The grim rural Alabama indie noir INTO THE ASHES seems to have all the ingredients for a compelling story that's heavy on the bleak hopelessness, but it just never quite manages to get its shit together and become the next BLUE RUIN or BAD TURN WORSE. Nick Brenner (YELLOWSTONE's Luke Grimes) lives a quiet life doing repairs for a local furniture company, but his past is about to come back and bite him in the ass in the form of Sloan (Frank Grillo). Just paroled after serving a several-year stretch because Nick hung him out to dry, Sloan wants revenge, and he doesn't care that Nick has cleaned up his act and built a new life--including buying a home with Sloan's money--with Tara (Marguerite Moreau). Sloan and two associates, Charlie (David Cade) and Bruce (Scott Peat), with the help of a sleazy private eye who learns the hard way that he shouldn't gouge Sloan for more money, end up at Nick's house while he's away for the weekend working on restoring a boat with his buddy Sal (James Badge Dale). When Nick returns, he's greeted by Sloan and his crew, who inform him that they killed Tara before shooting him twice in the back and leaving him for dead. He wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed under the steely glare of Sheriff Frank (Robert Taylor, taking his LONGMIRE act for another spin), who also happens to be his father-in-law and always knew he was no good. Nick manages to escape from custody when Frank leaves him with his idiot deputy (Brady Smith), and teams up with Sal to go after Sloan, Charlie, and Bruce.
It shouldn't take much to make something like INTO THE ASHES function as an engrossing thriller, but writer/director Aaron Harvey (best known for the dismal 2011 Tarantino knockoff CATCH .44, one of Bruce Willis' earliest forays into the world of straight-to-VOD) keeps the pace at a lugubrious crawl, and repeatedly errs in having significant events take place offscreen, only to have the characters talk about them after. That includes a late-film POV switch from Nick to Frank, who arrives on the scene of a motel shootout, sending him on a search for his son-in-law. Harvey eventually shows what happened in a later flashback, but by that point it doesn't matter, since we know who was killed and whatever minimal momentum was building has been completely quashed by a director trying to be stylish. Grillo (among the team of producers, along with his buddy Joe Carnahan) is an effective bad guy, but he's absent for long stretches, a tell-tale sign that they only had him for a few days. Grimes is sufficiently glum and dour but he remains a blank slate throughout, and only Taylor manages to create a genuinely interesting character, which Harvey of course diminishes by giving him pretentious voiceovers referencing religious parables about Samson in reference to Nick. INTO THE ASHES would've been a lot better if it just told a straightforward story instead of incessantly stalling itself and fumbling around with Creative Writing 101-level subtext in an attempt to be "deep." (Unrated, 97 mins)
COLD BLOOD (France/Ukraine - 2019)
A thriller so blandly by-the-numbers that it actually fades from your memory while you're watching it, COLD BLOOD could almost qualify as Luc Besson fan fiction on the part of debuting director Frederic Petitjean, right down to the hiring of cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, a frequent Besson collaborator going back to 1990's LA FEMME NIKITA. But the real Besson worship is evidenced by the presence of Jean Reno in what amounts to an alternate universe incarnation of his Leon character from Besson's 1994 favorite THE PROFESSIONAL, only here he's called Henry. The film opens in the snowy nowhere of the Pacific Northwest wilderness, where Melody (Sarah Lind) crashes her snowmobile. Bleeding and unconscious, she's found and nursed back to health by Henry, who lives in quiet solitude in a cabin on the lake. Flashbacks reveal Henry is actually a hit man in hiding after whacking a billionaire CEO (Jean-Luc Olivier) in NYC ten months earlier. The CEO was actually born in the nearest town in Washington state and chose to be buried there (of all the places for Henry to hide), which prompts irate local detective Kappa (BACKDRAFT 2's Joe Anderson) to investigate the murder himself. Other characters exist on the fringe, like an assassin (David Gyasi) hired by the CEO's sinister chief aide (Francois Guetary) and a "surprise" involving Melody that will only surprise you if COLD BLOOD is the first movie you've ever seen.
A French-Ukrainian co-production shot in Kiev, COLD BLOOD never quite looks or feels "American," starting with most of the Ukrainian supporting cast being unconvincingly dubbed. But there's also a ton of awkward, stilted dialogue like Kappa's wizened old partner Davies (Ihor Ciszkewycz) asking him why he transferred from NYC to the middle of nowhere and being told, in a way that suggests a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that's covered in pretentious bullshit, "Maybe I wanted to get lost." Or a head-scratcher of an exchange that actually sounds like Petitjean fishing for a distribution deal, where Davies asks Kappa "They got Netflix in New York?" and Kappa glowers "You see the things I see in New York City, you won't need Netflix." Or a floridly overwritten scene between Kappa and the CEO's estranged, dementia-stricken ex-wife (DOWNTON ABBEY's Samantha Bond, also Miss Moneypenny in the Pierce Brosnan-era 007 films), who's prone to surprisingly verbose purple prose and mellifluous exposition dumps for someone who can't remember a damn thing. For his part, Reno is Reno. At first, it's nice to see him in lethal assassin mode again, but he looks tired and bored, and after watching COLD BLOOD, one could hardly blame him. (R, 91 mins)
REPRISAL (US/UK - 2018) Directed by Brian A. Miller. Written by Bryce Hammons. Cast: Frank Grillo, Bruce Willis, Olivia Culpo, Johnathon Schaech, Natali Yura, Wass Stevens, Colin Egglesfield, Uncle Murda, Christopher Rob Bowen, Natalia Sophie Butler, Tyler Olson, Geoff Reeves, Shea Buckner, Ken Strunk. (R, 89 mins) On Comedy Central's recent roast of former actor Bruce Willis, Edward Norton was on the dais and wondered if he could get away with the stuff Willis does: "Could I just leave the set of a movie after my close-ups are done and have my co-stars act opposite a C-stand with a red 'X' taped to it while a script girl reads my dialogue to them?" Perhaps Norton has seen at least a few entries in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series, the latest installment being REPRISAL. Reuniting Willis--at least for a day, maybe two--with his THE PRINCE and VICE director Brian A. Miller, REPRISAL also makes frequent use of the big-eared Willis double who pretty much handled his work for him in the climactic shootout of FIRST KILL. In a performance that sets new standards for doing the bare minimum, Willis again demonstrates the kind of coasting entitlement that comes when you no longer feel the need to hide your utter contempt for your co-stars, your craft, and your audience. Upon a cursory glance, he seems to be in a good amount of REPRISAL, but not when you look closer. His first appearance comes five minutes in and perfectly encapsulates this bizarre phase of Willis' career: his character is seen working out in his driveway and his neighbor jokingly calls him "old man." But it's not Willis. We see Willis' Fake Shemp with the big ears and his back to the camera, then Miller cuts to a close-up where Willis looks frazzled and confused, but the shots don't really match. He's standing in front of windows that aren't there in the long shot. It looks like Miller has been forced to sub in outtakes from another scene. Then there's a cut to the big-eared double, his back to the camera, saying "I'll take you anytime, punk!" in what is clearly the voice of someone trying--and failing--to sound like Bruce Willis. This double shows up at a few more times throughout the movie, usually when Willis' character is required to be outdoors. Were it not for this man's heroic actions in the line of duty, doing whatever was needed to make the DIE HARD icon's performance complete, the makers of REPRISAL might've been forced to resort to drastic measures, like seeing if John Cusack was available.
