On Blu-ray/DVD/VOD: THE ASSISTANT (2020) and GUNS AKIMBO (2020)

THE ASSISTANT
(US - 2020)

A quietly harrowing, unsettling day-in-a-workplace drama that's rooted in the Harvey Weinstein scandal, but takes an abstract, minimalist, and at times ambiguous approach. Ambiguous in the sense that it doesn't specifically deal with Weinstein per se, but someone very much like him, and he's also never seen onscreen. He's heard on occasion, whether it's a muffled voice behind a closed door from which a browbeaten underling might emerge, or on a profane tirade over the phone. This figure is referred to only as "Him," and he's a high-powered movie exec in a NYC office that's a powderkeg of toxicity, bullying, enabling, and gaslighting. It's seen through the eyes of Jane (OZARK's Julia Garner, who's phenomenal here), a recent Northwestern grad who's one of three office assistants and, as the newbie who's been there for less than two months, she's the first one in and the last one out every day. She Ubers in from Astoria seven days a week, makes the coffee, turns on the lights, boots up the computers, makes the copies, gets the mail, books the flights and hotel rooms, signs the invoices, handles accounts payable, and does extra tidying that the janitorial crew might've missed. Things like a lone earring on the floor of his office, or scrubbing out an odd stain on the couch. The other two higher-seniority assistants--both men (Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins)--often treat Jane as their assistant, though it's arguable that their actions would be the same if she was a man. When she incurs his wrath, they're sympathetic and help her write the apology e-mail he demands, almost like they're giving her a lesson in how to placate him from their own experience.

Seemingly mundane occurrences all very methodically reveal a pattern of manipulation and abuse that's been heaped on everyone to varying degrees, and writer/director Kitty Green, a documentary filmmaker (2017's CASTING JONBENET) helming her first narrative feature, goes for an almost JEANNE DIELMAN-level of cold detachment and subtle screw-tightening. Things get really tense when a new assistant named Sienna (Kristine Froseth) arrives from Boise, where the boss recently attended a conference. Sienna is a waitress with no clerical experience, and Jane is bothered that she's been booked into a posh hotel while she gets settled. She takes her concerns to the company's HR head (Matthew Macfadyen) in a brilliantly-executed ten-minute nerve-shredder of a sequence that's one of the most troubling and infuriating scenes in recent memory ("Don't worry...you're not his type"), one that doesn't really sell you on trusting your HR rep in a workplace where everyone is trying to stay on the boss' good side, but also serves as the film's turning point that leads to Jane realizing her own complicity in what everyone at the office knows is going on (watch them all snicker when someone jokes "Don't ever sit on the couch!"). THE ASSISTANT is a film that sneaks up on you and has your stomach in knots, its intensity almost feeling like a horror film at times (the voice of the boss is provided by veteran character actor Jay O. Sanders, and he sounds almost gutturally demonic at times). It's a devastatingly merciless clinic on systemic workplace abuse and many online comments section detractors missed the point when they felt that Green pulled her punches by not going after Weinstein by name. It's not meant to be about Harvey Weinstein. It's about a mindset and a culture that allowed something like Weinstein to happen. And it's best film of 2020 so far. (R, 87 mins)



GUNS AKIMBO
(Germany/New Zealand - 2020)

Like a decade-late tribute to the collected works of Neveldine/Taylor, GUNS AKIMBO puts Daniel Radcliffe through the paces of a CRANK and GAMER mash-up with a touch of SHOOT 'EM UP and WANTED that feels like it was scripted by a Mountain Dew Kickstart thread on 4chan. In the dystopian near future of Shrapnel City, Miles (Radcliffe) hates his job coding for phone app games with titles like "Nut Bust 2," is routinely humiliated by his boss, and still pines for Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), the ex who dumped him. His life changes when he stumbles on an online underground snuff/fight club called "Skizm," which pits real people in kill or be killed situations, all captured by drone cameras and livestreamed to their rabid base of subscribers. After engaging in some anonymous shit-talking online, some goons show up at Miles' apartment, knock him out, and he wakes up with guns crudely bolted to his hands with an accompanying text message: "Welcome to Skizm. Your opponent is Nix." Nix is the introduced with the caption "This is fucking Nix," and she's a feral, unstoppable killing machine played by Samara Weaving, who's been so good in cult movies like THE BABYSITTER, MAYHEM, and READY OR NOT, and here looks like Klaus Kinski as a future noir Aguirre. As Miles tries to maneuver his way around with guns attached to his hands (cue shock value joke shot of Harry Potter's prosthetic dick flopping around as he tries to take a piss), Nix turns up everywhere tries to hide, derisively calling him "Fuck Boy" and leaving a trail of destruction and snarky bon mots in her wake ("Suck my clit!"). After a pair of Shrapnel City cops (Grant Bowler, Edwin Wright) try use him as bait to nab a fugitive Nix, Miles and Nix ultimately reach a tentative truce, forming an unholy alliance when Skizm mastermind Riktor (Ned Dennehy) kidnaps Nova around the time Nix discovers Riktor's been keeping a secret from her about her past.

There's a few clever ideas and legitimate laughs (Nix going berserk when a dudebro tells her "You should smile more"), but GUNS AKIMBO runs out of gas pretty quickly, opting to get more loud and obnoxious the longer it goes on. Even Weaving's crazy act, quite entertaining in the early going, wears out its welcome by the end, and before that, there's the requisite stupid needle drops, with action scenes set to aggro techno covers of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" and Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz," plus Rick James' "Superfreak," and Stan Bush's "Never Surrender" from the 1989 JCVD classic KICKBOXER. As prefab cult movies go, you could do worse, but there's just not much here when it's all said and done. If GUNS AKIMBO is remembered at all--and it won't be--it's for writer/director Jason Lei Howden (DEATHGASM) having a pre-VOD release social media meltdown that saw him getting banned from Twitter and then launching attacks from Saban Films' official GUNS AKIMBO Twitter account instead. There's more to it than that, but honestly, who gives a shit? (R, 97 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE CURRENT WAR (2019) and ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA (2020)

