Opened 40 Years Ago: THE HOWLING (3/13/1981)

 

THE HOWLING opening in Toledo, OH 
on 4/10/1981

On Blu-ray/DVD: 3 FROM HELL (2019), NIGHT HUNTER (2019) and SPIDER IN THE WEB (2019)

3 FROM HELL
(US - 2019)

If you thought Rob Zombie shit the bed with 31, then fuckin' hold his motherfuckin' beer because the unwatchable 3 FROM HELL is the kind of career-killer that's so bad that even some of his "gooble gobble, one of us!" fanboy faithful began turning on him after the film's three-night Fathom Events run a month before its Blu-ray/DVD release. The third chapter in what's--fingers crossed--a trilogy that began with 2003's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and 2005's THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, 3 FROM HELL seems like a desperation move after his pointless remake of HALLOWEEN and its disastrous sequel, his ambitious but unsuccessful THE LORDS OF SALEM--which at least tried to do something different before falling apart in the end--and the dismal 31 were all starting to make him look like a hick-horror one-trick pony whose entire filmmaking career was an endless tribute to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2. A brutally intense and absolutely uncompromising throwback to '70s grindhouse at its grittiest, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS remains Zombie's masterpiece, and he's never come close to duplicating it since. Even with 14 years to think about it, he doesn't even seem to have the slightest semblance of a game plan with 3 FROM HELL, which ends up looking like a flimsy excuse for Zombie, his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, and some friends from the convention circuit to hang out under the guise of belatedly continuing the saga of the homicidal, serial-killing Firefly clan, despite the fact that they went out in a Skynyrd-abetted blaze of glory on a desert highway at the end of the 1978-set REJECTS. Turns out they survived the hail of police bullets, spent a year in intensive care, and then ended up in prison. Cut to a decade later: leader Captain Spaulding (the late Sid Haig in his last film) is executed, and Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) orchestrates an escape with his previously unseen half-brother Winslow Foxworth Coltrane, aka "Foxy," aka "The Midnight Wolfman" (31's insufferable Richard Brake) after killing now-jailed bounty hunter Rondo (Danny Trejo). Meanwhile, at another prison, Baby (Mrs. Zombie) is denied parole (no shit) but gets bounced by the corrupt warden (Jeff Daniel Phillips), whose wife is being held hostage by DESPERATE HOURS superfans Otis and Foxy.

The titular trio head to Mexico and hole up in a sleazy south-of-the-border shithole where they run afoul of Rondo's crime boss son Aquarius (Emilio Rivera), who leads a Mexican wrestler-masked kill squad known as the Black Satans, leading to a long shootout set to Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida," as if MANHUNTER doesn't already exist. There's no way to sugarcoat this: 3 FROM HELL is absolutely abysmal. There can't possibly be a script. It's obvious that Zombie's making this up as he goes along and just letting the actors wing it, and improv doesn't appear to be anyone's strong suit. Moseley recycles the same schtick he's been doing since TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 but never finds the sense of terrifying menace that he brought to Otis in the previous film. Here, he just talks a lot of shit. Brake doesn't offer much other than a tired Bill Moseley impression, which leaves him more or less looking like the copy-of-a-copy that the Michael Keaton clones made in MULTIPLICITY, and a grating Sheri Moon Zombie doesn't even seem to be playing the same Baby as before. Remember the "Tutti Fuckin' Frutti" scene in THE DEVIL'S REJECTS? That's where she's at from start-to-finish here, with bonus meows, hisses, and vamping histrionics as Zombie does fuck-all to rein her in lest he be sleeping on the couch. You also get Dee Wallace humiliating herself as a sexually repressed prison guard, Clint Howard as a hacky clown-for-hire who pisses himself, Tom Papa and ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13's Austin Stoker as TV news anchors, Daniel Roebuck as a reporter, and Richard Edson as a scheming Mexican pimp.