Once in a while, Willis appears in one of these things and it's not terrible. 2016's HEAT ripoff MARAUDERS was actually OK, but that was due mostly to a borderline-gonzo performance by Christopher Meloni as a pissed-off FBI agent and certainly not due to Willis putting in a few sporadic, sleepy appearances as a financial CEO organizing robberies of his own banks. REPRISAL is maybe the worst of the bunch, and it doesn't even get a good performance out of the usually reliable PURGE and WHEELMAN tough guy Frank Grillo, who just looks lethargic and bored from the start. Grillo makes a lot of movies. He knows this is a piece of shit, but he doesn't have the luxury of being Bruce Willis, so he's forced to trudge through it. Grillo stars as Jacob Tasker, the manager of a downtown Cincinnati bank that's robbed by Gabriel (Johnathon Schaech), a methodical master criminal who's called in a series of bomb threats around the city as a distraction. Put on administrative leave for a week after the robbery, Jacob has time to sit at home and stew about things--not just what he could've done differently, but also his diabetic daughter Sophia (young Natalia Sophie Butler, given a warm welcome to the biz by having her name misspelled "Natlia" in the credits) and some mounting bills that are causing some tension with wife Christina (Olivia Culpo, whose primary function here is to say things like "Any updates?" and "Talk to me!"). Jacob spends a lot of his downtime drinking Heinekens with his neighbor James (Willis), a retired cop who helps him break down the robbery as the two try to pinpoint where the next one will occur. Jacob somehow figures this out and starts tailing Gabriel himself, even following him to an armored car heist and intervening as the cops arrive. Gabriel drops the bag of money during the shootout with the cops, prompting Jacob to impulsively pull a SILENT PARTNER and take the money for himself. This doesn't quite work out, as Gabriel figures out Jacob has the money and--wait for it--kidnaps Christina and Sophia, who goes into diabetic shock right on schedule while Jacob is forced to tell James he took the money as the two face two challenges: figuring out how to rescue Christina and Sophia and doing so with as little participation from Willis as possible.
REPRISAL is neither smart nor ambitious enough to devise something as clever as the 1979 cult classic THE SILENT PARTNER, where bank teller Elliott Gould figures out that deranged mall Santa Christopher Plummer is plotting to rob his bank, giving him time to concoct a clandestine plan to skim some money off the eventual take, starting a lethal game of cat and mouse between a mild-mannered teller who got a little greedy and a lunatic psycho who wants his money. No, REPRISAL just has no energy or momentum at all, starting with an unusually dull Grillo, who's saddled with a character that just as unbelievable as he is idiotic. Schaech isn't bad as far as stock, teeth-gritting bad guys go, even if it seems like the prep for his role consisted of watching Val Kilmer's and Tom Sizemore's scenes in HEAT, which is probably more than anyone else did. And Bruce? Well, he's Bruce. He spends a good chunk of his scenes--almost all in close-up because that's pretty much all he was there for--doing this weird, slurring thing with his voice. What is he doing? Is he ad-libbing his retiree character recovering from a stroke? It's a pointless affect that goes nowhere and serves no purpose other than Willis pretending he's "acting," but he can't even be bothered to keep up the ruse, as he starts speaking normally midway through. He does get to jog around with a shotgun near the end and blow somebody away, but it's obvious from the editing (lots of Bruce close-ups) and from the presence of the Fake Shemp that Willis and the actor he kills weren't there at the same time. There's one scene between Willis and Grillo where they have a beer in Jacob's backyard, and it seriously looks like neither actor has ever been in front of a camera before. But honestly, nothing sums up the futility of chronicling all of these Redbox-ready Lionsgate VOD dumpjobs like that first scene with Willis' double less than five minutes into the movie. I mean, seriously, look at this. This is laziness and apathy on a Steven Seagal level. Look how this scene had to be cobbled together just because Willis couldn't be bothered to stand there and stretch in a driveway. Edward Norton wasn't joking.
Nicolas Cage is in total coast mode in this lifeless and embarrassingly cheap-looking post-apocalyptic sci-fi dystopia dud. Set in a future America being rebuilt 30 years after a second Civil War, famine, and nuclear fallout wreaked nationwide destruction, THE HUMANITY BUREAU has Cage as Noah Kross, an agent with the titular government organization. They're in charge of weeding out and investigating those who aren't contributing their fair share to New America, where the rule is that you must give more than you take. These laws primarily affect the lower class, making the very concept a Fox News wet dream, but THE HUMANITY BUREAU can't be bothered to muster up any political subtext, unless you count one minor character being Photoshopped into that creepy pic of Donald Trump and Mitt Romney at dinner. Those who are deemed burdens on society are sent packing to a controlled welfare community called New Eden. Now, anyone who's seen a future dystopian sci-fi movie before will instantly figure out that New Eden is really a concentration camp set up for the genocidal extermination of the lower and underclass undesirables. It's a great concept for a film that gave a shit and maybe tried, but that's not THE HUMANITY BUREAU. Instead, glum Kross, who's shocked--shocked!--to learn what New Eden really is (watch Cage gravely intone "What have we done?" when he finds out, long after anyone watching does), decides to go against his ruthless boss Adam (Hugh Dillon as Stanley Tucci as Dean Norris) and protect single mom Rachel Weller (Sarah Lind) and her 11-year-old son Lucas (Jakob Davies) when they're deemed New Eden-worthy. They head to Canada in Kross' improbably still-functional late '70s El Camino, with Adam and comic relief agent Porter (Vicellous Shannon, who saw better days as a child actor when he starred opposite Denzel Washington in THE HURRICANE) in lukewarm pursuit.
Like Andrew Niccol's just-released Netflix film ANON, THE HUMANITY BUREAU feels like a high-concept sci-fi film that might've been something in 2001 or 2002, when Cage was still an A-lister. But with most of the budget obviously going to its star, the film never effectively conveys a post-apocalyptic atmosphere. There's a ton of scenes with Cage laughably fake driving his El Camino against an amateurishly phony digital backdrop that looks like it was done by Mattel's My First Greenscreen. There's a lot of interior scenes and the exteriors just look like remote areas of Canada, where the film was shot. People live a normal life considering how hellish it was just three decades earlier according to Rachel, who tells Kross stories of neighbors selling their children for quick cash or eating them to survive (wait--he was alive then...wouldn't he know that?). Any of that would've made a more compelling film than somber Nic Cage in his new limited edition Christopher Lee Memorial Hairpiece pretending to drive a car or bonding with an obnoxious kid. Speaking of Lucas, at one point Rachel begs Kross to delay their shipping out to New Eden because Lucas has a recital the next day for which he's been "rehearsing for months." Kross agrees and shows up at the recital to watch. Never mind that this film doesn't even seem to exist in its own world--the recital is filled with suburban middle-class parents supposedly living in a post-nuke dystopia where water is still a scarce commodity--but the big performance? Lucas and his class singing "Amazing Grace" and Lucas getting a solo dramatic reading of...The Pledge of Allegiance? This took months of preparation? Lucas is 11 years old. These kids are in 5th or 6th grade. Is this movie even trying? No, it's not. As MOM AND DAD showed earlier this year, Cage is still capable of bringing his A-game when he gives a shit, but to say he brought his even C-game to THE HUMANITY BUREAU would be charitable. He hasn't been this disinterested and disengaged with the material since BANGKOK DANGEROUS. Screenwriter Dave Schultz appears to show some affinity for CHINATOWN by giving Cage's character a name that riffs on John Huston's despicable Noah Cross, but other than that? Forget it, Jake. It's THE HUMANITY BUREAU. (R, 94 mins)
JOSIE (US - 2018)
It seems that much of today's film criticism consists of writers trying to out-"woke" one another by airing grievances, looking for reasons to be outraged, and listing ways in which they were offended instead of reviewing the movie itself. I consciously avoid that unless the film's offenses are so upfront and blatant that addressing them is unavoidable and thus making it impossible to separate the art from the artist. One time in which that kind of review approach was unfortunately justified was back in 2014, when I reviewed the indie horror film CONTRACTED. Click here for more about that, but in short, the film's chronicle of the degenerative body and STD-related horrors that result from a young bisexual woman's acquaintance rape at a party came across as heavy-handed and frankly gross slut-shaming on the part of director Eric England, largely because the film keeps referring to the inciting act as a "one-night stand," when it clearly isn't. I was unfamiliar with England's work at that point, but upon seeing CONTRACTED, a film that willfully refuses to differentiate rape and a one-night stand and subsequently blames its heroine for the venereal horrors that result from it, it was uncomfortably obvious that this guy seemed to have some issues with women. Cut to 2018, and just as England's latest film JOSIE was going straight to VOD and the #MeToo movement was well-established as a powerful force in the entertainment industry, allegations by his ex-girlfriend Katie Stegeman (who appeared in CONTRACTED and his earlier film MADISON COUNTY) surfaced on social media detailing several years of physical and psychological abuse. Her story is quite harrowing, and if it's true (like JOSIE, any resulting scandal pretty much vanished instantly because nobody knows or cares who Eric England is), then it's safe to infer that England is every bit the creep that CONTRACTED went out of its way to reveal him to be.
