If VALLEY OF THE GODS wasn't so incredibly dull, it would be the must-see, instant classic Batshit Cinema event of 2020. As it is, it's so ponderous and heavy-handed that it ends up being a virtual arthouse parody. Given a stealth DTV/VOD release in the US after nearly four years (!) on the shelf, VALLEY OF THE GODS was written and directed by Polish auteur Lech Majewski (THE MILL & THE CROSS), who fashions it an utterly impenetrable hodgepodge of Navajo mythology, midlife crisis melodrama, existential L.A. ennui, sociopolitical/environmental treatise, and surrealistic bullshit all rolled into one self-indulgent fiasco. The best thing that can be said about it is that the cinematography in and around the title Utah region is beautifully shot and these sections of the film would've been breathtaking on a big screen. But the downside is that is you have to endure the rest of it. After his wife (Jaime Ray Newman) leaves him for her hang-gliding instructor, Los Angeles-based would-be novelist John Ecas (Josh Hartnett) walks away from his industrial marketing job and, at the suggestion of his therapist (John Rhys-Davies), tries various methods of finding inner peace. This includes walking down a busy street backwards while blindfolded, and then gathering all of his pots and pans, tying them to his ankles, and climbing a mountain. He heads out to Monument Valley where he unloads an old wooden desk out of the back of his SUV and, in the middle of the desert, begins to write his Great American Novel longhand with a fountain pen. Meanwhile, Navajo tribes in the area are rising up in protest against the purchase of the Valley of the Gods by Tauros Engineering, a nefarious corporation with plans to drill for uranium in this sacred area. Tauros was also John's employer, and the company is owned by Wes Tauros (John Malkovich), the world's richest man, and an enigmatic, Howard Hughes-like trillionaire who lives in a castle atop a mountain that's accessible by an elevator in a secret passageway in a brick building at its base.
Sound a little strange? That's only the beginning, because it's about to get really fucked-up. One of the Navajo locals climbs to the top of a mountain and has sex with a rock formation, which later, after a torrential downpour, spawns a child with a firehose-length umbilical cord connected to the rock. Tauros frequently sneaks out of his mansion and wanders the streets of L.A., pretending to be homeless because it's the only way he feels alive. John sets his SUV ablaze after receiving a divorce petition from his wife via a fax machine in his glove compartment. He's also invited to meet with Tauros at his mountaintop compound, where he's greeted by loyal Alfred-esque butler Ulin (Keir Dullea sighting!), who's introduced delivering a monologue about Elvis' fat years as they stroll through a courtyard filled with statues of "Tauros' friends." A financially-strapped mother (Berenice Marlohe) arrives in a CGI stretch limo the length of a train that snakes along mountain roads, and is given a makeover to resemble Tauros' dead wife, after which she has sex with him while Ulin stays in the room and watches (she also wears a ring with her son's extracted kidney stone in place of a diamond). Tauros invites a ton of guests to a formal gathering where he drives a Rolls Royce onto a giant catapult and sends it flying off the mountain. The guests are actually prisoners kept in cells and cages in a secret dungeon under the compound where Tauros has the power to turn them to stone if they're disobedient. Then Ulin oversees the mummification of Tauros, who's laid into a tomb and reborn as a giant, bare-assed kaiju-like rock-baby that stomps through downtown Los Angeles like an infant Malkozilla. Majewski borrows equal parts Wim Wenders, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Matthew Barney, and especially Stanley Kubrick with the castle's ornate interiors (the presence of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY's Dullea is an obvious nod, plus longtime Kubrick inner-circler Jan Harlan is one of a couple dozen producers), but VALLEY OF THE GODS is almost nonstop nonsense, executed in such a monotonous, molasses-paced way that it's never as bizarrely entertaining as a summary makes it sound. For what it's worth, Majewski made exactly the movie he wanted to make, though I'm not sure it's for anyone but himself. It might make a great midnight movie if anyone can stay awake before it boards the crazy train. (Unrated, 127 mins) EMPEROR (US - 2020)
