MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE (US/UK - 2017)
A middling biopic that goes into the Watergate saga from the POV of the whistleblower, the cumbersomely-titled MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE focuses on the veteran FBI company man who, 30-plus years later, admitted that he was the informant known as "Deep Throat," who regularly fed information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. These provided some of the most memorable scenes in the 1976 classic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, with Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, but MARK FELT goes into what drove him to secretly talk to the press. Felt (1913-2008) is played by an excellent Liam Neeson, and as the film opens in 1972, J. Edgar Hoover has just died and Felt is generally considered by D.C. insiders as a lock to take over as director. The job goes to former deputy Attorney General L. Patrick Gray (Marton Csokas as Russell Crowe), a Nixon loyalist who also brings back disgraced agent Bill Sullivan (a twitchy and overly mannered Tom Sizemore), a longtime rival of Felt's. After the Watergate break-in, Felt leads the FBI investigation but is quickly shut down by Gray, who insists on reporting all of their findings to White House counsel John Dean (Michael C. Hall) over Felt's objections that the FBI doesn't work for the President. A frustrated Felt begins feeding info of a cover-up to Time reporter Sandy Smith (Bruce Greenwood) and eventually Bob Woodward (Julian Morris)at the Post as Gray and Dean desperately try to find the source of the leaks and protect the Oval Office.
Produced by Ridley Scott, MARK FELT was released in September 2017, just after President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey over concerns of "loyalty" and stopping an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. There's some unintended contemporary parallels with the FBI side of the story in MARK FELT and the Oval Office's misunderstanding of the limits of its power and who answers to it, and for a while, as Felt keeps digging for info and keeps being stonewalled by his own boss--this is as much about Felt butting heads with Gray as it is about Watergate--it's a compelling flip side to events seen in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. But as the film goes on, writer/director Peter Landesman (who also wrote the underrated and little-seen KILL THE MESSENGER) loses focus. Felt's decision to become a whistleblower seems initially rooted in his bitterness at being passed over as director after 30 years of doing and saying all the right things, but as he uncovers more evidence that leads directly to Nixon's inner circle, he refuses to play along and be the good soldier that Gray expects. This sort of thing plays to Neeson's strengths, and he turns in one of his best serious performances of the non-TAKEN variety in a long time. The large cast of supporting actors (there's also Josh Lucas, Brian d'Arcy James, Eddie Marsan, Tony Goldwyn, Noah Wyle, Ike Barinholtz, Kate Walsh, and Wendi McLendon-Covey) exists primarily to dump reams of exposition, exclaim cliches ("What you're doing...will bring down the whole house of cards!"), and stare suspiciously at one another as paranoia mounts. To the film's credit, it doesn't ignore Felt's post-Watergate conviction for illegal wiretapping of the Weather Underground and other activist groups and his subsequent pardon by Ronald Reagan in 1981, but it's included almost as an afterthought and it doesn't go deep enough into his reasoning for the overzealous surveillance of those groups: his daughter Joan (Maika Monroe) ran away and joined a commune and he was trying to find her while at the same time hoping to shield her from any prosecution for things she might've done as part of these activist groups. The entire subplot about Felt's home life is botched, leaving Diane Lane with almost nothing to do but complain and guzzle wine as Felt's neglected, long-suffering wife Audrey (who would commit suicide in 1984). Both Neeson and Landesman have expressed regret that most of Lane's performance ended up being cut from the film for time reasons, but really, the whole second half of MARK FELT collapses into total incoherence and starts demonstrating all of the tell-tale signs of a movie that's been hacked to pieces in post-production (Felt is shown meeting with Woodward just one time). At 103 minutes, MARK FELT is curiously short for this kind of sweeping historical saga, almost as if Landesman was told to ditch everything that didn't involve Watergate. Sony had no idea what to do with this, even with a big name like Neeson headlining: this only made it to 332 screens at its widest release, grossing just $768,000. (PG-13, 103 mins)
LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON
(US - 2017)
A refreshingly old-fashioned B-movie of the sort that would've played drive-ins back in 1980, the true crime saga LAST RAMPAGE: THE ESCAPE OF GARY TISON deals with a prison break and subsequent statewide manhunt that took place in Arizona in July and August of 1978. The film is a gritty labor of love for veteran character actor Robert Patrick, who produced and stars as Tison, a convicted murderer and tyrannical father who lords over his three devoted sons Donnie (Alex MacNicoll), Ricky (Skyy Moore), and Ray (Casey Thomas Brown). It's his sons who help pull off the escape during a visit, with Tison's psycho prison buddy Randy Greenawalt (Chris Browning) tagging along. Weary Sheriff Cooper (Bruce Davison) leads the manhunt and, of course, it's personal since Tison killed one of his close friends, while an ambitious reporter (Molly C. Quinn) tries to get a story out of Tison's devoutly dutiful wife Dorothy (Heather Graham). Tison is a brutal, ruthless sociopath with no capacity for mercy. He's not above shotgunning a newlywed couple or a toddler if it means saving his ass, and he doesn't hesitate to point a gun at Donnie's head when the eldest son starts thinking for himself, questioning his actions and refusing to call him "sir."
