There's about enough material for a 20-minute short film in this tiresome sci-fi/horror suburban nightmare, but once it establishes what's going on, it just has nowhere else to go and nothing else to say. It wants to be something akin to a feature-length BLACK MIRROR episode with Kafka-esque undertones that incorporates a bit of the novel The Midwich Cuckoos and its classic film adaptation VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, but its messaging is ham-fisted, shallow, and juvenile, the kind of thing a writer would scrap after sleeping on it and looking at it again in the morning with fresh eyes. Schoolteacher Gemma (Imogen Poots) and her groundskeeper boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are house-hunting and discover a new gated community called Yonder. They're met by very odd but persuasive realtor Martin (Jonathan Aris), who has them follow him in their car through neighborhoods of endless streets with hundreds of identical green houses. "You're Home Now," says the ominous billboard at Yonder's entrance, and Martin seems hurt when Gemma and a snarky Tom aren't immediately taken with what he insists is their "forever home" with the address "9." Gemma and Tom check out the backyard with the same privacy fence and perfectly landscaped lawn as every other, and when they go back in the house, Martin is nowhere to be found and his car is gone. They drive around for hours looking for Yonder's exit (Tom annoys Gemma by arrogantly asking "Want me to drive?" as if that's why they can't find a way out), and keep ending up back at 9. When they walk around and find a house with the lights on, they enter through its back door to find themselves back at 9 just the way they left it. There's hundreds of vacant homes, no way out, no phone reception, and as the days goes on, they're left packages of flavorless, vacuum-sealed food and other necessities, until one day the care package contains something else: a baby, with the instructions "Raise the child and be released."
Cut to some time later, and the baby is now an eight-year-old boy (Senan Jennings), though it's only been a few months and he's growing at the several-years-to-one rate similar to a dog. The boy insists Gemma and Tom are his parents, he mimics their words, mannerisms, and actions, spies on them having sex, and speaks in a voice that's an electronically-enhanced mix of both Poots' and Eisenberg's voices (an unsettling effect the first time, not so much over the next hour). He emits a piercing scream when he doesn't get his way, spends hours watching what looks like a hypnotic screensaver on TV, and soon drives a wedge between the couple, with Tom even suggesting they kill him at one point. Gemma attempts to bond with the child, while Tom spends days and weeks digging a bottomless hole in the front yard. Directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Garret Shanley, VIVARIUM makes some facile points about the bland sameness and homogeneity of planned, gated communities, the day-in/day-out grind of life (Tom's symbolically digging his own grave! Get it?), doesn't seem to have a very positive view of raising children, and just tediously spins its wheels after a promising start. It's a half-baked concept in search of a story, and it's not immune to horror movie cliches (when Gemma screams "I want to go home," the glaring boy replies with the sinister proclamation "You are home!"). By the time it finally reaches its finish--and you'll see the ending coming long before Gemma and Tom do--it's just an exhausting, pointless waste of time that its capable stars can't salvage. (R, 99 mins)
THE TRAITOR (Italy/Brazil/Germany/France - 2019; US release 2020)
Part of the radical movement in Italian cinema in the 1960s, director Marco Bellocchio made his name with his 1965 feature debut FISTS IN THE POCKET. He was also the center of controversy two decades later with 1986's DEVIL IN THE FLESH, where a scene of Maruschka Detmers performing unsimulated fellatio on her male co-star earned the film an X rating in the US. Bellocchio is a filmmaker of sterling repute in Italy but he's never really made any effort to crack the global market. He's never tried to find Hollywood fame and, unlike politically-minded '60s and '70s contemporaries such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Gillo Pontecorvo to name a few, has never sought a well-known American or British star to secure funding or increase export value. At 80 years of age, he's as busy and efficiently prolific a director in Italian cinema as geriatric Hollywood workhorses like Clint Eastwood, Ridley Scott, and a pre-cancellation Woody Allen, though the last Bellocchio film to get much arthouse attention stateside was 2009's excellent VINCERE. Sony Pictures Classics picked up his latest, THE TRAITOR, and it chronicles the last 20 years in the life of Palermo Cosa Nostra figure-turned-informer Tommaso "Masino" Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino). THE TRAITOR opens in 1980 as Buscetta is living in exile in Rio (cue mandatory establishing aerial shot of Christ the Redeemer statue) with his third wife Maria Cristina (Maria Fernanda Candido), after escaping from a Turin prison. Wanted by Italian authorities, he still long-distance oversees his Palermo-based operation, which has been under siege by chief Corleonesi rival Salvatore "Toto" Riina (Nicola Cali). Riina orders a barrage of hits on Buscetta associates and even family members, and when Buscetta's two oldest sons from his first marriage go missing in Palermo, he's taken into custody by Rio police, who torture him and dangle Maria Cristina from a helicopter. After attempting suicide by poisoning himself, he's extradited to Italy, and offers to turn pentito, spilling everything to notorious anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi), who's in the process of making a huge case against hundreds of Cosa Nostra figures in what became the epic "Maxi Trial" in Sicily in 1986, which eventually put away over 350 defendants for upwards of 2500 years' worth of prison sentences.