Arriving as a DTV/VOD title after the pandemic canceled its planned April theatrical release, EMPEROR ends up getting pretty much the gala premiere it deserves. The directing debut of veteran B-movie producer Mark Amin, whose name was on a ton of straight-to-video Vidmark/Trimark titles throughout the '90s and into the early '00s, EMPEROR is a simplistic biopic of Shields "Emperor" Green, a runaway slave who became a key figure in abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. Little is known about Green's life prior to his association with Brown, so EMPEROR feels free to take some significant dramatic license, citing it as being "based on a true legend." The film opens with the birth of Green and the supposition that he descended from African royalty, with his mother declaring "Your grandpa was a king, and you will be...an emperor!" Before you can even finish rolling your eyes, EMPEROR jumps ahead to 1859 Charleston, with Green (Dayo Okeniyi), affectionately called "Emperor" by his fellow slaves and a figure of some respect on a plantation owned by the kindly but heavy-drinking and financially hapless Duvane Henderson (comedian/podcaster Paul Scheer, in stunt casting that's almost as distracting as his combover wig/cap). Henderson loses the plantation to evil Randolph Stevens (M.C. Gainey) in a card game, and with his crew of brutal overseers, Stevens makes it clear to Emperor and the others that things are gonna change. When his young son Tommy (Trayce Malachi) is whipped for having the audacity to know how to read, Emperor snaps and kills three of Stevens' guys, and in their attempt to escape, Emperor's wife Sarah (Naturi Naughton) is shot dead.
Now a fugitive, Emperor becomes a folk hero as he makes his way along the Underground Railroad, encountering a seemingly kind but treacherous slave (Mykelti Williamson) who tries to turn him in to buy his own freedom, as well as affable white bank robber (Keean Johnson). In hot pursuit is ruthless bounty hunter Luke McCabe (Ben Robson) as EMPEROR basically becomes a pre-Civil War version of THE FUGITIVE before he crosses paths with Brown (James Cromwell), Frederick Douglass (Harry Lennix), and Robert E. Lee (James LeGros). The dialogue is as leaden as can be, with someone telling Emperor "You're not just a runaway slave anymore...you're a symbol!" and a wide-eyed Emperor asking Brown "Is that who I think it is?" as Brown replies "That's right, son...that's Frederick Douglass." Nigerian actor Okeniyi (whose credits include small roles in THE HUNGER GAMES and TERMINATOR: GENYSIS and was one of the corrupt crew of cops on the Jennifer Lopez/Ray Liotta NBC series SHADES OF BLUE) turns in a strong performance and gives the flimsy material a lot more gravity than it deserves, but even he can't overcome an inane finale that finds Emperor outrunning a CGI explosion that looks like something out of an Asylum ripoff of 12 YEARS A SLAVE. He gets solid support from the always-excellent Cromwell and Bruce Dern, who's upstaged by a hilariously terrible wig but nonetheless sympathetic as Levi Coffin, an ally along the Underground Railroad. (PG-13, 99 mins)
Contrary to what the title might indicate, INHERIT THE VIPER is not the name of a circa-2001 metalcore band with two lead vocalists--one gurgly and one yelpy. Rather, it's a somber and downbeat look at a family of rural Alabama oxycodone dealers at a turning point. The Conleys--Kip (Josh Hartnett), his sister Josie (THE DEUCE's Margarita Levieva), and their baby brother Boots (Owen Teague)--were largely left to fend for themselves growing up after their mother split and their drug lord father died when Boots was five. Kip and Josie try to keep Boots as isolated from their business as possible, but he's a Conley and he wants to be part of the local "legend." That the Conleys are the town's chief suppliers of oxy and heroin is an open secret, but Kip is feeling the heat after a local woman dies from a bad dose supplied by Josie. He's got a very pregnant fiancee (Valorie Curry), and a decent day job at the local mill, and between the dead woman--whose enraged husband (Brad William Henke) also works at the mill--and intervening in a clandestine side deal orchestrated by an ambitious Boots and his buddy Cooper (Chandler Riggs, best known from his days as Carl on THE WALKING DEAD) that results in him killing two troublemakers who try to rip off Boots, Kip decides it's over and they're done dealing. Not so, says Josie, who vows to "fix this" because "This is who we are!"
