BOMBSHELL (US/Canada - 2019) Directed by Jay Roach. Written by Charles Randolph. Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Liv Hewson, Brigitte Lundy-Paine, Rob Delaney, Stephen Root, Robin Weigert, Amy Landecker, Mark Moses, Richard Kind, Holland Taylor, Alanna Ubach, Anne Ramsay, Andy Buckley, Brooke Smith, Ben Lawson, Josh Lawson, Nazanian Boniadi, Brian d'Arcy James, Alice Eve, Elisabeth Rohm, Bree Condon, Ashley Greene, Tricia Helfer, Jennifer Morrison, Lisa Canning, Ahna O'Reilly, John Rothman, Tony Plana, Kevin Dorff, P.J. Byrne, Spencer Garrett, Michael Buie, Marc Evan Jackson, Katie Aselton. (R, 109 mins)
A chronicle of the Fox News sexual harassment scandal that brought down chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, BOMBSHELL belongs to that same "ripped from the headlines" subgenre that gave us THE BIG SHORT and VICE, generally decent films that provide easy Oscar bait for big-name actors to do uncanny impressions of ubiquitous figures. BOMBSHELL is very much in line with those films, and could make an unofficial trilogy with director Jay Roach's two previous HBO political docudramas, 2008's RECOUNT and 2012's GAME CHANGE. Those were instant Emmy and Golden Globe magnets, with RECOUNT giving Laura Dern a chance to do a remarkable take on Florida Attorney General Katharine Harris, and GAME CHANGE showcasing Julianne Moore and Ed Harris as dead-on versions of Sarah Palin and John McCain, respectively. But because these stories are so recent and the 24-hour news cycle so constantly there and in our faces, BOMBSHELL falls into the same trap as the rest of these kinds of movies: it entertains but offers nothing that we don't already know. Given Roach's history with HBO, it's surprising that BOMBSHELL is even in theaters. It follows the same formula and style as RECOUNT and GAME CHANGE, eschewing the snarky smartassery that Adam McKay brought to THE BIG SHORT and VICE, opting instead for occasional fourth-wall breaking while generally keeping it straightforward and serious.
The Fox News scandal broke in 2016 and BOMBSHELL is already the second 2019 project to tackle Ailes as a subject, following the Showtime limited series THE LOUDEST VOICE, with Russell Crowe as Ailes and Naomi Watts as Gretchen Carlson, the fired Fox News personality who was the first to sue him for sexual harassment. THE LOUDEST VOICE was more about the entire Ailes story, starting with the establishment of Fox News, while BOMBSHELL just deals with the scandal, with the focus being on Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), who finds herself under fire as the film opens in 2015, just after her debate scuffle with Donald Trump that led to his infamous "blood coming out of her...wherever" comment. Ailes (John Lithgow, with prosthetic jowls and a NUTTY PROFESSOR fat suit) sympathizes with the way Trump supporters are raging at her on Twitter, but wants her to play nice, as Fox and Trump are well on their way to a perpetual state of symbiotic co-dependence. At the same time, Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is ruffling feathers on the afternoon dead zone she's been given after being bounced from the highly-rated morning show FOX & FRIENDS, and when she's eventually fired, she decides to blow the doors off the worst-kept secret in the building: that Ailes is a serial sexual harasser and all-around creep, and that the network's "boys club"--the costly harassment settlements of Bill O'Reilly (played here by Kevin Dorff) are unspoken common knowledge among the grunts in the newsroom--has made for a toxic work environment. The mood is also fueled by deranged, right-wing paranoia that comes straight from Ailes, who at one point makes an off-the-cuff remark to his legal team about an Obama White House plot to have him murdered, a comment so batshit crazy that even his attorney Rudy Giuliani (Richard Kind) is seen looking away in incredulous discomfort.
The third figure in the story is the most problematic in that she's a wholly fictional creation of Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph (a co-writer of THE BIG SHORT). Margot Robbie is the improbably-named Kayla Pospisil, a composite character meant to show the kind of treatment given to established vets like Kelly and Carlson when they were ambitious youngsters at the network. Composite characters are very often a necessity with dramatic narrative recreations, and while it's no fault of Robbie's, the script just requires Kayla to be too many things at once. Ostensibly an "evangelical millennial" with a repressed upbringing in a staunchly far-right church family, Kayla is at Fox News to be a voice for young conservatives. She's first shown in a control booth, demonstrating no knowledge of the Eagles or classic rock in general when she puts a photo of Don Henley on the air to accompany a breaking news report on the death of Glenn Frey, blaming the gaffe on "never listening to secular music." The next time we see her, she's telling Carlson that she's leaving her staff to work for O'Reilly (wait...when was she on Carlson's staff in the first place?). Right after that, she's hopping into bed with a closeted lesbian cubicle mate (Kate McKinnon), who's a secret Hillary Clinton supporter. It's rightly disgusting and infuriating when we see ambitious Kayla requesting a meeting with Ailes and ending up being subjected to his degrading requests that she pull up her skirt for him, and the squirm-inducing scene is played very well by Robbie and Lithgow. But Robbie simply can't assemble a believable character out of the wildly disparate pieces she's been given.
Kidman has a good amount of screen time, but her story generally takes a backseat to what goes on with Robbie's Kayla and Theron's Megyn Kelly. Theron is definitely the MVP here, with just the right amount of subtle prosthetics combined with an astonishing mimicry of Kelly's voice, cadence, and speaking style. It's one of the most believable transformations of an actor into a real-life figure in recent memory. There's been some chatter online complaining that the film makes Kelly a hero, but that's another discussion for another time. No one deserves to be a victim of sexual harassment, and BOMBSHELL isn't about Megyn Kelly's dubious comments as a Fox News personality or during her short tenure at NBC. Briskly-paced and well-acted (except for the one scene between Theron and Robbie, which comes off as strangely clunky), with Theron and Lithgow being the standouts, BOMBSHELL also boasts a very large supporting cast, including Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch, Allison Janney as Ailes attorney Susan Estrich, Spencer Garrett as Sean Hannity, Tony Plana as Geraldo Rivera, a perfectly-cast Alanna Ubach as Judge Jeanine Pirro, Mark Moses as the loathsome Bill Shine, Anne Ramsay as Greta Van Susteren, Bree Condon as a Mean Girl-ish Kimberly Guilfoyle, P.J. Byrne as Neil Cavuto, and Connie Britton as Ailes' endlessly supportive wife, introduced scoffing at an employee for eating "liberal" grocery store sushi. Like RECOUNT, GAME CHANGE, THE BIG SHORT, and VICE, BOMBSHELL is perfectly fine entertainment and it'll almost certainly be up for major awards (Theron and Lithgow are both deserving). But once you get past the dedication and diligence of the performances, do these films have any lasting impact beyond that first viewing? THE BIG SHORT was great, but have I thought "I need to rewatch THE BIG SHORT" even once in the four years since I saw it in the theater?
