Whenever things are finally back to normal in terms of going to the movies, THE WRETCHED will have carved itself a unique spot in film history as the COVID-19 era's Little Movie That Could. With a diminishing number of drive-ins and only a handful of indie theaters open at the beginning of summer 2020, this micro-budget indie horror film shot in Northport, MI, about 40 miles north of Traverse City, became--even if almost entirely by default--the highest-grossing movie in America for six straight weeks, a feat that hadn't been achieved since AVATAR back in 2009. Its box-office take to date is a mere $3 million, which is pretty huge for something that cost only $66,000 to make. Of course, thanks to advances in technology, a regional horror flick today can look significantly more polished and professional than ones from back in the day, and THE WRETCHED establishes its low-budget fright flick bona fides not just by relying on lot of practical effects, but with the writing/directing team of The Pierce Brothers (Brett and Drew) having a direct link to a landmark in Michigan-based DIY horror: their dad Bart Pierce was part of the Sam Raimi/Robert Tapert/Bruce Campbell crew and was an effects technician on THE EVIL DEAD and EVIL DEAD II. Alas, beyond the novelty of its pandemic-abetted success, THE WRETCHED's comparisons to THE EVIL DEAD pretty much end there.
It gets off to an iffy start with a 1980s prologue featuring glimpses of an Etch-a-Sketch and a Rubik's Cube accompanied by a catchy synth-pop jam that serve to illustrate the continued IT-and-STRANGER THINGS-ificiation of modern horror, but it fortunately moves to the present day after the opening credits. Teenage Ben (John-Paul Howard) is spending the summer at a lakeside town with his dad Liam (Jamison Jones), who manages the local marina and puts him to work. Struggling with his parents' separation--and not pleased that his dad already has a girlfriend (Azie Tesfai)--Ben has a flirty rapport with co-worker Mallory (Piper Curda, a Disney TV vet who's the closest thing to a "name" here), but is distracted by some strange goings-on at the house next door. Through a convoluted chain of events, he becomes convinced that Abbie (Zarah Mahler) has been possessed by a witch--a "dark mother born from root, rock, and tree who feasts on the forgotten"--who gathers children and takes them into the woods to be sacrificed. The reason there isn't a panic and how this witch has gone undetected dating back to the '80s prologue? She has the ability to wipe her victims' existence from the memories of their loved ones. It's an interesting concept that the movie kinda bungles--when "Abbie"'s son becomes a victim and her husband (Kevin Bigley) no longer remembers him, that's all well and good, but Ben and Mallory still remember him and comment that he didn't show up a the marina to go paddle-boating. The Pierce Brothers have an obvious affection for '80s horror and throw in some visual shout-outs to THE SHINING and David Cronenberg's THE FLY, and they deserve some points for taking the '80s horror aesthetic and updating it to the present-day instead of crafting yet another snarky, reference-packed exercise in retro pop culture fetishism. Ben's inability to convince anyone that Abbie is a witch is a direct homage to FRIGHT NIGHT (and REAR WINDOW and, more recently, DISTURBIA), but the script's internal logic doesn't hold water, and the third act is curiously very sluggishly-paced when it should be kicking into high gear. The performances are better than expected for this sort of thing and there's a legitimately surprising twist late in the game. So to that extent, flaws and all, THE WRETCHED is slightly better than most of its ilk, and it's not hard to see how it managed to find an audience at the nostalgic comfort of drive-ins during These Uncertain Times™, but were it not for the unusual circumstances of American moviegoing in 2020, it probably would've debuted at your nearest Redbox with little notice. (Unrated, 95 mins)
ARCHIVE (UK/US/Hungary - 2020)
It's doubtful that the moody, melancholy hard sci-fi ARCHIVE would exist without EX MACHINA or, for that matter, the lesser-known THE MACHINE. It also owes a huge debt to a veritable inventory of influences but it manages to transcend its surface familiarities and genre cliches to become its own film thanks to some intelligent writing, surprising emotion, and top-notch production design. The feature debut of writer/director Gavin Rothery (who worked on the art department for MOON), ARCHIVE centers on scientist George Almore (Theo James of the DIVERGENT films), who's nearing the end of a three-year contract at a top-secret research facility in the remote mountains of Japan. He's been hired to develop an AI android program and is alone except for two prototypes named J1 and J2. The first experiment, J1 is a large robot that lumbers around, is silent except for a few sounds, and can perform simple tasks with strict supervision. J2 is a modified, smaller version of J1, more mobile and with the ability to speak and assist George with specific duties, and she's often left in charge of keeping an eye on the childlike J1. George is working on J3, a sleeker unit that almost resembles a human being. But he's distracted--not just by Simone (Rhona Mitra in a couple of Skyped-in or hologram appearances), the ballbusting corporate exec who keeps checking on him--but by the memory of Jules (Stacy Martin of Lars von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC), his late wife who was killed in a car accident shortly before he took the job in Japan. He's still able to connect with Jules via "Archive" an AI with an analog program that allows up to 200 hours of limited, low-tech interaction with the consciousness of a deceased loved one, and Jules periodically contacts him to let him know that she's OK.
