On Blu-ray/DVD: MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE (2017) and LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON (2017)

MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE
(US/UK - 2017)

A middling biopic that goes into the Watergate saga from the POV of the whistleblower, the cumbersomely-titled MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE focuses on the veteran FBI company man who, 30-plus years later, admitted that he was the informant known as "Deep Throat," who regularly fed information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. These provided some of the most memorable scenes in the 1976 classic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, with Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, but MARK FELT goes into what drove him to secretly talk to the press. Felt (1913-2008) is played by an excellent Liam Neeson, and as the film opens in 1972, J. Edgar Hoover has just died and Felt is generally considered by D.C. insiders as a lock to take over as director. The job goes to former deputy Attorney General L. Patrick Gray (Marton Csokas as Russell Crowe), a Nixon loyalist who also brings back disgraced agent Bill Sullivan (a twitchy and overly mannered Tom Sizemore), a longtime rival of Felt's. After the Watergate break-in, Felt leads the FBI investigation but is quickly shut down by Gray, who insists on reporting all of their findings to White House counsel John Dean (Michael C. Hall) over Felt's objections that the FBI doesn't work for the President. A frustrated Felt begins feeding info of a cover-up to Time reporter Sandy Smith (Bruce Greenwood) and eventually Bob Woodward (Julian Morris) at the Post as Gray and Dean desperately try to find the source of the leaks and protect the Oval Office.

Produced by Ridley Scott, MARK FELT was released in September 2017, just after President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey over concerns of "loyalty" and stopping an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. There's some unintended contemporary parallels with the FBI side of the story in MARK FELT and the Oval Office's misunderstanding of the limits of its power and who answers to it, and for a while, as Felt keeps digging for info and keeps being stonewalled by his own boss--this is as much about Felt butting heads with Gray as it is about Watergate--it's a compelling flip side to events seen in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. But as the film goes on, writer/director Peter Landesman (who also wrote the underrated and little-seen KILL THE MESSENGER) loses focus. Felt's decision to become a whistleblower seems initially rooted in his bitterness at being passed over as director after 30 years of doing and saying all the right things, but as he uncovers more evidence that leads directly to Nixon's inner circle, he refuses to play along and be the good soldier that Gray expects. This sort of thing plays to Neeson's strengths, and he turns in one of his best serious performances of the non-TAKEN variety in a long time. The large cast of supporting actors (there's also Josh Lucas, Brian d'Arcy James, Eddie Marsan, Tony Goldwyn, Noah Wyle, Ike Barinholtz, Kate Walsh, and Wendi McLendon-Covey) exists primarily to dump reams of exposition, exclaim cliches ("What you're doing...will bring down the whole house of cards!"), and stare suspiciously at one another as paranoia mounts. To the film's credit, it doesn't ignore Felt's post-Watergate conviction for illegal wiretapping of the Weather Underground and other activist groups and his subsequent pardon by Ronald Reagan in 1981, but it's included almost as an afterthought and it doesn't go deep enough into his reasoning for the overzealous surveillance of those groups: his daughter Joan (Maika Monroe) ran away and joined a commune and he was trying to find her while at the same time hoping to shield her from any prosecution for things she might've done as part of these activist groups. The entire subplot about Felt's home life is botched, leaving Diane Lane with almost nothing to do but complain and guzzle wine as Felt's neglected, long-suffering wife Audrey (who would commit suicide in 1984). Both Neeson and Landesman have expressed regret that most of Lane's performance ended up being cut from the film for time reasons, but really, the whole second half of MARK FELT collapses into total incoherence and starts demonstrating all of the tell-tale signs of a movie that's been hacked to pieces in post-production (Felt is shown meeting with Woodward just one time). At 103 minutes, MARK FELT is curiously short for this kind of sweeping historical saga, almost as if Landesman was told to ditch everything that didn't involve Watergate. Sony had no idea what to do with this, even with a big name like Neeson headlining: this only made it to 332 screens at its widest release, grossing just $768,000. (PG-13, 103 mins)




LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON
(US - 2017)

A refreshingly old-fashioned B-movie of the sort that would've played drive-ins back in 1980, the true crime saga LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON deals with a prison break and subsequent statewide manhunt that took place in Arizona in July and August of 1978. The film is a gritty labor of love for veteran character actor Robert Patrick, who produced and stars as Tison, a convicted murderer and tyrannical father who lords over his three devoted sons Donnie (Alex MacNicoll), Ricky (Skyy Moore), and Ray (Casey Thomas Brown). It's his sons who help pull off the escape during a visit, with Tison's psycho prison buddy Randy Greenawalt (Chris Browning) tagging along. Weary Sheriff Cooper (Bruce Davison) leads the manhunt and, of course, it's personal since Tison killed one of his close friends, while an ambitious reporter (Molly C. Quinn) tries to get a story out of Tison's devoutly dutiful wife Dorothy (Heather Graham). Tison is a brutal, ruthless sociopath with no capacity for mercy. He's not above shotgunning a newlywed couple or a toddler if it means saving his ass, and he doesn't hesitate to point a gun at Donnie's head when the eldest son starts thinking for himself, questioning his actions and refusing to call him "sir."

LAST RAMPAGE was directed by career journeyman Dwight Little, who made his name in the horror genre back in the day with 1988's HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS and 1989's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with Robert Englund. Since then, he's gone wherever his services have been required, from the 1991 Steven Seagal vehicle MARKED FOR DEATH, the 1992 Brandon Lee actioner RAPID FIRE, 1995's FREE WILLY 2, and 1997's MURDER AT 1600. Little's spent most of the last 20 years as a busy TV director, and LAST RAMPAGE is his first feature film since the $30 million video game adaptation TEKKEN went straight to DVD in 2011. Little doesn't bring any real sense of style to LAST RAMPAGE, but he keeps it fast-moving and focused, like a professional B-movie hired gun knows how to do. Patrick is terrifying and oozes pure evil as the monstrous Tison, and Davison has some nice moments as the folksy, matter-of-fact Cooper, even if the character seems to be a composite of Tommy Lee Jones in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and Jeff Bridges in HELL OR HIGH WATER. The film fails to take advantage of the unusual casting of Graham, and the scenes between the subtly manipulative Dorothy and the naive young reporter don't really seem to go anywhere. Dorothy is a woman who's convinced herself of many things, and Graham seems eager to disappear into a dowdy, unglamorous role with some truly hideous 1978 eyeglass frames, but the script, written by Alvaro Rodriguez (Robert Rodriguez's cousin) doesn't really give her much to do. The supporting cast also includes Megan Gallagher as Cooper's wife, Jason James Richter (the kid from FREE WILLY) as a deputy, and the late John Heard in one of his last roles (he died two months before the film's VOD release) as the useless warden. The Tison story was told once before, albeit in a more sanitized fashion, in the 1983 ABC TV-movie A KILLER IN THE FAMILY, which starred Robert Mitchum as Tison, with his three sons played by Lance Kerwin (SALEM'S LOT), and a young and unknown Eric Stoltz and James Spader. (R, 93 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: TO ROME WITH LOVE (2012), DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO (2013), and ABOUT CHERRY (2012)

TO ROME WITH LOVE
(US/Italy - 2012)

