BLUE MONKEY (Canada - 1987) Directed by William Fruet. Written by George Goldsmith. Cast: Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, John Vernon, Susan Anspach, Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, Don Lake, Helen Hughes, Sandy Webster, Joy Coghill, Stuart Stone, Sarah Polley, Peter Van Wart, Cynthia Belliveau, Philip Akin, Dan Lett, Michael J. Reynolds, Ivan E. Roth. (R, 96 mins) A cult classic due almost entirely to its ridiculous title, 1987's BLUE MONKEY is a low-budget Canadian monster movie that's a blatant response to the previous year's box-office smash ALIENS and, to a lesser extent, David Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY. A staple of any self-respecting video store back in the day, BLUE MONKEY has been MIA in the modern era but has just resurfaced on Blu-ray from Code Red offshoot Dark Force (the print used has the alternate title INSECT), because physical media is dead. It's moderately entertaining trash if approached with realistic expectations, with plenty of slime, ooze, and general grossness to go along with some generally well-done practical creature FX. It's got an eclectic mix of American and Canadian faces and an energetic score by Patrick Coleman and Paul Novotny that would be right at home in something from Empire Pictures. And it boasts a fine cult B-movie pedigree with a script by FORCE: FIVE and CHILDREN OF THE CORN screenwriter George Goldsmith and reliable Canuxploitation director William Fruet (THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, FUNERAL HOME, SPASMS, BEDROOM EYES) at the helm, guided by executive producer Sandy Howard, a noted purveyor of '80s exploitation who bankrolled hits like VICE SQUAD and ANGEL.
Released in the fall of 1987 by the short-lived Spectrafilm, BLUE MONKEY opens with elderly handyman Fred (Sandy Webster) flirting with sweet old Marwella (Helen Hughes) before being bitten by an insect hiding in one of her plants. He's rushed to the local hospital where he loses consciousness just as a worm-like parasite slithers out of his mouth. At the same time, intense, on-the-edge cop Bishop (intense, on-the-edge Steve Railsback) arrives with his partner (Peter Van Wart), who's just been shot during a stakeout. Soon, the paramedics who brought in Fred fall ill and the parasite is moved to a lab while the ER's Dr. Carson (Gwynyth Walsh) and Dr. Glass (Susan Anspach) wait for the arrival of renowned entomologist Dr. Jacobs (Don Lake). When horny nurse Alice (Cynthia Belliveau) is left in charge of watching the secured parasite but sneaks off with douchebag orderly Ted (Dan Lett), a quartet of adorable ragamuffins from the pediatric ward (including an eight-year-old Sarah Polley in one of her earliest credits) sneak into the lab and pour a chemical on the parasite that causes it to grow and mutate, escaping from the lab and hiding in the basement boiler room. With the parasitic virus infecting the hospital, the health department orders the entire building closed and the people in it quarantined, much to the chagrin of bloviating hospital director Levering (John Vernon, cast radically against type as "John Vernon"). This also makes for a long night, as the growing and rapidly spawning, hermaphrodite creature (played by Ivan E. Roth) periodically pops up to snatch victims to use as incubators for its asexually-produced eggs, with Jacobs predicting there could be an untold number of these creatures in the hospital by morning.
Originally set to be released as GREEN MONKEY, as if that makes a difference, BLUE MONKEY has an OK set-up and third act, but the midsection is filled with an awful lot of ass-dragging, with people endlessly wandering around dark corridors or heading to the boiler room to watch the creature lay its eggs. The kids run around the hospital and cause trouble, and unfunny comic relief is provided by usually reliable SCTV stars Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke (also an SNL vet) as the Bakers, dorky expectant parents who show up to deliver the baby even though she isn't in labor yet, but obnoxious Mr. Baker's scientific calculations have determined that today is the day. Anspach's promising early '70s career (FIVE EASY PIECES, BLUME IN LOVE) had pretty much flamed out by the time she was turning up in stuff like BLUE MONKEY, and neither she nor Vernon have very much to do as both vanish for long stretches, perhaps pleading with their respective agents to get them some more reputable gigs.