DESTROYER (US/UK - 2018) Last fall, DESTROYER had some awards-season buzz going for Nicole Kidman, but financially-strapped distributor Annapurna decided to focus their attention on the Oscar-baiting VICE instead, leaving DESTROYER to flounder on just 235 screens at its widest release. Looking what can be charitably described as several degrees south of haggard, Kidman did get a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as hard-drinking LAPD detective Erin Bell, a disgraced ex-FBI agent who's pretty much regarded as a total shitshow among her colleagues and always looks like she hasn't slept in days. Though two other cops have already caught the case, she shows up at a homicide where the John Doe murder victim was shot dead and has dye-stained $100 bills scattered around his body. Back at the precinct, someone mails her an envelope with an identically dye-stained $100 bill. She's convinced it's a message and she knows who's sending it: Silas (Toby Kebbell), the leader of a ring of bank robbers she and her former FBI partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) infiltrated as part of an extensive undercover operation nearly 17 years ago. Going rogue and blowing off her partner Antonio (Shamier Anderson), Erin starts tracking down all of Silas' known associates, none of whom are happy to see her since her cover was ultimately blown. She eventually works her way to Silas' sleazy, money-laundering lawyer DiFranco (Bradley Whitford), who's been holding the take and doling it out as requested in clandestine park handoffs to Silas' drug-addled girlfriend Petra (Tatiana Maslany). As Erin predicted, Silas' money is running out and he's resurfaced to plan another robbery and settle old scores.
At its core, DESTROYER is another saga of a morally-conflicted cop, with Kidman fearlessly diving into her own TRAINING DAY crossed with a bit of BAD LIEUTENANT, with one shock value scene where she goes to absurd lengths to get info on Silas' whereabouts from one of his terminally-ill former accomplices. But director Karyn Kusama and writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (the trio also worked on 2005's AEON FLUX and 2016's terrifying THE INVITATION), have a few unexpected tricks up their sleeves beyond a cleverly-constructed ending and one incredibly intense robbery sequence. These are doled out slowly in a series of flashbacks to the undercover operation that play as a parallel timeline to the current events. Erin's job, boozing, and pill-popping are at the expense of fractured relationships with her ex Ethan (Scoot McNairy) and her teenage daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn), and as the backstory gradually fills in, you finally get a sense of the extent to which she's gone to numb the pain. Everyone in her life has written her off, with the possible exception of her sympathetic former FBI boss Gil (Toby Huss), who invites her to a Bible study, insisting "It's low-key...nobody's handling snakes," prompting one of the very few times present-day Erin cracks a sort-of smile. In the end, DESTROYER doesn't absolve Erin of her sins and doesn't ask the audience for sympathy, but Kidman succeeds in conveying the humanity underneath an irreparably damaged person who can't stop making terrible decisions. (R, 121 mins)
WE DIE YOUNG (US/Bulgaria/UK - 2019) Following the French drama THE BOUNCER, Jean-Claude Van Damme gets another chance to go serious with the earnest but cliched WE DIE YOUNG. Hampered by obvious budget constraints, the film gets off to a clunky start with too many shots of a Bulgarian backlot unsuccessfully portraying the mean streets of Washington, D.C. (no streets have as many mailboxes and pay phones as these do), but it gets better and more compelling as it goes on. Set in a barrio war zone controlled by MS-13 kingpin Rincon (David Castaneda of the Netflix series THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY), who's already reaching "heavy is the crown" levels of paranoia, so much so that he really only trusts teenage drug delivery boy and collector Lucas (Elijah Rodriguez), who lost his older brother in Afghanistan and is doing everything he can to shield his younger brother Miguel (Nicholas Sean Johnny) from gang life. Rincon is preoccupied with the wedding of his baby sister Gabriella (Robyn Cara) and entrusts Lucas to deliver two bricks of heroin to a contact just outside his territory. But Lucas is distracted when he learns that Rincon's guys are planning to initiate Miguel into MS-13, so he never makes the drop and is instead pursued by Rincon's hot-headed cousin and ambitious second-in-command Jester (Charlie MacGechan). Fleeing for safety, they end up in the car of Daniel (Van Damme), an Oxycontin-addicted neighborhood mechanic and ex-Marine who lost his ability to speak when he took some shrapnel in a bomb blast in Afghanistan.
Set over the course of Gabriella's wedding day, WE DIE YOUNG turns into a standard-issue, urban "survive the night" scenario with Rincon's guys eventually catching Lucas and Miguel, forcing Daniel to channel the long-dormant warrior within to mount a daring one-man rescue. Making his narrative feature debut, Israeli-American documentary filmmaker Lior Geller has obviously spent time worshiping at the altar of Alfonso Cuaron, with a couple of reasonably well-executed handheld, long-take chase sequences, both in a car (complete with blood splattering against the lens, as required by law) and on foot. The problem is that you've seen them all before, along with the heavy-handed digital insertion of the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument into the background to remind you that This Is America, and all the hackneyed literary allusions with Daniel trying to get Lucas to read A Tale of Two Cities and Rincon serving as an ersatz Shakespearean figure who even quotes The Merchant of Venice at one point. To his credit, Castaneda tries to bring some complexity to a potentially cartoonish character, and Van Damme (one of 37 credited producers) does a fine job letting his aged face, pinched into an almost constant contorted grimace due to Daniel's chronic pain, speak volumes. But for the most part, there's nothing new here--the kid who's been sucked into the gang life trying to keep his little brother from the same fate, the SCARFACE trope of the powerful gangster being possessive of his little sister, the quiet loner silently suffering in a shell of his former self until he has a reason to take action. In the end, it's a decent enough Redbox rental, as Geller gussies it up with some occasionally effective documentary immediacy, and its three solid lead performances (Castaneda and Rodriguez were both in SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO as well) give it a little more credibility than those early Bulgarian backlot scenes would initially indicate. (R, 93 mins)
Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (DOGTOOTH) reteams with his LOBSTER star Colin Farrell for this brilliant mindfuck that puts Greek myth and tragedy into modern American suburbia and turns it into a dark and disturbing arthouse horror film. Shot and set in Cincinnati, OH, one of the most quintessentially midwest American cities, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER takes its time, building tension, and methodically tightening its grip. Farrell is Dr. Steven Murphy, a renowned cardiologist with a wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman, who starred with Farrell in last year's THE BEGUILED, which was shot after SACRED DEER but released first), teenage daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and young son Bob (Sunny Suljic). Unbeknownst to his family, Steven frequently meets with Martin (DUNKIRK's Barry Keoghan), a polite but troubled 16-year-old. The nature of their relationship isn't revealed until much later, but it appears to be a Big Brother or a mentor-type situation, as Martin's father is dead and his mother (Alicia Silverstone) doesn't seem to be all there in the two years since his passing. After Steven invites Martin to meet his family, the boy's neediness escalates and he starts showing up at Steven's office unannounced, demanding he come to his mother's house for dinner, watch GROUNDHOG DAY with him ("It was my dad's favorite movie") and psychologically manipulating and slowly seducing Kim. Then Martin drops the hammer and Steven is forced to contend with the extent of what the awkward teenager has in store for him and his family.
