Though it's anchored by two of the year's top performances, the noir-inspired THOROUGHBREDS never quite gels together like you hope, or at the very least, it's never quite as clever as it thinks it is. It's the directing and screenwriting debut of playwright Cory Finley, and though its talky script contains some insight and some often lacerating dialogue, the film never seems to shake the notion that it might've been a better fit for the stage. Lily (THE WITCH's Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (READY PLAYER ONE's Olivia Cooke) were once best friends in high school but have grown distant in the years since. Now in college, they awkwardly reconnect when Lily agrees to tutor Amanda, who's awaiting trial for animal cruelty in the killing of her horse. As they spend more time together, the dynamic of their relationship undergoes subtle shifts and Amanda, who's been "diagnosed with everything" in the DSM-V ("I don't have any feelings. Ever.") brings out the sociopath within Lily, who's grown intolerant of her boorish, asshole stepfather Mark (Paul Sparks) and doesn't need much prodding when Amanda suggests killing him. The murder plot involves securing the services of a fall guy in the form of Tim (the late Anton Yelchin in his last film; production wrapped just two weeks before his tragic death in June 2016), a none-too-bright local drug dealer and registered sex offender following a fling with a high school student ("I wasn't 25, I was 23!" he tries to explain). Amanda records Tim agreeing to the plan to kill Mark and the girls prepare their alibi, but since this is that kind of film, things don't quite go according to plan.
THOROUGHBREDS only made it to 500 or so screens during its spring 2018 release, but it was one of those films that managed to develop a cult following while it was still in theaters. Many people went for the easy description of "HEATHERS meets AMERICAN PSYCHO," which is pretty much meaningless as far as what the film is all about. It's more of a cerebral mood piece in the guise of a Hitchcockian thriller, but its strengths come not from suspense but from the outstanding performances by Cooke (also great in the recent THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM) and Taylor-Joy. They manage to create multi-dimensional characterizations even though Finley's insistence on withholding details often works against building any kind of flow or momentum. That works when the film plays more cinematically, but for a film that most often has the feel of a play, it too frequently comes off as forced and trying too hard, with characters referencing things they already know but having to stop and backtrack to shoehorn vital info in to get the audience caught up, leaving them to realize "Oh, Lily's father died?" or "Oh, she was expelled." Cooke and Taylor-Joy are terrific, and with limited screen time, Yelchin creates a memorably hapless sketchball with entrepreneurial pipe dreams that are clearly going nowhere fast, but THOROUGHBREDS is a film where the end result is a bit less than the sum of its parts. (R, 92 mins)
DELIRIUM (US - 2018)
Hot on the heels of STEPHANIE comes another long-shelved Blumhouse production, this one from director Dennis Iliadis and screenwriter Adam Alleca, the team behind the surprisingly not-terrible 2009 LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake. Shot in 2015 under the title HOME and quietly dumped on DVD two weeks after its gala VOD premiere, DELIRIUM is marginally better than the obviously unfinished and abandoned STEPHANIE, but that's not exactly a glowing recommendation. Released from a mental institution where he's been held since he was 12 years old, Tom Walker (Topher Grace) is placed under house arrest and left alone for 30 days at the family mansion where his disgraced politician father (Robin Thomas) has recently committed suicide. Tom is regularly badgered by his chain-smoking, flask-swilling, bitch-on-wheels parole officer Brody (Patricia Clarkson), but things get worse when he starts hearing noises and catching glimpses of his father's decaying corpse. He finds a tentative friend in grocery delivery driver Lynn (Genesis Rodriguez), but then his psychotic older brother Alex (Callan Mulvey) shows up and periodically vanishes as Tom is no longer sure what is real and what's in his imagination. 20 years earlier, 12-year-old Tom was rejected and humiliated by a girl and Alex talked him into getting back at her with a prank. Instead, Alex forced his little brother to watch as he beat the girl to a pulp and drowned her. Alex was sent to prison and Tom to a mental institution, and their shell-shocked mother vanished, leaving their domineering and impossible-to-please father behind. As the possibly paranormal hacktivity continues, Brody isn't buying Tom's stories of the house being haunted and doesn't believe that Alex has been visiting him because he was recently killed in prison fire.
