POLAR (Germany/US - 2019) Directed by Jonas Akerlund. Written by Jayson Rothwell. Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Vanessa Hudgens, Katheryn Winnick, Matt Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Johnny Knoxville, Ruby O. Fee, Fei Ren, Anthony Grant, Josh Cruddas, Robert Maillet, Julian Richings, Lovina Yavari, Ayisha Issa, Anastasia Marinina, Pedro Miguel Arce, Ken Hall. (Unrated, 118 mins) Based on Victor Santos' Dark Horse graphic novel Polar: Came in From the Cold, the Netflix Original POLAR is garish, grotesque, highly-stylized, and absurdly over-the-top, which is pretty much the methodology of veteran music video director and occasional filmmaker Jonas Akerlund. Best known for his work with a variety of artists including Roxette, Madonna, Prodigy (he directed the video for their controversial hit "Smack My Bitch Up"), U2, Maroon 5, Beyonce, the Rolling Stones, Rammstein, Metallica, and Taylor Swift among many others, Akerlund has sporadically dabbled in film going back to 2003's meth addiction black comedy SPUN. POLAR is the first of two movies he has coming out in early 2019--the long-delayed Norwegian black metal saga LORDS OF CHAOS is due out in February but was shot back in 2016. Akerlund's approach to POLAR is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Some of it does, but it generally feels like an even more cartoonish JOHN WICK fused with elements of PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, and John Waters. It's the kind of film where nearly every scene ends with someone getting their brains blown out. It's the kind of film where a guy gets shot in the balls with a nail gun and then takes a drill to the head. It's the kind of film where the corpulent, cackling villain has a skin condition that requires repeated shots of him being slathered with thick, gooey lotion. It's the kind of film where a farting 500 lb guy is tortured and then shot to pieces, with wet, chunky bits of flesh and fat splattering all over the room and everyone in it, accompanied, for some reason, by the 1983 Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton hit "Islands in the Stream."
When just-retired assassin Michael Green (Johnny Knoxville) is killed by a team of hired guns in Chile, his about-to-retire colleague Duncan Vizla, aka "The Black Kaiser" (Mads Mikkelsen), is assigned by his handler Vivian (Katheryn Winnick) to find and eliminate the culprits. Vizla isn't interested--he's tired of the life and he just wants out. But he works for Damocles, a DC-based black ops outfit run by the nefarious Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas), and they have a rather ruthless clause in their contract: all assassins are forced into retirement at age 50, and if they die--either in the line of duty or by another unfortunate "accident"--and are without a next of kin, their pensions (Vizla has managed to save up $8 million) are reabsorbed by the Damocles Corporation. Mr. Blut drives up his profits by having his retiring assassins whacked, and when Vivian sends Vizla to Belarus to kill the guys who offed Green, he discovers that Green's killers worked for Blut and it's all a set-up to take him out. Of course, he manages to escape and tries to go off the grid in his secret hideaway, a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Montana. But Blut and his crew of killers relentlessly pursue him, eventually finding him and kidnapping the one friend he's made--emotionally troubled, withdrawn neighbor Camille (Vanessa Hudgens)--which inevitably turns Vizla into a one-man wrecking crew of vengeance.
Do any new hires at Damocles read their contract? Blut has these young assassins going after Vizla, but don't they know that if they stick around long enough, they'll be killed when they turn 50? Logic really isn't the priority here, but for a while, POLAR is reasonably entertaining in a trashy way. The gore and nonstop violent mayhem are almost comical in their excess (the scene where Vizla wipes out an entire army of Blut henchman with a pair of laser gloves linked to a pair of hidden machine guns is pretty impressive), and there's some gratuitous nudity and sex (including Mikkelsen ambushed and running around in the buff in a blizzard after an extremely vigorous seduction by a sultry assassin sent to kill him). There's also plenty of oddball humor, like Vizla having a piece of pie with an avuncular doctor (Ken Hall) who just gave him a rectal exam, or Camille talking Vizla into speaking to local schoolkids about his many travels around the world, which leads to him demonstrating ways to sever someone's arteries and asking the kids "Have any of you ever seen a dead body that's been in the sun for three weeks?" and passing a picture around.
