Opened 40 Years Ago: EXCALIBUR (4/10/1981)

 

EXCALIBUR opening in Toledo, OH on 4/10/1981

On Netflix: LOST GIRLS (2020)

LOST GIRLS
(US - 2020)

Directed by Liz Garbus. Written by Michael Werwie. Cast: Amy Ryan, Gabriel Byrne, Thomasin McKenzie, Lola Kirke, Oona Laurence, Dean Winters, Miriam Shor, Reed Birney, Kevin Corrigan, Stan Carp, Molly Brown, Ana Reeder, Grace Capeless, Jimi Stanton, Matthew F. O'Connor, Brian Adam DeJesus, James Liao, Jared Johnston. (R, 95 mins)

Between HBO's THE WIRE and supporting roles in acclaimed films like CAPOTE and BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, Amy Ryan was already on the radar when her breakout performance in 2007's GONE BABY GONE earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod (she lost to Tilda Swinton in MICHAEL CLAYTON). She had a recurring role on THE OFFICE, co-starred in 2014's Best Picture Oscar winner BIRDMAN and has appeared in numerous smaller indie films, but A-list stardom never happened for her, and the Netflix Original film LOST GIRLS is one of the very few times post-GONE BABY GONE where she's been given a substantive lead role. Of course, there's some surface similarities with her GONE BABY GONE character, which was probably instrumental in getting her the part after Sarah Paulson dropped out during pre-production. LOST GIRLS, subtitled "An Unsolved American Mystery," deals with the Long Island Serial Killer case over 2010-2011, which had several persons of interest who were questioned, but to this day, no one has been charged. The disappearance of Jersey City escort Shannan Gilbert--last seen running from a client's house in a private beachfront community in Oak Beach in Suffolk County, when she called 911 and it took the cops nearly an hour to arrive--inadvertently leads to the discovery of four bodies (none of them Shannan's) buried in burlap sacks along a remote stretch of Ocean Parkway on the outskirts of the area. The cops on the case, led by the useless Bostick (Dean Winters, cast radically against type as "Dean Winters") aren't really taking any of it seriously, essentially sweeping it under the rug because the victims are "just hookers," which obviously doesn't sit well with Shannan's mother Mari (Ryan), who lives two and a half hours away in Ellenville. Police commissioner Dorman (Gabriel Byrne, previously teamed with Ryan on HBO's IN TREATMENT and in 2016's little-seen LOUDER THAN BOMBS) is facing a PR nightmare and his own possible dismissal after some previous mishandled cases, and isn't prepared to deal with Mari, a blunt woman with no fear of confrontation, but with plenty of her own flaws that end up coming out during the investigation.

A single mother of three, Mari made some questionable decisions during Shannan's childhood, including giving her up when she unable to cope with her then-12-year-old daughter's diagnosis of bipolar disorder while still working two jobs, paying the bills, and raising her two younger girls. She now puts Shannan on a pedestal, despite being frequently blown off for planned dinners, always giving her a pass because she floats some money Mari's way when she's short. Mari never asks where the money comes from, and prefers to be in denial over Shannan being a sex worker, though the younger girls--Sherre (Thomasin McKenzie of LEAVE NO TRACE and JOJO RABBIT) and Sarra (Oona Laurence)--know more than they let on. Mari's own investigation comes about after a mysterious phone call from a Dr. Hackett, who claims to run a home for "wayward girls" and said he treated Shannan on the night she disappeared. She's stonewalled time and again by apathetic cops who don't seem very interested in checking security cameras in the area or looking into the fact that Dr. Hackett (Reed Birney) has a bunch of burlap sacks in a shed behind his house, a tidbit of info brought to her attention by his neighbor Joe Scalise (Kevin Corrigan), whose tips are dismissed by Dorman when he finds out Scalise is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who's had numerous property disputes with Hackett.

