By now, it's pointless to find any rhyme or reason when it comes to Nicolas Cage's career choices. These days, his only A-list gigs come from voice work in animated films like SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, and every once in a while, he'll luck into a FROZEN GROUND, JOE, THE TRUST, or MOM AND DAD among his plethora of VOD clunkers. But 2018 was the year of MANDY, Panos Cosmatos' gonzo mindfuck of a midnight movie that got a lot of festival buzz and was an instant, legit cult classic right out of the gate. It immediately became an essential entry in the Cage canon and got him the most acclaim and attention he'd received in years. But any hopes that MANDY would herald a Cageassaince are dashed with BETWEEN WORLDS, a moronic and amateurish supernatural thriller that hit VOD at the tail end of last year. With enough strange ideas and Cage once again cast as a blue collar loner who finds himself caught up in all sorts of inexplicable mayhem, BETWEEN WORLDS could almost pass itself off as a distant cousin to MANDY, but it's filmed in such a basic, rudimentary fashion so devoid of style and a sense of professionalism that it actually looks, at best, like a student film that accidentally got a distribution deal. It seems the only trick that co-producer/writer/director Maria Pulera has in her arsenal--aside from somehow cajoling the great Angelo Badalamenti into composing the main theme, which I guess is there to give the film a Dipshit David Lynch vibe--is the repetitious and pointlessly wanky reliance on low-angle close-ups of everything from a coffee carafe to a bottle of beer to the hairy ass crack of an overweight convenience store clerk. That, and the ability to get real and long-established actors like Cage and Franka Potente (RUN LOLA RUN, THE BOURNE IDENTITY) to embarrass themselves in a project that's far beneath them.
In an opening filled with one of the most laboriously clumsy exposition dumps I've ever seen, Alabama trucker Joe Majors (Cage, wearing what looks like the tattered remains of his CON AIR mullet), still grieving the loss of his wife and young daughter in a recent house fire, is using the men's room at a gas station when he walks in on a burly guy strangling a woman. The woman is Julie (Potente), and Joe thinks he saved her life, but it's something else entirely: since a near-drowning experience as a child, she's had the ability to cross "between worlds," with a psychic ability to rescue those near death. She uses it sparingly, but needs it now because her grown daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell) is in a coma after a motorcycle accident that morning. In order to go between worlds, she has to be taken to the brink of death herself, with strangling being the most convenient way, and she paid the guy to choke her. Since he ruined the connection, Joe feels obligated to choke Julie himself in order for her to save a non-responsive Billie at the hospital, and it works. Before long, Joe and Julie are a thing but something isn't right with Billie. She's soon leering at Joe, tempting him in various states of undress when Julie isn't around, and giving him under-the-blanket handjobs on the couch while they watch TV and Julie's in the kitchen making dinner. Yep, you guessed it: when Julie went between worlds, Billie's soul was switched out with that of Joe's late wife, who's now inside Billie's body, ready for action, and not at all pleased that he's hooked up with Julie.