INHERIT THE VIPER plays a lot like a pilot episode for a SONS OF ANARCHY-type FX series about the dynamics of a white trash oxy empire. Debuting director Anthony Jerjen does a very thorough job of establishing the atmosphere with effective location work in some beaten-down areas of Birmingham, AL that can charitably be described as "unwelcoming," vividly capturing the bleak and depressing surroundings in the same way as WINTER'S BONE and OUT OF THE FURNACE. Andrew Crabtree's script probably could've used another run-through, with Kip and Boots more or less stock characters: Kip is a shrewd businessman but has a good heart in the way he skims off the inventory to give a few pills to a struggling local veteran, and Boots is the naive kid who wants to make his mark in the family business but is dumb enough to buy himself a flashy, attention-getting sports car and drive it to a drug buy. We keep hearing about how no one fucks with the Conleys, but that's all anyone seems to do, and Kip's instant response is "OK, we're done, we're walking away."
The most interesting and complex character is Josie, with Levieva quietly adding layers to what could've been a one-note villain role, and delivering an internalized and very convincing performance as a hardened, ruthless woman who won't let minor inconveniences like some missing teenagers and a few dead bodies take away the only thing she knows how to do. The local color extends to the very real portrayal of a close-knit small town, albeit one slowly rotting from the inside thanks to the severe economic downturn as well as the Conleys. They go to all the home football games where Kip deals under the bleachers, and Josie goes to AA meetings also attended by the sheriff (Dash Mihok), who was her boyfriend in high school, is her current occasional fuck-buddy, and is pretty sure some shell casings he's found match a gun he knows the Conleys own. INHERIT THE VIPER takes place in the kind of forgotten underclass nowhere that progress has left behind: no one's ever left, and you either work at the mill, join the military, or become a junkie, and supplying that demand is synonymous with the name "Conley." There's a lot of interesting elements in play here, but it's impossible to dig deep and flesh any of them out in a film where the closing credits roll at 78 minutes. It also squanders Bruce Dern, who has a few scenes as a cantankerous, wheelchair-bound, emphysema-stricken bar owner whose only real purpose is to inspire Kip's fateful final decision by telling a him story about a kid being bitten on the hand by a snake, and metaphorically asking him whether or not "you're gonna cut off the arm to save the body." (R, 84 mins)
THE SONATA (Germany/France/UK/Latvia/Russia - 2019; US release 2020)
There's a feeling of the familiar throughout the minor supernatural horror film THE SONATA, but it establishes a little more cred than expected thanks to director/co-writer Andrew Desmond displaying a natural gift for atmospheric details and striking shot compositions. He gets a huge assist from location work at the Cesvaine Palace in Latvia, and with its foreboding appearance outside and the BARRY LYNDON-esque natural lighting inside, it looks a lot like the a present-day throwback to the kind of gothic horror films that Hammer or Amicus would've made in the early 1970s. The film opens with reclusive classical composer Richard Marlowe (the late Rutger Hauer, in one of his last films) putting the finishing touches on his final masterwork, after which he proceeds to douse himself in gasoline and set himself ablaze. His only heir is his estranged daughter, renowned violin prodigy Rose Fisher (Freya Tingley), who has no memories of him as he abandoned her mother when Rose was just a year old. She's kept the identity of her father a secret, even from her devoted manager Charles (Simon Abkarian), to avoid any chance of the connection furthering her career. As Charles puts it, Marlowe was "more notorious than famous," and an ex-colleague (James Faulkner) calls him a mad, innovative genius who flamed out too young, describing him as "the Syd Barrett of classical music."