Even on a rudimentary jump-scare level, DELIRIUM is a dull, unfocused mess. Iliadis drops the ball early on by never really getting the audience acclimated with the house, so when we hear noises and see Tom exploring, we really have no clue where he is in relation to the other areas or how he gets from one place to another. There's missed opportunities with the handling of Clarkson's character, who vacillates between sympathizing with Tom and openly expressing her desire to send him back to the institution for good. She even tries to seduce him at one point in what could've been an intriguingly perverse plot development, but then it's just dropped, which is a shame because Clarkson gives this thing its biggest jolts of life. The film spends a lot of time trying to convince you that Lily and Alex are figments of Tom's imagination, which is the only way those characters can possibly make any sense. Grace is cast radically against type as Topher Grace, and the film attempts to mine some easy humor from Tom being 20 years behind on pop culture and rocking out to The Presidents of the United States of America's "Lump" while wearing a Gin Blossoms concert tee and not knowing what Wikipedia is. DELIRIUM is bad, and while it's not quite engulfed in the dumpster fire flames of STEPHANIE, it's still easy to see why Universal sat on it for three years before a borderline covert release. Co-producer Leonardo DiCaprio took his name off of the movie, probably around the time that REVENANT Oscar buzz was picking up some heat. (R, 96 mins)
I KILL GIANTS (US/Belgium/China/UK - 2018)
Adapted from Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura's 2008 graphic novel and counting Chris Columbus among its boatload of producers, I KILL GIANTS is an earnest and sincere examination of a child coping with the grieving process that's frequently too heavy-handed for its own good. It's also a victim of bad timing. J.A. Bayona's A MONSTER CALLS explored very similar territory two years ago, and while the I Kill Giants graphic novel preceded both the book A Monster Calls and its eventual film version, the impact of I KILL GIANTS can't help but be diminished. In a small town on the coast of Long Island (but shot in Ireland and Belgium), young Barbara (Madison Wolfe of THE CONJURING 2) is living with her adult sister Karen (Imogen Poots) and teenage brother Dave (Art Parkinson). Karen is struggling to keep up with her own job and taking care of her siblings, and while Dave is engrossed in his video games, Barbara is acting out, seemingly spending her time with 20-sided die role-playing games but quietly prepping the town for an inevitable giant attack that she's certain she can ward off with traps and an all-powerful weapon she dubs "Covaleski," named after early 20th century Phillies pitcher Harry Covaleski. Derided as "the nerd queen" by Dave and relentlessly bullied at school by imposing mean girl Taylor (Rory Jackson), Barbara is frequently visited by "harbingers" warning of the pending attack. At the same time, she reluctantly befriends shy, lonely British transfer student Sophia (Sydney Wade) and gradually opens up to her and school psychologist Mrs. Molle (Zoe Saldana) about her plot to take on the giants.
Of course, the absence of a visible paternal figure in the house and Barbara's head-first dive into a complicated fantasy world is too big of a tip-off as to where I KILL GIANTS is ultimately headed, especially if you've seen A MONSTER CALLS. Making his feature debut, Danish director Anders Walter (an Oscar-winner for 2013's Best Live Action Short HELIUM), gets a marvelous performance out of Wolfe, who's so good that you'll wish her dedication was in service of a more consistently strong film. The ultimate reveal may result in more questions than answers--such as "How did this family situation never come up in conversation?" and "Is Dave even a member of this family?"--but it has some convincing visual effects and some genuinely heartfelt moments that may make it therapeutic for younger children coping with similar circumstances. Some strong parts but it never quite comes together as a whole. (Unrated, 106 mins)
Though the title and the poster would indicate this is another by-the-numbers, Redbox-ready Nicolas Cage VOD actioner--and it gets off to a dubious start with video-burned opening credits straight out of a TV show-- VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY is a peculiar outlier in Cage's filmography, at least for this stage of his career. Cage originally planned to direct, something he hasn't done since 2002's little-seen SONNY, but at some point before shooting began, he handed the job off to veteran stunt coordinator and second-unit helmer Johnny Martin. Given Martin's pedigree, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY is very light on action and stunts, which one might expect once you know it's based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2003 novel Rape: A Love Story (not hard to see why they went with a slightly more marketable title for the movie). For a while, after a shaky opening and the obvious budget deprivation on display, the Georgia-shot, Niagara Falls-set VENGEANCE does alright as a melancholy, low-key character piece until it gives way to overwrought, deck-stacking melodrama before the "vengeance" element kicks in. Taking a shortcut through the woods at night on their way home from a 4th of July barbecue, single mom Teena (Anna Hutchison of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) and her 12-year-old daughter Bethie (Talitha Bateman) are attacked by four sub-literate, hillbilly yokels who physically assault Bethie and gang-rape Teena. Glum, burned-out (we know this because he moves pieces on a solitary chess board in his living room) cop and Gulf War PTSD case John Dromoor (Cage) catches the case and gets emotionally invested in it, still shell-shocked and trying to fill a void after the recent death of his partner during a botched arrest.
