On Blu-ray/DVD: LAST FLAG FLYING (2017) and THE SQUARE (2017)

LAST FLAG FLYING
(US - 2017)

LAST FLAG FLYING, the latest film from director Richard Linklater, is a "spiritual sequel" to Hal Ashby's 1973 classic THE LAST DETAIL, the common denominator between both films being novelist and screenwriter Darryl Ponicsan (whose other credits include CINDERELLA LIBERTY, TAPS, and VISION QUEST). Ponicsan adapted his own 1970 novel The Last Detail for Ashby, and in 2005, published a sequel with Last Flag Flying, showing the same characters 30-plus years later. In adapting Flying for the screen, Ponicsan (his first screenwriting credit since 1999's RANDOM HEARTS) and Linklater changed the names of the characters and switched them from ex-Navy to ex-Marines. As a result, the non-sequel sequel LAST FLAG FLYING functions as a standalone film but anyone who knows the backstory and is a fan of THE LAST DETAIL will clearly recognize the three protagonists as the same guys several decades on. Set in 2003 in an America where the wounds of 9/11 are still open and raw, mild-mannered Larry "Doc" Shepherd (Steve Carell, formerly Randy Quaid as Lawrence "Larry" Meadows) is a recent widower who's just been informed his son was killed in action in Iraq and will be buried in Arlington. A despondent Doc then seeks out two old Vietnam buddies--crass, crude bar owner Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston, formerly Jack Nicholson as Billy "Badass" Buddusky) and recovering wildman alcoholic and now-devoutly religious pastor Richard "Mauler" Mueller (Laurence Fishburne, formerly Otis Young as Richard "Mule" Mulhall)--to accompany him to receive his son's body.

Along the way, they argue, bond, reminisce, bust each others' chops, and confront long-suppressed demons from Vietnam that have quietly haunted them. It starts fine but more or less plateaus once they learn that Doc's son's death didn't go down like the Marines claim and they decide to transport his body back home themselves. This results in an uneven mix of gut-wrenching drama and goofy comedy that's equal parts somber character study, GRUMPY OLD MEN, and PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES. Carell does some of his best dramatic work yet and really looks like a guy who's endured just about all he can handle after losing his wife to cancer and his son to war in quick succession, but Linklater really needed to rein in Cranston a little. A little of Cranston goes a long way here, and he's trying way too hard to emulate Jack Nicholson, not by doing a hacky Nicholson impression but by playing most of the film so broadly that his late shift from smartass to serious never rings true. Fishburne provides a nice balance to compensate for Cranston's playing to the cheap seats with his obnoxious behavior and routine invocations of "Hey, I got your (noun) danglin' right here!" bit. Cranston is a national treasure, but his work here is both broken and bad as he turns Badass Buddusky into Dumbass Sal. 93-year-old Cicely Tyson has a nice cameo as the mother of one of their other buddies who was killed in Vietnam, and LAST FLAG FLYING does display some genuine heart on occasion and shows a bit of a cynical streak in terms of the way the government and the military aren't above manufacturing fiction when it comes to telling families that a loved one has paid the ultimate price for their country, but it's kind of all over the place. Carell, Cranston, and Fishburne are great actors, but it doesn't seem like Linklater has them on the same page, and the entire film feels like it's arrived a decade too late, assuming THE LAST DETAIL needed a "spiritual sequel" in the first place. Amazon and Lionsgate gave this a big promotional push in the early fall as an awards season contender but ultimately backed off, canceling its expanded rollout and stalling it on just 110 screens at its widest release, for a gross of $965,000. Obviously they weren't feeling it either. (R, 125 mins)




THE SQUARE
(Sweden/Germany/France/US/Denmark - 2017)

"The Square" is an exhibit at a renowned Swedish art museum where a plaque declares it "a sanctuary of trust and caring," and adds "Within its boundaries, we all share equal rights and obligations." THE SQUARE is writer/director Ruben Ostlund's follow-up to his wildly overpraised FORCE MAJEURE. It was awarded the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival and is currently an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, even though a good chunk of it is in English. There's often a sense of groupthink when it comes to critical praise and it's a problem that's only gotten worse in the era of Rotten Tomatoes. In short, I can't recall the last time I've felt this disconnected from what critics are saying about a film and my reaction to it as it unfolds. The most insufferable Palme d'Or winner since UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, THE SQUARE focuses on museum curator Christian (Claes Bang, whose name is the best thing about this) and a series of distractions that begin with him being conned in the street and having his phone, wallet and cuff links lifted off of him and ends with an ill-advised marketing scheme that shows a little girl being blown up by a bomb while standing at The Square. Christian also has a one-night stand with an American TV news reporter (Elisabeth Moss) that results in a potentially messy tug-of-war with a used condom, and a black-tie museum gala flies off the rails when human exhibit Oleg Rogozjin (Terry Notary) mimics an ape, rampaging through the dining area, attacking an artist (Dominic West) and nearly sexually assaulting a woman while everyone idly watches the "art" unfold.