LAST RAMPAGE was directed by career journeyman Dwight Little, who made his name in the horror genre back in the day with 1988's HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS and 1989's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with Robert Englund. Since then, he's gone wherever his services have been required, from the 1991 Steven Seagal vehicle MARKED FOR DEATH, the 1992 Brandon Lee actioner RAPID FIRE, 1995's FREE WILLY 2, and 1997's MURDER AT 1600. Little's spent most of the last 20 years as a busy TV director, and LAST RAMPAGE is his first feature film since the $30 million video game adaptation TEKKEN went straight to DVD in 2011. Little doesn't bring any real sense of style to LAST RAMPAGE, but he keeps it fast-moving and focused, like a professional B-movie hired gun knows how to do. Patrick is terrifying and oozes pure evil as the monstrous Tison, and Davison has some nice moments as the folksy, matter-of-fact Cooper, even if the character seems to be a composite of Tommy Lee Jones in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and Jeff Bridges in HELL OR HIGH WATER. The film fails to take advantage of the unusual casting of Graham, and the scenes between the subtly manipulative Dorothy and the naive young reporter don't really seem to go anywhere. Dorothy is a woman who's convinced herself of many things, and Graham seems eager to disappear into a dowdy, unglamorous role with some truly hideous 1978 eyeglass frames, but the script, written by Alvaro Rodriguez (Robert Rodriguez's cousin) doesn't really give her much to do. The supporting cast also includes Megan Gallagher as Cooper's wife, Jason James Richter (the kid from FREE WILLY) as a deputy, and the late John Heard in one of his last roles (he died two months before the film's VOD release) as the useless warden. The Tison story was told once before, albeit in a more sanitized fashion, in the 1983 ABC TV-movie A KILLER IN THE FAMILY, which starred Robert Mitchum as Tison, with his three sons played by Lance Kerwin (SALEM'S LOT), and a young and unknown Eric Stoltz and James Spader. (R, 93 mins)
ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (US - 2017) Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by David Scarpa. Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Charlie Plummer, Marco Leonardi, Andrew Buchan, Stacy Martin, Giuseppe Bonifati, Andrea Piedimonte, Nicolas Vaporidis, Charlie Shotwell, Guglielmo Favilla, Clive Wood, Giulio Base, Riccardo de Torrebruna. (R, 132 mins) Regardless of how the film turned out, it's inevitable that ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, a chronicle of the 1973 kidnapping of 16-year-old oil heir Paul Getty, will be remembered most for its role in "#MeToo" phenomenon and the epidemic of sexual assault and misconduct allegations that rocked the entertainment industry in the fall of 2017, beginning with the downfall of Harvey Weinstein. Approximately six weeks before the Christmas release date, director Ridley Scott made the decision to remove Kevin Spacey from the completed film following numerous disturbing allegations against the Oscar-winning actor. Cast as billionaire J. Paul Getty and essaying the role under a ton of prosthetic makeup that rendered him unrecognizable, Spacey was already set as the focus of the film's big awards season push. As more accusers came forward detailing incidents with Spacey dating back to the 1980s, Scott feared that the growing scandal would only prove toxic and potentially lead to the shelving of the film and everyone's hard work being all for naught. In order to save the project, he then made the decision to cut all of Spacey's scenes and brought in Christopher Plummer--his original choice before distributor Sony pushed for Spacey--for some burning-the-midnight-oil reshoots that took place from November 20 to November 29, 2017. This decision also required stars Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg to rearrange their schedules in order to redo their Getty scenes with Plummer, and the stitches show only slightly: only in one shot does it look like Plummer's been composited into an existing scene, and in his new scenes with Plummer, Wahlberg is clearly wearing a wig and, perhaps in the middle of prepping for another role, looks noticeably thinner in the face. Late-in-the-game cast changes have happened before, for a variety of reasons: the eventually blacklisted Howard Da Silva starred in the completed 1951 western SLAUGHTER TRAIL before RKO ordered his scenes cut and reshot with Brian Donlevy after Da Silva was accused of communist leanings and refused to testify before HUAC; when Tyrone Power died 2/3 of the way through filming the 1959 Biblical epic SOLOMON AND SHEBA, his footage was scrapped and Yul Brynner was hired to reshoot all of his completed scenes. These are but two instances of quick decisions being made to save a film, but the time element makes ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD something noteworthy (and, it's worth mentioning, easier to pull off in the age of digital). The complete removal of a major star due to a scandal, so close to the release date that said scandal is still ongoing in real time as the film hits theaters is unprecedented. And for the most part, the legendary filmmaker--80 years old and showing no signs of slowing down--pulled it off.
Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa take some liberties with the facts for dramatic purposes, sometimes detrimentally so, but it's an overall engrossing saga of the ordeal of Paul Getty (Charlie Plummer, no relation to Christopher), who's abducted and held for ransom by a terrorist group in Rome. They demand $17 million, assuming a quick and easy payday since Paul's grandfather is oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world. Getty can make $17 million on a good day, but he's also the most miserly man in the world, the kind of penny-pincher who has a pay phone installed in his house for guests to use, with a sign advising them to keep their calls brief. Everything is a deal to Getty and he never loses, and his first assumption is that Paul staged the kidnapping himself in order to extort money since Paul often joked about doing just that. Getty's also in no hurry to help his estranged daughter-in-law Gail Harris (Williams), who divorced his son John Paul Getty II (Andrew Buchan) several years earlier and received custody of Paul and their other three children. With Getty II now a borderline catatonic drug addict wiling away his days in Morocco, it's up to Gail to manage the negotiations with the kidnappers. She gets some assistance from ex-CIA agent and J. Paul Getty fix-it man Fletcher Chase (Wahlberg), who's been advised by the old man to retrieve his grandson and do it as cheaply as possible. Since Gail has no access to the Petty fortune--she agreed to take no cash settlement in the divorce in exchange for full custody of the kids--Paul is held captive for months due to Getty's unbending refusal to pay a single cent, and the boy is even sold to another group of kidnappers led by wealthy "investor" Mammoliti (Marco Leonardi), who eventually decides to send Paul's severed ear to a Rome newspaper in order to convince Getty that they're serious. And even then, the ruthless billionaire--who's in the midst of making the biggest profits of his life thanks to the oil crisis--only agrees to pay a significantly lesser sum once he and his lawyer Oswald Hinge (Timothy Hutton) finagle a way to make it tax-deductible.
Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty
Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty
Original poster art prior
to Spacey being cut from the film
As portrayed here by a sneering and subtly sinister Plummer, Getty is nothing short of a monster who would rather put his grandson at risk if the alternative is parting with any of his money (while the hostage negotiation is going on, he thinks nothing of dropping $1.5 million on painting). Spacey's removal from ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD is probably the best thing that could've happened: initial trailers showing the actor weighed down by unconvincing makeup would've ultimately been viewed as a distraction and Oscar-baiting stunt casting. By contrast, 88-year-old Plummer plays the 81-year-old Getty with no makeup, letting you see the condescension and the unscrupulous disregard for humanity come through in the decades visible on his face. He's perfectly cast and ultimately, the best thing in the movie. Young Charlie Plummer does some solid work as Paul, and his scenes with sympathetic kidnapper Cinquanta (Romain Duris) also provide some of the film's strongest moments. Wahlberg and Williams are less convincing--Wahlberg because he doesn't so much play Chase as much as he does a stock "Mark Wahlberg" character (the scene where he finally tells off Getty feels a little too "say hi to your mother for me"), and Williams because she's uncharacteristically mannered here, with actions and vocal inflections that too often sound like she's using the film to workshop a mid-career Katharine Hepburn impression. Scott's manipulation of the time element gets eye-rollingly melodramatic by the end, which crescendos into a ludicrous finale that has Getty dying at the very moment his grandson is rescued, which has no resemblance whatsoever to the reality where Getty died nearly three years later in 1976. Despite the occasional missteps, ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD gets a lot right, particularly the mood and feel of 1973 Italy, a tumultuous time that saw increased crime and Red Brigade-related terrorism take over the country. But really, the biggest reason to see it is for someone who wasn't even in it until about a month before its release. The ageless Christopher Plummer is a living legend, and on the shortest notice imaginable, created one of the most vivid and memorable characters of his long and storied career.
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (US - 2017) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Edward James Olmos, Wood Harris, Hiam Abbass, David Dastmalchian, Tomas Lemarquis, Sean Young. (R, 164 mins) Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is so highly and rightfully regarded as an influential sci-fi masterpiece to this day that it's easy to forget that it only did middling business in theaters in the summer of 1982 and the reviews weren't all that great. Over time, thanks to incessant cable and TV airings and the reconstruction of the "director's cut" in 1992 (assembled from the workprint and Scott's notes; he was busy working on 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE at the time and wasn't directly involved in it other than being consulted) and later with Scott's official "final cut" in 2007, the film's reputation and significance grew. The compromised theatrical version was a thorn in the side of both Scott and star Harrison Ford, who wasn't pleased about adding hard-boiled voiceover narration and made every effort to ensure that it sounded as if it was doing it at gunpoint. The director's cut removed the narration and added the much-debated unicorn scene, meant to ambiguously convey that perhaps Deckard (Ford), the titular blade runner, was himself a replicant just like those he was assigned to pursue and "retire." In the unlikely event you haven't seen BLADE RUNNER since it was in theaters and all you know is the now-obsolete theatrical version, then you're going to be completely baffled as to what's going in BLADE RUNNER 2049, which uses the director's cut as its springboard. With Scott onboard as executive producer, the original film's co-writer Hampton Fancher (his first credit since 1999's THE MINUS MAN) contributing to the script, and acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (PRISONERS, SICARIO, ARRIVAL) at the helm, BLADE RUNNER 2049 established its bona fides before filming even began. Villeneuve promised to remain true to the beloved original and he more or less does. It in no way insults or diminishes the memory of the 1982 classic, and it throws in plenty of winking callbacks, but at the end of the day, it's still a 35-years-later sequel that doesn't succeed in justifying its existence.