Sid Haig (1939-2019)

The sole saving grace--aside from the use of three James Gang deep cuts from the neglected Tommy Bolin era and an admittedly amusing scene with Sheri Moon Zombie doing a bad-ass slo-mo walk to Suzi Quatro's "The Wild One"--is the brief appearance of Haig, who's out of the film by the seven-minute mark. Frail-looking and obviously gravely ill, the beloved cult icon, who died just a few days after the Fathom Events screenings in September, nevertheless brings his A-game in his one scene, but when he's gone, it's quickly downhill from there. Tedious, ploddingly-paced, and ridiculously overlong at nearly two hours, the embarrassingly self-indulgent 3 FROM HELL is Rob Zombie hitting rock bottom, and the only thing it accomplishes is providing the final evidence one needs to concretely conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt that THE DEVIL'S REJECTS was a fluke. No matter how bad it gets, Zombie will always have a core of apologists who will stand by whatever he does, so best of luck to them going forward. I'm done. (R, 115 mins)



NIGHT HUNTER
(UK/US - 2019)

Shelved for two years before being dumped on VOD, NIGHT HUNTER is a bumbling and often incoherent procedural thriller that's just as formulaic as its title indicates and would've been right at home in the late '90s. In cold, snowy northern Minnesota, a young woman is killed jumping from a highway overpass while fleeing an unknown killer. Meanwhile, Cooper (Ben Kingsley), is a former judge who lost his wife and daughter to a killer who's never been apprehended. He channels his rage into becoming a vigilante who goes around entrapping, extorting, and castrating internet predators with the help of teenage accomplice Lara (Eliana Jones), a ward to whom he was appointed guardian. When Lara, who has a GPS tracker in her earrings, is abducted, the cops not only uncover Cooper's operation but they're also led to her location, where a deaf and mentally-impaired man named Simon (Brendan Fletcher) has several women held captive in cells in the basement. Marshall (Henry Cavill), a hard-nosed, inexplicably British-accented detective who--you guessed it--plays by his own rules, and profiler Rachel Chase (Alexandra Daddario) can't seem to get anywhere with him, and the mayhem doesn't stop even with Simon in custody: an entire forensics team is wiped out by a rigged gas leak in Simon's basement, another cop's baby is stolen, one is killed by a car bomb, and Rachel gets a bomb threat with a crayon-scrawled note reading (what else?) "Tick tock," meaning that someone else is pulling the strings and that Simon can't possibly be the primary culprit.

Writer and debuting director David Raymond corrals a solid cast in what should be a serviceable thriller, but it's so clumsily-edited and haphazardly-assembled that it never really catches fire. No by-the-numbers thriller like NIGHT HUNTER should be this hard to follow, and it ultimately can't even live up to its absurd potential as the next HANGMAN. Of course, there's a ridiculous twist 2/3 of the way through that a cursory glance at someone's medical records would've uncovered, but throwing in the big reveal and subsequently moving the plot forward demands that the cops be total morons. Daddario's Rachel has to be the dumbest profiler in the serial killer genre, and Fletcher obnoxiously overacts with the kind of slobbering, eye-bulging, vein-popping gusto that he brought to Uwe Boll's RAMPAGE franchise, his high point being when he yells "Tick tock, tick tock, who's the silly boo-boo?" while pissing on the walls of his cell. Elsewhere, a constipated-looking Stanley Tucci appears to be getting paid by the scowl as Marshall's irate captain, and Nathan Fillion is completely squandered as a police computer tech in a frivolous supporting role that literally anyone could've played. The Cooper/Lara plot thread is an interesting one that might've made a more entertaining film on its own, but NIGHT HUNTER can't stop tripping over its own feet, leaving Kingsley offscreen for long stretches (a good indication that they probably only had him for a few days) while we get character depth in the form of Cavill's boring, brooding Marshall trying to bond with his teenage daughter (Emma Tremblay) after splitting with his wife (Minka Kelly). Nothing against Henry Cavill, who's a fine actor under better circumstances, but wouldn't you much rather see a gonzo thriller with a vigilante Ben Kingsley going extreme TO CATCH A PREDATOR on some pedophile creeps? (R, 99 mins)



SPIDER IN THE WEB
(UK/Israel/Belgium/Netherlands/Portugal - 2019)