The annual Woody Allen movie is practically cinematic comfort food at this point, always there regardless of the familiarity of the most of the films and the sometimes paltry box office, and even when they aren't always top-tier Allen (it's only been three years, but does anyone remember YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER?), they're always worth seeing because he's Woody Allen, he's still cranking them out, and we're gonna miss him when he's gone.  Allen had a lightning-in-a-bottle blockbuster with 2011's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, which came out of nowhere to become his biggest hit in 25 years.  His follow-up, TO ROME WITH LOVE, didn't enjoy the same fawning reception from mainstream American moviegoers (it did better overseas), and there's a reason for that:  it's one of the weakest films of Allen's career and a definite indication that perhaps he's cranking these things out a bit too quickly.  Sure, he's directed somewhere around 40 movies over the last 45 years (incredibly, 1981 was the last year without a new Allen film, and some years, he directed two) and simple logic dictates that they can't all be winners, but any hope of Allen being on a late-career roll are immediately dashed with the rambling and disjointed TO ROME WITH LOVE, a lovely-looking travelogue that boasts a great cast, but it's too long and filled with too many half-baked and frequently obvious ideas that go nowhere.  Allen's always had a gift for dialogue and characterization, but you can see him just spinning his wheels here.  He doesn't seem invested in it from any standpoint:  directing, writing, and for the first time since 2006's SCOOP, acting.  And look, I get it.  I don't want to sound like a jerk, but he's 77.  People get old.  They maybe lose some of that spark and maybe miss more beats than they did even five or ten years earlier.  Woody Allen is one of the greats, but he just doesn't look good here.  Not in an unhealthy way, but just in an aging and fatigued way.  His performance is lethargic, his timing seems off and he looks distracted and bored in his own movie.  It's great to see him again, but after one or two scenes, I found myself feeling bad about wishing he'd just stayed behind the camera for this one.

Utilizing some of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS' fantasy elements, TO ROME WITH LOVE focuses on four parallel storylines that don't have any ties other than taking place in Rome.  Because of this structure, the stories never seem to gain any momentum.  Perhaps an anthology film with four self-contained stories would've been a better way to go.  Allen is a retired opera director visiting Rome with wife Judy Davis to meet their daughter Alison Pill's Italian fiance (Flavio Parenti), whose mortician father (tenor Fabio Armiliato) has a voice that only shines in the shower.  Mild-mannered office worker Roberto Benigni becomes an instant celebrity overnight for no reason and begins to adore the media attention.  Architect Alec Baldwin meets a younger version of himself (Jesse Eisenberg), advising him to stick with his loyal girlfriend (Greta Gerwig) and not succumb to the temptation of her phony, narcissistic visiting best friend (Ellen Page).  Naive, small-town newlyweds Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi get separated when she tries to find a hair salon and, through a complicated set of circumstances, he ends up passing off a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) as his new bride to his judgmental relatives.  Allen's always been a master at juggling multiple storylines and many characters, but with no real connection between the characters and no real reason to become invested in their issues, TO ROME WITH LOVE just never catches fire the way the great Allen films do.  Think ANNIE HALL (1977), MANHATTAN (1979), HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986), CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989) and his suspense thriller MATCH POINT (2005), probably his all-around best film of the last decade.  Even episodic Allen films like RADIO DAYS (1987) had engaging characters and compelling consistency to their story elements.  TO ROME WITH LOVE feels like a first draft that he didn't bother revising, almost like a film he made simply because he just had an unexpected hit involving one beloved European city, so it'll just as easily work a second time.  Except that it doesn't.  As a filmmaker, Allen is well beyond needing to prove himself to anyone, but TO ROME WITH LOVE is one of the emptiest and most forgettable films of his long and legendary career.  (R, 112 mins)


DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO
(South Africa/Germany - 2013)

The second DTV sequel to Paul W.S. Anderson's 2008 reimagining of the 1975 cult classic DEATH RACE 2000 is an improvement over the uninspired DEATH RACE 2.  Anderson has a producer and a story credit, once again leaving directing duties to DEATH RACE 2 helmer Roel Reine, a DTV vet with a couple of Steven Seagal vehicles under his belt.  DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO is easily Reine's most accomplished work yet and the film does a convincing job of looking a lot bigger than it really is, both in scope and budget.  Tony Giglio's script is mostly pretty standard stuff, complete with cliched dialogue like "Let's do this!" but there's a legitimately well-constructed twist late in the film that puts a different spin on the chronology of the franchise. 