I missed England's 2017 kidnapping-gone-awry dark comedy GET THE GIRL (whose cast featured convention regulars like Noah Segan and Scout Taylor-Compton), but JOSIE is a step up, at least in terms of relative prestige, as it marks the first time England's got some well-known and reasonably big-ish names who may or may not regret being in it now. In a small, depressing California town, Hank (Dylan McDermott) is a quiet loner living in a dive motel and working as a parking monitor at the local high school, where he's derisively referred to as "Spank" by a student body who look and act like they missed a casting call for Larry Clark's BULLY. Hank goes home to his dingy room, where two turtles are his only companions, and is annoyed when his nosy neighbors won't leave him alone. Hank comes out of his shell with the arrival of Josie (GAME OF THRONES' Sophie Turner), a tattooed high-schooler from the wrong side of the tracks who's new in town and arrives alone (her mom is on her way, she claims), quickly befriending Hank as well as Marcus (Jack Kilmer, Val's son), Hank's chief tormenter at school. Josie gets Hank to open up about his dark past and what drove him to choose a life of isolation and solitude, while Hank sees--though he knows he shouldn't--the possibility for something more. It isn't long before things come to a head, with Marcus vandalizing Hank's truck and boat and Josie ditching Hank to have sex with Marcus to make Hank jealous. Anyone who's ever seen a movie with a femme fatale will figure out precisely what Josie's up to at exactly the midway point and the only suspense really comes from watching how she's got both Hank and Marcus wrapped around her finger. And around the time of the climax, as things play out in the worst way possible for lonely, hapless Hank and dense, horny Marcus, that CONTRACTED ugliness and rage and England's alleged violence against Stegeman pops into your head. In fairness, JOSIE is an accomplished and more disciplined film compared to CONTRACTED, and it gets a lot of mileage from an excellent performance by McDermott, who's often achingly sad to watch as Hank talks to his turtles, is the butt of jokes and pranks at the high school, and plays some old-school country music while he puts on his best cowboy duds and slow dances by himself as he gets ready to have dinner with Josie only to find out Marcus is already in her room, leaving him to stand outside and listen to them fuck. And if you listen closely, you can probably hear England just out of camera range muttering "Yeah...that fucking bitch." (R, 87 mins)
STEPHANIE (US - 2018)
There has to be fascinating story about what went wrong with STEPHANIE because the signs are all there that this had to be a total clusterfuck behind the scenes. Curiously short running time, with super-slow closing credits rolling at 78 minutes? Check. Produced by profitable horror factory Blumhouse and left to gather dust on a Universal shelf for three years before getting a stealth VOD debut two weeks before hitting Blu-ray? Check. The least-finished-looking visual effects this side of A SOUND OF THUNDER? Check. Familiar names present in the IMDb cast listing (Harold Perrineau, Kenneth Choi, Alexa Mansour) but nowhere to be seen in the released film? Directed by Oscar-winning mercenary screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A BEAUTIFUL MIND)? Check. It's all too apparent that Universal had no clue what to do with this movie, which doesn't even have a real trailer (see below--it's just one out-of-context clip), and doesn't even look finished, exhibiting an abundance of evidence that it was just abandoned and completely given up on by everyone involved. That's too bad, because it gets off to an odd and interesting start, with the entire opening half-hour being a one-girl show for young Shree Crooks (CAPTAIN FANTASTIC) in the title role. She's alone in nice-looking suburban house and seems to have been left there for a while. Food is rotting in the fridge, she's down to pretzels and slices of American cheese, and she spends her time watching TV and talking to her stuffed toy turtle Francis. She's wary of periodic appearances of "the monster," and we see occasional flickering shadows of something around a corner, but she hides in her room and it goes away. There may or may not be the dead body of her older brother Paul in his room, and TV news reports show brief snippets of catastrophic disasters all over the world. Her parents (Frank Grillo of the PURGE sequels and FRINGE's Anna Torv) finally return home from wherever they were, casting concerned glances at Stephanie and seemingly shocked that she's alive. Talk soon turns to dealing with "the monster" as STEPHANIE proceeds to move at a glacial pace while doling out details to a story that never really comes together.
Goldsman, who doesn't have a writing credit here (that's left for the team of Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, who went on to script the cult indie SUPER DARK TIMES), gives us the what but the rest--the why and the how--remain frustrating mysteries, and not in a cleverly ambiguous or thoughtfully enigmatic way. It seems to use the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode "It's a Good Life" as a springboard but it just doesn't make sense on any narrative or logical level. Apparently, a much different cut of STEPHANIE screened at the 2017 Overlook Film Festival, containing a framing device and a ton of exposition about the setting being a dystopian 2027 (this is where Perrineau's character appeared), but that's all gone in this version. It'll be obvious to anyone who watches enough movies even without knowing that Perrineau and others have been cut from the movie that huge chunks of this thing have been hacked away seemingly willy-nilly. There's a few positives barely salvaged in the wreckage--Crooks is very good and looks so much like Torv that the two of them playing mother and daughter is inspired casting; and there's one intense bit involving a blender--but the climactic CGI display is a bush-league embarrassment and the released film (I hesitate to call it "completed") is a botched shitshow that looks like Universal said "Hey, what's going on with this?" and Jason Blum and everyone involved shouted "Not it!" and went home. (R, 86 mins)
Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (DOGTOOTH) reteams with his LOBSTER star Colin Farrell for this brilliant mindfuck that puts Greek myth and tragedy into modern American suburbia and turns it into a dark and disturbing arthouse horror film. Shot and set in Cincinnati, OH, one of the most quintessentially midwest American cities, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER takes its time, building tension, and methodically tightening its grip. Farrell is Dr. Steven Murphy, a renowned cardiologist with a wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman, who starred with Farrell in last year's THE BEGUILED, which was shot after SACRED DEER but released first), teenage daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and young son Bob (Sunny Suljic). Unbeknownst to his family, Steven frequently meets with Martin (DUNKIRK's Barry Keoghan), a polite but troubled 16-year-old. The nature of their relationship isn't revealed until much later, but it appears to be a Big Brother or a mentor-type situation, as Martin's father is dead and his mother (Alicia Silverstone) doesn't seem to be all there in the two years since his passing. After Steven invites Martin to meet his family, the boy's neediness escalates and he starts showing up at Steven's office unannounced, demanding he come to his mother's house for dinner, watch GROUNDHOG DAY with him ("It was my dad's favorite movie") and psychologically manipulating and slowly seducing Kim. Then Martin drops the hammer and Steven is forced to contend with the extent of what the awkward teenager has in store for him and his family.
