An ambitious but inert chronicle of the 1880s "War of the Currents" between Thomas Edison (Team DC: direct current) and George Westinghouse (Team AC: alternating current), THE CURRENT WAR has a behind-the-scenes backstory that's ultimately more interesting than the one it presents onscreen. Originally shown at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2017 and set to be released that November by the Weinstein Company (you can already see where this is going), it was one of many films pulled from the release schedule and shelved indefinitely when HarveyGate broke in the October interim. Weinstein had been supervising some last-minute editing, and with the film in limbo and Weinstein out, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL, and several episodes of AMERICAN HORROR STORY) appealed to co-executive producer Martin Scorsese to allow him to re-edit the film to his own--and not Weinstein's--specifications as well as arrange some additional reshoots. Gomez-Rejon also tossed the original score heard in the 2017 Toronto version and replaced it with a new one. The end result--sold to the upstart 101 Studios and advertised as THE CURRENT WAR: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT for its theatrical run in October 2019--is a rarity in that, at 102 minutes, it's actually ten minutes shorter than what the notorious Harvey Scissorhands was going to release in 2017. Despite a relentless blitz of TV spots, THE CURRENT WAR died at the box office, though it will no doubt find its proper audience once schools reopen, playing over four class periods to bored junior high science students while the teacher gets caught up on grading papers.
Written by Michael Mitnick, who originally pitched the idea as a musical production over a decade ago (Weinstein's name has been removed from the released version, but other credited producers like Scorsese, Steven Zaillan, Bob Yari, and Timur Bekmambetov should give you an idea of how many people were involved at various points over the long development period), THE CURRENT WAR opens in 1880 as Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch, also one of the producers) obtains a patent on an invention "whose purpose is simple: to give light." It involves lighting by direct current and he attracts the attention of both powerful financier J.P. Morgan (Matthew Macfadyen) and President Chester A. Arthur (Corey Johnson), the latter already impressed with Edison's invention of the phonograph. His work also intrigues engineer and entrepreneur Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), who invites Edison to dinner but is stood up with no explanation. It's this personal slight that begins the "War of the Currents," as Westinghouse and his friend Franklin Pope (Stanley Townsend) tout their method of electric illumination with alternating current, which covers longer distances than direct current. Edison is made aware of this by contract worker and "futurist" Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), who warns him that most of the country is empty space and that focusing on direct current isn't thinking about the long-term. This leads to a back-and-forth game of one-upmanship that will see tragedies for both men--Edison's wife Mary (Tuppence Middleton) dies from a degenerative disease assumed by historians to be a brain tumor that wasn't helped by that era's all-purpose quick fix of laudanum, and Westinghouse loses his right-hand man Pope to an accidental electrocution--and a frustrated Tesla eventually joining forces with Westinghouse when he can no longer deal with the stubborn and egomaniacal Edison.
Original 2017 poster
THE CURRENT WAR covers the details, but does so in a dry, educational fashion that isn't far removed from those historical films that Roberto Rossellini made in the last years of his career, and Gomez-Rejon's frequent indulgence in fish-eye lenses, Dutch angles, and other flashy moves only serves as a transparent attempt to liven things up. It doesn't handle the time element very well--after captions reading "1880" and "1882," it's pretty much abandoned until the coda at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, so the years are a blur in terms of what happens when. This is especially bungled with the illness of Mary Edison, who's given a diagnosis in one scene, and the next shows the closed casket at her funeral. When did she die? A month later? A year later? Later that same day? Who knows? And we can only surmise a few years have passed when Edison's secretary-turned-partner Samuel Insull (Tom Holland) suddenly shows up in one scene with a glued-on mustache. The actors are fine, especially Katherine Waterston, who provides a spark whenever she turns up as Westinghouse's loving and unexpectedly shrewd wife, and Cumberbatch and Shannon finally meet in passing at the 1893 World's Fair, and while it might not exactly be the diner scene in HEAT, it's the best moment here for both stars. There's nothing really wrong with THE CURRENT WAR, but it's just very slow-moving and the constant tech talk doesn't make for very riveting drama. Fans of Cumberbatch and Shannon should see it, but if you want the gist of the story in a much shorter lesson, just stick with Tesla's video for their minor 1991 hit "Edison's Medicine." (PG-13, 102 mins)
ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA (Australia/UK - 2020)
Based on the true story of three anti-apartheid activists who pulled off a daring escape from a South African prison in 1979, ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA makes sure to cross everything off the prison break movie checklist. After setting off a series of leaflet bombings in Cape Town in 1978, African National Congress activists Tim Jenkin (Daniel Radcliffe) and Stephen Lee (Daniel Webber) are found guilty and thrown into the Pretoria political prison for white males, where Jenkin immediately begins plotting an escape. They find a mentor in legendary ANC member and close Nelson Mandela associate Denis Goldberg (Ian Hart), who's serving four life sentences for trying to overthrow the government. Goldberg warns Jenkin to calm down ("Everybody thinks they're gonna break out next week"), but he wants out, and a photographic memory allows him to draw a detailed sketch of the key used by the guards to unlock the cells. He's able to construct a makeshift wooden key in the prison shop and eventually gets it to work, then methodically creates numerous duplicates, obsessively testing them in the middle of the night while spending his days devising an escape plan and creating keys to all the doors that will eventually allow them to simply walk out when no one is looking. Goldberg ends up sitting out the escape to run interference with the block's least competent guard on duty, and Jenkin and Lee are instead joined by Frenchman Leonard (Mark Leonard Winter), a fictionalized version of the third escapee, Alex Moumbaris.
It took a lot of work and planning, and it's in these scenes that director/co-writer Francis Annan generates the most stomach-knotting tension. But the biggest assist the three men got during their escape was some extremely lax security in that section of the prison complex, subsequently stepped up significantly after the embarrassment of three prisoners getting through a half dozen locked doors and simply walking out of a front gate that was carelessly left unlocked and wide open, which even they find shocking ("The gate's open?!"). ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA takes some liberties beyond not mentioning Moumbaris by name, a big one being its depiction of Jenkin and Lee caught in the act of series of leaflet bombings on a busy street. It makes for a tension-filled opening sequence, but in reality, they were quietly apprehended without incident moving some printing equipment into their residence, which had been under surveillance for some time. Lee almost pulled off his own escape while the pair were awaiting trial, but that's never mentioned here, and it's strange that Lee is more or less relegated to being Jenkin's loyal sidekick, with Webber (best known as Lee Harvey Oswald in the Hulu series 11.22.63 and as Vince Neil in the Motley Crue biopic THE DIRT) given little to do. It does clear the way for a committed performance by Radcliffe, who's never not going to be Harry Potter, but does an excellent job of projecting some genuine grittiness and disappearing into this role. The specificities of the plot aside, ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA is generally routine as far as prison break thrillers go, right down to Jenkin's chief nemesis being a guard nicknamed Mongo (Nathan Page), who's cartoonishly sadistic even by apartheid standards. There's nothing new here, but it's well-made and compelling, like a politically-driven ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. (PG-13, 106 mins)
KNIVES OUT (US - 2019) Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer, Margaret Langford, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Frank Oz, Edi Patterson, K Callan, Noah Segan, M. Emmet Walsh, Marlene Forte. (PG-13, 130 mins) Pop culture artifacts have always served as accurate reflections of the era in which they were produced, and when the dust settles, the wildly and wickedly entertaining KNIVES OUT will go down as one of the most razor-sharp critiques of the Age of Trump. It may draw from the mysteries of Agatha Christie and play like an elaborate redux of CLUE, but with its cast of greedy, deplorable heirs content to live off Daddy's wealth and fame, and the daughter of an illegal immigrant who ends up the target of their white privilege wrath, KNIVES OUT isn't exactly subtle. It's ultimately a perfect metaphor for the whole idea of the 2019-2020 now of this moment, not just in the political and social divide but also the rage and the malignant narcissism that have become commonplace, and it's best thing writer/director Rian Johnson has done since his 2006 debut BRICK. That's certainly not to slight 2012's LOOPER in any way, but perhaps after dealing with everything that came with making something as huge as STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, KNIVES OUT almost seems like a back-to-basics breather of sorts, even with its labyrinthine plot, endless twists and turns, and a large cast of characters with ever-shifting alliances and an eagerness to talk shit and throw everyone else under the bus.
