THE GRUDGE (US - 2020) Written and directed by Nicolas Pesce. Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, John Cho, Jacki Weaver, Lin Shaye, Betty Gilpin, Frankie Faison, William Sadler, Tara Westwood, Dave Brown, John Hansen, Zoe Fish, Junko Bailey. (R, 94 mins) Going back over the last decade and change in the grand tradition of the US remake of ONE MISSED CALL, THE DEVIL INSIDE, DEVIL'S DUE, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, THE FOREST, and THE BYE BYE MAN, THE GRUDGE continues Hollywood's seemingly annual ritual of kicking off the new year by bilking genre fans out of some multiplex gift cards with a horror movie that's forgettable at best and a contemptible piece of shit at worst. A reboot of the US franchise that was itself based on a Japanese franchise (got that?), THE GRUDGE 2020's biggest problem is its utter pointlessness. It's a step up to the major studio big leagues for writer/director Nicolas Pesce, who established some indie horror cred with 2016's THE EYES OF MY MOTHER and 2019's PIERCING. I'm not saying Pesce is an auteur, and I haven't seen PIERCING, but THE EYES OF MY MOTHER, while flawed, had some genuinely unsettling elements that showed Pesce was a promising new talent in the horror genre. But the kind of style and potential that got him the GRUDGE job in the first place is rendered moot when it's all just loud and predictable jolts and a tired story that could've been directed by anyone. GRUDGE 2020 is the kind of bland, by-the-numbers, one-note jump-scare machine that doesn't really even require a talented filmmaker as much as it needs a competent manager, someone handed a checklist and able to work through it without rocking the boat and making sure that all the same shit you've seen in dozens of other horror movies over the last several years is dutifully repeated--and instantly forgotten--yet again.
Counting Sam Raimi among its dozen or so producers, GRUDGE 2020 employs the non-linear structure used by director Takashi Shimizu in the 2004 GRUDGE and its Japanese antecedents in the original JU-ON series which, along with the likes of Hideo Nakata's RINGU films and Takashi Miike's original ONE MISSED CALL, helped establish the iconic "J-Horror" movement of the early 2000s. Set from 2004 to 2006, GRUDGE 2020 is both a reboot and an offshoot, opening in 2004 with American nurse Fiona Landers (Tara Westwood) leaving the Japanese house seen in the previous GRUDGEs, where someone was once killed in a fit of uncontrolled rage and their spirit cannot rest, forever haunting those who move into the cursed residence. But the Grudge (Junko Bailey in a brief appearance as the franchise's crawling, croaking spectre, thus sparing Japanese actress and JU-ON and GRUDGE vet Takako Fuji the indignity of embarking on the "Will Play Kayako for Food" phase of her career) also attaches itself to Fiona, following her to her home in the fictional Pennsylvania suburb of Cross River, where she's ultimately driven to murder her husband Sam (Dave Brown) and young daughter Melinda (Zoe Fish). Cut to 2006, as recently-widowed Detective Muldoon (MANDY's Andrea Riseborough, looking ready to crush her audition for the lead in THE CARRIE SNODGRESS STORY) has just transferred to quiet Cross River with her young son Burke (John Hanson), hoping for a change of scenery after losing her husband to cancer three months earlier. She's paired with weary, chain-smoking Detective Goodman (Demian Bichir) and they immediately catch a case where the charred remains of a woman are found in a car in an isolated stretch of woods on the outskirts of town. The dead woman is Lorna Moody (Jacki Weaver), an assisted suicide counselor who had been staying at 44 Rayburn Dr., the home of the Mathesons--William (Frankie Faison) and Faith (Lin Shaye, whose presence in these post-Blumhouse-era horror movies appears to be required by law)--to evaluate the terminally ill Faith's decision to end her life. Goodman wants nothing more to do with the case after hearing the address, so Muldoon goes there alone and finds a delirious Faith with her fingers hacked off and the rotting corpse of William sitting in the living room chair.
Then it cuts back to 2005, when married realtors Peter (John Cho) and Nina Spencer (Betty Gilpin) have the Landers house--at 44 Rayburn Dr--on the market, soon to be purchased by the Mathesons. In all the instances--Peter spending time at the house, Muldoon looking into the death of Lorna Moody, and Goodman's old partner Wilson (William Sadler) investigating the Landers killings in 2004 and ending up in a mental institution after blowing his face off in a failed suicide attempt (and allowing Sadler to wear what appears to be leftover remnants of Gary Oldman's Mason Verger prosthetics from HANNIBAL)--the "grudge" attaches itself to anyone who walks in the house, resulting in recurring instances of flickering lights, garbled phone calls, and out-of-nowhere appearances by little Melinda, who essentially serves as the new creepy, croaking, grudge ghost. Pesce rewrote an earlier draft penned by Jeff Buhler, who scripted last year's underrated THE PRODIGY but is also responsible for writing the recent dismal remakes of PET SEMATARY and JACOB'S LADDER. I'm willing to bet that Buhler is a big fan of Mario Bava's SHOCK, aka BEYOND THE DOOR 2, whose famous hallway jump scare was recreated in THE PRODIGY by director Nicholas McCarthy and is trotted out again here, to much lesser effect thanks to Pesce's bungled staging of it.
It's not that THE GRUDGE 2020 is an overtly terrible movie, though it does start to get pretty dumb near the end when Muldoon inexplicably takes her son--who Pesce leaves offscreen for so long at one point that you might start wondering if he's a Shyamalanian figment of her imagination--with her to 44 Rayburn Dr in the middle of the night and tells him "I want you to be safe!" and to...wait in the car, as if he's really going to listen to her (also, why is everyone driving beater cars from the late '70s and early '80s in a film that's explicitly set from 2004-2006? I don't know what small-town detectives make, but they should be able to get something newer than a primer-colored 1981 Caprice Classic). It's not an offensively bad movie, it's just an unbelievably routine one that does nothing to justify its existence or, at the very least, explain why it's opening on 2400 screens instead of premiering at your nearest Redbox. It not only squanders an overqualified cast (Bichir and Weaver have three Oscar nominations between them), but it takes the time to set up new metaphorical implications for the Grudge and doesn't even bother to explore them. With Muldoon's late husband and the cancer-stricken Faith, along with mention that Goodman's mother recently succumbed to cancer and pregnant Nina learning that her unborn child has the brain disorder ALD, THE GRUDGE 2020 seems poised to make some statement about the effect that terminal illnesses and grief have on caregivers and survivors, but it never does anything to work those ideas into the Grudge mythos, instead falling back on more ominous burps and croaks and jump scares you'll see coming a mile away. So why even bring them up and use them to develop the characters if nothing's going to be done with them? Maybe there was something more here and the studio whittled it down. Who knows? There is one telling moment that could almost be interpreted as a cry for help from Pesce. Faison's William gives a long speech about how all we really have is hope and love and we gotta hold on and be there for each other every day as the sentimental music cue swells and Pesce just abruptly cuts it off and goes to a shot of Riseborough in another location, and it's accompanied by the faint sound of a needle dragging across vinyl. It's a jarring cut that doesn't really have any artistic purpose unless you consider it an in-film auto-critique from Pesce, possibly incredulous that things have gotten so far off course that veteran character actor Frankie Faison is being forced to embody the archaic "Magical Negro" trope in the first goddamn movie of 2020.