To say anymore would involve far too many spoilers, but THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is hypnotic in ways we rarely see since the loss of Stanley Kubrick. The shot compositions, the long, static takes, and the cold, antiseptic interiors of the hospital and the Steadicam prowling its endless hallways like some sort of Overlook Medical Center all cast that vividly Kubrick spell, at least until the third act when things take a more pronounced Michael Haneke-inspired turn. Lanthimos has fashioned a film that is stilted and awkward by design. These characters are recognizably typical American people but they often talk like they're from another world, effectively emphasizing and almost darkly satirizing the cold detachment so vital to Kubrick. People say inappropriate things with little or no provocation: everyone is fixated on Steven's "beautiful" hands and they're mentioned in practically every other scene. "Do you have hair under your arms?" Bob asks Martin. It's the kind of movie where Martin's mother will start sucking Steven's thumb after he declines dessert and when he's uncomfortable and tries to leave, she sternly intones "I won't let you leave until you've tried my tart." It's the kind of movie where Steven impulsively tells his nine-year-old son that as a child, he once jerked off his drunk, passed-out stepfather ("The sheets were covered in sperm..."). And what prompts Steven to tell a colleague (Bill Camp) at a swanky gala hospital event "Our daughter started menstruating last week..."? Dysfunction is everywhere and the perfection of the American dream is all surface. Steven and Anna love one another but their sex life is bizarre--she strips and lies motionless, almost corpse-like, while he gropes himself, and it's a technique Kim mimics when she tries to initiate her idea of sex with an uninterested Martin, indicating that she's probably watched her parents. The film pulls no punches with its harrowing finale, and like any Lanthimos film, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is decidedly not for everyone (it's closer in spirit to DOGTOOTH than the darkly comedic THE LOBSTER, the latter seeming downright commercial in retrospect). But it's filled with outstanding performances by actors tasked with difficult roles (especially the quietly remarkable turn by Keoghan, who's even better here than he was as the doomed George in DUNKIRK), spellbinding camera work and cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis, and a unique and uncompromising vision on the part of its creators. Lanthimos is one of the masters of today's cinema. (R, 121 mins) CROOKED HOUSE
(UK - 2017)
Kenneth Branagh's middling remake of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS became a surprise hit in the fall of 2017, but another Agatha Christie adaptation arrived a couple of weeks later and no one knew about it. That's a shame because CROOKED HOUSE, while still flawed, is an overall better film despite Sony's apparent disinterest in promoting it, opting to dump it on 16 screens and VOD with no publicity at all (it wasn't even a theatrical release in the UK, where it premiered on Channel 5). Christie's novel, published in 1949, has fallen through the cracks over the decades even though it was one of the legendary writer's personal favorites of her work. She was especially proud of the incredibly uncompromising ending, which could be why there's never been a CROOKED HOUSE movie until now (there was a four-part BBC radio drama in 2008), and why this adaptation might've been a tough sell for mainstream audiences, even with the presence of some fine actors and a script co-written by GOSFORD PARK screenwriter and DOWNTON ABBEY creator Julian Fellowes. Fellowes' screenplay dated back to 2011, when Neil LaBute was originally attached to direct and Julie Andrews, Gabriel Byrne, and Gemma Arterton set to star. That fell apart in pre-production and the film eventually got made several years later with Gilles Paquet-Brenner (SARAH'S KEY, DARK PLACES) at the helm, reworking Fellowes' script (RAPA NUI writer Tim Rose Price is also credited) and losing all of the initially attached cast. Crooked House is populated by some of Christie's most loathsome characters, whose narcissism and misanthropy are obviously what initially drew LaBute (IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS) to the project. Paquet-Brenner tones that down a bit, but CROOKED HOUSE still contains some of the most bitterly sniping repartee in any Christie work.
Charles Hayward (Max Irons) is a British spy-turned-private eye in 1950s London (the film moves the book's setting ahead about a decade). He's hired by former flame Sophia Leonides (Stefanie Martini) to investigate the death of her grandfather Aristide (Gino Picciano), an obscenely wealthy tycoon and diabetic who was poisoned when his insulin was replaced with clear liquid eye medication. The chief suspect is his young trophy wife Brenda (Christina Hendricks), a Vegas showgirl who's of course treated with disdain and scorn by his greedy heirs, all of whom stay at the gargantuan family mansion to form one of the most dysfunctional families in the Christie universe. There's Aristide's eldest son and Sophia's father Philip (Julian Sands) and his washed-up ham actress wife Magda (Gillian Anderson); their obnoxious teenage son Eustace (Preston Nyman) and already cynical young daughter Josephine (Honor Kneafsey); Aristide's pompous youngest son Roger (Christian McKay) and his wife Clemency (Amanda Abbington); and Lady Edith (Glenn Close), the spinster sister of Aristide's late first wife and the only remotely likable one of the bunch aside from the wise-beyond-her-years Josephine. Lady Edith knows the entire family is a scheming nest of vipers and tries to help Hayward in his investigation, which is eventually taken over by dogged Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Taverner (Terence Stamp), who decides Hayward's feelings for Sophia are compromising his ability to handle things on his own. Like THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM, another recent British period mystery, CROOKED HOUSE starts out clunky and uneven but gets much better as it goes along, especially once Taverner takes charge and puts his foot down with this family of assholes. The film gets a big boost from Stamp, who still can still command the screen and is a much more interesting actor than the bland Irons (the dreadful BITTER HARVEST), who's just not believable as a former spy and has a way to go before he's on the level of his dad Jeremy. CROOKED HOUSE admirably doesn't cushion the blow of its ending, but part of me wonders how astonishingly mean-spirited this would've been in the hands of Neil LaBute. As it is, the film stumbles a bit in its first half, with uninteresting flashbacks to Hayward's romance with Sophia in Cairo (who cares?), but once an attempt is made on young Josephine's life and Stamp's Taverner has had it with everyone, it turns into a reasonably solid film that's worth seeing. (PG-13, 115 mins) BEYOND SKYLINE (US/China/UK/Canada/Singapore - 2017)
Offering further proof that anything can get a sequel in today's global market, BEYOND SKYLINE arrives seven long years after everyone instantly forgot about SKYLINE, a dismal Brett Ratner-produced alien invasion saga that nevertheless made back its paltry budget and was a big success in Asia, so here we are. Shot in late 2014 and into early 2015, BEYOND SKYLINE didn't enjoy the wide release, multiplex exposure its predecessor was given, instead bowing on VOD with the lowest possible expectations. But strange things can happen when nobody's looking, and while it's not a great movie by any means, BEYOND SKYLINE is a vast improvement, functioning as a de facto mulligan with the original film's writer Liam O'Donnell getting behind the camera (replacing veteran visual effects guys The Brothers Strause, still onboard as two of 29 credited producers) to do it right this time. You can almost sense O'Donnell's eagerness to wipe the slate clean since the two holdover characters from the original (played by different actors here) are killed off almost immediately, shifting the focus to the PURGE franchise's Frank Grillo as Mark, a lone wolf, alcoholic, widower cop (is there any other kind?) and his rebellious teenage son Trent (Jonny Weston) caught up in the alien invasion. Stuck in the underground subway tunnels, Mark and Trent team up with a few others, including transit employee Audrey (Bojana Novakovic) and homeless guy Sarge (Antonio Fargas), to evade the aliens but they end up being sucked into a hovering ship anyway, where Trent gets his brain ripped out and planted into an alien, thus reborn as an otherworldly species. While in the ship, Mark encounters Elaine, the pregnant survivor from the first film (Samantha Jean replaces Scottie Thompson) whose child is born with alien DNA after fiance Jarrod (Tony Black replaces Eric Balfour) was made part-alien after a brainectomy. Elaine dies giving birth, and Alien Jarrod sabotages the ship, which crashes in Laos, where Mark and Audrey meet a small band of resistance fighters led by Sua (Indonesian action star Iko Uwais). Oddball scientist Harper (Callan Mulvey) surmises that the alien blood of Elaine's child, who's growing at an accelerated rate and looks three years old after two days, might be the key to defeating the aliens, but in the meantime, Mark and Audrey team up with Sua, his sister Kanya (Pamelyn Chee), and eccentric warrior The Chief (Yayan Ruhian) for some one-on-one martial arts showdowns with the invaders, at which point the film moves from THE PURGE: SKYLINE to THE RAID: SKYLINE.
