POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (US - 2016) Directed by Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Written by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Cast: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, Sarah Silverman, Tim Meadows, Maya Rudolph, Imogen Poots, Joan Cusack, Chris Redd, Edgar Blackmon, James Buckley, Justin Timberlake, Emma Stone, Will Arnett, Chelsea Peretti, Mike Birbiglia, Eric Andre, Bill Hader, Kevin Nealon, Paul Scheer, Derek Mears, Will Forte, Weird Al Yankovic. (R, 87 mins) The music mockumentary is best represented by the 1984 classic THIS IS SPINAL TAP, though even Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner have cited the 1978 TV special THE RUTLES: ALL YOU NEED IS CASH as its primary influence. The tradition continued in later Guest projects like A MIGHTY WIND and in the early '90s rap mockumentaries CB4 and FEAR OF A BLACK HAT. The latest project from the Lonely Island comedy team of former SNL star Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer, the brains behind numerous viral SNL Digital Shorts like "Jizz in My Pants" and "Dick in a Box," takes aim at the current pop music scene and does a mostly nice job of completely roasting it. Inspired mostly by Justin Bieber but with a generous helping of Kanye West included, Connor Friel, aka Connor4Real (Samberg) is a global pop culture phenomenon, a pop star and ubiquitous social media and tabloid presenc, about to drop his second album, Connquest, the long-awaited follow-up to his record-shattering solo debut Thriller, Also. It's the most anticipated album of the decade from the one-time member of the chart-topping rap trio The Style Boyz, whose biggest hit "The Donkey Roll" made them superstars before disbanding at the end of the boy band heyday when Connor's increased popularity started to keep bandmates Owen, aka Kid Contact (Taccone), and Lawrence, aka Kid Brain (Schaffer) relegated to the background. When a guest verse on "Turn up the Beef," a hit single from a Katy Perry-like diva (Emma Stone) helped launch Connor4Real's solo career, Kid Contact stayed with him as his DJ while Kid Brain released a flop solo single and moved to Colorado to live a quiet, anonymous life as a farmer and woodcarver.
Connquest tanks upon its release, which sends Connor4Real's manager Harry (Tim Meadows) and publicist Paula (Sarah Silverman) into panic mode, securing a promotional partnership with appliance behemoth Aquaspin to have Connor4Real's music constantly blaring from all of their wi-fi-compatible products (remember that U2 debacle?). The backlash is so strong that concert attendance dwindles (thanks in no part to insensitive songs like "Ethpania," the inspiration for which came from Connor noticing that "in Spain, people's S's sound like T.H.'s," and "Equal Rights," a pro-LGBT duet with Pink where all of Connor4Real's lyrics aggressively stress that he's not gay), forcing Harry to bring up-and-coming Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd) onboard as an opening act. Hunter's presence increases the ticket sales, but Connor4Real is on a downward spiral: his televised-live-on-E! engagement to movie star Ashley Wednesday (Imogen Poots) is marred by wolves mauling guest singer Seal; there's a huge fallout over leaked video from the European tour where he takes a dump in the toilet in the Anne Frank house; a wardrobe malfunction during a concert goes viral when it appears he has no penis; someone's cell phone captures him drunk, starting a fight and getting his ass kicked by Martin Sheen in a sports bar; and he's constantly being overshadowed by the increasing popularity of Hunter the Hungry, whose sets start running long and Connor4Real has to face the realization that even though he's the headliner, nobody's there to see him. All the while, Kid Contact starts feeling more and more marginalized and resorts to PARENT TRAP machinations to encourage a Style Boyz reunion.