THE CURRENT WAR
(UK/US/Russia - 2019)

An ambitious but inert chronicle of the 1880s "War of the Currents" between Thomas Edison (Team DC: direct current) and George Westinghouse (Team AC: alternating current), THE CURRENT WAR has a behind-the-scenes backstory that's ultimately more interesting than the one it presents onscreen. Originally shown at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2017 and set to be released that November by the Weinstein Company (you can already see where this is going), it was one of many films pulled from the release schedule and shelved indefinitely when HarveyGate broke in the October interim. Weinstein had been supervising some last-minute editing, and with the film in limbo and Weinstein out, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL, and several episodes of AMERICAN HORROR STORY) appealed to co-executive producer Martin Scorsese to allow him to re-edit the film to his own--and not Weinstein's--specifications as well as arrange some additional reshoots. Gomez-Rejon also tossed the original score heard in the 2017 Toronto version and replaced it with a new one. The end result--sold to the upstart 101 Studios and advertised as THE CURRENT WAR: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT for its theatrical run in October 2019--is a rarity in that, at 102 minutes, it's actually ten minutes shorter than what the notorious Harvey Scissorhands was going to release in 2017. Despite a relentless blitz of TV spots, THE CURRENT WAR died at the box office, though it will no doubt find its proper audience once schools reopen, playing over four class periods to bored junior high science students while the teacher gets caught up on grading papers.

Written by Michael Mitnick, who originally pitched the idea as a musical production over a decade ago (Weinstein's name has been removed from the released version, but other credited producers like Scorsese, Steven Zaillan, Bob Yari, and Timur Bekmambetov should give you an idea of how many people were involved at various points over the long development period), THE CURRENT WAR opens in 1880 as Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch, also one of the producers) obtains a patent on an invention "whose purpose is simple: to give light." It involves lighting by direct current and he attracts the attention of both powerful financier J.P. Morgan (Matthew Macfadyen) and President Chester A. Arthur (Corey Johnson), the latter already impressed with Edison's invention of the phonograph. His work also intrigues engineer and entrepreneur Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), who invites Edison to dinner but is stood up with no explanation. It's this personal slight that begins the "War of the Currents," as Westinghouse and his friend Franklin Pope (Stanley Townsend) tout their method of electric illumination with alternating current, which covers longer distances than direct current. Edison is made aware of this by contract worker and "futurist" Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), who warns him that most of the country is empty space and that focusing on direct current isn't thinking about the long-term. This leads to a back-and-forth game of one-upmanship that will see tragedies for both men--Edison's wife Mary (Tuppence Middleton) dies from a degenerative disease assumed by historians to be a brain tumor that wasn't helped by that era's all-purpose quick fix of laudanum, and Westinghouse loses his right-hand man Pope to an accidental electrocution--and a frustrated Tesla eventually joining forces with Westinghouse when he can no longer deal with the stubborn and egomaniacal Edison.

Original 2017 poster

THE CURRENT WAR covers the details, but does so in a dry, educational fashion that isn't far removed from those historical films that Roberto Rossellini made in the last years of his career, and Gomez-Rejon's frequent indulgence in fish-eye lenses, Dutch angles, and other flashy moves only serves as a transparent attempt to liven things up. It doesn't handle the time element very well--after captions reading "1880" and "1882," it's pretty much abandoned until the coda at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, so the years are a blur in terms of what happens when. This is especially bungled with the illness of Mary Edison, who's given a diagnosis in one scene, and the next shows the closed casket at her funeral. When did she die? A month later? A year later? Later that same day? Who knows? And we can only surmise a few years have passed when Edison's secretary-turned-partner Samuel Insull (Tom Holland) suddenly shows up in one scene with a glued-on mustache. The actors are fine, especially Katherine Waterston, who provides a spark whenever she turns up as Westinghouse's loving and unexpectedly shrewd wife, and Cumberbatch and Shannon finally meet in passing at the 1893 World's Fair, and while it might not exactly be the diner scene in HEAT, it's the best moment here for both stars. There's nothing really wrong with THE CURRENT WAR, but it's just very slow-moving and the constant tech talk doesn't make for very riveting drama. Fans of Cumberbatch and Shannon should see it, but if you want the gist of the story in a much shorter lesson, just stick with Tesla's video for their minor 1991 hit "Edison's Medicine." (PG-13, 102 mins)

ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA
(Australia/UK - 2020)

Based on the true story of three anti-apartheid activists who pulled off a daring escape from a South African prison in 1979, ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA makes sure to cross everything off the prison break movie checklist. After setting off a series of leaflet bombings in Cape Town in 1978, African National Congress activists Tim Jenkin (Daniel Radcliffe) and Stephen Lee (Daniel Webber) are found guilty and thrown into the Pretoria political prison for white males, where Jenkin immediately begins plotting an escape. They find a mentor in legendary ANC member and close Nelson Mandela associate Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), who's serving four life sentences for trying to overthrow the government. Goldberg warns Jenkin to calm down ("Everybody thinks they're gonna break out next week"), but he wants out, and a photographic memory allows him to draw a detailed sketch of the key used by the guards to unlock the cells. He's able to construct a makeshift wooden key in the prison shop and eventually gets it to work, then methodically creates numerous duplicates, obsessively testing them in the middle of the night while spending his days devising an escape plan and creating keys to all the doors that will eventually allow them to simply walk out when no one is looking. Goldberg ends up sitting out the escape to run interference with the block's least competent guard on duty, and Jenkin and Lee are instead joined by Frenchman Leonard (Mark Leonard Winter), a fictionalized version of the third escapee, Alex Moumbaris.