What does it all mean? Who knows? Who cares? Seen too late to be included on my Worst of 2017 list, THE SQUARE is the kind of movie mainstream subtitle-phobes think of when they hear someone say "It's a subtitled art film." Like the equally overrated and oppressively long TONI ERDMANN, just because something's mostly subtitled and has a couple of mildly transgressive scenes doesn't make it an instant classic. It's allegedly a comedy, though I don't recall laughing once, even at various cringeworthy situations. The much-ballyhooed tug-of-war with the condom was described by hyperventilating critics as nothing short of a brilliant, tour-de-force comedic set piece. Was it a Blake Edwards-esque display of game-changing genius that forever altered our perception of comedy? No, it was over after a couple of tugs in about ten seconds.  After watching, I looked at some reviews to try and understand what it was that I was missing, and a reviewer for Vox wrote "One moment, in which a chef hollers for a stampede of museum donors to stop moving so he can meekly tell them the buffet's offerings, is one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie." Really? Surely, you can't be serious? THE SQUARE lazily takes aim at fish-in-a-barrel targets: pretentious art exhibits (including one that's a room filled with piles of debris and a neon light flashing "You Have Nothing," and a creaking stack of chairs that seems ready to collapse at any moment), vacuous benefactors, unqualified people in charge, the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Comic Sans font, people with Tourette's, and cynical marketing strategies just to name a few. Christian is ultimately in a no-win situation after the public outcry over the terrorism-inspired marketing ploy goes viral, but he's then pilloried by purists for caving to censorship. Also, Moss' character has a large chimpanzee roommate with a moderate level of artistic talent. which is just something we're supposed to roll with because apparently it's clever and not at all stupid when there's subtitles. I'm assuming the joke here is that even a monkey can create the kind of art that's met with enthusiastic accolades by those in the scene--so wait, is Ostlund actually proving that with THE SQUARE?  Maybe the possibility exists that this whole thing is a total stunt but it speaks to Ostlund's stunning lack of focus with this aimless, tedious film that after it screened at Cannes at 142 minutes, he decided to tweak and tighten it and it ended up running nine minutes longer when he was finished. The general message is that while The Square promotes the idea of altruism and empathy among society, everyone around it is a self-absorbed hypocrite. Pretty insightful stuff. Maybe for Ostlund's next film, he can explore and deconstruct the satirical implications of poseur Von Triers and bargain-basement Bunuels and the pitfalls of believing your own hype. (R, 151 mins)

In Theaters: THE INFILTRATOR (2016)

THE INFILTRATOR
(US/UK - 2016)

Directed by Brad Furman. Written by Ellen Brown Furman. Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo, Benjamin Bratt, Amy Ryan, Yul Vazquez, Juliet Aubrey, Joseph Gilgun, Elena Anaya, Jason Isaacs, Said Taghmaoui, Art Malik, Olympia Dukakis, Simon Andreu, Michael Pare, Ruben Ochandiano, Carsten Hayes, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Ashley Bannerman, Juan Cely, Andy Beckwith, Xarah Xavier, Daniel Mays. (R, 127 mins)

Based on the memoir by US Customs special agent Robert Mazur, THE INFILTRATOR chronicles the mid '80s takedown of an extensive, global money laundering operation with ties to Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, and somehow manages to do it without featuring Benicio Del Toro in any capacity (though it does co-star reliable second-string Del Toro Benjamin Bratt). It's 1985 and Mazur, played here by Bryan Cranston, realizes the agency isn't getting anywhere with simple drug busts, and instead hatches a plan to follow the money. A veteran of intense undercover work, the Tampa-based Mazur is reluctantly teamed with hot-dogging, hair-trigger agent Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo, cast radically against type as "John Leguizamo"), with Mazur posing as a mob-connected New Jersey businessman named Bob Musella. As Musella, Mazur works his way into Tampa drug circles and finds an in with low-level Medellin flunkies Gonzalo Mora Sr (Eurocult vet Simon Andreu sighting!) and his hard-partying cokehead son Gonzalo Jr (Ruben Ochandiano). This leads him a little further up the ladder to the flamboyant, bisexual Javier Ospina (Yul Vazquez), who's always accompanied by a silent mystery woman straight out of SALON KITTY (Xarah Xavier), and makes an awkward pass at Mazur/Musella by fondling him when they're alone. Musella sets up money laundering operations using reputable banks all over the world, most of which are well aware of what they're doing but are OK with it as long as the cash keeps flowing. Mazur/Musella becomes a big enough player that he--along with rookie agent Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), pressed into service when the married Mazur impulsively invents a fiancee to avoid cheating on his wife with a stripper supplied to him by Gonzalo Jr--becomes a trusted associate of Roberto Alcaino (Bratt), a key figure in Escobar's inner circle.