Considering its $15 million budget and a couple of dubious-looking CGI explosions, BEYOND SKYLINE looks as convincingly "big" as any over-budgeted Hollywood blockbuster opening on 3000 screens. Once again, Grillo is a believably hard-as-nails tough guy hero and things get pretty good once RAID stars Uwais and Ruhian turn up midway through. Aside from needing to look at SKYLINE's Wikipedia page because I had no memory of the Elaine/Jarrod storyline, BEYOND SKYLINE pretty much works as a standalone film, and one that's surprisingly engaging considering how needlessly convoluted it is and how bad SKYLINE was (have you ever met a SKYLINE fan?). O'Donnell takes too long getting to them, but anything goes once Uwais and Ruhian are introduced, and when you add Grillo into the mix (which is interesting since Grillo was at one time attached to the still-unmade American remake of THE RAID), along with some unabashed, over-the-top R-rated violence, BEYOND SKYLINE becomes something SKYLINE never was: entertaining. (R, 106 mins)
A mostly routine but diverting Netflix Original film that's a fine showcase for the growing cult of veteran tough guy character actor Frank Grillo. Grillo also produced and his character fits in perfectly with the persona he's crafted in the second and third PURGE movies (and it's infinitely better than THE CRASH, the dismal Libertarian polemic he produced and starred in earlier this year, which was so bad that the last name of its Wall Street financial titan villain was actually "Del Banco"). As the titular wheelman, Grillo is a stoical, no-nonsense getaway driver for an early evening bank robbery that goes typically awry when he's contacted by "the handler," who tells him to ditch the robbers and drive away. He can't get a hold of the contact (Garret Dillahunt) who arranged the job, and when a second handler calls and reveals that the other handler was an impostor, the wheelman has no idea who to trust and things get really hairy when the fake handler kidnaps his ex-wife (Grillo's wife Wendy Moniz). The wheelman ends up reluctantly teaming with his 13-year-old daughter Katie (Caitlin Carmichael) in an unpredictable and surprisingly engaging plot development, as Katie turns out to be smart, resourceful, and wise beyond her years and not the spoiled, "can't even" brat we're led to expect from the periodic phone calls to her dad throughout. The introduction of Carmichael's character could've easily been the film's death knell, but she and Grillo make an unexpectedly solid team. Writer/director Jeremy Rush, a protege of co-producer Joe Carnahan, wisely keeps 99% of the action in the car and focused on Grillo, who's in every scene and onscreen from start to finish. It sort-of ends with a whimper, but for the most part, WHEELMAN, a cross between DRIVE and LOCKE, is an entertaining, uncomplicated B-movie that's ideal for streaming and doesn't overstay its welcome at just 82 minutes. Also with Shea Whigham, perfectly cast as "Motherfucker." (Unrated, 82 mins, on Netflix) SHOT CALLER (US - 2017)
Following a pair of straight-to-video thrillers (1996's EXIT and 2001's IN THE SHADOWS), stuntman-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh has carved a niche for himself as a maker of gritty prison dramas. SHOT CALLER shares a lot of themes as his 2008 film FELON, which was a bit better than you'd expect from a 2008 movie with Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer. Waugh continued on this trajectory with the slightly more improbable Dwayne Johnson vehicle SNITCH, but the barely-released SHOT CALLER really should've been his breakthrough. Opening with the parole of hardened, gang-affiliated convict "Money" (GAME OF THRONES Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the film follows his post-prison activities that include taking part in a deal for a shipment of Russian military weapons stolen from Afghanistan, intercut with flashbacks to his old life and how he ended up where he is. Ten years earlier, "Money" was Jacob Harlin, a successful stockbroker with a wife (Lake Bell) and young son. After a dinner out with another couple, Frank is distracted by conversation and runs a red light. His friend in the backseat is killed and since he had a couple too many glasses of wine, he's charged with DUI with vehicular manslaughter. He makes a plea deal and is sentenced to two years and eight months, but life on the inside means ensuring your safety. He pragmatically aligns himself with a gang of white supremacists for protection, and is soon smuggling drugs in his ass and shivving a guy at their command. After he's involved in a riot, his sentence is extended and he builds a wall around himself, cutting off contact with his wife and son. Now that he's out, he still beholden to the powers that be on the inside, specifically The Beast (Holt McCallany), a gang lord who's so powerful that the guards in solitary answer to him.
It sounds like a standard-issue prison melodrama, but Waugh constructs SHOT CALLER in a way that it becomes a character study of a man using his intelligence to stay alive in a horrible situation. In a typical scenario like this, the story would be about what the prison system does to convicts. Everything that happens to Jacob in his transformation into Money is of his own volition. The pieces don't all fit until much later--indeed, there are moments here with the storytelling seems muddled, especially with exactly what Money's parole officer (Omari Hardwick) is really up to, but it all becomes clear by the end (though I'm still not quite sure what happened to Jeffrey Donovan's "Bottles," a key gang figure who vanishes from the film with no explanation). The main reason SHOT CALLER works so well is Coster-Waldau. Money is a quiet man who can only be pushed so far, and Coster-Waldau, in one of 2017's best performances that no one will see, never goes over the top and rarely raises his voice, internalizing Money's rage, always playing it smart and reading the room before making a decision that shows he's several steps ahead of everyone else. SHOT CALLER premiered on DirecTV before going straight to VOD after two years on the shelf. This deserved a much better release strategy than it got. (R, 121 mins, on Blu-ray/DVD) THE BABYSITTER (US - 2017)
It dispenses with any and all logic by the end, but the Netflix Original film THE BABYSITTER is a fun, fast, blood-splattered horror-comedy that's perfect for streaming. Bullied, overprotected 13-year-old Cole (Judah Lewis) is the only kid his age who still has a babysitter, but he doesn't mind because it's hot and hip Bee (Samara Weaving), who's so cool that she can quote BILLY JACK with him (there's the first tip-off that this doesn't exist on any level of reality). When his parents (Ken Marino, Leslie Bibb) go for a romantic getaway for the weekend, Cole and Bee party it up, and she even gives him encouraging big sister talks about how things will get better and how he should just be himself and stand up for who he is. Curious about what she does after he goes to bed, he spies on her when he hears the doorbell ring and she lets some friends in. One of these kids is a nerdy type who clearly isn't like the others (cheerleader, football star, etc), and when Bee puts two daggers through the nerd's skull and they all drink the blood pouring out of his head while reciting passages from an ancient book of Bee's, it's pretty clear that Cole might not make it through the weekend.
Basically HOME ALONE with Satan worshipers instead of bumbling burglars, THE BABYSITTER has Cole evading Bee and her accomplices, setting traps for them, and using his wits to take them out one by one. Considering it's after midnight and they're in a neighborhood, it's surprising no one calls the cops with all the mayhem going on, but hey, whatever. The kills are goofy and gory and the set-ups for some of the splattery gags are surprisingly smart in some foreshadowing and joke construction that's far more clever than it has any reason to be. It's a little more small-scale than you 'd normally expect from brainless blockbuster purveyor McG (CHARLIE'S ANGELS, TERMINATOR: SALVATION), who really goes for a sort-of Joe Dante vibe here. It's a guilty pleasure and I'm probably way past the target demographic, but it was funny and surprisingly enjoyable and just the right length at 85 minutes. Look for this to become a big cult movie with teenagers. (Unrated, 85 mins, on Netflix) THE FOREIGNER (China/UK - 2017)
A formulaic (villain says to hero "We're a lot alike, you and I") but still-riveting revenge/political thriller that's probably not quite as action-packed as the trailers make it out to be. Chinese immigrant Jackie Chan, trained by US Special Forces during Vietnam and now a British citizen, is obsessed with vengeance after his teenage daughter is killed in a London bomb blast. A group calling itself "Authentic IRA" claims responsibility, which doesn't sit well with Pierce Brosnan, a former IRA and Sinn Fein legend in his youth, now a Belfast-based bureaucrat working for the British government. Chan demands answers from Brosnan and won't leave him alone, setting off a small bomb in his office, following him, texting him photos he's taken of him with his mistress. Tensions escalate and it becomes clear Brosnan has something to hide, and it's quite fun watching him grow increasingly agitated that this "60-year-old Chinaman" is outwitting all the bodyguards and flunkies he sends after him. At first it appears the film when be Jackie Chan's entry into Liam Neeson/TAKEN mode, but THE FOREIGNER is equally focused on political intrigue and the past haunting the present, whether it's Chan and his family's tragic backstory or Brosnan's former associates and even his wife (Orla Brady) thinking he's a sellout. The story gets surprisingly twisty and complex, with one really sleazy plot reveal midway through that produced audible gasps from the audience. One problem is that the second half is so focused on Brosnan (who's really great here, chewing the scenery with rage and gusto) that there's a long stretch where Chan vanishes and seems like a guest star in his own movie, and Chan purists may lament the trickery used to help him with his stunt work (the dude's 63--give him a break), but THE FOREIGNER allows the beloved action star a chance to show his dark side in an English-language role, and the film proves to be a solid thriller from director Martin Campbell (GOLDENEYE, CASINO ROYALE) with a terrific score by the always-reliable Cliff Martinez. (R, 114 mins, in theaters) CULT OF CHUCKY (US - 2017)