It took a lot of work and planning, and it's in these scenes that director/co-writer Francis Annan generates the most stomach-knotting tension. But the biggest assist the three men got during their escape was some extremely lax security in that section of the prison complex, subsequently stepped up significantly after the embarrassment of three prisoners getting through a half dozen locked doors and simply walking out of a front gate that was carelessly left unlocked and wide open, which even they find shocking ("The gate's open?!"). ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA takes some liberties beyond not mentioning Moumbaris by name, a big one being its depiction of Jenkin and Lee caught in the act of series of leaflet bombings on a busy street. It makes for a tension-filled opening sequence, but in reality, they were quietly apprehended without incident moving some printing equipment into their residence, which had been under surveillance for some time. Lee almost pulled off his own escape while the pair were awaiting trial, but that's never mentioned here, and it's strange that Lee is more or less relegated to being Jenkin's loyal sidekick, with Webber (best known as Lee Harvey Oswald in the Hulu series 11.22.63 and as Vince Neil in the Motley Crue biopic THE DIRT) given little to do. It does clear the way for a committed performance by Radcliffe, who's never not going to be Harry Potter, but does an excellent job of projecting some genuine grittiness and disappearing into this role. The specificities of the plot aside, ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA is generally routine as far as prison break thrillers go, right down to Jenkin's chief nemesis being a guard nicknamed Mongo (Nathan Page), who's cartoonishly sadistic even by apartheid standards. There's nothing new here, but it's well-made and compelling, like a politically-driven ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. (PG-13, 106 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: BRAVEN (2018); BEAST OF BURDEN (2018); and MOHAWK (2018)

BRAVEN
(US/UK/Canada - 2018)

The surprisingly engaging BRAVEN doesn't pretend to be anything other than a formulaic action thriller, but it handles itself with such spirited gusto that it's easy to roll with what's basically ASSAULT ON LOG CABIN 13. Jason Momoa, best known as GAME OF THRONES' Khal Drogo, may be Aquaman but he has what's probably his best big-screen role yet as Joe Braven, a tough-as-nails logger with a heart of gold in a small, isolated Pacific Northwest town in the middle of snowy nowhere (the film was shot in Newfoundland). He's been running the family logging business since his dad Pops (Stephen Lang) has been suffering from accelerated dementia following an on-the-job head injury a year earlier. Pops has been pretty forgetful and sometimes fails to recognize his granddaughter Charlotte (Sasha Rosoff) and is prone to wandering into the town bar and causing trouble when he thinks random women are his late wife. The time has come for Joe and his wife Stephanie (Jill Wagner) to consider putting him in a home, and Joe wants to spend some time with Pops at the family cabin to discuss his care going forward. Once they arrive at the cabin, some problems arise: stowaway Charlotte snuck into the bed of Joe's truck and tagged along, and there's a crew of criminals led by ruthless drug lord Kassen (Garret Dillahunt as Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker) who arrive to retrieve a shipment of drugs stashed at the Braven cabin by one of Joe's dipshit drivers (Brendan Fletcher) who's been secretly hauling product for Kassen on his logging runs. Kassen makes it very clear that he wants his drugs and he's not leaving any of them alive when he's done, so Joe does what anybody would do: turn into an action hero and join forces with Pops, who drifts in and out of lucid, coherent thought, to protect the cabin, keep Charlotte safe, and take out Kassen's crew one by one.

Joe Braven is pretty adept with shotguns and a bow and arrow, and once she inevitably arrives looking for Charlotte, Stephanie is shown to be well-schooled in the ways of the crossbow. Yes, BRAVEN is the kind of movie where the good guys instantly turn into a family of John Wicks when their cabin is under siege, just like Kassen is the kind of bad guy who has to get pissed off and tell his flunkies "Enough...we're taking this cabin!" Except for a dodgy-looking greenscreen in the climax, veteran stunt coordinator and TV director Lin Oeding (CHICAGO FIRE, CHICAGO P.D.), making his feature debut, stages some occasionally wild and inspired action scenes when Joe starts unleashing hell on Kassen's guys (the bit where he hurls a flaming axe that lands in a guy's neck, then throws a jar of moonshine at him is pure PUNISHER: WAR ZONE). In a perfect world, BRAVEN would establish Momoa (also one of 26 credited producers) as a major action star, and his performance is quite good despite the silliness of the whole thing. Braven isn't a smartass and doesn't have any convenient witty quips at the ready. Momoa gets you on his side but plays it with just the right degree of gravitas to keep everything grounded. He's very good with young Rossof and he works well with Lang, one of our great character actors who gets saddled with too many junk movies to pay the bills. Pops is a difficult role that Lang handles beautifully. Watch the way he plays one scene where Pops traps one of Kassen's goons and drives a screwdriver into his lower jaw and up into his mouth. Despite the dementia, Pops' fight-or-flight kicked in but midway through forcing the screwdriver into the guy's jaw, Lang does this thing with his eyes where he conveys Pops was somewhere else and is only just then cognizant of the horrific act he's committing in self-defense. Of course, Lionsgate dumped BRAVEN on VOD with no fanfare and sure, there's nothing innovative about it whatsoever and I don't want to oversell it, but this is the kind of throwback, kickass, no-bullshit action movie that's impossible to resist and hugely enjoyable when done right. (R, 94 mins)




BEAST OF BURDEN
(US - 2018)

With indies like SWISS ARMY MAN, IMPERIUM, and JUNGLE, Daniel Radcliffe has made some intriguing career choices post-HARRY POTTER, but his attempt at an airborne LOCKE crashes and burns. LOCKE, which spent its entire 85 minutes inside a car with Tom Hardy, was a compact little suspense piece that also inspired last year's Netflix Original film WHEELMAN. Much like a copy of a copy losing its clarity, BEAST OF BURDEN is essentially DIPSHIT LOCKE, with Radcliffe as Sean Haggerty, dishonorably discharged from the Air Force for reasons we never learn, now working as a pilot flying drug shipments for a Mexican cartel. Sean's piloting a tiny, rickety, one-seater Cessna and he's constantly badgered with phone calls from his wife Jen (Grace Gummer, one of Meryl Streep's daughters), who thinks he's working for the Peace Corps; intimidating Mallory (Robert Wisdom), who represents the cartel boss; and Bloom (Pablo Schreiber), a DEA agent who's convinced Sean to rat out the cartel in exchange for new identities and medical coverage for Jen, who's just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Until the climax, when the story exits the Cessna and improbably becomes a murky chase and shootout thriller that requires the otherwise prepared and cool-under-pressure Mallory and Bloom to suddenly turn into careless idiots, BEAST OF BURDEN--basically LOCKE meets AMERICAN MADE--is largely a one-man show for Radcliffe, who mainly takes calls and grimaces as he pretends to fly a rickety plane through very inclement weather at night. This also means most of the film takes place in near-total darkness, which makes it hard to see what's happening on some occasions. The actor gives it his best shot, but there's just not much depth to Adam Hoelzel's script, as evidenced by a line from Bloom to Sean where Schreiber is actually required to say "You're a beast of burden living on borrowed time." The same could be said for Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt's time in Hollywood if BEAST OF BURDEN is any indication. (R, 90 mins)