Directed by Brad Furman (THE LINCOLN LAWYER) and scripted by his mother Ellen Brown Furman, THE INFILTRATOR has little new to offer to the "deep undercover" subgenre. There's the inevitable scenes of Mazur/Musella almost being exposed, whether someone catches a glimpse of the recording device planted in his briefcase or, in a scene that's pretty much mandatory in this kind of movie, the wire he's wearing malfunctions and starts burning through his skin. Mazur's marriage goes through the usual melodramatic checklist that culminates in his extremely patient wife Ev (Juliet Aubrey) giving him the "I don't even know who you are anymore" glare that's crosscut with a kicked-out Mazur lying in bed in a dingy motel room, thousand-yard-staring across the room, flicking the bedside lamp on and off FATAL ATTRACTION-style, pondering What I've Become. That happens about an hour and a half in, and honestly, THE INFILTRATOR almost lost me at that moment. I mean, seriously. Give us a fucking break, Furmans.

In spite of its stumbles, THE INFILTRATOR is a moderately diverting time-killer that gets a lot of mileage out of a miscast Cranston who, at 60, is probably at least 15 years too old for this role. Cranston is such a dynamic actor that he can sell virtually anything (the barely-released COLD COMES THE NIGHT is the only bad Cranston performance I've seen). He's given able support by Leguizamo, who can play this kind of role in his sleep, and Bratt, who's really perfected the Corinthian leather purr of the great Ricardo Montalban. Other recognizable character actors appear throughout the story, like Amy Ryan as Mazur's bitch-on-wheels boss; Jason Isaacs as a hapless government lawyer; Olympia Dukakis as Mazur's aunt, improbably and recklessly included in one of his undercover jobs; Michael Pare as doomed smuggler and informant Barry Seal; Said Taghmaoui and Art Malik as a pair of corrupt Panamanian banking execs; and Joseph Gilgun in what's probably a composite character, a violent felon and past Mazur informant sprung from the joint to function as Musella's bodyguard and all-knowing expert on the ways of the underworld. The film plays far too fast and loose with the facts (Seals' death in the film is not how it went down, and the final sting operation at a wedding is complete fiction) and gets by on its performances and  some set pieces that Furman would have to be a moron to screw up (one certain future YouTube highlight is Gonzalo Sr. happening upon an off-the-clock Mazur and his wife at their anniversary dinner). Furman lays on the Scorsese worship pretty thick at times--he really loves the "Steadicam following Cranston" bit--but he has some cool choices in classic rock, from an undercover Mazur's beginning-of-the-film intro striding into a bowling alley accompanied by Rush's "Tom Sawyer" to a long, ambitious, CHILDREN OF MEN-type tracking shot where the camera snakes around to introduce all the major players at the climactic wedding--a staged event to lure all the targets to Musella and Kathy's fake nuptials--set to The Who's "Eminence Front." One detriment to THE INFILTRATOR is that it's one of the cheapest-looking $47 million productions you'll ever see, with its saturated, fake-grainy look and some unconvincing greenscreen sticking out like a sore thumb, a good indicator that the money went to the cast and the song licensing. I generally liked THE INFILTRATOR--it's got Cranston, some genuine suspense, and it's never boring, but it's crying out for something more than the workmanlike Brad Furman is able to deliver. Maybe it's the presence of Leguizamo bringing back some fond memories of CARLITO'S WAY, but on several occasions, I kept thinking of how this could've turned out in the hands of an in-his-prime Brian De Palma.

On DVD/Blu-ray: STEVE JOBS (2015); TRUMBO (2015); and FORSAKEN (2016)

STEVE JOBS
(US - 2015)

Just two years after the already forgotten Ashton Kutcher-starring biopic JOBS, Danny Boyle's STEVE JOBS arrived to tell the Steve Jobs story once again. Based on the book by Walter Isaacson and adapted by Aaron Sorkin in a very Sorkin-esque fashion, STEVE JOBS takes a more experimental approach than most films of this sort. Boyle's film is essentially three long scenes, all taking place before major Jobs product launches in 1984, 1988, and 1998, each shot in, respectively, grainy 16mm, cinematic 35mm, and digital. The opening segment works the best and could almost function as a standalone short film, 40 minutes of dialogue-driven intensity as Jobs (an Oscar-nominated Michael Fassbender) prepares to introduce the world to the doomed Macintosh. He's furious about the "Hello" greeting not working and berates designer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) in front of everyone; he barely makes time for his old buddy Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), who just wants a shout-out to the Apple IIE that he designed; and he's incredibly cold and cruel to his ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) and five-year-old Lisa (played by Makenzie Moss in the first segment), the daughter that Jobs adamantly refuses to accept is his, even doing everything he can to avoid paying more child support even though Chrisann is going on welfare and he's worth $440 million. All the while, Jobs' long-suffering marketing manager and confidant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet, also Oscar-nominated) valiantly tries to hold everything together.

