SLEEPLESS (Italy - 2001) Directed by Dario Argento. Written by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini and Carlo Lucarelli. Cast: Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli, Gabriele Lavia, Rossella Falk, Paolo Maria Scalondro, Roberto Zibetti, Roberto Accornero, Barbara Lerici, Barbara Mautino, Conchita Puglisi, Massimo Sarchielli, Elena Marchesini, Guido Morbello, Aldo Massasso, Diego Casale, Alessandra Comerio, Daniela Fazzolari. (Unrated, 117 mins) Those Dario Argento fans who lament his decline after his trailblazing run from 1970's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE to 1987's OPERA often speak of those later films as if he just suddenly started making terrible movies out of the blue. The shift was gradual, though it's easy to let an outright fiasco like 1998's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA cloud your judgment and taint everything surrounding it in his filmography. While things started to get precipitously bad around 2007's MOTHER OF TEARS, Argento's early 21st century output following PHANTOM--SLEEPLESS, THE CARD PLAYER, DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK?--has its merits and those films aren't as bad as their reputations suggest, even if they're unquestionably second-tier Argento. Such is the case with 2001's SLEEPLESS, a minor giallo in the Argento canon in retrospect but an important one at the time, as it was such an unabashed "give the fans what they want" movie that SHAMELESS might've been a better title. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was met with such hostility and was so flatly rejected by everyone, that SLEEPLESS served as an olive branch, made with the promise of being the old Argento you know and love, and he even got disbanded DEEP RED and SUSPIRIA composers Goblin to reunite for the soundtrack.
If Argento wasn't such a gifted stylist, the greatest-hits pandering he engages in throughout SLEEPLESS would almost be embarrassing. He's like a legendary classic rocker coming off an ambitious, badly-received concept album and a costly tour that flopped and is now determined to win back the fans by promising to play nothing but the old hits. There's endless, constant callbacks to his earlier classics in scene after scene after scene--a teeth-bashing murder and a set-up similar to the "walking dummy" bit from DEEP RED; a riff on the way someone suddenly appears in the frame like the climax of TENEBRAE; murder sequences in the rain like TENEBRAE, and another bit with a woman outside a train station that recalls Jessica Harper waiting for a taxi in a torrential downpour outside the airport in SUSPIRIA, or Eleonora Giorgi outside the library in INFERNO; a parent trying to cover for a their murderer child in PHENOMENA; an aging protagonist with a disability like Karl Malden's blind earwitness to murder in THE CAT O'NINE TAILS; a locked, abandoned villa that holds a secret, much like DEEP RED; a long tracking shot across the carpeted floor of a theater leading to a brutal murder that's strongly reminiscent of the famous Louma crane shot in TENEBRAE; and most important to all of Argento's gialli, the notion of the amateur sleuth who's hung up on a barely-remembered and seemingly insignificant detail that's ultimately the key to the mystery.
SLEEPLESS opens with a brief scene in Turin in 1983, as detective Ulisse Moretti (Max von Sydow) comforts a little boy who was hiding and listening as his mother was brutally murdered via an English horn being repeatedly, violently crammed into her mouth and throat. She's the latest victim of a "killer dwarf" in what's been dubbed by the press as "The Dwarf Murders." Cut to 2000 and the bizarre murders start once again, and though the murderer claims to be the Killer Dwarf, it's immediately deemed the work of a copycat, since the primary suspect in the Dwarf Murders drowned in what was ruled a suicide 17 years earlier, though his body washed away and was never found. The current detective on the case, Manni (Paolo Maria Scalandro) has no leads and reaches out to pick the brain of the retired Moretti, now an elderly widower with a heart condition and a spotty memory and seemingly in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's. Though he's foggy on some of the details, Moretti is still brought in as a consultant and ends up reconnecting with Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), the now-grown little boy from 1983 who's coincidentally been summoned from Rome to Turin by his childhood friend Lorenzo (Roberto Zibetti) when the Dwarf Murders become front-page news once again.
Much like Karl Malden and James Franciscus in THE CAT O'NINE TAILS, David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi in DEEP RED, Anthony Franciosa and Christian Borromeo in TENEBRAE, and Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasence in PHENOMENA, von Sydow's Moretti and Dionisi's Giacomo become yet another in a long line of Argento's unlikely sleuth teams resorting to their own investigation when the police either dismiss their concerns or have reached a dead-end. As you might guess, as they get closer to the truth, their lives are in danger (someone attempts to poison Giacomo's beer in a crowded bar at one point, but Lorenzo ends up drinking it and almost dies), and numerous red herrings abound, among them Lorenzo, his Giacomo-hating, asshole father (DEEP RED and INFERNO co-star Gabriele Lavia), and the killer dwarf's still-grieving, embittered mother (a semi-retired Rossella Falk, veteran of numerous vintage non-Argento gialli like Luigi Bazzoni's THE FIFTH CORD, Paolo Cavara's BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, and Umberto Lenzi's SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS). And, as usual, the key to the mystery involves some obscure detail, in this case a little-known nursery rhyme for which Moretti can't remember the words, and a strange hissing sound heard amidst his mother's blood-gurgled screams that has stuck with Giacomo all these years and he still can't identify. There's absolutely nothing new here, but it's fun to see all of these Argento tropes being served up like giallo comfort food, not to mention the immeasurable boost it gets from the regal screen presence of the great von Sydow.
