I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (US - 2017) Written and directed by Macon Blair. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, David Yow, Jane Levy, Devon Graye, Christine Woods, Robert Longstreet, Gary Anthony Williams, Jason Manuel Olazabal, Derek Mears, Myron Natwick, Lee Eddy, Matt Orduna, Macon Blair. (Unrated, 97 mins) "Everyone is an asshole" - Ruth Kimke The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, the Netflix pickup I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (not to be confused with I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER or Netflix's I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE) is the directing debut of actor Macon Blair, who should be familiar to fans of the acclaimed Jeremy Saulnier films BLUE RUIN (2014) and GREEN ROOM (2016). Blair (the driven but hapless "hero" of BLUE RUIN and the incompetent manager of the skinhead venue in GREEN ROOM) doesn't deviate too far from the formula of his buddy Saulnier, and ANYMORE certainly belongs in that burgeoning indie subgenre depicting the seedy underbelly of rural and back roads America with Saulnier's films and Zeke & Simon Hawkins' flawed but interesting BAD TURN WORSE (2014). Blair's film takes more of a Coen Bros. approach, especially in the early-going, which is filled with dark humor and occasional bits of cringe comedy to around the midpoint, at which time things get more serious and the humor takes on a decidedly macabre bent that wouldn't be out of place in BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO. Blair wears his love of the Coen Bros. on his sleeve (even the set-up has a shaggy dog-like BIG LEBOWSKI feel to it), so while it doesn't win many points for originality, it has something to say about these troubling times and Blair pulls it off with enough panache that it works beautifully.
Depressed, lonely nurse's assistant Ruth Kimke (a perfectly cast Melanie Lynskey) spends her time moping around the house and reading fantasy novels. She's growing increasingly agitated by the boorish behavior of others, whether it's a huge pickup truck obnoxiously "rolling coal" at a red light, the same neighborhood dog shitting in her yard, people being inconsiderate to others in stores, guys who say "Deez Nuts," and a total stranger (Blair in a cameo) sidling up to her at a bar and spoiling a huge plot twist that's much further into the book she's sitting there reading. Things just get worse when she gets home from work and finds her house has been burglarized, with her laptop, her prescriptions, and her late grandmother's silver dinnerware missing, And with that, Ruth reaches her breaking point, telling her friend Angie (Lee Eddy) that she's tired of "the way people treat each other...they're disgusting and it's all 'mine mine and fuck you,'" adding "Everyone is an asshole." Fed up with lack of interest by the cop assigned to her case, one Det. William Bendix (Gary Anthony Williams), she manages to track down her laptop and cajoles her eccentric neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood)--a would-be martial arts doofus with a rat-tail and a Saxon shirt who's introduced jamming to Pentagram's "Forever My Queen"--into coming along as backup on a mission to retrieve it. But the perps bought it from a flea market, where the skeezy owner Killer Sills (Myron Natwick) has been buying stolen merchandise from Christian Rumack (Devon Graye), a bratty fuck-up from a rich family who's one of a trio of small-time, lowlife criminals that includes ex-con Marshall (Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow) and Dez (Jane Levy of DON'T BREATHE).
Online sleuthing and some good guesswork lead them to the home of Christian's wealthy, obnoxious father Chris Sr. (Robert Longstreet), who's more or less written off his son and refuses to take any responsibility for the shitbag he's become. Marshall has noticed Ruth and Tony following them around and after one major character makes an abrupt and shocking exit, all parties converge at the elder Rumack's house for one of the most inspired and audaciously over-the-top showdowns that the Coen Bros. never concocted, mixing it up with guns, knives, ninja stars, and projectile vomiting. Once it becomes apparent that Ruth and Tony are storming into a world with which they're not prepared to deal, there's some initial trepidation on the part of the viewer over the abrupt shift in tone, but Blair quickly regains control and smooths over the rough spots in the transition. He finds a perfect balance between the more dark-humored elements of Ruth's situation--such as her growing misanthropy and a quest for her belongings not unlike the Dude's pursuit of his peed-on rug in THE BIG LEBOWSKI--and the genuine sense of fear and danger that surrounds Ruth and Tony as they keep tangling with Marshall, whether intentionally or unintentionally. As good as it is, I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE wouldn't work nearly as well as it does were it not for the pitch-perfect performance by Lynskey, who impressed over 20 years ago with her debut in Peter Jackson's 1994 film HEAVENLY CREATURES and here creates a character that's every bit as memorable as her Pauline Parker from that film. Lynskey conveys the frustration, the anger, and the sadness in her character while never overdoing it, and while we never get Ruth's backstory, it's not really needed. She's getting by and she finds fleeting enjoyment in little things, but she's a loner who leads a solitary life and feels isolated from a world that she no longer understands. She gets able support from Wood, who gets to play the more goofy sidekick character but, like his co-star, underplays it for the most part. Where Ruth is a mordant, sad sack Dude, Tony is a more stoical but just as furious Walter Sobchak, again drawing comparisons to THE BIG LEBOWSKI and the Coens, albeit in a more low-key fashion (also worth mentioning is HELLO LADIES' Christine Woods, who steals all of her scenes as Chris Sr's booze-swilling second wife). A funny, twisted, and suspenseful film that goes in some genuinely unpredictable directions, I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE is an impressive debut for Blair, and a perfect showcase for the underrated Lynskey.