Rutger Hauer (1944-2019)
Rose travels to the French castle where Marlowe locked himself away, and finds the final composition, a violin sonata that seems erratic and unplayable. The music is accompanied by strange symbols, there's a chapel in the woods where Marlowe was up to some weird shit, and the more Charles digs into the mystery, the more unstable he becomes. It seems Marlowe was the leader of a secret sect that believed music had the capacity to "unlock portals between worlds," and that his final, epic composition--which he'd been working on for decades--was a Satanic sonata written specifically to conjure the Antichrist when performed. Yes, THE SONATA is quite silly, it can't really decide if Rose or Charles should be the main character, it succumbs to some dodgy late-film CGI, and Hauer probably didn't work more than a day on it. Nevertheless, the promising Desmond establishes a quaintly retro British horror vibe, he throws a couple of bones to Italian horror fans, with one TENEBRAE shout-out that's never surprising at this point but it's always a welcome sight, and the striking interiors of the Cesvaine Palace make this look a lot more expensive than it likely was. (Unrated, 88 mins)
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (New Zealand - 2014; US release 2015)
FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS' Jemaine Clement and EAGLE VS. SHARK and THE INBETWEENERS director Taika Waititi wrote and directed this overrated but still affectionate and often quite amusing Christopher Guest-inspired vampire spoof, with a documentary crew following the nightly routine of four vampire flatmates prior to the annual Unholy Masquerade. Viago (Waititi) is the den mother of sorts, a worrisome bloodsucker who's always trying to manage the household and make sure the bills are paid and the chores are getting done. That's the kind of absurdist humor that's on display throughout the film, and while it has moments that are very funny, it's a thin premise for a feature-length film (it seems like it should be one of those filmed SNL pieces that they call back to three or four times over the course of a show), with a really draggy middle that makes it feel longer than 86 minutes. There's also the perverse and jaded 800-year-old Vladislav the Poker (Clement), the younger--at just 183 years of age--and irresponsible Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), who thinks it's "bullshit" that he has to do the dishes, and the ancient, Nosferatu-like Petyr (Ben Frasham), with a new flatmate brought in when Petyr bites Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer). WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS works best when it sardonically looks at the impracticalities of vampirism, like neat-freak Viago spreading newspaper over the floor around a female victim in preparation for any bleeding out that takes place (and a real mess ensues when he accidentally bites the main artery, sending gory arterial spray shooting everywhere and confessing "That didn't go as I expected"). Or, when a depressed Vladislav lets himself go and starts showing his true age and opting to stay in for the evening as Viago implores "You don't look that good, but if you eat someone on the way..." The vampires also have a hilarious, ballbusting back-and-forth with a pack of asshole werewolves, with a scene-stealing performance by Rhys Darby as their hectoring leader, who sounds like a scolding parent when he informs his fellow lycanthropes "It's transformation night! Where's your track suit pants! Your legs expand when you transform and you're gonna rip through those jeans completely!" There's a lot of clever, deadpan humor throughout the film, but it never really rises to the level of laugh-out-loud funny or to the point where it can carry an entire film. It's likable and if you're a horror fan, you'll enjoy it, but it's not the new SHAUN OF THE DEAD. It's more like the new TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL. (R, 86 mins)
WILD HORSES (US - 2015)
Stepping behind the camera for the first time since 2003's middling ASSASSINATION TANGO, the great Robert Duvall stumbles badly with the awful WILD HORSES, a rambling, self-indulgent home movie with two purposes: to allow Duvall to yet again play--wait for it--an irascible, ornery old coot and to give a leading role to his much younger wife Luciana, who has a total of three acting credits, two being in films directed by her husband. Duvall has helmed five films since 1977's little-seen, self-released rodeo documentary WE'RE NOT THE JET SET, and his directing efforts are small, often self-financed passion projects, with 1983's ANGELO MY LOVE scoring some significant critical acclaim and 1997's THE APOSTLE breaking through to the mainstream and netting Duvall a Best Actor Oscar nomination. With the barely-released WILD HORSES however, Duvall is all over the place as a writer and director, with a meandering story that goes nowhere and entirely too many scenes brought down by the atrocious non-acting of Luciana Duvall and a supporting cast of non-professionals from the Salt Lake City and Magna, UT area where the film was shot. Duvall's wife--truly one of the worst actresses you'll ever see--has a monotone delivery that makes her sound hypnotized and she repeatedly trips over her dialogue. Some of the local actors pause their readings like they momentarily forgot their line, find their bearings and keep going. Then there's the poor kid playing Duvall's grandson, obviously distracted by the crew and looking directly into the camera several times in one scene as a reassuring Josh Hartnett visibly tries to keep him focused. It actually looks like Hartnett and the child were still rehearsing the scene when Duvall decided it was good enough. Personal passion projects with a gritty, DIY feel are fine, but there's a big difference between "naturalistic acting" and "people who have no business being in front of a camera." The 84-year-old Duvall has been a working actor in film and television since 1960. He's a living legend, but with all due respect, that doesn't excuse his attempting to pass this amateur-night vanity project off as a real movie.