For these reasons, and in looking at Argento's subsequent decline through the benefit of hindsight, SLEEPLESS has aged better than expected. Much of that is due to the terrific transfer on Scorpion's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), which represents the first proper presentation the film has had in America. Artisan Entertainment picked it up for the US and released it straight-to-video in the fall of 2001, but the DVD was a subpar transfer, and to add insult to injury, was only offered in 1.33:1 pan & scan. Of course, this was prior to the days of widescreen HDTV being the standard, but even then, most DVDs offered both widescreen and 1.33:1 "fullscreen" versions--either as two-sided discs or two different packages--the fullscreen option there for those holdouts who still couldn't grasp the concept of letterboxing. Now, at last, SLEEPLESS looks and sounds like it should, but it still has its faults that keep it firmly entrenched as second-rate Argento. The initially-welcome familiarity becomes a slight liability after a while, as one gets over the joy of Argento being Argento again and realizes that, no matter how much better this is than PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, it kinda just becomes Dario Argento's homage to Dario Argento. The killer, once revealed, starts using a weird vocal affect that sounds less like a sinister serial killer and more like a lost Festrunk brother; and at just under two hours, it's entirely too long, which makes the film's final minutes even more bizarre in the way Argento has the closing credits roll over the final scene as shit is still happening. It probably sounded like an outside-the-box idea on paper as a way of messing with the audience, but in execution, it's jarring and distracting, like the film is already 20 minutes too long but now he's in a mad rush to wrap it up. He would do the same thing over a final scene with Stefania Rocca in THE CARD PLAYER, but it was in a much less obtrusive fashion. SLEEPLESS is a far from perfect film, and it doesn't even crack the top ten of any "Best of Argento" lists, but at the same time, it also doesn't belong anywhere near the bottom, and at least now, with a quality Blu-ray presentation, it can be assessed on its own admittedly flawed terms by devout Argentophiles.
Originally titled KURSK, the Luc Besson-produced THE COMMAND is a strangely inert dramatization of the Kursk disaster in 2000, when two explosions--one small, followed by a second large enough to register on the Richter scale--sank a nuclear-powered Russian submarine that was part of a training exercise on the Barents Sea. Of the 118 officers onboard, 23 initially survived the explosions but all perished within the next couple of days due in large part to the inexcusably slow response of a Russian government desperate to save face and avoid national humiliation. The Russian Navy even stubbornly refused offers of rescue assistance from both England and Norway, who had ships in the vicinity that could be there in a matter of hours. The Kursk disaster was a huge embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, who became president just four months earlier and was roundly criticized for his handling of the tragedy. Adapted from Robert Moore's 2002 book A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy by screenwriter Robert Rodat (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN), THE COMMAND doesn't have the courage of its convictions--or the 118 men who died--in its decision to make no mention of Putin at all, instead letting faulty, outdated equipment take the blame and the fictional composite Admiral Petrenko (Max von Sydow) serve as the villain, an old guard, bureaucratic company man overruling fleet commander Admiral Grudzinsky (TONI ERDMANN's Peter Simonischek), refusing help from British Commodore Russell (Colin Firth), and holding press conferences where he's forced to shout down angry wives and order them removed from the room when they start making a scene. Despite the kid-gloves treatment of Putin, it's these scenes that are the strongest in THE COMMAND, with the mutual respect between Russell and Grudzinsky tossed aside when Grudzinsky is removed from the situation after he goes rogue and takes England and Norway up on their offers to assist with a rescue. That rescue never happens because Petrenko decides Russia's honor--and the guarding any potential military secrets the rescuers might encounter--takes precedence over human lives ("They know what they signed up for," an unknown voice is heard saying over the phone). That voice is as close as THE COMMAND gets to a Putin appearance, as all scenes involving the president, reportedly a major supporting character in Rodat's script, were tossed in the shredder before shooting even began.