THE TRUST (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Alex Brewer & Benjamin Brewer. Written by Adam Hirsch and Benjamin Brewer. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Elijah Wood, Sky Ferreira, Jerry Lewis, Ethan Suplee, Steven Willliams, Eric Heister, Alexandria Lee, Keston John. (R, 92 mins) At this point in his career, Nicolas Cage has almost become synonymous with "VOD," spending the last several years cranking out a series of largely interchangeable and mostly forgettable action movies that played in as few theaters as contractually mandated. For every worthwhile film he makes, like JOE or THE FROZEN GROUND, there's three RAGE's or THE RUNNER's. And when he does manage to headline a nationwide release, it's LEFT BEHIND, easily the most embarrassing film of his career. Cage coasts through so many garbage movies that it's a major event for his fans when he makes a good one, and the quirky heist thriller THE TRUST, while no classic, qualifies as high-end Cage these days and definitely belongs in the JOE and FROZEN GROUND club. Directed by Alex & Benjamin Brewer and written by Benjamin Brewer and Adam Hirsch, THE TRUST provides the Oscar-winning actor with one of his trademark eccentric characters, essayed by a Cage who's sort-of mellowed with age but still shows flashes of bug-eyed hysteria when he's pushed to the edge. Cage is Jim Stone, a bored cop and supervisor of the Las Vegas P.D.'s evidence department. Stone happens upon a bail receipt for $200,000 cash and is curious about the potential criminal activities and "deep pockets" of someone who has $200,000 in cash so easily available. Buddying up with one of his staffers, disgruntled David Waters (Elijah Wood), Stone uses department funds to set up a phony undercover/surveillance operation, even posing as a clumsy waiter to tail the guy who got bailed out to see if it leads to the source of the big money. Eventually, they uncover the existence of a secret vault hidden in a freezer inside a carryout, where numerous drops are made but no money ever leaves. Convinced it's a cash drop for a Vegas drug operation, Stone aggressively cajoles Waters into robbing the vault, even convincing him to drop $10K of his own money on an industrial-sized drill so they can work into the vault from the supposedly vacant apartment above the carryout. And of course, like any heist movie, complications ensue.
It's great to see Cage in a role that effectively utilizes his talents and inspires him to turn in one of his periodic "He's still got it!" performances. JOE proved that Cage is capable of great things if his heart's in it, and while THE TRUST is by and large a relatively minor, "small" movie, it's the kind of low-key, indie departure that he should've made more of back in his '90s and early '00s heyday and his career probably wouldn't be in the rut it is today. In his best role since JOE, Cage is wired, jumpy, and unpredictable in ways unseen since Werner Herzog's BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS back in 2009, with some laugh-out-loud funny line deliveries (the odd way Stone says "cocaine," or when meeting a dangerous criminal named Bobo, Stone can't stop marveling at how "fun" the name Bobo sounds, carrying on until Bobo inevitably barks "Shut the fuck up!") and having fun with character quirks like Stone's taste for lemons slathered in tabasco. Though he makes the character his own, there are a few instances--the breath spray bit, for instance-- where Cage seems to be channeling vintage Chevy Chase (and then Stone struck me as the kind of offbeat role that could've revitalized Chase's career back when it mattered). Starting with the unholy lemons & tabasco mix, Stone can pretty much talk the unambitious Waters into anything, and the humor, which almost feels like the Coen Bros. adapting an Elmore Leonard novel, gradually disappears as the stakes get more serious.
THE TRUST is a lot more fun in its early stages when it focuses on the planning of the heist and the amusing camaraderie between Stone and Waters, and Wood proves to be a solid, slow-burning foil for his boss' impulsive and often irresponsible antics ("You're mortgaging your house to pay for a heist?!"). But when the heist starts to involve murder and an unintended hostage (Sky Ferreira), and Waters gets an increasingly paranoid feeling that Stone is setting him up, THE TRUST gets dead serious and very downbeat, and it doesn't really gel with the more easy-going, working-stiff OCEAN'S ELEVEN riff with nine less guys pulling off a job on the seedier side of town. It's almost too methodical in its depiction of the heist, actually slowing down the momentum at times. But despite the jarring shift in tone and the uneven nature of the story, THE TRUST is still an engaging comedy-turned-thriller. Cage (wearing one of his more plausible Christopher Lee hairpieces) and Wood could make a good comedy team, and the film even offers a rare-these-days screen appearance for the legendary Jerry Lewis in a small role as Stone's retired cop dad. It's a role anyone could've played and 90-year-old Lewis doesn't have much to do in two brief scenes. While it's not a KING OF COMEDY-style stretch and he likely wasn't on the set for more than a day, it's nice to see him in a movie again, and in a generally atypical dramatic role.
Writer/director David O. Russell has been on a hot streak with THE FIGHTER (2010), SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012), and AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013), and that's probably what finally got his long-shelved NAILED released as ACCIDENTAL LOVE. NAILED was shot in South Carolina during the summer of 2008 and co-written by, among others, Russell and former Vice Presidential daughter Kristin Gore, based on Gore's 2004 novel Sammy's Hill. The film's primary backer was the financially-strapped Capitol Films, who ran out of money on this and several other films shot at the same time, including Taylor Hackford's LOVE RANCH (ultimately released in 2010) and AMERICAN HISTORY X director Tony Kaye's BLACK WATER TRANSIT (still unreleased). NAILED shut down production on at least eight occasions over that tumultuous summer, despite an initial budget alleged to be in the area of $25 million. One shutdown was caused when the crew revolted over not being paid, and another occurred when stars Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal followed suit and walked off the set over similar money issues. Production was halted permanently by the end of 2008 with all of the post-work still needing to be done and at least one major scene--one that all parties agreed was completely essential--still unfilmed. By early 2010, Russell ran out of patience and washed his hands of it. He publicly distanced himself from NAILED, moved on to THE FIGHTER, and never looked back. In 2013, co-producer Kia Jam corralled enough funds to cobble as much of the missing scene together as possible and complete post-production, but Russell wanted no part of it. Now carrying the generic title ACCIDENTAL LOVE, the film was acquired by Millennium and given a VOD dumping in February 2015, with the non-existent "Stephen Greene" shouldering the blame after Russell successfully petitioned to have his name removed as both director and co-writer.