The seventh entry in the now-29-year-old CHILD'S PLAY franchise, written all these years by Don Mancini (who took over directing with the fifth installment, 2004's SEED OF CHUCKY), returns to the more comedic approach largely abandoned by 2013's surprisingly straightforward CURSE OF CHUCKY. CULT brings back paraplegic Nica (Fiona Dourif) from the previous film, and it makes Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent, a little kid in the first film back in 1988) a key supporting character. Mancini's storyline is muddled for the most part, but eventually things make sense--at least on their own terms--and you'll just roll with the insanity that develops. Mancini seems to be making it up as he goes along, but like CURSE, there's some surprisingly well-done shout-outs to the horror genre in general, with one SUSPIRIA-inspired death being a real standout. There's other genre staples like De Palma split screen, a lecherous doctor, and a mental hospital whose chilly, antiseptic layout has a vaguely Canadian horror vibe to it. Plus having Chucky possess the patients at a mental hospital one by one is a sly nod to THE EXORCIST III with that film's Brad Dourif also being the voice of Chucky. It's actually almost adorable watching Nica get possessed by Chucky and cackling along with him, Fiona Dourif perfectly replicating her dad's Chucky laugh. There's some impressively over-the-top gore, a lot of it old-school and practical. This has turned into one of the more durable horror franchises, very unusual in that it's been going nearly 30 years with Mancini and Dourif, as well as the returning Vincent and Jennifer Tilly, who's been a part of the party since 1998's BRIDE OF CHUCKY, and has yet to be rebooted. CULT OF CHUCKY is what it is--it's no masterpiece, but in the world of DTV and being a horror franchise that's several decades old, it's more entertaining than it has any reason to be. (R, 91 mins, on Blu-ray/DVD)
Philip Roth has been a lion of American literature since the 1950s, though that success hasn't always translated to the screen, with a common description of Roth's writing being "unfilmable." 1969's GOODBYE, COLUMBUS, adapted from Roth's 1959 National Book Award winner, was a critical and commercial hit that put Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw on the map. But when Benjamin was tapped to star in another Roth adaptation with 1972's PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, lightning didn't strike twice and the results were so disastrous that it would be over 30 years before anyone attempted another big-screen take on Roth. Robert Benton's THE HUMAN STAIN opened to middling reviews in 2003, and Barry Levinson's THE HUMBLING (based on one of Roth's most critically panned works) only made it to a handful of theaters in 2015. Other than GOODBYE, COLUMBUS, the only Roth adaptations to receive any notable degree of acclaim were 2008's ELEGY, based on his 2001 novel The Dying Animal, and 2016's INDIGNATION. 2016 also saw the release of the long-planned AMERICAN PASTORAL, based on Roth's 1997 Pulitzer Prize winner about a well-to-do family falling into turmoil in the late 1960s. In various stages of development since 2003, filming actually began on a version in 2012 with Fisher Stevens at the helm and husband and wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly starring, but the project fell apart and was scrapped almost immediately. It got rolling again in 2015 with some help from Chinese co-producers TIK Films, with Connelly still attached and now heading the cast with Ewan McGregor in place of Bettany, but when director Philip Noyce quit during pre-production, McGregor himself stepped in to make his directorial debut. AMERICAN PASTORAL was touted as a major 2016 awards contender but that never panned out, as the initial reviews were so overwhelmingly negative that Lionsgate bailed on the film, pulling the plug on its nationwide rollout and stalling its release at just 70 screens for a gross of $550,000.
Considering its internationally revered source novel, AMERICAN PASTORAL the film is a complete disaster, the kind of transparently phony awards bait that wears its bloated sense of self-importance on its sleeve. You can actually see the film completely collapse around the 23-minute mark, when we get our first look at stuttering 16-year-old Merry Levov (Dakota Fanning) as she's cooking burgers in the kitchen. She's having a pleasant conversation with her father Seymour "Swede" Levov (McGregor) when the sight of LBJ on TV provokes a profane, hysterical meltdown. She excoriates Swede and her mother Dawn (Connelly) over their upper-middle class complacence, with Swede running his dad's (Peter Riegert in cartoonish Oy, vey! mode) Newark glove factory and Dawn having her own cow pasture on their expansive property in rural Old Rimrock. When Dawn tells Merry "You're not anti-war...you're anti-everything!," Merry concludes this bug-eyed, out-of-nowhere tirade by shouting "And you're pro-cow!," spitting her burger on the floor and storming out of the house, prompting Swede to go into her bedroom to find the walls plastered with anti-war, Weather Underground-like pamphlets and flyers calling for revolution as Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" cues up on the soundtrack, modern cinema's universal sign that the times they-are-a-changin' and it's...the Sixties, man! AMERICAN PASTORAL never recovers from this jaw-droppingly awful scene, as the Levovs' cushy existence is upended when Merry becomes a fugitive after blowing up the Old Rimrock post office and killing the local mailman. This leads to endless malaise and ennui in the lives of the Jewish Swede, a high-school football legend, and the Catholic Dawn, a shiksa who was Miss New Jersey in the 1947 Miss America pageant.
McGregor and journeyman screenwriter John Romano (who's had a long career in writing for TV on everything from HILL STREET BLUES to the recent HELL ON WHEELS) cut out huge chunks of Roth's novel willy-nilly to focus on how the general sense of the Sixties, man! takes its toll on the Levovs, though they do leave in a 2002-set framing device with recurring Roth character Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn) that really doesn't add anything to the story. AMERICAN PASTORAL relies on trite cliches and overwrought hysteria, with McGregor demonstrating no clue how to direct himself or his actors: Fanning's vein-popping overacting through clenched teech and flared nostrils is actually embarrassing to watch, especially since that palpable rage comes out of nowhere and wasn't present in the 12-year-old Merry we see played by a younger actress in earlier scenes. The first time we see Fanning, she's boiling with uncontrollable, shrieking fury and we don't know why. Even Connelly is terrible here, saddled with an unplayable character whose big scene has her showing up at Swede's factory, off her meds and babbling incoherently, dancing around totally nude except for her Miss New Jersey sash. At one point, a cop tells Swede "You've done everything wrong you possibly could've." I think that actor was breaking character and speaking directly to McGregor. AMERICAN PASTORAL is a botched misfire, but hey, congrats to PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT: you're no longer the worst big-screen Philip Roth adaptation. (R, 108 mins)
KING COBRA
(US - 2016)
Though it frequently succumbs to the cliches that come with almost any post-BOOGIE NIGHTS look at the seedy underbelly of the porn world, KING COBRA shifts gears into a grim and bleak thriller that benefits from the twists and turns of the real-life events on which it's based. Based on Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway's true crime chronicle Cobra Killer: Gay Porn Murder, the film follows wide-eyed innocent Sean Paul Lockhart (Garrett Clayton) as he arrives in the relatively non-descript northeastern Pennsylvania from San Diego, intent on becoming a star for Cobra Video, a web-based gay porn production company owned by Stephen (Christian Slater). Middle-aged Stephen (a character based on Cobra Video head Bryan Kocis) is drawn to young, late-teens "twinks," and he has a particular affinity for Sean, growing extremely jealous when he shows interest in other men. Stephen directs a series of videos with Sean starring under the name "Brent Corrigan," and after a falling out when Sean begins aggressively demanding more money and objecting to Stephen's controlling attitude, the pair part ways in an acrimonious split that jeopardizes both of their careers when Sean reveals he lied about his age and was only 17 when Stephen directed his first videos. Meanwhile, Joe Kerekes (James Franco, one of 29 credited producers) and Harlow Cuadra (Keegan Allen), a pair of sketchy escorts and amateur gay porn entrepreneurs running a low-rent company called Viper Boyz, are trying to break into the big time, living way beyond their means convincing themselves that they're on the level of Cobra Video. $500,000 in debt and increasingly desperate, the unstable and manipulative Joe reaches out to "Brent" to forge a business partnership based on the "Brent Corrigan" name, but Sean isn't legally allowed to use it since Stephen had the name copyrighted as a property of Cobra Video. While Sean tries to broker a peaceful agreement with Stephen, Joe and Harlow decide to deal with it in a manner that befits their thoughtless, volatile nature: they kill Stephen and set his house on fire in a half-assed attempt to cover it up.
