's a pleasure to watch just for the opportunity to enjoy the great Bill Nighy in a rare lead, brought in as a last-minute replacement for Alan Rickman, who hoped to make the film despite his pancreatic cancer diagnosis but was forced to back out when his health began rapidly declining just before filming began in October 2015 (Rickman died in January 2016). Of course Rickman would've been perfect (the film is dedicated to him), but Nighy is superb as Inspector John Kildare, a weary Scotland Yard official in 1890 London who gets the case of a serial killer known as "The Limehouse Golem" dumped in his lap. At the same time Kildare inherits the case, he finds a link to another involving stage actress Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), accused of poisoning her husband John (Sam Reid). Kildare finds a journal with insane rantings that may implicate John as the Limehouse Golem, though the investigation leads to other suspects, including real-life figures like music hall comedian Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins), and even Karl Marx (Henry Goodman). Partnered with constable George Flood (Daniel Mays), Kildare up-ends the Limehouse district to find proof John Cree is the killer, hoping that if Elizabeth is convicted of poisoning him, she can be spared execution for putting an end to the Golem's reign of terror.

Low-key despite some occasional flashes of splatter, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM almost plays like an R-rated PBS mystery. Director Juan Carlos Medina and screenwriter Jane Goldman (KICK-ASS, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, both KINGSMAN movies) spend a little too much time in the first half on Leno's theatrical troupe, often veering from a murder mystery into a redux of Mike Leigh's TOPSY-TURVY. But once all the pieces are in place and everything involving Elizabeth's hellish upbringing and John's insane jealousy over her friendship with Leno and that her career is taking off while he languishes as a failed playwright is established, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM takes off and becomes a riveting suspense piece, anchored by terrific performances from Nighy and Cooke (THE QUIET ONES). The production design and period detail are big pluses, with London looking about as gray, bleak, and grimy as it did in the 1979 Sherlock Holmes classic MURDER BY DECREE. It's not quite on the same level, but Nighy's Kildare--a complex character whose closeted homosexuality makes him the object of hushed scorn and dismissal among his colleagues, even though there's a cryptic moment where a sympathetic Flood whispers "I'm on your side"-- is ample proof that the actor would make a great Holmes. (Unrated, 109 mins)



GUN SHY
(US/UK - 2017)

You probably won't find a worse comedy in 2017 than GUN SHY, a staggeringly awful adaptation of Mark Haskell Smith's 2007 novel Salty, which garnered some acclaim at the time for its Carl Hiaasen-esque comic mystery crossed with an Irvine Welsh sense of the grotesque. Smith co-wrote the screenplay, but everything that book reviewers liked about Salty appears to have been neutered into oblivion for GUN SHY. This is a film where it's abundantly clear that the endgame was a mystery for all involved. The humor here isn't clever, it isn't sly, it isn't raunchy...it isn't anything. The film plods along, gasping and wheezing to its conclusion without a single laugh or even a remotely humorous moment. Gags fall flat, the story goes nowhere, and the actors look completely stranded. It's not like there's a lack of talent here: Antonio Banderas and Olga Kurylenko are fine actors, and Simon West isn't an auteur by any means, but he's directed some entertaining movies (CON AIR, THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MECHANIC), but GUN SHY is one of those rare instances where, whatever the intent was going in, nothing works. It's painfully unfunny and miserable to endure, and the only thing saving it from complete ruin is that Banderas actually seems to be enjoying himself. Between recent VOD duds like BLACK BUTTERFLY, FINDING ALTAMIRA, SECURITY, and now this, Banderas is due for either a new agent or an intervention.

Banderas is Turk Henry, former bassist/vocalist for the '80s hair metal band Metal Assassin, best known for their hit single "Teenage Ass Patrol." Kicked out of the band after his supermodel wife Sheila (Kurylenko) was deemed a "Yoko" by the other members, Turk's career and personal life are in the toilet. Now an emotionally needy, drunken recluse who still dresses like "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)"-era Steven Tyler, he hasn't left his Malibu mansion in two years, prompting Sheila to arrange a vacation to Turk's native Chile in an attempt to boost his spirits. Once there, she's kidnapped by a group of neophyte pirates who think they've struck gold and try to extort a huge ransom when they realize she's Turk Henry's wife. Turk's manager sends his assistant Marybeth (Aisling Loftus) and Clive Muggleton (Martin Dingle Wall), a Crocodile Dundee-like Aussie mercenary with impossibly white teeth and a serious shellfish allergy, to help Turk negotiate with pirate leader Juan Carlos (Ben Cura). US Homeland Security gets wind of the kidnapping and sends ambitious CIA agent Ben Harding (Mark Valley), who's quick to label it a terrorist act in order to boost his profile to his superiors. What follows is a lot of shameless mugging and dead air as entire sequences go by with nothing even remotely amusing, unless you count a vomiting llama, Turk getting bitten on the dick by a snake, Turk trying to dodge Harding by dressing in drag, a clueless Turk calling his GPS a "CGI," and mispronouncing easy words, like "tore-toys" for "tortoise." The novel had the vacation taking place in Thailand, with a hapless, shaggy dog Turk getting involved in busting a sex trafficking ring. Here, he's just a bumbling buffoon making an ass of himself in Santiago. There's no attempt at political satire, no attempts at physical comedy, and no attempt at any INHERENT VICE or BIG LEBOWSKI-style absurdist noir humor. No, the only thing the makers of GUN SHY had was "Antonio Banderas dressed up like a hair metal singer" and they just assumed everything would work itself out. GUN SHY is so lazy that it doesn't even have any insider, THIS IS SPINAL TAP-style jokes about the music industry. There's nothing here, though Banderas, not an actor known for his comedic skills, looks like he's having fun despite his helpless, idiotic character having absolutely nothing to do. As if GUN SHY wasn't oppressive enough, it pads out the running time by including four endings, two music videos during the closing credits, and three (!) post-credits stingers, as if anyone watching this would think "Wow, I had such a blast with these characters...just keep giving me more!" This is stunningly bad. (R, 92 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THEIR FINEST (2017) and DRONE (2017)