It's hardly praise, but as far as abandoned clusterfucks go, ACCIDENTAL LOVE isn't as bad as Alec Baldwin's doomed directorial debut THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, shot in 2001 and ultimately aired on Starz in 2007 as SHORTCUT TO HAPPINESS, with director credit going to one "Harry Kirkpatrick." Biel stars as Alice, a small-town Indiana roller-skating carhop who gets shot in the head with a nail gun at a restaurant just after her cop boyfriend Scott (James Marsden) proposes. Uninsured Alice can't afford the brain surgery required to extract the nail, and it's deemed a pre-existing condition when she tries to get on Scott's insurance. Concerned about future medical issues, Scott bails and Alice goes to Washington to meet with her district representative, freshman Congressional newbie Howard Birdwell (a mannered, bug-eyed Gyllenhaal), to bring attention to her plight and plead the case for health care reform. Birdwell is a nebbishy type with great political ambition but he's kept under the thumb of lobbyists and powerful Rep. Pam Hendrickson (Catherine Keener, cast radically against type as a cold, brittle bitch-on-wheels), a former astronaut whose primary goal is getting the government to fund a military base on the moon. ACCIDENTAL LOVE vacillates between screwball comedy, with Alice's condition frequently causing spontaneous outbursts, speaking in a foreign language, or demonstrating insatiable lust, and political satire, which comes across as forced and rather toothless. It shouldn't come as a surprise or edgy insight to see that politicians are frequently corrupt, self-serving, and beholden to special interest groups.
"Stephen Greene"'s ACCIDENTAL LOVE obviously isn't as polished as David O. Russell's NAILED would've been, but what's here is almost all Russell's work, and it wouldn't have been his finest hour any way you cut it. There's some amusing bits here and there, and Kurt Fuller does a nice job as a priest with Viagra issues, but the more it goes on, the more shrill and heavy-handed it becomes. It's the kind of movie that ends with the whole cast gathered for a feelgood dance number, with the added bonus of closing credits bloopers, as if anyone had a good time making this thing (given the chaotic production, wouldn't footage of the Capitol money men telling a pissed-off crew they aren't being paid make for a much more entertaining blooper reel?). Other familiar faces lost in the quagmire include James Brolin as the Speaker of the House (a last-minute replacement when James Caan quit over "script disagreements," probably the film's liberal bent being at odds with the far-right Caan's politics); Tracy Morgan as Alice's friend Keyshawn, but he's essentially playing himself; Paul Reubens as Hendrickson's aide; Bill Hader as the snide ER doc who shuts down the surgery and grabs a burger when he's told Alice is uninsured; Beverly D'Angelo as Alice's mom (D'Angelo, in what must've been a frustrating summer in 2008, was also in BLACK WATER TRANSIT); and Kirstie Alley (her name misspelled "Kirstey" in the closing credits) as Alice's aunt. Perhaps NAILED could've been a sharp and prescient satire on pre-Obamacare politics, but ACCIDENTAL LOVE is a dated misfire best forgotten by all concerned. (PG-13, 101 mins)
EVERLY (US - 2015)
The idea of Salma Hayek spending an entire movie slicing, dicing, and blowing away a crew of yakuza goons in an apartment building sounds a lot more fun than EVERLY turns out to be. A reverse RAID of sorts, EVERLY has Hayek as the title heroine, a prostitute holed up on the sixth floor of a yakuza-owned slum where other women are pimped out to wealthy Japanese clients and other assorted perverts and sadists. Everly has secretly been working with the cops to bring down crime boss Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe), who owns the building and the women who live in it. Taiko knows what she's been up to and has a price on Everly's head as other prostitutes, Taiko flunkies, and her neighbors try to get into Everly's apartment and take her out while she frantically tries to reunite with her estranged mother (Laura Cepeda) and young daughter (Aisha Ayamah). Director Joe Lynch (CHILLERAMA, KNIGHTS OF BADASSDOM) manages to pull off a couple of fairly well-executed sequences involving long tracking shots and uninterrupted takes, but for the most part, EVERLY just never finds its groove and feels significantly longer than 90 minutes. When it was screened at the 2014 Fantastic Fest in Austin, it got an overwhelmingly positive reaction from participation medal-awarding scenesters who no doubt have Lynch among their Facebook friends, but what's here is in many ways reminiscent of Alexandre Aja's atrocious PIRANHA remake, another lazy grindhouse poseur of an exploitation flick that thinks showing up and making the references are good enough. There's a lot of Takashi Miike in the over-the-top bloodshed and a bit of Tarantino, not just in the adoring shots of Hayek's feet as Everly constantly goes from high heels to barefoot, but also in one Japanese john (Akie Kotabe) spending his entire screen time bleeding out from a gunshot wound on Everly's couch, just like Tim Roth in RESERVOIR DOGS right down to his wardrobe. As she demonstrated 20 years ago in DESPERADO (has it been that long?), Hayek, still stunning at 48, is more than game as a kick-ass action heroine, but EVERLY just isn't up to her level. It's an endless fanboy circle jerk that exists in an insulated, prefab cult movie echo chamber. Hayek could use a hit, and in better hands, EVERLY could've easily been her JOHN WICK. Instead, it's her HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN and nobody needs that. (R, 92 mins)
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (US - 2014)
There's a strong early-Jim Jarmusch vibe to this hypnotic vampire film from writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour, perhaps the most inventive of its kind since LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Co-produced by Elijah Wood and shot in black & white in and around Bakersfield, CA, GIRL is set in the fictional Bad City, Iran and is in Persian with English subtitles. Amirpour and cinematographer Lyle Vincent do a tremendously effective job with the widescreen framing and using things like smokestacks and pumpjacks to present Bad City as a depressing industrial wasteland where drugs and crime rule above all. Nice-guy Arash (Arash Marandi) is forced into settling the debts of his junkie father Hossein (Marshall Manesh) to ruthless drug lord Saeed (Dominic Rains) when Saeed decides to take the only thing that matters to Arash--his pristine '57 T-Bird--as repayment. Saeed is soon slaughtered by a strange, silent woman (Sheila Vand) who turns out to be a vampire. The remarkably expressive, sad-eyed Vand is one of the most memorable vampires to hit the screens in some time. Portraying The Girl as one those melancholy sorts doomed to a life of loneliness, Vand doesn't even utter a word until nearly 40 minutes in, and almost like a holdover from the silent era, lets her face do much of her acting. When she tells prostitute Atti (Mozhan Marno) "You're sad, you don't remember wanting, and nothing ever changes," she's really talking about herself. GIRL is largely a triumph of style over substance, but there are numerous parallels and dualities at work throughout, like flip sides of a coin--between The Girl and Atti, Arash and Saeed, and The Girl and Hossein, perhaps the biggest monster of all when he shoots Atti full of heroin and prompts The Girl to take on the role of avenger. The Girl longs for love and humanity--watch the small, subtle smile she allows herself in really great scene the first time she's alone with Arash and plays White Lies' "Death"--in a world where empathy and feeling simply have no place with the likes of Saeed and Hossein around. A fascinating thematic companion piece to Jarmusch's recent ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT has its tedious bits that scream "art house pretension," especially with a long scene of Reza Sixo Safai's Rockabilly dancing with a balloon, but overall, it's a unique and visually arresting addition to vampire cinema. (Unrated, 101 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? (Japan - 2013; US release 2014)