Unbeknownst to Simone, George has been using his AI work with the J series androids to harness Jules' consciousness, creating a template from pattern recognition, with the intention of converting the analog signal to digital in order to store "Jules" into the updated and almost human-like J3 model. Each of the J androids houses different facets of Jules' personality, and while J1 isn't articulate enough to convey anything aside from grunts and sighs, it's J2 who begins to feel rejected by her creator, ultimately attempting to sabotage his work and destroy J3. ARCHIVE isn't trying to kid itself into believing it's not liberally borrowing from the likes of not just EX MACHINA, MOON, and the work of William Gibson, but also SOLARIS, SILENT RUNNING, and BLADE RUNNER. A big plus is that it's not content to merely go through the motions, finding its own place in the AI subgenre with complicated, conflicting emotions and some pretty heavy scenes involving the heartbroken J2, who's grown tired of being kept occupied with cartoons and kids video games. In the wrong hands, ARCHIVE could've easily veered into the realm of the unintentionally hilarious, but Rothery displays some remarkable confidence for a debuting filmmaker. He gets outstanding performances from a never-better James, as well as Martin--cast in three roles as Jules in flashbacks, the J3 model, and the voice of J2--plus a Tangerine Dream-ish score from GRAVITY Oscar-winner Steven Price, and he wraps it up with an ending that's either going to knock you on your ass or be a total deal-breaker (I'm in the former camp). This was supposed to be a big title at this year's canceled SXSW, so it ended up on VOD and in a handful of open theaters courtesy of the lowly Vertical Entertainment, who are to be commended for branching out beyond their usual DTV and Redbox swill and acquiring something that has A24 written all over it. ARCHIVE is a highly-recommended gem that will have a sizable cult following in no time at all. (Unrated, 109 mins)
After the perfectly acceptable HUNTER KILLER tanked in theaters last fall, I said to a friend "Other than the next entry in the HAS FALLEN series, Gerard Butler's probably headed to VOD going forward." Cut to a little over two months later, and not only was Butler's next movie bowing on VOD, but it was also given an ignominious first-weekend-of-January dumping on top of it. Shot in 2017 as KEEPERS, THE VANISHING (not to be confused with two previous George Sluizer thrillers with the same title) isn't one of Butler's formulaic action vehicles, but it does find the star (and one of 28 credited producers) in Serious Actor mode in the vein of the underseen MACHINE GUN PREACHER. Inspired by the 1900 "Flannan Isle Mystery," where three lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace from a distant island off the coast of Scotland, THE VANISHING moves the setting to the 1930s and proceeds on pure speculation. The film could've gone in any number of directions--theories of the disappearance range from one of the three men going insane and killing the other two; a sea serpent; and an even an alien abduction--but it opts for a character-driven mash-up of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and Danny Boyle's breakthrough SHALLOW GRAVE with a bit of a John Carpenter siege scenario for a little while.