Set 30 years after the first film, BLADE RUNNER 2049 opens in an even more dystopian California. Due to repeated replicant rebellions like the one led by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt. Replicant production began once more when what was left of Tyrell's operation was purchased by billionaire industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). Blade runner K (Ryan Gosling) arrives at the isolated desert farm of Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), an old-school Nexus 8 replicant with an indeterminate lifespan. After a violent confrontation, K does his job and takes him out before reporting back to LAPD headquarters for a "baseline" debriefing required of replicants. Yes, that's right. BLADE RUNNER 2049 immediately answers the million dollar question: blade runners are replicants, and they're now integrated into society, even though they're regarded as second-class citizens, or "skinjobs" and "skinners." Investigation of Morton's property reveals a box of human skeletal remains near a tree. Examination of the remains indicate that it was a woman who died giving birth, and further analysis of the DNA shows proof that the skeleton is that of a replicant, thus blowing the doors off everything known about the bioengineered "skinjobs," who can apparently sexually reproduce, one last experiment pulled off by the Tyrell Corporation before it imploded. K's investigation into the whereabouts of the woman's child leads him to numerous places--very slowly--and also involves his hologram love interest Joi (Ana de Armas); a "memory designer" (Carla Juri) who knows about a specific real or imagined event that's been planted into K's memory; Wallace's ruthless enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks as Milla Jovovich) who's also out to find the now-adult child; and even a visit to a retirement home with Gaff (Edward James Olmos), who's still passing the time and busies his hands by making tiny origami animals.
Eventually, K ends up in the radioactive ruins of Las Vegas, where Deckard has been in hiding for 30 years after running off with now-deceased replicant Rachael (Sean Young) at the end of the first film. To say anymore would involve too many spoilers, but let's begin with the positives: it's just as visually stunning as you'd expect, thanks in large part to the work of the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, the Susan Lucci of D.P.s who's been nominated for 13 Oscars and has yet to win. The world of BLADE RUNNER 2049 is just as vividly dystopian as its predecessor in its own ways, this time mixing its neon-drenched cityscapes with dusty wastelands and the almost Overlook Hotel-esque appearance of the abandoned casino resort Deckard calls home. Ford's appearance here is not unlike Charlton Heston's extended cameo in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: BLADE RUNNER 2049 runs an ass-numbing 164 minutes, and in one of the most delayed entrances this side of Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW, Ford's first appearance doesn't even happen until nearly two hours in. Atmospheric slow-burn is one thing, but the ponderous and relentlessly gabby BLADE RUNNER 2049 is oppressively overlong, with scenes going on much longer than necessary and too many instances of characters introduced making overly verbose expository proclamations from the shadows only to slowly emerge in the light (Leto only has two scenes, and he enters both of them in this fashion). Everyone in this movie is a slow talker, and it probably adds 30 minutes to the running time.
Knowing now that Deckard is a replicant doesn't change the events of the first film since the director's cut more or less said as much, but Ford still managed to create a compelling and complex character. Here, Deckard just looks befuddled and grouchy. In other words, he looks like Harrison Ford, reliving his Han Solo and Indiana Jones glory days in present-day nostalgia trips that don't quite measure up to the classics that came before (STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS was fun, but have you ever met an INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL fan?). K is a character that, on paper, plays to the strengths of Gosling's moody persona as seen in DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES, but Nicolas Winding Refn made those enigmatic Gosling characters a lot more interesting in those films than Villeneuve does here. K's love for Joi is an interesting concept that never really feels developed, but then, nor do any of the characters. BLADE RUNNER is a hypnotic experience that feels new and compelling and fresh with each revisit. It's timeless. But for all the talk of replicants finding their humanity in BLADE RUNNER 2049, there's nothing here even remotely as memorable or gut-wrenching as Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" monologue before his final, resigned declaration of "Time to die." And while Vangelis' synth score is one of the 1982 film's most memorable components, the score here by Hans Zimmer is so aggressively, overbearingly bombastic that it almost qualifies as self-parody. Vangelis enhanced the mood and the vision and contributed to the hypnotic nature. Zimmer's score stampedes and bulldozes over everything to the point where it's an overwhelming, suffocating distraction that actually detracts from the effectiveness of numerous scenes. I gave BLADE RUNNER 2049 time, fidgeting through its laborious first hour and legitimately intrigued by a major plot reveal that finally seems to set things in motion, but it resumed dragging ass shortly thereafter and Zimmer's score got even more obnoxious, and no matter how captivating the visuals were, I finally had to accept the fact that it was well past two hours into this thing, its contrivances and developments were getting more half-baked and nonsensical (I'm still not sure what's going on with the replicant "revolution" that gets brought up near the end and is instantly dropped) and the point had passed where I ran out of excuses and had to admit to myself that I wasn't connecting with it at all. BLADE RUNNER was slow in a methodical way that was never boring. BLADE RUNNER 2049 is so concerned with replicating that feeling that it never finds its footing and never gets any momentum going. Maybe I'll look at it again in a year.