All of this occurred from 2004 to 2007, and other than changing the name of Slater's character, it gets all the pertinent details down, albeit a bit glossed over and rushed considering the film only runs 90 minutes. It's a rare instance of a movie that could've been improved if it ran a little longer, with some more time allotted to explore the smaller details. Writer-director Justin Kelly keeps things moving briskly and copies from the best, with much of the film having that same tense vibe as the section of BOOGIE NIGHTS where everyone's hitting bottom (Dirk hustling, Rollergirl in the limo, etc). He gets mostly strong performances from his cast, with a really skeezy Franco doing his best to channel Willem Dafoe in AUTO-FOCUS mode but sometimes going overboard, and Clayton and Allen doing solid work as the naive and, in the case of Allen's Harlow, dumb young twinks being manipulated by the older men projecting their neuroses on to them. Molly Ringwald has a small role as Stephen's wholesome, oblivious sister and if you want to feel really old, Alicia Silverstone plays Sean's mom (yes, Alicia Silverstone is 40 now). But the real standout is Slater who, between Lars von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC and his Golden Globe-winning work on the acclaimed TV series MR. ROBOT, has very quietly been taking his career seriously again in between his frequent gig as a guest co-host on LIVE WITH KELLY. Slater sells every facet of Stephen's mercurial personality. He puts up a front for his sister and his neighbors, pretending he makes a living as a photographer at kids' birthday parties, but when it comes to Cobra Video, he stops at nothing to get what he wants. He's soft-spoken and sensitive, insanely jealous, a creepy manipulator of barely-legal boys far away from their homes, and a ruthless businessman who never hesitates to remind Sean/"Brent" that he owns him. It's a complex and fearless performance by Slater, who manages to make you feel some degree of sympathy for Stephen--he fears growing old alone and Sean did lie about his age with a very well-crafted and believable fake ID. KING COBRA has to get to the circumstances surrounding Stephen's murder, but it loses something once Slater exits the movie with about 30 minutes to go. He's so good here that you almost wonder if a more interesting film could've been made by just focusing on his Bryan Kocis-inspired character. As it is, KING COBRA is a decent film, and one of the more relatively accessible James Franco indie productions of late (more than, say, INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR., for example), and the story is so intriguing that it may leave you wanting more substantive details into the world of Cobra Video. (Unrated, 92 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
THE CRASH
(US - 2017)
A financial thriller set in the near future that plays like the 1981 flop ROLLOVER if remade by the most annoying Ron Paul supporter in your Facebook newsfeed, THE CRASH is a lecture disguised as a movie. Written and directed by Aram Rappaport, last seen watering down 2013's SYRUP, a pointless adaptation of Max Barry's scathing 1999 novel satirizing corporate marketing and branding, THE CRASH renders itself dated immediately as it assumes Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election, with "Madame President" a fleetingly-seen character (played by Laurie Larson) late in the film. After cyber-terrorists hack the NYSE and threaten to bring down the global economy in 48 hours, Treasury Secretary Sarah Schwab (Mary McCormack) only sees one option: hiring master hacker and market manipulator Guy Clifton (Frank Grillo, also one of 29 credited producers) to thwart the attack. Clifton's currently facing SEC charges of hacking the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to benefit his own companies and previously hacked into the NYSE. He's somehow not in prison but he'll be granted immunity on the latest charges if he and his crack team of computer wizards and financial experts can stop the cyber attack and keep the economy stable. This mostly involves Clifton and his cohorts--sultry market analyst Amelia Rhondart (Dianna Agron), ALS-afflicted hacker George Diebold (John Leguizamo), and genius programmer Ben Collins (Ed Westwick)--spouting endless financial jargon while staring at monitors in the makeshift command center set up in Clifton's mansion. Clifton's got other things on his plate: his wife Shannon (Minnie Driver) isn't convinced this will keep him out of prison, and his 18-year-old daughter Creason (AnnaSophia Robb) is suffering from cancer and isn't responding to chemo. And she just got dumped by her secret boyfriend Ben.
THE CRASH runs just 84 minutes--and even then it's padded with super-slow-moving end credits kicking in around the 78-minute mark--yet it feels roughly three hours long. There's a way to make financial thrillers intriguing and suspenseful--BLACKHAT and the little-seen AUGUST come to mind--but Rappaport still feels the need throw in some disease-of-the-week TV-movie melodrama with Creason, and relies on too much in-your-face shaky cam, perhaps with the intention of making the viewer feel as backed-against-the-wall as Clifton, but it doesn't work. The more the film goes on, the more preachy and obvious it gets, especially with a corrupt, sneering Federal Reserve chairman named Richard Del Banco, who any seasoned moviegoer will correctly deduce is a scheming Dick from the Bank the moment they see he's being played by Christopher McDonald. By the end, with a mole inside Clifton's team planting a virus that creates a domino effect of collapsing world economies (of course, there's still time for Clifton and Ben to have a heart-to-heart and reach an understanding about dumping Creason) as "Madame President" stands around helplessly while her aides scramble and freak out, Clifton has a change of heart and just lets it fail, followed by an end crawl passive-aggressively advocating the abolishing of the Federal Reserve. Considering what I've seen of his work with SYRUP and now THE CRASH, I think the bigger priority is abolishing Aram Rappaport's DGA membership. (Unrated, 84 mins)
THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR (US - 2016) Written and directed by James DeMonaco. Cast: Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell, Mykelti Williamson, Edwin Hodge, Betty Gabriel, Kyle Secor, Raymond J. Barry, Terry Serpico, Joseph Julian Soria, Lisa Colon-Zayas, Christopher James Baker, Ethan Phillips, David Aaron Baker, Brittany Mirabile. (R, 109 mins) The latest installment in the most political of today's horror franchises, one that depicts a near-future where the New Founding Fathers have created "Purge Night," the one night a year when murder is legal for 12 hours. What was supposed to placate the nation's rage has turned into literal class warfare, with the rich hunting the poor. THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR takes advantage of the most ludicrously surreal election season in America's history to represent the DEATH WISH 3-ification of the series. These films, all written and directed by James DeMonaco, have always worn their politics on their sleeve, and after the furious anger of the superior first sequel, THE PURGE: ANARCHY, DeMonaco cranks the absurdity to new heights here. It's easy to look metaphorically at the world presented in THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR and see it as a harbinger of what a Trump nation would conceivably look like, but the film is so over-the-top and filled with gaping logic holes that, unlike THE PURGE: ANARCHY, it's impossible to take seriously for a moment. Indeed, this film's depiction of the dystopian urban hellscape of Washington, DC makes ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK look like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Taking place several years after the events of ANARCHY, ELECTION YEAR gives us two presidential candidates--liberal Sen. Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), who wants to abolish the annual killfest since her family was wiped out during a Purge Night 18 years ago, and the far-right conservative, evangelical, New Founding Fathers-endorsed Rev. Eldridge Owens (Kyle Secor), a talking points-spouting, sermonizing stooge who's the puppet of NFF leader Caleb Warrens (Raymond J. Barry), who's introduced vowing to take out "that cunt Senator." The Purge is sold as the American way, but half the nation is vehemently against it, and Warrens and his high-ranking cohorts push legislation through Congress that changes the rules regarding elected officials. Previously protected from being Purge Night targets, they're now fair game in what's a transparent attempt to goad their acolytes into killing Roan. Against the wishes of her chief of security Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo), the lone-wolf hero of ANARCHY-turned-Secret Service agent here, Roan takes a stand with the average American and against the Purge and spends the night in her own fortified home instead of going to an underground government bunker. Of course, Barnes is the only honest agent on the payroll, as everyone else is in cahoots with the NFF, allowing white supremacist militia leader Earl Danzinger (Terry Serpico) and his team of mercenaries with Confederate flag and white power patches on their uniforms into the house to apprehend Roan and take her to a secret location to be sacrificed by the cult-like NFF. She escapes with Barnes, and they're on the street on their own to survive the night. They eventually meet up with neighborhood deli owner Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson), his Mexican immigrant employee Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria) and their neighborhood activist friend and former gang leader Laney Rucker (Betty Gabriel), who drives around the area with Dawn (Lisa Colon-Zayas) as a volunteer EMT team helping those in need.