Arriving on Flannan Isle for a six-week stint of running the lighthouse and other various maintenance duties, boss Thomas Marshall (Peter Mullan), James Ducat (Butler), and young apprentice/good-natured hazing target Donald McArthur (newcomer Connor Swindells, currently on Netflix's SEX EDUCATION) find their dull routine broken up one morning by the appearance a crashed boat and a body washed ashore on the rocks below. Donald is lowered down to check him and even though he says the man (Gary Kane) isn't breathing, he comes to and attacks Donald, who then bashes his head in with a rock in self-defense. In the crashed boat is a locked trunk that Thomas opens to discover it's filled with an untold fortune in gold bars. James and Donald think they've struck it rich, but Thomas urges caution, reminding them "Somebody's gonna come looking for this guy." Sure enough, two men, Locke (Soren Malling) and Boor (GAME OF THRONES' Olafur Darri Olafsson), show up on the island and start asking questions. It isn't long before there's two more dead bodies and increasing paranoia over more people coming and a growing mistrust of one another over concerns about making off with the gold and who'll keep their mouth shut about it. Given the speculation about what could've gone down on Flannan Isle in 1900--and to this day, no one knows for sure--THE VANISHING certainly takes an unexpected approach when it could've been just as easy to get a movie about a sea monster or aliens made. It benefits from three strong performances by its stars, particularly Mullan as the conflicted Thomas--considered the likely killer by historians who support the "one man went insane killed the other two" theory--still grieving over the deaths of his wife and daughters (and he won't say how they died). But in the context of the film, it's Butler's James who really cracks up and folds under pressure, which allows the actor to stretch a bit when he's usually the hero. THE VANISHING is worth a look for fans of Butler and the great character actor Mullan (SESSION 9), but the pace is a bit too slow (probably why Lionsgate relegated it to VOD), and it starts stumbling in the home stretch when it really matters most, leading to an abrupt and not-very-satisfying conclusion. (R, 107 mins) VOX LUX (US - 2018)
If Lars von Trier attempted to make his own warped version of A STAR IS BORN and was completely in over his head and absolutely terrible at his job, it would probably come out looking a lot like VOX LUX, the latest from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet. In his acting days, Corbet paid his dues with stints on 24 and with guest spots in the LAW & ORDER universe, but instead of going the mainstream route, he was driven to take roles in films by provocateurs like von Trier (MELANCHOLIA), Gregg Araki (MYSTERIOUS SKIN), Michael Haneke (the remake of FUNNY GAMES), and Olivier Assayas (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA). I've not seen Corbet's 2016 directing debut THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER, but VOX LUX is a film that thinks it's deep and meaningful, but is really just shallow, exploitative, self-indulgent drivel that feels like the kind of nonsense that VELVET BUZZSAW was trying to lampoon. Corbet may have spent time observing and picking the brains of his auteur heroes, but he doesn't seem to have learned anything from them beyond surface imitation. You know you're in for an ordeal when the film opens with von Trier-esque title cards like "Prelude: 1999" followed by "Act I: Genesis (2000-01)." There's also wry and sardonic narration by frequent von Trier star Willem Dafoe, just like the kind John Hurt provided in von Trier's DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY. In an effectively harrowing opening sequence set in 1999, Staten Island teenager Celeste Montgomery (Raffey Cassidy of THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER) gets a bullet lodged in her spine when she's the sole survivor of a shooting rampage by troubled outcast and character-name-that-could-only-exist-in-a-shitty-movie-like-this, Cullen Active (Logan Riley Bruner), who mows down her entire classroom, and it's all downhill from there. During her long recovery, after which she's still able to walk as long as the bullet doesn't dislodge, she attends a candlelight vigil and performs a song written by her older sister Ellie (Stacy Martin, who played the young Charlotte Gainsbourg in von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC) that captures the nation's attention and draws interest from various record companies. She gets a manager (Jude Law), a publicist (Jennifer Ehle), and a choreographer, and soon enough, she's about to become teen pop sensation "Celeste," recording songs in NYC and Europe, and then the sisters are partying hard and hooking up with guys in L.A. in the early morning hours of 9/11, when narrator Dafoe gravely intones "Celeste's loss of innocence curiously mirrored that of the nation."
I would pay to see the look on Willem Dafoe's face when he was standing in the recording booth and was handed that line. It's impossible to take anything VOX LUX offers seriously after that, but at about the midway point, there's a 16-year time jump or, as Corbet (who probably now pronounces it "Cor-bay") puts it, "Act II: Regenesis 2017," where we're introduced to 31-year-old Celeste, and the film achieves the unthinkable and somehow gets even worse. Much of that is due to a career-worst performance by Natalie Portman, who takes over the role while Cassidy now plays her teenage daughter Albertine. Adult Celeste is now a Madonna/Lady Gaga-esque pop culture icon, constantly stalked by the tabloids and addled by booze, drugs, public meltdowns, and other scandals. As she prepares for a sold-out comeback concert at a Staten Island arena, her always-enabling manager (still played by Law, who's pretty much Alan Bates in THE ROSE) informs her that terrorists dressed as the dancers in the music video of one of her early hits have just committed a horrific mass shooting on a beach in Croatia. She has nothing but resentment and scorn for the long-suffering Ellie, who's done most of the heavy lifting both writing her songs for her and raising Albertine. It all culminates in a triumphant performance by Celeste in front of her hometown "angels" in an interminable finale featuring songs by Sia that sound like they came from the bottom of her slush pile. Corbet's ham-fisted, would-be commentary on everything from school shootings to 9/11 to the Price of Fame while feebly trying to emulate von Trier and others borders on outright poseurdom, and while Martin and Cassidy manage to emerge generally unscathed (though Cassidy's British accent slips through quite a bit in the first half), a shrill and over-the-top Portman, stuck playing one of the most grating, off-putting, and aggressively unlikable characters in any movie from last year, is just embarrassingly bad. Check out her overly-affected Noo Yawk screech when she's ranting at Ellie or at restaurant managers or at a journalist (Christopher Abbott), or waxing philosophic over society's ills and "ultra mega triple hi-def TVs" and "our intimate knowledge of the commitment to the lowest common denominator." Barely released by Neon and grossing just $730,000, VOX LUX isn't a serious artistic statement by a bold new voice in filmmaking. It's smug, self-impressed, vacuous bullshit. Can someone tell Brady Corbet that masturbation is usually something done in private? (R, 114 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.