BIRD BOX (US - 2018) Directed by Susanne Bier. Written by Eric Heisserer. Cast: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, Jacki Weaver, Rosa Salazar, Daniele Macdonald, Lil Rel Howery, Tom Hollander, Colson Baker, BD Wong, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Vivien Lyra Blair, Julian Edwards, Parminder Nagra, Rebecca Pidgeon, Amy Gumenick, Taylor Handley, David Dastmalchian, Happy Anderson. (R, 124 mins) Based on a 2014 novel by Josh Malerman, the frontman for Detroit indie rockers The High Strung, the Netflix Original film BIRD BOX has an intriguing concept that was probably conveyed more effectively on the page than on the screen, where its ideas come off as tired riffs on the overly familiar. Comparisons to this year's earlier A QUIET PLACE are inevitable, and there's also some of PONTYPOOL and the apocalyptic horror feel of THE WALKING DEAD, but it mostly plays like a less preachy retread of M. Night Shyamalan's little-loved THE HAPPENING, which seems an unlikely choice for any film to emulate, especially a decade later and with no apparent sense of revisionist affection on the horizon. Jumping back and forth between the present day and five years earlier, BIRD BOX takes time to piece its story together but you'll ahead of the game all the way, predicting all of its punches and reveals long before they're apparent to its characters. It opens with Malorie (Sandra Bullock, who also produced) coldly and methodically blindfolding two children, named "Boy" (Julian Edwards) and "Girl" (Vivien Lyra Blair), and loading them, some supplies, and three birds in a box into a small boat for an arduous journey along a dangerous river. She dons a blindfold herself and warns them to not speak or remove the blindfolds no matter what they hear.
Cut to five years ago, as a strange mass suicide phenomenon stemming from Russia and Eastern Europe makes its way to the US: people stopping dead in their tracks, their eyes changing color, and impulsively killing themselves by the quickest means at their disposal, spurred on by voices that only they can hear, often those of friends and family encouraging their actions. The force's presence is indicated by increased wind gusts and sensed by birds. Malorie, a single, misanthropic artist who's pregnant and largely in denial about it, is in an SUV with her sister Shannon (Sarah Paulson) when the "virus" breaks out. Shannon is behind the wheel and overtaken by the force, loses control, gets out and, as if under some kind of mind control, wanders directly into the path of a speeding truck. In the ensuing panic and chaos, a woman (Rebecca Pidgeon) walks out of a house to rescue Malorie but is herself "taken over," answering to her unseen mother and self-immolating by getting into a car already engulfed in flames. Malorie is taken into the house, whose kind-hearted owner Greg (BD Wong) has turned into a shelter for his neighbors and uninfected passersby, among them the woman's abrasive husband Douglas (John Malkovich), who's already no fan of Malorie since his wife died trying to rescue her, ex-military Tom (Trevante Rhodes), Cheryl (Jacki Weaver), Charlie (Lil Rel Howery), Lucy (Rosa Salazar), and Felix (Colson Baker, better known as rapper Machine Gun Kelly).
BIRD BOX continues to cut back and forth between the post-outbreak of five years earlier and Malorie, Boy, and Girl's journey on the river, presumably to some known area of safety while pre-spoiling who doesn't make it. Screenwriter Eric Heisserer (ARRIVAL) and Danish director Susanne Bier, making her first film since the long-shelved and barely-released 2015 Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Lawrence bomb SERENA, do manage to convey a nerve-wracking intensity in the early outbreak scenes and in the bits where the survivors go out for food and supplies blindfolded, forced to feel their way around and at the mercy of voices constantly badgering them to "look." But the more the film goes on, the more predictable and silly it becomes. They let another pregnant woman, Olympia (Danielle Macdonald), in the house against Douglas' wishes, but when odd, twitchy Gary (Tom Hollander) shows up, it should be immediately apparent that he's bad news, which only Douglas--BIRD BOX's de facto Harry Cooper--seems to pick up on. Things really start collapsing around the time Malorie and Olympia go into labor at the same time. When the backstory is told and the third act goes forward with the river journey, the film turns into an eye-rolling metaphor for...I don't know...motherhood, I guess? Malorie is distant, unlikable, and often cruel to Boy and Girl, so much so that they're five years old and don't even have names. It's eye-rollingly ludicrous when she has her Come to Jesus moment as "it" surrounds them but is held at bay when Malorie defiantly declares "Leave my children alone!" That's even before a Shyamalanian reveal and the absurd reappearance of a minor character who only seems to exist to give a nod of affirmation that, yes, Malorie is indeed a good mother. BIRD BOX has an effective score by always-reliable team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (the closing credits theme really gets its John Carpenter groove on), and it benefits from an ensemble of fine actors--and Machine Gun Kelly--doing what they do. Bullock and Paulson display a terrific and very natural sibling chemistry until Paulson's early and abrupt exit, Howery is essentially playing the same comic relief exposition guy he perfected in GET OUT, and Malkovich is cast radically against type as "John Malkovich." But it doesn't offer much in the way of originality, and seems specifically designed to be a horror movie for people who don't watch horror movies and therefore won't recognize just how many ideas it's recycling.
WIDOWS (US/UK - 2018) Directed by Steve McQueen. Written by Gillian Flynn and Steve McQueen. Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Liam Neeson, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Garret Dillahunt, Lukas Haas, Jon Bernthal, Kevin J. O'Connor, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Molly Kunz, Matt Walsh, Coburn Goss, Michael J. Harney, Adepero Oduye, James Vincent Meredith, Josiah Sheffie, Tonray Ho. (R, 129 mins) Following 2008's HUNGER, 2011's SHAME, and 2013's 12 YEARS A SLAVE, British filmmaker/video artist Steve McQueen's winning streak continues with the heist thriller WIDOWS. Though it's McQueen's most commercially accessible work yet, it's got more going on beneath the surface, mixing contemporary concerns into a story with a decidedly '70s aesthetic, one that manages to be a stylish, Michael Mann-inspired crime saga, an introspective, Robert Altman-esque character piece, as well as a chronicle of big-city political corruption that feels like vintage Sidney Lumet. Based on a British TV series created by Lydia LaPlante that ran in 1983 and 1985, WIDOWS has been both streamlined and expanded for its American incarnation by McQueen and co-writer Gillian Flynn, the latter quick to point out in interviews that the one whopper of a mid-film plot development is all LaPlante, despite it having Flynn's GONE GIRL style and execution written all over it.