BETWEEN WORLDS doesn't even follow its own barely-there logic, and its primary justification is simply for Cage to channel his inner Talk Show Robin Williams, with Pulera apparently so grateful that he said yes that she does nothing to rein him in. In a performance that makes his work in the long-forgotten early '90s erotic potboiler ZANDALEE seem disciplined, Cage has several absurdly over-the-top sex scenes with both Potente and Mitchell, sometimes amusing himself while thrusting away by randomly quoting and pantomiming the crucifix masturbation scene in THE EXORCIST or reading aloud from a book of erotic poetry with a cover that reads "Memories by Nicolas Cage." He ad-libs endlessly (Potente: "Want a beer?" Cage: "Does the Tin Man have a sheet-metal cock?"), and totally loses it in the finale, which has him sobbing uncontrollably and cradling his dead daughter's Jack-in-the-Box while pouring gasoline on himself to the tune of The Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack." Mind you, as on-brand as this is for Nic Cage--who wouldn't wanna see the movie I just described?--none of it is ever as entertaining as it sounds. Similar to his disastrous performance in the unwatchable ARMY OF ONE, Cage's histrionics come off as exhausted and overly affected, because there's no movie here--it's just him goofing off for 90 minutes. Something more polished and professional might've made Cage's antics more palatable, but BETWEEN WORLDS is a film that displays all the production value of a high-end sex tape or hostage video, magnifying the fact that Cage has nothing to work with and really begging the question of what even attracted him and Potente to this thing in the first place. (R, 91 mins)
A PRIVATE WAR (US/UK/Germany - 2018)
One of the most overlooked films of the 2018 awards season, at least by the general moviegoing public, A PRIVATE WAR is a harrowing chronicle of Marie Colvin, an American expat and war correspondent who spent nearly 30 years covering the most dangerous areas of the world for the UK's Sunday Times. The film covers the post-9/11 era, where Colvin, portrayed here in a remarkable performance by Rosamund Pike, spent most of her time embedded in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, venturing into places and situations that most journalists would consider too dangerous (when asked if she's afraid, she replies "You're never gonna get to where you're going if you acknowledge fear...fear comes later"). She lost the sight in her left eye after catching shrapnel in a bomb blast in Sri Lanka in 2001--with an eye-patch subsequently providing her signature look--and after two miscarriages, two failed marriages to journalist/novelist David Irens (Greg Wise), and now too old to have children, she threw herself into her work and grew even more ambitious and addicted to the danger. After befriending photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) in Iraq, she convinces him to tag along with her and a translator, breaking the rules and moving ahead of US troops to corroborate rumors of a Saddam Hussein-ordered mass grave in Fallujah. Her actions both earn the respect and test the patience of everyone in her life, from Conley to her editor (Tom Hollander), her best friend (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a sympathetic potential love interest (Stanley Tucci). Colvin extensively covered the Syrian civil war, and her life came to an end in the city of Homs, where she, Conroy, and journalist Remi Ochlik (Jeremie Laheurte) would be trapped in a building receiving heavy artillery fire trying to evacuate residents from the area. Only a seriously-injured Conroy survived, with Colvin and Ochlik succumbing to injuries sustained from a bomb blast. Only hours before her death, Colvin was interviewed by Anderson Cooper in prime time on CNN.
THE CONJURING 2 (US - 2016) Directed by James Wan. Written by Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes, James Wan and David Leslie Johnson. Cast: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Frances O'Connor, Madison Wolfe, Simon McBurney, Franka Potente, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Simon Delaney, Sterling Jerins, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh, Patrick McAuley, Bob Adrian, Steve Coulter, Bonnie Aarons, Javier Botet, Joseph Bishara. (R, 134 mins) Paranormal icons to some, fraudulent fundamentalist hucksters to others, the husband & wife ghostbusting team of Ed and Lorraine Warren made their name with their involvement in the investigation of the legendary Amityville house in the late 1970s (Lorraine is now 89; Ed died in 2006 at 79). As played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in James Wan's surprisingly terrific 2013 film THE CONJURING, the Warrens are an immensely likable couple with a deep-rooted sense of Christianity and family values, with Wan and the screenwriters never questioning their sincerity and legitimacy. Amityville has pretty much been debunked as a hoax for decades, but it still makes for entertaining cinema, and it provides a prologue for Wan's uneven sequel which, for a horror film, runs an epic length of well past two hours. While investigating the Amityville house in 1976, Lorraine saw the spectre of a demonic nun and had a premonition of Ed's death by impalement. She's further perturbed when Ed, unable to sleep, gets up and paints a picture of a face he saw in a dream--of course, it's the demon nun, though judging from the looks of it, it could've just as easily been a premonition of the coming of Marilyn Manson.