Artist Jesse Hellman (Ethan Embry), his wife Astrid (Shiri Appleby), and their teenage daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco) move into a farmhouse in the rural outskirts of Austin after closing on it at a really low price. Of course, it's because two people died in the house, which is never good sign in the horror genre. Astrid works full-time and metalhead Jesse makes ends meet by painting murals of butterflies and pretty scenery for local businesses. They're a loving family--Jesse's passed his love of metal on to Zooey, and it's cute watching father and daughter bond by headbanging to some death metal ("Can you play something lighter?" Astrid asks, to which Zooey smirks "Like what? Metallica?"). Once in the farmhouse, strange things begin happening, starting with random appearances by Ray Smilie (Pruitt Taylor Vince), the son of the elderly couple who died in the house. Smilie has spent a significant chunk of his life in mental hospitals and likely killed both of his parents. He hears voices and plays doomy riffs on a Flying V as if being directed by an outside force. He abducts and kills children, following the instructions of the voices, and the visions of those dead kids are revealed in Jesse's paintings. The paintings take on an increasingly Satanic bent, though when they're done, Jesse awakens from a trance and has no recollection of painting them, which disturbs him even more when Astrid sees that he's painted Zooey's screaming face into a mural of hellfire and murdered children ("They're inside me," he says, "begging to be let out"). Much of the muddled plot unfolds in total darkness, and though the Hellmans (real subtle) are a happy family, the film almost wants you to be surprised that pot-smoking metalheads can be loving, nurturing parents. The much-acclaimed metal angle has no real purpose, though it's awfully convenient that a serial child killer whose instructions from the devil come to him in the form of a riff on a Flying V would happen to have a family of Slayer fans to pursue. THE DEVIL'S CANDY is an OK horror flick to stream on a slow night, and the four stars give this a lot more than they get in return (Appleby and Glasco are great screamers), but it's all rather silly and dull, even with the closing credits rolling at 74 minutes. (Unrated, 80 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
PHOENIX FORGOTTEN (US/UK/China - 2017)
Inspired by the 1997 "Phoenix Lights" incident, the faux-doc/found footage horror film PHOENIX FORGOTTEN wants to be the UFO version of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT but it lacks the ingenuity and originality. It tries to pass itself off as something with a low-budget, DIY aesthetic but it's really a three-country co-production with 29 credited producers, including After Dark Films chief Courtney Solomon, MAZE RUNNER screenwriter T.S. Nowlin and director Wes Ball, 300 producer Mark Canton, and, for some reason, Ridley Scott, all of whom must've cleaned out the change in their car's cupholders to get this thing made. Nowlin co-wrote the script with first-time feature film director Justin Barber, and for a while, PHOENIX FORGOTTEN is actually pretty good. Haunted by the disappearance of older brother Josh (Luke Spencer Roberts) 20 years earlier, Sophie Bishop (Florence Hartigan) begins work on a documentary to find the truth about what happened to her then-17-year-old brother and his friends Ashley (Chelsea Lopez) and Mark (Justin Matthews). They vanished in the weeks following the appearance of the Phoenix Lights, two different events on March 13, 1997 where massive light formations in the sky--most likely flares from jets on a training exercise at a nearby military base--were witnessed by many and presumed to be UFOs (even then-Arizona governor Fife Symington laughed it off at the time but would later admit he believed them to be UFOs). Sophie interviews all of the parents, school officials, retired cops, and local astronomers, but the investigation hits the same dead end it did 20 years ago. She's even given the brush off by a former Symington aid after showing up at his house. Josh documented their trip with his own video camera, but when another camera with a school "property of" label on it, battered and damaged after being discovered in the desert and sent back to the school, is discovered in a long-unused storage unit rented by the school, Sophie finds a tape left inside.
Obviously, the other tape holds the answers to the mystery, and Barber does a nice job cutting from Sophie's discovery of it immediately to her shaken reaction after watching it. Then we see it, and what was an interesting and well-constructed faux doc turns into yet another rote, tired BLAIR WITCH ripoff, right down to the final tilted shot from the POV of a Dutch-angled video camera that's been dropped. It's too bad the inspiration flamed out at the midway-point, because even though found footage is as played out as can be, PHOENIX FORGOTTEN was shaping up as a decent little sleeper. Sophie's documentary unfolds like a riveting episode of DATELINE, and the mix of fiction with actual footage from the period is handled quite effectively. Another plus is that the actors deliver believable, "real" performances--at least until the second half, when all they're doing is bitching at each other and screaming "Mark!" when he vanishes into pitch black darkness. The big revelation here is the charming Lopez, who's got such a natural screen presence about her that when she's onscreen, it's easy to forget you're watching a fictional horror movie (and her impression of Jodie Foster in CONTACT--a small example of how this film gets the 1997 period detail right--is a clip that deserves to go viral). It's easy to dismiss films of this sort, especially this late in the game when there's really nothing new to do with them. Once in a while, a good one will break through and surprise you (like Bobcat Goldthwait's WILLOW CREEK), but these days, they're mostly like last year's hyped and crushingly disappointing BLAIR WITCH. PHOENIX FORGOTTEN falls somewhere in between, buoyed considerably by its cast's efforts and an opening half that's better than it has any right to be (and with a creepily effective use of Paul Revere & the Raiders frontman Mark Lindsay's 1969 solo hit "Arizona") but ultimately fizzling out when the filmmakers appear to simply give up when it mattered most. Maybe a different approach would've been to follow Sophie's efforts to expose the truth, especially after she meets with an official on a military base who tells her "don't let the public see that tape." Why not go the conspiracy route instead of checking out and coasting the rest of the way with an alien abduction remake of the first BLAIR WITCH? (PG-13, 87 mins)
ALIEN: COVENANT (US - 2017) Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by John Logan and Dante Harper. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demian Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Guy Pearce, James Franco, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Goran D. Kleut. (R, 120 mins) Despite the pre-release tap-dancing around the issue, it was obvious that 2012's PROMETHEUS was Ridley Scott's return to the universe he created with the 1979 classic ALIEN. After PROMETHEUS' ultimate reveal as a prequel, Scott has returned with no illusions about what's going on with ALIEN: COVENANT. Picking up ten years after the events of PROMETHEUS, COVENANT centers on a colonization mission on the space vessel Covenant, with a crew of 15 carrying 2000 colonists and 1000 embryos on a seven-year, hypersleep mission to an oxygenated planet known as Origae-6. They're under the watchful eye of "Mother," the ship's computer, as well as Walter (Michael Fassbender), a synthetic in charge of maintaining the ship. A "neutrino burst" causes significant damage to the ship, killing some sleeping colonists and forcing Walter to bring the crew out of stasis. Second-in-charge Oram (Billy Crudup) is forced to assume command when mission leader Branson (a barely-seen and uncredited James Franco) is killed in a freak explosion when his pod won't open. They're still seven years from Origae-6, and Branson's wife Daniels (Katherine Waterston, Sam's lookalike daughter), who's also on the crew, voices her objection when Oram decides to investigate a signal (someone singing John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," in a garbled audio transmission that's effectively creepy in an EVENT HORIZON way) from a previously unseen planet just a few weeks away that's showing even better habitability figures than their intended destination.
I guess Daniels is the only one who's ever seen an ALIEN movie or an ALIEN ripoff, since this is obviously a decision worthy of a Bad Idea Jeans commercial. While the Covenant and pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride) stay in orbit with two other crew members, a smaller vessel piloted by Tennessee's wife Faris (Amy Seimetz) takes Oram and the rest of the crew to the surface. They split up, with Oram's biologist wife Karine (Carmen Ejogo) collecting samples with soldier Ledward (Benjamin Rigby), who unknowingly stirs some alien spores that enter his ear and go undetected, taking root in his brain. Meanwhile, Oram and the others discover the wreckage of the spacecraft in which Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and synthetic David (also Fassbender) escaped at the end of PROMETHEUS. When a soldier in that group, Hallett (Nathaniel Dean), also gets infected by spores, they head back to the docked vessel where a creature has already burst out of Ledward's back and killed Karine, eventually leading to an explosion that kills Faris. A creature erupts out of Hallett's mouth and soon, others similar to the franchise's signature xenomorphs start attacking until the whole group is rescued by David (also Fassbender), who's been living alone in what appears to be the ruins of a Pompeii-like civilization. Dr. Shaw was killed in a crash landing ten years earlier, and when David isn't weeping at a shrine he's set up in her memory, he's been surviving on his own. He clearly has other intentions, as evidenced by his barely-contained enthusiasm upon being told that there's 2000 hibernating colonists and 1000 embryos aboard the still-orbiting Covenant.