It's best going into this sly whodunit as cold as possible, since the surprises start fairly early never stop (NO SPOILERS). World-famous mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead by his housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) in his hidden study on the third floor of his mansion the morning after his 85th birthday party. The cause of death is assumed to be suicide as he appears to have slashed his own throat. Detective Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield) and doofus-y state trooper/Thrombey superfan Wagner (Noah Segan) are conducting a routine investigation of what looks like an open-and-shut case. But it quickly reveals almost the entire Thrombey clan to be a pit of vipers who, at best, are shamelessly salivating over their inheritance and, at worst, displaying no shortage of reasons to be glad the old man is gone. There's Thrombey's eldest child, daughter Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis), who constantly crows about building her successful business on her own from the ground up even though everyone knows she started it with a $1 million loan from her dad; her husband Richard (Don Johnson), who had a testy private conversation with his father-in-law the afternoon of the party; Thrombey's son Walt (Michael Shannon), who manages his father's publishing house and is frustrated by his dad's refusal to allow movie and TV adaptations of his work despite being offered a ton of money by Netflix; Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette) is a new age-y Instagram influencer and the widow of Thrombey's late son, and lives a cushy, carefree life on an annual allowance from her father-in-law, who also covers the college tuition of her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford); Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) is the son of Linda and Richard, the black sheep of the family and a lifelong problem child (as if the name "Ransom Drysdale" doesn't already render him pre-ordained to be a complete prick), who stormed out of the party after a verbal spat with his grandfather and then skips the funeral while making sure to show up for the reading of the will; and Walt's wife Donna (Riki Lindhome), and teenage son Jacob (Jaeden Martell), a Ben Shapiro-like alt-right troll who spends all of his time owning the libs on social media and calling his cousin Meg a "snowflake." Finally, there's Great Nana (K Callan), Harlan's mother ("His mother? How old is she?" Elliott asks Linda, who replies "No one knows"), who says almost nothing but sees everything.
The lone outsider is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas, in what should be a star-making performance), Thrombey's caregiver who was hired after a recent back injury but who came to be a trusted friend and confidante to the old man. Everyone considers her "part of the family" even though they aren't entirely sure where she's from, alternately calling her Brazilian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, or Ecuadorian because they really don't know the difference. It isn't long before Elliott is deferring the investigation to one Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a wily Southern gentleman of a private eye and a bit of a celebrity in his field (a star-struck Joni gushes "I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you!") who's been hired by an anonymous client to get to the bottom of an alleged suicide that's starting to look more and more like foul play. Blanc presses more than the ineffective cops when he rightly suspects that old Harlan went on a scorched earth bridge-burning with some his family on the day of his birthday and more than one family member's life would be a lot easier if he was no longer around. Blanc finds an unexpected Watson to his Holmes in Marta, who he deduces is the most trustworthy ally in the house because everyone in the Thrombey family knows she has a rare condition where she vomits if she tells a lie (and yes, that's mined for laughs on numerous occasions).
Almost everyone in the ensemble gets a chance to claim the spotlight, with de Armas (who's really the star of the movie) making a charming and resourceful heroine and Craig getting to show some comedic chops in a role that falls somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Jason Sudeikis' "Maine Justice" judge on SNL (Ransom: "What is this? CSI: KFC?"). KNIVES OUT masterfully balances suspense, blistering laughs at the expense of the 1% (multiple characters refer to Jacob as "the little Nazi," and watch Johnson's Trump-supporting Richard blast immigrants while thoughtlessly handing Marta his empty plate, proof that even when she's an invited guest at Thrombey's birthday party, they still only see her as "the help") and frequently self-aware humor, as when Elliott describes the Thrombey estate as "living in a Clue board" or when he reacts to an obligatory, out-of-nowhere car chase by declaring "That was the dumbest car chase ever." Johnson errs slightly by sidelining too many of the film's more vigorous supporting actors in the second half (Curtis, in particular, is on fire here, and we're long overdue for the Don Johnsonssaince that COLD IN JULY would've started in a perfect world), but the richly-textured and intricately-constructed KNIVES OUT is an absolute blast from beginning to end, culminating in a beautifully cathartic final shot that ends it on a perfect note.
LET THE CORPSES TAN (Belgium/France - 2017; US release 2018)
If Alejandro Jodorowsky followed up EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN with an Italian crime thriller in the mid-1970s, it would probably end up looking a lot like LET THE CORPSES TAN, the latest from the Belgium-based filmmaking duo of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Much like their previous efforts, the giallo homages AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, LET THE CORPSES TAN is a fetishistic rollercoaster ride of Eurocult worship, incorporating elements of poliziotteschi, spaghetti westerns, the work of French crime novelist and screenwriter Sebastien Japrisot (RIDER ON THE RAIN), and liberally borrowing soundtrack cues from 1971's tawdry ROAD TO SALINA as well as composers like Ennio Morricone and Nico Fidenco. Based on a 1971 novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, LET THE CORPSES TAN is riddled with bizarre, impenetrable, and hypnotic imagery but at the same time, it's the most narrative-driven of Cattet and Forzani's films thus far. The fusion of the wildly surreal and the rigidity of story structure don't always mesh, especially since the story is pretty much a standard-issue cops-and-robbers standoff on a sparsely-populated Mediterranean island getaway. The action centers on an isolated resort of adobe-style ruins run by misanthropic artist Madame Luce (Elina Lowensohn, who a brief moment in the '90s indie spotlight with Hal Hartley's AMATEUR and FLIRT and the title role in Michael Almereyda's NADJA). Among the guests are Max Bernier (Marc Barbe), a washed-up writer, and Luce's sleazy attorney and occasional lover Brisorguiel (Michelangelo Marchese). There's also three criminals--Rhino (Stephane Ferrara), Gros (Bernie Bonvoisin, lead singer of the French metal band Trust, whose "Prefabricated" was on soundtrack for 1981's HEAVY METAL), and Alex (Pierre Nisse)--who sport Frankenstein masks as they pull off a gold heist from an armored car but get stopped by a trio of hitchhikers during their escape. The hitchhikers include a woman (Dorylia Calmel), who's just stolen her son (Bamba Forzani Ndiaye) from her ex-husband and escaped with him and his nanny (Marine Sainsily). As it turns out, they're all headed to Madame Luce's, as the criminals plan to use it as a safe house and the woman is tracking down her estranged second husband Bernier.