At Lorraine's insistence, Ed agrees to take time off from active pursuits of the paranormal and focus strictly on lecturing. Their altruism gets the better of them in late 1977 when the church asks them to travel overseas to Enfield in northern London, where Peggy Hodgson (Frances O'Connor), a single, working-class mother of four, is dealing with an entity that makes its presence known to all in the house but seems to be specifically targeting her second child, 11-year-old Janet (Madison Wolfe). It's a lot of the usual stuff: deep, guttural voices, levitation, and objects moving themselves, mixed with the usual loud crashes, piercing booms, and the sudden appearances of evil faces that's become Wan's go-to jump scare since the first INSIDIOUS. Ultimately, Janet is possessed by a demon who claims to be the home's elderly previous owner, bellowing "This is my house!" and demanding everyone get out, as the Warrens, British paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse (Simon McBurney) and skeptical, cynical psychology professor Anita Gregory (Franka Potente) converge on the Hodgson home to determine the validity of "The Enfield Poltergeist."
The case attracted a lot of attention at the time, with the press referring to it as "the British Amityville." THE CONJURING 2 takes significant liberties with it, starting with the fact that this was largely Grosse's investigation, with his team doing most of the work related to it, while the Warrens had a significantly lesser role. The poltergeist targeted Janet and older sister Margaret (played here by Lauren Esposito), and both were caught red-handed staging occurrences. The film portrays one instance of Gregory catching Janet on film throwing chairs, breaking things, and bending spoons after locking herself in the kitchen to create the illusion of paranormal phenomena. Taking dramatic license to its limits, Wan and his screenwriters work Janet's rationale for doing so into a bigger event centered on the Warrens, who the film posits as being drawn into a mystery involving a more powerful force that's using the Hodgsons to target them. In other words, THE CONJURING 2 shoehorns the Enfield Poltergeist into a newly-concocted work of Ed & Lorraine Warren fan fiction. The Enfield case (covered in the 2015 British miniseries THE ENFIELD HAUNTING, with Timothy Spall as Grosse and no one as the Warrens since their characters aren't even in it) has been deemed a hoax by most investigators, though Grosse did feel it had some legitimacy. Taken on its own terms, THE CONJURING 2 isn't bad. It goes on far too long and there's only so many scary face-and-slamming door jump scares you can get hit with before it grows stale and repetitive. Wan does a great job with the period look and detail of the film, shooting it in drab, gray, muted tones indoors and a near-constant rain on the outside, really capturing the kind of gritty, '70s kitchen-sink British atmosphere that makes parts of this look like what might happen if Ken Loach or Mike Leigh made a demonic possession movie (bonus points for STARSKY & HUTCH superfan Margaret's wall adorned with David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser pics, faithfully recreated from actual 1977 file photos).
Wan also takes the approach of classics like THE EXORCIST and THE SHINING, letting the dread and tension build for over an hour and change before all hell breaks loose. Oddly, it's when all hell breaks loose that the film starts to feel draggy and uninspired, and the climax has some unintentional laughs that really diminish the impact. And speaking of unintentional laughs, whose idea was it to use the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke" to underscore a dramatic plot turn in the most ham-fisted way possible? And the appearance of The Crooked Man (Guillermo del Toro contortionist Javier Botet, who had the title role in MAMA) would be a lot more effective if he didn't look like The Babadook's more sartorially flashy cousin. Wilson and Farmiga are quite appealing together (Wilson in particular is very likable, especially when he's bonding with the Elvis-loving Hodgson kids by playing his own acoustic take "Can't Help Falling in Love") and young Wolfe is excellent as the anguished Janet, giving it everything she's got as the demonic spirit's grip on her tightens. As far as Hollywood horror movies go these days, THE CONJURING 2 isn't bad, but between his two INSIDIOUS entries (the second was awful, and he didn't direct the third) and now two CONJURINGs, Wan does alright here but doesn't have much in the way of new tricks up his sleeve.