THEIR FINEST
(UK/Sweden - 2017)

It's overlong, mostly predictable and hampered somewhat by a third act plot development that rivals 47 METERS DOWN in terms of unnecessary cruelty, but THEIR FINEST is an enjoyably old-fashioned "war at home" WWII saga that became a small word-of-mouth art house hit in the spring. In London in 1940, Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) thinks she's getting a secretarial job with the Ministry of Information's film division. With most of the men called up as the war escalates, she's actually been hired as a screenwriter after department head Roger Swain (Richard E. Grant) was impressed with some comics she wrote for a newspaper in the absence of the regular writers who were off fighting. Teaming with in-house scribe Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin), Catrin's job is to come up with inspiring scripts for movies to keep the British citizens' spirits lifted amidst constant air raids and concerns, as Swain puts it, "that there won't even be any theaters left to show them." Catrin is drawn to the story of twin sisters Lily and Rose Starling (Lily and Francesca Knight) who have found a certain degree of local fame for taking their father's boat, the Nancy Starling, to rescue soldiers at Dunkirk. The sisters have embellished the story significantly, as the Ministry eventually discovers that they tried to go to Dunkirk, but their engine broke down and they were towed back before they even left British waters. It's got too much crowd-pleasing potential to dismiss, so Catrin and Tom are instructed to fictionalize it, and to also add an authoritative male figure--a drunk uncle played by aging thespian Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy)--because no one will believe that two young women took a boat to Dunkirk.

Directed by Lone Scherfig (AN EDUCATION) and adapted from Lissa Evans' 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by veteran British TV writer Gaby Chiappe (HOLBY CITY, EASTENDERS, LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD), THEIR FINEST is definitely a "they don't make 'em like they used to" kind of movie, at times playing like one of Woody Allen's period comedies, mostly pleasant and anchored by an appealing performance from Arterton. THEIR FINEST does a nice job of presenting a woman's struggle in a male-dominated job market (of course, she makes less money than her male colleagues), and her duties inevitably lead to the expected resentment of her artist husband Ellis (Jack Huston), who has no money coming in and can no longer serve because of a leg injury sustained in the Spanish Civil War a few years earlier. There's also some timeless jabs at the eternal struggle between artists and the powers that be, with the filmmakers forced by the Secretary of War (Jeremy Irons) to cast American soldier and Eagle Squadron hero Carl Lundbeck (Jake Lacy) to appeal to the US, even though he can't act and there were no Americans at Dunkirk. It's Arterton's film, but the scene-stealer is the always-outstanding Nighy, whose Hilliard is a pompous, past-his-prime egotist humbled by the sacrifices made by those around him and eager to do his part by helping Lundbeck hone his acting chops, even talking his agent down from demanding more money and better accommodations because the plucky, can-do spirit of those around him have inspired him to such a degree. It's a warm and at times touching performance that again demonstrates why Nighy is one of our great character actors. THEIR FINEST is a film that's impossible to dislike even if it's rather slight when it's all said and done, and that late-film story development is jarring but in a way that somewhat negatively impacts the film as it sets it up for some ham-fisted sentimentality near the end. (R, 117 mins)



DRONE
(US/Canada - 2017)

A potentially interesting, politically-driven thriller, DRONE gets derailed when the filmmakers decide to make it overwrought and polemical, with its antagonist basically wearing a light that flashes "MESSAGE!" In Renton, WA, Neil Westin (Sean Bean) claims to be an IT troubleshooter for a software corporation. Unbeknownst to his wife Ellen (Mary McCormack) and 16-year-old son Shane (Maxwell Haynes), he's actually a CIA contractor who's part of a secret program that employs civilian drone pilots to drop bombs on suspected terrorists in the Middle East from the cozy confines of suburban Seattle, but a recent security leak threatens to expose the entire operation. Meanwhile, Imir Shaw (Patrick Sabongui) has arrived from Pakistan and leaves at least one dead body in his wake in his surveillance of the Westin family, including trailing an adulterous Ellen to a motel with a younger co-worker (Bradley Stryker) who wants to take their fling to a more serious level. Neil's also dealing with the recent passing of his Alzheimer's stricken father and can't find the words to write his eulogy when Imir shows up in his driveway under the guise of buying Neil's father's sailboat. Neil invites him in and as they discuss the boat and get to know each other, Ellen arrives home and they ask Imir to stay for dinner. As Imir starts slowly doling out his backstory, culminating in the revelation that it's the one-year anniversary of his wife and daughter being collateral damage in a US drone strike, it finally dawns on Neil that his dinner guest knows his real job and intends to avenge the death of his family by destroying Neil's.