Things more volatile by the minute, especially once two cops (Herve Sogne, Dominique Troyes) happen by with news of the gold heist and an abducted child on the radio, completely unaware that they're about to walk into both situations at once. From then, it's a mix of violent shootouts and trippy imagery, with frequent cutaways to a nude woman looming over a miniature recreation of Luce's resort, populated by ants in an apparent homage to the opening scene of THE WILD BUNCH. There's more, from urination to champagne lactation to an overt reference to a really nasty moment in Andrea Bianchi's CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, and a foolhardy attempt by Brisorguiel to steal the gold and drive a wedge between Gros and his cohorts, and from a plot standpoint, there's little here that's going to surprise anyone, even with supernatural allusions regarding Madame Luce. There's still that sense of surreal delirium that's become synonymous with Cattet and Forzani, and they also use some impressive, rapid-fire editing techniques in conjunction with an occasionally non-linear time element that keeps bouncing back to show events from different perspectives. But by embracing both their style and attempting to stick to the structure required by a story and to do right by the novel, they're sometimes working at cross purposes. Cattet and Forzani are admittedly an acquired taste, but if you liked AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, you'll generally like LET THE CORPSES TAN. The difference here is that you've got an abundance of plot and characters getting in the way of what this filmmaking team does best. (Unrated, 92 mins)
WHAT THEY HAD (US/UK/Canada - 2018)
Whether it was a lack of confidence or cash flow, it's a shame that distributor Bleecker Street didn't treat WHAT THEY HAD a little better, stalling its release at just 53 screens for a gross of $260,000. Showcasing some of the best performances of 2018 that nobody saw, the film is a semi-autobiographical look at a family affected by Alzheimer's, written and directed by a debuting Elizabeth Chomko, a playwright and occasional actress who conceived the project as a tribute to her parents. Elderly Ruth (Blythe Danner) gets out of bed on Christmas Eve and wanders out into a Chicago snowstorm wearing only her robe and slippers. Her husband Burt (Robert Forster) wakes up to find her missing and the front door wide open. He places a frantic call to his son Nick (Michael Shannon), who lives nearby, and Nick calls his sister Bridget, or "Bitty" (Hilary Swank), who flies in from California with her teenage daughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga). By the time Bitty and Emma land, Ruth has been found, and it's just the latest incident in an ongoing and inevitable decline that's now a few years running and one that stubborn Burt refuses to see as a problem. Bullheaded and devoutly Catholic, he believes in taking care of his wife on his own ("In sickness and in health...that's the deal!") and has no patience for "teenage doctors" who don't know his wife as well as he does. Nick keeps unsuccessfully trying to convince Burt--who's 75, survived four heart attacks, and is clearly physically and emotionally exhausted from being a round-the-clock caregiver--that Ruth needs to be put in a nursing home, and he's hoping Bitty, who has power of attorney if their parents are incapacitated, will back him up.
As is the case in films like this, old wounds are reopened and the family gnaws on one another's nerves as only family can, but WHAT THEY HAD never panders and never goes the easy maudlin route. Having experienced Alzheimer's with her own mother, Chomko cuts through the bullshit and sugarcoats nothing, particularly in the script's many instances of dark humor, recognizing the ordeal as one of those situations where you frequently have to laugh to keep from crying. Danner plays Ruth with compassion and dignity, never overdoing it or going for cliched awards-bait moments, often speaking volumes just with a confused look on her face or a periodic flash of clarity (it's also heartbreaking to see Bitty's optimism when her mom sees her and excitedly says "Is that my baby?" only to soon realize Ruth says that to anyone younger than she is). Of course, those clear moments get increasingly rare as the story unfolds, and her family is forced to contend with embarrassing and uncomfortable incidents like Ruth in church flipping the bird to a fellow parishioner or drinking the Holy Water ("Well, at least she's hydrated," Nick deadpans), then hitting on Nick on the way home, completely unaware that he's her son. Bitty, presumably based on Chomko, has her own problems, namely an increasingly distant Emma and a stale marriage to Eddie (Josh Lucas), while abrasive Nick ("What are you, dead inside?" Emma asks, and he replies "Almost"), who resents his sister for living across the country and leaving him to deal with Burt and Ruth, has sunk his life savings into a bar and sleeps in its basement, seemingly never able to live up to his dad's standards (Shannon is terrific in a scene where he completely loses his composure and starts stammering when Burt keeps derisively calling him a "bartender"). But it's the great Forster who provides the rock-solid foundation of this ensemble with his best performance since JACKIE BROWN, making a complex character out of Burt that other films would just turn into a loud, Catholic blowhard. Even as he's laying down his "my way or the highway" stance on Ruth's care, Forster lets you see in his face that Burt is finding it increasingly difficult to keep believing his own excuses, but doing his best to ignore the fact that, despite his best intentions, he may be doing her more harm than good (also, nobody yells "What am I, some kinda horse's ass?!" quite like Robert Forster). He's a goddamn national treasure who, in a perfect world, would be a Best Supporting Actor Oscar front-runner right now, and it's unfortunate that this fine film completely fell through the cracks and was never given a chance by its distributor. (R, 101 mins)
GALVESTON (US - 2018)
Nic Pizzolatto's debut novel Galveston earned some critical acclaim upon its release in 2010, but didn't attract much attention from the book-buying public until his later success as the creator of the HBO series TRUE DETECTIVE. It's likely the success of that show (at least its first season, probably not the much-maligned second) that led to Pizzolatto adapting Galveston into a screenplay, and while he gets a "Based on a novel by" credit, he ultimately had his name removed from the film--script credit now goes to his vaguely hard-boiled pseudonym "Jim Hammett"--when he felt that director Melanie Laurent's reworking and reshaping of his screenplay into her own work during production was so extensive that he didn't feel he should take sole credit per WGA rules, so he took none at all. Laurent, the French actress best known for her performance as the vengeance-seeking Shosanna in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, has very quietly been establishing herself--at least among critics and festival programmers--as a versatile filmmaker, with works that include narrative features (BREATHE, DIVING), and a documentary about climate change (TOMORROW). GALVESTON is her US directing debut, and it's very much a slow-burning, often mumbly mood piece that isn't in any hurry to get to where it's going, but it sneaks up on you in an emotional and often devastating second half.
Set in 1988, the story focuses on Roy Cady (Ben Foster), a 40-year-old New Orleans hit man who's introduced storming out of a doctor's office when faced with what he knows is a terminal lung cancer diagnosis. After narrowly escaping a set-up orchestrated by his boss, dry-cleaning magnate and Big Easy crime kingpin Stan Pitko (Beau Bridges), Cady goes on the run with teenage prostitute Rocky (Elle Fanning), who was being held captive by the men hired to kill him. Cady was just doing the right thing by rescuing her, with the expectation of dropping her off somewhere on his way to die in his hometown of Galveston, but the two form a tentative bond that's strengthened when Rocky insists they make a stop and end up with her three-year-old sister Tiffany (twins Tinsley and Anniston Price) after Rocky shoots their abusive stepfather. Cady's got files of Pitko's invoices that leave a paper trail of his corrupt and shady business dealings, and tries to blackmail his boss for $75,000 in an attempt to do one good thing before he dies and provide some money to Rocky and Tiffany to start a new life, but seeing as this is a downbeat, back roads noir written by Nic Pizzolatto, it's certain the worst will happen. It's easy to see why some found GALVESTON inert and uninvolving. Laurent is more focused on mood than action, so much so that a late Cady rampage at Pitko's business, done in a long take reminiscent of similar sequence in the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE, initially seems jarring, but it's a natural response given a key event that led to it. For the most part, GALVESTON is more early Terrence Malick than TRUE DETECTIVE, with fine work by Foster and especially Fanning, who does a marvelous job with Rocky's motel room revelation (that you'll figure out long before Cady does), which is just about the point where you realize you're more engrossed in this than you thought. (Unrated, 93 mins)
After taking 20 years off between 1978's DAYS OF HEAVEN and 1998's THE THIN RED LINE, Terrence Malick's directorial output in the 2010s is coming at a furious pace that rivals Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood. Counting the 40-minute IMAX film VOYAGE OF TIME, SONG TO SONG is his sixth movie of this decade, and the final part of a loose trilogy that began with 2013's TO THE WONDER and 2016's KNIGHT OF CUPS. Shot back-to-back with KNIGHT OF CUPS way back in 2012 and endlessly tinkered with by its maker, SONG TO SONG takes the first-world ennui of CUPS' self-absorbed Los Angeles navel-gazers and moves them to the hipster mecca of Austin, TX for maximum insufferability. Any hopes of Malick turning this into his own version of NASHVILLE are dashed the moment the film begins and it's the same kind of pained, whispered, emo journal entry voiceover by a dull ensemble of ciphers played by actors who, for some reason, still want to say they were in a Malick movie. If there's a central character--none of them are referred to by name--it's Faye (Rooney Mara), a waify aspiring musician who's seen onstage with a band a couple of times and seems to be friends with Patti Smith (as herself), but we never really see her working on music or practicing with the rest of the band. Faye's involved with Cook (Michael Fassbender), who's some kind of music industry A&R asshole (I guess), and BV (Ryan Gosling), another aspiring musician who doesn't seem to do much playing or songwriting and, like everyone in this film, appears to have significant disposable income. Faye drifts between both men, and during some downtime, the psychologically abusive Cook hooks up with teacher-turned-diner waitress Rhonda (Natalie Portman), and even coerces Rhonda and Faye to join him in a threesome. Faye also gets involved with Parisian transplant Zoey (Berenice Marlohe) and BV with Amanda (Cate Blanchett), while almost everyone gets their turn at center stage for some of Malick's signature vacuous ruminations of the privileged and aimless. To wit:
"I thought we could roll and tumble. Live from song to song. Kiss to kiss."