ALIEN: COVENANT is consistently interesting, but it's still a hot mess. The biggest obstacle that it can't overcome--and it didn't seem apparent to me until I considered it and PROMETHEUS as a whole piece--is that knowing the backstory to the events of ALIEN and the whole Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) saga is completely unnecessary. When the actual H.R. Giger-designed xenomorphs finally appear in the last half hour or so, we see entirely too much of them, and in their sleek new CGI incarnation, pinballing all over the screen like sprinting zombies in 28 DAYS LATER, they lack the sense of tangible menace like the aliens in ALIEN and its equally great 1986 sequel ALIENS. This whole saga of PROMETHEUS and COVENANT ultimately feels like little more than ALIEN fan fiction that does nothing to enhance the movies we've been watching for going on 40 years now. Scott throws in enough bizarre and unexpected elements that COVENANT has always got your attention even when it's stumbling--the whole midsection of the film, showing David's routine around the ruins of the society he's adopted as his home, is another example of the director's occasionally insane side making its presence known. But in the end, it doesn't go far enough, like a lobotomized Ray Liotta eating his own sauteed brain in HANNIBAL or Cameron Diaz fucking a car in THE COUNSELOR. Before long, we once again start getting that PROMETHEUS feeling that Scott realizes he needs to appease the studio and abandons the project's unique ideas in favor of rushing through the last 30 or so minutes because he seems to suddenly remember he's making an ALIEN movie. In other words, almost right down to the minute, the same flaws in PROMETHEUS are repeated in COVENANT, with the added detriment of a laughably predictable twist ending and an attempt to turn David into a quipping, synthetic android Freddy Krueger.
Fassbender is fine in both roles, especially as David, with his gentlemanly sinister demeanor and erudite line delivery recalling Peter Cushing not just in his performance, but also in the echoes of Cushing's Nazi mad scientist living on a deserted island among his aquatic zombie creations in 1977's SHOCK WAVES (instead of CGI-ing Grand Moff Tarken in ROGUE ONE, they should've just hired Fassbender to do his Cushing impression). ALIEN: COVENANT feels like three movies in one, all of them tonally different (a late shower kill with gratuitous T&A as an apparently pervy xenomorph peeps in on a cavorting couple feels like it belongs in an '80s slasher movie or, at best, a Roger Corman ALIEN ripoff like GALAXY OF TERROR). Waterston makes a tough, gritty heroine, but elsewhere, there's too much distracting stunt casting, whether it's McBride coming off as "Kenny Powers in space" and not selling lines like "That's one hell of an ionosphere!" or Franco turning in his finest performance in years as a burnt corpse (Guy Pearce also appears as evil CEO Peter Weyland in a prologue). It's intriguing that the crew is almost entirely made up of married couples, with some sociopolitical commentary in Oram being established as conservative and bitching that his faith has held him back in his career, or that Hallett and badass security head Lope (Demian Bichir) are a gay couple, but it's never really explored other than as transparent thinkpiece-bait. Ridley Scott owes no explanations to anyone, and it's great that the 79-year-old legend is still full of piss and vinegar and able to work so much in his emeritus years, but like others in his age bracket such as Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen, his average of a new film every year or year-and-a-half is an indication that maybe a break and a recharging wouldn't be a bad thing. Scott is just spinning his wheels here, and so is the ALIEN franchise.
MINDHORN (UK - 2017) Directed by Sean Foley. Written by Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby. Cast: Julian Barratt, Andrea Riseborough, Essie Davis, Steve Coogan, Russell Tovey, Simon Farnaby, Richard McCabe, David Schofield, Nicholas Farrell, Harriet Walter, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Callow, Jessica Barden, Robin Morrissey, Jordan Long. (Unrated, 88 mins) It succumbs to predictability when the comedy gives way to formulaic action in the third act, but the British-made Netflix acquisition MINDHORN, starring and co-written by THE MIGHTY BOOSH's Julian Barratt, gets its share of big laughs from an inspired premise. Barratt is Richard Thorncroft, a washed-up Isle of Man-born actor best known for a late '80s/early '90s TV series called MINDHORN, In it, Thorncroft starred as Bruce Mindhorn, an MI-5 agent who was captured and held prisoner at a secret compound in the outer regions of Siberia, where Soviet scientists replaced his left eye with a cybernetic optical lie detector, "allowing him to literally see the truth!" according to the show's dead-on INCREDIBLE HULK-type voiceover intro ("It's Truth Time!" Mindhorn declares when he nabs a perp). MINDHORN was a big hit for a few years but Thorncroft did a poor job of handling his fame. After releasing an album with the minor hit single "You Can't Handcuff the Wind" (sample lyric: "It's like tryin' to put thunder in jail!"), the show's popularity waned, ratings plummeted, his relationship with leading lady Patricia Deville (Essie Davis of THE BABADOOK) fell apart, and he had a very public meltdown when he appeared falling-down drunk on a live talk show, trash-talking co-star Peter Easterman (Steve Coogan), who played Mindhorn's sidekick Windjammer. Upon MINDHORN's cancellation, Easterman became a bigger star than Thorncroft ever was thanks to the spinoff WINDJAMMER, currently in its 16th season and still the most-watched show on British TV. Thorncroft's fall from grace continued when he ditched his loyal agent Geoffrey Moncrief (Richard McCabe) and went off to Hollywood when a megabudget producer promised to make him the next Burt Reynolds. The movie bombed and Thorncroft crashed and burned, and he's been scrounging for work and licking his wounds in London in the 20 years since. He's still trying to stage a comeback, still sucking in his gut and throwing on a Mindhorn toupee to cover his now-bald head, with his latest agent (Harriet Walter) unable to find any publisher interest in his autobiography (Easterman has just published his third memoir), while his most prominent recent gigs have found him coasting on what little MINDHORN notoriety he still has in TV commercials endorsing man-girdles and orthopedic socks.
After a disastrous audition with Kenneth Branagh where he humiliates himself pretending he and Branagh go back decades ("Kenny B!"), Thorncroft is about to throw in the towel, but he gets an unexpected offer from an Isle of Man police precinct: escaped lunatic Paul Melly (Russell Tovey), who makes squawking sounds and calls himself "The Kestral," is the prime suspect in a recent murder, but he refuses to speak with Baines (Andrea Riseborough), the detective on the case. Instead, MINDHORN superfan Melly, who thinks the character is real, will only talk to Agent Mindhorn, which leads the cops to hire Thorncroft to once again essay his signature role to help capture "The Kestral." Of course, at-an-all-time-low Thorncroft can't help but become a braying jackass and all-around egomaniac now that he thinks he's in-demand once more, and he very nearly screws up the entire investigation before accidentally helping apprehend Melly. But after reconnecting with Patricia, now a crusading reporter, and learning she ran off with his old stunt double Clive Parnevik (co-writer Simon Farnaby), Thorncroft is once more despondent until evidence surfaces that Melly has been framed for the murder, with Geoffrey having the proof on a VHS tape. When Geoffrey turns up dead and Thorncroft is implicated, he and Melly escape and set out to clear both of their names. Thorncroft's bigger concern seems to be his career, which, after a brief resurgence of interest thanks to his role in capturing Melly, immediately goes back into the shitter following an escalating confrontation with the gloating Easterman that goes viral when Thorncroft takes a swing at his former co-star and instead punches an innocent female bystander.