McQueen opens WIDOWS with an initially jarring series of smash-cut snippets that quickly settle into a masterfully economic display of concise exposition. Chicago career criminal Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) lives a life of luxury in a penthouse apartment with his wife Veronica (Viola Davis), a former rep for the Chicago teacher's union. Veronica is as aware of Harry's "business" as she needs to be and seems to feign blissful ignorance while enjoying its many financial benefits. That comes to a screeching halt when Harry and his crew--Florek (Jon Bernthal), Carlos (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and Jimmy (Coburn Goss)--are killed in an explosive shootout with police following a high-speed chase after their latest score. Immediately following the funeral, Veronica is visited at home by Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), a well-known south-side crime kingpin who was robbed of $2 million by Harry's crew. That money burned up with Harry and the others and he gives Veronica a month to get it back, threatening to send his ruthless, attack-dog younger brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya) after her if she fails to pay up.
It's a sign that Jamal isn't quite ready to let go of his past life, even as he's trying to go legit at the same time by running a high-profile campaign for alderman of the city's economically-depressed and predominantly African-American 18th Ward. It's a spot that's been held for three generations by the corrupt Mulligan political dynasty, currently being handed off by elderly and ailing Tom Mulligan (Robert Duvall) to his son Jack (Colin Farrell), the scion who's inheriting a storied legacy that he doesn't really want. With her back against the wall, Veronica reaches out to the widows of Harry's partners--Carlos' wife Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), violent meathead Florek's battered wife Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), and Harry's wife Amanda (Carrie Coon)--to carry out a haphazardly-sketched heist from a notebook of Harry's, one that will net them $5 million--$2 million to repay Jamal and $3 million to split among themselves. Amanda, preoccupied with a four-month-old infant, declines to take part, and when Jatemme kills Harry's loyal driver Bash (Garret Dillahunt) to send a message to Veronica that the clock is ticking, they need a driver. They find one in hairdresser Belle (Cynthia Erivo, so memorable in the recent BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE), a casual acquaintance of Linda's who's been babysitting her kids while Linda meets with Veronica and Alice to plan the heist.
All of these characters cross paths in unexpected ways, and WIDOWS manages to pack quite a bit into its brisk and relentlessly-paced 129 minutes. There are times where it feels like things are too simplified or convenient, most notably when Alice's gold-digging mom (Jacki Weaver) convinces her to become a de facto escort for some easy money, and her first "date" is David (Lukas Haas), who happens to be a big-time architect who spots a blueprint of the heist target on her bedside table and instantly recognizes it as a panic room and eventually helps identify its location. There's also Alice pretending to be a Russian mail-order bride at a gun show and effortlessly convincing a red-state mom to buy her three Glocks. And of course, Veronica's dog, an adorable little Westie that accompanies her everywhere, seemingly holding on to it in desperation as the last connection to a family that's been taken from her (she and Harry had a teenage son, whose death ten years earlier will prove to have a profound effect on the events that transpire), but is really there as a plot device that's instrumental in setting up that mid-film twist.
From the standpoint of commercial, mainstream storytelling, McQueen's handling of these sorts of things could use a little more polish, but WIDOWS makes up for its occasional narrative clumsiness with a stacked ensemble of award-worthy performances, the standouts being the always-galvanizing Davis, a terrifying Kaluuya, who makes Jatemme one of 2018's great bad guys, and Debicki, whose character gets the most surprising arc, revealing her unexpected smarts and ambition as the one who most transcends her lot in life as an abused doormat for her asshole husband and narcissistic mother. The political gamesmanship between Farrell's Mulligan and Henry's Jamal almost has enough going on that it could warrant its own movie, but it serves its purpose as part of a greater mosaic that McQueen is constructing, both thematically and artistically. There are several arresting visual touches ranging from the use of reflections in windows and mirrors (the final scene in the coffee shop!) to one long, uninterrupted take involving the younger Mulligan's limo that's a total knockout telling you all you need to know about his character. In the end, despite some occasional hiccups that might seem smoother on repeat viewings, WIDOWS is a terrific and compelling piece of grown-up filmmaking--the kind that can credibly and successfully coexist in the multiplex and the art-house--the likes of which we don't see enough of these days.
THE DISASTER ARTIST (US - 2017) Directed by James Franco. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Cast: Dave Franco, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Ari Graynor, Alison Brie, Josh Hutcherson, Jacki Weaver, Zac Efron, Megan Mullally, Sharon Stone, Melanie Griffith, Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas, Hannibal Buress, June Diane Raphael, Andrew Santino, Nathan Fielder, Charlyne Yi, Bob Odenkirk, Jerrod Carmichael, Zoey Deutch, Randall Park, Casey Wilson. (R, 104 mins) Since making his mark nearly 20 years ago on the ignored-and-now-iconic cult TV series FREAKS AND GEEKS, James Franco has had one of the strangest careers of any mainstream Hollywood actor. He's one of the industry's most tireless workaholics, with some extremely unpredictable choices that often border on some kind of obscure performance art. He appears in box-office blockbusters (Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN trilogy, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES), hit comedies (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, THIS IS THE END), played the bad guy in a Jason Statham movie (HOMEFRONT), stars in acclaimed indies (SPRING BREAKERS), barely-released European art films (Wim Wenders' EVERY THING WILL BE FINE, Werner Herzog's QUEEN OF THE DESERT), Lifetime movies (the remake of MOTHER, MAY I SLEEP WITH DANGER?), has an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (127 HOURS), did a three-year recurring stint on GENERAL HOSPITAL, frequently turns up in uncredited cameos (THE HOLIDAY, the remake of THE WICKER MAN, NIGHTS IN RODANTHE, THE GREEN HORNET, ALIEN: COVENANT), has published several collections of poetry and short stories, created a multimedia presentation based on the late '70s/early '80s sitcom THREE'S COMPANY, starred in the TV series 11.22.63 and THE DEUCE, earned a degree in Creative Writing in the mid '00s while maintaining his film and TV work schedule, and more recently, taught film courses at UCLA. For the last several years, he's been in an average of ten movies a year, and has somehow found the time to direct over 20 feature films, most getting very limited exposure and some still unreleased, ranging from the experimental CRUISING riff INTERIOR LEATHER BAR to biopics (he directed and starred as poet Hart Crane in THE BROKEN TOWER) to gothic horror (THE INSTITUTE), and most notably, an ongoing series of classic American literature adaptations (William Faulkner's THE SOUND AND THE FURY and AS I LAY DYING, Cormac McCarthy's CHILD OF GOD, and John Steinbeck's IN DUBIOUS BATTLE). Franco's oeuvre as a director has been commonly described as self-indulgent at best and unwatchable at worst, but he remains undeterred: he's got five directing efforts scheduled for release in 2018.