"I love the pain. It feels like life."
"I'm low. I'm like the mud."
"Foolish me. Devil."
"I was once like you. To think what I once was. What I am now."
"I played with the flame of life."
"I feel like we're so...connected. I can't really understand. It's like..."
"The world built a fence around you. How do you get through? Connect?"
"You burn me. Who are you?"
"I need to go back and start over."
Malick should've taken that last sentiment to heart. Like KNIGHT OF CUPS, SONG TO SONG shows the revered filmmaker continuing his ongoing descent into self-parody. This does not look like the work of a 73-year-old auteur who's been making movies for 45 years. If this same movie was presented by a film school student, it would be dismissed as self-indulgent, adolescent drivel. But Malick's defenders continue to give him a pass and insist that his detractors--a contingent of former acolytes that's growing with each new Malick journey up his own ass--just can't grasp the level of genius that's being gifted to them. Bullshit. Malick was poised to stake his claim as the Greatest American Filmmaker when Stanley Kubrick died, and brilliant films like 2005's THE NEW WORLD and 2011's THE TREE OF LIFE certainly made a strong case for his inheriting the title. But over the course of TO THE WONDER, KNIGHT OF CUPS, and now SONG TO SONG, Malick has offered enough evidence to suggest that the emperor has no clothes, and rather than the new Kubrick, he's really just the American Jean-Luc Godard, another filmmaking legend who's abandoned any semblance of narrative cohesion and for whom any negative criticism is strictly verboten. Malick goes into these films with no clear vision, instead hoping it comes together in post with the help of eight (!) credited editors. And, as was the case with WONDER and CUPS, a ton of name actors got cut out of the film when Malick decided they weren't needed, among them Christian Bale, Benicio del Toro, Haley Bennett (THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN), Boyd Holbrook (LOGAN), and Angela Bettis (MAY), along with artists Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes, and Arcade Fire (when asked about this film in a 2013 interview after shooting wrapped, even Fassbender said he wasn't sure if he'd end up being in it). Iggy Pop and John Lydon turn up in SONG TO SONG, along with Smith, who gives the film one of its few legitimately worthwhile dramatic moments when she fondly speaks of her late husband, MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith. Alternating between wide-angle and fish-eye lenses and often using GoPro cameras to maximize the faux-experimental aura, Malick and renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki did some extensive shooting at the 2012 Austin City Limits and Fun Fun Fun fests, which gave Fassbender a chance to wrestle with Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea and let Malick waste some screen time on that. For all the impact that the Austin events brought to the film, Malick may as well have shot scenes at that year's Gathering of the Juggalos. Holly Hunter turns up briefly as Rhonda's mom and Val Kilmer does a walk-through as a wildman rock star, onstage with the Black Lips at the Fun Fun Fun fest, cutting off clumps of his hair with a Bowie knife and chainsawing an amp during a live show while yelling "I got some uranium!" Malick would've had a significantly more entertaining movie if he'd just followed Kilmer around and filmed him being weird for two hours.
It's also nice to see Malick has entered his "pervy old man" phase, with lingering, leering shots of Mara and Marlohe caressing each other, Zoey kissing Faye's hand while she masturbates, and Cook in bed with two nude escorts in what looks like an outtake from the harrowing Fassbender sex addiction drama SHAME. It's easy to assume from his last few films that Malick has forgotten how people really communicate and interact and maybe doesn't get out much anymore, and from the looks of some of the more sordid scenes in SONG TO SONG, he's apparently just discovered Cinemax. It's possible that Malick is putting a stop to this myopic nonsense with his next film, the German-set WWII drama RADEGUND, due out later this year. It stars (for now) August Diehl, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz, and the late Michael Nyqvist, and by all accounts, it's actually Malick doing a commercial film with a straightforward narrative. It's about time, because SONG TO SONG is a fucking embarrassment. (R, 129 mins)
SALT AND FIRE (Germany/US/Mexico/France/UK - 2017)
A companion piece of sorts to his 2016 Netflix documentary INTO THE INFERNO (which was shot second but released first), SALT AND FIRE provides further evidence that, much like his 1970s New German Cinema contemporary Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog's strengths no longer lie in narrative filmmaking. A visionary German auteur and one of cinema's most beloved eccentric raconteurs, Herzog is a tireless workaholic whose curiosity of all subjects has led him to create some of the most captivating documentaries of the modern era, including 2005's GRIZZLY MAN, 2007's ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, and 2010's CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. He once made brilliant, groundbreaking dramas like 1972's AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and 1982's FITZCARRALDO, but after his superb 2006 Vietnam POW drama RESCUE DAWN, his gonzo 2009 reimagining of BAD LIEUTENANT, and his experimental 2010 misfire (though it has its admirers) MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE?, Herzog's most recent forays into scripted cinema have fallen flat: his Nicole Kidman-headlined historical epic QUEEN OF THE DESERT took four years to get released in the US in April 2017, the same day as the shot-in-2015 SALT AND FIRE. MY SON, MY SON was bad, but SALT AND FIRE is easily the worst Herzog film I've seen, a deadening, ponderous slog with muddled, ham-fisted admonishments about environmental issues and filled with characters who never once speak like human beings who know how to interact with one another. Much of the dialogue sounds like stuff Herzog would've written for himself to narrate in a documentary and honestly, it would play significantly better coming out of his mouth instead of a monotone, somnambulant Michael Shannon, one of the great character actors around but who's having a really off day here. Imagine the curiously soothing tone of Herzog uttering such musings as "Truth is the only daughter of time," "Here lies a monster on the verge of waking," or "The noblest place for a man to die is the place he dies the deadest," and you've got a movie. But when those same lines are mumbled by Shannon, they sound like the pretentious ramblings of the world's most depressed Bond villain.