The submarine sequences aren't exactly the second coming of DAS BOOT, largely because we already know the outcome. There's some rudimentary characterization in the early going with a rushed wedding sequence that evokes memories of THE DEER HUNTER while showing the relative poverty of the Russian military in the way the officers make so little money that they have to pawn their watches to pay for champagne for the reception. Once on the sub, actors like Matthias Schoenaerts and August Diehl do solid work as men displaying valor and fighting to stay alive (and Schoenaerts goes above and beyond, holding his breath in a long scene underwater), but it's the scenes above water, with Schoenaerts' pregnant wife (Lea Seydoux) being coldly stonewalled at every turn in her search for news, that have a more dramatic impact. With an abundance of dodgy greenscreen and video-gamey CGI, it's clear that director Thomas Vinterberg (who worked with Schoenaerts on 2015's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) has ventured as far as he can from the minimalist "Dogme '95" movement he co-founded with his much more controversial friend Lars von Trier. But he still indulges in pointless wankery like the first 20 minutes of the film being in a windowboxed 1.66 aspect ratio, then opening up to 2.35 for the next 80 minutes before returning to the windowboxing for the last act. It might make artistic sense if there was a rhyme or reason to it--like one aspect ratio for the submarine scenes and another for above water--but that's not the case. Filmed in 2017, THE COMMAND also suffers from inadvertent bad timing in its eventual straight-to-VOD US release, as the harrowing HBO miniseries CHERNOBYL did an infinitely more effective job of depicting the indifference of the Russian government to the suffering of its people in a devastating tragedy. The late Michael Nyqvist (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, JOHN WICK) succumbed to cancer during production, and while Vinterberg said the actor completed his scenes before his death and initial festival screenings mentioned him being in it, he appears to have been cut from the final release despite his name remaining at the very end of the closing credits cast crawl. (PG-13, 119 mins)
EL CHICANO (US - 2019)
Advertised as the first Latino superhero movie, EL CHICANO attracted some attention during its brief theatrical run when producer/co-writer/internet tough guy Joe Carnahan (NARC, SMOKIN' ACES, THE GREY) read some negative reviews and promptly began attacking those critics on social media. He ended up deleting his Twitter account and eventually admitted he was "punching down" to generate publicity for the movie. A dick move that's pretty much on-brand, but it didn't help, as it opened in 11th place and topped out at 605 screens, grossing just over $1 million. In the end, EL CHICANO is hardly a barrio BLACK PANTHER, as Carnahan and director/co-writer Ben Hernandez Bray (a veteran stuntman and the second unit director on several Carnahan films) don't really do anything interesting beyond setting their story in East L.A. In a prologue set 20 years ago, twins Diego and Pedro and their friend Jose witness masked avenger El Chicano brutally murder Jose's father, crime lord Shadow (Emilio Rivera). In the present day, Diego (Raul Castillo) is a dedicated cop long-estranged from Pedro, who chose a life of crime and has just committed suicide shortly after being paroled. Diego and his hothead partner Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) are told by an informer (Noel Gugliemi) that Pedro didn't kill himself, but rather, was part of a massacre orchestrated by Jose, who took over his father's East L.A. empire and now goes by Shotgun (David Castaneda). Diego discovers a trail of clues that Pedro has left for him, revealing a storage unit where Pedro kept everything he needed for his plan to resurrect the long-dormant legend of "El Chicano" and rid the area of the likes of Shotgun once and for all. Unable to nail Shadow by the book and watched over by his no-bullshit captain (George Lopez), Diego is inspired to pick up with Pedro left off and become the new El Chicano, especially when Shadow partners with Mexican cartel boss El Gallo (Sal Lopez) and his son Jaws (Roberto Fabian Garcia, aka Chicano rap star Mr. Criminal, who also performs the theme song) to tighten his stranglehold on the area.