With that in mind, it's easy to see why Franco the filmmaker might feel some sense of kinship with Tommy Wiseau, the auteur behind 2003's THE ROOM, the midnight cult movie sensation that's become one of the most beloved bad movies of all time. Based on the 2013 memoir by ROOM co-star Greg Sestero, THE DISASTER ARTIST chronicles the friendship between Wiseau (Franco) and Sestero (James' younger brother Dave Franco) that began in a San Francisco acting class in 1998. 19-year-old Greg lives with his mom (Megan Mullally) and dreams of being an actor, but he's too shy and lacking in confidence in front of an audience. Enter Tommy, a long-haired, enigmatic mystery man of unknown origin and indeterminate age who gives the class an overwrought, climbing-the-walls, writhing-on-the-floor, pelvic-thrusting version of the "Stella!" bit from A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Greg approaches Tommy about practicing some scenes together, and though he's a terrible actor, Tommy's fearlessness inspires Greg and almost immediately, the pair move to Los Angeles to pursue their acting dreams. They live in Tommy's L.A. apartment--a self-described "pied-a-terre" that he rarely uses. Tommy also drives a Mercedes and seems to be independently wealthy, but refuses to discuss his past, his money, or his age. Greg soon lands an agent and gets a few small gigs and a girlfriend (Alison Brie, Dave Franco's offscreen wife), while Tommy, with his strange appearance and even stranger accent, goes nowhere and grows increasingly jealous of Greg's relative "success." With both of their careers seemingly stalled before they even begin, Tommy considers giving up and going back to San Francisco but when Greg half-jokingly suggests they make their own movie, Tommy takes him seriously.
Tommy spends nearly three years writing THE ROOM, a drama with obviously semi-autobiographical plot elements, including a woman who broke his heart by cheating on him with his best friend. Tommy casts himself in the lead role of Johnny and Greg as his best friend Mark. Tommy also intends to direct the film, despite having no filmmaking experience. This is evident when he chooses to go the significantly more expensive route of buying the camera and sound equipment instead of renting, and when asked if he's shooting in 35mm or digital, he impulsively blurts out "both," which requires two different crews of technicians, but Tommy doesn't care because "I have a vision!" He pays to have sets constructed that look exactly like the real locations right outside the studio, which thoroughly baffles experienced script supervisor Sandy Schklair (Seth Rogen), who's worked on real movies and TV shows and immediately recognizes that Tommy has no idea what he's doing. But Tommy perseveres, making the film he wants to make while alienating a good chunk of the cast and crew, including Greg, with a turning point being his berating female lead Juliette Danielle (Ari Graynor) over a couple of small pimples on her chest that he insists will ruin their sex scene. By the time filming is finished--it's no surprise that Tommy goes over schedule--the budget balloons to $6 million and he doesn't even bat an eye at the cost.
What makes THE DISASTER ARTIST work as well as it does is the respectful approach James Franco takes--both as a director and an actor--to Wiseau. It would've been easy to make a snarky and mocking takedown, but Franco seems to genuinely admire the eccentric auteur. And he's perfect in the role, nailing his garbled, vaguely Eastern European accent (Wiseau repeatedly claims to be from New Orleans) and his mannerisms, right down to every facial expression. THE ROOM was a film whose early cult consisted of celebrities telling their friends about it--both James and Dave Franco, Rogen, and others like Kristen Bell (who acquired a print and would screen it for friends at her house), Paul Rudd, Patton Oswalt, Kevin Smith, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, David Cross, J.J. Abrams, and VERONICA MARS creator Rob Thomas, who began slipping ROOM references into episodes of the show. Like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, THE ROOM took on a life of its own on the midnight movie circuit, with audiences throwing plastic spoons (a reference to a strange photo of a framed spoon in Johnny's house) and tossing footballs around, which characters in the film always seem to be doing. And there's so much quotable dialogue, from "Oh, hi Mark," to "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Tommy Wiseau, James Franco, Greg Sestero, and Dave Franco
at an early 2017 screening of THE DISASTER ARTIST
Making his most accessible, commercial effort yet as a director (you really don't need to know THE ROOM to enjoy THE DISASTER ARTIST, but if you haven't seen it, you should), James Franco clearly adores Wiseau but isn't afraid to show his paranoid and often unlikable side, nor does he shy away from pointing out the genuinely inept elements of THE ROOM--like Wiseau's bizarre choice to have Johnny laugh at a story Mark tells about a friend being nearly beaten to death, or one character's announcement that she has breast cancer never leading anywhere or being referenced again ("It's a twist!" Franco-as-Tommy explains, obviously not knowing what a plot twist is), and James Franco matches Wiseau's utter lack of self-consciousness with the auteur's tendency to lay himself bare when a ranting Tommy demands his thrusting ass be the center of attention in a sex scene. There's a fair amount of dramatic license taken for sure, but THE DISASTER ARTIST is a funny, heartfelt, and sincere love letter not just to a movie that's brought joy to a lot of people (of course, Wiseau now insists much of the film was meant to be funny), but to all of the misguided souls whose dreams are too far beyond their capabilities--few soundtrack choices this year are more perfect than Faith No More's "Epic" playing as Tommy and Greg walk to the set in slo-mo on the first say of shooting ("You want it all but you can't have it!") . Be sure to stick around for the credits, where several ROOM scenes are played side-by-side with dead-on, perfectly-matched recreations by the in-character cast of THE DISASTER ARTIST. I wouldn't be surprised if Franco actually shot a scene-for-scene remake of THE ROOM with his cast to be included as an inevitable Blu-ray bonus feature.
SMALL CRIMES (UK/France/US - 2017) Directed by Evan Katz. Written by Evan Katz and Macon Blair. Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Robert Forster, Jacki Weaver, Gary Cole, Molly Parker, Macon Blair, Pat Healy, Michael Kinney, Daniela Sandiford, Shawn Lawrence, Larry Fessenden, Tara Yelland. (Unrated, 95 mins) Based on a 2008 novel by Dave Zeltserman, the Netflix Original film SMALL CRIMES belongs to that ever-growing post-BLUE RUIN subgenre where names like Jeremy Saulnier and Macon Blair keep turning up (you could also lump BAD TURN WORSE in there, even though it was made by others). Saulnier (GREEN ROOM) isn't involved in SMALL CRIMES, but Blair is, as a co-writer and co-star, just a couple of months after his excellent I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE also bowed as a Netflix Original. Shot in Quebec but set in small-town America, SMALL CRIMES recalls BLUE RUIN more than the visceral horrors of GREEN ROOM or the Coen Bros. aura of the misanthropic I DON'T FEEL AT HOME,. It's more of a character study centered on Joe Denton (GAME OF THRONES' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a disgraced ex-cop who can't stay out of trouble. Dubbed the "Slash Cop" by the local press after a knife attack that left current District Attorney Phil Coakley (Michael Kinney) with significant scarring, Joe has just been paroled after six years in prison, during which time his wife took their two daughters, changed their last names, moved far away, and got a restraining order against her ex-husband. Once he's out, everyone seems to be lining up for revenge, from Coakley's seductive daughter (Daniela Sandiford) to his former partner Lt. Dan Pleasant (Gary Cole), who reminds him that they have some unfinished business. On the take before he was sent to jail, Joe had a side job with Pleasant on the payroll of mob boss Manny Vassey (Shawn Lawrence). Manny is on his deathbed in the last stages of colon cancer, but he's been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury by Coakley. Coakley wants to reopen the investigation into the mysterious "suicide" of a cop who was about to expose Joe and Pleasant's corrupt dealings with Manny, who wants to clear his conscience before he dies. Pleasant tells Joe he needs to whack Manny to kill Coakley's case and make amends for all the trouble he caused him, and once that's done, he'll see about getting him in contact with his daughters, since he's owed a favor by a family court judge he helped cover up a fatal hit-and-run. But killing Manny in a matter of a few days proves virtually impossible, as he's under constant protection by his men and his empire is being run by his hot-tempered, idiot son Junior (Pat Healy), who warns Joe to stay away.