Part of this story--the Falcone side--was told in the 1999 HBO movie EXCELLENT CADAVERS, with Chazz Palminteri as Falcone and F. Murray Abraham as Buscetta, but most of THE TRAITOR focuses on the numerous trials at which Buscetta testifies throughout the 1980s. He wasn't the only informer at the Maxi Trial, though less time is devoted to the other, Salvatore "Totuccio" Contorno, played here by dead ringer Luigi Lo Cascio. Buscetta's family is placed in witness protection in New Hampshire, where he eventually joins them until he's spooked by a Santa in an Italian restaurant singing an old Sicilian song, at which time they're immediately moved to Colorado, and eventually Florida. THE TRAITOR seems entirely too long at two and a half hours, though its length may play better for Italian audiences who are more familiar with Buscetta, Falcone, and the Maxi Trial. Falcone really only figures in the first half of THE TRAITOR, but his horrific 1992 assassination at the hands of the Sicilian Mafia in the Capaci highway bombing (which also took the lives of his wife and several agents assigned to protect them) is depicted here in an incongruous sequence that seems more fitting for a FAST & FURIOUS sequel, and it's strange seeing Bellocchio embrace CGI action technology this far into his career. Favino, who occasionally has supporting roles in Hollywood movies like ANGELS & DEMONS and WORLD WAR Z, and is probably best known to America audiences as Christopher Columbus in NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, turns in a strong performance as Buscetta, but while there's a compelling story here, THE TRAITOR is a film that expects you to be up to speed on its events going in. One might want to consult some Wikipedia entries on Buscetta and the Maxi Trial before watching, especially since the first 20 minutes are a dizzying blur of background info and character introductions with onscreen captions that only make things more confusing, since every other Sicilian Mafia guy seems to be named "Salvatore." (R, 150 mins)
Though it's anchored by two of the year's top performances, the noir-inspired THOROUGHBREDS never quite gels together like you hope, or at the very least, it's never quite as clever as it thinks it is. It's the directing and screenwriting debut of playwright Cory Finley, and though its talky script contains some insight and some often lacerating dialogue, the film never seems to shake the notion that it might've been a better fit for the stage. Lily (THE WITCH's Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (READY PLAYER ONE's Olivia Cooke) were once best friends in high school but have grown distant in the years since. Now in college, they awkwardly reconnect when Lily agrees to tutor Amanda, who's awaiting trial for animal cruelty in the killing of her horse. As they spend more time together, the dynamic of their relationship undergoes subtle shifts and Amanda, who's been "diagnosed with everything" in the DSM-V ("I don't have any feelings. Ever.") brings out the sociopath within Lily, who's grown intolerant of her boorish, asshole stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks) and doesn't need much prodding when Amanda suggests killing him. The murder plot involves securing the services of a fall guy in the form of Tim (the late Anton Yelchin in his last film; production wrapped just two weeks before his tragic death in June 2016), a none-too-bright local drug dealer and registered sex offender following a fling with a high school student ("I wasn't 25, I was 23!" he tries to explain). Amanda records Tim agreeing to the plan to kill Mark and the girls prepare their alibi, but since this is that kind of film, things don't quite go according to plan.