A balanced combination of spoof, satire, oddball humor (Bill Hader as a roadie who's a FLATLINERS superfan) and grossout raunch (Connor4Real signing one frantic male fan's dick from the back of his limo after the guy drapes his balls over the half-rolled-down window), POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING does an admirable job of shredding vacuous pop culture figures, annoying trends (Connor4Real goes on tour with an Adam Levine hologram), blasting the fickleness of a fan base (Connor4Real's "Connfidants"), torching industry greed (Paula: "I don't personally like Connor's music, but it makes so many people so much money!"), and taking some merciless shots at the sycophantic media. The periodic cutaways to the TMZ-like bull sessions of the cackling staff at CMZ, who gleefully revel in every Connor4Real misfortune, are absolutely blistering, with Will Arnett doing an absurd and vicious takedown of Harvey Levin, complete with large straws sticking out of an increasingly ridiculous number of cups, mugs, and pitchers as he asks for the most mundane items of "news" ("Does anyone have a pic of James Franco leaving a Denny's?"). As it becomes obvious that the Style Boyz will set aside their differences and triumphantly reunite, POPSTAR loses its caustic edge and gets a lot nicer. But in the first half, where Samberg boldly plays all of Connor4Real's clueless arrogance and megastar entitlement to the hilt--whether he's enjoying the constant reassurance of his entourage of paid enablers and yes-men or callously ignoring the Kubrick-like levels of care that go into the meticulous meal preparations of his devoted and long-suffering personal chef Tyrus Quash (Justin Timberlake)--it has a scathing mean streak and isn't afraid to take some hard-hitting jabs at the artists, the fans, the vapidity of Twitter, and the ubiquity of idiotic catchphrases ("Doink-de-doink!"). Like the protagonists of THIS IS SPINAL TAP, the Style Boyz might be clueless dolts but they're good guys deep down and it's a big-studio summer comedy, so one can't expect something too subversive. It's not about wanting to have bad things happen to Connor4Real, though a further exploration of the public's love of schadenfreude could've provided some more substance. This is bombing hard in theaters, as did the team's HOT ROD (directed by Schaffer and starring Samberg and Taccone, but written by Pam Brady) and Taccone-directed MACGRUBER, but both of those found cult followings later on Netflix. The same seems likely for the often very funny POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING.
The latest teaming of B-movie action icons Scott Adkins and director Isaac Florentine has about as straightforward an action movie set-up as you can get. Adkins is Colton MacReady, an on-the-run Iraq War deserter who turns up in Mexico and takes out a good chunk of the soldiers working for drug lord Fernando Garcia (Tony Perez). Among the dead are Garcia's nephew (Ray Diaz), who kidnapped MacReady's teenage niece Hailey (Madison Lawlor), after her lowlife stepfather Walt (Jake La Botz), the go-between for Garcia's operation north of the border in Arizona, stole a hefty sum of money belonging to the cartel. MacReady brings Hailey home to her mother, his sister Angela (Caitlin Keats), with what's left of Garcia's army in hot pursuit. The bad guys have some help from corrupt sheriff Calloway (Nick Chinlund), who's morally conflicted over his duty to the law and the money that being on the Garcia payroll brings him. In addition to periodic attempts to show Calloway's decent side, there's also some brief overtures at characterization in the way MacReady scolds his widowed sister for settling on a shitbag like Walt for a second husband, but Florentine wisely keeps the focus on action, with MacReady, Angela, and Hailey holed up inside the family farmhouse while Garcia keeps sending his guys in only to get roundhouse-kicked, stabbed repeatedly, or just shot in the head point-blank by MacReady.
If you've ever seen a Florentine/Adkins collaboration, you know that over-the-top action is the main focus, and CLOSE RANGE delivers to almost absurd levels. Florentine fluidly moves the camera around to keep as much of the expertly-choreographed confrontations going with as few cuts as possible. Things get a little sped up at times, as is the norm, but he makes an effort to avoid going for the quick-cut, shaky-cam approach, which showcases exactly how much work went into these sequences by the actors and the stunt crew. Story-wise, CLOSE RANGE is pretty standard and predictable--of course, MacReady deserted for the right reasons, as he was defying incompetent orders that would've disgraced his unit and led to certain death--and Florentine gets a little too winking at times with the fun but repetitive spaghetti western homages. But it steps up where it matters, and again, you're forced to wonder why Adkins isn't headlining bigger movies (Florentine likely prefers the autonomy of low-budget cinema). It's not quite on the level of their UNDISPUTED sequels or the outstanding NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR. but it's more entertaining and satisfying than a lot of what passes for major action movies these days. Short, simple, and to the point (except for a drawn-out title card intro for each minor villain, which only seems to be there in order to pad the brief run time), CLOSE RANGE's only goal is to have Scott Adkins glower and kick ass for an hour and a half, and on that end, it achieves everything it sets out to do. (R, 85 mins) SHANGHAI
(US/China - 2015)
Filmed in Bangkok in the summer of 2008 and released in Asia and other parts of the world over 2010-2011, this lavishly-mounted, $50 million US/Chinese co-production was shelved stateside for seven years by Harvey Weinstein before getting a stealth release on 100 screens in the fall of 2015. SHANGHAI fancies itself a Far East, historical noir CASABLANCA, set in the title city that's doing its best to stave off the encroaching Japanese occupation in October 1941, but the lugubrious pacing, lackluster direction by Mikael Hafstrom (who made the Anthony Hopkins demonic possession film THE RITE and the Stallone/Schwarzenegger pairing ESCAPE PLAN in ensuing years before this finally came out) shoddy CGI, and a hopelessly muddled script by Hossein Amini (DRIVE) prove to be flaws too fatal to overcome. US Naval Intelligence spy Paul Soames (John Cusack) arrives in Shanghai, posing as a Nazi-sympathizing journalist but drawn into a murder investigation when his Navy buddy and fellow agent Conner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is found dead with his throat slashed. Soames is at the center of an incredibly convoluted story that involves Triad crime lord Anthony Lan-Ting (Chow Yun-Fat) and his mysterious wife Anna (Gong Li), with whom Soames will of course have a clandestine fling. There's also Japanese Intelligence officer Capt. Tanaka (Ken Watanabe), who's suspicious of Soames' true intentions, plus Soames also seduces Leni (an underused Franka Potente), in order to get intel on her husband, a German engineer (Christopher Buchholz), who may have Nazi business to conduct with the Japanese.