MOHAWK
(US - 2018)

Ted Geoghegan's 2015 feature debut WE ARE STILL HERE borrowed elements of THE FOG and displayed an affinity for the classic films of Lucio Fulci. It didn't exactly reinvent horror, but it was an anomaly in today's genre scene in that its focus was on middle-aged characters and was the kind of effective post-Ti West slow-burner that Ti West fans think Ti West makes. Geoghegan is back with MOHAWK, a complete misfire of a sophomore effort that has him regressing in every way. Set in New York in 1814 in the waning days of the War of 1812, the film tells a simple revenge/survivalist story that's hard to screw up, but does so anyway. A group of American soldiers led by Col. Hezekiah Holt (Ezra Buzzington) piss off the wrong Mohawk in Oak (Kaniehtiio Horn). She's a fierce warrior in a tribe that's adamantly remained neutral in the US and British conflict, and she's in a polyamorous relationship with fellow tribe member Calvin Two Rivers (Justin Rain) and British officer and arms dealer Joshua Pinsmail (Eamon Farren). Holt and his men start by attacking Joshua, but he's rescued by Oak and Calvin and the pursuit begins. They eventually capture and kill Calvin and then Joshua, and shoot Oak and leave her for dead. She experiences a vaguely supernatural reawakening, and of course, makes them pay with their lives. And your time.

The polyamory angle leads to exactly one interesting moment, when Calvin is being tortured and screaming in agony, and it's Joshua who insists on going back to rescue him while Oak tries to talk him out of it. What is the point of putting these characters in that relationship when it has no bearing on anything that develops? Is this a colonial survivalist thriller or a Dan Savage column? It's trying too hard. It's like Geoghegan said "I want to make a brutal, blood-splattered revenge saga, but I'm also woke." Has anyone watched BROKEN ARROW on Turner Classic Movies lately and thought "Yeah, this is good, but I could relate to it a lot more if Debra Paget was fucking Jimmy Stewart and Jeff Chandler's Cochise?" Also, why is there an anachronistic, intrusive, throbbing John Carpenter-styled synth score in a War of 1812 movie? The entire project has a student-film amateurishness about it that makes it look like a group of LARPing fanboys took over an historical site for a couple of weekends and a made a movie. With the exception of Buzzington, who brings a sort-of off-kilter Stephen McHattie intensity to Col. Holt, the performances are all various degrees of atrocious across the board, with the actors making no effort to sound period appropriate at all. Horn is a dull heroine, though in her defense, Geoghegan and co-writer Grady Hendrix (whose recent Paperbacks from Hell, a non-fiction chronicle of all those great horror paperbacks of the 1970s and 1980s, is a fun read) keep her offscreen for too much time. There's one nicely-done PREDATOR-inspired bit where Holt's fey translator (Noah Segan, who's just terrible and wearing a bad Henry Jaglom hat, for some reason) crawls into a hole and Oak's eyes materialize behind him, but considering the promise Geoghegan showed with WE ARE STILL HERE, MOHAWK is an alarming step in the wrong direction, both in concept and execution. (Unrated, 92 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: JUNGLE (2017) and THE SHOW (2017)

JUNGLE
(Australia/US/UK - 2017)

This fact-based chronicle of future tech entrepreneur and ecological activist Yossi Ghinsberg's harrowing three weeks spent lost in the uncharted jungles of Bolivia in 1981 provides a chance for Daniel Radcliffe to give it everything he's got and he certainly runs with it. Looking to see the world after serving three years in the Israeli military, Tel Aviv-born Yossi upsets his parents by not going to university, but he's a wandering, curious soul who does what he must do. After venturing through Alaska and down into the States, with stops in NYC and Vegas, Yossi ends up in Bolivia where he meets Swedish tourist Marcus Stamm (Joel Jackson) and noted American hiker and photographer Kevin Gale (Alex Russell). A chance encounter with Austrian adventurer and treasure hunter Karl Ruprechter (Thomas Kretschmann) leads to the quartet venturing deep into uncharted territory in the foreboding Bolivian jungle on a trip they'll soon regret taking. An infection in Marcus' feet slows them down, but after building a raft and attempting to travel via river, increased tensions and the discovery that Karl may not be what he claims to be have them turning against each other as much as they're fighting the forces of nature. Hopelessly lost, Marcus and Karl decide to hike their way back to civilization while Kevin and Yossi proceed along the river on the raft. The raft is destroyed in a dangerous stretch of rapids and Kevin and Yossi are separated. So begins Yossi's three-week journey into the heart of darkness, with a useless map and delirium sending him in circles, battling the elements, fungal infections, a persistent parasite, red ants, and quicksand.