But after a while, POLAR takes an ugly turn and stops being mindless fun. Vizla is found and taken in by Blut's goons, who then kidnap Camille and get her hooked on heroin like Gene Hackman in FRENCH CONNECTION II, while Blut spends four days torturing a shackled Vizla, slicing, dicing, snipping off pieces of flesh, gouging out his eye, etc. Mikkelsen is appropriately badass as the situation demands, Winnick has a definite femme fatale flair as the duplicitous Vivian, and Richard Dreyfuss drops by for an amusing cameo as Porter, an aging Damocles retiree who successfully managed to get away and now spends his days disheveled and shitfaced in a Detroit karaoke bar. Hudgens, looking a lot like a young Meg Tilly here, does what she can with a rather thinly-drawn character who, of course, has a dark secret that she's hiding, and Lucas, who previously worked with Akerlund in the barely-released 2013 dud SMALL APARTMENTS, dials it up to 11 as the world's least convincing megalomaniacal black ops mastermind, whether he's haplessly shouting "Guards!" when there aren't any around or standing helplessly as Vizla storms his compound and his security team says peace out and just leaves him on his own. But Akerlund also doesn't know when enough is enough. Watching Lucas squirt lotion and slather it all over himself isn't funny once, let alone ten times, and Akerlund spends entirely too much time with the obnoxious antics of the grating team of assassins sent to kill Vizla. At just under two hours, POLAR is bloated and overlong, and its go-for-broke attitude eventually grows exhausting. Akerlund even has the balls to re-stage the OLDBOY hallway scene, already several years past its sell-by date when REPO MEN did it nearly ten years ago, this time utilizing the editing skills of the dubious Doobie White, last seen hyper-cutting the most recent RESIDENT EVIL outing into headache-inducing incoherence.
THE WITCH (US/Brazil/UK/Canada - 2016) Written and directed by Robert Eggers. Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson, Bathsheba Garnett, Sarah Stephens, Julian Richings. (R, 92 mins)
The slowest of slow burners, THE WITCH immediately establishes debuting writer/director Robert Eggers as an extraordinarily promising new voice in cinema. A painstakingly executed 17th century period piece in which Eggers based part of his script on actual diaries and testimonies from the era, THE WITCH is the best horror film to come down the pike since THE BABADOOK and IT FOLLOWS, with Eggers masterfully cranking the dread-soaked tension until your stomach is in knots. Almost immediately after the the fade-in, the feeling of doom and despair quickly goes from palpable to overwhelming. Banished from their village for reasons the script never specifies--the film, subtitled "A New England Folktale," is a case study in presenting literal horrors surrounded by a much larger sense of ambiguity--a devoutly religious Puritan family is forced to make it on their own as they travel a distance to settle on the edge of a dark, vast woods. Patriarch William (busy British TV actor Ralph Ineson, best known to American audiences as David Brent's obnoxious pal Finchy on the original UK version of THE OFFICE and as Dagmer Cleftjaw on GAME OF THRONES) and wife Katherine (Kate Dickie, GAME OF THRONES' insane Lysa Arryn) have five children: eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is on the verge of womanhood; eldest son Caleb (the awesomely-named Harvey Scrimshaw) is just entering puberty and can't stop stealing curious glances at Thomasin's blossoming cleavage; younger twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) sing, play, and engage in mischief, spending a lot of time talking to Black Philip, the family goat; and infant Samuel. Not long after establishing their new home, Samuel seemingly vanishes into thin air as Thomasin covers her face playing peek-a-boo with him. Then the crops start dying. Then Katherine's cherished silver cup belonging to her late father goes missing and she blames Thomasin. There's a logical explanation for the cup's disappearance--William sold it for food and goods that they desperately needed--but the tensions start flaring and paranoia sets in, and the response to everything is to pray harder.
Thomasin cruelly jokes about being a witch to the twins, who believe her when Caleb returns naked and exhausted from a trip to the woods, possibly possessed by a malevolent force after he encounters a seductive, shape-shifting witch (Sarah Stephens), who may be the old crone (Bathsheba Garnett) we see absconding with baby Samuel and bathing in his blood after sacrificing him. Katherine is quick to blame everything on Thomasin (why?) and going back to their village is impossible (why?). The situation grows more dire with each passing minute, with William's intense faith and dutiful sense of innate guilt unable to keep evil from wreaking havoc on their lives. THE WITCH is set a few decades prior to the Salem Witch Trials, but Eggers toys with the idea that the finger-pointing hysteria was justified. The events in THE WITCH are not some kind of group psychosis borne of religious fanaticism and it's not just voices in their heads--it's real and it manifests itself in ways that make escape impossible. Even once they try to leave, it won't let them. Never mind the real witch casting a spell on Caleb or making itself known to the twins through a vessel like Black Philip. The horror in THE WITCH is not of the in-your-face, jump-scare variety that's the de rigeur norm for fright flicks today. No, THE WITCH takes the approach favored by ROSEMARY'S BABY and the first hour of THE EXORCIST: by the time the shit hits the fan, you're feeling so suffocated that you're practically gasping for air.