Director/co-writer Jason Bourque, a veteran of numerous Lifetime movies, takes entirely too long to generate any suspense with DRONE. Imir doesn't even make his intent known to the Westins until the last 15 minutes, and the bulk of the film feels like a long dinner sequence in a play. The film shows its cards too soon in establishing Imir as a threat and doesn't really explore the moral complexities of Neil's job. He doesn't seem to feel one way or another about it, though his decidedly non-PC colleague Gary (Joel David Moore) serves as a mouthpiece for intolerance with his labeling drone casualties as "dune coons." Subtlety is a foreign concept to DRONE, and it's not helped by an ineffective, mannered performance by Bean, who's usually a sure thing but here, he's using a forced, overdone American accent that completely undermines anything he might've been able to do with this character. A subplot about Neil's distance from his late father and Shane getting close to his grandfather in his final days adds nothing, due in large part because Haynes is a terrible actor. McCormack and Sabongui do what they can with paper-thin characters, and even when it finally gets going at the very end, Bourque still can't resist tacking on a final scene of clunky political commentary. DRONE isn't nearly as obnoxious in its pontificating as say, THE CRASH, another thriller from earlier this year that got tripped up in political preaching and also featured McCormack, but it's still not really worth anyone's time. (Unrated, 90 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: GOAT (2016); PET (2016); and DAD'S ARMY (2016)

GOAT
(US/UK - 2016)

GOAT is a harrowing chronicle of fraternity hazing, based on the 2004 memoir by Brad Land. Director Andrew Neel (the LARP documentary DARKON) and co-writer David Gordon Green (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) take some significant liberties with the book, playing a little fast and loose with the facts as to what happened to Land and what he did regarding the fraternity. Taken on its own terms, GOAT is frequently very powerful, with a pair of strong performances as its core by Ben Schnetzer (the acclaimed but short-lived series HAPPY TOWN) as Brad and Nick Jonas as his older brother Brett (though he looks younger, Schnetzer is actually two years older than Jonas). In the summer after graduating high school, Brad visits Brett at his Phi Sigma Mu frat house at Brookman University (the frat and Brookman are fictional; the actual university was Clemson) and is talked into giving a ride to two sketchy-looking townies who steal his car and nearly beat him to death. Still traumatized by the incident and unwilling to cooperate with police, Brad has all of his masculine insecurities brought to the forefront, questioning why he gave them a ride and why he never tried to fight back ("Am I a pussy?" he drunkenly wonders). Though Brett doesn't think it's the answer, Brad decides to pledge Phi Sigma Mu and is joined by his sensitive new roommate Fitch (Danny Flaherty), both freshmen needing to feel like they belong somewhere and needing to feel bolstered and reinforced by the power and prestige that comes with being in a popular frat ("I'm having sex for the first time in my life!" Fitch keeps saying). Neel doesn't shy away from the brutal hazing of Hell Week, an endless series of increasingly degrading and dehumanizing rituals that make it seem like a collegiate version of SALO could break out at any moment. The pledges are terrorized, forced to drink gallons of alcohol until they puke and black out, tied up and locked in animal cages, urinated on, threatened with forced bestiality with a goat if they don't finish a keg in a certain amount of time, and one comparatively harmless prank involves a blindfolded Brad believing he's being forced to eat a turd out of a toilet bowl, but it's only a banana. The hazing by frat leaders Chance (Gus Halper) and the sadistic Dixon (Jake Picking) goes over the line to the point where even Brett is growing disillusioned with the whole thing, asking Chance at one point "Is this getting a little weird this year?"

Weird eventually escalates to tragic, but all the while, Brad is willing to look the other way because the more he endures, the less of a "pussy" he feels. It's his way of getting back at the guys who assaulted him, even as he ignores calls from the cops to come in and ID two guys who match the description and have been picked up for another crime. The changes made by Green and Neel are strange--in the book, Brad put his foot down and quit the fraternity while Brett was presented as, for lack of a better term, an antagonist who resented his brother. In the film, Brad is so concerned with asserting his manhood that he refuses to give up on the frat even as Brett pleads with him to do so, and it's Brett who grows tired of Chance's and Dixon's antics. It's an odd decision that may create some dramatic tension between the brothers but sort of undermines Brad's role in what was supposed to be his own story and his own expose. The story works in the context of the film, but it's a bizarre artistic choice by the filmmakers, unless someone thought making Nick Jonas the hero might secure a better distribution deal. It hardly mattered--the Cincinnati-shot GOAT only played in a few theaters and on VOD, but it's a sleeper that's certain to find an audience on streaming services, as difficult as it is to endure at times. Schnetzer and Jonas are both excellent (Jonas is a real surprise here, though he might've fared even better as an actor if the filmmakers stuck to the book), but producer James Franco gives himself a cameo as an aging frat god from years earlier who still periodically stops by the house to chug some beers and reminisce with the younger guys about his glory days. Franco basically turns up for a few minutes to play a dudebro combination of "James Franco" and "Matthew McConaughey's Wooderson" for a few minutes, and it's distracting to say the least, but hey, he's the producer, so what are you gonna do? (R, 102 mins)