HIGH-RISE (UK/Ireland/Belgium - 2016) Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written by Amy Jump. Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Bill Paterson, Peter Ferdinando, Sienna Guillory, Reece Shearsmith, Stacy Martin, Augustus Prew, Tony Way, Enzo Cilenti, Dan Skinner, Louis Suc, Neil Maskell. (R, 119 mins) Producer Jeremy Thomas has tried to put together an adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel High-Rise since it was first published in 1975. Though regarded as unfilmable, it nearly came to be in the late '70s with director Nicolas Roeg and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg intending it to be their next film after 1976's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. That never happened, nor did any other attempt, and the closest anyone got prior to now was when CUBE director Vincenzo Natali nearly got the greenlight in the early 2000s. It took 40 years, but Thomas finally got HIGH-RISE made, with acclaimed British cult filmmaker Ben Wheatley at the helm, working from a script by his wife and writing partner Amy Jump. Wheatley has acquired a cult following with the overrated WICKER MAN knockoff KILL LIST, the dark comedy SIGHTSEERS, and the unnerving A FIELD IN ENGLAND, but HIGH-RISE is his most ambitious project yet, working with his biggest budget and largest, most prestigious ensemble cast yet.
Combining the coldness of David Cronenberg (whose controversial 1996 film CRASH was based on the Ballard novel of the same name) with the absurdist black comedy of Terry Gilliam, HIGH-RISE is ultimately done in by a too-lengthy delay between the publication of its source novel and its eventual big-screen adaptation. Had Roeg and Mayersberg made this in 1977, it likely would've been prophetically visionary and as highly regarded as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH But now, in 2016, it's exhaustingly heavy-handed, hammering its points over the audience's head again and again, and even ending with a Margaret Thatcher soundbite just in case the themes of class struggle and the haves ruling the have-nots wasn't quite hammered home for the preceding two hours trip into the hellhole of dystopia and capitalism run amok. Med school instructor Robert Laine (Tom Hiddleston, in a role that would've been perfect for David Bowie had Roeg had his shot at this way back when) moves into the 25th floor of a Jenga-esque 40-story high-rise tower block. The swingin' 70s are here in all their glory, as Laine quickly hops into bed with sexually liberated single mom Charlotte (Sienna Miller), and the residents of the high-rise form a very insulated community with every convenience--a gym, pool, 15th floor grocery store--readily available. The not-very-subtly-named Royal (Jeremy Irons), the building's architect, lives in the top floor penthouse, and when problems start arising--priorities for supply deliveries going to the wealthy one-percenters on the top floors and the lower class near the bottom being plagued by frequent power outages--he dismisses it as "teething" and "the building settling in." Disgruntled, philandering TV documentarian Wilder (Luke Evans) lives on one of the lower floors with his very pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss) and several kids, and eventually leads a revolt against the rich and powerful in the high-rise. Soon, all sense of order disintegrates as the high-rise becomes both the entire world of its occupants and a microcosm (SYMBOLISM!) of societal inequality and injustice: garbage piles up, food molds, and it's kill or be killed as life metamorphoses into a visceral orgy of rage, violence, hate-fucking, and all manner of degradation, debauchery, and destruction.
This feels a lot like SNOWPIERCER in a skyscraper, from the class struggle motif to Wilder's making his way to the top of the building, all the way to one character admonishing Laine to "know your place." Sure, in retrospect, it looks like SNOWPIERCER--and other movies--co-opted a lot of Ballard's ideas, and that's not the fault of the filmmakers here, but it doesn't do this belated adaptation any favors. It's also reminiscent of a somewhat less abrasive BLINDNESS, though Wheatley and Jump do keep the unpleasantness to a minimum, mostly implying it except for a few examples of shock value shots and dialogue (Royal to Laine, during a game of squash: "By the way, I hear you're fucking 374...she has a tight cunt as I recall"). Laine is the relative "everyman" audience surrogate, a successful career man who lives in the middle of the building and is comfortable screwing third-floor Charlotte and hobnobbing with penthouse Royal and other near-the-top residents, like sneering, asshole gynecologist Pangbourne (James Purefoy). Royal, the Trump of the high-rise if you want a present-day analogy, speaks of the building as both a living, breathing entity and as a symbol of society. It's all rather facile and obvious, though again, it could've been the angry FIGHT CLUB of its day had it been made 40 years ago. Whatever ham-fisted conclusions there are to draw from the events in HIGH-RISE have already been made decades ago. Wheatley scores some points for the film's retro-future look that ties in perfectly with Laine's observation that it "looks like a future that had already happened," and trippy, early '70s prog tunes by Amon Duul and Can, and a Portishead cover of ABBA's "S.O.S." provide a lot of atmosphere, but HIGH-RISE is repetitive, dated, and eventually oppressive. The filmmakers swing for the fences and get a few hits, but it goes on forever and you'll be ready for it to end long before it finally does.
THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN
(France/Belgium - 2015)
Mystery novelist and screenwriter Sebastien Japrisot (1931-2003) was considered "the French Graham Greene" and is still held in high regard by fans in his home country. Though the 2004 film A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is probably the best known adaptation of his work to modern arthouse audiences, the late '60s/early '70s saw a string of French films that were either based on Japrisot's work or were original screenplays penned by the author himself, including two of Charles Bronson's biggest hits from his star-making European sojourn: 1968's FAREWELL, FRIEND aka HONOR AMONG THIEVES and 1970's RIDER ON THE RAIN. One such film was 1970's THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN, the final work by veteran journeyman Anatole Litvak, scripted by Japrisot and based on his novel. LADY was remade in 1992 as the Estonian/Russian THE LADY IN THE CAR, which doesn't appear to have ever been released west of the Baltic Sea, and 2015 saw this remake that didn't really generate much interest in France or elsewhere. Director Joann Sfar sticks close to the novel and doesn't really do much to differentiate this version from Litvak's other than adding some more explicit sex and violence. In fact, he even makes a concerted effort to keep the story set in an early '70s setting and trots out some De Palma split-screen and other stylish and colorful tricks. The whole point of the project seems to be to emulate 1970 as much as possible while deliberately avoiding the self-conscious retro fetishism.
There isn't much reason for this remake to exist, but it's an enjoyable thriller with an appealing performance by Freya Mavor (Samantha Eggar in the 1970 version) as Dany Doremus, a frumpy wallflower in gaudy, oversized specs (of course, she's drop dead gorgeous when she takes them off). Dany is a secretary for wealthy Paris businessman Michel, played by Benjamin Biolay (Oliver Reed in the original). Michel has an important report Dany needs to type, so he has her come to his house and stay the night, since he and his wife Anita (NYMPHOMANIAC's Stacy Martin; Stephane Audran in the original) and their daughter are going out of town for a few days. Michel has Dany drive them to the airport in a vintage Thunderbird with instructions to take it back to their house and take a few days off work with an extra bonus for all of her trouble. Instead of taking the car back to Paris, she impulsively heads to the south of France because she always wanted to see the sea. On a road she's never taken to a place she's never been in a car she's never driven, everywhere she goes on the way, people insist they've seen her the previous day and she's even already signed in to a hotel where she tries to book a room. She's also attacked and has a wrist broken in a gas station restroom and can't trust a seemingly concerned mystery man (Elio Germano; John McEnery in the original) she meets in the hotel lobby. Things get even more bizarre when a body turns up in the trunk of the T-Bird. Is she suffering from amnesia or is there a conspiracy to drive her insane? The ludicrously contrived final explanation is so simple, quaintly old-fashioned, and beholden to coincidence and convenience that it's no wonder this didn't really get much play with today's twist-accustomed moviegoers. But right down to the score with some very Morricone-style 1970s cues, the 2015 version of THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN is a slight but fun and entertaining throwback that wears its love of early '70s French thrillers on its sleeve and tries hard to please its audience. It's just too bad that its audience is still back in the 1970s. (Unrated, 95 mins)
STANDOFF
(Canada/US - 2016)
There's a lot of dumb things you need to overlook, but STANDOFF is the kind of compact B thriller that would've played the bottom half of a double bill back in the old days, and that's meant in a nice way. Visiting the graves of her parents who were killed in a car accident, 12-year-old Isabelle, nicknamed Bird (Ella Ballentine) witnesses several service attendees on the other side of the cemetery get gunned down by cold-blooded hit man Sade (Laurence Fishburne). Realizing he has a witness--and she was taking photos--he chases her to a ramshackle farmhouse where PTSD-plagued Iraq War vet Carter Greene (Thomas Jane) is drinking himself into a stupor with the intention of building up the courage to blow his brains out. Sade shoots Carter in the ankle, and a shotgun-toting Carter grazes Sade's side. Carter's got one shell left and heads to the top of the stairs with Bird, shatters some light bulbs and scatters them on the steps in case Sade decides to sneak up on them. Sade, meanwhile, waits in the living room for the perfect time to take them both out. Hence, STANDOFF.