The first segment works so well that Boyle and Sorkin essentially repeat it twice more. But as it goes, the dialogue becomes more forced and the Sorkinese more insufferable. The rapid fire delivery of the first segment turns into endless speechifying and pontificating and starts representing all of Sorkin's most grating tendencies. It's no secret that Jobs was kind of an asshole and that comes through loud and clear here, at least until the feelgood ending when he finally accepts Lisa as his daughter (played in the last segment by Perla Haley-Jardine, best known as young B.B. from KILL BILL, VOL 2) just as he's about to unveil iMac as he receives a standing ovation while a cloying, Coldplay-like song by the Maccabees plays on the soundtrack. Boyle should be above such manipulative horseshit. Why are tears streaming down Winslet's face in this scene? The 1984 and 1988 launches were total failures--Rogen's jealous Wozniak keeps wanting to know why Jobs gets all the glory, and frankly, you will too. STEVE JOBS is a film that keeps an impenetrable man at a distance and it's cold by design--the shift into crowd-pleaser territory doesn't mesh with what came before, and by the end, you realize the film is little more than a stagy THIS IS YOUR LIFE with echoes of THE GODFATHER in that Jobs is constantly pestered on the days of product launches by past associates coming to him like he's Vito Corleone doling out favors on his daughter's wedding day. Fassbender nails the "driven intensity" element even though he doesn't really look or sound like Jobs, and Winslet works some occasional magic with what's really a thankless role, but STEVE JOBS just fizzles after the dynamite opening 40 minutes, falling into a comfort zone and riding it out on autopilot. Not bad, but pretty overrated. (R, 122 mins)




TRUMBO
(US - 2015)

A much more traditional biopic than the repetitious STEVE JOBS, TRUMBO is a very entertaining--though undeniably softened and sanitized to varying degrees--chronicle of the Blacklist and the face of the "Hollywood 10," communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976). Trumbo (Bryan Cranston, Oscar-nominated in a magnificent performance), respected Hollywood writer (KITTY FOYLE, THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO) joins the CPUSA in 1943 and in the ensuing years, earns a reputation as a pro-working man troublemaker along with such Hollywood luminaries as Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) and screenwriter pal Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.), a character invented for the film and a composite of five members of the Hollywood 10, the group of writers who were the first to be blacklisted and turned into industry pariahs at the dawn of the Cold War. Leading the charge against them before HUAC even calls them to testify are director Sam Wood (John Getz), Louis B. Mayer (Richard Portnow), John Wayne (David James Elliott), and the film's nominal villain, bitter, muckraking gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren). Cut to 1951, and needing to work after serving a year in prison for contempt of Congress, Trumbo offers his services to B and C studios and uses a variety of pseudonyms, often working on five scripts at once and popping amphetamines to keep going around the clock. Of course, it takes a toll on his family as devoted wife Cleo (Diane Lane) struggles to hold everything together until rumors abound that Trumbo was actually the uncredited screenwriter of the Oscar-winning ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953) and THE BRAVE ONE (1956), eventually leading to Kirk Douglas (Dean O'Gorman) and Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) breaking the blacklist by hiring Trumbo for SPARTACUS and EXODUS, respectively, and defiantly giving him credit under his actual name.

Trumbo's daughter Nikola (played in the film by Elle Fanning) served as a technical consultant, so of course, Trumbo's hardline communist stance is toned-down significantly for the film, and while it may tap dance around certain issues, Cranston is so good here that it's easy to overlook it. Adapting Bruce Cook's book Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter John McNamara and director Jay Roach (the AUSTIN POWERS trilogy, MEET THE PARENTS, GAME CHANGE) keep things moving briskly and get superb work out of their ensemble cast, particularly John Goodman, who makes every scene count as a bombastic B-movie producer who secretly hires Trumbo. It may take a somewhat simplistic view of a complicated subject, but as popcorn entertainment, it succeeds and never seems to revel in a sense of self-importance like STEVE JOBS. One wishes it didn't treat its subject with such kid gloves, but Cranston inhabits the role to such a degree that he wins over any doubts you might have. (R, 125 mins)



FORSAKEN
(Canada - 2016)