Japanese auteur Sion Sono has several fascinating films in his back catalog--2001's SUICIDE CLUB, 2005's STRANGE CIRCUS, and 2010's COLD FISH to name three--but none on the level of his masterpiece, 2008's LOVE EXPOSURE, belatedly released in the US in 2012. A mammoth, four-hour epic about religion, forbidden love, and upskirt photos, LOVE EXPOSURE is a film like no other. Like the Takashi Miike of a decade and a half ago, the prolific Sono is always working on something, but WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? is his first film to get a US release since LOVE EXPOSURE, and it's one where a little goes a long way. An absurdist satire that takes on the yakuza tradition and the state of Japanese filmmaking, HELL gets off to a funny start with the introduction of an enthusiastic but talentless filmmaking collective who call themselves "The Fuck Bombers." There's a long prologue set ten years ago before two parallel storylines kick off and finally converge around 80 minutes into the 130-minute film. Ten years ago, the wife (Tomochika) of yakuza boss Muto (Jun Kunimura) was sent to prison for going on a stabbing rampage that took out several flunkies of Muto's rival Ikegami (Shinichi Tsutsumi). This prompts a toothpaste company to take a popular series of commercials off the air that showcase a catchy jingle sung by Muto's young daughter Mitsuko (played as a child by Nanoka Hara), on whom Ikegami has an unusual and questionable fixation. Ten years later, Mrs. Muto is about to be released from prison and Mitsuko (Fumi Nikaido) is starring in a cheap yakuza thriller when she runs off the set with her hapless boyfriend Koji (Gen Hoshino). When Muto's men apprehend the couple, Mitsuko convinces her father that Koji is a filmmaker and was going to put her in a better movie to impress her mother. Forced to pretend he's a movie director, Koji recruits his childhood acquaintances in The Fuck Bombers, led by the delusional and oblivious Hirata (Hiroki Hasagawa), who sees this as his ticket to the big time and stages an epic, captured-on-film battle-to-the-death between Muto's and Ikegawa's perpetually-warring crews.
Sono is aiming all over the place throughout the often tedious HELL, but it improves quite a bit once Hirata starts shooting his magnum opus as blood, limbs, heads and appendages fly across the screen with wild abandon. Hirata insists on using 35mm and his resulting masterwork, also titled WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? ultimately represents the death of film for Japanese cinema (I'm sure Sono is being facetious in his overuse of CGI splatter) as it goes out in a blaze of glory, where even the two-person camera crew starts firing assault rifles while making sure they get their shots. There's a bit of a STUNT MAN method to Hirata's Eli Cross-like madness, but ultimately, the film just starts getting too meta for its own good, with a late-in-the-game Buddy Bizarre wall-breaker that takes it into BLAZING SADDLES territory. There's some clever and funny bits scattered throughout, from offbeat humor (this is a guy, after all, whose EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS was a film about killer hair extensions) to simple sight gags (a bunch of yakuza goons bracing themselves and scrambling to avoid an approaching assassin that turns out to be a cat) and the message about the death of film being the end of an era is a poignant and elegiac one. But a dawdling Sono lets the pace drag and takes too long to say what he has to say, spending entirely too much time on standard-issue yakuza cliches straight out of any Beat Takeshi joint, and general goofball silliness with the Fuck Bombers (it's surely by design, but Hasagawa's performance is grating) that only serve to pad the running time. LOVE EXPOSURE was a four-hour work of art that I would've happily spent another four hours watching. With HELL, however, Sono could've trimmed it by at least 30 minutes and ended up with a stronger film as a result. (Unrated, 130 mins)
OPEN WINDOWS (Spain/US - 2014)
In the years following the phenomenal success of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, Elijah Wood has done voice work in the HAPPY FEET films but has generally laid low in indies and offbeat projects like the cult TV series WILFRED. He's also embarked on an unexpected side career in European-made thrillers like Alex de la Iglesia's THE OXFORD MURDERS and Franck Khalfoun's MANIAC, a remake of the 1980 horror classic. OPEN WINDOWS, the latest from TIMECRIMES director Nacho Vigalondo, puts Wood in a similar predicament his character encountered in another recent Spanish thriller, GRAND PIANO. In that film, Wood played a famous and reclusive concert pianist, returning from a very public nervous breakdown and being taunted and threatened via earpiece in mid-comeback performance by the voice of John Cusack as a sniper perched in the balcony, threatening to shoot him if he plays one wrong note. It was a high concept that didn't carry through to the end but had enough De Palma-esque visual flourishes to keep it giddily entertaining. Wood is harangued by an unseen voice yet again in OPEN WINDOWS, this time as Nick, a dweeby blogger and webmaster for a fan site devoted to B-movie actress Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey). Nick is in Austin, where Jill is premiering her latest cheesy horror film and he's won a contest to have dinner with her. He's contacted in his hotel room by Chord (Neil Maskell), who tells him that the dinner is off and that the bitchy Jill never had any intention of meeting up with him anyway. Chord has inside knowledge of Jill's activities and convinces Nick that he's part of her team and is just trying to let him down easy. He sends Nick some links that give him access to her phone and its contents, and even hacks into Nick's digital camera to provide an inside look into Jill's hotel room, where she's stepping out on her boyfriend with her agent. Nick's naivete has allowed Chord to completely take over his laptop and use it to remotely hack into every aspect of Jill's life, and only then does the slow-on-the-uptake Nick realize there never was any contest and that Chord is setting him up to take the fall for his plan to stalk and eventually kill Jill.