Joe is the perfect kind of antihero for this subgenre: a hapless shit magnet who can't stop fucking everything up. He talks a lot about "second chances" and "making things right," but even he knows he's full of shit. No one knows him better than his tough-love mother Irma (Jacki Weaver), who tells it like it is compared to his more enabling father Joe Sr. (Robert Forster), an arthritic, retired firefighter who just can't say no to his son. But you can see from his mournful expressions and his slumped shoulders that Joe Sr. knows his son is a lost cause. Staying out all night his first day out of jail and drinking at a bar, Joe returns home the next day to scornful criticism from Irma and tries to deflect it by showing off the sobriety chip he received in prison. She calls him out immediately, spitting "You expect me to be happy that you didn't drink while you were in jail?" Joe begins dating Manny's nurse Charlotte (Molly Parker), and the more involved they get, the darker the cloud you can practically see looming over her. Joe may have feelings for her, but first and foremost, he sees her as a way to get to Manny to save his own ass.
Danish actor Coster-Waldau, with a flawless American accent, is very good as Joe, who starts every day with the best intentions but can't maintain the illusion for very long, not even to himself. He's matched by Weaver and Forster (an unsung national treasure), both doing magnificent work as loving parents who can't figure out where they went wrong ("I saw something in you when you were young and I didn't do anything about it," his dad tells him as he's kicking him out of the house, adding "You bring mayhem with you, Joe"). Cole has one of his all-time great "Gary Cole" roles as the sarcastic and ironically-named Pleasant. Whether he's barking out some great quotables ("You're battin' zero, shithead," "Goddamn, I miss high school!" and "Figure it out! Put in some work instead of gettin' your dick wet," when Joe leaves Charlotte's place and tells him he can't get to Manny, and "If you can't clip Manny, clip the mutant," referring to the disfigured Coakley). Cult movie scenesters will also enjoy the brief appearances of Healy (THE INNKEEPERS, COMPLIANCE) and the ubiquitous Larry Fessenden--once a promising filmmaker before becoming the Michael J. Pollard of his generation--as a strip club manager. Director/co-writer Evan Katz (CHEAP THRILLS) lets the proceedings play out at a leisurely pace but, as things are wont to do in creative endeavors involving Macon Blair (who also has a supporting role as the younger brother of the "suicide" cop), things get much more dark and bleak as doomed inevitability runs its course. Even though he spent six years locked up, Joe is the kind of guy who can talk his way out of most dilemmas--dilemmas that he usually creates for himself. But as SMALL CRIMES reaches its legitimately shocking conclusion--the kind of ending that would probably induce an audible collective gasp from an audience if this was playing in theaters--it becomes clear that he's just about exhausted all of his chances and any amount of goodwill even from those closest to him. The story gets a little convoluted at times, especially in the way that Katz and Blair take almost the entire film to really let you in on what Joe did to end up where he is, but when the pieces fall into place, SMALL CRIMES is a worthy addition to the Six Degrees of Saulnier subgenre, if you will, and one of the better Netflix Originals of late.
SACRIFICE is one of those "outsider lured to a small town that has a deep, dark secret and everyone's in on it" suspense/horror movies that won't offer any surprises to anyone who's seen THE WICKER MAN or even HOT FUZZ. Hell, the giveaway's right there in the title. It's not really similar to THE WICKER MAN in terms of its story, but it hits the same points. Pregnant Manhattan obstetrician Dr. Tora Hamilton (Radha Mitchell) is devastated after suffering a miscarriage on the job. Looking for a healing change of scenery, Tora and her Scottish-born husband Duncan Guthrie (late '80s Merchant Ivory fixture Rupert Graves) leave NYC and relocate to the small village in the Shetland Islands where his family still resides. Tora's father-in-law Richard (DOWNTON ABBEY's David Robb) pulls some strings to get her on the staff at the local hospital, and all is going well until a woman's decayed corpse is found buried on Tora's and Duncan's property. Strange runic symbols have been carved into the victim's flesh and her heart has been carved out of her chest. Overstepping her bounds at the hospital, Tora also finds evidence that the woman gave birth a week to ten days before her murder. Hospital head McKie (GAME OF THRONES' Ian McElhinney) dismisses her concerns and after digging further, Tora uncovers an epidemic of ovarian cancer deaths among women in the village going back decades. When she brings this up, everyone seems mildly irritable and starts giving her the side-eyed sneer, making it painfully obvious that she's stumbled onto something that she's not meant to know. Of course, she's pursued by a gloved killer at the hospital while working late one night. Of course, Tulloch (Joanne Crawford), the one sympathetic local cop who thinks Tora might be on to something, turns up dead. And of course, Tora catches Duncan having a secret meeting with all of the village powers-that-be who are telling her to shut up and mind her own business.