Speaking of Ben Kingsley, he's clearly in one of his frequent "Just pay me and I'll do it" phases, and the tireless 75-year-old Oscar-winner's performance as an aging, weary Mossad agent close to being put out to pasture--whether voluntarily or by more aggressive means--is the chief selling point of the relentlessly talky and glacially-paced espionage thriller SPIDER IN THE WEB. In the latest from Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis (ZAYTOUN, THE SYRIAN BRIDE, SHELTER), Kingsley is Avner Adereth, a spy for the Israeli government who's currently undercover in Antwerp, posing as an antiques dealer named Simon Bell. He's spent two years gathering intel on a Belgian medical supply company that he suspects is secretly involved in chemical weapons sales to Syria. Complicating matters is that his boss Samuel (Itzik Cohen) is losing confidence in him, believing Adereth to be slipping, burned-out, and flat-out making shit up and pocketing big payments designated for a source that he hasn't been meeting nearly as much as he's claimed. As a result, the clock's ticking on Adereth to produce some legitimate results, and Samuel assigns ambitious young agent Daniel (Itay Tiran) to babysit him and make sure the info he's giving them and the leads he's chasing are legit. Of course, Daniel is the son of Adereth's late colleague from back in the day, which brings emotion into play as the two form a hesitant bond. All the while, Adereth finds himself falling for Angela (Monica Bellucci), an environmental activist and doctor who works for the Belgian company and is unaware of their side-involvement in funding terrorism. She's also upset when he shows her how her employer has been polluting the fresh water supply, thus convincing her to get him a secret file called--wait for it--"Spider in the Web," that explicitly details all of their Syrian shenanigans. Convoluted double-crosses ensue, with at least one character not being who they claim to be, and it's all a rather rote imitation of John Le Carre, with Adereth even waxing rhapsodic on the author at one point in case you don't pick up on the influence. The generic SPIDER IN THE WEB is really nothing special, but Kingsley's regal performance single-handedly gives it a boost above the mediocre, making it worth a look on a slow night for his fans who don't mind their night getting even slower. (Unrated, 114 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: ACTS OF VENGEANCE (2017); REMEMORY (2017); and RED CHRISTMAS (2017)

ACTS OF VENGEANCE
(US - 2017)

Arriving very soon after BLACK BUTTERFLY, SECURITY, and GUN SHY, ACTS OF VENGEANCE is Antonio Banderas' fourth straight-to-VOD vehicle in the last five months. Looking pretty ripped at 57, the prolific actor appears to have embraced the idea of jumping on the 60-and-over action bandwagon (he's also got something called BULLET HEAD hitting VOD in December). Shot under the title THE STOIC, ACTS OF VENGEANCE teams the busy Banderas with the great action director Isaac Florentine, the DTV legend behind US SEALS 2 and several excellent Scott Adkins actioners. Florentine is probably the best action filmmaker still stuck in low-budget B-movies, though at this point, it almost has to be by choice. Produced by Avi Lerner's Cannon cover band Millennium Films, ACTS OF VENGEANCE isn't top-shelf Florentine: the fight scenes, while outstandingly choreographed, are few and far between, and the inane script by Matt Venne (WHITE NOISE 2, MIRRORS 2) is a blatant ripoff of JOHN WICK. Smooth criminal defense attorney Frank Valera (Banderas) gets preoccupied at the office, breaking a promise to his wife Sue (Cristina Serafini) to make it to their daughter's talent show (or, as the Bulgarian production team labeled it on the marquee, "tallent (sic) show"). Hours go by and he gets concerned when they never make it home. Police arrive at the house and inform Valera that his wife and daughter were murdered. The investigation by detective Lustiger (Johnathan Scheach) goes nowhere, and Valera implodes: he takes a leave from his job, drinks to numb the pain, and voluntarily goes to a secret fight club--barely concealed in the upstairs of a bar on a busy street--to get the shit beat out of him, his way of punishing himself for not being there for his family.

He eventually has an epiphany after happening--in the most hackneyed way possible--on a paperback of the writings of Marcus Aurelius, channeling his sorrow and grief into the life of a stoic, taking a vow of silence ("Good things do happen when you shut the fuck up for a minute or two" is easily the script's most inspired line) and training with a sensai (played by martial arts expert Florentine) to condition himself in preparation of devoting his life to finding his wife and daughter's killers, refusing to utter a word until justice is served. There's a potentially interesting philosophical angle here that the film doesn't really explore aside from rudimentary analogies to samurai or ronin, but stylistically, it's all JOHN WICK. The supporting characters are poorly-defined, with Paz Vega turning up halfway through as a nurse who tries get close to Valera, but Robert Forster gets one scene, delivering a blistering, no-bullshit dressing down as Valera's father-in-law, who flat-out tells him that now that his daughter and granddaughter are dead, he wants nothing more to do with him. The big reveal involving the killer's identity involves a plot twist that calls Valera's entire competence as an attorney and even as a human being with a functioning brain into question, though it's always a good rule of thumb in these kinds of movies to pay attention to any prominently-billed, reasonably well-known actor who appears fleetingly and doesn't appear to have much to with the plot. Also with DREDD and STAR TREK's Karl Urban as a police officer who occasionally turns up at the secret fight club, ACTS OF VENGEANCE is passable as brain-dead action fare--the "NYC street" backlot at the Nu Boyana Studios in Sofia, Bulgaria is somehow even less convincing than usual--and it's at least better than Banderas' recent comedic shitshow GUN SHY. But despite allowing Florentine to work with bigger names than usual, ACTS OF VENGEANCE is one of the director's more forgettable efforts, though it's understandable if his mind was elsewhere: the film is dedicated to his late wife Barbara, who died in January 2017 after a two-year battle with cancer.  (R, 87 mins)