It should come as no surprise as MINDHORN (which counts Ridley Scott among its producers) reaches its conclusion that getting to the bottom of the case is key to Thorncroft's personal and professional redemption, as are rekindling his romance with Patricia and getting the idiotic Clive out of the picture. MINDHORN is consistently amusing but works best in its early scenes, especially its establishment of the current sad state of Thorncroft's life and career. There's a definite sense of Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant-style cringe comedy that gives way to a more HOT FUZZ-esque genre parody, and the styles don't always mesh. Also, the identity of the real villain is a bit of a letdown, since the individual doesn't have much to do with the plot and just seems arbitrarily tossed in. Barratt is appropriately self-deprecating in a role that would've had Kevin Kline written all over it 25 years ago, though he and debuting director Sean Foley could've just as easily gone in either direction the whole way through, be it a squirming discomfort about a washed-up actor or as an outright parody with a feature-length MINDHORN episode in the vein of an AUSTIN POWERS or a MACGRUBER. There's some very funny inside jokes for fans of British cinema, whether it's Branagh's deadpan cameo as himself ("No fucking clue who that was," he tells his assistant when Thorncroft finally leaves), or Thorncroft dealing with the ballbusting of actor/author Simon Callow, another of his agent's clients ("Fuck off, Callow!"). There's also some big laughs coming from his diva-like attitude when he arrives to help with the investigation, stopping a cop and ordering a coffee or requesting his tea with two teabags and name-dropping Sean Bean in the process ("Picked that up from Sean Bean...'Double-Bag' Bean, we called him."). MINDHORN doesn't maintain that same level of absurdist inspiration all the way through, but as far as Netflix Originals go, it's a better British comedy than DAVID BRENT: LIFE ON THE ROAD and a much better cop comedy than the dismal HANDSOME: A NETFLIX MYSTERY MOVIE.
MORGAN (US - 2016) Directed by Luke Scott. Written by Seth Owen. Cast: Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rose Leslie, Toby Jones, Paul Giamatti, Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Cox, Michael Yare, Boyd Holbrook, Chris Sullivan, Vinette Robinson. (R, 92 mins) Luke Scott has served as an assistant and a second-unit director on several films by his legendary and seemingly ageless father Ridley Scott, but MORGAN marks the 48-year-old scion's feature directing debut (Ridley's other filmmaker son, Jake Scott, debuted with 1999's PLUNKETT & MACLEANE). Pops Scott produced the film, and if Luke had any hopes of emerging from the long shadow cast by his visionary father, he's gonna have to try a lot harder than MORGAN. In all fairness, MORGAN looks fine, with some effective set design and a few breathtaking exterior visuals in a surrounding forest and on a lake (this was shot in Ireland), but the script by Seth Owen (rumored to be overhauled and rewritten by the director) is so derivative and obvious that any seasoned moviegoer will figure out where this thing is headed by the ten-minute mark. At a secret research facility in remote upstate New York, scientists have succeeded in creating, after two failed attempts, a flesh-and-blood, A.I. humanoid named Morgan (THE WITCH's Anya Taylor-Joy), who's five years old but whose accelerated growth rate gives it the appearance of a girl in her late teens. Cold and standoffish Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) is a risk assessment agent sent in by the project's corporate benefactors to determine Morgan's viability after it attacks one of the scientists, Dr. Kathy Grieff (Jennifer Jason Leigh), gouging out her eye in a fit of rage when it's informed it disobeyed the rules and can't go outside anymore. Lee is naturally met with apprehension and scorn by the rest of the research team--Dr. Simon Ziegler (Toby Jones), Dr. Amy Menser (Rose Leslie), Dr. Ted Brenner (Michael Yare), married Drs. Darren and Brenda Finch (Chris Sullivan, Vinette Robinson), and the head of the project, Dr. Liu Cheng (Michelle Yeoh)--with her only real ally coming from the facility's nutritionist/cook/potential love interest Skip (Boyd Holbrook).
Why these people can't prepare their own meals and require Skip to be on the payroll in a sworn-to-secrecy, middle-of-nowhere location for a minimum of five years is the least of the questions you'll have after watching MORGAN. As Morgan demonstrates more human qualities and has tangible feelings of joy and sorrow (it loves the outdoors and opera, and is set off when it's punished for wandering off the property while out on a walk with Amy), they've grown attached to it and refer to it as "she" and "her," which doesn't fly with the no-nonsense Lee. With her aloof, bottom-line attitude, Lee's character arc is pretty easy to pick up on thanks to Scott's inability to grasp the concept of subtlety. There's a big EX MACHINA influence on MORGAN, but it also works in a significant plot point of Dad Scott's first or second-most famous film in such a ham-fisted way that the biggest mystery isn't what the twist is, but how long it's going to take the rest of the dim characters to figure out what you already know. With her saucer-like eyes and the large pupil contacts she wears in some scenes, Taylor-Joy evokes memories of Delphine Chaneac's more monstrous Dren in Vincenzo Natali's 2010 film SPLICE, which took things in a decidedly more Cronenberg-ian slant, but whose transgressive perversions are hinted at here and dropped almost instantly. Indeed, there's something strongly suggested in outsider Amy's feelings for Morgan--feelings that don't seem to be maternal or sisterly. There's a throwaway line by Skip about how he briefly hooked up with Amy years ago before realizing "I'm not her type." There's enough in Leslie's performance here to suggest that Amy has other designs on Morgan but nothing comes of it (those who've seen SPLICE will recall that, yes, it went there).
There's good performances in MORGAN in the early-going, before it turns into a rote body count movie when Morgan escapes from the lab and starts killing everyone off one by one. Taylor-Joy does a solid job of balancing childlike innocence with palpable rage, but Alicia Vikander did it much better and with more complexity and ambiguity in EX MACHINA. Still, Morgan shows more emotion than Mara's Lee, whose brittle chilliness is oversold with a stick-up-her-ass demeanor and an "I'd like to speak to a manager" hairstyle that exemplifies MORGAN's rush to show its cards too soon. The veteran actors in the cast are underutilized: Leigh pretty much lies in a bed with gauze over her eye, catatonic with painkillers in one of the most inactive-by-design performances this side of Eric Stoltz in ANACONDA; Yeoh's Dr. Cheng drifts in and out of the story in ways that suggest Scott only had the actress for a very limited time (why is she not there for the big assessment of Morgan?); Brian Cox almost literally phones in his entire performance as the CEO of the company bankrolling the Morgan project; and Paul Giamatti has one ten-minute scene, breaking out every move in his "Paul Giamatti" arsenal as Dr. Shapiro, the psychologist brought in to interview Morgan. Giamatti's character is a man so bellicose and arrogant that the actor has barely finished emitting his first dismissive sneer before you conclude that he's not making out of the room alive. The fact that Shapiro's there because Morgan has attacked Kathy and his plan is to sit with it at the same table and agitate it to evaluate its temper--essentially poking Morgan with a stick until it attacks--tells you how smart this film and its characters are. MORGAN looks like what might've happened if EX MACHINA was made at a major studio and the suits let the test audiences and the focus groups dictate the outcome. It's never dull but it's doomed to be a forgotten afterthought as soon as its over, its primary influences thuddingly apparent to any knowledgeable cineaste with even a passing interest in genre fare. They've seen things the makers of MORGAN wouldn't believe. All those ripoffs will be lost online, like streams on demand.