Tora isn't pregnant again but it's obvious Duncan is pulling some sort of a Guy Woodhouse gaslighting on her and the abundance of ovarian cancer deaths don't seem to alarm any of the men running the village. Duncan's character arc doesn't go quite where you expect it to, and there's an interesting patriarchy element that's hinted at but largely abandoned by writer/director Peter A. Dowling, who's best known for co-writing the 2005 Jodie Foster thriller FLIGHTPLAN. The village has an inherent contempt for women, and they don't quite know how to handle someone as assertive as Tora. Being American, she's already an outsider, plus she's a career woman, and she kept her maiden name after marrying Duncan. Duncan's father expresses some sneering disdain at the way his son doesn't treat his wife as a subordinate, but Dowling doesn't do much with these themes. Other than a De Palma split diopter shot that seems more show-offy than anything, Dowling's direction is workmanlike at best, rushing through the exposition and assembling the film as such that it plays like it should be a pilot to a TV series with Mitchell as a snooping, mystery-solving obstetrician. Even the opening credits look like a TV show and the abrupt ending feels like it's only missing an "On the next SACRIFICE, Tora discovers..." Mitchell does what she can with the material, but SACRIFICE is the kind of forgettable, frivolous trifle that instantly evapor (Unrated, 91 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
EQUALS (US/South Korea - 2016)
Drab, mopey, and predictable, EQUALS is another all too familiar futuristic sci-fi saga set in a chilly dystopia where emotion is forbidden and two outcasts commit the unpardonable sin of falling in love. It's all here--the towering cityscapes, the cold, expansive, antiseptic interiors, and everyone wearing the latest in THX-1138 fashions. In this particular dystopia, all illness has been eradicated but a new disease called S.O.S., or "Switched On Syndrome," is gaining ground. It's blamed on "problem genes" that cause "behavioral defects" that lead to "coupling." In other words, people's emotions are kicking in and they're experiencing things like love and desire. Violators are sent to "the Den," or a "Defective Emotional Neuropathy" facility for treatment. Like cancer, it's graded in stages, with stage 1 having a good chance for recovery if discovered early, and beyond-hope stage 3 sufferers encouraged to commit suicide. Silas (Nicholas Hoult) works in a high-tech printing facility and has just been diagnosed as Stage 1 S.O.S. This gets the attention of co-worker Nia (Kristen Stewart), a self-diagnosed stage 1 who's managed to keep her symptoms hidden from everyone at the office. It isn't long before their S.O.S. gets the best of them and they "couple," with Silas getting some help from an underground group of anarchic S.O.S. patients, including stage 2-diagnosed Jonas (Guy Pearce) and Bess (Jacki Weaver), to plan an escape from the city and go on the run with Nia. Of course, that plan hits a snag when the Big Brother-like government rolls out a just-approved S.O.S. cure, making vaccination mandatory and getting everyone back to "Equal" status. Blandly directed by Drake Doremus (LIKE CRAZY), EQUALS gets the look down with occasionally striking location work in some Tokyo and Singapore office districts, but the script by Nathan Parker (who wrote the much better MOON) cribs from too many other influences and just feels like stale leftovers. The pace is excruciatingly slow and it limps along to a tired, not quite Tangerine Dream electronic score by Sascha Ring and Dustin O'Hallorann. Ridley Scott was one of 22 producers, but even his involvement didn't get this on any more than 92 screens in the US. (PG-13, 102 mins)
VIRAL (US - 2016)
CATFISH masterminds Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman went on to direct the third and fourth PARANORMAL ACTIVITY entries before making this thankfully not found-footage Blumhouse zombie parasite outbreak horror film that spent enough time on the shelf that it ended up being released the same weekend as the duo's next film, NERVE. While NERVE got a nationwide release by Lionsgate and became a modest hit, VIRAL was buried by the Weinstein Company, debuting in a handful of theaters and on VOD. It's pretty by the numbers, with a parasitic outbreak quickly working its way across the country as President Obama (seen in footage taken from Ebola-related press conferences in 2014) declares nationwide martial law in an attempt at quarantining the virus. While the horror elements are pretty much working off a checklist--yes, the infected once again sprint around 28 DAYS LATER-style--much of VIRAL's focus is on the bond between two sisters who have had their share of family upheaval of late. Shy and introverted Emma (THE NIGHT OF murder victim Sofia Black-D'Elia) lives in the shadow of her outgoing, hellraising older sibling Stacy (Analeigh Tipton). Their mom is absent for reasons that are revealed later in the film, but they've just moved to a new suburb with their dad (Michael Kelly), who's been let go from his university job and is now teaching biology at their high school. An infected classmate sends everyone home from school, and it isn't long before the government steps in, with Dad unable to get home and the girls left on their own. Of course, Stacy doesn't listen to Dad's orders and decides to go to a party, pressuring Emma to go along. And of course, someone at the party is infected, as the parasite burrows through its host, feeding off of it and absorbing it, causing it to attack anyone in its vicinity. Stacy is exposed to it at the party, and Emma and Evan (Travis Tope), the sensitive nice guy who lives across the street, barricade her in the bathroom, Emma determined to keep her big sis alive.
The relationship between Emma and Stacy is where VIRAL attempts to differentiate itself from so much of its type, but it's not enough to get the film to the next level. Joost, Schulman, and their PARANORMAL ACTIVITY writer Christopher Landon spend too much time on the same old zombie apocalypse mayhem, with the added bonus of CGI worms burrowing out of peoples' orifices. This is another horror film that depends too much on its characters doing idiotic things to advance the plot, like Emma and Evan chasing an escaped Stacy into an abandoned house where, of course, at least a dozen infected appear out of nowhere. Had the girls just stayed home instead of going to a party, none of this would've happened to them. This is also one of those teen-centered films where parents (other than the sisters' dad and Evan's asshole stepdad) are nowhere to be seen, thus enabling horny kids played by actors in their mid-to-late 20s to disregard police and government orders and orchestrate a kegger. And if it takes everyone else who's exposed about four seconds to turn, why does it take Stacy half the movie? There's no logic in the tired horror elements of VIRAL, but it does get a big boost from the convincing chemistry between Black-D'Elia and Tipton, and a scene where Emma sticks her hand into an opening in the bathroom door to make physical contact with an infected, practically rabid Stacy in an attempt to remind her of her human side ("I know you'll never hurt me!") is genuinely tense, emotional, and well-played by the two stars. Black-D'Elia and Tipton aren't able to completely salvage VIRAL from being a genre afterthought, but they're good enough that you'd probably rather see them working together in something other than a dumb horror movie you've seen a hundred times already. (R, 86 mins)
For all the shit Nicolas Cage justifiably gets about the crummy movies he's been making, the precipitous decline of John Cusack--Cage's CON AIR co-star in better days for both--has flown under the radar with most mainstream critics and moviegoers who likely just assume he hasn't been busy. Oh, he's been busy. Any VOD denizen who regularly prowls the fringes of Netflix Instant's new arrivals or checks out a Redbox at the grocery store has probably noticed Cusack turning up in an alarming number of bad movies of late. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was briefly generating Oscar buzz for 2007's GRACE IS GONE, headlining 2009's mega-budget disaster epic 2012, and had a hit comedy with 2010's HOT TUB TIME MACHINE. In retrospect, it seemed like he stopped trying around the time no one really responded to his well-intentioned but smug and self-satisfied 2008 anti-war satire WAR, INC. There have been a couple of positives for Cusack in the last few years--even though nobody saw it, his reteaming with Cage on THE FROZEN GROUND produced a surprisingly compelling thriller, not something you can usually say about any film containing 50 Cent, and the Spanish GRAND PIANO was a goofy but enjoyable De Palma homage that featured Cusack mainly as a voice in an earpiece taunting concert pianist Elijah Wood from the balcony, threatening to shoot him if he plays one wrong note. Cusack is in David Cronenberg's upcoming MAPS TO THE STARS, which will mark the actor starring in his first respectably A-list production in years (not counting his brief bit as Richard Nixon in Lee Daniels' LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER), but it would appear to be an exception and not the rule.