Around the time OPEN WINDOWS got a limited and VOD release in the US, celebrity cell phone hacks of Jennifer Lawrence, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and others were making headlines, followed sometime later by the Sony e-mail hacks over the controversial THE INTERVIEW. OPEN WINDOWS blows a chance to be a smart and unexpectedly prescient thriller by going off the deep end and not taking better advantage of its high concept--almost the entire film plays out as pop-up windows on Nick's laptop. Yes, we've gone from found-footage to feature-length Skyping, but the first 30 or so minutes are terrific and very well-orchestrated by the director. But then Vigalondo makes the fatal mistake that so many filmmakers do when dealing with something like this: he should've kept Nick in his hotel room, glued to his laptop. That's what cranks up the suspense--when he's helpless and has nowhere to go. Instead, Vigalondo can't wait to get Nick out of the hotel and into a car, where he ends up being chased by the cops, laptop open in his passenger seat as Chord continues to terrorize him. There's also a team of French hackers who dial in to help Nick, and then there's a whole subplot about them mistaking Nick for a criminal known as "Nevada," who might actually be Chord but maybe not. Vigalondo also introduces one nonsensical twist after another, involving identity theft, doubles, and masks and no one being who they say they are. While Nick is in his hotel room, OPEN WINDOWS is taut, plausible, and terrifying, but as soon as he's out, it collapses almost instantly as Vigalondo not only subscribes to the belief that computers can do what they do in CBS police procedurals, but he piles on one ludicrous twist after another, digging himself into such a hole that the resolution makes no sense whatsoever. It hardly matters, since you'll have stopped caring long before that. OPEN WINDOWS gets off to a killer start but implodes faster than any fright film this side of LEGION. (Unrated, 101 mins) MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE (Mexico/Spain - 2014)
Pantelion Films, an offshoot of Lionsgate and Mexico's Grupo Televisa, is a specialty distributor of films targeted toward Spanish-speaking audiences in the US. Pantelion had a breakout hit with 2013's INSTRUCTIONS NOT INCLUDED and recently released the biopic CANTINFLAS, which wasn't quite as successful. Released on 178 screens last fall, where it had a respectable $3000 per screen average to land in 17th place its opening weekend, the 3-D horror film MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE was so geared toward a particular audience that it went out under its original title instead of the translated "Darker Than Night." Other than its release pattern, there's absolutely nothing special about NOCHE, a remake of a 1975 film of the same title that's somewhat revered by Mexican moviegoers, though it didn't make much of a dent in the States. Presumably working from a checklist provided by Lionsgate, NOCHE '14 is yet another rote "vengeful ghost" saga that you've seen countless times before, loaded with jump scares and loud music cues. When Greta (Zuria Vega) was orphaned as a child, she was raised by her rich Aunt Ofelia (Lucia Guilmain), a spinster who lived with her beloved cat Becker and fiercely devoted housekeeper Evangelina (Margarita Sanz). Years later, Aunt Ofelia has died and Greta inherits everything, with the caveat that she must care for the seemingly ageless Becker. Greta moves into Ofelia's mansion with her cheating, dirtbag fiance (producer Josemaria Torre Hutt) and her three hard-partying besties, much to the chagrin of Evangelina as well as Aunt Ofelia, whose enraged ghost still prowls the grounds. When Greta's coke-whore friend Vicky (Ona Casamiquela) finds that her ferret's been killed by Becker, she drowns the cat in the pool, which sets Ofelia's ghost on a rampage of vengeance that eventually results in the possession of Greta, who starts offing everyone in a variety of gruesome ways. NOCHE '14 is an abysmally dull failure that takes forever to get going and when it finally does, it simply goes through every modern horror cliche in the book: predictable jump scares and fake-outs, a creepy music box, constantly flickering lights and creaking doors accompanying Ofelia sightings, and endless running and screaming down long corridors like some botched tribute to the slamming-door farce. NOCHE '14 clearly has some money up on the screen with some effectively dank and ominous production design (THE OTHERS and THE ORPHANAGE are major stylistic influences here), but when it's finally and mercifully over, writer/director Henry Bedwell's film is nothing more than a tired, D-list Guillermo del Toro ripoff, with loathsome characters, a dearth of scares, and the pointless bonus of ending with Marilyn Manson's cover of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain," for some reason. (R, 110 mins)
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.
Busy VFX siblings and occasional directing team The Brothers Strause (ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM and the awful SKYLINE) produced this would-be mindfuck that irritates more than it entertains. Melding elements of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS with a circa 2000 teen party comedy, +1 doesn't have nearly enough substance to last 90 minutes and feels like something more akin to a TWILIGHT ZONE episode and even then it would need some work to get to 30 minutes. Sensitive nice-guy David (Rhys Wakefield, the grinning home-invasion leader in THE PURGE) has just had an ugly breakup with his away-at-college girlfriend Jill (Ashley Hinshaw) when she catches him kissing her fencing rival. While everyone else went away to college a year earlier, David, his best friend Teddy (Logan Miller), and loner Allison (uncredited twins Suzanne and Colleen Dengel) stayed at home, and now everyone's back for an epic bash at Angad's (Rohan Kymal) parents' house. At the same time, an object crashes in someone's backyard and a kind-of lifeforce melds with the power lines, spreading throughout the town and causing periodic brief blackouts. During the first of these blackouts, a doppelganger is generated for everyone at the party, and it takes a while for David to notice, but once he does, he sees that they're repeating what the actual people did a short time earlier (as shown by, among other things, David seeing himself walking through the party looking for Jill). With each short power blackout, the doubles get closer and closer in time, to the point where paranoia takes over and partygoers are soon duking it out with their identical doubles.