THOROUGHBREDS only made it to 500 or so screens during its spring 2018 release, but it was one of those films that managed to develop a cult following while it was still in theaters. Many people went for the easy description of "HEATHERS meets AMERICAN PSYCHO," which is pretty much meaningless as far as what the film is all about. It's more of a cerebral mood piece in the guise of a Hitchcockian thriller, but its strengths come not from suspense but from the outstanding performances by Cooke (also great in the recent THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM) and Taylor-Joy. They manage to create multi-dimensional characterizations even though Finley's insistence on withholding details often works against building any kind of flow or momentum. That works when the film plays more cinematically, but for a film that most often has the feel of a play, it too frequently comes off as forced and trying too hard, with characters referencing things they already know but having to stop and backtrack to shoehorn vital info in to get the audience caught up, leaving them to realize "Oh, Lily's father died?" or "Oh, she was expelled." Cooke and Taylor-Joy are terrific, and with limited screen time, Yelchin creates a memorably hapless sketchball with entrepreneurial pipe dreams that are clearly going nowhere fast, but THOROUGHBREDS is a film where the end result is a bit less than the sum of its parts. (R, 92 mins)
DELIRIUM (US - 2018)
Hot on the heels of STEPHANIE comes another long-shelved Blumhouse production, this one from director Dennis Iliadis and screenwriter Adam Alleca, the team behind the surprisingly not-terrible 2009 LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake. Shot in 2015 under the title HOME and quietly dumped on DVD two weeks after its gala VOD premiere, DELIRIUM is marginally better than the obviously unfinished and abandoned STEPHANIE, but that's not exactly a glowing recommendation. Released from a mental institution where he's been held since he was 12 years old, Tom Walker (Topher Grace) is placed under house arrest and left alone for 30 days at the family mansion where his disgraced politician father (Robin Thomas) has recently committed suicide. Tom is regularly badgered by his chain-smoking, flask-swilling, bitch-on-wheels parole officer Brody (Patricia Clarkson), but things get worse when he starts hearing noises and catching glimpses of his father's decaying corpse. He finds a tentative friend in grocery delivery driver Lynn (Genesis Rodriguez), but then his psychotic older brother Alex (Callan Mulvey) shows up and periodically vanishes as Tom is no longer sure what is real and what's in his imagination. 20 years earlier, 12-year-old Tom was rejected and humiliated by a girl and Alex talked him into getting back at her with a prank. Instead, Alex forced his little brother to watch as he beat the girl to a pulp and drowned her. Alex was sent to prison and Tom to a mental institution, and their shell-shocked mother vanished, leaving their domineering and impossible-to-please father behind. As the possibly paranormal hacktivity continues, Brody isn't buying Tom's stories of the house being haunted and doesn't believe that Alex has been visiting him because he was recently killed in prison fire.