Much of LOST GIRLS focuses on Mari's reluctant bond with a group of women whose sisters and daughters were among the four unearthed bodies, all escorts and prostitutes and thus, viewed with scornful derision by the cops and the upright citizens of Oak Park, who look the other way, pull their shades, and close their curtains when Mari comes snooping around. One of the women is Kim (Lola Kirke), who also works as an escort and comes to be viewed by Mari as a surrogate for Shannan, which leads to McKenzie being forced into a somewhat hackneyed "I'm still here!" speech by Sherre. LOST GIRLS is the first narrative project for veteran documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus (GIRLHOOD, BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD), and even with a powerful performance by Ryan, the subject cries out for a true-crime-style examination. There's simply too much to the case to condense it all down to 95 minutes, giving it a rushed feel that has to cut too many corners in the early going to push the story along.

The way it's presented here, it looks like the four bodies are found right after Shannan disappears. In reality, it was seven months later. And Mari's transformation into a dogged sleuth ten minutes into the film seems a little unlikely. More remains are found in another area of Suffolk County, including a pair of dismembered legs tied to remains found elsewhere in 1996 (!), and there's significant hints of police corruption and some kind of cover-up, but LOST GIRLS doesn't have the time or space to go into it. Nor does it have time to delve into a part of the story that broadens the scope of this unspeakable tragedy: Sarra Gilbert, whose psychological troubles are mentioned in passing here and only grew worse following Shannan's disappearance and the later discovery of her remains in a marsh adjacent to Hackett's property, was later diagnosed as schizophrenic, and in 2016, killed Mari after going off her meds. That's only mentioned in almost "yadda yadda" fashion in an onscreen text at the end of the film. There's a larger story here that would best be served by Garbus' proven skills as a documentarian. What's here is the kind of actor's showcase that a jobbing pro like Ryan deserves, and she's absolutely convincing unleashing her fury at the do-nothing cops (Bostick: "Look, honey, why don't you let the police do their job?" Mari: "Why don't you suck my dick?"). And it's suitably compelling on its own terms, with a meeting between a nervous Mari and the overly folksy Hackett kinda sorta reminding you of that incredibly intense basement sequence in ZODIAC, but as is happening more and more with today's trend of serialized binge-watching, LOST GIRLS probably would've been more effective as a multi-episode documentary series.

In Theaters: HEREDITARY (2018)

HEREDITARY
(US - 2018)

Written and directed by Ari Aster. Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Mallory Bechtel. (R, 127 mins)

The buzz around HEREDITARY has been nonstop since it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival six months ago. Written and directed by Ari Aster, it's one of the most confident and impressive debuts in a long while, a harrowing, cerebral shocker that eschews the overplayed jump scares in favor of a slowly escalating sense of suffocating dread, hopelessness, and absolute terror that mercilessly tightens its grip over two intense hours. It's not surprising that A24 acquired the distribution rights--they've been positioning themselves as Blumhouse's nerdy, brainier alternative and the home for "serious" horror for a few years now, going back to THE WITCH, THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, and IT COMES AT NIGHT, all thoughtful, uncompromising films that earned significant critical accolades but tended to frustrate and alienate mainstream audiences. With the festival hype calling HEREDITARY "this generation's EXORCIST," you can expect the same commercial response again once the multiplex moviegers and the horror scene's notoriously insular "gatekeeper" (© Jason Coffman) crowd gets a look at it. Unlike the increasingly generic horrors offered by Blumhouse, A24 acquisitions like HEREDITARY provoke thought, discussion, and are works that play the long game and will stand the test of time. It's not the game-changer that THE EXORCIST was because horror is probably past the point where game-changers even exist. There isn't much more that can be classified as "innovative," and like any filmmaker who grew up watching any kind of movie, Aster is going to be influenced by the works of others that paved the way.