REMEMORY
(UK/Canada/US - 2017)

The BLACK MIRROR episode "The Entire History of You" did a better job of exploring similar subject matter, but an excellent performance by GAME OF THRONES' Peter Dinklage makes the melancholy sci-fi drama REMEMORY worth a look. It's gray, gloomy, occasionally Cronenbergian in its production design, and vividly Canadian in its chilly mood, as introverted model maker Sam Bloom (Dinklage), still mourning and blaming himself for the death of his younger brother Dash (Matt Ellis) in a car crash in which he was behind the wheel, involves himself in a mystery when groundbreaking psychiatric genius Gordon Dunn (Martin Donovan) is found dead in his office. Dunn was the CEO of Cortex, a company that created the Rememory Machine, a high-tech form of therapy in which Dunn is able to filter and record the memories of his patients down to every specific detail. It's a controversial technique that isn't without its detractors, most of whom seem to be his patients/guinea pigs, among them Wendy (Evelyne Brochu), a young woman with whom Dunn has been having an extramarital affair; Charles (Scott Hylands), a dementia-stricken man in an assisted living facility; and Todd (the late Anton Yelchin in one of his last roles), an anger management case who Sam considers the prime suspect in Dunn's death, which the police have labeled natural causes but he's convinced was murder. He ends up stealing the Rememory Machine and befriends Dunn's widow (Julia Ormond, also very good), while Dunn's sinister business partner (Henry Ian Cusick) acts suspicious and may have something to hide. Directed and co-written by Mark Palansky (who hasn't made a feature film since the 2006 Christina Ricci bomb PENELOPE), REMEMORY starts out like a mystery with deep sci-fi leanings, but eventually goes the route of Shyamalanian sentimentality, with Sam's investigation ultimately all smoke and mirrors leading to a conclusion that isn't really a surprise, as Sam obviously has secrets of his own that he's been hiding from everyone else, including the audience. In the end, it's an overlong and somewhat muddled BLACK MIRROR episode that's very well-shot, with a catchy electronic synth score, and two lead performances by Dinklage and Ormond that go the extra mile to make a minor and mostly forgettable film worth a stream on a slow night. (PG-13, 112 mins)

RED CHRISTMAS
(Australia - 2017)

Released on three screens and VOD at the tail end of summer, the Australian RED CHRISTMAS got some buzz from scenesters eager to anoint it that week's Insta-Classic (© William Wilson) horror indie, with the added nostalgic rush of cult icon Dee Wallace once again summoning some of her CUJO maternal fury. It's great seeing the veteran actress and convention fixture in a lead role again, and it's easy to see why she jumped at the opportunity, but RED CHRISTMAS isn't worthy of her talents. Amateurishly shot, with pointlessly garish red and green, sub-Argento colorgasms, cheap splatter effects, and a muddled political subtext, RED CHRISTMAS centers on the final Christmas gathering at the isolated rural home of widowed matriarch Diane (Wallace), an American who's spent most of her life in Australia and is about to sell the house to take a long sabbatical to Europe, a last request by her cancer-stricken husband on his deathbed after she spent so many years putting everyone else first. Joining her are her infertile, ultra-conservative religious zealot daughter Suzy (Sarah Bishop) and her minister husband Peter (David Collins); bitchy, free-spirited, and very pregnant daughter Ginny (Janis McGavin) and her pot-smoking partner Scott (Bjorn Stewart); adopted, artist daughter Hope (Deelia Merial), her youngest, son Jerry (Gerard O'Dwyer), who has Down syndrome, and her medicinal marijuana enthusiast brother Joe (Geoff Morrell). A huge family argument is broken up by a stranger appearing at the front door: a cloaked figure with bandages covering face and going by the name Cletus (Sam "Bazooka" Campbell). Cletus appears to be homeless and alone but soon wears out his welcome when he begins taunting Diane with very personal information about an event 20 years earlier--a bombing at an abortion clinic where she happened to be, secretly terminating a pregnancy after learning that it was another DS baby and that her husband only had a few months to live. Unable to face raising an additional special needs child alone, she made a decision to abort, but the child somehow survived, and was taken in by the fanatical right-wing activist who bombed the clinic. And now, 20-year-old Cletus is determined to get revenge on the mother who tried to kill him by taking out her entire family one by one. And, of course, Ginny goes into labor.