DeMonaco keeps things fast-moving and incredibly violent as the ragtag group makes their way from one nightmarish set piece to another, dealing with everything from a crew of obnoxious schoolgirls who want revenge against Joe and Laney for kicking them out of the deli when they were caught shoplifting, to a group of vacationing "murder tourists" who come from all over the globe to take part in the legal killing spree. Later on, they're taken in by anti-Purge activist Dante Bishop (Edwin Hodge), the hunted man reluctantly given refuge by Ethan Hawke's family in the first PURGE film, who now leads a group of people determined to assassinate Owens and all of the New Founding Fathers (note to Trump supporters--the New Founding Fathers are supposed to be the villains) at their Purge prayer group at a nearby church. And there's just one rather idiotic element of ELECTION YEAR. Even something like the PURGE franchise needs to stick to its own internal logic, which it fails to do here ("I can't believe we're on the street again," Roan tells Barnes at one point; you'll likely concur). The Purge lasts from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am (apparently, the New Founding Fathers have also done away with time zones). If anyone is fair game now that government officials aren't protected, why would the NFF risk transporting a bunch of their top people and their families to a church service in mid-Purge? And if anyone is fair game, why would people be out picking up the corpses and keeping the streets clean during the Purge? Couldn't that wait until after 7:00 am? I get that Laney and Dawn are concerned citizens driving their own EMT truck and risking their lives as volunteers, but are these clean-up guys other Purgers? Are they city sanitation workers? If so, are they at least getting paid overtime? And while I get that Joe would want to protect his deli from Purgers and vandals, does it make any sense that he'd position himself on the roof of his establishment and start pounding beers, completely oblivious to all of the taller apartment buildings surrounding him from which a sniper could easily take him out? And if the Purge is legal, why all the garish costumes? There's no need to disguise yourself. DeMonaco tries to explain that away by having one mask salesman cackle "It's Halloween for adults!" but it still doesn't make any sense. Has DeMonaco been out on Halloween lately? Halloween is Halloween for adults. Here's an idea: schedule the Purge on Halloween but the only targets can be grown-ass adults who still go trick-or-treating and don't even wear costumes. There's something we can all get behind.
THE PURGE: ANARCHY at least felt plausible as an angry, socially-conscious B-movie, but THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR is a completely unbelievable cartoon (though the end credits rolling to David Bowie's "I'm Afraid of Americans" is a nice touch). There's no subtlety here whatsoever, but in a way, that's reflective of the politics of today. ELECTION YEAR deals in absolutes. Those fearful of a Trump victory often joke that he'll turn the country into a MAD MAX wasteland, so it's only natural that a franchise with such a liberal-leaning agenda would present that scenario as a reflection of the times. ELECTION YEAR is overblown and heavy-handed, lacking the gritty edge of ANARCHY (by far the best in this series so far) and suffering from a change in attitude for hero Barnes. In ANARCHY, he was a stoical badass that you could get behind, but here, he's pretty much a total dick, while Williamson's Joe and Gabriel's Laney emerge as the most likable heroes. Joe risks his ass for Roan too many times for Barnes to continuously question his motives and derisively refer to him as "Deli Man," seeming more concerned with his own butthurt ego than he is with the Senator's safety. The most prescient moment of ELECTION YEAR is the final shot with a news anchor voiceover, which basically suggests a preview of what's likely to happen at the Republican National Convention. Here's to hoping DeMonaco is already at work on his script for THE PURGE: MEDIUM COOL.
THE PURGE: ANARCHY (US/France - 2014) Written and directed by James DeMonaco. Cast: Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, Zoe Soul, Michael K. Williams, Justina Machado, John Beasley, Jack Conley, Noel G, Edwin Hodge, Keith Stanfield. (R, 104 mins)
Last summer, the $3 million THE PURGE grossed $64 million to become one of season's surprise sleeper hits, despite no one really liking it that much. And yet, exactly one year later, here's THE PURGE: ANARCHY. When any film rakes in 21x its budget, a sequel is going to happen whether you want one or not. A year is a long time, and a lot of people have forgotten that over half of that $64 million came from the opening weekend before the negative word-of-mouth spread, sending the film on a precipitous 76% freefall in its second weekend. THE PURGE had a great concept, one that was ripe for social and political commentary: five years into the future, unemployment and crime are an all-time low, due to the revamped US government, overseen by a group of elected officials known as "The Founding Fathers" having legalized "The Purge," a one-night, 12-hour block of time where all crime, including murder, is legal, thereby allowing everyone to get a year's worth of rage out of their systems and allow society to flourish. It's the kind of dystopian high concept that could've led to an incendiary metaphor for the divisive state of the world today. But writer/director James DeMonaco blew it. After the intriguing set-up, THE PURGE quickly devolved into a rote, run-of-the-mill home invasion thriller, with a well-to-do family led by dad Ethan Hawke and mom Lena Headey under siege by a group of privileged thrill-killers trying to get in their locked-down house after they give shelter to young African-American man.
DeMonaco (who scripted 1998's THE NEGOTIATOR and the 2005 remake of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13) is back for THE PURGE: ANARCHY, and he's more or less admitted that he bungled the first film and is attempting to set things right. For the entire duration of THE PURGE, I kept wondering what an in-his-prime John Carpenter might've done with such an idea. That's a big shift in the direction that DeMonaco takes with the sequel, a sort-of PURGE 2.0, if you will, that jumps ahead to 2023, opening up the action and taking it to the streets as we follow a group of strangers thrown together to survive the night. There's low-income single mom Eva (Carmen Ejogo) and her teenage daughter Cali (Zoe Soul), nearly killed by riot-geared soldiers rounding people up in a high-tech truck; about-to-split married couple Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez), stranded on the highway when their car breaks down on the way home; and a nameless mystery man (Frank Grillo) armed to the teeth on a mission of vengeance in a souped-up, steel-covered Italian-post-nuke-looking hot rod, who ends up rescuing them and reluctantly becoming their protector.
THE PURGE: ANARCHY doesn't really hold up under much scrutiny, but it's a vast improvement over the first film. While putting the heroes in a position to make their way across an urban hellscape may bring to mind everything from THE WARRIORS (1979) to the underrated JUDGMENT NIGHT (1993), DeMonaco keeps things moving at a fast clip and offers some striking imagery like ominous overhead shots or a school bus engulfed in flames speeding by in the background. He also has a lot of interesting if not fully-baked ideas while taking some crowd-pleasing shots at easy targets, like the bloody, mutilated remains of a stockbroker, chained up and hanging outside of a bank in the financial district, sporting a hand-written shame-sign stating that he stole the pensions of middle-class workers ("Maybe he deserved it," Shane muses as they stare up at the body), or a large gathering of Botoxed one-percenters holding an auction where the highest bidders get to go on a canned hunt of some captured underclass in an enclosed recreation area, fist-bumping as they don night-vision glasses to make the hunt easier. There's also Carmelo Jones (Michael K. Williams), leader of an online revolutionary organization determined to overthrow the Founding Fathers and expose their SNOWPIERCER-like plan for society. DeMonaco wears his politics on his sleeve, basically shooting fish in a barrel with the points he makes in ANARCHY (SPOILER ALERT: if you think the Botoxed one-percenters and the dead stockbroker are the victims, then you're probably not part of the target audience), but taken at face value, it's exactly the kind of subversive, cynical little B-movie--think CAGED HEAT or DEATH RACE 2000--that Roger Corman would've shepherded in the 1970s. Some action sequences get a little shaky-cammy and one is murkier than it should be, but the entire project gets a huge boost by a terrific lone-wolf performance from veteran character actor Grillo, playing a man who's lost everything and is using The Purge as a last-ditch way of setting things right. His character arc is predictable, but Grillo is perfect in the role, speaking volumes with a squint or a look of disgust, and it's easy to see why the terrified quartet latches on to him after he tries to extricate himself from them and continue on his mission. It's also nice that DeMonaco doesn't make the others into stock cowards and whiners--Liz turns out to be a crack shot, and Cali is a smart kid with wisdom beyond her years, and the protective father-daughter bond that develops between her and the mystery man is well-played by Soul and Grillo. THE PURGE: ANARCHY isn't a great film and it can be kind of dumb, but it's undeniably entertaining and works on a visceral, red-meat level.