The film opens with crotchety, gun-toting, Bible-thumping Texas rancher Scott Briggs (Duvall) finding his youngest son Ben making out with his best friend Jimmy in the barn. 15 years later, Texas Ranger Samantha Payne (Mrs. Duvall) re-opens an investigation into the disappearance of Jimmy, who was never seen again after that night on the Briggs farm. Scott remains close to his two older sons, Johnny (Devon Abner) and KC (Hartnett), and extends an olive branch to the estranged, openly gay Ben (James Franco), who ran away to live with his mother (wives leaving them years earlier is a recurring motif for Duvall's grizzled old cowpokes) and hasn't seen his father since that fateful night. Scott wants his sons home so he can finalize his will and set things right, which also involves revealing that family friend Maria (Angie Cepeda, also in the recent Duvall-as-cantankerous-old-bastard dud A NIGHT IN OLD MEXICO), who's "like a sister" to the Briggs boys, actually is their sister, thanks to a years-ago fling. When he isn't mending fences with Ben, Scott, who obviously knows the truth behind Jimmy's disappearance, is pressuring the local law, who gave him a pass 15 years ago, into "encouraging" Payne to give up her investigation and leave him alone, and after multiple attempts on her life by goons in the employ of the corrupt deputy sheriff, she's not about to ease off on old Scott. WILD HORSES has the makings of an intriguing mix of family skeletons drama and revenge thriller, but Duvall can't be bothered to focus on either of those potentials. He's more interested in local color and capturing the chattering, non-professional actors being "real," which doesn't really translate to watchable cinema when they can't hold their own with experienced vets like himself, Franco, Hartnett, and BABEL Oscar-nominee Adriana Barraza as Jimmy's still-devastated mother. At times, it seems like WILD HORSES is trying to go for a THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA-type vibe, but Duvall's aimless script, lax direction, and unconditional love for his wife prevent it from accomplishing anything at all. (Unrated, 104 mins)
DER SAMURAI (Germany/UK - 2014; US release 2015)
This ultra low-budget, partially Indiegogo crowd-funded fusion of cult genres deserves some special mention for never self-consciously winking at the audience, like it's a prefab, self-aware cult movie. The film began as writer/director Till Kleinert's senior thesis for the German Film & Television Academy (though he already has one feature, 2009's THE LONGEST NIGHT, under his belt), and while its allegorical implications are perhaps a little too obvious, DER SAMURAI has enough wit, style, and spirit (cue the now-mandatory John Carpenter-style synth score!) to work quite well, and at just 80 minutes, it doesn't have chance to wear out its welcome. In a small German town near the Polish border, young police officer Jakob (Michel Diercks) lives with his grandmother (Ulrike Hanke-Haensch) and gets zero respect from his colleagues or the townies. He's mocked by his boss for hanging bags of meat in the woods to attract a wolf that's been terrorizing neighborhoods, and gets an oddly-sized package sent to the station addressed to "The Lonely Wolf." A strange phone call sends him to a seemingly abandoned hovel where he finds a nameless, transvestite squatter (Pit Bukowski) who says the package is for him. It's a samurai sword, and the squatter--Der Samurai--goes on a rampage of violence and destruction across the town with Jakob in pursuit. Der Samurai's constant chatter about how he and Jakob are one and the same and Jakob's constant failed attempts at displaying any sense of manhood or masculinity certainly make gay panic one very likely subtext. For a while, it seems as if Kleinert might even be going into Chuck Palahniuk territory with the way he seemingly goes out of his way to avoid having Jakob and Der Samurai in the shot together when other characters are involved. Der Samurai is Jakob's repressed homosexuality run rampant, trying to goad him into a killing spree to assert his hetero manliness. There's a lot of potential to be offensive here--some overseas poster art comes dangerously close to Uwe Boll territory, with the tag line "The deadliest thing from Germany since 1945," which erroneously sends the message that it's a shock value-type of film--but Kleinert directs with much self-confidence, never letting things get too jokey or over-the-top, and the performance by Bukowski in the title role--he looks like a deranged DNA experiment that fused Klaus Kinski, Jake Busey, and Carrot Top--should establish the character as a minor-league cult icon. (Unrated, 80 mins)