Though they appeared in the same films on a couple of past occasions (1983's MAX DUGAN RETURNS and 1996's A TIME TO KILL), the Canadian western FORSAKEN marks the first co-starring pairing of Kiefer Sutherland with his dad Donald. A labor of love for the Sutherlands, with Kiefer bringing along his buddy Brad Mirman to script (he also wrote Kiefer's 1998 directing effort TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.) and regular 24 director Jon Cassar to call the shots, FORSAKEN is an OK if undemanding western that almost plays like an old-fashioned '50s B oater with some modern F-bombs and a few enthusiastic blood squibs. Kiefer is John Henry Clayton, a Civil War vet, feared killer, and all-around bad guy who's put away his guns and is on his way back to his family home for the first time in ten years. Arriving to find his mother has since passed and his embittered reverend father (Donald) still resents him and everything he represents, Clayton tries to lay low, determined to live a peaceful life and prove that he's a changed man. Of course, that won't happen in a town where greedy robber baron McCurdy (Brian Cox, doing his best Al Swearengen impression) is forcibly buying up everyone's land so he can sell it to the inevitable railroad for a ridiculous profit. McCurdy's men, led by the weaselly Tillman (Aaron Poole), routinely bully and terrorize the landowners, much to the disapproval of the classy and sartorial Gentleman Dave (Michael Wincott), a more refined regulator who respects his adversaries, thinks reasoning can accomplish more and sends a better message than threats and cold-blooded murder, and only resorts to violence as an absolute last resort. Tillman and his mouth-breathing sidekicks never miss an opportunity to see how far they can push Clayton, despite Gentleman Dave's warnings that "You kick a dog enough, he's gonna bite."

Cliched dialogue like that abounds (Tillman when he first spots Clayton in the saloon: "Well, well, well...if it isn't John Henry Clayton!"), and the longer it goes on, the more FORSAKEN takes its cues from the likes of UNFORGIVEN and OPEN RANGE, and it can't help but feel like a lesser retread of both. Plus, it's extremely predictable and even by the standards of dumb underlings, the actions of McCurdy's men defy any kind of logic and reason, so much so that you wonder why McCurdy never dumps these clowns and lets Gentleman Dave do his dirty work for him in a much more diplomatic fashion. Still, it's a comfort-food kind-of western that goes down easy and doesn't aim for much more than straightforward entertainment. That may seem a little overly quaint coming on the heels of a revisionist genre assaults like BONE TOMAHAWK and THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but FORSAKEN seems content being what it is: a chance for a famous father-and-son to work together. Naturally, the scenes with Donald and Kiefer are what play best, and it's hard not to be sucked in when a distraught Clayton breaks down and his hard, stern father takes him in his arms, or when, later on, that hard, stern father tearfully admits "I was wrong about you." You see the scenes coming, but they carry some extra emotional resonance when you see a real-life father and son acting them out. They get some solid support from a supporting cast of friends like Cox, Wincott (who's very good here, playing an intriguing character who isn't a cardboard cutout and should've been given more to do), and Demi Moore as Clayton's one-time love who married another when he disappeared. Filmed in 2013 but only given a VOD and scant theatrical release in early 2016, FORSAKEN isn't even close to being the next great western, but it looks very nice and it's good to finally see the Sutherlands working together, and hopefully not for the last time. (R, 90 mins)

In Theaters: GODZILLA (2014)

GODZILLA
(US - 2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards.  Written by Max Borenstein.  Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, Richard T. Jones, Victor Rasuk, Al Sapienza, Taylor Nichols, Carson Bolde, CJ Adams. (PG-13, 123 mins)

The second attempt at an American GODZILLA serves to commemorate the iconic monster's 60th anniversary as well as erase any lingering trauma left by Roland Emmerich's universally-despised 1998 GODZILLA. Emmerich's "Zilla" was so reviled by Godzilla purists that 2004's GODZILLA: FINAL WARS (thus far the final film in the official Toho franchise) brought Zilla onboard and, in one of the all-time great big-screen disses, had Godzilla kill it in a matter of seconds. Director Gareth Edwards previously helmed the overrated 2010 monster movie MONSTERS, which was unique in its minimalist approach but lacking overall even though it already has a devoted cult following.  Edwards' affinity for Godzilla is obvious and he does a nice job of honoring its legacy as well as reshaping it for today's audiences.  Edwards knows he has to eventually give the audience what it wants, but he utilizes the same kind of anticipatory buildup that young Steven Spielberg used on JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, letting the tension mount and making Godzilla's entrance--about an hour into the film--a truly impressive sight to be behold. This is the biggest and most imposing Godzilla has ever been onscreen, but in finding some common ground between his low-budget MONSTERS roots and this mega-budget GODZILLA, Edwards often seems to be working at cross purposes.  It wasn't uncommon in the Toho productions of old for Godzilla's appearance to be delayed, and Edwards paces his film as such that even though Godzilla doesn't make his entrance until halfway through, it still works because it's just the way this story flows to that point.  Edwards also takes a page out of Spielberg's JAWS playbook by not showing too much.  There are very few full-on shots of Godzilla and even that isn't a problem.  The biggest mistake Edwards makes is that Godzilla simply isn't in the film enough, and it's a film that frequently seems to relegate its namesake to a minor supporting character and could just as easily have been titled ATTACK OF THE MUTOS.