To say anymore would involve far too many spoilers, but THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is hypnotic in ways we rarely see since the loss of Stanley Kubrick. The shot compositions, the long, static takes, and the cold, antiseptic interiors of the hospital and the Steadicam prowling its endless hallways like some sort of Overlook Medical Center all cast that vividly Kubrick spell, at least until the third act when things take a more pronounced Michael Haneke-inspired turn. Lanthimos has fashioned a film that is stilted and awkward by design. These characters are recognizably typical American people but they often talk like they're from another world, effectively emphasizing and almost darkly satirizing the cold detachment so vital to Kubrick. People say inappropriate things with little or no provocation: everyone is fixated on Steven's "beautiful" hands and they're mentioned in practically every other scene. "Do you have hair under your arms?" Bob asks Martin. It's the kind of movie where Martin's mother will start sucking Steven's thumb after he declines dessert and when he's uncomfortable and tries to leave, she sternly intones "I won't let you leave until you've tried my tart." It's the kind of movie where Steven impulsively tells his nine-year-old son that as a child, he once jerked off his drunk, passed-out stepfather ("The sheets were covered in sperm..."). And what prompts Steven to tell a colleague (Bill Camp) at a swanky gala hospital event "Our daughter started menstruating last week..."? Dysfunction is everywhere and the perfection of the American dream is all surface. Steven and Anna love one another but their sex life is bizarre--she strips and lies motionless, almost corpse-like, while he gropes himself, and it's a technique Kim mimics when she tries to initiate her idea of sex with an uninterested Martin, indicating that she's probably watched her parents. The film pulls no punches with its harrowing finale, and like any Lanthimos film, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is decidedly not for everyone (it's closer in spirit to DOGTOOTH than the darkly comedic THE LOBSTER, the latter seeming downright commercial in retrospect). But it's filled with outstanding performances by actors tasked with difficult roles (especially the quietly remarkable turn by Keoghan, who's even better here than he was as the doomed George in DUNKIRK), spellbinding camera work and cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis, and a unique and uncompromising vision on the part of its creators. Lanthimos is one of the masters of today's cinema. (R, 121 mins) CROOKED HOUSE
(UK - 2017)
Kenneth Branagh's middling remake of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS became a surprise hit in the fall of 2017, but another Agatha Christie adaptation arrived a couple of weeks later and no one knew about it. That's a shame because CROOKED HOUSE, while still flawed, is an overall better film despite Sony's apparent disinterest in promoting it, opting to dump it on 16 screens and VOD with no publicity at all (it wasn't even a theatrical release in the UK, where it premiered on Channel 5). Christie's novel, published in 1949, has fallen through the cracks over the decades even though it was one of the legendary writer's personal favorites of her work. She was especially proud of the incredibly uncompromising ending, which could be why there's never been a CROOKED HOUSE movie until now (there was a four-part BBC radio drama in 2008), and why this adaptation might've been a tough sell for mainstream audiences, even with the presence of some fine actors and a script co-written by GOSFORD PARK screenwriter and DOWNTON ABBEY creator Julian Fellowes. Fellowes' screenplay dated back to 2011, when Neil LaBute was originally attached to direct and Julie Andrews, Gabriel Byrne, and Gemma Arterton set to star. That fell apart in pre-production and the film eventually got made several years later with Gilles Paquet-Brenner (SARAH'S KEY, DARK PLACES) at the helm, reworking Fellowes' script (RAPA NUI writer Tim Rose Price is also credited) and losing all of the initially attached cast. Crooked House is populated by some of Christie's most loathsome characters, whose narcissism and misanthropy are obviously what initially drew LaBute (IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS) to the project. Paquet-Brenner tones that down a bit, but CROOKED HOUSE still contains some of the most bitterly sniping repartee in any Christie work.
Charles Hayward (Max Irons) is a British spy-turned-private eye in 1950s London (the film moves the book's setting ahead about a decade). He's hired by former flame Sophia Leonides (Stefanie Martini) to investigate the death of her grandfather Aristide (Gino Picciano), an obscenely wealthy tycoon and diabetic who was poisoned when his insulin was replaced with clear liquid eye medication. The chief suspect is his young trophy wife Brenda (Christina Hendricks), a Vegas showgirl who's of course treated with disdain and scorn by his greedy heirs, all of whom stay at the gargantuan family mansion to form one of the most dysfunctional families in the Christie universe. There's Aristide's eldest son and Sophia's father Philip (Julian Sands) and his washed-up ham actress wife Magda (Gillian Anderson); their obnoxious teenage son Eustace (Preston Nyman) and already cynical young daughter Josephine (Honor Kneafsey); Aristide's pompous youngest son Roger (Christian McKay) and his wife Clemency (Amanda Abbington); and Lady Edith (Glenn Close), the spinster sister of Aristide's late first wife and the only remotely likable one of the bunch aside from the wise-beyond-her-years Josephine. Lady Edith knows the entire family is a scheming nest of vipers and tries to help Hayward in his investigation, which is eventually taken over by dogged Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Taverner (Terence Stamp), who decides Hayward's feelings for Sophia are compromising his ability to handle things on his own. Like THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM, another recent British period mystery, CROOKED HOUSE starts out clunky and uneven but gets much better as it goes along, especially once Taverner takes charge and puts his foot down with this family of assholes. The film gets a big boost from Stamp, who still can still command the screen and is a much more interesting actor than the bland Irons (the dreadful BITTER HARVEST), who's just not believable as a former spy and has a way to go before he's on the level of his dad Jeremy. CROOKED HOUSE admirably doesn't cushion the blow of its ending, but part of me wonders how astonishingly mean-spirited this would've been in the hands of Neil LaBute. As it is, the film stumbles a bit in its first half, with uninteresting flashbacks to Hayward's romance with Sophia in Cairo (who cares?), but once an attempt is made on young Josephine's life and Stamp's Taverner has had it with everyone, it turns into a reasonably solid film that's worth seeing. (PG-13, 115 mins) BEYOND SKYLINE (US/China/UK/Canada/Singapore - 2017)