The hard-R EL CHICANO, which also counts Carnahan bro Frank Grillo as a co-producer, gets off to a decent start, but soon becomes a rote checklist of genre cliches and imagery swiped from other comic book and graphic novel films. It leans heavily on THE PUNISHER and especially THE DARK KNIGHT by the end, which sets up a sequel that looks pretty doubtful given the tepid response from critics and audiences. Castillo does a decent Christian Bale impression in his stoical performance, but Castaneda doesn't get the space to create a complex character like he did in the JCVD thriller WE DIE YOUNG. The familiar faces in the supporting cast aren't put to good use--Rivera and Gugliemi are killed off shortly after they appear, Aimee Garcia (GEORGE LOPEZ, DEXTER) is wasted in a thankless role as Diego's wife, and Mexican telenovela star and El Chapo bestie Kate del Castillo turns up at the end to set up that unlikely sequel. (R, 108 mins)
BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK (US - 2019)
Having cut her teeth on horror anthologies starting with a producer credit on V/H/S, writer/director Roxanne Benjamin helmed one of strongest segments of SOUTHBOUND and the weakest of XX. She splits the difference with her feature-length debut BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK, which takes a terrific premise and doesn't really do anything interesting with it. Relative newcomer Karina Fontes is well-cast as Wendy, a part-time summer guide at the fictional Brighton Rock National Park (the film was shot in Idyllwild, CA). Wendy doesn't take the job as seriously as she should--she's always late for work and is considered a lightweight "indoor kid" by her more experienced colleagues--and as the season's winding down into fall, she decides to prove to the naysayers, namely her friend Maya (Emily Althaus), that she can hack it by offering to take Maya's assignment for the day: switching out seasonal signs and postings along one of the park's rougher trails. Wendy is absent-minded and easily-distracted, so of course she misplaces her map, gets lost, and wanders off the trail. She sends a selfie to Maya from the peak of a rock formation, to which Maya replies "Who's behind you in the pic?" Wendy sees what she's talking about in a nearby ravine: a dead body. She tries to call for help but killed her phone battery taking selfies and playing '80s music (Oingo Boingo and Expose on the soundtrack) while she danced along the trails all day, and she's in a remote area where radio reception is poor. What she manages to ascertain is that it's getting dark, they don't know where she is, and she's to stand guard over what might be a crime scene until the authorities can start looking for her in the morning. Then affable but vaguely sinister hiker Red (Casey Adams) shows up.
The initial set-up of BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK seems primed for an effective survivalist B-movie where "indoor kid" Wendy grows up and sees what she's made of. While it's no fault of Fontes, who does a good job in what's effectively a solo show after the first ten minutes (the only established cast member is veteran character actor John Getz, seen briefly as a local sheriff), Wendy's hard to root for as she makes one dumb decision after another. Offended that her co-workers think she can't handle the trail--and they're absolutely right--she proceeds to do everything possible to make her predicament worse, with the low point being when she freaks out and thinks something's behind her and ends up misting herself with capsaicin bear spray. Benjamin wrings some suspense out of shadows, breezes, and other random nature sounds and uses some effective editing techniques, but once the premise is established, BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK just spins its wheels to an unsatisfying conclusion. (R, 87 mins)
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (US - 2015) Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt. Cast: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Gwendoline Christie, Joonas Suotamo, Simon Pegg, Pip Torrens, Kiran Shah, Greg Grunberg, Kenny Baker, Warwick Davis, Ken Leung, Iko Uwais, Harriet Walter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster. (PG-13, 135 mins) Picking up the STAR WARS saga a decade after the mixed-bag prequel trilogy, fan expectations were high with franchise overlord George Lucas removing himself from the equation and Episode VII being handed to polarizing director and lens flare enthusiast J.J. Abrams. Abrams himself is coming off a career nadir with the abysmal STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, a film that everyone loved until they actually saw it. Taking place 30 or so years after the events of RETURN OF THE JEDI, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS brings together two protagonists--lone warrior/scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), from the desert planet Jakku, and morally-conflicted Stormtrooper FN-2187, or "Finn" (ATTACK THE BLOCK's John Boyega)--and a rolling droid called BB-8, who has an important piece of a map in his possession, placed there by Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (EX MACHINA's Oscar Isaac). The Empire may have fallen after the destruction of the second Death Star, but The First Order has risen in its place, overseen by the nefarious, masked Kylo Ren (GIRLS' Adam Driver) and ambitious General Hux (Isaac's EX MACHINA co-star Domnhall Gleeson, channeling Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin), who work at the behest of Supreme Leader Snoke (motion-captured Andy Serkis). The map contains the key to the whereabouts of the long-missing Luke Skywalker, and with Kylo Ren's Stormtroopers in pursuit, Rey, Finn, and BB-8 commandeer a junked Millennium Falcon and cross paths with none other than Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew in some closeups, but played mostly by stuntman Joonas Suotamo due to 71-year-old Mayhew's disabling knee issues), who are surprised to find their old ship. As the hunt for BB-8 intensifies, the heroes end up joining the Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), who's desperately searching for the whereabouts of her lost brother, Luke.