The "MUTO"'s are "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms."  Opening with a prologue set in 1999, Japanese scientist Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his colleague Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins) are investigating a creature skeleton found in the Philippines with evidenced of hatched eggs.  At the same time, a Japanese power plant explodes, and American supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) has been tracking strange seismic shifts. The explosion, which kills several scientists including Brody's wife (Juliette Binoche), is blamed on an earthquake and the entire area is quarantined due to intense radiation. 15 years later, Brody is a raving conspiracy theorist convinced that there's no radiation in the area and that the Japanese and American military are covering something up regarding the truth behind the explosion. Of course, he's right. His Navy explosive experts son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has to go to Japan to get his father out of jail and the two are eventually arrested for trespassing in the quarantined area.  They're met by Serizawa and Graham, who are on the scene and recognize the same seismic patterns Brody was talking about 15 years earlier.  It's then that the first MUTO, a winged arachnid-esque creature, appears.  Serizawa deduces that it feeds on radiation and was trying to send a signal to a second MUTO that they trace to a nuclear waste site in the desert outside of Las Vegas.  But the signal was also heard by another creature, an ancient god resting near the core of the earth.  Known as "Godzilla," it has the power to restore balance to the natural order of things, and Serizawa is convinced that it will rise to fight the MUTOs, one of which is female and looking for a place to lay hundreds of eggs.  From Japan to Hawaii to Vegas and finally to San Francisco, the monsters will wreak havoc and do battle, and oh yeah, Ford has to figure out how to get back to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son (Carson Bolde) in San Francisco.

True to the Godzilla that most fans love, Edwards opts to make him a good guy here, despite his villainous, horrific kaiju origins in Ishiro Honda's 1954 classic.  As those films went on and were aimed at younger and younger audiences, Godzilla eventually became a good guy who would even do victory dances after winning a kaiju battle.  Godzilla is the hero here, but that doesn't mean he's any less furious.  His final battle with the MUTOs culiminates in perhaps Godzilla's angriest moment in the last 60 years.  It's a crowd-pleasing capper to the expected fight, but Edwards fumbles the ball a few times.  I heard grumbling from the audience on a few occasions where a Godzilla/MUTO throwdown was about to happen and Edwards cuts back to whatever Ford is doing.  It's one thing to subvert expectations and formula, but that's dangerously close to just being a contrarian dick.  It's commendable that Edwards has no interest in turning this into a generic Michael Bay-style, quick-cut, shaky-cam, video-game, CGI blur--and the CGI on display throughout GODZILLA is top-notch and proof that it can look good when the filmmakers want it to--but why cut away from a kaiju battle?  Edwards walks a fine line and mostly ends up on the right side with the film's effective pacing, less-is-more reveals, and some stunning visual effects, but when he ends up on the wrong side, it's glaring and deflating. The actors are fine, but no one cares about Ford, especially when Watanabe's Serizawa (a nice nod to the 1954 film for those in the know) is the far more interesting character (it's too bad Watanabe and Hawkins vanish for most of the last third of the film).  Taylor-Johnson has little to do other than run from place to place and doesn't really have much to build on, though I suppose it's nice that Edwards and screenwriter Max Borenstein (with uncredited contributions by Frank Darabont) didn't turn him or Navy Admiral Stenz (David Strathairn) into the kind of slogan-spouting, flag-waving cartoons that most films of this sort would.

It's got some major flaws (the climactic battle is sometimes too dark and murky-looking for its own good), but overall, GODZILLA is a fun time, especially in the almost quaintly old-school way that it's made.  The suspense is allowed to build, the action sequences are coherent, the CGI is done with care, and the monsters are genuinely frightening.  It's as much a tribute to Spielberg as it is to Godzilla.  This is once again a situation--OCULUS was another recent one--where it's a surprise that a film is made in an almost defiantly old-fashioned way and manages to stick out from the crowd simply for looking more like a movie instead of a video game.  I like Edwards' Spielbergian mindset.  It shows he's studied the classics, he knows what works, and he knows what doesn't need fixed.  We've seen it enough times that we're maybe a little numb to its magic, but remember the first time you saw JAWS or JURASSIC PARK?  Remember that feeling? Edwards goes for that here and sometimes pulls it off.  Sometimes he doesn't and makes some questionable decisions that have the best intentions but seem to stem from him wanting to go too far in the opposite direction.  No one needs a feature-length WWE battle, but at the same time, cutting away from kaiju throwdowns is a risky move that provoked audible frustration in the crowd.  Edwards gets enough right that this is a good GODZILLA, but his missteps prevent it from being a great one.  Yes, it's a classic compared to Emmerich's botch job, and while every dollar is up there on the screen and it looks fantastic, I'm still partial to the guys running around in monster suits while demolishing scale models of Tokyo.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE LAST DAYS ON MARS (2013) and COLD COMES THE NIGHT (2014)

THE LAST DAYS ON MARS
(UK/Ireland - 2013)