Offering further proof that anything can get a sequel in today's global market, BEYOND SKYLINE arrives seven long years after everyone instantly forgot about SKYLINE, a dismal Brett Ratner-produced alien invasion saga that nevertheless made back its paltry budget and was a big success in Asia, so here we are. Shot in late 2014 and into early 2015, BEYOND SKYLINE didn't enjoy the wide release, multiplex exposure its predecessor was given, instead bowing on VOD with the lowest possible expectations. But strange things can happen when nobody's looking, and while it's not a great movie by any means, BEYOND SKYLINE is a vast improvement, functioning as a de facto mulligan with the original film's writer Liam O'Donnell getting behind the camera (replacing veteran visual effects guys The Brothers Strause, still onboard as two of 29 credited producers) to do it right this time. You can almost sense O'Donnell's eagerness to wipe the slate clean since the two holdover characters from the original (played by different actors here) are killed off almost immediately, shifting the focus to the PURGE franchise's Frank Grillo as Mark, a lone wolf, alcoholic, widower cop (is there any other kind?) and his rebellious teenage son Trent (Jonny Weston) caught up in the alien invasion. Stuck in the underground subway tunnels, Mark and Trent team up with a few others, including transit employee Audrey (Bojana Novakovic) and homeless guy Sarge (Antonio Fargas), to evade the aliens but they end up being sucked into a hovering ship anyway, where Trent gets his brain ripped out and planted into an alien, thus reborn as an otherworldly species. While in the ship, Mark encounters Elaine, the pregnant survivor from the first film (Samantha Jean replaces Scottie Thompson) whose child is born with alien DNA after fiance Jarrod (Tony Black replaces Eric Balfour) was made part-alien after a brainectomy. Elaine dies giving birth, and Alien Jarrod sabotages the ship, which crashes in Laos, where Mark and Audrey meet a small band of resistance fighters led by Sua (Indonesian action star Iko Uwais). Oddball scientist Harper (Callan Mulvey) surmises that the alien blood of Elaine's child, who's growing at an accelerated rate and looks three years old after two days, might be the key to defeating the aliens, but in the meantime, Mark and Audrey team up with Sua, his sister Kanya (Pamelyn Chee), and eccentric warrior The Chief (Yayan Ruhian) for some one-on-one martial arts showdowns with the invaders, at which point the film moves from THE PURGE: SKYLINE to THE RAID: SKYLINE.
Considering its $15 million budget and a couple of dubious-looking CGI explosions, BEYOND SKYLINE looks as convincingly "big" as any over-budgeted Hollywood blockbuster opening on 3000 screens. Once again, Grillo is a believably hard-as-nails tough guy hero and things get pretty good once RAID stars Uwais and Ruhian turn up midway through. Aside from needing to look at SKYLINE's Wikipedia page because I had no memory of the Elaine/Jarrod storyline, BEYOND SKYLINE pretty much works as a standalone film, and one that's surprisingly engaging considering how needlessly convoluted it is and how bad SKYLINE was (have you ever met a SKYLINE fan?). O'Donnell takes too long getting to them, but anything goes once Uwais and Ruhian are introduced, and when you add Grillo into the mix (which is interesting since Grillo was at one time attached to the still-unmade American remake of THE RAID), along with some unabashed, over-the-top R-rated violence, BEYOND SKYLINE becomes something SKYLINE never was: entertaining. (R, 106 mins)
THE BEGUILED (US - 2017) Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard. (R, 93 mins) Based on Thomas P. Cullinan's 1966 Civil War-set novel A Painted Devil, THE BEGUILED was previously made into a film in 1971 by director Don Siegel. A departure at the time for star Clint Eastwood, who would have DIRTY HARRY in theaters later that year, THE BEGUILED was a badly marketed box-office flop though its reputation has improved significantly over time. It's especially interesting in hindsight when viewing it as part of the entire Eastwood canon, as it's a fascinating look at a masculine, archetypal Eastwood character having the tables turned on him by a boarding school full of women he's manipulated and betrayed (though it also shares a common theme with the later and far more sordid and sleazy TIGHTROPE, where once again Eastwood is a character surrounded by women--in that case, prostitutes and other sex workers--throwing themselves at him and he's never once shown paying). Sofia Coppola's remake, also called THE BEGUILED, approaches the story more from the POV of the women, though it hasn't been without controversy: a slave character named Hallie (played by Mae Mercer in the 1971 film) has been dropped, her absence explained in an early bit of a dialogue where someone says "The slaves all left." In addition, the character of Edwina, played by Kirsten Dunst, was biracial in the novel, but it's never mentioned here, nor was "whitewashing" brought up in 1971 when Elizabeth Hartman played the same role, but perhaps critics and film enthusiasts had more pressing issues to bitch about in 1971. Neither the novel nor the 1971 film had any big salient points to make regarding race or slavery, because it's not what the story is about. Coppola explained her reasoning being that girls and young women tend to be drawn to her films (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, THE BLING RING), and she didn't want a black female to be portrayed in any negative way that distracted from the story.
The central premise remains the same: in 1864 Virginia, Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell), a Union deserter, is found injured in the woods surrounding a sparsely-attended girls school. Young Amy (Oona Laurence of SOUTHPAW) is out picking mushrooms and helps him back to the school grounds, where he's taken in and his leg wound tended to by headmistress Miss Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman). Agreeing to give him time to recover before turning him over to Confederate soldiers, Miss Martha keeps McBurney locked in the music room and informs the others--teacher Edwina (Dunst), rebellious teen Alicia (Elle Fanning), and younger girls Jane (Angourie Rice of THE NICE GUYS), Marie (Addison Riecke), and Marie (Emma Howard)--that McBurney's room is off limits. With his smoldering looks and his Irish brogue, the charming, Dublin-born McBurney slowly endears himself to the women and the girls, who begin showing off by dressing in their best clothes, breaking out the jewelry ("You haven't worn that pendant since the Christmas party!" two different people mention to Edwina), and constantly finding excuses to go into his room. McBurney revels in the attention and it isn't long before the choking atmosphere of repression simmers into overpowering sexual tension as McBurney declares his love for Edwina while seducing Alicia and very nearly getting the prim, proper Miss Martha into his bed. Hell hath no fury like several women scorned, and things go south very quickly for McBurney.