It's an admittedly clever concept, but that's ultimately all it is. Director Dennis Iliadis (who helmed 2009's surprisingly OK remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) and writer Bill Gullo seriously belabor the point--how many times do we need to see David or Teddy or Jill watching themselves in events from 45 or 30 or 15 minutes earlier before they realize we get the gimmick? Before long, the whole thing is just a way for David to win Jill back by pulling some GROUNDHOG DAY shenanigans, which makes no sense since he isn't sure which Jill he's winning (Teddy even brings this up when he yells "Do you even care which one?"). David means well, but he's kind of an immature creep, and his actions throughout the film reflect that. It's a risk to make this guy the hero and if +1 had any point, it's a ballsy move that might've worked. But there's nothing here other than the initial hook. The main characters--David, Jill, Teddy, and Allison--are fleshed-out a bit, Miller provides some likable comic relief as the tries-too-hard Teddy who can't believe he gets to hook up with the impossibly hot Melanie (Natalie Hall), and Iliadis deserves some props for choosing to go for some good ol' gratuitous nudity that you don't generally see in these types of movies, but +1 never kicks into gear. It's derivative, dull, and there's no way in hell a group of one-year-out-of-high-school kids this diverse would ever be at the same party. Wallflower Allison is routinely bullied by these people--why would she even go to their party? In fact, when someone references the Book of Talmud and a Woody Allen-ish Jewish kid pops up out of nowhere to provide expository info and is promptly never seen again, I started to wonder if Iliadis and Gullo were just punking the audience. Then I thought "What audience?" (Unrated, 96 mins)
TOAD ROAD (US - 2013)
Centered on the urban legend of an abandoned asylum on Toad Road in York, PA and the surrounding wooded area that's allegedly home to the seven gateways to Hell, the micro-budgeted, cinema verite-styled TOAD ROAD isn't really a horror film. It's not really much of any film as director/writer/cinematographer Jason Banker has his cast seemingly riff and improv what's largely a look at privileged, drug-abusing slackers smoking, snorting, and inhaling anything that will get them high and through the day. Feeling like what might happen if Harmony Korine directed a mumblecore Lucio Fulci tribute to REQUIEM FOR A DREAM by way of JACKASS, the Elijah Wood-produced TOAD ROAD focuses on James (James Davidson), who's introduced high as shit, dragged down a hallway with his pants around his ankles. This is every day for James and his buddies--whether they're dropping acid, blowing Vicks inhalers in each others' eyes, or setting one another's pubes on fire, they only exist to see how fucked-up they can get. James somehow attracts the attention of college freshman Sara (Sara Anne Jones), who's experiencing freedom from her parents for the first time and wants to explore the hedonistic lifestyle of James and his friends. For James, whose dad still pays his rent, developing feelings for Sara has convinced him that maybe it's time to quit dicking around and grow up. But Sara is intent on dropping acid and venturing to Toad Road and attempting to pass the seven gates.
Banker is obviously going for a heavy-handed addiction metaphor with the "gateways to Hell" stuff, but it takes about 55 of the film's 76 minutes to even get there. There's some intriguing elements, especially with James waking up in the woods on Toad Road and being told six months have passed and he's a suspect in Sara's disappearance. But Banker has no interest whatsoever in conventional narrative, and that would be fine if there was anything else here. Considering they aren't professional actors, Davidson and Jones aren't bad, and if TOAD ROAD acquires any cult following at all, it'll be due to 24-year-old Jones' death from a heroin overdose just as the film was making the festival rounds in 2012. There's an undeniably queasy feeling watching her character hell-bent on immersing herself in the culture of addiction "for the experience" and knowing she'd die that way before anybody saw the movie. Jones was an aspiring model and this was her only film (she also appeared in a Death Cab for Cutie video). She had an appealing presence and even when TOAD ROAD is going nowhere--which is to say, essentially its entire running time--the camera seems to love her. What a waste. (Unrated, 76 mins)
BLINDSIDED (US/Canada - 2014)
Shot two years ago under the title PENTHOUSE NORTH, the ludicrous home invasion thriller BLINDSIDED was set to be released theatrically by Dimension Films in 2013, but executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein obviously had a change of heart. They didn't even give it a courtesy DVD dumping, instead selling it to Lifetime, who ran it the first weekend of 2014 as a "Lifetime Original Movie" before it turned up on Netflix Instant a few days later. Those are some pretty major red flags, and coupled with the fact that it stars the great Michael Keaton and the charming Michelle Monaghan, and is the first film in a decade directed by Joseph Ruben, a veteran pro who knows how to make commercial, crowd-pleasing suspense thrillers (he's best-known for 1987's THE STEPFATHER, 1991's SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY and 1993's THE GOOD SON), the initial assumption you might have about Dimension's treatment of this film is that it must be terrible. And you'd be right.
It's one thing to be awful but it's also utterly generic. Ruben and frequent screenwriting collaborator David Loughery (they previously worked together on 1984's DREAMSCAPE and 1995's MONEY TRAIN, and Loughery also scripted such films as 1992's PASSENGER 57 and 2008's LAKEVIEW TERRACE) are both uncharacteristically asleep-at-the-wheel here and seemed to prep for this by rewatching WAIT UNTIL DARK, telling Keaton to do some Michael Keaton stuff, giving Monaghan a white cane, and hoping other minor details like a plausible plot and competent filmmaking would just work themselves out. Ruben's no Hitchcock, but he's made some very good movies and one legitimately great one with THE STEPFATHER. BLINDSIDED, on the other hand, is easily his worst thriller (I'd say it's his worst film overall, but not with the 1980 comedy GORP on his resume). Monaghan is Sara, a combat photographer who loses her sight in an Afghanistan suicide bombing. Three years later, she lives with her boyfriend Ryan (Andrew Walker), who owns a posh penthouse apartment in Manhattan and "has some money." It's New Year's Eve, and after buying some wine for a quiet night in, Sara returns home and, until she slips in a pool of blood, is unaware that Ryan is lying dead in the kitchen. Sara is then terrorized by Chad (REVENGE's Barry Sloane), a psycho who insists Ryan has some money hidden in the penthouse. Eventually, they're joined by Chad's boss, the matter-of-fact Hollander (Keaton), who then tells Sara that Ryan has made off with his diamonds and he thinks they're stashed somewhere in the apartment. You can predict the