Eggers' stylistic choices are extremely effective as well. There's a definite Stanley Kubrick inspiration in the shot compositions, in the almost exclusive use of natural lighting in Jarin Blaschke's cinematography (think BARRY LYNDON), in Caleb's encounter with the witch, which is an obvious affectionate nod to Room 237 in THE SHINING, and in the chilling score, with its mix of strings and shrieking, cacophonous voices recalling unforgettable moments of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Eggers' almost obsessive pursuit of the harsh realism of the time brings to mind both the perfectionism of Kubrick and the rigorously-achieved detail of something like Bela Tarr's THE TURIN HORSE or Kelly Reichardt's MEEK'S CUTOFF, and the entire aura of THE WITCH is reminiscent of both THE CRUCIBLE reinterpreted as an exercise in Satanic horror and of Avery Crounse's 1983 film EYES OF FIRE, a low-budget, rustic-looking 18th century colonial period piece that has a small but very devoted following today (it's surprising that no one's resurrected it on Blu-ray by now). Other than Ineson and Dickie, who aren't exactly household names in the US, and a brief early appearance by Canadian cult actor Julian Richings (CUBE) as the village elder who orders the family exiled, the cast is populated by unknowns, which only makes their performances that much more gritty and utterly believable. Ineson and Dickie are superb, and Scrimshaw has one haunting moment that he plays to absolute perfection, but this should be a starmaker of a performance by Taylor-Joy, who's dragged through the ringer and required to run the gamut of emotions throughout.
A big hit at Sundance a year ago and arriving in theaters now with the seal of approval from none other than the Satanic Temple, THE WITCH was acquired by A24, who opted to roll it out nationwide. An arthouse film like this is a tough sell to a mainstream audience, and if the grumbling at the end of the matinee I saw on opening day is any indication, this isn't going to find an appreciative audience expecting cheap jolts to distract them from their phones. Eggers' devotion to period detail is as unrelentingly fanatical as the religious zealotry of his characters. It's such that the dialogue is often difficult to decipher--the accents are thick and there's a lot of "thee," "thou," and "wouldst" rolling off the actors' tongues (it's a pretty safe bet that this will be the only film of 2016 to have an actor shouting "Didst thou make an unholy pact with that goat?"). It's also very much a film in tune with the politics and culture of today, with its allegorical approach to the tunnelvision of fundamentalism and inherent distrust of anything outside of religion, while at the same time doing so without mocking them and providing no easy answers since, at least in the context of this film and its depiction of the early-to-mid 17th century, those so-called zealots have valid reasons to be very afraid. THE WITCH is a boldly original and uncompromising film that's insidious in the way it digs its hooks into you and doesn't let go. It's an exercise in vivid, complex world-building that takes its time drawing you into its orbit, and if given a chance, it's the kind of work whose chilling, disturbing effectiveness stays with you long after the movie ends. This is the first great film of 2016.
The globetrotting actioner SKIN TRADE is a bloody, bone-crushingly entertaining throwback to the mismatched buddy/cop movies of the late '80s and early '90s. It occasionally suffers from budget limitations and has more plot and extraneous characters than it really needs, but it delivers the goods where it matters, and has its heart in the right place with an obviously sincere concern for human trafficking on the part of producer/co-writer/star Dolph Lundgren. Lundgren is Nick Cassidy, a plays-by-his-own-rules Newark cop obsessed with nailing Serbian crime lord Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman) who, with his four sons, oversees a global operation involving the trafficking of drugs, young women and teenage girls. Meanwhile, Bangkok detective Tony Vitayakul (ONG BAK's Tony Jaa) has lost contact with his girlfriend/informant Min (Celina Jade), who went undercover to be abducted by the Cambodia wing of Dragovic's operation. Back in Newark, Cassidy nabs Dragovic at a shipyard after a shootout results in the death of one of the criminal's sons, but Dragovic jumps bail to Cambodia after his goons blow up Cassidy's house with a rocket launcher, killing his wife and daughter. Clinging to life and without the knowledge of his boss Costello (Peter Weller) and FBI agent Reed (BLACK DYNAMITE's Michael Jai White), Cassidy flees both the hospital and the country, heading to Southeast Asia to exact revenge on Dragovic and bring down his operation. The Feds are in hot pursuit, and through a convoluted set of circumstances, Vitayakul spends a good chunk of time thinking Cassidy killed his partner, but eventually they team up to take out Dragovic...if they don't kill each other first!