THE MARTIAN (US - 2015) Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Drew Goddard. Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Chen Shu, Eddy Ko, Nick Mohammed. (PG-13, 141 mins)
During a manned mission to Mars, a catastrophic storm suddenly appears and the crew of the Ares III is ordered to evacuate the landing site and abort the mission by Cmdr. Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain). Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is blown away by a satellite antenna in a powerful gust of wind and when he doesn't respond and his vitals cease to register, he's presumed dead and Lewis and the crew--Martinez (Michael Pena), Johansson (Kate Mara), Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Vogel (Aksel Hennie)--begin the ten-month journey home. But Watney survived, though he's been impaled by an antenna and has no way to communicate to anyone at NASA that's he's been left behind. With enough pre-packaged meals for the entire crew to last 400 sols (a Martian sol being slightly longer than an Earth day) if he rations carefully, he must find a way to grow food to last four years until the next planned manned Mars expedition. Fortunately, Watney is a botanist and uses his wits and ingenuity ("I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this thing") to grow a small potato crop. Around the 54th sol after being left behind, Mars expedition director Dr. Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and graveyard-shift NASA analyst Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) notice movement of structures on satellite imagery of the landing site, proof that Watney is alive. What follows is the thoroughly engrossing saga of Watney's struggle to survive when faced with one catastrophic obstacle after another, and the efforts of those at NASA to get him home.
Adapted by Drew Goddard (THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) from the novel by Andy Weir, THE MARTIAN is career highlight for director Ridley Scott (BLADE RUNNER, THELMA & LOUISE), an ageless workaholic who shows no signs of slowing down at 77 years of age (he just had EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS in theaters ten months ago). Unlike 79-year-old Woody Allen and 85-year-old Clint Eastwood, two legends who seem to crank out annual movies more out of obligation than anything, Scott still seems interested in challenging himself, whether it's venturing back to the ALIEN universe for PROMETHEUS or going way off on a tangent with the inspired and insane THE COUNSELOR. Scott's hardly been skidding, but THE MARTIAN is his best work in years, a masterful mix of drama, humor (there's a great running gag about Lewis' terrible taste in music), thrills, hard science, and escapist entertainment, operating at a level of quality you rarely see these days. It's rousing without being pandering, and filled with baited-breath intensity, and emotion and sentiment that's earned and not forced. It's a crowd-pleasing popcorn movie done right, with a terrific ensemble whose performances make a very human and universal story rather than simply "CAST AWAY in space." The world comes together in plausible ways to rally behind Watney and his safe return--the Chinese space program even sets its own ambitions aside to work with rival NASA by contributing a necessary booster that the Americans have yet to develop. There's a certain element of "Nobody gets left behind!" but it's not a jingoistic flag-waver. Watley's plight unites the planet.
Sure, that could've been some hokey, feel-good bullshit, and a man stranded alone on the red planet has been explored to some degree in the revered 1964 sci-fi classic ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, but Damon's performance, filled with raw emotion, self-deprecating humor, and a spirit of dogged persistence, is nicely juxtaposed with a large cast of characters. They all get moments in the spotlight (with the possible exception of Kristen Wiig, who isn't given much to do as NASA's media relations coordinator), from each of Watney's fellow astronauts to the brilliant scientific minds on the ground (Ejiofor's Mars mission director, Sean Bean as the launch director, Benedict Wong as a rocket designer, and Donald "Childish Gambino" Glover as an astrodynamicist), to Jeff Daniels as the bottom-line, very Jeff Daniels-ish NASA chairman, a character that other films would've made into an obligatory earthbound adversary but here, his blunt demeanor that occasionally comes off as insensitive is just a realistic reaction to the situation. THE MARTIAN is a triumph across the board, from its story to its performances to its astonishing visual effects, particularly in the tense, nerve-wracking climax. Most of the film was shot on sets constructed at a Hungarian studio, but the Mars exteriors were shot in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, looking appropriately desolate and otherworldly through the lens of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (working on his fourth straight Scott film), augmented by the appropriately otherworldly, Tangerine Dream-ish synth score by Harry Gregson-Williams, who also contributed to the soundscapes of Michael Mann's underrated BLACKHAT. THE MARTIAN is the most satisfying and thrilling time at the movies since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and like the mad genius George Miller, the great Ridley Scott is essentially conducting a seminar on how it's done.
THE SALVATION (Denmark/UK/South Africa - 2014; US release 2015)
Produced by Lars von Trier's Zentropa Entertainments, THE SALVATION is a dark, brutal western that will please fans of films like THE PROPOSITION and the more recent THE HOMESMAN. Shot in some desolate regions of South Africa that stand in for an almost otherworldly, apocalyptic version of the 1870s Old West, the film centers on Jon Jensen (Mads Mikkelsen), a Danish immigrant and war veteran who settled in America seven years earlier with his brother Peter (Mikael Persbrandt). Jon has finally achieved enough success and financial security that he can afford to bring over his wife Marie (Nanna Oland Fabricius) and Kresten (Toke Lars Bjarke), his son who was just an infant when he left for America. When fate has them sharing a coach ride to town with two drunken louts, the Jensen family's American dream quickly goes south: the drunks attempt to rape Marie and hold a knife to Kresten's throat before throwing Jon from the coach. By the time Jon catches up to them, he finds the dead bodies of his wife and son in the road and the two men still in the coach, sleeping it off. Jon kills both men and he and Peter bury Marie and Kresten. It turns out one of the drunks was the younger brother of Henry Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the ruthless, cold-blooded enforcer for an oil baron looking to buy up the town and run everyone out. Delarue gives the mayor (Jonathan Pryce) and the sheriff (Douglas Henshall) two hours to find his brother's killer or they have to pick two of their own residents to sacrifice. It says a lot about this town that they don't even bother investigating and instead spend the two hours deciding which two people they'll give Delarue before settling on an old woman and a paraplegic. It doesn't take long for everyone to realize Jon is the killer, and even though they know and like Jon and know the men killed his family, they're only too eager to turn him and Peter over to Delarue, who makes the mistake of underestimating the resourcefulness and the resolve of the Jensen brothers.