There's so many ways that this could've been a creative, daring film with a thoughtful subtext. But it's pretty much amateur hour in the hands of writer/director Craig Anderson, who rushes through the set-up only to have the characters whispering and wandering around in the darkness for most of the rest of the way, often requiring them to do stupid things to get to the next kill scene. Why else would a sheriff arrive and park his car 100 yards from the house--with plenty of driveway ahead of him--unless it's to get a bear trap thrown over his head by Cletus while walking the ludicrous distance from his car to the house? There's no sense of spatial layout to the house, so it's impossible to tell where anyone is at any given time, or how Cletus manages to end up in or out of the house so much. Wallace turns in a strong performance, though it's hard to tell if we're supposed to be on her side or not. The film justifies her decision but seems intent on making her and her family suffer for it. On top of that, very few of the characters are particularly likable (Ginny picks fights with everyone, repressed Peter spies on Ginny and Scott having sex in the laundry room) with the exception of easy-going Joe and devoted Jerry, who questions his entire life after learning about the abortion and angrily confronting Diane with "Do you want to kill me too?" (O'Dwyer, who has DS and is a well-known figure in Australia, is quite good). Cletus' kills are pulled off with little imagination and style, and when his monstrous face is revealed, it looks like a MAC AND ME mask that was left out in the sun too long. RED CHRISTMAS' closing credits include a list of recommended books and movies that deal with the subject of abortion from both the pro-life and the pro-choice angle, conveniently allowing Anderson to "both sides" his way around his own movie. He should've included a list of better Christmas horror movies to watch instead of this one, but since he didn't, I will: any of them. Pick one. (Unrated, 81 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: GRAND PIANO (2014)

GRAND PIANO
(Spain/US - 2013; US release 2014)

Directed by Eugenio Mira.  Written by Damian Chazelle.  Cast: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Kerry Bishe, Tamsin Egerton, Alex Winter, Don McManus, Allen Leach, Dee Wallace, Jack Taylor.  (R, 90 mins).

Damian Chazelle's drama WHIPLASH earned some significant buzz and the audience and jury awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, just in time for the US release of the Chazelle-scripted high-concept thriller GRAND PIANO, several months after it debuted in Europe.  Both films--WHIPLASH was acquired by Sony and will be released later this year--deal with psychological pressures on a music prodigy, though GRAND PIANO takes a decidedly different approach in the hands of director Eugenio Mira.  The term "Hitchcockian" has been bandied about for decades, but it applies here.  Unfortunately, the longer GRAND PIANO goes on, the more silly and nonsensical it gets, and despite his background in music, Chazelle seems to have no idea how classical and orchestral performances go down.  Do conductors kibitz with the audience in between movements?  Does the featured pianist get up and wander around for long stretches of time while the rest of the orchestra carries on?  As a suspense piece, GRAND PIANO has a doozy of an idea that ultimately collapses once the villain's motivations are revealed.  It's fun while it's happening, but even before the movie's over, you'll be scratching your head and listing all the ludicrous lapses in logic.  If you want to make it Hitchcockian, then go for it.  Sure, not every Hitchcock thriller is airtight, but Chazelle and Mira are pretty much jamming a funnel down your throat to make you swallow the absurdities that they keep piling on.