John Cusack in RECLAIM. Or maybe DRIVE HARD.
Careers have peaks and valleys, but in recent memory, few icons--yes, with SAY ANYTHING, GROSSE POINTE BLANK, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, and HIGH FIDELITY, I'd say Cusack is iconic with a certain demographic--have plummeted so quickly without some offscreen scandal or obvious and very public personal problems pulling them down. Almost overnight, Cusack went from box office draw to the undisputed king of Video-on-Demand. Working actors work, and to quote '70s exploitation producer Mardi Rustam on casting past-their-prime actors, "working's better than sitting by a phone that's not ringing," but with rare exception, Cusack's recent string of credits--THE RAVEN, THE PAPERBOY, THE FACTORY, THE NUMBERS STATION, ADULT WORLD, THE BAG MAN, and THE PRINCE--range from forgettable to flat-out embarrassing. A pilot he shot for a potential CBS series about a Wall Street investment firm wasn't picked up by the network. Cusack did star with Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li in Mikael Hafstrom's $50 million epic SHANGHAI, but it's been sitting on a Weinstein Company shelf for six years. The Cusackalyptic state of his career--honestly, an appearance in an Uwe Boll film can't be far off--has only become apparent to casual moviegoers in the last couple of weeks, when a poster for the Chinese period piece DRAGON BLADE, teaming Cusack as a centurion with Jackie Chan and Adrien Brody, made the rounds on the internet. Other upcoming Cusack projects include the Stephen King adaptation CELL, which maybe has commercial potential, and LOVE & MERCY, a low-budget Beach Boys biopic where he briefly appears as the older Brian Wilson (Paul Dano plays Wilson in most of the film) but other than that, it's business as usual, with a cop thriller called KICKBACK, where he co-stars with Famke Janssen, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Mischa Barton, and Tom Sizemore. Who knows if Cusack can pull himself out of this quagmire or if he's happy to just be working? In the meantime, here's his two latest obscurities that you probably haven't heard of until this moment.
DRIVE HARD (Australia/UK/Germany - 2014)
A grating buddy comedy from Ozploitation legend Brian Trenchard-Smith, DRIVE HARD isn't the action-packed fun-fest that it seems to think it is. Cusack is paired with Thomas Jane--both appeared in Terrence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE--and presumably both are only here for the paid Australian vacation. A quickie shot in Gold Coast, Queensland in a mere two and a half weeks, DRIVE HARD has Jane as Peter Roberts, a former American racing phenom who left the circuit to marry Aussie attorney Tessa (Yesse Spence). They have an impossibly cute daughter and a beautiful house, but Peter is unhappy working at his dull job as a driving instructor and misses the circuit. One morning, Peter's first appointment is American Simon Keller (Cusack), a vaping oddball in a black baseball cap and sunglasses, who claims to be in town on business. Simon's eccentric behavior irritates Peter, especially when he asks Peter to stop at a nearby bank so he can quickly run in and "take care of something." The bank is owned by the mob, and Simon is a freelance criminal from Cleveland sent to swipe some mob cash in the form of bank bonds set up by scheming executive Rossi (Christopher Morris). The connected Rossi uses his influence to keep the cops off as various unsavory sorts spend the rest of the film chasing the two Americans--with unwilling accessory Peter specifically targeted by Simon for his superior driving skills--who have to work together to survive...if they don't kill each other first!
Trenchard-Smith's storied history in stunt-crazed Ozploitation cinema of the 1970s and 1980s would seem to make him a natural for something like this, but he hasn't made a good film in about 25 years (no, LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE doesn't count), and DRIVE HARD exhibits none of the past style and panache that have made him such an endearing figure in cult cinema. The actual car chases are sparingly shown and unexciting, things gets bogged down in Peter's marital problems and the investigation by a hard-nosed Gold Coast major crimes investigator (Zoe Ventoura), and there just isn't much of a story here. That would be fine if the action was good, but Trenchard-Smith seems so excited to be working with name American actors again that just lets them riff their way through it. Long stretches of the film consist of Cusack and Jane doing some uninspired improv in the car, with tiresome and endless banter that usually involves a yapping Cusack being an unfunny, hectoring smartass and Jane yelling, almost like they're both trying to be Vince Vaughn, and it doesn't work. Jane, in particular, is really hard to take here. He seems to be mistaking "being really loud" for being funny. His entire performance is one long spaz attack, while Cusack, who never takes off the hat and shades, has been given a green light to do whatever he wants. Simon's final monologue to Rossi, where he blathers on endlessly about Buddha before shooting the coke-addled banker in the balls, allows Cusack the kind of self-indulgent, incoherent nonsense you would've expected from late-period Marlon Brando. Cusack was obviously given the star treatment by the producers--his personal chef is credited twice--and he responds by at least coming to work awake, which is more than you can say for his contributions to THE PRINCE, but DRIVE HARD is just a dull, dumb, and loud exercise in Cusackalyptica with an Ozploitation twist, an action-comedy that struggles to find a tone and comes up lacking in both action and comedy. (Unrated, 96 mins)
RECLAIM (US/Australia - 2014)
I don't know if RECLAIM was shot immediately after DRIVE HARD or vice versa, but Cusack's wearing the same black hat in some scenes and he's introduced vaping, which has obviously become his personal prop of choice. Released on just ten screens, RECLAIM is like a less competent version of the kind of glossy, hot-button thrillers that dominated the 1990s. Indeed, if it came out 12-15 years earlier with the same leads and a bigger budget, it would've been a huge hit. Despite his top billing, Cusack has a mostly secondary role until a little past the midway point, with the real stars being Ryan Phillippe and Rachelle Lefevre as Stephen and Shannon Mayer, a Chicago couple arriving in Puerto Rico to finalize the adoption of seven-year-old Haitian orphan Nina (Briana Roy). Unable to have children of their own after a car accident several years earlier that caused a pregnant Shannon to miscarry and netted them a nearly $3 million settlement, the Mayers are desperate to become parents and have already paid $60,000 to a charity agency run by the altruistic Gabrielle Reigert (Jacki Weaver), but still must wait several days for Nina's passport and some general paperwork to clear. In the meantime, Gabrielle sets the Mayers up at a resort where they keep encountering the gregariously pushy Benjamin (Cusack, greasy-haired and disheveled), his girlfriend Paola (Veronica Faye Foo) and their extremely surly buddy Salo (Jandres Burgos). Benjamin and especially Salo (who beats the shit out of committed-to-sobriety Stephen in a bar after Stephen declines a drink) display enough red flags for the Mayers to inform Gabrielle that they're checking into another hotel, but of course Benjamin and his crew turn up there as well, and not long after, Nina goes missing. Stephen attempts to notify Gabrielle, but no one at the agency's office answers the phone, the web site is down, and the property vacant when Stephen pays a visit. Benjamin is part of a scam overseen by Gabrielle (not her real name) to bilk people out of exorbitant adoption fees and make off with the kid. The scam is common, according to the useless local police chief, played by Luis Guzman, in practically the same role he had in the recent Gina Carano actioner IN THE BLOOD. Feeling cheated out of his share by Gabrielle, Benjamin goes rogue and concocts his own scheme to get the Mayers' entire fortune.