PET
(US/Spain - 2016)

There's some intriguing ideas in this sort-of extreme horror variation on the John Fowles novel The Collector, famously made into a 1965 film with Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar. What begins as a standard-issue psycho-stalker movie gets a major boost from a mid-film reveal that just ends up fizzling by the end, when screenwriter Jeremy Slater (a writer and producer on the Fox TV series THE EXORCIST) and director Carles Torrens (the found-footage possession movie APARTMENT 143) go for one too many twists and contrivances as things wrap up with a groan instead of a jolt. Seth (Dominic Monaghan, whose American accent needs some work) is a lonely and awkward man who works as an attendant at a Los Angeles animal shelter. On the bus ride home from work one evening, he spots Holly (Ksenia Solo), an aspiring writer and high school classmate who doesn't remember him. He makes bumbling small-talk and is oblivious to the fact that she's clearly not interested, but he stalks her on social media, shows up at the greasy spoon where she waits tables asks her to a Ben Folds show, and follows her to a bar where he's promptly beaten up by her ex-boyfriend Eric (Nathan Parsons). Repeatedly reprimanded at work for getting too attached to the animals and failing at any attempt at male bonding with imposing security guard Nate (Da'Vone McDonald), a desperate Seth finds a closed-off room in the shelter basement, complete with a large cage, which he deems the perfect place to keep Holly until she realizes how perfect they are for one another.

PET is pretty standard up to that point, but Slater and Torrens pull one of 2016's better bait-and-switches that up-ends both Seth's motive for doing what he does and the audience's perception of Holly. We're not talking a USUAL SUSPECTS-level game-changer here, but as far as twists go in 2016 movies, this one is pretty audacious. But the filmmakers stumble on the follow-through, with PET completely collapsing in the final act, trying to go for ambiguity as an excuse to cover up the trail of implausibilities that's left them completely backed into a corner. Seth's devotion and Holly's behavior ultimately make little logical sense, and PET turns into one of those movies where everyone from Seth's bosses to the cops are required to be incredibly careless and unbelievably stupid in order to keep the plot moving. Still, there's enough good intentions in the building blocks of PET's construction and in an outstanding performance by Solo that it's worth a look, even if it ultimately misses the mark and 40-year-old Monaghan looks entirely too old to have gone to high school with Solo. (R, 94 mins)



DAD'S ARMY
(UK - 2016)

Running from 1968 to 1977, the BBC series DAD'S ARMY remains one of the most beloved sitcoms in the history of British television. Giving career roles to great British character actor ringers like Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier, DAD'S ARMY dealt with the wacky antics of a platoon of misfit Home Guard volunteers in a small English town in WWII. With its slapstick comedy and quotable catchphrases, it was so popular that it spawned a 1971 feature film spinoff in the middle of its run. Nostalgia would seem to be the only reason to produce a remake nearly 40 years after the show went off the air, and with absolutely no reason to exist, the 2016 version of DAD'S ARMY is painfully unfunny and would be completely unwatchable if not for a distinguished cast that's hopefully having a lot more fun than the audience. In 1944, in the days before D-Day, Walmington-at-Sea's Home Guard leader Capt. Mainwaring (Toby Jones in Lowe's role) and his right-hand Sgt. Wilson (Bill Nighy in Le Mesurier's role) are informed by their commander Theakes (Mark Gatiss) that they're to patrol an Allied base at Dover that's being targeted for invasion by high-ranking Nazi Admiral Canaris (Oliver Tobias), who's sent a spy to infiltrate the area. Meanwhile, sultry reporter Rose Winters (Catherine Zeta-Jones) arrives to do a story on the Home Guard, which results in Mainwaring and Wilson trying to one-up the other in their hapless attempts to woo her, which naturally infuriates their henpecking wives. Also among Mainwaring's Home Guard troops are doddering Jones (Tom Courtenay), senile Godfrey (Michael Gambon), crotchety Frazer (Bill Paterson), and youngsters like the womanizing Walker (Daniel Mays) and goofball Pike (Blake Harrison).