As SALT AND FIRE opens, scientist Dr. Laura Sommerfeld (Veronica Ferres) is on a UN fact-finding mission in South America with two colleagues--horndog Italian Dr. Fabio Cavani (Gael Garcia Bernal) and stoical German Dr. Arnold Meier (Volker Zack Michalowski)--to look into an impending ecological disaster at the Diablo Blanco salt flats (played by Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni). They're left at an abandoned airport and abducted by armed, masked men and taken to an undisclosed location where Sommerfeld is granted an audience with mastermind Matt Riley (Shannon), the CEO of a mysterious corporation known as "The Consortium." While Cavani and Meier are sidelined in the shitter for the rest of the film after secretly being given a powerful laxative (one of the film's several ill-advised attempts at levity; c'mon, Herzog...you're better than poop jokes), Riley and his chief associate Krauss (theoretical physicist Jonathan Krauss as himself) take Sommerfeld into the middle of the Diablo Blanco, where Riley informs her that a lake that was there just a few decades ago is gone and that expanding Diablo Blanco threatens to reactivate a long-dormant volcano that could obliterate mankind ("It could be 20,000 years or it could be 20...but it will happen"). After confessing that it was his company's unethical, careless practices that brought this certain disaster on the world, he abandons her in the desert with two blind children, for whom she quickly adapts to the situation to be a protective mother figure while trying to ascertain the exact of Riley's actions. Ferres and Shannon aren't given characters to play but rather, talking points to recite, with Shannon's Riley coming off as particularly hectoring in a way that borders on mansplaining, considering Ferres' Sommerfeld is the top ecology expert in her field. Popular German actress Ferres delivers her lines in a stilted, halting way that sounds like she looped them in post-production, while Shannon comes off as so lifeless that you might think Herzog pulled a HEART OF GLASS on him. SALT AND FIRE is anti-entertainment of the highest order, a film that opens as a straightforward hostage drama and flirts with becoming a disaster movie before turning into an overbearing, finger-wagging lecture, and finally, an examination of a career woman finding her true inner self when, like the volcano, her long-dormant maternal instincts are reawakened (it's mentioned that Sommerfeld has a estranged daughter who's in the custody of her ex), along with signs of a budding romance with her kidnapper. It speaks to how random and disjointed SALT AND FIRE is that it's no less than three movies before it finally settles on being a fourth with a clumsy attempt to link motherhood with nurturing Mother Earth, a metaphor that's so ineptly handled by Herzog that it comes off as a passive-aggressive, context-free rebuking of the life choices of a world-renowned science professor that also has her succumbing to the charms (?) of her creepy, morose abductor. Herzog's rarely been as wrong-headed as he is here--he should've just made a documentary about the Salar de Uyuni salt flat and everything would've turned out better for everyone. (Unrated, 98 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
For years, Don Cheadle has been talking about his wish to make a film about jazz legend Miles Davis. He finally got the chance with this partially crowd-funded indie that also marks his debut as a writer and director. For something that he had bouncing around in his head all these years, MILES AHEAD is an almost total missed opportunity. Cheadle wanted to avoid the pratfalls of a standard-issue biopic, which is commendable, but he more or less just drops a character named "Miles Davis" into a rote buddy movie with occasional car chases and action sequences. Set primarily during Davis' reclusive late 1970s period of self-imposed exile in his Upper West Side NYC apartment, MILES AHEAD pairs him with a fictional Rolling Stone journalist named Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor), who's desperate to grab an exclusive with him. Davis is currently butting heads with Columbia Records execs who have been waiting several years for his latest record. Columbia A&R douchebag Harper Hamilton (a reptilian Michael Stuhlbarg) and his Davis-like, Next Big Thing signing Junior (LaKeith Lee Stanfield) steal the sole copy of Davis' latest recording, prompting the embittered, burned-out, drug-addled trumpeter and his befuddled sidekick Braden to turn NYC (actually, Cincinnati, where this was shot) upside-down in pursuit of it. All the while, Davis periodically reflects on his career triumphs (and, of course, sees himself in the young ingenue Junior) and his failed marriage to dancer Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi), pondering Where It All Went Wrong.
The flashbacks to the 1950s to the mid 1960s seem like Cheadle giving himself some opportunity to portray Davis in a straightforward fashion rather than the showy, coke-snorting jazz version of Howard Hughes he's playing in the late 1970s sections of the film. Cheadle is a dead ringer for Davis and it's a terrific performance that's completely let down by Cheadle the filmmaker. Cheadle is a gifted actor who could've brought much substance and complexity to a serious chronicle of the ups and downs of Davis' life. Why he--and Davis' family, who gave him their blessing--opted for a completely fictional scenario is a mystery. McGregor doesn't have much to do other than to look perplexed over Davis' wildly unpredictable behavior (like firing a gun in the Columbia offices), while Corinealdi does some good work in the more serious side of the film, even though she's tasked with little other than raging at a selfish, serially philandering Davis when he repeatedly treats her like a doormat. If Davis' family was OK with showing him in a negative light in these scenes, then why not make an honest film about him instead of this dumb movie that tries to have one foot in the arthouse and the other in the multiplex? Cheadle makes a great Miles Davis...it's just lost in a mediocre misfire of his own making. (R, 101 mins)
ELVIS & NIXON (US - 2016)
Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon had a meeting in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970, with the resulting photo of the two cited as the most requested in the National Archives. ELVIS & NIXON purports to tell "the true story" of what went down at that secret meeting. Troubled by the direction of Vietnam-era youth--their malaise, their drug use, their music--Elvis is obsessed with the idea of working undercover for the Federal Narcotics Bureau as a "Federal Agent-at-Large," and requests a meeting with Nixon to make it happen. This story was covered before in Allan Arkush's little-seen 1997 cable movie ELVIS MEETS NIXON, with Rick Peters as Elvis and Bob Gunton as Nixon, but ELVIS & NIXON, co-written by actor Cary Elwes and directed by Liza Johnson (HATESHIP LOVESHIP), has two bigger names onboard, with Michael Shannon as Elvis and Kevin Spacey as Nixon. These are brilliant actors, and while neither does an SNL caricature, Spacey does a good job of nailing Nixon's mannerisms in the face of Elvis' increasingly absurd behavior, like an impromptu karate demonstration near the end of their afternoon together. Nixon sees being an Elvis pal as a way of appealing to America's youth, and while he's initially dismissive of the idea, the meeting puts a spring in Nixon's step--watch the way he enthusiastically asks aides Egil Krogh (Colin Hanks) and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) "Am I Mr. Cool?"--and Spacey does a very nice job with it. Shannon is a versatile actor but he just can't pull off Elvis. It makes sense that he wants to play Elvis as a person rather than the "Elvis" of his public image, but he never comes off as anything but Michael Shannon in an Elvis costume. He meets two impersonators early on and they demonstrate more life than he does. Shannon's Elvis is among the most quiet and soft-spoken in pop culture. It would've helped a little to maybe sound or act like him--Shannon is about as plausible an Elvis as Chevy Chase was a Gerald Ford. While Spacey doesn't cartoonishly mimic Nixon, he at least conveys a Nixonian presence. Shannon seems like an Elvis impersonator who's off the clock but still hasn't changed into his own clothes. And who cares about his buddy Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer) who's preoccupied with getting back to Hollywood to propose to his girlfriend (Sky Ferreira)? The closing credits roll at 80 minutes and they still have to pad the running time with a subplot about Jerry and his girlfriend? Also featuring Johnny Knoxville for some reason, ELVIS & NIXON finds some genuine laughs in the very late-going, but for the most part, it's low-key to the point of catatonia, never recovering from a miscast Shannon's inert (though some critics really liked it) interpretation of the King. If you want an Elvis performance that's funny and heartfelt and relatively real, stick with Bruce Campbell in BUBBA HO-TEP. (R, 86 mins)
ANDRON (Italy/UK - 2016)
From the 1960s through the 1980s, it was common to find Hollywood actors who were aging or in a career slump slumming in B-grade European knockoffs of popular American movies. To that end, there's a brief sense of nostalgia to be enjoyed with ANDRON, an incoherent Italian ripoff of THE HUNGER GAMES and THE MAZE RUNNER that somehow prominently features a visibly inconvenienced Alec Baldwin as Adam, the nefarious master of--wait for it--"The Redemption Games." It's some survival game being broadcast to a post-apocalyptic, dystopian society in the year 2154, years after "The Big Catastrophe" nuked the planet, killing billions of people and leading to The Nine Corporations assuming control of the world. Ten strangers wake up to find themselves forced contestants in The Redemption Games, which is being beamed to members of an enslaved society who have placed bets where the winners earn their freedom. You expect to see Danny Glover in something like this--he plays "The Chancellor," some Nine Corporations leader--but isn't this a little beneath Alec Baldwin? Sure, hosting a rebooted MATCH GAME is probably a fun lark, but how exactly did this script get to him? Did he see an easy payday and assumed the resulting mess would never be released? ANDRON was filmed in 2014, around the same time Baldwin had a supporting role in the fifth entry in Santiago Segura's popular Spanish-made TORRENTE action/comedy franchise, TORRENTE 5: OPERACION EUROVEGAS (the first was made in 1998 and they've turned up streaming on Amazon), so he likely did the Malta-shot ANDRON on the same trip to Europe. But why? His appearances throughout are almost Bruce Willisian in their laziness and disconnect from the rest of the movie (the DVD's making-of shows a VFX shot of Baldwin's head being CGI'd onto a stand-in's body for a scene where his character appears with Glover). He probably didn't spend any more than a day or two on the set, probably coming off like a mercurial prick at least once and maybe trying to lighten the mood by entertaining the crew by dropping some GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS bon mots or the MALICE "I am God" speech. His role primarily consists of sitting at a desk, watching The Redemption Games on a hologram and occasionally engaging in some MINORITY REPORT pantomiming as he manipulates and moves things around on a holographic screen. When the first contestant is killed, a smirking Baldwin purrs "Ten little Indians standing in a line, one toddled home and then there were nine." Other observational witticisms from behind his desk include:
"Now things get interesting."