Australian director Alan White really wants this to be a serious expose of child exploitation and trafficking, but it's really just a rote, formulaic B-movie, and not a very good one. It starts with Stephen and Shannon being entirely too gullible too many times, but even on a technical level, RECLAIM comes up short. It sports what may go down as 2014's most ineptly-shot car chase, which hilariously shoddy greenscreen work that moves entirely too fast and jerky and looks like a Hanna-Barbera wraparound background. Coupled with a scene where the Mayers' SUV is dangling off the side of a cliff, RECLAIM has the worst car crash CGI this side of 2011's IN TIME. Phillippe and Lefevre do what's required of them, but Cusack is in PRINCE mode here, looking haggard and sleepwalking through a Puerto Rican vacation either immediately before or after his DRIVE HARD Australian respite. Until the midway point, he really isn't in it that much and until late in the film, he's more of a henchman to mastermind Gabrielle. In some scenes, he defers to the hot-tempered Salo. Why is Cusack playing a stock heavy role that any jobbing character actor could've played? I doubt he's even reading the scripts he's given--he's choosing his films based on where they're being shot and how nice a resort the producers are willing to book him (though his personal chef doesn't seem to have made the trip for this one). Cusack's a smart actor and an insightful writer--if he was finding anything challenging or professionally rewarding about his Cusackalyptic career choices, he wouldn't resort to vaping in two different movies in a desperate effort to provide his character with some remotely interesting trait. An end caption states that over a million children are trafficked a year, adding "They're invisible and they're everywhere." These days, the same could be said for John Cusack movies. (R, 96 mins)
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT (US - 2014) Written and directed by Woody Allen. Cast: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Eileen Atkins, Marcia Gay Hardin, Hamish Linklater, Simon McBurney, Jacki Weaver, Catherine McCormack, Erica Leerhsen, Jeremy Shamos, Ute Lemper. (PG-13, 97 mins)
The annual visit from Woody Allen finds the great filmmaker firmly in "pleasant trifle" mode with MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT. A year after directing Cate Blanchett to an Oscar for the devastating BLUE JASMINE, Allen goes light and breezy in another attempt to recapture the unexpected blockbuster success of 2011's out-of-nowhere MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. MAGIC is certainly enjoyable but is yet another effort that falls squarely in the middle, along with other diverting-at-the-time-but-forgettable-after trifles like SCOOP (2006), the overrated VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (2008), WHATEVER WORKS (2009), and YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER (2010). Aside from the occasional MATCH POINT (2005) or BLUE JASMINE, Allen's work at this point more or less functions as comfort food, a reminder than even with the ever-shifting and unpredictable ways of cinematic finance and distribution, those Windsor font opening credits with the alphabetically-listed cast, accompanied by a scratchy old jazz or big band standard (in this case, Leo Reisman & His Orchestra's 1929 version of Cole Porter's "You Do Something to Me") are always there to remind us that some things haven't changed if Woody's still cranking them out year after year (incredibly, 1981 was the last year without a new Allen film). Even when he's coasting and repeating himself, a new Woody Allen movie is--almost, other than, say, 2012's TO ROME WITH LOVE, one of his worst films--always welcome.
In 1928 Berlin, world-famous, mysterious Oriental magician Wei Ling Soo astounds a captive audience with his repertoire of tricks and illusions. Backstage, he's revealed to be disguised Brit Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), a snobbish misanthrope who considers most of his fan base to be uncultured rubes. An expert medium and spirit world-debunker outside of his Wei Ling Soo persona, Stanley is persuaded by his friend and fellow magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney, the Roddy McDowall of his generation) to accompany him to the French Riviera to investigate an American medium who's enthralled the region with her uncanny abilities. The medium is Kalamazoo, MI native Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), who's captured the hearts of the wealthy Catledge family and is engaged to be married to scion Brice (Hamish Linklater), a ukulele-strumming romantic who serenades her regularly and promises her all that money can buy. Stanley is suspicious from the start, but as Sophie's ability to know some of Stanley's most private secrets as well as those of his beloved Aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins) becomes apparent, Stanley goes from sneering and dismissive to a smitten believer, even after rebuffing Sophie's advances since he's engaged to Olivia (Catherine McCormack), who's back home in London.
Magic, mysticism and fantasy are not new subjects to Allen. He's covered them in various ways in films like THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985), the "Oedipus Wrecks" segment of NEW YORK STORIES (1989), ALICE (1990), THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION (2001), SCOOP, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and TO ROME WITH LOVE, to name a few. To that end, there's not really anything particularly new or noteworthy about MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT. As expected, Stone is as appealing a presence as ever, and while she initially seems miscast, Allen wisely takes that and uses it to her character's advantage as a transplanted Midwesterner who doesn't really belong with the high society on the Cote d'Azur, but is lovingly accepted anyway by the smothering Brice and his mother Grace (Jacki Weaver). Firth has a good time playing a droll, acid-tongued grouch, and just when you think Allen is going too schmaltzy with his character, he has something happen that pulls him back into being the bitter crank he's been for the previous hour. But these are characters and situations we've seen in any number of Allen's previous 45 films as a writer/director. For its first half, MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT is witty and often quite amusing, but then I was reminded of his surprise 2000 hit SMALL TIME CROOKS (about once a decade in the years since his commercial heyday ended in the mid '80s, Allen has a breakout smash that gets embraced by more moviegoers than usual), which spent half of its running time as a hilarious comedy of errors about an ineptly-plotted heist only to switch gears and morph into another sappy, analytical relationship comedy between Allen and Tracey Ullman. Similarly, MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT bogs down considerably once Stanley believes in Sophie's abilities and she expresses her feelings for him. Do we need another Woody Allen movie with a younger woman falling for a man 30 years her senior? I suppose it could be worse--Allen could've cast himself as Stanley--and Firth doesn't look 53 years old, but Allen's older man/younger woman motif has been one of the more blatantly self-referential and increasingly peculiar tropes of his filmography. MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT is diverting late summer entertainment, Firth and Stone are fine, the locations, production design, and period detail are terrific, and Atkins is a delight as Aunt Vanessa, but like most of Allen's output over the last decade or two, there's an unavoidable sense of familiarity, like he's just shuffling pages of random older scripts together and cobbling new movies out of previously explored ideas.
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)