Even on a rudimentary jump-scare level, DELIRIUM is a dull, unfocused mess. Iliadis drops the ball early on by never really getting the audience acclimated with the house, so when we hear noises and see Tom exploring, we really have no clue where he is in relation to the other areas or how he gets from one place to another. There's missed opportunities with the handling of Clarkson's character, who vacillates between sympathizing with Tom and openly expressing her desire to send him back to the institution for good. She even tries to seduce him at one point in what could've been an intriguingly perverse plot development, but then it's just dropped, which is a shame because Clarkson gives this thing its biggest jolts of life. The film spends a lot of time trying to convince you that Lily and Alex are figments of Tom's imagination, which is the only way those characters can possibly make any sense. Grace is cast radically against type as Topher Grace, and the film attempts to mine some easy humor from Tom being 20 years behind on pop culture and rocking out to The Presidents of the United States of America's "Lump" while wearing a Gin Blossoms concert tee and not knowing what Wikipedia is. DELIRIUM is bad, and while it's not quite engulfed in the dumpster fire flames of STEPHANIE, it's still easy to see why Universal sat on it for three years before a borderline covert release. Co-producer Leonardo DiCaprio took his name off of the movie, probably around the time that REVENANT Oscar buzz was picking up some heat. (R, 96 mins)
I KILL GIANTS (US/Belgium/China/UK - 2018)
Adapted from Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura's 2008 graphic novel and counting Chris Columbus among its boatload of producers, I KILL GIANTS is an earnest and sincere examination of a child coping with the grieving process that's frequently too heavy-handed for its own good. It's also a victim of bad timing. J.A. Bayona's A MONSTER CALLS explored very similar territory two years ago, and while the I Kill Giants graphic novel preceded both the book A Monster Calls and its eventual film version, the impact of I KILL GIANTS can't help but be diminished. In a small town on the coast of Long Island (but shot in Ireland and Belgium), young Barbara (Madison Wolfe of THE CONJURING 2) is living with her adult sister Karen (Imogen Poots) and teenage brother Dave (Art Parkinson). Karen is struggling to keep up with her own job and taking care of her siblings, and while Dave is engrossed in his video games, Barbara is acting out, seemingly spending her time with 20-sided die role-playing games but quietly prepping the town for an inevitable giant attack that she's certain she can ward off with traps and an all-powerful weapon she dubs "Covaleski," named after early 20th century Phillies pitcher Harry Covaleski. Derided as "the nerd queen" by Dave and relentlessly bullied at school by imposing mean girl Taylor (Rory Jackson), Barbara is frequently visited by "harbingers" warning of the pending attack. At the same time, she reluctantly befriends shy, lonely British transfer student Sophia (Sydney Wade) and gradually opens up to her and school psychologist Mrs. Molle (Zoe Saldana) about her plot to take on the giants.
Of course, the absence of a visible paternal figure in the house and Barbara's head-first dive into a complicated fantasy world is too big of a tip-off as to where I KILL GIANTS is ultimately headed, especially if you've seen A MONSTER CALLS. Making his feature debut, Danish director Anders Walter (an Oscar-winner for 2013's Best Live Action Short HELIUM), gets a marvelous performance out of Wolfe, who's so good that you'll wish her dedication was in service of a more consistently strong film. The ultimate reveal may result in more questions than answers--such as "How did this family situation never come up in conversation?" and "Is Dave even a member of this family?"--but it has some convincing visual effects and some genuinely heartfelt moments that may make it therapeutic for younger children coping with similar circumstances. Some strong parts but it never quite comes together as a whole. (Unrated, 106 mins)
Terrence Malick makes movies for no one other than Terrence Malick, and by this point, you're either onboard with his improvisational, self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness journeys up his own ass or you're not. So if you've been open to his increasingly prolific output in recent years or found him stretching well beyond the point of myopic self-parody, KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't going to do a thing to change your opinion. Similar to 2013's ponderous misfire TO THE WONDER--notable for being the first instance of some of his most devoted acolytes finally having the stones to admit he kinda lost them with this one--Malick continues to move away from the concept of narrative altogether in his presentation of Hollywood screenwriter Rick (Christian Bale, who worked with Malick on 2005's significantly better THE NEW WORLD), a man hopelessly lost in a suffocating malaise of L.A. ennui. No, KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't one of those bile-spewing insider takedowns of Hollywood but that might've actually been preferable. There's lots of scenes of Rick walking and driving around various obligatory recognizable locations (other than Bale, the most screen time goes to the 405 and some Death Valley wind turbines, and yes, at one point, he engages in some thousand-yard staring at the nearly bone-dry concrete of the L.A. River, whose appearance in a Los Angeles-set film is apparently required by law) and replaying the bad decisions and lost loves in his life. It's all accompanied by the expected ponderous, insufferable, pained-whisper narration by various characters that's become Malick's trademark (note: these make even less sense in context):
"Fragments...pieces of a man...where did I go wrong?"
"I want you. Hold you. Have you. Mine."
"All those years...living the life of someone I didn't even know."