So to that end, yes, there's familiar tropes in HEREDITARY. Yes, there's shout-outs to THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY. And yes, Aster has clearly seen THE SHINING several times (and other Kubrick classics, judging from some shot compositions and several nicely-done match cuts). But HEREDITARY takes those elements and uses them to fashion a devastating metaphor about the pain of a family in turmoil and hanging on by a thread, a family overwhelmed by grief, dysfunction, a history of mental illness, and other things always there but left unspoken. It's about things passed down, genetically and otherwise. No film in recent memory has offered more disturbing evidence that you don't get to choose your parents and that nothing is in your control. In what is unquestionably her career performance thus far, Toni Collette is Annie Graham, an artist who creates obsessively detailed miniature dioramas of her life. She's mourning the death of her estranged mother Ellen. To say their relationship was frayed and perpetually at a breaking point is an understatement. A domineering, controlling woman who suffered from depression and dissociative personality disorder, Ellen dealt with a lot in her life beyond her own psychological problems: a clinically depressed husband who starved himself to death when Annie was a baby, and a schizophrenic son named Charles who hanged himself when he was 16, leaving a note for his mother blaming her for putting the voices in his head. Annie has a seemingly "normal," upper-middle class suburban life with her doctor husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), stoner teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff), and odd, withdrawn 13-year-old daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Ellen's passing stirs all sorts of trauma that's been bubbling under the surface in the Graham household--unresolved issues, long-buried resentments, things that should never be spoken aloud, and habitual secrets and lies (Annie attends a weekly grief support group but covers it with a lie about "going to see a movie," and Steve is notified by the cemetery that Ellen's grave has been desecrated but keeps it to himself). HEREDITARY is the kind of movie where going in knowing as little as possible is really the only possible way to approach it. But in the midst of the grief over Ellen and everyone handling it in their own way, something happens around the 40-minute mark that is so unexpected and so traumatizing (to the Grahams and to the audience) that Aster instantly sends the message that the screws are tightening and that no one--onscreen or in the theater--is safe going forward.

Everything that unfolds over the next 90 minutes is a direct result of what happens at the 40-minute mark, so it's impossible to discuss without spoiling everything. What can be discussed is the ensemble cast. The unique-looking Shapiro creates an instant impression as Charlie, the Graham family member who was closest to Ellen and the most outwardly affected by her death. Her appearance and her bizarre "clucking" tic (which gets extremely creepy as the film goes on) will probably guarantee her a spot on the roster at any horror con of her choosing for the rest of her life. Wolff is superb in what becomes an unexpectedly complex and difficult role, Ann Dowd (THE HANDMAID'S TALE's Aunt Lydia) has a small but important role as a support group acquaintance of Annie's, and Byrne brings a stoical standoffishness to Steve, who loves his family but is convinced that ignoring the increasingly bizarre mayhem going on around him is for the best and everything will just work itself out. In any other scenario, Wolff's performance would be HEREDITARY's secret weapon, but this is Toni Collette's movie from start to finish. Horror films typically aren't known for containing gut-wrenching performances that exhaustively run the gamut of emotions, but Collette throws herself into this role and into Annie's indescribable pain with a commitment bordering on feral. You don't often see performances on this level in films that don't contain Daniel Day-Lewis.

At 127 minutes, HEREDITARY is long and takes its time building its multi-layered story. It demands patience and attention but it's never dull and there's never a wasted moment, even from the start with a brief glimpse of a creepily-grinning onlooker at Ellen's funeral. It's not a perfect film. Astor is a little too ham-fisted in making sure we know that Charlie has a nut allergy and one significant plot turn doesn't really pass the smell test: as a point of comparison, it would be tantamount to Minnie and Roman Castevet and all of their neighbors taking pictures of their activities and leaving them in a photo album for Rosemary to discover later on. I guess it's HEREDITARY's "All of them witches" moment but this particular variant seems forced. And the final scene has the distinct feeling of a producer pleading with Astor to explicitly spell out what would be best left ambiguous. That said, this is a bold, terrifying, and profoundly unsettling film with numerous moments and images that will haunt you for days. And Collette's performance will likely go down as the best in any movie in 2018.