Not as good as EUROPA REPORT but still far better than STRANDED, THE LAST DAYS ON MARS is, like those films, another throwback ,'80s-inspired outer space horror outing that only managed the get the slightest of theatrical releases.  This one tries to be a thinking person's sci-fi film along the lines of EUROPA REPORT, MOON, and SUNSHINE, but it works best when it's content to be a straight-up B-horror movie.  Indeed, MARS gets off to an extremely brisk start for these kinds of things, barely establishing most of the characters before they start getting offed one by one.  Then, faced with a lot of time and too few people left to kill, things slow down to the point where it becomes a crushing bore.  It almost feels like director Ruairi Robinson and screenwriter Clive Dawson have more highbrow things in mind but decided to get the commercial obligations out of the way first and finding nothing else on their plate to fill the second half of the movie.  They should've slowed down and paced themselves for the long haul.  And have fun with it--this should've been titled SPACE ZOMBIES or even MARS NEEDS ZOMBIES and just rolled with it. 

On the last day of a six-month international mission to the red planet, crew member Marko (Goran Kostic) is investigating trace evidences of life when a crater opens up and sucks him under the Martian surface.  Captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) leads some of the crew on a search, and they lose Dalby (Yusra Warsama) in the process.  While Brunel and a few others are still out, a zombified Marko and Dalby turn up at the ship and try to kill the others.  As the infection spreads and the dead crew members revive to attack, second-in-command Campbell (Liev Schreiber) is forced to find his inner Ripley and take control.  LAST DAYS works best in the early going, and it starts so well that it just barrels through its limited number of actors and grinds to a halt right when it should be gaining momentum.  It's a backwards approach that might've worked if the filmmakers had anything significant to say, but this isn't exactly hard sci-fi we're dealing with here.  It's zombies in space but somehow finds a way to screw it up.  With location shooting in the vast deserts of Jordan, LAST DAYS looks terrific, the interiors on the ship have an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere, and the cast (Schreiber and Koteas are good, and there's also Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, and Johnny Harris) is unusually credible for such standard genre fare.  It's suspenseful and engrossing for about 50 minutes before its slow, shambling stagger to an unsatisfying conclusion. Universal put up some of the budget, but must not have seen much potential, opting to hand the US distribution rights over to Magnet, who dumped it on 13 screens for a $24,000 gross.  (R, 98 mins)


COLD COMES THE NIGHT
(US - 2014)

The late, great Anthony Perkins' son Osgood Perkins co-wrote this drab, tired would-be film noir that offers no suspense and no surprises other than a shockingly bad performance by the usually infallible Bryan Cranston.  Using the dual crutches of fading eyesight and a garbled Russian accent, Cranston is Topo, a money mule on a delivery with his dumbass nephew/driver Quincy (Robin Lord Taylor).  They stop for a few hours' sleep at a shitty motel run by widowed Chloe (Alice Eve), who lives on the property with her daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker of LOUIE).  The motel primarily functions as a brothel for the local hookers and a safe haven for drug dealers, overseen by corrupt cop Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), an ex of Chloe's who gives her a cut of his proceeds (Chloe, of course, has a heart of gold and the illegal activities are just a way to make ends meet).  When Quincy attacks a hooker and both are killed in the melee, his Jeep--with the money Topo was supposed to deliver--is impounded by the cops, led by (who else?) Billy, who searches the vehicle and makes off with the loot he finds inside.  Desperately needing his money and helpless with his poor eyesight, Topo kidnaps Chloe and forces her to help him recover what belongs to his employers. 

COLD COMES THE NIGHT just never works, whether it's the inconsistency of Topo's eyesight (he can't drive, he can't count money and can't see to write anything on a piece of paper in front of his face, but he's a point-blank crack shot and can get the edge on several people who can actually see), the cartoonish ludicrousness of Cranston's accent, which is less like a BREAKING BAD badass and more like Evil Yakov Smirnoff (at one point, he pulls a gun and orders someone to "Shut fuck up"), or the complete lack of urgency in the slumbering direction of co-writer Tze Chun, who never gives this any sense of pacing, energy, or logic.  Watch the scene where Billy pulls Chloe and Topo over for a traffic stop, swearing at them over his PA speaker in the middle of town, in no way behaving like a dirty cop who knows how to keep a secret.  There's ultimately no reason for Topo to be blind or Russian other than to indulge Cranston with a character who comes off more like an SNL parody than a credible, threatening villain.  There's so little here that the film actually ends at around the 78-minute mark, but there's an absurdly slow-moving, 12-minute (!) closing credits crawl to pad this thing out to 90 minutes.  Cranston is uncharacteristically off his game here, but Marshall-Green (PROMETHEUS) is worse, and KIDS star Leo Fitzpatrick is wasted in a nothing role as a second driver who taxis Topo around.  A bland misfire, the thoroughly forgettable COLD COMES THE NIGHT opened on just 16 screens in January 2014, pulling in a paltry $17,000.  (R, 90 mins)