Picking up where DEATH RACE 2 left off, Terminal Island inmate Frankenstein (Luke Goss, the straight-to-DVD Jason Statham) needs to win one more race to gain his freedom.  That plan is stymied when Death Race is taken over by billionaire douchebag Niles York (Dougray Scott), who envisions a global Death Race franchise and loans Frankenstein out to Kalahari Prison in South Africa for a Cannonball Run through various deserts, dangerous territories overseen by warlords, and heavily-populated shantytowns (think a more apocalyptic version of the 1982 David Carradine/Christopher Lee African racing comedy SAFARI 3000...or better yet, don't).  Reine and the stunt team stage some truly spectacular crashes and explosions, which is really what this is all about, but it looks and feels unusually accomplished and large-scale for a DTV effort.  Danny Trejo (as the improbably named "Goldberg"), Ving Rhames and Tanit Phoenix return from the previous film, and franchise mainstays Robin Shou (as 14K) and Fred Koehler (as Lists) are once more the only people from the 2008 DEATH RACE with nothing better to do, though you do see a photo of Ian McShane and a freeze-frame of Joan Allen on a monitor which, oddly enough, exceeds her screen time in THE BOURNE LEGACY.  Also, thanks to this film, I've now seen Danny Trejo's ass.  (Unrated, 105 mins)


ABOUT CHERRY
(US - 2012)

This barely-released indie (total theatrical gross: $3000) tries to be a BOOGIE NIGHTS for the modern-day internet and streaming porn industry but offers surprisingly little insight despite being co-written by veteran adult film actress Lorelei Lee.  Lee and director/co-writer Stephen Elliott (not to be confused with THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA director Stephan Elliott) want to convey an insider's look at "the life," but get sidetracked by bland, predictable melodrama and it doesn't have much to say other than the obvious.  It also tries to sugarcoat the industry by making everyone in it an earnest, misunderstood misfit just trying to make an honest living despite the objections of their appalled friends and family, and with the exception of a couple of characters, almost everyone not in the porn industry is a judgmental asshole with substance abuse or other psychological issues.  Ashley Hinshaw (who looks a lot like a young Teri Polo) is the not-very-subtly-named Angelina, who escapes a dysfunctional household complete with an alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) and an abusive stepdad by moving to San Francisco with her platonic male "like a brother" best friend Andrew (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE's Dev Patel), who--does it even need to be said?--silently carries a torch for her.  Having already done a nude photo shoot back home at the urging of her shitbag guitarist ex-boyfriend (Jonny Weston), Angelina finds a job with upscale internet porn company Bod, adopts the stage name Cherry, and starts doing nude photo shoots and then solo masturbation videos directed by veteran adult filmmaker Margaret (Heather Graham). 

As Cherry gains notoriety and moves to girl-on-girl films and eventually straight penetration, the people in her life--from her alcoholic mother to Andrew to her new boyfriend, cokehead lawyer Francis (James Franco)--start to resent her for her "disgusting" career choice.  The script argues that these people sold out their dreams either to raise kids or to punch a clock (Francis wanted to be an artist) and are taking it out on Angelina/Cherry, and it feels disingenuous.  How can it be that none of Cherry's colleagues are there out of desperation?  It's a squeaky-clean, Pollyanna-ish environment that just doesn't ring true.  Nobody's on drugs, everybody's clean, and it's all about the art.  Lee stacks the deck in favor of Angelina/Cherry, and in the process of trying to make her an independent young woman forging her own path in life, instead seems intent on canonizing her and it comes off as overly defensive.  BOOGIE NIGHTS did a terrific job of realistically conveying the world of porn while still making the characters a strangely-appealing, loving "family" of sorts that presented them flaws-and-all and didn't alienate the audience.  Here, it just feels forced and contrived, like the filmmakers are trying too hard to get us on Cherry's side.  Graham does a very good job despite the hackneyed character arc she's forced to play (falling for Cherry and jeopardizing her relationship with a real estate agent played by Diane Farr), almost coming off like a mature, middle-aged version of her Roller Girl from BOOGIE NIGHTS.  (R, 102 mins)