Written and directed by Adam Alleca, who hasn't done anything since scripting the 2009 remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, STANDOFF has a simple set-up that can't fail: stick the characters in a powderkeg of a situation in an enclosed space and just let it boil. Alleca's script sometimes falls victim to some overbaked tough-guy posturing and pissing contests as Sade and Carter repeatedly shout at each other and Sade constantly invokes how they're both soldiers following orders. Fishburne, whose dialogue and his delivery of it seem to suggest that Alleca wrote the part for Samuel L. Jackson but Fishburne was probably more economically priced, has a blast playing a thoroughly despicable shitbag, while Jane does a nice job as a shattered man whose life has completely fallen apart after his combat experiences and his procrastinating about picking up a tire in the high grass, inadvertently leading to his young son's death when he tripped over it and cracked his head open on a rock. Sure, it's a hackneyed plot device that Carter, whose wife left him after their son died, sees saving Bird as his last shot at redemption, just like it's hopelessly maudlin to have the son's death symbolized by his red balloon floating away (also, why isn't anyone looking for the missing sheriff's deputy that Sade kills?), but STANDOFF overcomes its missteps by excelling where it matters, with the actors (young Ballentine is very impressive) and the intensity of the situation. Alleca also shows his horror influences with several striking shot compositions throughout, and some interesting and unexpected stylistic touches and some occasionally Argento-inspired colorgasms. These positives allow you to overlook things like Sade hectoring Carter with philosophical nuggets like "You don't look the devil in the face without takin' a ride to the bottom floor," which is probably the best bit of Satanically-based life coaching this side of mercenary-of-the-future Jack Palance incomprehensibly bellowing "If you're gonna dine with the devil, you're gonna need a looooong spoon!" in 1993's CYBORG 2. Fishburne and Jane were among the small army of producers, which also includes actor Hayden Christensen and, of all people, Rich Iott, a former Republican congressional candidate from Ohio and occasional Nazi fashion enthusiast. (R, 86 mins) FLIGHT 7500 (US/Japan - 2016)
When a passenger has a violent seizure, vomits blood, and dies shortly into a Los Angeles-to-Tokyo flight, a supernatural presence makes itself known in this dismal and long-shelved English-language horror film from J-Horror auteur Takashi Shimizu, best known for 2002's JU-ON and its 2004 American remake THE GRUDGE. Filmed in 2011 with a trailer arriving online and in theaters early the next year for its planned August 2012 release under its original title 7500, FLIGHT 7500 was yanked from the release schedule by CBS Films and simply vanished until its premiere overseas in 2014. Lionsgate ended up acquiring the film for the US and sat on it for another two years before quietly dumping it as a DTV title with no publicity at all. The end result looks a lot like what might happen if M. Night Shyamalan remade one of the later, dumber AIRPORT sequels, filled with characters for the most part so loathsome that you hope the plane crashes five minutes after takeoff. With a running time of just 79 minutes, FLIGHT 7500 plays like something that's been truncated and mangled in the editing room, obviously the kind of film that was simply abandoned by everyone involved. The Shyamalanian plot twist at the end is a hoary cliche that negates everything that happened before, like the death of the seizing passenger or the douchey dudebro who tries to steal his Rolex. There's some talk of that passenger carrying a "death doll" that has something to do with Japanese folklore, but that's forgotten as soon as it's mentioned. Then a couple of dead passengers turn into zombies and the survivors are chased by what looks like the output of an '80s metal band's malfunctioning fog machine, but nothing comes of it and nothing is ever fully realized or even remotely explored for that matter, at least in this version.
In the midst of all the paranormal inactivity, Shimizu and screenwriter Craig Rosenberg (THE QUIET ONES) start focusing on the uninteresting characters' melodramatic, daytime soap-ready backstories--flight attendant Leslie Bibb coming to the realization that pilot Johnathon Schaech is never leaving his wife and kids for her; flight attendant Jamie Chung and her prolonged engagement; paramedic Ryan Kwantan and wife Amy Smart trying to get over their second miscarriage; ENTOURAGE's Jerry Ferrara and his germphobic bitch of a Bridezilla wife Nicky Whelan (who continued her unintentional "airline disaster-as-metaphor-for-her-career" motif by later co-starring in the Nic Cage remake of LEFT BEHIND) on their honeymoon; and sullen, tattooed goth chick Scout Taylor-Compton serving as this film's Basil Exposition when it comes to the spirit world and the whatever else thing this is trying to say. A film so bad that the post-production clusterfuckery has to be more interesting than anything in the finished product, FLIGHT 7500 might've had some good ideas at some point, but what's here is an incoherent disaster that's been chopped down as much as it can while still barely qualifying as feature-length. On top of that, after Capt. Schaech orders lights out for the duration of the flight, most of the film takes place in such murky darkness that you can hardly see half of what's going on. Some good films just have bad luck and get lost in the shuffle when it comes to finding a place on the release schedule--this is not one of them. Still, I can't help but think that having George Kennedy turn up as a ghostbusting Joe Patroni would've salvaged the whole thing. (PG-13, 79 mins)
NYMPHOMANIAC (Denmark/Germany/France/Belgium - 2013; US release 2014) Written and directed by Lars von Trier.