A couple of months go by in what feels like real time, and all of these parties converge for a boring climax that takes place on a certain date which will live in infamy--by which I mean the bombing of Pearl Harbor and not the date that Harvey Weinstein greenlit SHANGHAI--with the exception of Leni and her husband, who are completely forgotten by the filmmakers. Rinko Kikuchi (then a recent Oscar nominee for BABEL) turns up as Conner's opium-addicted Japanese girlfriend, and David Morse has a few inconsequential scenes as Soames' contact at the US consulate in Shanghai, warning Soames to not get involved and forced to utter trite dialogue like "This isn't black or white...we're caught in the middle!" SHANGHAI is a tedious, plodding mess that never gets going and never gels together. There's no consistency to the characterizations and everyone wanders in and out of the story with the kind of clunky randomness that suggests this was a much a longer film at some point. Made when Cusack was still getting A-list work but fitting in perfectly with his current string of unseen, Cusackalypse Now paycheck gigs, SHANGHAI reunites the star with Hafstrom, who directed him in the decent 2007 Stephen King adaptation 1408. Cusack is completely unengaging as the hero here and has no chemistry with either Gong or Potente. Beyond that, a fine cast is completely stranded in this incredibly dull misfire that bombed everywhere, grossing just $46,000 in the US. (R, 104 mins) ASHBY
(US/UK/UAE - 2015)
Writer/director Tony McNamara can't seem to decide what he wanted ASHBY to be. It's like the worst parts of Cameron Crowe and Wes Anderson got jumbled in with a RUDY ripoff, a little GRAN TORINO, and a discarded draft of the Kevin Costner-as-a-terminally-ill-assassin movie 3 DAYS TO KILL. When Ashby finds out that one of his assigned contracts was not a threat to the country, but an innocent guy who got in the way of some old associates making a profit on a business deal, he starts taking those associates out--and having an oblivious Ed chauffeur him around--in order to right a wrong while he's still able. Ashby is an anguished man plagued by guilt and regret--he's already lost his wife and daughter and wants nothing more than to be absolved of his countless sins (he estimates he killed 93 people over his career) in order to be permitted into Heaven to be with them. It's a great role for Rourke, but McNamara would rather focus on Wolff's Ed, who's presented as the only smart kid in his class, and the only one with a vague notion of history but who has somehow never seen a cassette tape and, in his clueless fascination, unspools the tape on one of Ashby's Peter Frampton cassettes and smirks "I don't think I can get this back in there." Mind you, it's the entire tape. All of it. How much of the tape do you unspool before you ascertain that it's probably not a good thing? And why would he unspool it in the first place? Is that how he found it? How can a jaded millennial douchebag like Ed not know what a goddamn cassette looks like? Can he possibly be that stupid? And if the scene is played for laughs, then it's even worse, because now Ed is a complete dick for fucking with Ashby's Frampton tape. Wolff goes through the film with a cocky "Aren't I just a stinker?" look that renders his the most punchable face this side of Justin Bieber or the Affluenza kid. It's a wonder why Ashby would even dispense life lessons to this little turd. McNamara's characters are unreal, from Roberts' stock quirky girl who serves as whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment, to Kevin Dunn's bombastic football coach who still uses terms like "the Japs" when referencing WWII, to Zachary Knighton's improbably hipster cool-guy priest with alt-rocker hair who says "fuck" and eats hot wings. The situations are inane, like Ed commandeering the coach's pregame speech--what coach would allow a player to rally the team with "Fuck the coaches!"? ASHBY doesn't exist on any level of reality, and speaking of which, do you know anyone Sarah Silverman's age named June? I don't. Does she have younger sisters named Edith and Myrtle? And there's even stabs at raunch humor with Ed walking in his mom blowing a guy. Rourke brought his A-game to ASHBY, but his efforts were wasted. Rarely has such an excellent performance been stuck in a movie this bad. Paramount picked this up for distribution but the buyer's remorse must've hit quickly: they only released it on 15 screens and VOD for a total gross of $4600. (R, 103 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)