rest: they play cat-and-mouse games, yell a lot, Sara gets tortured via waterboarding, and of course, she tries to play the bickering criminals against each other. The underemployed Keaton, kicking off his 2014 "Fuck It, Just Pay Me" tour that includes the ROBOCOP remake and NEED FOR SPEED, has some enjoyably snarky moments in the way he condescendingly addresses Chad's frequent bouts of incompetence, but there isn't a single thing in BLINDSIDED that you haven't seen before, unless you count greenscreen work and CGI that can best be described as "unfinished." The unbelievably shoddy look of BLINDSIDED--the NYC skyline in the background is hilariously unconvincing, as is the CGI breath as characters stand out on the terrace in freezing temps (when the filmmakers remember to use it, that is) and one character's cartoonish fall from the terrace--is the likely reason the Weinsteins dropped this like a bad habit, pawning it off on presumably less-demanding TV viewers who might be more inclined to forgive crummy visuals at home than they would be laughing it off the screen at the multiplex. BLINDSIDED just looks like a movie that everyone involved simply walked away from during post-production. There's probably a story to tell with what went wrong here. I hate to think Ruben returned from a decade-long sabbatical to make something this uninspired, amateurishly sloppy, and riddled with plot holes. (Unrated, 85 mins; currently only available on Netflix Instant)
The biggest change this new film makes is shooting it almost entirely from Frank's POV. Wood primarily turns up as reflections in mirrors and windows, except for a few times when Khalfoun inexplicably bungles it and swings the camera around to show Frank actually killing people. The POV is a nice touch, so it doesn't make sense and it's completely intrusive when Khalfoun breaks it, and it seems to have been done only to give Wood more screen time as he'd otherwise barely be visible. Still, as far as remakes go, MANIAC '13 isn't bad, however unnecessary it may be. The makeup effects by Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger are a nice mix of CGI and practical, with the blood looking appropriately wet and the flesh moist instead of completely cartoonish and badly-digitized. When he sticks to the Frank POV, Khalfoun stages some nicely-done murder sequences, particularly the first one with the way the knife enters the frame. Frank, who suffers from migraines, is also frequently sickened by his actions, which gives Khalfoun a good excuse for a suitably gross POV puking shot into a toilet. I guess if MANIAC had to be remade, this turned out as good as it could've turned out, and the music score by "Rob" is a standout. Face it, this could've just as easily been a neutered, PG-13, in-name-only revamp instead of the unrated gorefest that it is. It's an admirable effort, better than anything with the name "Alexandre Aja" attached to it should be, and Wood gives it his all, but when I feel like watching MANIAC, I'm going with Joe Spinell. (Unrated, 89 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
I'm a sucker for a good cold, snowy, icy horror flick, but THE COLONY fails to take its place aside such iconic titles as THE SHINING or either version of THE THING. It isn't even in the same league as WHITEOUT or the recent prequel THE THING. At least WHITEOUT went to the trouble of CGI-ing some visible breath for the actors in the exterior scenes. The interiors of the closed-up NORAD facility make a good location, but THE COLONY falls apart whenever anyone walks outside. Everything is unconvincingly green-screened and cartoonishly CGI'd. You never feel for one moment that these actors are out in the elements and not in a comfortable, climate-controlled studio standing in front of a screen. The best kind of CGI is the kind that doesn't call attention to itself, and the CGI here is basically wearing a bright, flashing neon sign. And once the cannibals make their way to the colony, the whole thing becomes yet another John Carpenter-styled siege scenario and a sort-of ASSAULT ON COLONY 7. The film is directed by Jeff Renfroe, who primarily works in TV these days but previously made a pair of interesting and little-seen indies: 2004's Euro-dystopian PARANOIA 1.0 has Jeremy Sisto as a computer programmer who starts cracking up when mysterious packages keep appearing at his door, and 2007's CIVIC DUTY stars Peter Krause in an intense performance as a laid-off accountant with nothing but time on his hands, spending his days watching cable news and becoming increasingly obsessed with his new neighbor--a Muslim grad student--and convincing himself that the guy is a terrorist. Both of these films have a powerful sense of paranoia and claustrophobia that would seem to be ideal for THE COLONY, but the artifice of the whole production design just keeps you at a distance. While the film works best when it stays indoors, it has nothing unique or substantive to offer, doesn't even make any valid points on an environmental level, and exists only to provide easy paychecks for Fishburne and Paxton. It took four screenwriters to come up with this? (R, 94 mins)
THE EAST (US - 2013)
Actress/screenwriter Brit Marling has made a name for herself on the indie and festival circuits over the last couple of years with 2011's ANOTHER EARTH (directed by Mike Cahill) and 2012's SOUND OF MY VOICE (directed by Zal Batmanglij). Marling and Batmanglij team up again with THE EAST, which finds the creative pair getting a sizable budget boost courtesy of A-list producers Ridley Scott and Michael Costigan, and falling flat on their faces, with a story that travels a path that's too structurally similar to SOUND OF MY VOICE. And where VOICE and ANOTHER EARTH were science fiction stories that could explain away some of the more outlandish plot elements, Marling seems to struggle when the plot is based in the real world and without a fantastic angle. Marling stars as Sarah, a former FBI agent who lands a gig at a private company specializing in corporate espionage. Her boss (Patricia Clarkson), hired by big money clients, assigns her to infiltrate The East, a domestic eco-terrorism outfit that's been targeting CEOs and various corporate big shots with such acts as flooding an oil honcho's house with crude after his company causes a massive oil spill. In the first of many embarrassingly simplistic developments straight out of Plot Convenience Playhouse, it takes Sarah about a day to get into The East's inner circle, which she manages to accomplish via Craigslist and hanging out with some acoustic guitar-strumming hippies on the shore. Of course she finds herself drawn to their charismatic leader Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) and comes to agree with The East's philosophies and practices (at times, with their straitjacket dinners and off-kilter rounds of Spin the Bottle--"May I hug you for one minute?"--they seem more like a cult), taking part in their projects (called "jams"), and her happy life with her nice but boring boyfriend (Jason Ritter) falls apart as she ignores her boss' most vital piece of advice: "Do not get soft."