It's simply impossible to replicate the groundbreaking, game-changing phenomenon that was the original STAR WARS trilogy, which still stand among the most influential films ever made. It's clear that Abrams and co-scripters Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) and EMPIRE STRIKES BACK/RETURN OF THE JEDI co-writer Lawrence Kasdan (THE BIG CHILL) have molded THE FORCE AWAKENS as the "give the fans what they want" nostalgia trip. There's nothing wrong with that, but one must keep their expectations in check. It's filled with exciting action, fun performances, and lots of trips down Memory Lane to get a good sentimental streak going, but that's really all it does. It works for the most part, and you'd almost have to be a total dick to not get a big, stupid grin on your face over Han's and Chewbacca's first appearance 40 minutes in when they discover the Millennium Falcon ("Chewie...we're home!"). The same goes for the eventual appearances of Fisher's Leia (she and Han still harboring feelings for one another, and both feeling a sense of responsibility for the rise of The First Order), Anthony Daniels' C-3PO, and an offline R2-D2 (81-year-old Kenny Baker now credited as "R2-D2 Consultant"), who comes back to life late in the film to provide an important piece of the puzzle involving Luke's location. Mark Hamill returns as Luke--obviously to help set up what must be a larger role in Episode VIII--but don't be fooled by his second billing: there are Hitchcock cameos that last longer than Hamill's appearance in THE FORCE AWAKENS.
There's also a trip to a bar run by 1000-year-old pirate Maz Kanata (motion-captured by 12 YEARS A SLAVE's Lupita Nyong'o) that looks very similar to the legendary Mos Eisley Cantina, and there's numerous callbacks and parallels to previous saga plotlines, from Rey living in the hollowed remnants of an AT-AT Walker to a father-son confrontation that looks very similar to the Cloud City showdown between Luke and Darth Vader in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The set-up itself is very similar to STAR WARS, with BB-8 carrying a crucial piece of information and teaming up with Rey, much like the circumstances that brought R2-D2 and Luke together. Franchise newcomers Boyega and Ridley acquit themselves well, particularly Ridley, whose fierce energy makes her an inspiring heroine worthy of becoming a next-gen Luke Skywalker. Once he removes the helmet, Driver is seriously miscast as the sulking, pouting Kylo Ren, and regardless of that being the intent with the character, it turns Kylo Ren into little more than a millennial Darth Vader with daddy issues. For those who saw the original trilogy when it was new, the real fun of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is seeing the old-school icons back in action. Even though only Han and Chewbacca get any significant screen time, it's great fun seeing them still doing what they do and bickering like an old married couple. Ford gets by on his legend alone, often delivering his dialogue with a "Look, Abrams...how much longer do I have to be here?" tone that sort-of works considering he's playing an older and even more cynical Han that gels rather well with the actor's grouchy persona. He gets a huge laugh out of fans when Rey says "You're the Han Solo?! You made the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs!" to which Han angrily snaps "12 parsecs!" then, shaking his head and harumphing in incredulous disgust under his breath, "14..." Abrams and the writers lean heavily on that sense of established goodwill and unlike the prequel trilogy, it moves quickly, gets pretty much all of the exposition out of the way in the traditional opening crawl, and doesn't dawdle around with political machinations and trade federation debates or get bogged down with George Lucas' complete post-JEDI inability to grasp human interaction. There have been some analogies made comparing this to a long-floundering classic rock band getting a few original members back together for a new album and going on a tour to play one song from it while the rest of the set is all the beloved hits from the past. That perfectly describes STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: it's the real thing, it's got enough of the key components, it's fun while you're watching it and maybe you love it now because you really don't like the prequels and this gives you everything you want. But when the dust on Jakku settles, is it really going to hold up against the original trilogy?
It's hard to fathom the idea that there was actually a script for the Russian sci-fi epic BRANDED. It feels more like a pitch that the writing/directing team of Jamie Bradshaw and Alexander Doulerain came up with between bong hits: "OK, seriously. Duuuude, listen. What if the brands like, fuckin' came to life, man? No, no, no, dude...seriously, check this shit out. Seriously, I'm not fuckin' around, just hear me out. Like, we don't decide what to buy...but it's like the things we buy control us, man! Dude! The fuckin' corporations! Am I right? It's not science-fiction! It's happening now! Our thoughts are not our own! They decide, man!" A disaster of ludicrous proportions, BRANDED was stealthily dumped into theaters for a week last fall by Lionsgate under its Roadside Attractions banner, where it somehow grossed $350,000. I can't imagine anyone who bought a ticket was still in attendance when the closing credits rolled. Russian marketing hotshot Misha Galkin (Ed Stoppard of the UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS revival and son of Oscar-winning screenwriter Tom) has been overseeing the advertising of American products and brand names in Moscow while working under powerful ad honcho and American spy Bob Gibbons (Jeffrey Tambor). Gibbons has some strange connection to god-like marketing guru Joseph Pascal (Max von Sydow), who's hatching some master plan from a high-tech fortress in the Polynesian Islands to alter the world's perception of beauty ("We will make fat the new fabulous!" he says). Meanwhile, Misha is working on a side project and falls in love with Gibbons' visiting niece Abby (Leelee Sobieski), helping her produce a cosmetic surgery reality show. That idea goes down the toilet (joining everything else about BRANDED) when their star goes into a coma during surgery. Gibbons dies, Abby disappears, and Misha becomes a fugitive. Six years later, Pascal's "branding" has taken hold and the overweight and obese are now the supermodels and the world's beauty standard, and Abby finds Misha working as a cow herder (with Stoppard sporting one of the worst glued-on beards ever seen), and reveals that they have a son. Misha sacrifices a red cow and bathes in its blood, which allows him to start seeing visions of gelatinous, worm-like creatures surrounding everyone and everything, and he's convinced that these are brands coming to life and controlling our desires for products and consumption. Misha decides to fight the power by starting a guerrilla "death cow" ad campaign that bankrupts the fast food industry. Misha starts using the same technique on other mind-controlling corporations, which results in brands mutating into giant CGI monster form and attacking Moscow. Oh, and the whole thing is narrated by a talking cow constellation in the sky.