The latest teaming of B-movie action icons Scott Adkins and director Isaac Florentine has about as straightforward an action movie set-up as you can get. Adkins is Colton MacReady, an on-the-run Iraq War deserter who turns up in Mexico and takes out a good chunk of the soldiers working for drug lord Fernando Garcia (Tony Perez). Among the dead are Garcia's nephew (Ray Diaz), who kidnapped MacReady's teenage niece Hailey (Madison Lawlor), after her lowlife stepfather Walt (Jake La Botz), the go-between for Garcia's operation north of the border in Arizona, stole a hefty sum of money belonging to the cartel. MacReady brings Hailey home to her mother, his sister Angela (Caitlin Keats), with what's left of Garcia's army in hot pursuit. The bad guys have some help from corrupt sheriff Calloway (Nick Chinlund), who's morally conflicted over his duty to the law and the money that being on the Garcia payroll brings him. In addition to periodic attempts to show Calloway's decent side, there's also some brief overtures at characterization in the way MacReady scolds his widowed sister for settling on a shitbag like Walt for a second husband, but Florentine wisely keeps the focus on action, with MacReady, Angela, and Hailey holed up inside the family farmhouse while Garcia keeps sending his guys in only to get roundhouse-kicked, stabbed repeatedly, or just shot in the head point-blank by MacReady.
If you've ever seen a Florentine/Adkins collaboration, you know that over-the-top action is the main focus, and CLOSE RANGE delivers to almost absurd levels. Florentine fluidly moves the camera around to keep as much of the expertly-choreographed confrontations going with as few cuts as possible. Things get a little sped up at times, as is the norm, but he makes an effort to avoid going for the quick-cut, shaky-cam approach, which showcases exactly how much work went into these sequences by the actors and the stunt crew. Story-wise, CLOSE RANGE is pretty standard and predictable--of course, MacReady deserted for the right reasons, as he was defying incompetent orders that would've disgraced his unit and led to certain death--and Florentine gets a little too winking at times with the fun but repetitive spaghetti western homages. But it steps up where it matters, and again, you're forced to wonder why Adkins isn't headlining bigger movies (Florentine likely prefers the autonomy of low-budget cinema). It's not quite on the level of their UNDISPUTED sequels or the outstanding NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR. but it's more entertaining and satisfying than a lot of what passes for major action movies these days. Short, simple, and to the point (except for a drawn-out title card intro for each minor villain, which only seems to be there in order to pad the brief run time), CLOSE RANGE's only goal is to have Scott Adkins glower and kick ass for an hour and a half, and on that end, it achieves everything it sets out to do. (R, 85 mins) SHANGHAI
(US/China - 2015)
Filmed in Bangkok in the summer of 2008 and released in Asia and other parts of the world over 2010-2011, this lavishly-mounted, $50 million US/Chinese co-production was shelved stateside for seven years by Harvey Weinstein before getting a stealth release on 100 screens in the fall of 2015. SHANGHAI fancies itself a Far East, historical noir CASABLANCA, set in the title city that's doing its best to stave off the encroaching Japanese occupation in October 1941, but the lugubrious pacing, lackluster direction by Mikael Hafstrom (who made the Anthony Hopkins demonic possession film THE RITE and the Stallone/Schwarzenegger pairing ESCAPE PLAN in ensuing years before this finally came out) shoddy CGI, and a hopelessly muddled script by Hossein Amini (DRIVE) prove to be flaws too fatal to overcome. US Naval Intelligence spy Paul Soames (John Cusack) arrives in Shanghai, posing as a Nazi-sympathizing journalist but drawn into a murder investigation when his Navy buddy and fellow agent Conner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is found dead with his throat slashed. Soames is at the center of an incredibly convoluted story that involves Triad crime lord Anthony Lan-Ting (Chow Yun-Fat) and his mysterious wife Anna (Gong Li), with whom Soames will of course have a clandestine fling. There's also Japanese Intelligence officer Capt. Tanaka (Ken Watanabe), who's suspicious of Soames' true intentions, plus Soames also seduces Leni (an underused Franka Potente), in order to get intel on her husband, a German engineer (Christopher Buchholz), who may have Nazi business to conduct with the Japanese.