"Let's liven things up a little."
"Let's give them something else to think about."
"That's my girl."
"Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends!"
"Let's shuffle this deck."
"What the hell is that?"
"Get them back on the grid!"
"Shit!"
Written and directed by Francesco Cinquemani, ANDRON is so muddled and incomprehensible that it feels like you're watching the fourth or fifth installment in a franchise where the previous installments were never made. Opening in medias res is one thing, but not knowing who anyone is or what's going on or why we should even care makes for a frustrating experience. Never mind the atrocious CGI and greenscreen work--it seems entirely possible that Baldwin is completely unaware of this film and his appearance in it is actually a CGI hologram--the story isn't even remotely engaging and what little you can figure out is blatantly and shamelessly cribbed from THE HUNGER GAMES, THE MAZE RUNNER, and even the cult classic CUBE. The nominal lead is Leo Howard, the star of the Disney Channel's KICKIN' IT, and Skunk Anansie vocalist Skin plays a Milla Jovovich-like badass who's been implanted with someone's memories or some such nonsense. ANDRON is a complete botch that has the audacity to leave the door open for a sequel, and if Z-grade '70s hack Alfonso Brescia/"Al Bradley" was still alive and making Italian ripoffs, he probably would've made this. As it is, it's hopefully as close to an Uwe Boll joint as Baldwin will ever get. Did he owe Stephen a favor and do this movie for him? Did Mitch & Murray send him to Malta on a mission of mercy? (R, 96 mins)
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (US - 2016) Written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Sam Shepard, Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Camp, Scott Haze, Paul Sparks, David Jensen, Dana Gourrier, Sean Bridgers. (PG-13, 112 mins) Since his brilliant 2008 debut SHOTGUN STORIES, Arkansas-based writer/director Jeff Nichols has explored family bonds and haunted legacies in distinct and vivid rural settings. His is a unique voice that has emerged over his follow-up efforts TAKE SHELTER (2011) and MUD (2013), a key film in the McConaissance of a few years back, in which Matthew McConaughey turned in an even better performance than he did in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, even though it was the latter that got him an Oscar. MUD was enough of a sleeper hit to get Nichols his first major-studio production, the sci-fi drama MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, though it's hardly a commercial, multiplex endeavor. Warner Bros. opened it small after sitting on it for nearly two years and changing the release date a few times, and it's the kind of film that gains traction by word of mouth. Though he's working with a bigger budget and some reasonably conservative use of special effects, Nichols keeps MIDNIGHT SPECIAL very much in line with his own cinematic niche. In a way, it's his most personal film yet, inspired by a period where his then eight-month-old son was suffering seizures and was paralyzed for a month.
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL focuses on a family that's loving but shattered nonetheless. Nichols plays his cards close to the vest, offering small details here and there and leaving it to the audience to connect the dots, a brave decision in today's multiplexes. Roy Tomlin (Nichols regular Michael Shannon) and his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) are the subjects of a manhunt after an Amber Alert is issued for Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher), the eight-year-old adopted son of Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard). Meyer is the charismatically shady leader of a religious cult known as "The Ranch," whose Texas compound has just been raided by the FBI after months of surveillance. Meyer tells the agents in charge that Roy is Alton's biological father and that Roy and his estranged wife Sarah (Kirsten Dunst) recently left The Ranch. Meyer preaches a series of numbers that the FBI and NSA investigator Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) believe are top-secret coordinates transmitted from government satellites. Both are incredulous when Meyer tells them the numbers came out of Alton's mouth and he believes he's a vessel for God's word. While Meyer dispatches his own hired guns (Bill Camp, Scott Haze) to find Alton, the boy is being taken to an unknown location in Florida by his father and Lucas, a childhood friend of Roy's who lost touch with him after Roy's family joined Meyer's cult. For reasons that become clear as the film goes on, Alton cannot be out in daylight and must wear dark goggles that keep in check powerful beams of light that emanate from his eyes when he gets his "messages" and noise-canceling headphones in an attempt to keep him from picking up radio signals. When he brings down a government satellite and it crashes in pieces on a gas station in the middle of the night, the FBI turns the case over to Sevier, the NSA, and the military, who want to get to the bottom of Alton's unique abilities, but even they aren't prepared for the reality of Alton or his origin.
A very allegorical, metaphorical story open to a number of interpretations--is Alton a symbol for Jesus? Is he possessed? Is he from another world? Is he a young superhero learning to control his powers? Is he terminally ill?--MIDNIGHT SPECIAL may be Nichols' most personal film yet. In dealing with the situation involving his own ill infant son and the recovery that inspired him to conceive this story, Nichols gained new perspectives on parenthood that resonate in the relationship between Roy and Alton. Shannon, rarely a sympathetic figure onscreen, is often heartbreaking as a loving father struggling to put his family back together and willing to do whatever it takes, even sacrificing innocent bystanders, to fulfill his role as protector and make sure his son is safe. Much has been made of the Spielbergian, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND nature of MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, though I'd argue that a good chunk of the film could almost pass for John Carpenter in STARMAN mode or Joe Dante in one of his darker moods. Regardless of what's the bigger stylistic influence, MIDNIGHT SPECIAL feels like an early 1980s film lost in time, and that's meant to be a compliment. Nichols demonstrates an ability to tell a bigger story that grows more reliant on special effects as it proceeds while still keeping it grounded in his own style and tone. Nichols loves setting films in rural places and makes great use of empty highways and back country roads, and it's telling that MIDNIGHT SPECIAL's weakest section is its effects-filled finale, where the payoff doesn't quite match the buildup (also, Shepard's Calvin Meyer just disappears from the film), with an open-to-interpretation ending that feels a little hoary and played-out. Still, for a film that's bigger than anything he's done ($20 million is probably still considered "low-budget," but that's double what MUD cost), MIDNIGHT SPECIAL succeeds in the way it very much remains the distinctive work of its maker. That's something that's unusual to see in today's movies, particularly ones with big-studio money that gradually roll out to nationwide release. This isn't Nichols' best film, but it's still a very good one that's better than a lot of what's out there now, and with a 4-for-4 record, it's pretty clear by this point that this is someone we can start calling an important American filmmaker.
Despite critical acclaim and some major pre-release awards buzz, 99 HOMES fizzled in theaters, topping out at 691 screens and grossing just over $1 million. Directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani, the film takes place in the greater Orlando, FL area circa 2010, after the housing bubble burst and foreclosures were big business. Unable to hold on to his home is unemployed construction worker Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), who supports his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his young son Connor (Noah Lomax). Sheriff's deputies and a team of movers are present when constantly-vaping real estate foreclosure vulture Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) shows up at Dennis' front door to begin the eviction. Powerless to fight the system despite being given 30 days to appeal, Dennis moves his family into a motel filled with other foreclosure families and when he's unable to find a job, he reluctantly accepts a job offer from Carver to do repair work on his properties. Carver admires Dennis' persistence and the way he stands up for himself, especially in confronting one of Carver's men who stole some of Dennis' tools during the eviction. This leads to Dennis being complicit in Carver's various scams and schemes in the way he takes advantage of federal government loopholes to maximize his own profits, and before long, Dennis is essentially Carver's right hand, evicting good people in the exact position he once was, but doing so for the sake of supporting his family and doing whatever he needs to do to repurchase the family home.