A Southern Gothic that was as close as Eastwood ever came to starring in a horror movie, the 1971 BEGUILED took its time to let things boil over and when they did, it got seriously dark and unsettling. Coppola doesn't replicate that feeling here because her version seems to rush through the story (the closing credits roll before the 90-minute mark). Farrell's McBurney tells Edwina he loves her much too quickly, and whether Coppola's breezing past the details or it's intentional to show how lonely and desperate Edwina is for an escape from her dreary existence, it doesn't work. This new interpretation shows more gore in the surgical scenes and blood splattered all over Miss Martha's white dress as she emphatically orders someone to "Go to the smokehouse, bring me the saw!" before performing an impromptu offscreen leg amputation--a horrifying moment in the original film--but it's tame in other respects. Gone is the subplot about Miss Martha's past incestuous relationship with her brother (which led to one of Eastwood's best lines in the 1971 version) as well as any sense of tension and suspense at all. The shocking scenes where Eastwood's McBurney kills Amy's beloved turtle, and when he wakes up to find one of his legs missing are both ineffectively handled here to the point of being bungled. The subsequent psychotic rampage by Farrell's McBurney threatens to turn Coppola's BEGUILED into a Civil War-set "Houseguest from Hell" thriller, while the climactic dinner sequence loses all of its momentum thanks to Coppola's bizarre decision to have Edwina decline a helping of mushrooms. Farrell, Kidman, and the supporting cast are fine, but Kidman isn't given nearly as meaty and complex a Miss Martha as Geraldine Page got to play in 1971, and the only real improvement Coppola makes is with her Kubrick-like use of natural lighting throughout. Shot by cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd (THE GRANDMASTER) in a 1.66 aspect ratio--unusual for today's movies--THE BEGUILED '17 looks great. There's a dreamlike haze to the proceedings--not surprising to anyone who's seen THE VIRGIN SUICIDES--and you can feel the sweltering humidity, and with the BARRY LYNDON-like natural lighting, whether it's sunlight during the day or candles providing scant illumination at night, accompanied by the constant background noise of war and cannon fire and the sight of smoke from battle that's too close to the school for comfort, you really do feel transported back to 1864. But elsewhere, this BEGUILED doesn't seem to show much purpose since Coppola seems to have gone out of her way to render it as dramatically inert as possible. It looks stunning, but what exactly was the point of remaking this?
SECRET IN THEIR EYES (Spain/US - 2015) Written and directed by Billy Ray. Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Dean Norris, Alfred Molina, Michael Kelly, Joe Cole, Zoe Graham, Don Harvey, Amir Malaklou, Niko Nicotera, Patrick Davis, Ross Partridge. (PG-13, 111 mins)
Juan Jose Campanella's 2009 Argentine thriller THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES dealt with the reopening of a 25-year-old murder case that was hindered in its initial stages by the tumultuous political upheaval of 1970s Argentina. It won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and is the source for the THE-less English-language remake SECRET IN THE EYES, written and directed by Billy Ray, who previously helmed SHATTERED GLASS and BREACH and whose CAPTAIN PHILLIPS screenplay earned him an Oscar nomination. SECRET '15 makes some major changes to the story (though Ray does restage the original's much-ballyhooed soccer stadium zoom at a Dodgers game) and works fine for a good chunk of the way. But then it starts collapsing under the weight of too many contrivances and coincidences, and a third-act twist that's just too ludicrous to accept, though it does give us a brief preview of how an Oscar-winning, A-list actress might handle a 1960s-inspired Bette Davis "horror hag" renaissance in another 25 or so years.
Alternating between 2015 and flashbacks to 2002, the film opens with former FBI agent Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofor), now the head of security for the New York Mets, arriving in Los Angeles to visit district attorney Claire Sloan (Nicole Kidman). Claire was an assistant D.A. in 2002 when Ray was on loan from the FBI in the months following 9/11, working a joint anti-terrorism task force with L.A. cops Jess Cobb (Julia Roberts), Bumpy Willis (Dean Norris), and bootlicking department company man Reg Siefert (Michael Kelly). They were part of a post-9/11 surveillance operation on a mosque believed to be housing a sleeper cell when a young woman's body was discovered in a dumpster adjacent to the building. The dead girl turned out to be single mom Jess' high-school senior daughter Carolyn (Zoe Graham). Devastated by Jess' inconsolable grief, Ray disregarded his own job and the orders of D.A. Morales (Alfred Molina) and conducted his own investigation after seeing a suspicious-looking young man (Joe Cole) staring at Carolyn in photos taken at a police department picnic. Nobody seemed to know who the kid was until Siefert confessed that his name was Marzin, and he was his snitch inside the mosque. With the department and Morales' office deciding that preventing another 9/11 trumps bringing Carolyn's killer to justice, the case against Marzin was buried and he was declared "untouchable" and set free, with Morales and Reg opting to instead railroad a mentally-incompetent Muslim (Amir Malaklou) for the murder.
But Marzin vanished shortly after, and Ray has spent 13 obsessive years tracking him down and he's finally found him, recently paroled, sporting a new nose and the name Beckwith. Claire is now the D.A. (Morales is now the governor) and is hesitant to reopen the investigation. Jess agrees, a broken shell of what she once was and having thrown herself into her job, concluding "I don't think I can stomach seeing him walk away again." Ray won't let it go and along with a hobbling Bumpy, now on desk duty and using a cane after suffering a serious knee injury in a 2002 pursuit of Marzin, and against the wishes of a sneering Reg ("Hey, Ray...the Mets just called and they need you...somebody stole second base!"), goes rogue in pursuit of "Beckwith."
When SECRET IN THEIR EYES focuses on the dual-timeline investigations in 2002 and 2015, with director Ray and editor Jim Page doing a fine job of handling the back-and-forth time element, it's a thoroughly engaging thriller with some potent observations about the post-9/11 War on Terror that ultimately get cast aside as the story progresses. It's got a sturdy foundation in the always-excellent Ejiofor's commanding performance as a man haunted by regrets--he was supposed to meet Carolyn at a bakery to pick out a cake for Jess' surprise birthday party, but he was swamped with work and blew her off, and two hours later, she was found dead in a dumpster. His obsessive pursuit of Marzin--spending several hours a night for 13 years in a needle-in-a-haystack search combing hundreds of thousands of mugshots in the parolee database hoping to find Marzin using an alias--is fueled more by guilt than a sense of legal justice. Ejiofor and Norris make a great team who deserve their own buddy-cop movie, but the romance angle between Ray and Claire is half-baked and eventually fizzles completely. It's not helped by Kidman's stilted, zombified performance--she's just not good here, aside from one terrific 2002-set scene where she just shreds Marzin, emasculating him in the most cutting ways imaginable. It's almost enough to redeem her otherwise weak performance, though it's a mystery why she does so well in that scene but almost seems under hypnosis in the rest of the film.