This actually got funded, filmed, acquired by a major company, and distributed in theaters for people to pay money to see. It's one of the most bewilderingly awful films to come down the pike in years, filled with actors who don't seem to understand what's going on, subpar CGI effects, toothless jabs at TV advertising, movie trailers, and the corporate power structure, and satire that's simply too heavy-handed to work. Stoppard and Sobieski just look lost, Tambor exits halfway through and hopefully got to enjoy the rest of his paid Moscow vacation, and von Sydow is clearly elsewhere, never interacting with the main actors and in front of an unconvincing greenscreen, obviously reading lines that were just given to him moments before (there's no way he read this script--he made sure the money was deposited and showed up for a day or two, tops). Whatever ambitions Bradshaw and Doulerain had are obliterated by their utter ineptitude as writers and directors and their complete inability to establish any kind of narrative drive or pacing of the story. Pages upon pages of dialogue are spouted by the actors and the first half of the film feels like THEY LIVE re-enacted by marketing students forced to take an improv class. But when the giant monsters in Misha's head start attacking Moscow GODZILLA and MOTHRA-style, the film starts to look like its makers are just baked out of their skulls and the entire project is cashed. The stunningly bad BRANDED has to be seen to be disbelieved. (R, 106 mins)
DOOMSDAY BOOK (South Korea - 2012)
This three-part anthology film began shooting in 2006, with segments to be directed by Yim Pil-Sung, Kim Jee-Woon (A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, I SAW THE DEVIL), and Han Jae-Rim. Yim and Kim finished their segments but the financing fell apart before Han's contribution was started. The project was shelved until 2011 when new backers entered the picture and the third segment--different from what Han was planning--ended up being directed by Yim, with some uncredited collaboration from Kim. Opening with Yim's "Brave New World," DOOMSDAY BOOK presents three different apocalypse scenarios, kicking off with a 28 DAYS LATER-type zombie virus outbreak in Seoul stemming from bacteria in a rotten apple that made its way through a recycling plant and into some cow feed and into the eventual beef consumed at a hibachi restaurant by the hapless Seok-woo (Ryo Seung-Byum), from whose home the apple came in the first place. Of course, flesh-eating mayhem consumes the city in a rather tired story that makes its points in ten minutes but lasts another 30, though there is one great gag involving characters in an online video game even being infected by the virus. Things take a much more philosophical turn in Kim's "Heavenly Creature," set in a future where worker robots are commonplace. One such robot, an outdated RU4 unit called In-Myung (voiced by THE HOST's Park Hae-Il) works at a Buddhist monastery and has achieved some kind of sentient autonomy and announces he's reached enlightenment. A technician is called and finds nothing functionally wrong with In-Myung but the corporate CEO decides, in the best interests of the human race, that In-Myung and any RU4s still operational need to be destroyed immediately. But the monks--who profess to live a "simple" life but all have their own cell phones--see In-Myung as a new spiritual leader. Finally, in "Happy Birthday," the segment shot in 2011, a little girl placing a replacement order on a dubious web site for a damaged 8-ball for her billiards-obsessed dad and uncle coincides with the uncle spotting a UFO and two years later, the 8-ball is finally on its way--in the form of a giant meteor speeding toward Earth.