Basically a housing bubble redux of WALL STREET, 99 HOMES is sincere in its look at hardworking people victimized by the system and by bad luck, and the performances of Garfield and especially Shannon are excellent. Shannon even gets a big Gordon Gekko-style "Greed is good" speech about how "America was built by bailing out winners, by rigging a nation of the winners, for the winners, by the winners." There are powerful moments throughout, particularly the agonizing and intense sequence where Carver coldly and methodically has Dennis and his family forced out of the house, and a heartbreaking one later on when Dennis has to evict a frail and obviously mentally-diminished elderly widower who just keeps helplessly repeating "We had a reverse mortgage...my wife signed the papers..." These scenes are very effectively done and are certain to get your blood boiling, but Bahrani and co-writer Amir Naderi give Dennis a far too familiar character arc. He doesn't tell his mother he's working for the man who evicted them, and she doesn't seem to question anything as long as he keeps getting paid, and Dern is saddled with playing a character too dim and oblivious to garner much sympathy. Of course, the more money Dennis makes, the more seduced he is by Carver's Mephistophelian appeal, which extends to him leaving Lynn and Connor in a dangerous situation at the motel to go to a swanky, boozy party with Carver and some hot women that of course results in a drunk Dennis with his head in his hands as he ponders What I've Become. 99 HOMES becomes far too predictable in it second half, especially with a by-the-numbers subplot about a deal with an even bigger real estate mogul (Clancy Brown) and Carver's plan to discredit and sabotage one man's (Tim Guinee) attempt to avoid foreclosure. There are moments of gut-wrenching power in 99 HOMES, but there's also a lot of formulaic melodrama. Overall, it's a good film, but not the great one the early buzz predicted. Bahrani dedicates 99 HOMES to the late Roger Ebert, who championed the filmmaker when he was just starting out and spoke very highly of his 2005 indie breakout MAN PUSH CART. (R, 112 mins)
MI-5 (UK - 2015)
A feature-film spinoff of the ten-season BBC television series SPOOKS (retitled MI-5 in most areas outside the UK; the film's UK title is SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD), MI-5 is a fairly standard-issue espionage/terrorism thriller, with enough action and genuinely suspenseful set pieces to make it worthwhile, even if it doesn't exactly blaze new trails in its genre. Recurring series director Bharat Nalluri and writers Jonathan Brackley and Tim Vincent stick to the style of the show, but make it accessible for the uninitiated, primarily by relegating most of the participating series stars to minor supporting roles or killing them off not long after they're introduced. Though the series featured the likes of Matthew Macfadyen and David Oyelowo in its earliest years, its only constant throughout its decade-long run was Peter Firth (EQUUS, LIFEFORCE), who reprises his role as Harry Pearce, the no-nonsense head of MI-5's counter-terrorism unit. MI-5 kicks off with a botched convoy transport of apprehended terrorist Adem Qasim (Elyes Gabel) ends up with several agents dead after Pearce lets Qasim go free in order to minimize the risk of civilians getting caught in the crossfire. Decommissioned and with his career and reputation ruined, Pearce publicly jumps from a bridge into the Thames but it's all a ruse that his superiors, namely MI-5 Director General Oliver Mace (Tim McInnerney) quickly see through. As a fugitive Pearce goes on an off-the-grid hunt for Qasim, Mace calls in rogue agent and former Pearce protege Will Holloway (GAME OF THRONES' Kit Harington) to track down his disgraced one-time mentor.
What follows are the usual shifting alliances and double crosses, with Pearce and Holloway engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse while acknowledging that they're both on the same side, while also dealing with old grudges since it was Pearce who decommissioned Holloway from MI-5 and derailed his career. Pearce is convinced that someone in his unit tipped off Qasim's people about the convoy transport, and of course, he's right. The problem is, Mace and his deputy director Geraldine Maltby (Jennifer Ehle) think the traitor is Pearce. Journeyman director Nalluri, who's spent most of his career in British TV (TORCHWOOD), but has also helmed a variety of features including the 1998 LA FEMME NIKITA ripoff KILLING TIME, 2000's THE CROW: SALVATION, and 2008's minor arthouse hit MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, does a solid job with the action sequences and the intense climax is very well-handled save for one dodgy-looking CGI explosion. Of the holdovers from the TV series, only Firth and McInnerney get any significant screen time, with Harington, Ehle, and Tuppence Middleton (JUPITER ASCENDING) as another agent helping Holloway, being new additions to the MI-5 universe. MI-5 doesn't offer much in the way of surprises, but it's engaging, it moves fast, and it does exactly what it sets out to do. (R, 104 mins)
FREAKS OF NATURE
(US - 2015)
KITCHEN SINK was a horror spoof script by Oren Uziel (22 JUMP STREET) that spent several years on Hollywood's "Black List" of best unfilmed screenplays that floated around town waiting to get the green light. Something clearly got lost on KITCHEN SINK's way to becoming FREAKS OF NATURE, a dreary and almost completely laughless slog that was shot in 2013 and spent two years on the shelf before Columbia decided to cut its losses and quietly snuck it into 100 theaters last October. Co-produced by Uziel's buddy and two-time Academy Award-nominee Jonah Hill and featuring a cast of all-star comedy ringers, FREAKS OF NATURE is a total misfire that, aside from maybe two lines and a couple of throwaway sight gags, makes SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE look like SHAUN OF THE DEAD. Set in the small town of Dillford, FREAKS presents a society where vampires (the rich and privileged), zombies (the destitute dregs of society) and humans (the middle class) co-exist. The film doesn't do anything more with the class struggle notion than that, instead focusing on three high-school protagonists: affable, sensitive, baseball-playing stoner Dag (Nicholas Braun) and his hapless attempts at romancing Lorelei (Vanessa Hudgens), who keeps him in the Friend Zone but likes his access to weed; nice-girl Petra (BAD TURN WORSE's Mackenzie Davis), who lets stud vampire Milan Pinache (Ed Westwick) transform her only to break her heart immediately after; and geeky loser Ned (Josh Fadem), who finds love with zombie girl Jenna (Mae Whitman) and lets her turn him into one of the walking dead if it means no longer putting up with his braying jackass of a jock brother (Chris Zylka as Seann William Scott as Stifler). Chaos erupts when an alien invasion (aliens, vampires, zombies, and eventually werewolves figure in, hence the original KITCHEN SINK title) turns Dillford into a war zone, which means Dag, Petra, and Ned (played by actors in their late 20s to early 30s) end up barricading themselves in the school basement in a half-assed re-staging of THE BREAKFAST CLUB, because that's what makes a great horror spoof.
Some very qualified comic performers are wasted in nothing supporting roles: Denis Leary as the asshole owner of Dillford's chief source of income--the processed-meat riblet factory (one of the very few laughs comes from him crowing about firing Dag's mom after she tried to unionize his zombie workforce); Patton Oswalt as a paranoid survivalist hiding in a bunker with his elderly mother; Bob Odenkirk and Joan Cusack as Dag's hippie parents; Ian Roberts and Rachael Harris as Ned's parents; and Keegan-Michael Key as a perpetually angry vampire high-school teacher who's burned out after dealing with 97 years of apathetic students. If you make it to the end, you'll hear Werner Herzog as the voice of the alien leader, announcing their peaceful intentions by quoting Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," which might sound amusing, but in the context of this disastrous failure, is emphatically not. A comedy that throws in everything except the kitchen sink and comedy, FREAKS OF NATURE is staggeringly awful. A documentary about what went wrong here in the hands of director Robbie Pickering would be far more interesting than anything in the finished product, but hey, garbage in, garbage out. Doesn't matter. Audiences grading it on the horror fanboy's "everything is awesome" curve and insisting it's this week's new genre classic will scarf it up and ask for seconds. (R, 93 mins)
THE HARVEST is one of those intense thrillers that has you on the edge of your seat until you start thinking about it and it promptly falls flat on its face. Shown at festivals in 2013 but unreleased until its stealth VOD premiere two years later by IFC, it's also the first new film in over a decade by HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and WILD THINGS director John McNaughton, whose last film, the obscure Bill Murray comedy SPEAKING OF SEX, sat on the shelf for seven years before going straight-to-DVD in 2007. In a rural, wooded area, a sickly 13-year-old boy named Andy (Charlie Tahan) is housebound and under the constant care of his overbearing, overmedicating doctor mother Katherine (Samantha Morton) and his passive, weak-willed father Richard (Michael Shannon). Andy is homeschooled, has never been outside of the house, and is surprised when his first friend comes knocking at his window. Maryann (Natasha Calis) is a feisty orphan who just moved in with her grandparents (Peter Fonda, Leslie Lyles) across the nearby creek. The two lonely kids enjoy playing video games, but the possessive Katherine is threatened by Maryann, and after a conversation with the grandparents, it's decided that Maryann is no longer welcome to visit Andy. That doesn't stop her, and as the observant Katherine sees evidence that Maryann is still visiting, she goes off the deep end, unable to give Andy any freedom despite protests from Richard to let the dying boy have as normal a life as possible in what little time he has left.