In what amounts to a supporting role, Roberts has a couple of Oscar-baiting breakdowns as the devastated Jess, but is solid throughout and keeps it real, looking like she hasn't slept in weeks and going without makeup and with unflattering bangs in her frumpiest and least-glamorous role this side of MARY REILLY ("You look a million years old," Ray tells her at one point). It's decidedly not a standard "Julia Roberts" role and those expecting a Roberts starring vehicle will likely be as disappointed as everyone else who sees an otherwise entertaining--if more than slightly unbelievable--procedural careening off the rails with a ridiculous climax that seems more fitting for a horror movie. The finale of SECRET IN THEIR EYES may seem ludicrous, but it's really just the entire film's Plot Convenience Playhouse nature crescendoing into a symphony of silliness, commencing right around the time three different stops on the way down puts all of the principal parties (Ray, Claire, Jess, and Marzin) on an elevator together. SECRET IN THEIR EYES abandons any illusions of subtext and commentary and despite the powerhouse headliners (a Roberts/Kidman teaming seems like it should've happened at least a decade ago, doesn't it?), it won't be getting any Oscar consideration, but if you're looking for a reasonably entertaining time-killer, it's worth a glance when it hits Redbox and Netflix in about three months.
HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE (US - 2014) Directed by Stephen Merchant. Written by Stephen Merchant, Gene Stupnitsky, and Lee Eisenberg. Cast: Stephen Merchant, Christine Woods, Nate Torrence, Kevin Weisman, Kyle Mooney, Sean Wing, Stephen Tobolowsky, Allison Tolman, Adam Campbell, Henrietta Meire, Stephanie Corneliussen. (Unrated, 80 mins)
Cancelled after one season by a network that somehow kept ARLI$$ on the air for seven, HELLO LADIES garnered enough of a fan base for HBO to greenlight a spinoff film that doubles as a feature-length finale, albeit one with a few more aerial shots than usual for a bit of a cinematic flourish. The brainchild of THE OFFICE co-creator Stephen Merchant and BAD TEACHER co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (also a writing team on the American OFFICE), HELLO LADIES dealt with Brit Stuart Pritchard (Merchant) and his escapades as a would-be player in the L.A. dating scene. Stuart is a nice guy who means well, but he tries too hard and has always been obsessed with being popular, and his awkward attempts at ingratiating himself in with the cool kids at trendy nightspots and any other social setting provided some outstanding bits of wincing, cringe-worthy discomfort comedy. That element of the show tapered off as that lone season wore on, with more of a focus on his "Will They or Won't They?" platonic relationship with his friend and tenant, aspiring actress Jessica (Christine Woods), who was spinning her wheels in a dead-end relationship with her douchebag agent Glenn (Sean Wing).
HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE picks up right where the first season left off, with Stuart still sucking up to Glenn to get into parties attended by supermodels, Jessica abandoning her acting career after a humiliating audition for a yogurt commercial, and Stuart's divorced best friend Wade (Nate Torrence) still tagging along as his hapless wingman. Stuart is panicked after getting a phone call from Trudy (Henrietta Meire), an ex from the UK who's visiting L.A. with her husband Mike (Adam Campbell). Trudy left Stuart for Mike, and Stuart was so traumatized that he moved to L.A. in an attempt to reinvent himself. Obsessed with showing Trudy and Mike that he's "won at life," Stuart manages to convince one of Glenn's Russian supermodels (Stephanie Corneliussen) to go on a double date, but she backs out to go to a party instead, prompting Stuart to press Jessica into service as a last-minute replacement. The night goes perfectly, at least until Stuart and Jessica are forced to confront their feelings for each other.
HELLO LADIES worked best when Merchant got Stuart into situations that were so awkward that it was difficult to even look at your TV (ask anyone who saw the fourth episode, "The Dinner," where Stuart starts telling jokes, gets some laughs, gets a bit overconfident, and has what he deems a smartly-conceived observational one about hypocrisy that blows up in his face...and then he somehow makes it worse). The cringing genius of HELLO LADIES at its best is a good indication that while Ricky Gervais is essentially the face of the UK version of THE OFFICE, Merchant probably came up with a lot of the show's most memorable laughs. Merchant and his co-writers packed these kinds of moments into the first half of the season and they're the ones that provided the biggest laughs, but anyone approaching HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE cold will get a perfectly entertaining movie with Merchant's love of '70s and '80s songs, with a very effective use of Gerry Rafferty's "Days Gone Down," but one more in tune with the latter part of the series. The aftermath of Stuart and Jessica taking things to the next level provides some truth bombs from Jessica that force Stuart to take stock of his life and exactly why he's the way he is. It's well-written and believably acted, but the film needs more scenes like Stuart pestering Nicole Kidman at a party because Trudy's a fan and a bullshitting Stuart claims to be friends with her. There's a nice subplot later on with Nate meeting a woman (Allison Tolman, of FX's FARGO) who's just as likably odd and as thoroughly comfortable about it as he is, and one laugh-out-loud reveal of Stuart's "assistant" Rory's (Kyle Mooney) new hairstyle, but their horndog, wheelchair-bound buddy Kives (Kevin Weisman) more or less gets relegated to the sideline. HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE seems poised to end on a bittersweet note, but it also needs to bring closure, so there's really nothing surprising about the crowd-pleasing wrap-up. It's hard to tell where HELLO LADIES would've ended up had HBO given it another season or two. Maybe there wasn't enough there for a long-running series, anyway. Amusing and occasionally heartfelt, HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE is an enjoyable enough coda to a series that hit the ground running and didn't exactly switch gears, but seemed to burn brightest too early, losing some of its edgy fearlessness.
THE RAILWAY MAN (Australia/UK - 2013; US release 2014) Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson. Cast: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Stellan Skarsgard, Jeremy Irvine, Sam Reid, Tanroh Ishida. (R, 107 mins)
Based on Eric Lomax's acclaimed memoir of his time spent in a Japanese prison camp after the fall of Singapore during WWII and his later efforts to track down the officer who tortured him, THE RAILWAY MAN offers fine performances and harrowing depictions of war crimes, but sometimes suffers from hokey dialogue and too often emits a "Weinstein Company awards bait" vibe. The script by frequent Michael Winterbottom collaborator Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson takes some occasionally questionable liberties with Lomax's story, but overall, it's a solid film that succeeds more often than it stumbles, and gets an immense boost from a quietly powerful performance by Colin Firth as Lomax.