A DTV-level film that somehow made it into some theaters, SKIN TRADE suffers from some dubious-looking greenscreen and digital work, though only Lundgren can convincingly pull off looking cool as he walks away from a CGI explosion. A weathered and craggy-looking Lundgren, augmented by some facial scarring makeup, is an engagingly gritty hero and convincingly sells Cassidy's obsessive rage (Lundgren is a better actor than people think). He works well with Jaa, especially in a pair of extensive fight scenes, but it's nearly an hour into the film before they even pair up, as the script works through a lot of backstory and characters. One wishes White had a little more to do--one pivotal plot point hinges on his character, but because he's such an engaging screen presence in action films (and a solid actor as well) that it does seem like he's getting table scraps here with an overall minor supporting role. Perlman chews the scenery with a thick Eastern European accent, and Weller gets a couple of dyspeptic outbursts as Cassidy's pissed-off lieutenant (disappointingly, the filmmakers deprive Weller of the chance to demand Cassidy's gun and shield to stash away in the top drawer of his desk). Director Ekachai Uekrongtham previously helmed the 2004 Muay Thai boxing drama BEAUTIFUL BOXER, but otherwise has little experience is this genre, with most of his work being straight drama aside from the 2008 horror film THE COFFIN. He does a good job with the actors, but one suspects Lundgren and Jaa--both experienced directors themselves--had significant input in the staging of the action. SKIN TRADE doesn't really offer anything new, but it does enthusiastically deliver exactly what it promises. (R, 96 mins)
EJECTA (Canada - 2015)
Fans of the linguistic viral zombie outbreak cult classic PONTYPOOL (2008) will be interested in EJECTA, as both were scripted by Tony Burgess and feature Lisa Houle (PONTYPOOL's radio station manager Sydney Briar) in a key role. Much the way PONTYPOOL offered a rare lead for a familiar and constantly jobbing familiar face (Stephen McHattie), EJECTA does the same for veteran Canadian character actor Julian Richings. Richings is William Cassidy, a loner still haunted by an alien abduction he experienced 39 years earlier. Cassidy also blogs about UFO sightings, alien encounters, and government conspiracies under the name "Spider Nevi," and he reaches out to young documentary filmmaker and Spider Nevi superfan Joe Sullivan (Adam Seybold) about an upcoming Carrington Event or "mass ejection," a solar flare that may throw Earth off its orbit. Instead, they encounter an alien running rampant through the woods, and something--exactly what doesn't become clear until much later--happens that lands Cassidy in a Guantanamo-like bunker where he's interrogated and tortured by the sadistic Dr. Tobin (Houle, in a quite a menacing contrast to her PONTYPOOL character), an operative for a mysterious shadow wing of the government who doesn't hesitate to shoot military personnel in the head if she doesn't like the answers they give or if they fail to respond to her requests with appropriate speed.
Burgess and directors Matt Wiele and Chad Archibald juggle three overlapping stories: Cassidy and Sullivan encountering an alien in the woods; Tobin's soldiers looking for the missing Sullivan; and the psychological and physical torture of Cassidy by Tobin. It's the Cassidy-Tobin dynamic that's the most interesting element of EJECTA, so of course it takes a back seat until late in the game as the directors instead focus more on the other two storylines, which seem to exist simply to pander to the found-footage and hand-held crowd, whether it's Sullivan's documentary about "Spider Nevi" or the military search, which plays out entirely in green night-vision. There's some thought-provoking ideas in the Cassidy-Tobin sections of the film, particularly in the way Cassidy withstands every brutality Tobin has inflicted on him because after what he experienced 39 years ago, nothing can terrify or hurt him, and in fact, her abuse only makes him stronger. In the end, despite some unexpected elements in the home stretch--including some unabashed KEEP-worship in some of the music and visuals--and a pair of terrific performances by Richings and Houle, EJECTA isn't much more than yet another shaky-cam, faux-doc, found footage alien invasion movie with some pretty dodgy visual effects. Fans of PONTYPOOL--one of the best horror films of the last decade--will find it frustrating because, like that film, EJECTA could've brought something new to a played-out subgenre. It's still better than any SKYLINE or AREA 51 or most of its type. Despite its many problems, it's worth one watch for the work of Richings and Houle, and I have to admit that the shout-out to THE KEEP was a pleasant surprise that won some points in its favor. (Unrated, 82 mins)