VOL I: Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Connie Nielsen, Jens Albinus, Hugo Speer, Cyron Melville, Felicity Gilbert, Anders Hove, Jesper Christensen, Saskia Reeves, Ananya Berg, Nicolas Bro. (Unrated, 117 mins)
VOL II: Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, Michael Pas, Caroline Goodall, Kate Ashfield, Ananya Berg, Shanti Roney, Kookie Ryan, Papou. (Unrated, 124 mins)
Arthouse provocateur Lars von Trier prides himself on walking the fine line between visionary auteur and misanthropic asshole, a firm believer that any publicity is good publicity, whether he's putting his lead actresses through hell to get the performance he needs from them, or prompting John C. Reilly to walk off of 2005's MANDERLAY over filming the actual slaughter of a donkey, or getting kicked out of the Cannes Film Festival for saying he sympathizes with Hitler. Like a bratty kid, von Trier revels in attention but with rare exception, backs it up with great films. When he announced NYMPHOMANIAC would run over five hours and include professional actors in unsimulated, hardcore sex scenes, the buzz was on. While the director's complete five-and-a-half hour cut was released in Europe, the US release was split into two films running around two hours each, released a few weeks apart (the director's cut will likely surface on Blu-ray). Von Trier supervised the US cuts, and while much explicit material was removed, quite a bit remains, including some penetrative shots that involve body doubles and CGI trickery melding the below-the-belt region with the name actors' bodies from the waist up. In other words, Shia LaBeouf may have auditioned for the film by sending von Trier a homemade sex tape, and while he's doing frontal nudity, the erection and beyond are the work of his body double. The same goes for actress Stacy Martin fellating a man (Jens Albinus) on a train. It's a very real-looking prosthetic penis, and while we see semen drooling out of Martin's mouth, the director's cut apparently shows the spurting ejaculation, for those so inclined.
A lot of this is von Trier just being von Trier, but contrary to initial reports and the director's own incessant hype, NYMPHOMANIAC, at least in its US incarnation, isn't quite the wall-to-wall porno fuckfest that it's been made out to be. In many ways, it's a von Trier greatest hits package, with cues from and callbacks to his past films like DOGVILLE (2003), ANTICHRIST (2009) and especially BREAKING THE WAVES (1996). It's von Trier's third straight film with Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's become his muse in misery after the harrowing ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA (2011), where she initially has a supporting role but becomes the focus as the film progresses. Von Trier has a history of pushing his actresses to their limit and getting incredible work from them: Emily Watson's Oscar-nominated performance in BREAKING THE WAVES remains one of the greatest in all of cinema, while Bjork surpassed all expectations in DANCER IN THE DARK (2000). DOGVILLE's Nicole Kidman and MANDERLAY's Bryce Dallas Howard also survived von Trier and lived to tell the tale. In Gainsbourg, von Trier has found a kindred spirit who's willing and eager to go to the dark places others won't. She's the Klaus Kinski to his Werner Herzog, minus the mutual death threats.
As the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC opens, bookish academic Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) happens upon the unconscious Joe (Gainsbourg) lying in an alley, beaten and bloodied. He helps her back to his apartment, lets her shower and makes her some tea. They begin talking, first about little things, and then she agrees to tell her story. Von Trier plays with the time element a bit, but in the first volume, much of the dramatic weight is carried by 22-year-old newcomer Martin as young Joe. As older Joe explains, "I discovered my cunt as a two-year-old," and before her age is in double digits (Ananya Berg plays Joe at this age in some discreetly-shot sequences that imply more they show), Joe and her best friend B are exploring themselves in ways that are already threatening to go beyond sliding down the bannister and grinding themselves against the bathroom floor. At the age of 15 (and now played by Martin), Joe asks local stud mechanic Jerome (LaBeouf) to take her virginity, which he does in the most perfunctory fashion imaginable. Nevertheless, the beast has been unleashed as Joe and B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) have contests like sneaking on to a train and screwing as many men as possible during the trip. They even form a club at school devoted to the pursuit of sex without love, though B eventually comes to her own realization that "the secret ingredient to sex is love." Joe believes that love complicates things, and continues sleeping with as many men as possible, eventually reconnecting with Jerome when she applies for a secretarial job at a printing company owned by his uncle (Jesper Christensen), even though she has no secretarial skills. She resists Jerome's advances, spending her evenings maintaining a busy schedule of hourly appointments with men who drop in to have sex with her, often passing one another as one arrives and the other leaves. By her own estimate, she's sleeping with up to eight men on a typical evening, and even devises an elaborate system for deciding which men she'll call back among the many messages on her answering machine. At the end of Vol. 1, Joe decides to settle down for domesticity with the now-successful Jerome, when she finds she can no longer reach orgasm.