"You gave me peace. You gave me what the world can't give. Mercy. Love. Joy. All else is cloud. Be with me. Always."
"We find me."
"Oh. Life."
"Begin."
Many familiar faces drift in and out throughout, some playing characters (Cate Blanchett as Rick's ex-wife; Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Isabel Lucas, Freida Pinto, and Teresa Palmer as various lovers; Wes Bentley as Rick's brother, who commited suicide; Brian Dennehy as their dad; barely visible bits by Nick Offerman, Jason Clarke, Clifton Collins Jr., Joel Kinnaman, Dane DeHaan, Shea Whigham, and Kevin Corrigan as Rick's buddies or colleagues) and others playing themselves in what amounts to an arthouse ZOOLANDER 2 (Ryan O'Neal, Fabio, Joe LoTruglio, Joe Manganiello, Thomas Lennon, and Antonio Banderas, who offers this bit of sage relationship advice to Rick: "It's like flavors...sometimes you want raspberry and after a while, you get tired and want strawberry," in a way that sounds like Antonio Banderas imitating Chris Kattan imitating Antonio Banderas on SNL). TO THE WONDER was terrible, but at least it captured the beauty in the bland sameness of middle America in a vividly Antonioni-esque, RED DESERT fashion. With KNIGHT OF CUPS, shot way back in 2012 and endlessly tinkered with by its dawdling maker, Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki don't even find a unique visual perspective of Los Angeles, mainly because we've seen all of these places in 50,000 other movies and Malick, currently American cinema's top auteur who doesn't seem to get out much, has no new perspective to offer. Sure, Malick injects some personal pain into the story--his own brother committed suicide--but does it matter when his writing has regressed to the level of an angsty teenager who's just had his heart broken for the first time? Do we need another movie about depressed and loathsome L.A. dickbags and their first-world problems? The Malick of old could bring a singularly original perspective to this tired and played-out concept, but all the Malick of today has to offer are sleepy, enigmatic voiceovers and more California cliches than a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Look, film snobs. Let's just cut the shit. Stop giving Malick a pass simply because of your fond memories of what he once was. (R, 118 mins)
45 YEARS
(UK/Germany - 2015)
A quiet and low-key character piece that subtly grows more tense and uncomfortable as it goes along, 45 YEARS is also a showcase for a pair of late-career triumphs for stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Rampling received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Kate Mercer, a retired schoolteacher in a small, rural British town. The film follows Kate and husband Geoff (Courtenay) over the week leading up to a swanky party with all of their friends--the Mercers never had children--celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary (a party was planned for their 40th, but Geoff's heart attack and bypass surgery led to its cancellation). On Monday of that week, Geoff receives a letter from Germany informing him that the still-preserved body of Katya, his German girlfriend who died over 50 years ago, was found in a melting glacier where she fell into a crevasse while they were mountain climbing in Switzerland. Memories from a half-century ago come back to haunt Geoff, and while Kate is initially supportive of the wave of grief overcoming her husband, she grows increasingly concerned over the week as long-buried details of his relationship with Katya come to the surface. He was contacted because the initial report listed him as her next-of-kin, which leads Kate to think Geoff and Katya were married. He insists they weren't, only that they pretended to be since it was a much more conservative era. After a failed attempt at sex due to Geoff's mind being elsewhere, she catches him rummaging around in the attic in the middle of the night, looking for pictures of Katya. Geoff starts smoking again, tries to back out of a lunch with some old work buddies, and even their friends remark that he seems distant, agitated, and preoccupied. He starts reading up on global warming and Kate finds out he's been talking to a travel agent about booking a trip to Switzerland. While Geoff is out one afternoon, Kate goes through his old photos and notebooks in some boxes stashed away in the attic and finds something that makes her question everything about their 45-year marriage.