It looks to be an open-and-shut case, as the four rapists--all brothers--leave ample fingerprint and DNA evidence and are all identified by Bethie in a lineup, but their bitter, white trash mother (Charlene Tilton sighting!) makes her husband mortgage the house to hire slick, high-priced, Harley-riding defense attorney Jay Kirkpatrick (Don Johnson). At a preliminary hearing, Kirkpatrick tries to establish that Teena seduced the brothers, launching a town-wide smear campaign to slut-shame the victim, even questioning her competency as a parent. Kirkpatrick is also friends with the judge (Mike Pniewski), who overrules every objection from Teena's lawyer (Kara Flowers) and takes petty offense to grammatical errors in Dromoor's testimony ("It's 'my partner and I,' detective...not 'me and my partner'"). The brothers are released on bail and begin terrorizing Teena and Bethie, kill Teena's mother's (Deborah Kara Unger) cat, and intimidate witnesses, and then the judge moves the trial date up to give Teena's lawyer as little time to prep as possible. Seeing that Teena is getting a raw deal, Dromoor does what lone wolf cops in formulaic movies with the word "vengeance" in the title do. It takes about 75 of the film's 99 minutes for the vengeance to commence, but even after that, Cage turns in maybe the quietest performance of his career. He never even smiles. Johnson, who's become a great character actor in recent years (COLD IN JULY, BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99), delivers another terrific performance in a movie seen by no one. Hutchison and young Bateman are very good, at least until the script by TV vet John Mankiewicz (a writer on MIAMI VICE, a producer on HOUSE M.D. and HOUSE OF CARDS, and creator of the short-lived 1990s Jeff Fahey series THE MARSHAL) starts asking the audience to buy too many implausibilities. There's no way a judge would behave like this one does, and there's no way a defense attorney would sit there and let his clients leer at and threaten someone who's accusing them of the crime for which he's defending them, right there in court. By the end, VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY never lives up to its potential. It's too hokey and lacking in nuance and subtlety to be taken seriously, but it's too restrained and slow-moving to work as a dumb action thriller. It's earnest and well-meaning, but it can't reconcile its goals and decide what it wants to be. Cage and long-retired ONION FIELD and VISION QUEST director Harold Becker, who hasn't made a film since 2001's DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE, were among the producers. (Unrated, 99 mins)
THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM
(UK - 2017)
Based on Peter Ackroyd's 1994 novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, the Jack the Ripper-inspired British mystery THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM falls victim to some tedious stretches in its first half, but it gets better as it goes on. Even during its slow spells, it's a pleasure to watch just for the opportunity to enjoy the great Bill Nighy in a rare lead, brought in as a last-minute replacement for Alan Rickman, who hoped to make the film despite his pancreatic cancer diagnosis but was forced to back out when his health began rapidly declining just before filming began in October 2015 (Rickman died in January 2016). Of course Rickman would've been perfect (the film is dedicated to him), but Nighy is superb as Inspector John Kildare, a weary Scotland Yard official in 1890 London who gets the case of a serial killer known as "The Limehouse Golem" dumped in his lap. At the same time Kildare inherits the case, he finds a link to another involving stage actress Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), accused of poisoning her husband John (Sam Reid). Kildare finds a journal with insane rantings that may implicate John as the Limehouse Golem, though the investigation leads to other suspects, including real-life figures like music hall comedian Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins), and even Karl Marx (Henry Goodman). Partnered with constable George Flood (Daniel Mays), Kildare up-ends the Limehouse district to find proof John Cree is the killer, hoping that if Elizabeth is convicted of poisoning him, she can be spared execution for putting an end to the Golem's reign of terror.