Set in 1980, the film presents Lomax as a milquetoast railway enthusiast with an almost savant-like knowledge of trains and rail schedules. He meets Patti (Nicole Kidman) during a train ride home and, in a bit of rushed storytelling, they hit it off and soon marry. Only then does Patti become aware of Lomax's PTSD in the form of nightmares, mood swings, periods of aloof silence, and attacking a bill collector with a box cutter. He refuses to discuss his war experiences, prompting Patti to turn to Lomax's war buddy Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard), who also believes in the stiff upper lip, keep-calm-and-carry-on mentality but can see how much Patti wants to help his friend. Flashing back to 1942, young Lomax (Jeremy Irvine) and Finlay (Sam Reid) were engineers taken prisoner by the Japanese and forced to help build the Burma Railway (part of this railroad was the centerpiece of the 1957 classic THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI). All the men were tortured and treated with barbaric cruelty by the captors, none more than Lomax, who was caught with a secretly-built radio used for listening to British broadcasts. His captors insist it was an instrument for secret communication, and though he endures extensive beatings and all manner of torture overseen by Kempeitai officer Nagase (Tanroh Ishida), Lomax never gives in. Back in 1980, Lomax's psychological torment threatens his marriage and his sanity until Finlay alerts him to a Kempetai historical museum located at the very camp where they were prisoners, and the museum is run by none other than Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada).
THE RAILWAY MAN then sends Lomax off on a mission of vengeance against Nagase that becomes a journey of healing for both men. The remorseful Nagase is just as haunted by his actions during the war, and runs the museum as a way of setting things right and dealing with the past. It takes Nagase a few minutes to realize he's talking to Lomax. In reality, Lomax never considered revenge, their reunion took place in 1993, and Nagase knew he was coming. From the outset, the meeting was an effort to turn the page on that chapter of their lives. Of course, film is a different medium and THE RAILWAY MAN is not a documentary. Dramatic developments must be expressed in their own way, but initially portraying Lomax as a nebbishy vigilante seems a bit disingenuous, no matter how good Firth is in the role. The inaccurate 1980 setting seems to have been chosen perhaps because it's the latest year that the filmmakers could possibly ask the audience to buy Firth in the role of a WWII vet, considering the two men, both born in 1919, were 74 when they reunited. The film also does some pre-emptive damage control to maximize audience sympathy, completely eliminating the fact that Lomax was married for 37 years and had two adult children who wanted nothing more to do with him when he left his wife for the younger Patti in the early '80s, and he wasn't quite the stammering, socially-awkward Rain Man he is in the early scenes. Nevertheless, taken in its own context and on its own terms, THE RAILWAY MAN is compelling, with outstanding performances by Firth and Sanada, even if both look too young for their roles at 52, when Lomax and Nagase would've been 61 even if they met in 1980. As for the rest of the cast, Kidman has little to do after the midway point, but Irvine (WAR HORSE) does a remarkable job of channeling a young Firth and bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Lomax. As far as a "true story" is concerned, to say THE RAILWAY MAN plays fast and loose with the facts is an understatement, but the essential message of forgiveness and healing is key and in that respect, the film gets the job done. This story was also adapted into the 1995 British TV movie PRISONERS IN TIME, with John Hurt as Lomax.
Despite plenty of pre-release hype, STOKER, the English-language debut of famed South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook (OLDBOY) only got a limited US release, topping out at 275 screens at its widest. It's not surprising, really: it was never really clear what kind of film it was, Fox had no clue how to sell it, and the title probably led test audiences to expect a vampire movie. It's best to approach STOKER knowing as little as possible. On her 18th birthday, withdrawn outcast India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) discovers her wealthy father Richard (Dermot Mulroney) has been killed in a car accident. India and her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) are joined at their estate by Richard's long-absent younger brother Charles (Matthew Goode), who has been "travelling abroad" and who India never knew about before the funeral. Charles decides to stay, much to the disapproval of motherly housekeeper Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville) and his aunt Gwendolyn (Jacki Weaver), both of whom quickly disappear without a trace. Nevertheless, the charming Charles develops flirtatious relationships with both Evelyn and India, forming a bizarre--and murderous--triangle of unrequited lust with the sexually-frustrated mother and the sexually-blossoming daughter. Working from a script by PRISON BREAK star Wentworth Miller, Park's film manages to overcome its often clumsy metaphors and facile symbolism (chief among them India's switch from saddle shoes to sexy high heels--and there's enough lingering close-ups of Wasikowska's feet to guarantee this a spot near the top of Quentin Tarantino's Best of 2013 list) with some truly inspired filmmaking. Park, cinematographer Chung-Hoon Chung, and editor Nicolas De Toth are the real stars of the show here, with endless visual flourishes, brilliant use of sound, color, odd framing, sweeping camera movements, tracking shots, etc. It's like an art-house mix of Hitchcock, De Palma, Argento, and Antonioni wrapped in some soapy Tennessee Williams-inspired gothic potboiler, but never going over the top and never played too broadly by the actors. STOKER is flawed, but it hits much more than it misses, it's genuinely unpredictable, and Park's enthusiastic, inspired filmmaking is positively infectious. (R, 99 mins)
The much-mocked title is the least of this pointless sequel's problems. Abandoning the found-footage motif of the surprisingly OK 2010 original (which got a huge boost from Patrick Fabian's performance as a phony preacher faced with very real evil), PART II finds once-possessed Nell Sweetzer (the returning Ashley Bell) taking up residence in a New Orleans halfway house for troubled girls run by the gruff Muse Watson, the guy you call when Kris Kristofferson is out of your price range. The sheltered Nell befriends some of the other girls, gets a job cleaning hotel rooms, and finds a possible romance with a shy co-worker (Spencer Treat Clark), but it's not long before the evil spirit Abalam comes back for more. Of course, it takes director/co-writer Ed Gass-Donnelly 70 of the film's 89 minutes to get there, as the bulk of the film is spent on endless fake scares and scenes of Nell walking around, haunted by visions of her supposedly dead father (Louis Herthum) and being followed by a mysterious figure wearing Tom Cruise's EYES WIDE SHUT orgy mask. Sporting possibly the most asinine ending of any movie this year (which expectedly leaves the door open for PART III), THE LAST EXORCISM PART II is a shameless con job that approaches DEVIL INSIDE levels of audience contempt, which is starting to sum up possession movies in general. We've seen enough. THE EXORCIST is now 40 years old and it's never going to be equaled, let alone topped. So just stop. Please. By the time you get to using a title like THE LAST EXORCISM PART II, it's pitifully obvious that there's no new angles for filmmakers and nothing more of anything resembling entertainment value to offer audiences. (Unrated, 89 mins)
Already guaranteed a spot in film history as "that movie where Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron," THE PAPERBOY is a miserable fiasco based on a Pete Dexter novel and scripted by Dexter and director Lee Daniels. Daniels gained some industry respectability for co-producing 2001's MONSTER'S BALL and directing 2009's PRECIOUS, but THE PAPERBOY is more in line with his mindblowing directorial debut, the 2006 cult trash classic SHADOWBOXER, a film that offered Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren sex scenes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mo'Nique as a couple, and Stephen Dorff strutting around wearing nothing but a condom. SHADOWBOXER is a terrible movie, but it's a great terrible movie, and one where something jawdroppingly insane can happen at any moment. THE PAPERBOY wants to be as thoroughly batshit as SHADOWBOXER, but Daniels is torn between a desire to sleaze up the screen and be Taken Seriously, and proves himself absolutely unable to reconcile the two. The result manages to somehow be both grotesque and boring, and it's easy to see why Cannon cover band Millennium/Nu Image only put this on 76 screens at its widest release, grossing just $700,000 despite a big-name cast and all the golden shower hype.