Based on David Constantine's short story "In Another Country" and written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who cut his teeth working on the editing team of several Ridley Scott films (GLADIATOR, BLACK HAWK DOWN, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN), 45 YEARS is a fascinating, unsettling, and often deeply moving meditation on marriage, trust, love, and the disturbing realization that no matter how long or how well you've known someone, you'll never know everything about them. Kate was aware of Katya's death when she met Geoff, but it never occurred to her just how much of a presence the memory of Katya was in her marriage to Geoff, or the ways in which Katya has been the driving force in many of Geoff's--and by association, Kate's--decisions over the years. Haigh doesn't ask the audience to pick sides--indeed, there are times when Kate seems insensitive to Geoff's grief, but Geoff doesn't make it easy, yammering on about "my Katya" in ways that sometimes seem like an inadvertent slap in Kate's face. There's no doubt that Geoff loves Kate dearly, but it's just as clear that Katya has always been on his mind. In their best roles in years (probably decades for Courtenay, who's been nominated for two Oscars and was big in the mid '60s but seemed to consciously avoid the commercial pursuits of his British "angry young man" contemporaries like Richard Burton, Albert Finney, and Peter O'Toole), the two living legend stars are just superb, their body language and mannerisms expertly conveying decades of lived-in familiarity and shorthand communication, culminating a long, static shot near the end that up-ends all of that in a devastating portrait of ambiguity and uncertainty. (R, 95 mins)
POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (US - 2016) Directed by Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Written by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Cast: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, Sarah Silverman, Tim Meadows, Maya Rudolph, Imogen Poots, Joan Cusack, Chris Redd, Edgar Blackmon, James Buckley, Justin Timberlake, Emma Stone, Will Arnett, Chelsea Peretti, Mike Birbiglia, Eric Andre, Bill Hader, Kevin Nealon, Paul Scheer, Derek Mears, Will Forte, Weird Al Yankovic. (R, 87 mins) The music mockumentary is best represented by the 1984 classic THIS IS SPINAL TAP, though even Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner have cited the 1978 TV special THE RUTLES: ALL YOU NEED IS CASH as its primary influence. The tradition continued in later Guest projects like A MIGHTY WIND and in the early '90s rap mockumentaries CB4 and FEAR OF A BLACK HAT. The latest project from the Lonely Island comedy team of former SNL star Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer, the brains behind numerous viral SNL Digital Shorts like "Jizz in My Pants" and "Dick in a Box," takes aim at the current pop music scene and does a mostly nice job of completely roasting it. Inspired mostly by Justin Bieber but with a generous helping of Kanye West included, Connor Friel, aka Connor4Real (Samberg) is a global pop culture phenomenon, a pop star and ubiquitous social media and tabloid presenc, about to drop his second album, Connquest, the long-awaited follow-up to his record-shattering solo debut Thriller, Also. It's the most anticipated album of the decade from the one-time member of the chart-topping rap trio The Style Boyz, whose biggest hit "The Donkey Roll" made them superstars before disbanding at the end of the boy band heyday when Connor's increased popularity started to keep bandmates Owen, aka Kid Contact (Taccone), and Lawrence, aka Kid Brain (Schaffer) relegated to the background. When a guest verse on "Turn up the Beef," a hit single from a Katy Perry-like diva (Emma Stone) helped launch Connor4Real's solo career, Kid Contact stayed with him as his DJ while Kid Brain released a flop solo single and moved to Colorado to live a quiet, anonymous life as a farmer and woodcarver.
Connquest tanks upon its release, which sends Connor4Real's manager Harry (Tim Meadows) and publicist Paula (Sarah Silverman) into panic mode, securing a promotional partnership with appliance behemoth Aquaspin to have Connor4Real's music constantly blaring from all of their wi-fi-compatible products (remember that U2 debacle?). The backlash is so strong that concert attendance dwindles (thanks in no part to insensitive songs like "Ethpania," the inspiration for which came from Connor noticing that "in Spain, people's S's sound like T.H.'s," and "Equal Rights," a pro-LGBT duet with Pink where all of Connor4Real's lyrics aggressively stress that he's not gay), forcing Harry to bring up-and-coming Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd) onboard as an opening act. Hunter's presence increases the ticket sales, but Connor4Real is on a downward spiral: his televised-live-on-E! engagement to movie star Ashley Wednesday (Imogen Poots) is marred by wolves mauling guest singer Seal; there's a huge fallout over leaked video from the European tour where he takes a dump in the toilet in the Anne Frank house; a wardrobe malfunction during a concert goes viral when it appears he has no penis; someone's cell phone captures him drunk, starting a fight and getting his ass kicked by Martin Sheen in a sports bar; and he's constantly being overshadowed by the increasing popularity of Hunter the Hungry, whose sets start running long and Connor4Real has to face the realization that even though he's the headliner, nobody's there to see him. All the while, Kid Contact starts feeling more and more marginalized and resorts to PARENT TRAP machinations to encourage a Style Boyz reunion.