Sporting a convincing Israeli accent, Radcliffe looks like he went to hell and back shooting this thing, but director Greg McLean (WOLF CREEK, ROGUE, THE BELKO EXPERIMENT) keeps things moving at a detrimentally glacial pace, and by the third act, gets totally sidetracked with Yossi's flashbacks, hallucinations, and random Jesus Christ poses. Based on Ghinsberg's memoir, JUNGLE admirably doesn't sugarcoat its characters and their passive-aggressive treatment of Marcus, and is appropriately grueling and unflinching (though as icky as the parasite-extraction scene is, readers of the memoir may wonder why they left out the bit where Yossi lands ass-first on a sharp pole, penetrating and severely injuring his rectal area), but McLean meanders all over the place, torn between making a Werner Herzog homage and a standard survivalist adventure, and coming up short at both ends. Still, Radcliffe fans will definitely want to check it out, but they'll probably end up wishing his work was showcased in a better movie. (R, 115 mins)



THE SHOW
(US/UK - 2017)

THE SHOW wants to be a blistering takedown of reality TV, but it has no idea how satire works, taking its place alongside AMERICAN VIOLENCE as the most embarrassingly heavy-handed film of 2017. After a rejected woman on a BACHELOR-like reality show kills the bride and groom and turns the gun on herself on live TV, smarmy host Adam Rogers (Josh Duhamel, sporting the douchiest haircut you'll ever see) pitches a new show to his boss (Famke Janssen as Faye Dunaway) called THIS IS YOUR DEATH (the film's original title when it played the festival circuit), where contestants come up with various elaborate ways to commit suicide in front of a live studio audience and millions watching on TV, with the winner's designated survivors getting a huge payday. Meanwhile, hard-working family man Mason (Giancarlo Esposito, who also directed) has fallen on hard times and works two jobs--one as a janitor and the other as a dishwasher at a posh restaurant--and ends up losing both of them in the same night (the dishwashing one because he sees Rogers sitting at the bar and criticizes THIS IS YOUR DEATH, prompting dickhead Rogers to complain to the manager). With his wife on his case, his disabled son needing new crutches, his bills mounting, no job prospects, and close to his breaking point thanks to the deck that the script has stacked against him, Mason decides to audition for the season finale promising $1 million to the winner, and of course, he makes the cut.

Approached with a sardonic, DEATH RACE 2000 or NETWORK attitude, THE SHOW could've been the bitter, bile-soaked screed that the subject deserves. But it comes off as obnoxiously pushy and utterly humorless wokesploitation, taking itself completely seriously, and Duhamel's impossibly smug caricature of a TV host is hard to take after a while (imagine how subversive this could've been simply by casting someone like Ryan Seacrest as Rogers). The only thing that saves THE SHOW from total oblivion is a genuinely effective performance by Sarah Wayne Callies (THE WALKING DEAD) as Rogers' sister, a nurse and recovering addict whose life takes a downward spiral thanks to her brother's notoriety as the man behind the most controversial show in America. THE SHOW gets more sanctimonious and full of itself as it goes along, pointing fingers at everyone, from Rogers' increasingly monstrous behavior to the ghoulish, rubbernecking audience that can't get enough (there's one guy holding a sign that says "Show Me the Bloody") and Mason on live TV shouting things like "WHY ARE YOU WATCHING THIS?" and "TURN IT OFF!!!" Considering Esposito is the director, that may be the most accidentally satirical thing THE SHOW has going for it. (R, 104 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: IMPERIUM (2016)

IMPERIUM
(US - 2016)

Written and directed by Daniel Ragussis. Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Sam Trammell, Nestor Carbonell, Burn Gorman, Chris Sullivan, Seth Numrich, Pawel Szajda, Devin Druid, Linc Hand, Adam Maier, Roger Yawson. (R, 108 mins)

It's hard not to be reminded of 1998's AMERICAN HISTORY X or 2002's THE BELIEVER while watching IMPERIUM. It's another chronicle of white supremacy, but while it provides insightful commentary on the nature of fascism, its primary concern is being a straightforward thriller. It's also yet another example of the changing nature of film distribution. Headlined by an actor known the world over, it's a sad commentary that a solid, crackerjack nail-biter like this is relegated to a few screens and a VOD dumping. It didn't cost much to make and it's not an offbeat art film. It's a smart movie that would've been a hit 10-15 years ago, and it's depressing that there's no place for IMPERIUM in today's blockbuster-obsessed, franchise-driven distribution model. It's also a very topical film considering the rhetoric of a major American political party's Presidential nominee, a man whose words and opinions have frequently been termed "fascist." IMPERIUM looks at the motivation behind fascism and what really drives it ("it's about looking for someone to blame"), and does so without being overtly political. There's no liberal vs. conservative soapboxing here, but it does provide a sometimes terrifying look inside the white supremacy culture, much like AMERICAN HISTORY X did. The stereotypes are there, but they don't always apply. White power meetings take place at suburban homes in IMPERIUM. The ugly rhetoric is discussed at backyard barbecues while children play, and where housewives bake cookies decorated with swastikas. These are people you know, and you don't know them at all.

Young FBI agent Nate Foster (Daniel Radcliffe) is a quiet outsider among his colleagues, riding along on raids but spending most of his time at his desk combing through surveillance material. It's his introverted and analytical nature that attracts the attention of Agent Angela Zamparo (Toni Collette). When six sealed barrels of radioactive cesium go missing from an overturned chemical transport vehicle outside of Washington, D.C., Zamparo is convinced it's part of a plot by Richmond-area white power radio host Dallas Wolf (Tracy Letts) to detonate a dirty bomb in the nation's capital. She wants Nate to go undercover as a skinhead and infiltrate Wolf's inner circle. Passing himself off as an embittered vet just back from Iraq, Nate gets his foot in the door by getting chummy with low-level dirtbags like Vince (Pawel Szajda) and Roy (Seth Numrich), guys who talk loud and are always looking for a fight. This introduces him to the more connected Ohio-based religious militia figure Andrew Blackwell (Chris Sullivan) and engineer Gerry Conway (Sam Trammell). While Blackwell is the standard-issue, swastika-sporting skinhead, albeit with more drive, focus, and a seemingly intelligent demeanor than clowns like Vince and Roy, Conway is an upper-middle class suburban husband and father with a successful career. Of course, he's taught his kids that their playhouse needs to be fortified in case "the mud people" attack, but Nate is caught off-guard by how far from the stereotype Conway and his associates present themselves. Conway even tells Nate "You seem a little mature for a skinhead," as they observe the drinking, fighting, and carrying on of Vince and Roy. Nate is eventually introduced to Wolf, by spinning a story about being backed by an investor who wants to take Wolf's show nationwide but needs assurance that his plans are coming to fruition. When a small Geiger counter indicates high levels of radiation in Wolf's house, Nate and Zamparo are convinced that the cesium is on the premises and set in motion a plan to take down Wolf and his followers.