In Theaters: ARGO (2012)

ARGO
(US - 2012)

Directed by Ben Affleck.  Written by Chris Terrio.  Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Rory Cochrane, Scoot McNairy, Christopher Denham, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Chandler, Chris Messina, Bob Gunton, Philip Baker Hall, Titus Welliver, Zeljko Ivanek, Richard Kind, Michael Parks, Adrienne Barbeau, Richard Dillane, Keith Szarabajka, Jamie McShane.  (R, 120 mins)

ARGO is a riveting, relentlessly-paced chronicle of the covert operation that rescued six Americans who escaped from the US Embassy in Iran as the 1979-81 hostage crisis unfolded.  They spent nearly three months hiding in the home of Canadian ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor (Victor Garber) before CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directed) was able to put an extremely unlikely rescue plan in motion, or as Mendez's boss Jack O'Donnell (Bryan Cranston) puts it:  "This is the best bad idea we've got."

Mendez is presented with a preliminary plan of getting the six Americans bicycles to ride 300 miles to the Turkish border ("You can send someone to follow them with an air pump," he says), but stumbles upon an idea while watching BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES on TV:  have the six Americans pose as a Canadian film crew scouting Iranian locations for a big-budget STAR WARS ripoff.  Mendez consults Oscar-winning makeup designer John Chambers (John Goodman), who's "worked for us before," and brings in aging Hollywood producer (and fictional composite character) Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), to help establish the backstory to make the plans for the film "real."  They can't just say they're making a movie...it has to look like it's being made, which means a fake production company, ads in Variety, a table read, Chambers creating costumes and makeup effects, and Siegel doing some Hollywood wheeling and dealing.  They choose a script called ARGO, a "piece of shit" that's in turnaround and likely has no chance of getting made.  Mendez, posing as a Canadian movie producer and using the cover name "Kevin Harkins," arrives in Tehran on January 27, 1980 and meets with Taylor and the six Americans, assigns them their cover identities and preps them for an escape from the Tehran airport via a flight to Switzerland.

This whole incident was known for a long time as "The Canadian Caper," and for the safety of the 50 American hostages at the embassy (who were ultimately released on January 20, 1981), US involvement remained top secret until the whole "Argo" operation was declassified by President Clinton in 1997.  Until then, it was a Canadian operation, which strained their relations with Iran and Taylor had to head home for his own safety. There was a 1981 Canadian TV movie entitled ESCAPE FROM IRAN, which dealt with the story strictly from the Canadian side with Taylor, and one flaw of ARGO is that it does seem to downplay Taylor's involvement and just how much he put himself and his wife at risk by giving sanctuary to the Americans.  It doesn't take long for the Ayatollah's forces to figure out that six Americans are unaccounted for, and if they'd been caught, Taylor and his wife certainly would've been jailed or executed.  ARGO is, of course, "based on a true story," so Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio do play a little fast and loose with some facts for the sake of dramatic and entertainment purposes. Apparently, the tension-filled trip through the Tehran airport wasn't nearly as tension-filled as the film suggests, and one of the six Americans, Robert Anders (played by Tate Donovan in a gray wig) is chosen to pose as ARGO's director because he's "the oldest of the group" at 54, when the real Anders was, in fact, just 34 at the time. 

But ARGO is not a documentary, it's a thriller, and it's a damn fine one.  After the excellent GONE BABY GONE (2007) and THE TOWN (2010), ARGO is Affleck's most accomplished work yet as a director, and one that makes a clear case that he's a serious filmmaker.  This is an actor who's clearly spent a lot of time watching and learning from other directors over the course of his career.  He does a terrific job of not just overseeing a 1980 look (from the hair, the wardrobe, and the ghastly eyeglass frames to the smoke-filled interiors) but a 1980 feel, even opening with that era's Warner Bros. logo.  ARGO has the same sort of tense, nail-biting, nerve-wracking energy that guys like Sidney Lumet and Alan J. Pakula routinely brought to their films of the 1970s and early 1980s.  Affleck also proves to be an actors' director, graciously giving all of his co-stars the best moments, particularly Goodman and Arkin, both of whom are just fantastic.  Arkin, especially, is an absolute joy to watch as a seen-it-all dealmaker who's way past his prime but still knows how to get it done.  One surprising element of ARGO, given its grim, serious nature, is how laugh-out-loud funny it sometimes is.  Terrio's script has some great quotable dialogue, most of it coming from Arkin, Goodman, and Cranston.  The supporting cast is packed with character actors young and old and Affleck gives them all an opportunity to shine. Affleck himself is good as Mendez, even if he isn't exactly a convincing Hispanic and looks nothing like the real guy.   In the end, ARGO is a stomach-in-knots experience that honors some extraordinarily brave people and is one of the year's best films.

Tony Mendez meeting with President Jimmy Carter
in 1980 after completing the "Argo" rescue mission.