A balanced combination of spoof, satire, oddball humor (Bill Hader as a roadie who's a FLATLINERS superfan) and grossout raunch (Connor4Real signing one frantic male fan's dick from the back of his limo after the guy drapes his balls over the half-rolled-down window), POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING does an admirable job of shredding vacuous pop culture figures, annoying trends (Connor4Real goes on tour with an Adam Levine hologram), blasting the fickleness of a fan base (Connor4Real's "Connfidants"), torching industry greed (Paula: "I don't personally like Connor's music, but it makes so many people so much money!"), and taking some merciless shots at the sycophantic media. The periodic cutaways to the TMZ-like bull sessions of the cackling staff at CMZ, who gleefully revel in every Connor4Real misfortune, are absolutely blistering, with Will Arnett doing an absurd and vicious takedown of Harvey Levin, complete with large straws sticking out of an increasingly ridiculous number of cups, mugs, and pitchers as he asks for the most mundane items of "news" ("Does anyone have a pic of James Franco leaving a Denny's?"). As it becomes obvious that the Style Boyz will set aside their differences and triumphantly reunite, POPSTAR loses its caustic edge and gets a lot nicer. But in the first half, where Samberg boldly plays all of Connor4Real's clueless arrogance and megastar entitlement to the hilt--whether he's enjoying the constant reassurance of his entourage of paid enablers and yes-men or callously ignoring the Kubrick-like levels of care that go into the meticulous meal preparations of his devoted and long-suffering personal chef Tyrus Quash (Justin Timberlake)--it has a scathing mean streak and isn't afraid to take some hard-hitting jabs at the artists, the fans, the vapidity of Twitter, and the ubiquity of idiotic catchphrases ("Doink-de-doink!"). Like the protagonists of THIS IS SPINAL TAP, the Style Boyz might be clueless dolts but they're good guys deep down and it's a big-studio summer comedy, so one can't expect something too subversive. It's not about wanting to have bad things happen to Connor4Real, though a further exploration of the public's love of schadenfreude could've provided some more substance. This is bombing hard in theaters, as did the team's HOT ROD (directed by Schaffer and starring Samberg and Taccone, but written by Pam Brady) and Taccone-directed MACGRUBER, but both of those found cult followings later on Netflix. The same seems likely for the often very funny POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING.
GREEN ROOM (US - 2016) Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Macon Blair, Eric Edelstein, Mark Webber, Kai Lennox, Brent Werzner, David W. Thompson, Jake Love, Kyle Love, Samuel Summer. (R, 95 mins) Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier established himself as filmmaker to watch after 2014's gritty revenge noir BLUE RUIN and his latest film, GREEN ROOM, finds him putting his characters in even more dangerous territory with grim and horrifying results. The Ain't Rights--bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin), guitarist Sam (Alia Shawkat), frontman Tiger (Callum Turner) and drummer Reece (Joe Cole)--are a small-time, Richmond-based punk band touring the Pacific Northwest in a beat-up van and getting from gig to gig by siphoning gas. When their next show is abruptly cancelled and they're out of money, local zine writer and Ain't Rights superfan Tad (David W. Thompson) hooks them up with a show in the rural outskirts of Portland where his cousin Daniel (Mark Webber) is a bouncer. He warns them that there's a catch: the gig's at the clubhouse of a neo-Nazi stronghold owned by a group of white supremacists who don't take to The Ain't Rights kicking off their show with a cover of Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off." The band play their set and get paid and are packing up their gear to make way for the death metal house band Cowcatcher when Pat goes back to the dressing room to get Sam's phone and finds members of Cowcatcher and bouncer Werm (Brent Werzner) standing over a dead girl with a knife planted in her skull. Bouncer Gabe (Macon Blair, the star of BLUE RUIN) tries to contain the situation after Pat calls 911 to report a stabbing and has the phone taken from him as the rest of the bouncers refuse to let them go, with Gabe politely explaining "We're not keeping you...you're just staying." Gabe and club manager Clark (Kai Lennox) try to contain the situation by having two new recruits stage a stabbing outside in order to get rid of the cops, but when the band gets the edge on bouncer Big Justin (Eric Edelstein), grabbing his gun and barricading themselves in the room, Gabe has no choice but to call owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart), who takes charge and immediately decides the band will have to be eliminated and it has to look like an accident.