Railsback is typically Railsbackian, a quirky actor who was briefly the Nicolas Cage of his day after his mesmerizing performance as Charles Manson in the hugely popular 1976 CBS miniseries HELTER SKELTER. That led to the title role opposite Peter O'Toole in 1980's highly-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated THE STUNT MAN, but beyond that, 1980s Hollywood never really could figure out what to do with him. Railsback was a promising actor who just came off as too twitchy and weird to make it as an A-list leading man, like a Christopher Walken or a Jeff Goldblum minus the eccentric sense of humor and the winking self-awareness. Even when he's playing the hero in BLUE MONKEY, he manages to look like a creep in physical pain when he's goofing off with the kids. Railsback had a long run in cult movies throughout the '80s--Brian Trenchard-Smith's ESCAPE 2000 and Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE being the standouts--and he did manage one more critically-acclaimed performance in the 1985 cocaine addiction drama TORCHLIGHT, but by 1987, BLUE MONKEY was typical of the kind of B-movie and straight-to-video gigs he was getting. In the '90s, he would occasionally land supporting roles in major releases like IN THE LINE OF FIRE, BARB WIRE, and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, and managed to channel some of that Manson insanity when he landed the title role in the barely-released 2001 indie ED GEIN. Now 74, Railsback works much less frequently these days, most recently appearing in an apparently unreleased 2019 horror movie called IT WANTS BLOOD! with such convention luminaries as Eric Roberts, Felissa Rose, Ola Ray, Tuesday Knight, and Brinke Stevens.
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (France/Belgium/Spain - 2013)
The Palme d'Or winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival has stirred controversy for a number of reasons, from its explicit NC-17 sex scenes to director Abdellatif Kechiche's post-release war of words with stars Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos. The actresses said in interviews that, while they respected the filmmaker, his methods and treatment of the cast and crew (there were also allegations of Kechiche violating French labor practices on set) made for a highly unpleasant atmosphere and they'd probably never work with him again. Kechiche repeatedly lashed out at a lot of people but reserved most of his rage for Seydoux, accusing her of coming to the set unprepared and claiming he unsuccessfully tried to have her replaced. Regardless of whatever turmoil took place, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is a remarkable achievement, a raw, honest, unflinching look at first love, sexual awakening, and the entire cycle of the relationship between young, inexperienced Adele (Exarchopoulos) and the few years older, free-spirited artist Emma (Seydoux). With the focus on Adele, Kechiche takes his time building the characters and the world in which they live. We see Adele's interactions with her family, her circle of friends, and losing her virginity to nice-guy Thomas (Jeremie Laheurte), who's devastated when she breaks up with him not long after. Adele's journey of self-discovery leads her to Emma, who she originally passed in a crosswalk weeks earlier where the two shared a glance that was enough to tell Adele that Thomas might not be who she wants. Adele accompanies her gay friend Valentin (Sandor Funtek) to a gay/lesbian bar and runs into Emma. The two strike up a flirtation that leads to an all-consuming passion, and Kechiche shows the audience everything: the intimacy, the dynamics, the reactions of friends and family. Anchored by a pair of fearless performances, there are no corners cut, no clichés, and no plot turns that transpire because of convenience.
The sex scenes in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR caused quite a sensation and make no mistake, the NC-17 rating is earned. But there's nothing trashy or exploitative about them and they aren't what the film is about. They match the intensity of the performances of the two stars, who shared the Best Actress award at Cannes. Seydoux has been seen in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and had a small but memorable role as an assassin in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, but Exarchopoulos is new to me. It's an astonishing performance and an egregious oversight that she wasn't nominated for an Oscar. Often, Kechiche will just leave the camera lingering on Exarchopoulos' expressive face, and with the film taking place over several years, even her physical transformation from confused and sometimes awkward 17-year-old to a grade-school teacher in her mid 20s feels extensive even though she doesn't pull some De Niro/Christian Bale tricks. The film doesn't feel three hours long, and Kechiche makes every moment and every shot count. Funny, emotional, exhilarating, exhausting and devastating in equal measure (their late-film meet in a coffee shop is just heartbreaking), BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is like an absorbing novel played out on the screen, rich with characterization and detail, and an extraordinary work that will stay with you long after it's over. (NC-17, 180 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
MR. NOBODY (France/Germany/Canada/Belgium - 2010/US release 2013)
When Jared Leto started getting accolades for his performance in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, he kept saying it was the first movie he made in six years, even though MR. NOBODY was in limited release just a few weeks prior. He wasn't lying or pretending it didn't exist: MR. NOBODY was filmed in 2007, premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in 2009 and was released in Europe in 2010 where it's developed a significant cult following. It finally received a very belated US release in the fall of 2013. Leto took a sabbatical from acting after MR. NOBODY, focusing on his band Thirty Seconds to Mars and, under the pseudonym "Bartholomew Cubbins," directing the music industry documentary ARTIFACT, which played the 2012 Toronto Film Festival but still hasn't been picked up for distribution. Leto probably needed a break after the workout he got in MR. NOBODY, an often astonishingly ambitious mind-bender from Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael (best known for 1991's TOTO THE HERO). Exploring the idea of alternate universes, the Butterfly Effect, and theories of parallel and diverging timelines, MR. NOBODY opens in 2092 and tells the story of 118-year-old Nemo Nobody (Leto), the world's oldest man and also the last mortal on Earth. Some years earlier, humanity was able to achieve "quasi-immortality" via cell regeneration courtesy of pigs. Now, no one ages, no one is born, and no one dies, but it's a rigid, sexless, clean, overly-safe utopia--regarding the Earth of his youth, the aged Mr. Nobody says "There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful! Most of the time nothing happened... like a French movie." The world is now how it shall always be, with Mr. Nobody the final relic of a mortal, flawed era. Reflecting on his life to a journalist (Daniel Mays), Mr. Nobody's memories seem inconsistent and incoherent. He tells of multiple lives, wives, children he did or didn't have, jobs he worked, how he had two distinctly different childhoods when his parents (Rhys Ifans, Natasha Little) split up. As nine-year-old Nemo's mother boards a train, Nemo tries to jump on the train--in one memory, he makes it and in the other, he doesn't. But he's lived both existences. The argument is that if one happenstance doesn't occur in one reality, it happens in another simultaneous one. He has multiple lives with three different wives--Anna (Diane Kruger), Elise (Sarah Polley), and Jean (Linh-Dan Pham)--and the circumstances (and the wife) might change several times in a scene.