On Blu-ray/DVD: SMALL TOWN CRIME (2018) and LIES WE TELL (2018)

SMALL TOWN CRIME
(US - 2018)

Another entry in the new wave of gritty noirs that's given us acclaimed films like COLD IN JULY, BLUE RUIN, BAD TURN WORSE, I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE, and the similarly-titled SMALL CRIMES, SMALL TOWN CRIME is a terrific thriller that also owes a debt to BLOOD SIMPLE-era Coen Bros. Despite the obvious influences, the sibling writing/directing team of Esham & Ian Nelms (WAFFLE STREET) throw in enough unpredictable twists and turns and interesting characters that SMALL TOWN CRIME manages to find its own voice and place in the subgenre. Character Actor Hall of Famer John Hawkes stars as Mike Kendall, an alcoholic and disgraced ex-cop booted off the force after a traffic stop went bad, resulting in his partner getting shot in the head by the driver, a psycho who had a kidnapped girl in the trunk who was accidentally shot dead by Kendall, who was shitfaced on the job in the police cruiser and just started randomly firing when his partner went down. Unable to get a job and getting so blackout drunk every night that it's not uncommon for him to wake up in a field 100 yards away from his old-school Nova littered with empties on the dashboard, Mike is driving home on one such morning after when he spots a bloodied and barely-breathing young woman lying on the side of the road. He drives her to the hospital, but she dies shortly after. He finds her phone under his passenger seat and has a testy conversation with criminal lowlife Mood (Clifton Collins Jr), who keeps calling the girl's phone incessantly. After being threatened by Mood, Mike draws three conclusions: the dead girl was a prostitute, Mood was her pimp, and he obviously doesn't know she's dead. Even though he's in a drunken blur most of the time, this awakens his long-dormant cop instincts and he's unable to let it go, even after being told to back off by homicide detectives Crawford (Michael Vartan) and Whitman (Daniel Sunjata), both of whom know and, more so with Whitman, still resent him over his exit from the department.

In a plot development more suited for a wacky comedy but pulled off with total straight-faced seriousness, broke-ass Mike pretends to be a private investigator and is hired to the tune of $2500 a week by the dead girl's wealthy grandfather Steve Yendel (Robert Forster who, oddly enough, was also in SMALL CRIMES), who's fed up with the slow pace of the police investigation. Another dead hooker is found, and this leads Mike on the trail of all manner of sleazy criminal activity including, but not limited to, another prostitute (Caity Lotz) who knew the dead girl; a low-rent brothel being run out of a shithole bar owned by Mike's buddy Randy (Don Harvey); two psycho hit men (James Lafferty and Jeremy Ratchford, the latter looking like he got the role because Mark Boone Junior was busy) who start following Mike around and harassing his brother-in-law Teddy (Anthony Anderson), which doesn't sit well with his sister Kelly (Octavia Spencer, also an executive producer), whose family adopted Mike when he was a kid rescued from junkie parents; and a sex tape involving three rich douchebag real estate developers. After Teddy is kidnapped by the hit men, Mike forms an unholy alliance with Mood, the two setting aside their differences and joining forces with a shotgun-toting Yendel to settle this their own way. You really haven't lived until you've seen a scowling Forster as Yendel, already pissed-off and forced to ride shotgun in Mood's rebuilt purple Impala low-rider with serious hydraulics action. Despite the grim subject matter, there's quite a bit of dark humor throughout ("Sometimes, you're just a shitheel, ya know?" a bar waitress tells Mike). Mike's arc is obviously a redemptive one but the Nelmses don't allow everything to wrap up all neat and tidy, especially when it comes to Teddy and Kelly, though the film somehow manages to end on a crowd-pleasing note (I would love seeing Hawkes, Collins, and Forster revisit these characters and team up for another mystery). Released straight to DirecTV and VOD, SMALL TOWN CRIME is genuine sleeper gem that's going to find a solid word-of-mouth cult following once it hits streaming services, and it's a real shame something this entertaining barely got any theatrical exposure. Check this one out. (R, 92 mins)