"Brave New World" is easily the least of the three tenuously-connected stories (though the rotten apple makes a cameo appearance in "Happy Birthday"), but the other two can almost function as stand-alone short films. "Heavenly Creature" is beautifully shot and quite moving at times, with In-Myung earning its place as one of sci-fi cinema's most memorable robot characters. "Happy Birthday" is the kind of inventive, clever, absurdist silliness that probably would've put a smile on Douglas Adams' face. Even the image of a giant 8-ball in the sky looks like it belongs on the cover of a lost Adams novel. As the poet laureate Jim Steinman once wrote for the philosopher Meat Loaf, "two out of three ain't bad," and once you get past its relatively weak opener, DOOMSDAY BOOK is an admittedly uneven but alternately powerful, profound, silly, and hilarious anthology that's well worth a look. (Unrated, 114 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
SOLOMON KANE (UK/Czech Republic/France - 2009; 2012 US release)
Written and directed by Michael J. Bassett. Cast: James Purefoy, Pete Postlethwaite, Max von Sydow, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Alice Krige, Jason Flemyng, Mackenzie Crook, Philip Winchester, Patrick Hurd-Wood, Sam Roukin, Isabel Bassett. (R, 100 mins)
"Is there some reason SOLOMON KANE hasn't been released here yet?" -uttered innumerable times and posted on countless genre message boards by an undetermined number of US moviegoers since early 2010.
It's been one of the great moviegoing mysteries of late as to exactly why it took three years for SOLOMON KANE to get a US release. It's a large-scale, medieval supernatural fantasy based on a character created by Robert E. Howard of Conan fame, filled with action and special effects, and received generally positive if not exactly exuberant reviews overseas. It's been on DVD and Blu-ray in the rest of the world since 2010, and was even up on YouTube in its entirety until The Weinstein Company, via their genre subsidiary Radius, acquired it for the US and gave it a VOD and limited theatrical release this weekend. You know a movie's been detained in distribution limbo for a while when second-billed Pete Postlethwaite died nearly two years ago. The great and much-missed Postlethwaite looks like his old self here, unlike his gaunt, frail appearances in 2010's INCEPTION and especially later that year in THE TOWN, where it was very apparent that he was quite ill.
As the film opens in 1600, Solomon Kane (James Purefoy) is a mercenary and all-around total bastard whose encounter with a demon calling itself "The Devil's Reaper" (and sounding like Dr. Claw from INSPECTOR GADGET) puts him on a path of peace and redemption. A year later, he befriends Puritan minister Crowthorn (Postlethwaite) and becomes an adopted member of his family, traveling with Crowthorn, his wife Katherine (Alice Krige), and their three children, including Meredith (Rachel Hurd-Wood). They're ambushed by demonic minions of evil sorcerer Malachi (Jason Flemyng), who's after Kane's soul. Meredith is abducted and as Crowthorn dies, he promises Kane that his soul will be saved if he rescues Meredith. Kane summons the merciless killer still buried deep within and goes on a vengeance-fueled quest to save both Meredith and his soul, damned to hell after a tragic incident in his past.
Written and directed by Michael J. Bassett (the terrific 2007 survivalist thriller WILDERNESS as well as the upcoming SILENT HILL: REVELATION), SOLOMON KANE isn't an undiscovered classic, but I still can't see why it took so long to get released in the US. Was it bad memories of 2004's disastrous and universally loathed VAN HELSING, which had Hugh Jackman looking a lot like Howard's decades-old depiction of Kane? Were there some kind of legal issues? With some publicity, this would've done well in wide release. On a slow April or September weekend, it almost certainly would've topped the box office. It does drag a bit in the middle, Kane's final confrontation with Malachi seems to be over before it starts, and some of the CGI is a little too cheap-looking, especially the fake cold breath and a couple of explosions and some really wonky greenscreen work, but I've seen far worse craftsmanship make it on to the big screen in national release. Purefoy is appropriately stoic and grim, true to Howard's vision of the character, and he's surrounded by a fine supporting cast that includes Max von Sydow in a small role as Kane's father, plus brief appearances by Purefoy's future IRONCLAD co-star Mackenzie Crook (Gareth on the original UK version of THE OFFICE) and Philip Winchester, who's since gone on to some notoriety on the Cinemax series STRIKE BACK. And it's always nice to see the ageless Krige, in addition to getting one more chance to appreciate Character Actor Hall of Famer Postlethwaite, even if his exit from the film is a bit early. SOLOMON KANE is little more than a CGI-heavy time-killer, but it's got enough rousing action and evil monsters to keep one's interest. It's not nearly as good as it could've been, but it's got a long life ahead of it on cable, where it'll be one of those movies you stop on while channel-surfing and end up watching the whole thing.
DEATH WATCH (France/Germany - 1980; 1982 US release)
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier. Written by David Rayfiel and Bertrand Tavernier. Cast: Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Max von Sydow, Bernhard Wicki, Therese Liotard, Vadim Glowna, William Russel, Caroline Langrishe, Robbie Coltrane. (R, 130 mins).