It's an impressive feat that Van Dormael and his editors manage to keep the potentially unwieldy plot and its endless possible directions on task and coherent. The only recent film that occurs to me that juggles this many complex narratives without dropping the balls is 2012's CLOUD ATLAS. MR. NOBODY has a lot of obvious influences but still manages to be its own film, even if it sometimes feels like Benjamin Button has become unstuck in time and dropped into a precious reimagining of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE directed by Wes Anderson. There's a lot to absorb, though Van Dormael sometimes belabors the point--in one life, Elise is suffering from crippling depression, and around the sixth or seventh Polley crying breakdown, you almost want to tell Van Dormael "OK, we get it"--and he lets the film go on forever (the DVD and the Blu-ray contain his 156-minute unrated director's cut, which runs 18 minutes longer than the barely-released R-rated US theatrical cut). But with its incredible fusion of romance, tragedy, and sci-fi epic, incorporating stylistic and thematic elements of other films as diverse as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976), DEATH WATCH (1980), SOLARIS (1972), and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and even taking a version of Mr. Nobody into Neanderthal times as well as a future incarnation living on Mars, MR. NOBODY is quite possibly the most batshit insane, yet oddly touching and sentimental, big-budget epic sci-fi art film that you haven't seen. Also with Juno Temple (unknown when the film was made), Allen Corduner, and an impressive Toby Regbo as the teenage Nemo. (Unrated, 156 mins)
Veteran Canadian actress Sarah Polley showed maturity beyond her years when she made her writing/directing debut at 28 with 2007's AWAY FROM HER, a sensitive and emotionally devastating look an at aging couple struggling to cope when the wife (Julie Christie) is diagnosed with Alzheimers. As an actress, Polley has always chosen smart and creative projects, even in the occasional instances when she stars in something commercial (1999's GO or the 2004 remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD). Dating back to her childhood, Polley has worked with many great filmmakers--Terry Gilliam, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, just to name a few--and she's learned from them. Her second feature, TAKE THIS WALTZ, is uneven and too frequently succumbs to quirkiness and occasionally feels "cute" to the point of annoyance. But it's a deliberate and clever misdirection and it enables the film to really sneak up on you in its much more effective second half. In a bohemian enclave in Toronto, travel writer Margot (Michelle Williams, who's very quietly become one of today's great actresses) and cookbook author Lou (a nice dramatic turn by Seth Rogen) have been married for five years and a sense of complacency has crept in. They have goofy rituals and talk to each other in funny voices and they seem more like close friends than a married couple. Entering the situation is Daniel (Luke Kirby), who Margot meets while on a research trip and it turns out he lives just a few doors down the street. They begin a flirtaceous but platonic relationship as Margot wrestles with the idea of the known/old (Lou) vs. the unknown/new (Daniel).