Things don't go according to plan, but little does in IMPERIUM. It's a film that never plays out how you expect it to and adds unpredictable little asides that sometimes border on black comedy: witness the cringeworthy moment when a humiliated Vince, who talks a big game about "going way back with Dallas," isn't even recognized by the radio host when he introduces Nate to him. Or, even funnier, when Nate visits Wolf at his nondescript house in an average neighborhood and finds that this white power hero is a middle-aged man who still lives with his mother. It's her house and the much ballyhooed radio show is broadcast from a tiny den in the basement ("This is just temporary!" Wolf keeps adamantly insisting). Wolf spouts a lot of ideas online and in his speeches ("Diversity is a code word for 'white genocide!'"), but the early signs that he's little more than a shit-stirring troll who regards his followers as little more than useful idiots are telling. It's a very subtle performance by Letts, a veteran playwright and screenwriter (BUG, KILLER JOE, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY), who's only recently been gaining ground as an actor in films like THE BIG SHORT, ELVIS & NIXON, and an acclaimed turn in INDIGNATION. Radcliffe is credible and believable throughout, though director Daniel Ragussis' script, inspired by a true story involving now-retired FBI agent Michael German, sometimes abandons key figures and plot points. It's stated that "a lot of these white supremacist guys are all talk," but as the true threat presents itself, we never see what happens to some of the others, and this is after Blackwell makes it quite clear something about Nate doesn't gel. But then we never see him again. The audience might also like to know more about the African-American protester at a white power rally who recognizes Nate and asks him what he's doing there (staying in character, Nate has to respond by shouting "Shut the fuck up, n----r!"), but we never see him again.

It's around this time that IMPERIUM pivots from AMERICAN HISTORY X-type statement to a domestic terrorism thriller along the likes of ARLINGTON ROAD or the little-seen UNTHINKABLE. The shift is smooth enough that it isn't awkward or a major disruption, but it's noticeable. And it still works. Though its antagonists differ, IMPERIUM actually has a lot in common with UNTHINKABLE, a terrific film that should've received more exposure than it got, but maybe that's the issue right there. It would be one thing if Radcliffe were paired up with, say, Bruce Willis in a quipping, mismatched buddy actioner about two FBI agents out to stop a white supremacist outfit...if they don't kill each other first!  That's a film that would get a wide release. But think back to ARLINGTON ROAD's release being delayed for several months in 1999 because of the Columbine tragedy. 2010's UNTHINKABLE and now IMPERIUM are two smart yet multiplex-ready, commercial thrillers that take a completely serious and uncompromising approach to their subject. Maybe the potential for controversy is too much of a headache. Maybe movies like this just make studios uncomfortable. They wouldn't have 20 or 30 years ago. This is not to imply that IMPERIUM is some kind of classic or anything, but it is a good film that deserves a much better rollout than it's getting.

In Theaters: NOW YOU SEE ME 2 (2016)

NOW YOU SEE ME 2
(US/China - 2016)

Directed by Jon M. Chu. Written by Ed Solomon. Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, David Warshofsky, Tsai Chin, Ben Lamb, Richard Laing. (PG-13, 129 mins)

Sure, 2013's enjoyable NOW YOU SEE ME was a sleeper hit, grossing $120 million in the US, but was anyone demanding more? Apparently so, as it did almost double that overseas. In what will go down as one of the least necessary sequels of the year, the thoroughly superfluous, $90 million NOW YOU SEE ME 2 isn't even inspired enough to be subtitled NOW YOU DON'T, and is the kind of perfunctory, clock-punching follow-up that makes you retroactively like the first one a little less. That film was directed by Luc Besson protege Louis Leterrier, a sure-handed pro who kept the story engaging and fast-moving, and really conveyed a knowledge and appreciation of magic. In the hands of STEP UP 2: THE STREETS, STEP UP 3D and JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER director Jon M. Chu, whose most recent film is 2015's flop-turned-inevitable-cult-movie JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, NOW YOU SEE ME 2's chief goal seems to be how many nonsensical dei ex machina it can pull out of its ass like rabbits out of a hat. NOW YOU SEE ME had the magician team of The Four Horsemen using their skills to bankrupt greedy and corrupt insurance titan Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), whose company denied claims to scores of Hurricane Katrina victims. Tressler figures into the second half of this sequel in a way that you'll figure out long before the Four Horsemen do, but initially, the heroes--illusionist J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), hypnotist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) and presumed-dead street magician Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), along with new addition Lula May (Lizzy Caplan)--have been in hiding, but are called back to public view at the behest of The Eye, the top-secret society of magicians. Their assignment: expose tech billionaire Owen Case (Ben Lamb) as a fraud intending to use his software to steal the personal info of millions of his customers and sell it on the black market. But someone else hijacks their presentation, also publicly outing rogue FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), who's still pretending to pursue the Four Horsemen for the benefit of his boss (Sanaa Lathan), even though he was revealed to be the enigmatic Fifth Horsemen at the end of the first film.

The figure behind all the mayhem is Case's former partner Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe), who faked his death a year earlier and has spent that time in Macau putting into play his Blofeldian plot to control the world's economy with a data chip device. Now a fugitive, Rhodes springs imprisoned magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) from custody and takes him to Macao to help get to the bottom of Mabry's plan. Of course, Bradley manages to get away from Rhodes--who blames Bradley for the magic trick mishap death of his father 30 years earlier--while the Four Horsemen pull off a complicated heist of the chip device from a top secret facility, with constant double-crosses coming from Mabry as well as Chase McKinney, Merritt's duplicitous and more-than-slightly effeminate twin brother played entirely too broadly by Harrelson, with a curly wig and a toothy grin that suggests what might've transpired had there ever been a hypothetical Marjoe Gortner one-man show based on the biography Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story.