With that cast and a script by frequent Rowan Atkinson collaborator Hamish McColl (MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY, JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN) working under the direction of Oliver Parker (the 1995 OTHELLO with Laurence Fishburne, AN IDEAL HUSBAND), it's hard to believe DAD'S ARMY is as terrible as it is. Joke after joke lands with a thud, the pace is laborious, and the greenscreen work and CGI look unfinished. Who is the audience for this movie? Older people who fondly remember the TV show probably won't go for the more contemporary vulgar elements, whether it's a confused Godfrey relieving himself on what he thinks is a tree but is really Jones in disguise (I'm pretty sure that when Tom Courtenay received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO 50 years ago, he never envisioned Michael Gambon pissing on him in their emeritus years), or Paterson's Frazer dropping trou and mooning a U-boat crew. The increased toilet humor seems to be there to draw a younger crowd who I'm certain has no interest in seeing an otherwise dated and creaky WWII comedy headlined by Bill Nighy, Toby Jones, and Tom Courtenay. DAD'S ARMY resurrects the catchphrases ("You stupid boy!") and gives cameos to the series' two surviving cast members (Ian Lavendar, the original Pike, appears as a general, and Frank Williams reprises his role as the town's vicar), but it was panned by British critics and flatly rejected by UK audiences, bombing when it was released there in early 2016. With the TV show known only by the most ardent Anglophile TV fans in the US, Universal had no viable strategy on how to sell this to American audiences, even with familiar faces like Nighy and Zeta-Jones, so they ended up releasing it straight-to-DVD/Blu-ray with no publicity at all.  A rare movie that's made for absolutely no one and whose very existence is an inexplicable mystery, DAD'S ARMY's only point of interest is that it was produced by Alan Parker (MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, FAME, PINK FLOYD: THE WALL, MISSISSIPPI BURNING), who's been MIA since directing 2003's THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE. He's no relation to Oliver Parker, which would at least explain his involvement. Alan Parker disappears for 13 years and this is what inspired him to emerge from self-imposed exile? You know a comedy is bad when even the end credits blooper reel isn't funny. (Unrated, 100 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: I, FRANKENSTEIN (2014); DEADLY CODE (2014); and MOBIUS (2014)

I, FRANKENSTEIN
(US/Australia - 2014)

It's no surprise that I, FRANKENSTEIN looks like an UNDERWORLD sequel, as it's based on an unpublished graphic novel by UNDERWORLD co-writer and actor Kevin Grevioux and features Bill Nighy (UNDERWORLD's nefarious vampire leader Viktor) as the villain.  It seems to take place in the same Vampires-and-Lycans world, but it owes just as much to THE DARK KNIGHT, right down to that film's Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Aaron Eckhart, in the title role. Relying heavily on mimicking Christian Bale's grunting Batman voice, Eckhart is Frankenstein's monster, here dubbed "Adam," and any faithfulness to Mary Shelley is buried by the four-minute mark, along with Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Aden Young), laid to rest by Adam just as he's confronted by a horde of winged demons. He's rescued by warriors in the service of Lenore (Miranda Otto), Queen of the Gargoyles, who's been locked in an eternal struggle with the army of demon prince Naberius.  Cut to 200 years later, as Adam is now a globetrotting demonslayer still pursued by Naberius' minions.  Naberius is passing himself off as wealthy Charles Wessex (Nighy), CEO of the Wessex Institute, where his science research is a cover for his real plot:  to learn the secrets inside Dr. Frankenstein's diary in order to transfer the damned souls of descended demons into thousands of reanimated corpses stored in a secret bunker at the lab's headquarters.

Considering that Lionsgate kept this on the shelf for a year after its original planned release, only to see it gross $19 million domestically against a $65 million budget, it's not likely that I, FRANKENSTEIN will become an UNDERWORLD-like franchise (or the initially-rumored crossover film), or that there will be any future interest in actually publishing Grevioux's graphic novel.  It's got a goofy enough plot that it should be campy fun, but while the dark and dour demeanor worked for THE DARK KNIGHT, it doesn't bode as well here.  No film with a story this silly should be as somber and self-serious as this, though there are occasional hints at humor that manage to shine through, like Adam doing a "bad cop" interrogation of a demon and dunking his head in holy water, or the requisite speed-ramping where Adam punches a winged demon in the face. But overall, I, FRANKENSTEIN is just an eye-glazing blur of crummy CGI and graphic novel cliches.  Eckhart rarely seems comfortable with the character or his idiotic dialogue, such as Adam grunting "I think your boss is a demon prince!" to Wessex's leading researcher, hot electrophysiologist Terra (Yvonne Strahovski), and Nighy is past the point where he can play this character--it's basically Viktor with a different name--in his sleep. Writer/director Stuart Beattie previously helmed the acclaimed Australian film TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN (2010) and wrote Michael Mann's COLLATERAL (2004), but is best known as a screenwriting mercenary on fare like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003), 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (2007), and G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (2009).  Given that resume, it's easy to see COLLATERAL as an anomaly and that Beattie's seemingly opted to instead channel his inner Len Wiseman or Stephen Sommers.  Cult movie nerds will enjoy seeing Bruce Spence--THE ROAD WARRIOR's Gyro Captain--in a small role as one of Wessex's lab flunkies, but I, FRANKENSTEIN isn't a movie.  It's a bland, boring, assembly-line product. (PG-13, 92 mins)


DEADLY CODE
(Italy/UK - 2013; US release 2014)

Italian filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores has worked steadily for the last 30 years but is best known for directing 1991's MEDITERRANEO, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the overrated 2003 thriller I'M NOT SCARED.  Elsewhere, most of his output is forgotten or unseen outside of Italy--his 1997 virtual reality sci-fi snoozer NIRVANA was picked up by Harvey Weinstein, who shelved it until dumping it on DVD in 2005--and that seems the likely fate for DEADLY CODE, which has gone straight-to-DVD in the US with perhaps the least-appealing cover art of the year.  Shot in 2011 under the title SIBERIAN EDUCATION, the tedious and cliche-filled DEADLY CODE wants to be the Russian Mafia version of THE GODFATHER, but comes off as a third-rate EASTERN PROMISES knockoff.  The confusing narrative jumps around from 1985 to 1998, telling the story of two men, Kolima (Arnas Fedaravicius) and Gagarin (Vilius Tumalavicius), who--wait for it--were childhood best friends who became bitter adversaries as adults.  As if that wasn't a tired enough story foundation, it's a woman who comes between them, in this case the mentally-challenged Xenja (Eleanor Tomlinson), a sweet but simple-minded young lady referred to by the locals as everything from "a special gift from God" to "retarded."  Both men enter a life of crime and spend time in prison--Gagarin as a youth and Kolima as an adult--and once Kolima is released, he swears vengeance on Gagarin, who raped Xenja while he was gone and left her a catatonic shell of the vibrant, innocent woman she was, the quick culmination of a sudden conflict between the two men that, until Kolima finds out about the rape, seems to come out of nowhere.