While Polley's script (and a lot of Williams' and Rogen's dialogue feels improvised) is frequently more quirky than it needs to be (Daniel works as a rickshaw driver?) and the dialogue in the early going too obviously prophetic (Margot on air travel: "I'm afraid of connections"), it eventually displays a level of honesty and complexity rarely seen in films like this. You ever notice in movies how, when men have affairs, they're selfish assholes, but when women have affairs, it's because they need to "find themselves"? Polley approaches it differently. Her characters are real (she takes a big risk by making Margot frequently obnoxious) and they're flawed. She and the film don't take sides, they don't make excuses, and they don't provide any easy answers. And when certain things are revealed, the characters respond like real people would respond (Rogen is especially good late in the film). TAKE THIS WALTZ can best be summed up by a line during a scene in a gym shower where Margot is listening to Lou's recovering alcoholic sister (Sarah Silverman, also good in a serious role) talk about the sense of boredom, the routine, and the lack of "new" in her own marriage, and an older woman overhears them and offers some simple words of experience and wisdom: "New things get old, too." (R, 116 mins)
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE (US/Russia - 2012)
A lunkheaded but surprisingly entertaining "men on a mission" combat action film, the barely-released SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE gets off to a clunky and exposition-heavy start before finding its groove as a likably brainless second-string EXPENDABLES. For a while, it gets perilously close to being a subversively satirical commentary before backing up and focusing on blowing shit up. Maybe it's the overqualified cast that does a good job of selling it--and admittedly, it's a dumb movie--but I was surprised at how much I found myself enjoying it. In desperate need of cash, disgraced ex-Marine Christian Slater accepts a job with Soldiers of Fortune, a war-games resort company that caters to billionaires and assorted One-Percenters wishing to experience the thrill of warfare without the danger of actually being killed. With his fellow dishonorably discharged pal Freddy Rodriguez tagging along, Slater heads to Ukraine to whip his unlikely soldiers into shape: there's mining magnate Sean Bean, telecommunications giant James Cromwell, international arms dealer Ving Rhames, Wall Street hedge-fund dickwad Charlie Bewley, and spazzy video-game designer Dominic Monaghan. Essentially observers on a mercenary mission to Snake Island to topple a nefarious Russian colonel (Gennadi Vengerov), the rich fatcats are forced into battle when all of the experienced military guys except Slater are killed en route to the island. Of course, this is personal to Slater: the Russian's right-hand man is rogue CIA agent-turned-contractor Colm Meaney, who--wait for it--was the guy responsible for ruining Slater's military career.
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE never takes itself seriously, and at times, it seems like it might cross the line into actual comedy. But even as a cliche-filled action film, it's a total guilty pleasure. Director Maxim Korostyshevsky does a good job making a low-budget film look a lot "bigger" than it really is. It's very nicely shot in some scenic Ukraine areas (a welcome change of pace from the dreary Bulgarian locations usually seen in this type of thing), there's some daring stunt work, convincing explosions (some CGI, some real), minimal shaky-cam, and a good mix of CGI blood with actual splattery squibs so as not to look completely cartoonish. There's nothing here you haven't seen before (sweeping aerial shot of the heroes walking a narrow path along the top of a mountain? Check! Sneering villain strutting into the room where the nabbed heroes are being held and gloating "Hello again, gentlemen..."? Check!), but the ensemble cast works very well together and they seem to be having a good time. Not a great or even a very good film by any means, but it's a lot of fun and accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, and definitely deserved more than a 50-screen dumping with no publicity at all. (R, 94 mins)
THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH (France/Poland - 2012)
This frustrating and impenetrable would-be thriller from acclaimed Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (MY SUMMER OF LOVE) establishes a certain degree of interest for a while but it doesn't take very long to conclude that it simply isn't going anywhere. Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) is an American novelist and literature prof who arrives in Paris and drops in unexpectedly on his estranged wife (Delphine Chuillot) and young daughter (Julie Papillon), in apparent disregard of a restraining order. Ricks has recently had a mental breakdown and may or may not have been hospitalized or imprisoned. He's also a bit of a clueless doof, as he falls asleep on a bus and wakes up to find his bags stolen. He gets a room at a seedy bar/flophouse run by the obviously shady Sezer (Samir Guesmi), who agrees to provide room and board if Ricks will spend his evenings watching a video monitor outside a drug den that he owns. Ricks foolishly gets involved with Sezer's Polish girlfriend Ania (Joanna Kulig) while at the same time seeing a mystery woman named Margit (Kristin Scott Thomas) who he meets at a literary gathering. A third-act twist merely confirms what was suspected all along, but it still doesn't really provide any answers, as the whole story may or may not even be happening. It's really quite dull and pointless, and the pieces of the puzzle probably aren't even meant to fit, which would be fine if it was a visually interesting work. Hawke is fine in the lead, and plays most of his role in French, but THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH isn't suspenseful, it isn't overtly stylish, and it's not erotic. It's the kind of ponderous snoozer that gives subtitled arthouse films a snobby rep. (R, 84 mins, also available on Netflix streaming)