NOW YOU SEE ME 2 is a mess. There's some of the charm of the first film in the camaraderie between the Four Horsemen, particularly some ballbusting between Atlas and McKinney, and it seems Eisenberg and Harrelson are having a good time. The globetrotting plot goes from NYC to Macao to London and makes a lot of noise, but not much sense. There's no sense of magic to a film where the tricks and illusions are all CGI'd or revealed to be some kind of absurdly complex conspiracy. Its twists and turns are such that the characters on the receiving end of them--be they the FBI, Mabry, Rhodes, various security guards, or Tressler--have to be completely incompetent idiots to fall for them (again in Tressler's case). The heist of the chip device starts out clever but becomes too belabored and improbable to even laugh at. The script, written by a returning Ed Solomon (BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, MEN IN BLACK), has little consistency, especially with Freeman's Stevens, whose purpose and loyalties change with little or no logic or flow whenever the movie needs them to (he and Caine are just here for the paid vacation to Macau). Taiwanese singer and actor Jay Chou, who you probably haven't thought of since his turn as Kato in the forgotten Seth Rogen disaster THE GREEN HORNET, is on hand as another new Horseman once they arrive in Macau (his character's grandmother is played by veteran actress Tsai Chin, best known as the treacherous daughter of Christopher Lee in the 1960s FU MANCHU movies), but he barely figures into the story and only seems to be there to satisfy a Chinese co-production deal with TIK Films. He likely has more to do in the version being released in Asia, but his complete insignificance to the film only highlights the fact that more work went into negotiating the business deal than coming up with a coherent story to justify its existence.

Dumbest of all is the opening at the expose of Case, where the Four Horseman are posing as waiters, bartenders, and security staff to get behind the scenes. These are world-famous magicians and international fugitives and the subject of ongoing media scrutiny and yet, here they are, undisguised, milling about a highly publicized event at a massive arena for America's biggest tech mogul, TV cameras everywhere, and not a single person recognizes them. Even dumber, right there at the event is Rhodes, openly talking to the Horsemen near the stage, in full view of everyone even though his sole case seems to scouring the ends of the earth to find them. Compare that to a scene later on in London when each of the magicians just show up at various street corners to set up their final takedown of Mabry as everyone stops what they're doing and whips out their phones because they recognize them as globally-known celebrities. Everything in this film relies on contrivance and convenience. NOW YOU SEE ME was hard to swallow, but it was a fun movie that had some inspired moments. The sequel turns its heroes into a combination of David Copperfield, Jason Bourne, 007, and Wikileaks. Honestly, by the end, I had no idea what was going on and I really didn't care. And it was upon that realization that I felt a kinship to Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine that I will likely never feel again.

On DVD/Blu-ray: STARRY EYES (2014); EXISTS (2014); and HORNS (2014)

STARRY EYES
(US/Belgium - 2014)

In horror circles, STARRY EYES was hailed as an instant cult classic almost immediately after it played the festival circuit and hit the VOD rounds last fall. I always get a little skeptical when today's horror fans latch on to something, because that's when you get conned by things like The Legend of Ti West and the absurd notion that THE INNKEEPERS is a good movie, or that Alexandre Aja's PIRANHA is "like, totally old-school exploitation!" Mind you, there's a great idea at the heart of STARRY EYES, and there's some cutting observations about the culture of Hollywood, the pretentiousness and the catty one-upmanship and those would-be stars working mundane day jobs when they aren't trying to catch a break at an audition. It also sports a supporting cast filled with minor cult figures like SOMEONE'S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR and DEADGIRL's Noah Segan, RED, WHITE & BLUE stars Amanda Fuller and Marc Senter, COMPLIANCE prank caller Pat Healy, and a KISS Kameo by professional wealthy offspring Nick Simmons.  But in its execution, STARRY EYES is impossibly heavy-handed, making its points in the most suffocatingly ham-fisted and overly literal ways imaginable, and it just gets dumb and dumber as it goes along. In an undeniably strong and demanding performance that hints at deeper issues haunting the character, Alexandra Essoe is Sarah Walker, a Big Taters waitress struggling to make it as an actress. She gets an audition for a horror film called THE SILVER SCREAM, produced by Astraeus Pictures, a once-notable studio now sort-of on the skids. It's an unusual audition held by a pair of eccentrics, but she gets a callback that consists of a lot of flash photos in a dark room. She's then called to meet with the producer (Louis Dezseran), an aging Roger Corman-type who unsubtly tries to get her on the casting couch. Initially rejecting but having a change of heart after she quits her job and sees her roommates and friends going nowhere in their own acting and filmmaking pursuits, she caves to the producer's demands that she "show" how dedicated she is and that she make the appropriate "sacrifice."

Of course, there's something more sinister afoot, as the writing/directing team of Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer have shown the producer with a pentagram burned into his hand and his assistant (Maria Olsen, fast becoming the Michael Berryman of today's DIY hipster horror scene) wearing a pentagram necklace. Yes, they're all Satanists, and their cult is fame, the central conceit of STARRY EYES being a literal death and rebirth as your old self dies--the sacrifice--and a star is born. After fellating the producer, Sarah's body starts breaking down in Cronenbergian fashion, and also in ways very similar to the awful slut-shaming body-horror film CONTRACTED. There's a cynical message here that all Hollywood success stories are rooted in evil, soulless vanity, but that shouldn't surprise anyone after ALL ABOUT EVE. By the time Sarah vomits maggots and starts offing her friends in ways that will even have the most seen-it-all gorehounds flinching, the filmmakers have her literally stabbing one in the back in order to make sure you're getting the message that she's not the same old Sarah. It's all rather obvious and while Kolsch and Widmyer take the L.A. scenester-types to task early on, the notion of "breaking through the gate" and achieving fame and fortune by selling your soul to Satan isn't exactly a high concept if you've ever heard of Faust. This has its moments, augmented by a very John Carpenter-esque synth score by Jonathan Snipes, but I'm really at a loss as to what movie everyone saw when they got on the STARRY EYES love train and declared it a modern horror classic. (Unrated, 96 mins)


EXISTS
(US - 2014)