In a near-future society where disease has been almost completely eliminated, Catherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider) is diagnosed with an extremely rare terminal
illness. Unscrupulous TV exec Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton)
tries to cajole her into appearing on DEATH WATCH, a reality-TV show where his
camera crews will follow her as she lives out her final days, giving viewers the rare chance to see someone dying of something other than natural causes or old age. She agrees, only to provide money for her husband (Vadim Glowna), but arranges an escape from the camera crews farely quickly. Ferriman
sends cameraman Roddy (Harvey Keitel)--who has a camera implanted in his
eyes--after her. Finding her at a church shelter, Roddy befriends the dying
Catherine, and unbeknownst to her, is filming her for the DEATH WATCH broadcast.
Complications arise when Roddy develops feelings for Catherine, who's on her way
to visit her ex-husband (Max von Sydow), and die with dignity, on her own terms. Roddy also has to manage the fact that,
because of the camera implantation, he has to have a constant light source and
can't close his eyes for more than a few seconds or it will cause near-instant
blindness (one glaring weakness of the film is that it never sufficiently explains how Roddy sleeps, other than him saying "I never did sleep much. I always felt that I'd miss something").
Catherine (Romy Schneider) on the run
with Roddy (Harvey Keitel), unaware that
he's filming her for DEATH WATCH.
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier (COUP DE TORCHON, ROUND MIDNIGHT), who co-wrote with frequent collaborator David Rayfiel, this
sci-fi art film is, in retrospect, filled with surprisingly prescient
visions of today's reality TV and a media and schadenfreude-obsessed, tragedy-as-entertainment culture
("Death is the new pornography," says Ferriman). I'm surprised this hasn't been
remade. Quietly released in the US by Quartet Films
in 1982, about a month before Schneider's sudden death from cardiac arrest at just 43 (her 14-year-old son died a year earlier after being impaled on a spiked fence he was attempting to climb, and it was a tragedy from which Schneider never recovered), this vanished quickly but eventually found a cult thanks to home video and late-night TV airings in the 1980s. It benefits from
a genuinely jarring feel throughout--European production, Americans and
Europeans in the cast, shot in Scotland, and is quite unique in the sci-fi,
"futuristic" genre, in that it largely looks just like 1980 Glasgow (except for
a great THEY LIVE-esque moment in a huge, Costco-type supermarket, with subliminal "Don't steal...you'll feel much better if you don't" messages
loudly playing over the speaker system). It loses a little momentum near the end
with a few long monologues from von Sydow, but the climax is quite emotional and
well-played by the actors. The beautiful Schneider has rarely been better,
and she and Keitel work very well together, despite their reportedly not getting
along all that well. It's interesting seeing Keitel and Stanton in such odd (for
them) settings. They seem to be improvising in many of their scenes together.
Schneider with Harry Dean Stanton as network exec Vincent Ferriman
DEATH WATCH was just released in a Blu-ray/DVD set from Shout Factory, and presents Tavernier's uncut European version for the first time in the US. Running 12 minutes longer than the US version, the European DEATH WATCH is a great example of how small edits and subtle changes can make a completely different film.
(SPOILERS)
In the US cut, Catherine is legitimately sick. In the European cut, Ferriman's subject dies earlier than expected and, needing a new "star," he bribes Catherine's doctor (William Russel) into convincing her that she's got two months to live. The doctor gives her a painkiller prescription, but it's the pills that are designed to make her feel sick when she's really not, and the whole plan is to have her be miraculously "cured" at the end of the show's run. It's established early on that it's all scripted by Ferriman and the network (Roddy is not involved in that aspect of the plan; he thinks Catherine is truly ill) to maximize ratings and profits. The European cut is even more tragic and cynical in its critique of corporate greed and the invasive, rubbernecking nature of reality TV.
The ending and Ferriman's motivation are the biggest differences in the US and European cuts, with the doctor getting some added commentary like "What a circus," and "Drug her and make her sick, then 'cure' her, all for what? Ratings?" but the European version also includes a scene with Catherine visiting her dementia-stricken father (Bernhard Wicki) in a mental hospital. Wicki remained credited in the US cut, but was nowhere to be found.
Trailer for the film's 2012 UK re-release
Shout Factory's Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also finally allows North American fans to see DEATH WATCH in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The US version was released on VHS by Embassy Home Entertainment, and looked atrocious in a washed-out, faded, and hideously-cropped 1.33:1. The Blu-ray is a revelation in terms of detail, textures, and color. The only extra is a photo gallery that runs just over a minute. A more comprehensive package, or at least an interview with Tavernier, would've been nice, but it's enough of an event to have this ambitious, thinking person's sci-fi film at long last available in its intended version after all these years. It's a dark, scathing, brilliant and beautifully-shot film that's more relevant and powerful than ever. Is it much of a stretch for the 1980 science-fiction of DEATH WATCH to become as real as the 1976 satire of NETWORK that's happening on cable news and countless tabloid TV shows every hour of every day?