In a long, hot summer in the swamplands of Moat County, FL in 1969, local crazy-ass Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) is convicted of murdering the sheriff. Big-city Miami reporters Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) and Yardly Acheman (David Oyelowo) arrive in Moat County to interview Van Wetter, causing some tension with Ward's father W.W. (Scott Glenn, sporting ludicrous sideburns that are more 1869 than 1969), who owns the local rag. Ward's younger brother Jack (Efron) accompanies them, along with area floozy Charlotte Bless (Kidman), who wrote to Van Wetter and intends to become his bride. While Ward and Yardly investigate the possibility that Van Wetter is innocent, Jack, the titular paperboy, a college dropout who whittles away most days lounging around in his tighty-whiteys and flirting with the housekeeper (Macy Gray), becomes obsessed with Charlotte, who spends most of her time teasing him but is there to urinate on him when he gets stung by a jellyfish. Ridiculous twists abound, most of which are predictable and none of which are interesting, before Daniels sets up a finale that seems more fitting for a horror film. He's clearly gunning for this to be some overripe, campy melodrama, but he doesn't have the courage of his convictions. The screen fades to black just before Jack and Charlotte finally get busy, as if to say, "Well, we want to make this sweaty, panting potboiler, but we're not asking Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman to get naked." You can't fault McConaughey for going all out, allowing himself to be filmed nude and hog-tied in one scene that's almost on the "Dorff condom" level of outrageousness, and there is one amusing BAD LIEUTENANT-esque bit during a prison interview where a handcuffed Cusack masturbates while, across the room, Kidman spreads her legs and mimes fellatio...with McConaughey, Efron, and Oyelowo sitting right next to her (and Daniels, in a classy move, fails to exhibit the restraint of Abel Ferrara and pans the camera down to show a big wet spot on Cusack's drawers, clarifying any mystery as to whether or not the character came. SPOILER ALERT: he did). This ridiculous, over-the-top scene happens early enough that it makes one hopeful for some pulpy, hard-R histrionics to follow, but ultimately, THE PAPERBOY is as big of a tease as Kidman's character. It's all talk and no payoff, filled with embarrassing performances, particularly Kidman (did she really get a Golden Globe nomination for this?) and Cusack (who's trying to be Nicolas Cage), and filmed with jittery hand-helds in an ugly, grainy, washed-out, fake '70s look, making the resulting film just as hideous as the script. Pointless, endless, pretentious, and nothing close to the trashy fun that it thinks it is, THE PAPERBOY is a total misfire. (R, 107 mins)
OFFICER DOWN (US - 2013)
Released on one screen in the US four days before its DVD/Blu-ray release (where it may get some accidental sales thanks to confused shoppers who mistake it for END OF WATCH), the hopelessly muddled cop thriller OFFICER DOWN boasts an interesting cast of familiar movie and TV faces, none of whom are put to good use in a film that simply tries too hard for its own good. Director Brian A. Miller, a sort-of lower-budgeted DTV version of L.A.P.D. cop flick specialist David Ayer (TRAINING DAY, STREET KINGS, END OF WATCH), previously helmed the atrocious Chris Klein/50 Cent dud CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE, and while OFFICER DOWN may have better performances than Klein and Fiddy could offer, it's entirely too convoluted with too many extraneous, meandering plot threads that either go nowhere or get abandoned altogether. Miller and screenwriter John Chase get some points for trying something a little more ambitious than the usual DTV cop outing, but the film just collapses under the weight of its aspirations, with Miller more concerned with style and technique than telling a remotely coherent story.
Supposedly based on a true story, the film cuts between the present and two years earlier as it follows Bridgeport, CT detective David Callahan (Stephen Dorff), a reformed bad boy cop who used to go full-on TRAINING DAY and pal around with Russian mobsters and strippers, and had a drinking and drug problem. He cleaned up his act after getting shot trying to shake down some thugs for drugs and refocused his energy on his family (wife Elisabeth Rohm and teenage daughter Beatrice Miller) and his job, and while he drinks Diet Coke, he still orders a bourbon when he goes to a bar and just lets it sit there, because that's apparently what cops on the edge do. He's presented with a diary that belonged to a murdered stripper (EXCISION's Annalynne McCord) who worked for a former criminal associate with Russian mob ties (Dominic Purcell), and may have been killed by a regular customer known as "The Angel" (Walton Goggins), a creepy type who used to sketch the dancers on napkins at his usual table. The film continues to cut back and forth from the current, honest Callahan (in color) to the corrupt, asshole Callahan (in black & white), as his old demons resurface and he kills someone in cold blood, tries to cover it up and then--wait for it--is assigned to investigate that very murder. Chase's script veers all over the place and is overpopulated with far more characters than it really needs and only serves to pad the flimsy story. Was there really a need to show McCord's character so extensively in flashbacks? David Boreanaz turns up for a few scenes to yell and pound his fist on some tables as a cop who hates Callahan. There's also Stephen Lang as the gruff lieutenant, Tommy Flanagan as an Irish priest, Johnny Messner as a serial rapist, Richard Brooks as his lawyer, rapper Soulja Boy as the thug who shoots Callahan, Oleg Taktarov cast radically against type as a slow-witted Russian mobster named Oleg, and James Woods, looking mildly annoyed as the hot-headed, preserve-the-department's-image-at-all-costs police captain prone to barking warnings like "If I go down, you will be the one to break my fall!" which is probably the same thing his agent heard when he presented Woods with this script. (R, 97 mins)