Sofia Coppola's latest film is an account of the rash of 2008-2009 burglaries of celebrity homes in the Hollywood Hills committed by a group of privileged teenagers dubbed the "Bling Ring." It had the unfortunate timing to be released right after Harmony Korine's more flashy and impressive SPRING BREAKERS, and despite some stinging observations of its protagonists' coddled lifestyles, it doesn't really have much to say. It starts out fine, as troubled rich kid Marc (Israel Broussard) arrives at a new school and immediately befriends Rebecca (Katie Chang). Historically a misfit, Marc is welcomed into Rebecca's clique--also consisting of sisters Nicki (Emma Watson) and Sam (Taissa Farmiga), and their friend Chloe (Claire Julien)--and petty crimes committed out of boredom soon lead to burglarizing celebrity mansions after they read that Paris Hilton will be out of town. They go to Hilton's home and find the keys under the mat. Hilton is out of town so much that they go back several times, and also hit the homes of Lindsay Lohan, THE HILLS star Audrina Patridge, and Orlando Bloom, and bring along Nicki and Sam's younger sister Emily (Georgia Rock) to Megan Fox's house because she's small enough to fit through a doggy door and let everyone else in. Like any group of young and inexperienced criminals, they get too cocky and stupid for their own good, not just in their repeat visits to Hilton's house, but posting pics of themselves with the stolen merchandise on their Facebook pages. And of course, Rebecca, the de facto ringleader, tries to throw everyone under the bus when the shit hits the fan.
The story behind THE BLING RING is a interesting one, so it's hard to tell why the film ends up such an inert trifle, especially in the capable hands of Coppola (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, LOST IN TRANSLATION). Maybe it's that in her attempts to convey the shallow and vacuous lives of the "Bling Ring," Coppola inadvertently creates a shallow and vacuous film. Once the premise and the players are established, the film becomes one montage after another of the titular group hanging out, doing drugs, clubbing, and taking selfies. There are some high points: Watson is very good and Leslie Mann gets some laughs as Nicki's, Sam's, and Emily's new agey, home-schooling mother whose educational curriculum is based on Rhonda Byrne's bestselling book The Secret. There's probably a solid crime film to be made of this story, but it just plays like a less horrific, rich-kid, L.A. ennui version of Larry Clark's BULLY. (R, 90 mins)
JAVA HEAT (US - 2013)
JAVA HEAT is a throwback actioner from the L.A.-based Margate House Films, a company owned by former political commentator Rob Allyn (producer, co-writer) and his son Conor (co-writer, director). Though an American company, they work primarily in Indonesia, and JAVA HEAT does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of Java and Conor Allyn admirably goes for real explosions and stunt work instead of the usual CGI that we get in every other product from the Hollywood assembly line. While the Allyns' sense of filmmaking aesthetics are admirable, their script is pretty weak and not helped at all by a bland leading man in TWILIGHT co-star Kellan Lutz. Lutz is Jake Wilde, an AWOL Marine posing as a grad student in Indonesian art history, in Java on a personal mission to eliminate a terror cell run by a Frenchman named Malik, played by what once might've been Mickey Rourke. Jake forms an uneasy, bickering, culture-clashing alliance with local cop and devout Muslim Hashim (Indonesian superstar Ario Bayu) to bring down Malik...if they don't kill each other first!
It's obvious that the younger Allyn is a disciple of big-budget '80s and early '90s actioners and he does an admirable job of emulating the look of those films, even in the unique (to American audiences, at least) setting. But other than some nice, real explosions and a few decent action sequences, JAVA HEAT is pretty boring. Some of that falls on Lutz, who's just not an interesting actor, but the story is pretty hollow and formulaic to the point of catatonia. It's overlong and badly-paced, and doesn't make good use of cosmetic-surgery-gone-horribly-awry cautionary tale Rourke, who lumbers around like the Frankenstein monster, utilizing a horrid French accent that's so thick and garbled that he's often subtitled even when speaking English. It might've worked if he'd cut loose and played it crazy, but since Rourke is obviously bored, he creates a boring character (though there is one cool shot of him walking away from an explosion in slo-mo). Wasn't THE WRESTLER supposed to rescue him from this kind of junk? Or has he finally burned every remaining bridge in his quest to squander all of the goodwill that brilliant performance earned? If you want to see Rourke play the bad guy in dumb action movie, just watch DOUBLE TEAM again. Allyn shows bits of style here and there, and with a script from someone other than him and/or his dad, he might have a future as a reliable, go-to DTV action director of the Isaac Florentine variety. But for now, JAVA HEAT doesn't really get the job done. (R, 104 mins)
PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES (US - 2013)
Anchor Bay barely released this incredibly awful, absurdly tardy PULP FICTION ripoff that plays like it should've gone straight-to-video in 1996. Co-produced by Limp Bizkit mainman Fred Durst, who was originally set to direct before the job went to the once-promising Wayne Kramer (THE COOLER, RUNNING SCARED), PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES tells a trio of stories centered on a rundown pawn shop in the hillbilly south run by Vincent D'Onofrio and Chi McBride. First off, a crew of brainless meth heads--including Paul Walker and Lukas Haas--can't get their shit together to follow through with their half-assed plan of robbing the area's top meth cooker (Norman Reedus, his face hidden behind a respirator mask). The next has Matt Dillon ditching his new bride (Rachelle Lefevre) when he discovers his missing first wife's ring at the pawn shop, sending him on a quest for revenge and the truth behind her disappearance. The final story involves the redemption of a hopelessly down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator (Brendan Fraser) who can't even scrape together some pocket change for a coffee at a greasy spoon. Written by Adam Minarovich, PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES stumbles at every turn as Kramer tries to replicate the balls-out insanity and comic book mindset of RUNNING SCARED but fails miserably, and the film is so slavishly devoted to its Tarantino stylings that you quickly go from feeling sorry for it to being actively pissed off at its sheer laziness, wallowing in sleaze and would-be "shock" bits as it drags on to an exhausting 112 minutes. Wasting an interesting supporting cast that had some cult-movie potential (there's also Thomas Jane, Pell James, Ashlee Simpson, and a vigorously masturbating Elijah Wood), while getting career-worst performances from most of the past-their-prime leads (Fraser and Dillon are terrible), the appalling, unwatchable PAWN SHOP CHRONICLES has absolutely nothing redeeming about it and offers zero entertainment value. There's just nothing else to say: this is a complete pile of dog shit. (R, 112 mins)