DEADLY CODE tries and fails to address the culture of the Russian mob and its ties to the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, represented in the hammiest possible fashion by John Malkovich as ruthless Siberian crime boss Grandfather Kuzia, who happens to actually be Kolima's grandfather.  Malkovich gets to dust off his Teddy KGB-from-ROUNDERS accent while dispensing sage advice and hackneyed metaphors.  It's hard to believe it took six screenwriters--including THE BEST OF YOUTH scribes Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli--to put together a story this cookie-cutter rote and by-the-numbers.  The film was shot in English, so perhaps something got lost in the translation, especially with stilted dialogue like an enraged Gagarin yelling "I destroy everything I touch!" and "I don't follow your rules!  I don't believe in anything, so I can do what I want!"  Lithuanian actors Fedaravicius and Tumalavicius both debut here and aren't bad, though they're sabotaged by poor writing and a bland story. Tomlinson (JACK THE GIANT SLAYER) is stuck with an almost unplayable character about which we learn very little, so really the only entertainment value here is Malkovich, who spends a lot of time tending to his doves, showing his grandson how to properly shiv someone, and taking a steam with other underworld figures, like Ink (Peter Stormare), who's in charge of all the body art.  DEADLY CODE had an opportunity to explore a unique subject, but instead opts to fall back on trite dialogue, stale genre conventions and a scenery-slurping guest turn by its American export value.  (R, 103 mins)


MOBIUS
(France/Belgium/Luxembourg - 2013; US release 2014)

Quite possibly the most boring financial thriller this side of 1981's ROLLOVER, the deadening MOBIUS offers little aside from the novelty of THE ARTIST Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin in a straight-faced and completely serious role.  Dujardin is Russian FSB agent Gregory Lubov, codename "Moses," caught in a complex web of lies and deception involving American financial analyst Alice Redmond (Cecile de France), who's been exiled from Wall Street after helping bring down Lehman Brothers.  She's now working as a trader at the headquarters of a Monaco firm owned by billionaire Russian banking magnate Ivan Rostovski (Tim Roth), whose firm is a front for a global money laundering scheme.  Alice is actually working for the CIA as a mole in Rostovski's employ in order to obtain information that will enable her to return to the US. Rostovski keeps trying to get Alice into bed, but she's more interested in Moses, who's posing as a writer and, judging from Alice's facial twitching, popped neck veins, and quivering body spasms in their sex scenes, may very well be the inventor of the female orgasm.  These scenes aren't particularly explicit and de France's nudity is brief, but writer/director Eric Rochant's static, lingering close-ups of her face as Alice reaches multiple orgasms just feels like an odd decision that completely fails to come off as erotic, especially considering that, taken out of context, it looks like she could just as easily be constipated. The Monaco scenery looks beautiful, but Rochant's script is weak, especially when a folksy CIA agent (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS' Brad Leland) has to explain the concept of the Mobius Strip to Moses in the most heavy-handed fashion imaginable. Dujardin is good and is obviously capable of anchoring a suspense thriller, but it would've worked out better if MOBIUS was even remotely suspenseful or thrilling. De France isn't exactly a convincing American, and the always-reliable Roth is horribly miscast, playing the ruthless, big-money power broker with a glum, slouched disinterest that borders on narcolepsy. Also with Emilie Dequenne as Moses' FSB associate and John Lynch, John Scurti (RESCUE ME, HOUSE OF CARDS), and Wendell Pierce (THE WIRE, TREME) as CIA honchos overseeing Alice's infiltration of Rostovski's empire, MOBIUS is a sleep-inducing, hopelessly convoluted dud of a thriller where the most versatile acting is done by Cecile de France's facial muscles. (R, 108 mins)

In Theaters: THE WORLD'S END (2013)

THE WORLD'S END
(US/UK - 2013)

Directed by Edgar Wright.  Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.  Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Pierce Brosnan, David Bradley, Rafe Spall, Michael Sarne, voice of Bill Nighy. (R, 113 mins)

It's been nine years since Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg gave us the sleeper hit zombie homage SHAUN OF THE DEAD, followed in 2007 by the cop/buddy movie tribute HOT FUZZ.  For the final part of their so-called "Cornetto Trilogy" (named after the ice cream bar that appears in all three films), we find a more thoughtful and mature team of filmmakers.  They were always gifted with a knack for strong characterization that really made the films connect with fans, but THE WORLD'S END is something they couldn't have made a decade ago.  It's a film about entering middle age, a time when maybe your best years are behind you and you find your dreams didn't come true.  It's about letting go of youth or stubbornly refusing to grow up.  It's surprisingly heartfelt and often devastatingly poignant, all wrapped in a hilarious story that involves a sort-of alien invasion and gives Wright and Pegg the chance to once again pay tribute to a beloved genre that had a major impact on them.