LIES WE TELL
(UK - 2018)

British-Pakistani double-glazed window magnate Mitu Misra had never even been on a movie set before making his self-financed debut film LIES WE TELL. Based in Bradford in West Derbyshire, an area that's home to a large Pakistani population, LIES WE TELL tries to be both a culture-clash soap opera and a seedy crime thriller, with a central relationship that recalls Neil Jordan's MONA LISA (1986) and a finale that straight-up steals a major moment from Brian De Palma's CARLITO'S WAY (1993), Other than a positively Ed Wood-ian sight of a camera drone hovering over a traffic jam and quickly exiting the frame, obviously not meant to be in the shot, Misra doesn't humiliate himself but he doesn't accomplish much either, relying on the presence of a few seasoned pros who were probably happy to jump aboard once Misra's checks cleared. Melancholy Donald (Gabriel Byrne) is the loyal, longtime driver for wealthy Greek businessman Demi Lampros (Harvey Keitel). Lampros dies suddenly (Keitel checks out less than five minutes in), and in the event of his passing, left Donald specific instructions to keep his family from discovering his indiscretions and clear out his secret apartment where he regularly met Amber (Sibyllla Deen), his 20-something Muslim mistress who's going through law school on his dime. Liberal in her beliefs and the object of scorn by her strict, fundamentalist family, Amber is still under the thumb of KD (Jan Uddin), her cousin and a sketchy Bradford crime lord to whom she was nearly forced into an arranged marriage when they were both 16. Now, nearly a decade later, Amber's parents are forcing her younger sister Miriam (Danica Johnson) into an identical arrangement with the abusive KD. Out of loyalty to his late employer, Donald is drawn into Amber's troubled life and ends up helping her get Miriam out of a bad situation that's made worse when Lampros' weasally, asshole son Nathan (Reece Ritchie) discovers a sex tape on his father's phone.

That leads to an attempt by Nathan to blackmail Amber into a similar sugar daddy situation, but the phone's memory card is swiped by an enraged KD, who threatens to show Amber's parents unless she backs off and quits trying to stop the wedding. Mark Addy also periodically appears as Donald's slovenly brother-in-law and roommate, but doesn't really serve a purpose. There's also a barely-explored subplot about Donald's estranged wife (Gina McKee) and their dead daughter, and though he pumps the brakes at shirtless, thus sparing us the familiar sight of the full Bad Lieutenant in the sex tape footage, the whole film seems like an elaborate excuse for 78-year-old Harvey Keitel to disrobe onscreen yet again. LIES WE TELL is dull and dreary, though Byrne and Deen manage to occasionally lift the uninspired material just with their professionalism and natural acting talent. McKee and Addy are pros given nothing to work with, and there's no way Keitel worked on this for more than a day. Other than that ridiculous, bush-league fuck-up with the camera drone, Misra's intentions are sincere, and while this isn't a good movie at all, it's likely the best one you'll see by a West Derbyshire-based double-glazed window magnate by default, so that's gotta count for something. Right? (Unrated, 110 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ALAN PARTRIDGE (2014); CAPITAL (2013); and HAUNT (2014)

ALAN PARTRIDGE
(France/UK - 2013; US release 2014)

British actor/writer/comedian Steve Coogan's (PHILOMENA) best known character is clueless and insufferably self-aggrandizing radio and TV personality Alan Partridge. Coogan's been playing Partridge off-and-on on numerous British TV shows since 1991, and it's proven so popular that he had a change of heart on his plan to retire Partridge some years back. Coogan's first stab at bringing Alan Partridge to the big screen resulted in a blockbuster hit in British theaters, where it was called ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA.  The second half of the title was dropped by US distributor Magnolia, but it makes no matter.  If you like snappy, misanthropic, foul-mouthed British humor in the vein of THE THICK OF IT and its big-screen spinoff IN THE LOOP (2009), you'll dig ALAN PARTRIDGE since it also features the contributions of co-writer Armando Iannucci, whose unique brand of biting humor has translated beautifully to American TV with HBO's blisteringly funny VEEP. Here, Partridge is the afternoon DJ at North Norfolk Digital, a small-time radio station that's just been bought out by a big-time media company run by the loathsome Jason Tresswell (Nigel Lindsay). Fearing for his job security, Partridge trash-talks veteran night DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) enough that Farrell is canned.  Later that night, at a party thrown at the station by Tresswell, a disgruntled Farrell shows up and takes everyone hostage.  Acting as a liaison between the police and Farrell, Partridge sees the siege and the inevitable media circus as his ticket back to the big time.