A couple of months go by in what feels like real time, and all of these parties converge for a boring climax that takes place on a certain date which will live in infamy--by which I mean the bombing of Pearl Harbor and not the date that Harvey Weinstein greenlit SHANGHAI--with the exception of Leni and her husband, who are completely forgotten by the filmmakers. Rinko Kikuchi (then a recent Oscar nominee for BABEL) turns up as Conner's opium-addicted Japanese girlfriend, and David Morse has a few inconsequential scenes as Soames' contact at the US consulate in Shanghai, warning Soames to not get involved and forced to utter trite dialogue like "This isn't black or white...we're caught in the middle!" SHANGHAI is a tedious, plodding mess that never gets going and never gels together. There's no consistency to the characterizations and everyone wanders in and out of the story with the kind of clunky randomness that suggests this was a much a longer film at some point. Made when Cusack was still getting A-list work but fitting in perfectly with his current string of unseen, Cusackalypse Now paycheck gigs, SHANGHAI reunites the star with Hafstrom, who directed him in the decent 2007 Stephen King adaptation 1408. Cusack is completely unengaging as the hero here and has no chemistry with either Gong or Potente. Beyond that, a fine cast is completely stranded in this incredibly dull misfire that bombed everywhere, grossing just $46,000 in the US. (R, 104 mins) ASHBY
(US/UK/UAE - 2015)
Writer/director Tony McNamara can't seem to decide what he wanted ASHBY to be. It's like the worst parts of Cameron Crowe and Wes Anderson got jumbled in with a RUDY ripoff, a little GRAN TORINO, and a discarded draft of the Kevin Costner-as-a-terminally-ill-assassin movie 3 DAYS TO KILL. When Ashby finds out that one of his assigned contracts was not a threat to the country, but an innocent guy who got in the way of some old associates making a profit on a business deal, he starts taking those associates out--and having an oblivious Ed chauffeur him around--in order to right a wrong while he's still able. Ashby is an anguished man plagued by guilt and regret--he's already lost his wife and daughter and wants nothing more than to be absolved of his countless sins (he estimates he killed 93 people over his career) in order to be permitted into Heaven to be with them. It's a great role for Rourke, but McNamara would rather focus on Wolff's Ed, who's presented as the only smart kid in his class, and the only one with a vague notion of history but who has somehow never seen a cassette tape and, in his clueless fascination, unspools the tape on one of Ashby's Peter Frampton cassettes and smirks "I don't think I can get this back in there." Mind you, it's the entire tape. All of it. How much of the tape do you unspool before you ascertain that it's probably not a good thing? And why would he unspool it in the first place? Is that how he found it? How can a jaded millennial douchebag like Ed not know what a goddamn cassette looks like? Can he possibly be that stupid? And if the scene is played for laughs, then it's even worse, because now Ed is a complete dick for fucking with Ashby's Frampton tape. Wolff goes through the film with a cocky "Aren't I just a stinker?" look that renders his the most punchable face this side of Justin Bieber or the Affluenza kid. It's a wonder why Ashby would even dispense life lessons to this little turd. McNamara's characters are unreal, from Roberts' stock quirky girl who serves as whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment, to Kevin Dunn's bombastic football coach who still uses terms like "the Japs" when referencing WWII, to Zachary Knighton's improbably hipster cool-guy priest with alt-rocker hair who says "fuck" and eats hot wings. The situations are inane, like Ed commandeering the coach's pregame speech--what coach would allow a player to rally the team with "Fuck the coaches!"? ASHBY doesn't exist on any level of reality, and speaking of which, do you know anyone Sarah Silverman's age named June? I don't. Does she have younger sisters named Edith and Myrtle? And there's even stabs at raunch humor with Ed walking in his mom blowing a guy. Rourke brought his A-game to ASHBY, but his efforts were wasted. Rarely has such an excellent performance been stuck in a movie this bad. Paramount picked this up for distribution but the buyer's remorse must've hit quickly: they only released it on 15 screens and VOD for a total gross of $4600. (R, 103 mins)