Directed and co-written by von Trier's Dogme 95 colleague Kristian Levring, THE SALVATION is an absolutely riveting western that could've been a hit if it had gotten a wide release. One of the most commercially accessible films to come out of the von Trier camp--and a complete break from Dogme 95 for Levring--THE SALVATION presents one of the most dour and hellish looks at the west this side of HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, and the town is populated by what may very well be the western genre's most shameless cowards--the mayor (who's also the undertaker) and the sheriff (who's also the minister) not only sacrifice a frail, elderly woman and a disabled man ("I don't bother anybody! I don't want to die!" the legless man cries) rather than do their jobs, but when Jon sells his land back to the mayor for a measly $150, the mayor tells him to keep the money in his boots strictly so he'll know where to recover his $150 when Delarue strings Jon up and lets him bake in the sun later on. And in an infuriating display of tone-deafness, the old woman's grandson (Alexander Arnold) actually calls Peter a coward for not stepping up to stop Delarue's reign of terror. Mikkelsen and Morgan make outstanding adversaries, and even playing mute doesn't make Eva Green tone down her usual crazy-eyes routine that Eva Greeniacs have come to know and love in her performance as "The Princess," the silent widow of Delarue's younger brother. She had her tongue cut out by "savages" as a little girl and has a strange relationship with Delarue where she's both co-conspirator and captive. As is the case with so many movies these days, it's some dodgy CGI late in the game (some really unconvincing fire) that takes you out of the film, but subtracting that, THE SALVATION is a must-see for western fans, a film that very effectively invokes nihilistic memories of classic spaghetti westerns--right down to its Kaspar Winding score that emulates the more somber, reflective side of Ennio Morricone--without becoming winking or self-conscious in any way. This one's a small masterpiece that's going to find a strong cult following very quickly. (R, 92 mins)
INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE (US - 2015)
An initially OK throwback to the kind of nature-run-amok horror movie that followed in the wake of JAWS in the late '70s and early '80s, INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE, a loose remake of 1976's GRIZZLY, devolves into a laughable mess of crummy CGI and bad editing. The cutaways to the titular beast often look like haphazardly-inserted stock footage of Bart the Bear, and it's a rare occurrence where you get the feeling that the rampaging grizzly is actually in the same vicinity as the cast. By the very end, director David Hackl (SAW V) is resorting to a totally CGI'd bear and some CGI fire that would have the digital effects team at the Asylum looking away in embarrassment. This doesn't help make the case for the long-delayed INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE, which was completed in 2012, is on its second distributor (Open Road acquired it and sat on it for a year and a half before selling it to Indomitable Entertainment), and its third retitling after being known as RED MACHINE, ENDANGERED, and GRIZZLY. A movie about a bear chasing people through a forest shouldn't have this much behind-the-scenes strife. Fittingly, the film went straight to VOD, since its climax would probably get it laughed off the screen in wide release. There's ample evidence to suggest that INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE knows that it's garbage--no one's going to argue that a mauled-and-presumed dead Billy Bob Thornton reappearing with the left side of his face hanging off as he takes aim at the grizzly isn't entertaining as hell, or another character sinking into a rotting, maggot-infested deer carcass like it's quicksand doesn't deliver the gory goods, but INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE keeps stumbling every time it gets some goofy momentum going.
The script, co-written by BUNRAKU director Guy Moshe, works in entirely too much family squabbling between estranged brothers Rowan (James Marsden who, between this, THE LOFT, and ACCIDENTAL LOVE, has become the Patron Saint of Shelved Cinema) and Beckett (Thomas Jane). Rowan is an ex-con just paroled after a seven-year stretch for manslaughter, and Beckett is the deputy sheriff in their small Alaskan hometown. Rowan is back to look for local guide Johnny (Adam Beach), who's been missing with two hunters in the "Grizzly Maze" for nearly two weeks. There's evidence that a rampaging, rogue bear is on the loose, but nature-minded Beckett, who's tagged and collared numerous bears in the forest in order to protect them from being hunted, doesn't want Sheriff Sully (Scott Glenn) or eccentric local bear expert Douglass (Thornton, functioning as the "Jon Voight-in-ANACONDA" or "Henry Silva-in-ALLIGATOR" asshole) to just go in and kill it. There's some attempt at statement-making with Douglass, a Grizzly Whisperer if you will, incessantly talking about how man has upset the balance of nature and the bear is pissed off and ready to eat anything that gets in its way to restore that balance ("He's a machine. He doesn't give a shit. You all taste the same to him!"). Beckett, Rowan, and local medic Kaley (Michaela McManus) end up joining forces, both to find the bear and to locate Beckett's deaf wife Michelle (Piper Perabo), a nature photographer and conservationist who went exploring the forest to take shots for a new project, because sure, a deaf person in a forest ruled by potentially pissed-off bears who have had it with poachers and loggers is a great idea (SPOILER ALERT: the bear sneaks up behind her multiple times). Until Hackl gets way too comfortable resorting to unconvincing CGI, INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE is an intermittently fun B-movie throwback. There's a good amount of stuff to like about it: Thornton knows what kind of movie he's in and is clearly enjoying himself as the hectoring, antagonizing Douglass, who ventures into the maze on his own solo mission to exterminate the bear and keeps taunting Rowan and Beckett when they periodically cross paths, and the location shooting in Utah and in Vancouver is often breathtakingly beautiful. But there's just too much needless backstory on everyone, from Rowan and Beckett's tortured dad and cancer-stricken mom to their dad and Douglass having some falling out years earlier, to the real reasons behind Rowan's incarceration, and Sully allowing poachers into the forest because he's about to retire and needs a cushier nest egg. It's a movie about a killer grizzly...no one gives a shit about Sully's pension. The ending flies off the rails in a way that will amuse followers of bad movies, but it didn't need to be that way. Clumsy editing, subpar special effects, reshoots, and a plethora of post-production and "additional editing" credits show the tell-tale signs of a project in which no one was really sure what they wanted. You'd think it would be hard to screw up a B-horror movie about a killer bear, but INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE too often manages to do it. (R, 90 mins) CHILD 44 (US - 2015)
Up until a week or so before its release, CHILD 44 was scheduled to bow on 2500 screens. At the eleventh hour, Summit abruptly came to its senses and downgraded it to a limited release, instead rolling it out on just 510 screens in a valiant attempt to contain the fallout. Landing in 17th place and grossing a paltry $600,000 in its opening weekend, the $50 million CHILD 44 was one of the biggest box office bombs of the year (a legit bomb--not one of those "It only grossed $80 million its opening weekend, so it's a flop" bombs that you read about every Sunday evening on Variety's web site), though it would've been even more catastrophic on five times as many screens. Produced by Ridley Scott and based on Tim Rob Smith's 2008 bestseller, CHILD 44 has a top-notch screenwriter (Richard Price, who scripted THE COLOR OF MONEY, SEA OF LOVE, and CLOCKERS among others), a solid director (Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa, best known for SAFE HOUSE), and a terrific cast, but it's just lugubrious misfire from the start. The pace is mind-numbingly slow, the film absurdly overlong at 137 minutes (and it still feels like whole sections of story are missing), the cast of British and Swedish actors pays loving homage to Yakov Smirnoff with their cartoonish Boris & Natasha accents, and it takes a ridiculous 75 minutes for the main plot to even kick into gear. In the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, MGB (later known as the KGB) officials are busy burying evidence of a string of murders where the victims, all young boys, are found naked. Calling murder "a capitalist disease," the officials instead chalk all of the killings up to "train accidents," which doesn't rest well with MGB officer Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy). He's already butting heads with colleague Vasili (Joel Kinnamon), who starts a rumor that Demidov's wife Raisa (Noomi Rapace) is a traitor. This gets the Demidovs demoted to Volsk where, months later, a similar murder catches Leo's attention and gets him in hot water with his superior General Nesterov (Gary Oldman), a company man happy to look the other way when it's obvious there's a serial killer at work. Price and Espinosa throw in a number of subplots that feel like superfluous padding, and while the period detail is excellent, there's little context in terms of where the story fits into Soviet history other than having barking officers barging through a door to find starving people in tattered clothing, huddled together as they cry and scream, which seems to happen every few minutes. There's such a lack of focus that the story becomes increasingly difficult to follow, there's a few fight scenes that are completely incoherent, and the cast of proven but defeated actors are terrible across the board. Did Espinosa spend all of his energies focusing on the production design at the expense of everything else? Aside from the gray, dreary look of the film, absolutely nothing in the miserable CHILD 44 works. One of the most oppressive film experiences of 2015. (R, running time: endless)