Even if you haven't seen much of Coogan's past work as Partridge, ALAN PARTRIDGE works just fine as a stand-alone film.  You'll be able to fill in the blanks, like Partridge's insensitive interaction with doting assistant Lynn Benfield (Felicity Montagu) or the antics of his Geordie friend Michael (Simon Greenall). Coogan and Iannucci assembled a summit of ALAN PARTRIDGE writers older and newer to put this together, including Peter Baynham, who worked on the early Partridge material and went on to write BORAT with Sacha Baron Cohen, plus twin brothers Neil & Rob Gibbons, who worked on more recent PARTRIDGE incarnations with Coogan.  Along with the writers, director Declan Lowney (a veteran of numerous British TV favorites like FATHER TED and LITTLE BRITAIN) approaches this in a fan-friendly fashion and doesn't fix what isn't broken, while at the same time making it accessible for the first-time viewer. Of course, if you know Coogan's style or have seen any of his work with Rob Brydon, you know what to expect. Whether he's being politically incorrect, extraordinarily self-centered, pretending to be on the phone to avoid talking to someone only to have it ring, or just being an outright coward (as someone's about to enter a room with guns blazing, Partridge tells one woman "I'll protect you" while sheepishly crouching behind her), Coogan is hilariously obnoxious throughout, and has a good foil in Meaney's ill-tempered Farrell.  Sure, the whole concept is more than a little reminiscent of the 1994 radio station hostage comedy AIRHEADS, but Coogan and Iannucci bring enough of their distinctive style to the table to make it very worthwhile. (R, 90 mins)


CAPITAL
(France - 2012; US release 2013)

Though he's dabbled in various genres, the great Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras is best known for his politically-charged films like the Oscar-winning Z (1969), THE CONFESSION (1970), STATE OF SIEGE (1972), MISSING (1982), BETRAYED (1988), and MUSIC BOX (1989).  He's never shied away from controversy, especially with 1983's HANNA K, a film whose perceived Palestinian sympathies got it yanked from theaters and probably had a hand in effectively ending Jill Clayburgh's run as a Hollywood A-lister. Costa-Gavras hasn't made an American film since 1997's ham-fisted MAD CITY, but he's been working fairly steadily in France over the last decade.  His latest--and first to get US distribution since 2002's AMEN--is CAPITAL, which finds the 80-year-old director taking aim at the global financial meltdown in sometimes heavy-handed ways, and while it's not essential Costa-Gavras, it's still worth seeing. It's hard to make financial thrillers thrilling (the recent MOBIUS is a great example of how not to do it), and while the characters and the subplots are fairly standard-issue, CAPITAL gets some genuine momentum going once all the pieces are in place.