Five years after suffering a breakdown in mid-performance and becoming a recluse, stage-fright-prone classical pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is set to make his comeback appearance.  He's not eager to do so, but his glamorous movie-star wife Emma (Kerry Bishe) insists he re-enter public life.  He's set to play the priceless grand piano that belonged to his late mentor Patrick Godureaux (played in photos and lobby posters by American expat Spanish exploitation icon Jack Taylor), and is visibly nervous about his return to live performance but, as the gregarious conductor (Don McManus) reassures him, "You play music this dense, you're gonna hit a wrong note.  The audience never knows."  Things quickly head south when Tom sits at the piano and notices some writing in his score:  "Play one wrong note and you and your wife die."  There's a laser pointed at Emma and at Tom's hand.  He turns the page: "During the next break, go back to your dressing room."

OK, how many breaks does a star pianist get?  It's his comeback performance and he's chosen a composition that seemingly involves as little piano as possible?  Tom makes his way to his dressing room and finds an earpiece radio transmitter waiting for him.  "Get back on stage!" orders the unseen sniper with the voice of John Cusack, perhaps calling from the set of one of the other two new movies he's had dumped on VOD in the last two weeks. "Call for help and I will hear it.  Get a guard involved and I will know it.  Play a wrong note, you will die." What does the sniper--named "Clem"--want?  "I don't want your money.  I want you to play the most flawless concert of your life."  And what's the concluding piece for this comeback concert?  An extraordinarily complex original composition by Godureaux known ominously in the world of classical music as "The Unplayable Piece"...the very piece that caused Tom's public meltdown five years earlier.

This should be a can't-miss nail-biter, and sometimes, it is.  It's hard to get around the gaping breakdowns in logic in Chazelle's script (WHIPLASH may be great, but it's worth noting that he also wrote THE LAST EXORCISM PART II). and as the plot gets dumber and the motivations of Clem and his accomplice (Alex Winter--yes, that Alex Winter), who's posing as a stage assistant, are spelled out, you start thinking "There has to be an easier way."  Where is the stage manager?  Why does Tom just arrive at the hall to play a highly-publicized concert on a piano he's never used with an orchestra with whom he's never played...and no practice, nothing.  Five years since he's played and he's just winging it?  Mira's direction is so stylish, enthusiastic, and brimming with a love of cinema that GRAND PIANO almost pulls it off.  Aside from the Hitchcock influences--particularly the Royal Albert Hall sequence in 1956's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH--there's the constant classical music, the rich, lush colors, the long tracking shots and widescreen shot compositions of cinematographer Unax Mendia (who did similarly memorable work on Kolda Serra's little-seen 2006 film THE BACKWOODS), and the sweeping camera in constant motion, telling us Mira has obviously spent a lot of time watching Brian De Palma and Dario Argento movies.  There's even a vintage De Palma split screen at one point, and parts of "The Unplayable Piece" sound like something Claudio Simonetti would've written for an Italian horror film.  There's also one brilliant bit where Mira pulls a 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY "bone to spaceship" match cut with a glass shard about to slit a throat seamlessly becoming a bow sliding across the strings of a cello.  Stuff like that will put a smile on the face of anyone who loves cinema.  What Chazelle doesn't seem to understand, and what Mira is forced to work around, is that with high-concept thrillers of this sort--be it Keanu Reeves on a speeding bus in SPEED or Colin Farrell trapped in a phone booth in PHONE BOOTH--the key is to keep them in that spot to maximize the suspense.  PHONE BOOTH is by no means a great movie but it understands why it's called PHONE BOOTH.  GRAND PIANO works best when Tom is at the grand piano being harangued by an endlessly taunting Clem.  It's too much that he's constantly getting up from the piano, is having loud conversations with Clem while playing, and is actually texting for help at one point...all the while never flubbing a single note.

Wood turns in a credibly frazzled performance when he's at the piano, and though he's mostly heard and only briefly seen, Cusack is a formidably intimidating bad guy.  But Clem's ultimate motivation is hardly worth the effort, the climax is weak, and the film ends with an abrupt whimper. There's hints that there's more going on between Clem and Godureaux and Taylor's presence in the closing credits without actually acting in the movie might be an indication that he shot some scenes that were cut, even though the film doesn't run long (this is the second movie I've seen this week where the closing credits sloooowly crawl over ten minutes to pad the film to 90).  Still, there's no denying GRAND PIANO has its moments.  Mira's made a few films prior to this, none very noteworthy (he did serve as second unit director on THE IMPOSSIBLE), and he sported a fake mole and mugged shamelessly as the young version of Robert De Niro's character in the forgettable RED LIGHTS.  But GRAND PIANO is irrefutable proof that the guy's got something...and just needs a better script to take it to the next level.