Something odd is going on in the house and what sounds like a fusion of coming-of-age and disease-of-the-week dramas makes an abrupt switch in direction with a doozy of a midway plot twist that unfortunately backs first-time screenwriter Stephen Lancelotti into a corner from which he can't claw his way out. The implausibilities abound--how is Maryann able to so easily sneak in and out of the house, and once she finds what she finds, she exclaims "Nobody believes me!" but we only see her tell her incredulous grandparents. Grandpa says "stay off the computer," then when she pleads with him later about what's really going on in the house, does he call the police? No, he tells her to "follow your heart." What? THE HARVEST has no idea what to do with Fonda's character, who starts out the film as a rock for his grieving granddaughter and quickly turns into a useless old fool, giving the actor literally nothing to do but parody himself and mutter "Far out!" a couple of times. Calis and Tahan are fine, even though it feels like they're 13-and-14-year-olds playing characters who should be eight or nine. Shannon is terrific in a rare restrained, sympathetic performance--watch him in one scene where he contorts his upper body and looks to be in agony trying to avoid hugging the bonkers Katherine. It's Morton who rules THE HARVEST, with a terrifying, mad performance as the off-her-rocker mother desperately clinging to her control over a child for reasons that only become clear later on. Fast-paced and gripping, THE HARVEST is nonetheless too dumb to be taken seriously, wrapping up with one of the more frustratingly inane closing shots in recent memory, one that looks like a hasty reshoot a year after the rest of the movie was finished. (Unrated, 104 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
EXTINCTION (Spain/Hungary - 2015)
This week's new zombie movie is the European-made EXTINCTION, which valiantly tries to bring an emphasis on characterization to the proceedings, but gets so bogged down in tedium and belaboring its points that it's a full 90 minutes before the creature mayhem even gets rolling. Directed and co-written by Miguel Angel Vivas (KIDNAPPED) and produced by frequent Liam Neeson director Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN, NON-STOP, RUN ALL NIGHT), EXTINCTION's prologue briefly goes into the initial zombie outbreak before cutting to "Nine Years Later." The world is now a frozen apocalypse with scant few human survivors, the plus side being that the extreme climate change wiped out the zombie population and killed the undead infection. The first hour and change primarily deals with a still-seething feud between a pair of neighbors in the middle of iced-over nowhere: bearded, long-haired Patrick (LOST's Matthew Fox) hunts for food with his loyal dog, while next door, overprotective Jack (BURN NOTICE's Jeffrey Donovan) helicopter parents his spunky, starting-to-rebel nine-year-old daughter Lu (Quinn McColgan). Patrick and Jack have a past--they were on a bus in the prologue, with a woman named Emma (Valeria Vereau) and a crying infant. When the bus was sieged by rampaging zombies, Emma was bitten and Patrick killed her before she turned. Jack has never been able to forgive him and forbids Lu to speak to him.
It seems hard to buy that this level of grudging tension and neighborly hatred could go on for nine years--almost as hard as it is to buy Lu eating a box of Froot Loops that looks like it was just brought home from the grocery store. When Patrick is out scavenging for food and encounters an evolved version of the zombies--able to withstand the cold but hobbled by blindness--the men set aside their differences to battle the approaching creatures and protect Lu, who's clearly the center of a pre-zombie outbreak babydaddy dispute. Even with its frequently shoddy greenscreen work, it's hard to dismiss EXTINCTION's efforts to do something different in an absurdly played-out genre, but it doesn't do itself any favors by pulling a Gareth Edwards and keeping the zombies offscreen as much as possible (for most of the film, there's one zombie and Patrick has him chained up outside). And when they do finally arrive, they seem to have sprinted in off the set of Neil Marshall's THE DESCENT. The film's sympathies clearly lie with the more proactive and heroic Patrick, who wins the respect of Lu, who seems to realize that Jack is a bit of an asshole and a coward, especially when his first reaction when the zombies attack is to try and pre-emptively shoot Lu in the head. Young McColgan is a scene-stealer, especially in a really nice bit where she traps a zombie in a downstairs freezer and allows herself a brief smile, marveling at her own ingenuity and badassery. More moments like that, and less of a pouting, butthurt Jack scowling at Patrick might've made some improvements. There's a solid 90-minute movie hiding somewhere in the bloated two-hour one that got released. (R, 113 mins) UNFRIENDED (US - 2015)
An ambitious stunt that sticks to its game plan but still really works only once, UNFRIENDED is a real-time social media fright flick that plays out on a multi-window Skype session. Nacho Vigalondo's OPEN WINDOWS attempted this with hapless results, and while UNFRIENDED is much more successful at adhering to and exploiting the gimmick, they payoff isn't quite worth the buildup. A year after the tragic death of high school student Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), who committed suicide after a humiliating video of her was posted to YouTube, her group of friends are taunted during a group chat on Skype by a blank-icon user going by the name "Billie227." All attempts to ditch the intruder fail, and Billie seems to have insider knowledge about all of them. As Billie Facebook messages Blaire (Shelley Hennig), who at one time was Laura's best friend, the stakes are raised, secrets are revealed, and people start dying. Director Leo Gabriadze (a protege of producer Timur Bekmambetov) and screenwriter Nelson Greaves hint at things under the surface, whether it's lip service being paid to the issue of cyberbullying or some dark secret involving an incident with Laura's uncle when Laura and Blaire were younger, but they also do an admirable job cranking up the tension, making harmless sounds like text message and chat alerts come off as nerve-wracking and dread-inducing. As Billie starts to mercilessly expose the wrongdoings and hypocrisy of Blaire and her friends--both to Laura and to one another--it's clear that everyone has secrets and the bonds of friendship are tenuous at best, as evidenced by the nail-biting game of "Never Have I Ever." It's an often bleak and misanthropic film (kudos to the filmmakers for going for the R rating), but it's one that should've dug a little deeper instead of going the easy route of everyone shouting over one another, climactic jump scares, and tilted BLAIR WITCH camera angles. It's also another horror film where the "teenagers" are played by actors in their mid-to-late 20s and looking it. But for the most part, UNFRIENDED is better and more compelling than it has any right to be, and has enough good things going for it that its shortcomings are all the more frustrating. So many genre films of a reality-based style (faux-doc, found-footage, etc) start cutting corners and cheating as soon as they can, but UNFRIENDED establishes its rules and sticks to them. The real-time element is believably-handled and Gabriadze never once strays from the central position of having the camera planted on Blaire's laptop, from her POV (that was where Vigalondo dropped the ball with OPEN WINDOWS--he couldn't wait to get the action away from the laptop), and the whole film really does look like it was pulled off in one take in real time. Of course, a pretty good thing always has to be ruined: UNFRIENDED 2 is coming in 2016. (R, 83 mins)