When the old-school CEO (Daniel Mesguich) of France-based Phenix Bank has a heart attack and gets an overly symbolic testicular cancer diagnosis (that's right--he doesn't have the balls for this business anymore), he nominates his protege Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) to replace him. The board isn't happy, but figure Tourneuil is enough of a yes-man that they can bully him around and get what they want anyway. Tourneuil proves to be a hard negotiator and a driven businessman and immediately makes a number of bottom-line decisions that are so unpopular that even his mentor wants him fired. Phenix is in dire shape and in order to turn things around, Tourneuil forms an uneasy alliance with an aggressive Miami-based hedge fund overseen by ruthless financial titan Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne, who had one of his earliest major roles in HANNA K). Rigule plots an insider trading scam to drain Phenix's assets through a secret corporation, then overtake it with his own hedge fund, essentially using Phenix's money to buy themselves out.  Tourneuil is promised a fat payday out of it and the first step is firing 10,000 Phenix employees worldwide to aid in shareholder (and Rigule) profit. Of course, Tourneuil's mind isn't always focused on Rigule's junkyard-dog act or the deceptive machinations of his own underlings, since his newfound power predictably turns him into a total asshole, ignoring his devoted wife (Natacha Regnier) and growing obsessed with a manipulative supermodel (Laura Gemser lookalike Liya Kebede), even blowing off meetings so he can fly to Tokyo to go down on her in an airport restroom.  The relationship between Tourneuil and the supermodel is the most problematic element in CAPITAL, taking up too much time and going nowhere, and their final scene together is just unpleasant and bizarre. Costa-Gavras pulls no punches in his depiction of the high-rolling sociopaths that inhabit the financial world:  even from the beginning, when the old CEO collapses on a golf course, Tourneuil is already grinning at the prospect of being put in charge. He's not a nice guy corrupted by power.  He's an asshole who was patiently waiting for his turn. In the end, CAPITAL's points are simplistic and obvious, but the financial cat-and-mouse game between Tourneuil and Rigule (it's great fun watching Byrne turn from a smooth operator into a bloviating prick as the film goes on) provides some well-handled dramatic tension.  It's no Z, but Costa-Gavras, still looking spry, energetic, and a good decade younger than his age in the DVD's making-of doc, still has a little gas left in the tank.  (R, 114 mins)


HAUNT
(US - 2014)

It's probably easier to just list the movies HAUNT rips off rather than attempt a review.  Another in an ever-increasing (and ever-annoying) line of slow-burner horror films that mistakes "long stretches of lethargically-paced nothing" for "building tension" (thanks, Ti West!), HAUNT offers yet another dull and oblivious family moving into a cursed house because it's impossibly cheap thanks to all of the murders that have taken place under its roof.  The Ashers--dad (Brian Wimmer), mom (Ione Skye), oldest daughter (Danielle Chuchran), son (Harrison Gilbertson), and younger daughter (Ella Harris)--relocate to a spacious Iowa home where the the previous family all met horrific ends except for the matriarch (SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK'S Jacki Weaver), who ran a pediatrics practice from a home office. The ghostly activity starts with an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) machine that's been left behind in a secret room next to Gilbertson's. Gilbertson meets a troubled teen (Liana Liberato) who lives down the road with her abusive father, and soon she's sleeping over with him, which is totally cool since his folks are the hippest and most easygoing parents around.  Gilbertson and Liberato mess around with the machine and a voice tells him to "Get out of my room!"  Soon enough, they're haunted by the usual apparitions out of nowhere, shadows lurk in hallways, wet footprints lead nowhere, and the youngest Asher is having long conversations with her dolls, standing in doorways in a catatonic stupor, and scratching the eyes and faces out of family photos.  Might it all have something to do with a clumsily-placed flashback with Weaver helping out a young mother with a screaming baby girl?  Gilbertson is so preoccupied playing savior with Liberato that he doesn't even notice the weird stuff going on with his little sister, which is fine since director Mac Carter and writer Andrew Barrer completely forget about her anyway. Instead, they just restage elements of INSIDIOUS, WHITE NOISE, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, SINISTER, and of course, once they unleash the angry spirit of Weaver's teenage son, Gilbertson briefly becomes possessed and starts doing the herky-jerky JU-ON/GRUDGE shuffle.  With no scares, thoroughly cardboard characters, and an egregious wasting of two-time Oscar-nominee Weaver, HAUNT (not to be confused with the recent and much better HAUNTER) is an instantly forgettable trifle that almost wears its half-assed laziness like a badge of honor, its only concern being how many movies it can crib from on its way to the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart. I guess the only good thing you can say about it is that no one in the family seems to own a video camera. (R, 86 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)