Low-key despite some occasional flashes of splatter, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM almost plays like an R-rated PBS mystery. Director Juan Carlos Medina and screenwriter Jane Goldman (KICK-ASS, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, both KINGSMAN movies) spend a little too much time in the first half on Leno's theatrical troupe, often veering from a murder mystery into a redux of Mike Leigh's TOPSY-TURVY. But once all the pieces are in place and everything involving Elizabeth's hellish upbringing and John's insane jealousy over her friendship with Leno and that her career is taking off while he languishes as a failed playwright is established, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM takes off and becomes a riveting suspense piece, anchored by terrific performances from Nighy and Cooke (THE QUIET ONES). The production design and period detail are big pluses, with London looking about as gray, bleak, and grimy as it did in the 1979 Sherlock Holmes classic MURDER BY DECREE. It's not quite on the same level, but Nighy's Kildare--a complex character whose closeted homosexuality makes him the object of hushed scorn and dismissal among his colleagues, even though there's a cryptic moment where a sympathetic Flood whispers "I'm on your side"-- is ample proof that the actor would make a great Holmes. (Unrated, 109 mins)
GUN SHY (US/UK - 2017)
You probably won't find a worse comedy in 2017 than GUN SHY, a staggeringly awful adaptation of Mark Haskell Smith's 2007 novel Salty, which garnered some acclaim at the time for its Carl Hiaasen-esque comic mystery crossed with an Irvine Welsh sense of the grotesque. Smith co-wrote the screenplay, but everything that book reviewers liked about Salty appears to have been neutered into oblivion for GUN SHY. This is a film where it's abundantly clear that the endgame was a mystery for all involved. The humor here isn't clever, it isn't sly, it isn't raunchy...it isn't anything. The film plods along, gasping and wheezing to its conclusion without a single laugh or even a remotely humorous moment. Gags fall flat, the story goes nowhere, and the actors look completely stranded. It's not like there's a lack of talent here: Antonio Banderas and Olga Kurylenko are fine actors, and Simon West isn't an auteur by any means, but he's directed some entertaining movies (CON AIR, THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MECHANIC), but GUN SHY is one of those rare instances where, whatever the intent was going in, nothing works. It's painfully unfunny and miserable to endure, and the only thing saving it from complete ruin is that Banderas actually seems to be enjoying himself. Between recent VOD duds like BLACK BUTTERFLY, FINDING ALTAMIRA, SECURITY, and now this, Banderas is due for either a new agent or an intervention.
Banderas is Turk Henry, former bassist/vocalist for the '80s hair metal band Metal Assassin, best known for their hit single "Teenage Ass Patrol." Kicked out of the band after his supermodel wife Sheila (Kurylenko) was deemed a "Yoko" by the other members, Turk's career and personal life are in the toilet. Now an emotionally needy, drunken recluse who still dresses like "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)"-era Steven Tyler, he hasn't left his Malibu mansion in two years, prompting Sheila to arrange a vacation to Turk's native Chile in an attempt to boost his spirits. Once there, she's kidnapped by a group of neophyte pirates who think they've struck gold and try to extort a huge ransom when they realize she's Turk Henry's wife. Turk's manager sends his assistant Marybeth (Aisling Loftus) and Clive Muggleton (Martin Dingle Wall), a Crocodile Dundee-like Aussie mercenary with impossibly white teeth and a serious shellfish allergy, to help Turk negotiate with pirate leader Juan Carlos (Ben Cura). US Homeland Security gets wind of the kidnapping and sends ambitious CIA agent Ben Harding (Mark Valley), who's quick to label it a terrorist act in order to boost his profile to his superiors. What follows is a lot of shameless mugging and dead air as entire sequences go by with nothing even remotely amusing, unless you count a vomiting llama, Turk getting bitten on the dick by a snake, Turk trying to dodge Harding by dressing in drag, a clueless Turk calling his GPS a "CGI," and mispronouncing easy words, like "tore-toys" for "tortoise." The novel had the vacation taking place in Thailand, with a hapless, shaggy dog Turk getting involved in busting a sex trafficking ring. Here, he's just a bumbling buffoon making an ass of himself in Santiago. There's no attempt at political satire, no attempts at physical comedy, and no attempt at any INHERENT VICE or BIG LEBOWSKI-style absurdist noir humor. No, the only thing the makers of GUN SHY had was "Antonio Banderas dressed up like a hair metal singer" and they just assumed everything would work itself out. GUN SHY is so lazy that it doesn't even have any insider, THIS IS SPINAL TAP-style jokes about the music industry. There's nothing here, though Banderas, not an actor known for his comedic skills, looks like he's having fun despite his helpless, idiotic character having absolutely nothing to do. As if GUN SHY wasn't oppressive enough, it pads out the running time by including four endings, two music videos during the closing credits, and three (!) post-credits stingers, as if anyone watching this would think "Wow, I had such a blast with these characters...just keep giving me more!" This is stunningly bad. (R, 92 mins)