In 1990, on the night of the last day of school, five friends attempted a pub crawl of the twelve watering holes in their hometown of Newton Haven.  They never finished it, and while they made attempts to keep in touch and remained friends in pairs for a few years, they largely went their separate ways as a quintet and on to their adult lives.  Everyone that is, except ringleader Gary King (Pegg), a legendary hellraiser in his youth who now, at 40, continues to behave like it's 1990 and he's 18 years old.  He's been in and out of rehab for alcohol and drug abuse, still wears the same Sisters of Mercy tee, drives the same car, listens to the same mix tapes, and hangs out at the same pubs in Newton Haven.  Gary wants to, as he states it, "put the band back together," and reunite the old gang and complete the pub crawl.  Three of the other four--divorced building contractor Steven (Paddy Considine), high-strung real estate agent Oliver (Martin Freeman), and car salesman Pete (Eddie Marsan)--reluctantly agree to return to their hometown, primarily out of morbid curiosity.  The other is Andy (Nick Frost), a corporate attorney who had a huge falling out with Gary in the mid '90s and hasn't spoken to any of the others since.  There's vague mentions of an "accident" that was the last straw for Andy, who hasn't had a drink since.  Andy wants nothing to do with Gary, but is compelled to go along when Gary repays him £600 he borrowed years earlier and mentions that he just lost his mother to cancer.  Feeling sorry for Gary and giving him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he's grown up, Andy surprises the others by showing up for the big night out, set to finish up at the 12th pub, The World's End.

It quickly dawns on the others that Gary hasn't changed a bit, especially when Andy finds out that Gary hit the others up for £200 each before visiting him (his mother isn't dead, either).  The pubs all look generically alike ("Starbucking," Steven calls it) and the four career guys are content catching up with one another but Gary's obsession with getting shitfaced--and mocking Andy for drinking water--soon causes tempers to flare.  It's around this time that Gary gets in a fight with a teenager in the men's room only to find that the kid is a robot-like creature filled with blue blood.  The guys finally notice how strangely the townspeople are behaving, almost as if there's been some otherworldly takeover of all of Newton Haven.  Agreeing that something's wrong and not wanting to draw attention to themselves, the guys decide to carry on with the crawl even as the situation worsens and they're pursued from pub to pub by an increasing horde of Newton Havenites seemingly possessed by an alien intelligence.

Wright and Pegg do a wonderful job establishing these characters and slyly use such things as "Starbucking" as a way of foreshadowing events to come (even the names of the pubs are used as indicators of plot developments that take place at each one).  SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ were both intelligently-constructed, character-driven stories cleverly disguised as genre spoofs, and to that degree, THE WORLD'S END, with its riffing on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and John Carpenter movies, sticks to their formula.  But there's a dark melancholy streak to THE WORLD'S END, the kind of which comes with maturity and middle age.  We all know characters like the five here--some of us maybe are these characters.  Every group has the one guy--in this case, Oliver--whose sister (Rosamund Pike as Sam) fooled around with at least one of his buddies.  Every group has the guy who got his balls busted a little more than others (Pete).  Go to your hometown and there's probably a guy like Gary hanging out at one of the local bars.  He may not be a goth guy or a headbanger--maybe he's a once-legendary jock still telling stories about the big game 25 years earlier and still wearing his varsity jacket if it fits.  Throughout the course of the Cornetto Trilogy, Wright and Pegg have approached genre spoofing as intelligently and as thoughtfully any filmmakers ever have, using them to create surprisingly real characters with thematic relevance to the genre being parodied.  Making an alien invasion spoof is easy.  Populating it with strong, believable characters who reinforce the genre staples while allowing the film to tell its own story takes a little more effort.

While THE WORLD'S END has a terrific ensemble (Pierce Brosnan also turns up as their old headmaster), it is, perhaps more than SHAUN and HOT FUZZ, very much Simon Pegg's film.  Largely considered simply a "comic actor" and onboard to add levity to the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and STAR TREK films, Pegg uses THE WORLD'S END to establish himself as a legitimate actor.  As Gary, he brilliantly and sometimes painfully conveys the desperation lurking just under the cocky bravado.  When his big night starts falling apart and he's pressed about why he's so obsessed with the pub crawl, his outburst of "It's all I have!" is just heartbreaking.  Pegg has turned in one of the great movie performances of this year, and it'll never happen, but it's one that deserves to be remembered come awards season (it's also interesting against-type casting to have Pegg, and not Frost, playing the perpetually juvenile fuck-up). THE WORLD'S END might not be quite as rapid-fire hilarious as SHAUN OF THE DEAD, and while that film and HOT FUZZ are still as enjoyable as they were when they were brand new, THE WORLD'S END is the most surprisingly substantive of the trilogy, offering a bit more to chew on that you'd expect from a movie getting dumped at the end of the summer.