After co-directing the 1999 phenomenon THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, Eduardo Sanchez has stayed busy with DTV or limited theatrical release horror titles like ALTERED (2006), SEVENTH MOON (2009), and the critically-acclaimed LOVELY MOLLY (2012). Sanchez has never had the accolades nor the success that BLAIR WITCH brought him, so now, 15 years later, he's back sucking from the faux-doc/found footage teet with EXISTS, just as the subgenre he helped make mainstream is falling out of favor with fans. Obviously, Sanchez is an old pro at this kind of thing, and EXISTS has a handful of well-done set pieces, but you have to wade through an hour of dudebro dialogue, idiotic characters, several long sequences in night-vision or almost total darkness, and plenty of time to ponder the age-old question in this type of horror film: why are you still filming? Five dumbasses (two couples and the obligatory comic-relief fifth wheel who does all the filming) head to a remote cabin in the woods (owned by the uncle of two of the dudes, who actually are bros) for a weekend of beer, weed, and doing generally EXTREME! shit, all to be documented in its entirety on their GoPro cameras. Their SUV hits something, and only a blurred figure is seen on the playback, but once they're at the cabin, a howling in the woods convinces the goof of the group (Chris Osborn) that they're dealing with Bigfoot. Even if EXISTS wasn't rendered moot arriving so soon after Bobcat Goldthwait's Bigfoot-themed WILLOW CREEK, one of the better recent found-footage offerings, it can't overcome a deadly first half with some of the most irritating characters the subgenre has ever offered. Most of the dialogue is along the lines of "What the fuck was that, bro?" or "What the fuck's goin' on here, bro," and "You killed my friend, motherfucker!" as one fires a shotgun blindly in the dark, which of course attracts the creature and promptly gets the trigger-happy bro's head bashed in. To his credit, Sanchez does get some serious momentum going as the five get whittled down to three and they try to venture through the woods to find the highway. Naturally, one's surefire shortcut results in them getting lost, but Sanchez knows how to do this right. He gets that climactic BLAIR WITCH vibe going in the last 20 or so minutes with the sprinting creature's relentless pursuit (one sudden appearance through a cloud of fireworks smoke is a good example of a jump scare done right), but it's still not enough to counter the damage caused by such a shitty script, penned by Sanchez's usual post-BLAIR WITCH writing partner Jamie Nash. It's maybe worth a Netflix stream on a really slow night if you're still a found-footage completist, but in returning to the woods to recapture some of his dwindling mojo, Sanchez remains doomed to spend the rest of his career in BLAIR WITCH's shadow. (R, 81 mins)

HORNS
(US - 2014)

Anything would be a step up for French horror director Alexandre Aja after his smug and miserable fakesploitation 2010 remake of PIRANHA, and while it's not always successful, HORNS is certainly ambitious. Based on Joe Hill's novel, the very busy HORNS crams a lot of story into two hours and even though plot points are rushed through or not fully fleshed-out, it still feels overlong, like it either needed to lose 20 or so minutes or just be extended to a cable miniseries. Letting the story breathe might've done a lot to smooth over the rough tonal shifts as HORNS careens from love story to murder mystery to dark satire to CGI-heavy supernatural horror in ways that probably read a lot better on the page than they play on the screen. That doesn't mean there aren't pleasures to be had in HORNS, which has its moments before collapsing into contrivance, convenience, and stupidity in its third act. Radio station DJ Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) is besieged by media and outraged citizens of his small town when his longtime girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple) is found brutally murdered in the woods. Nobody believes he's innocent except his older brother Terry (Joe Anderson) and his lawyer best friend Lee (Max Minghella). The town thinks Ig is the devil, and it doesn't help his case that he sprouts a pair of horns out of his forehead overnight--horns that not everyone can see, but when they do, they feel compelled to confess their deepest secrets and their most bluntly honest thoughts. It's this portion of HORNS that works best, as Aja wrings much dark humor out of a mom openly admitting she hates her screaming child, a bartender crowing about his dogfighting ring and how his dream is to torch his bar and collect the insurance money, or Ig being hassled by two bullying cops who casually admit they'd rather be sucking each other off. It also generates some well-handled drama as Ig's mom (Kathleen Quinlan) and dad (James Remar) admit they think he's guilty and would rather never see him again ("I don't want you to be my son anymore, sweetheart," his mother explains). People of genuinely good character--like Lee and Merrin's grieving father (David Morse)--can't see the horns, and over time, Ig learns to use their power to his advantage, with a highlight being one hilarious sequence where he's followed by a small army of reporters and uses the horns to convince them to beat the living shit out of one another, with the winner getting an exclusive, tell-all interview (there's a great callback to this scene much later, as reporters are all outside a courthouse with cuts, bruises, and bandages). Flashbacks to their childhood fill in the blanks of how Ig and Merrin got together, the effect it had on Ig's relationship with his buddies, and what exactly led to his being accused of her murder.

Admirably gory and going all-in with hard-R glee, HORNS works best in its periodic black comedy phases. No matter how silly a film's premise, it can always work if it follows its own rules, which HORNS doesn't always do. The more it goes on, the more uneven it becomes, as Aja and screenwriter Keith Bunin (the HBO series IN TREATMENT) juggle elements of DONNIE DARKO, TWIN PEAKS, HELLBOY, GHOST RIDER, early Peter Jackson splatter comedy and, in a possible shout-out to Joe Hill's dad Stephen King, STAND BY ME and THE DEAD ZONE until they just drop the balls and let them scatter. It's entirely too easy to figure out who the real killer is and once it's revealed, there's still over 40 minutes to go as Aja embarks on a Peter Jackson climax spree and can't seem to decide where the movie should end. Even with all the plot, it still loses track of several major characters (Kelli Garner as the no-self-esteem, self-described "town whore" who's carried a torch for Ig since childhood, seems especially shortchanged), and Merrin's dad's eventual sympathizing with Ig feels rushed and unconvincing. It's definitely worth seeing once, as Radcliffe is quite good and the film is really firing on all cylinders when it's being funny--Heather Graham has a great bit as a diner waitress giving false info about Ig to the police in the hopes that it makes her the star witness at the eventual trial ("I'm gonna release my own sex tape and have a reality show and be on the cover of Us Magazine!" she squeals with wild-eyed glee)--but the more it goes on, the more of a unwieldy, undisciplined mess it becomes. (R, 120 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)