One of the more memorable things about BLUE RUIN was the way Blair's hapless, homeless hero tried to be a tough guy but had no idea how to handle any kind of weapon. That's a similar motif that pops up here as the dwindling number of Ain't Rights, accompanied by the dead girl's friend Amber (Imogen Poots), aren't really adept at handling guns and end up resorting to other means at their disposal, like box cutters, machetes, fire extinguishers, mic stands, etc, as Darcy keeps sending his guys into the club to deal with them. It's a survival/siege movie in the classic John Carpenter style (there is a synthy score, but it's very subtle, a surprise given the Carpenter score homages so prevalent in genre fare these days), and Saulnier does a great job of capturing that sense of bleak, claustrophobic hopelessness as the situation gets worse by the minute in one of the scariest clubs you'll see in any movie. Early attempts to run out of the club fail miserably as Darcy has guys waiting behind the door of every room they pass, and even breaking through the floor to Darcy's basement storage area for his cash and the neo-Nazis' heroin business fails to lead them to a way out. The Ain't Rights have no choice but to fight their way out and the results are gruesome and hard to watch. Even the most seasoned gorehound will have a tough time withstanding what happens to Pat's left hand, and when they're forced to work with what's available, a box cutter will certainly disembowel someone or slit a throat. But it's tough-going, and Saulnier assaults you with it so quickly that you don't have a chance to look away.
The Ain't Rights are generally OK, though other than Yelchin, they don't really have much to do but be frantic and try to survive. Outsider Amber is the toughest of the bunch--and she's not with the neo-Nazis but has a specific reason for being there--but even before she's injured, Poots' performance is overly affected and off-putting, almost like she's speaking at half-speed for no reason. She's the major misstep in GREEN ROOM, as Amber is a character who's a fierce, independent badass but Poots is playing her like a tranquilized Aubrey Plaza. The real revelation here is Patrick Stewart like you've never seen him before. Stewart is all calm, soft-spoken menace as the malevolent Darcy, doing whatever he can to keep the cops away from a situation that's spiraling out of control thanks to the resourceful nature of prey he's drastically underestimated ("They're smarter than you!" he shouts at Gabe in his one moment of losing his cool). Stewart is such a beloved, iconic figure that it's hard to get by him playing such a despicable character who says some things it's hard to imagine Patrick Stewart saying, but he makes it work by not overdoing it. Darcy isn't a raving maniac. In fact, he seems oddly detached at times, almost like he just assumes the situation will work itself out, even as more and more of his guys go inside to kill the Ain't Rights but don't come back out. Stewart underplays Darcy, a charismatic leader who can blend into society and be a nice guy on the surface, which makes his being a cold-blooded killer, heroin trafficker, and unapologetic racist and anti-Semite all the more chilling. Like many close-quartered, powderkeg nerve-shredders of this sort, GREEN ROOM works perfectly (Poots' terrible performance aside) until it goes outside, leaving the compound for a conclusion that seems abrupt and a bit unsatisfying given the buildup. Still, for 90% of its duration, it's a bold, brutal, stone cold piece of work, sickeningly violent in all its extreme, hard-R glory and unrelentingly intense in its execution.