In Theaters: TOTAL RECALL (2012)

TOTAL RECALL
(US - 2012)

Directed by Len Wiseman.  Written by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback.  Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bill Nighy, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho. (PG-13, 121 mins)


Is there really any need for a PG-13 remake of TOTAL RECALL?  Len Wiseman's (UNDERWORLD) take on the Paul Verhoeven/Arnold Schwarzenegger action/sci-fi classic from 1990 is even less faithful to its source, Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," and ultimately won't supplant anyone's fond memories of the original, but for a good chunk of its duration, TOTAL RECALL 2012 is surprisingly good.  The script by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback completely jettisons the Mars element, and instead focuses on a post-chemical warfare 2084 Earth where the only inhabitable regions are (for some reason) "The United Federation of Britain," and Australia, now referred to as "The Colony."  I wouldn't be surprised if Wimmer, a veteran journeyman screenwriter (STREET KINGS, LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, SALT) best known to genre fans for writing and directing the excellent 2002 sci-fi cult classic EQUILIBRIUM, had a hand in shaping, or at least influencing, the very effective dystopian look of the futuristic Colony, which resembles a sort-of high-tech, Shanghai shanty town that's one big Red Light District.

Colin Farrell as Quaid

Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell, in his second summer remake in a row after last year's dismal FRIGHT NIGHT redux) is a factory worker who commutes daily from The Colony to the UFB on "The Fall," a seven-minute ride through the center of the Earth.  He assembles "Synthetics" (robotic police officers) for the UFB by day, and at night, is plagued by vague dreams where he's some kind of secret agent.  Other than feeling like he's stuck in a dead-end job, Quaid is happy with Lori (Kate Beckinsale), his wife of seven years, and despite warnings from his friend and co-worker Harry (Bokeem Woodbine), he visits the memory-implant company Rekall, thinking the implantation of a spy-type adventure will lift his spirits.  During the procedure, the Rekall staff realizes that Quaid already is a secret agent, though he has no memory of it.

Farrell and Kate Beckinsale: "Conseedah
dat a deevawrse!"

Anyone who's seen the Verhoeven film is obviously familiar with the story so far.  In one respect, it's a detriment because those of us who have seen TOTAL RECALL 1990 many times know about the characters Quaid (and his other identity, Hauser), Lori, Harry, Melina (played here by Jessica Biel) and the villain Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), and that inevitably takes the element of surprise away from the plot twists (though the filmmakers do have some fun playing with the malfunctioning fat-lady disguise that Quaid used to sneak through Mars security in the 1990 film, and Farrell's Quaid is seen reading Ian Fleming's The Spy Who Loved Me at one point). TR 2012 keeps the characters familiar but changes their surrounding story significantly.  Cohaagen is now the Chancellor of the UFB, intent on wiping out The Colony and "terrorist" Resistance leader Matthias (Bill Nighy) so as to eliminate the lower class--the factory workers, who he intends to replace with Synthetics--in order accommodate the burgeoning overpopulation issue in the upper-class UFB.  The remake eliminates Cohaagen's right-hand man Richter (memorably played by Michael Ironside in the 1990 film) and instead combines that character with Lori, thereby allowing Beckinsale to do her action heroine routine.  There's definitely the potential for seeing a political subtext here, but it's largely unexplored, instead focusing on action and some truly stunning visual effects.  As familiar as the story may seem despite the many changes, TR 2012 really excels with some astonishing production design and CGI wizardry to create one of the most dazzling future dystopias that's been seen on the screen in quite some time.  The budget for this was allegedly in the neighborhood of a ludicrous $200 million, but it shows (is it going to make that back?  Probably globally).  It's not just CGI greenscreen backgrounds.  There's some innovative set design and some extremely well-choreographed action sequences throughout.   Wiseman, directing his first film since the atrocious LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007), does a commendable job throughout, which I believe is the first time anyone has said such a thing about Len Wiseman.

Jessica Biel as "Meh-leeeee-naaaaah!"

Is TR 2012 as good as TR 1990?  No.  But for a good hour or more, it seems like it might be.  Only in the home stretch, when it starts getting louder and sillier and more illogical (would an evil, megalomaniacal supervillain like Chancellor Cohaagen really suit up and take part in a raid on Matthias' stronghold in the inhabitable No Zone?), and more derivative (utilizing elements of BLADE RUNNER, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, and even STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES), does it stumble somewhat.  There was really no reason for a TOTAL RECALL remake, and while it's not a complete success across the board, Wiseman, the screenwriters, and the production design and effects team really brought their A-game to it.  Perhaps it's a depressing sign of the times to resort to applauding filmmakers for not phoning it in and instead actually investing themselves in a project, but for the most part, TOTAL RECALL 2012 surpasses admittedly diminished expectations and is much more enjoyable and entertaining than it has any reason to be.

Farrell drops into this outtake from THE FIFTH ELEMENT

Earlier this week, to coincide with the remake, Lionsgate released a new Blu-ray edition of the 1990 original.  Their previous Blu-ray was a shoddy HD transfer, while the new "Mind-Bending Edition" was supervised and approved by director Paul Verhoeven.  The Verhoeven/Schwarzenegger commentary and the rest of the extras are carried over from the prior edition, along with a new "Restoration Comparison" detailing the process of restoring and remastering the film and doing a side-by-side comparison of the old vs. new transfers.  It's quite an upgrade.