In a brilliant debut, Martin is the focal point of the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC, and like Watson in BREAKING THE WAVES, she's up to the challenge even though von Trier saves the worst for Joe for when Gainsbourg assumes the role. For the first half, Gainsbourg is limited to sitting in bed as Joe tells Seligman her story, and the kind-hearted intellectual listens intently, often going off on thematic tangents involving fly fishing, cake forks, Bach, Poe, and mathematical theories that sort-of tie into the psychology of what Joe is telling him. Von Trier also gives Christian Slater his best role in years as Joe's doctor father in flashbacks. Joe loves her father deeply, and the two bond over their shared love of trees and flowers, neither feeling a connection to Joe's "cold bitch" mother (Connie Nielsen). As good as Martin and Slater are, the show-stealer for the first half is Uma Thurman in a one-scene stunner as the enraged wife of Mr. H (Hugo Speer), one of Joe's regular hookups. When Mr. H leaves his wife and shocks Joe by showing up at her place with his suitcases in tow, he's followed closely by Mrs H, who's dragged their three young sons along with her. If that wasn't awkward enough, Joe's next guy (Cyron Melville) shows up and everyone watches Mrs. H maniacally melt down, introducing the boys to Joe so they can "put a face to the all the therapy they'll need down the road," and saying "Would it be alright if I show the children the whoring bed? They need to see it! Let's go see Daddy's favorite place!" Thurman is onscreen for less than ten minutes but she makes every second count, and it's an instant classic of laughing while cringing in pained discomfort, one of those rare instances where a cameo is actually Oscar-worthy.
Vol. 2 picks up with Joe and Jerome married and having a baby. A few years pass as Martin exits and Gainsbourg takes over. The child, Marcel, is now three and though they love each other, Joe and Jerome's sex life has stalled. Jerome encourages her to see other men if it will help her psychologically ("If you buy a tiger, you have to keep it fed," he says). This goes on for some time and eventually leads Joe to the mysterious K (Jamie Bell). K seems to be some sort of Craigslist-type sex therapist/sadist who lives in what appears to be an abandoned office building where women show up for appointments to be beaten. K does not offer sex, and he doesn't allow safe words. You do what he says, period. Joe's sessions with K involve him renaming her "Fido," tying her to a couch, bent over, while he whips her bare ass with a riding crop, then inserting his fingers into her vagina to gauge her arousal. Things just get worse for Joe as her sex addiction, self-loathing and degradation cause her to lose her family. She can barely hold down her office job, routinely fucking male co-workers in the restroom or a closet space. She's ordered into therapy, where she lashes out against a society that judges her and tries to shame her. Now in her mid-40s, she eventually loses any feeling of pleasure, as her vagina is so scarred and worn from the thousands of men over three decades of hook-ups that it spontaneously bleeds, and causes numerous bouts of unbearable, debilitating pain. Joe eventually gets a job as a debt collector/extortionist for the shady L (Willem Dafoe), which leads to her shot at redemption by becoming a mentor to troubled teen P (Mia Goth).
While the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC has its share of dark moments, it's also surprisingly amusing in spots, such as Joe comparing her vagina to the automatic doors at a supermarket ("only with a stronger sensor") or when Seligman echoes the audience's call of bullshit with every one of Jerome's improbably hackneyed returns to the narrative. There's also the standard von Trier button-pushing bits like Joe getting wet standing by her father's death bed, and later in Vol 2, unsubtle Christ metaphors and Joe admitting that she feels a sympathetic kinship with a pedophile (Jean-Marc Barr) because of their "outcast" status (drawing thematic parallels to past von Trier outcasts ike the tragic Bess in BREAKING THE WAVES, Selma in DANCER IN THE DARK, and Grace in DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY). But it's the second half where things take a grim turn, largely with the intensely disturbing sequences involving Bell's K (the much-ballyhooed "Silent Duck" moment when K fists Joe is mostly implied, at least in the US cut), and the effect Joe's behavior has on Jerome and Marcel. I'm still not convinced that his recent public implosion isn't some extended von Trier-coordinated publicity stunt, but credit where it's due--funny accent and all, LaBeouf is actually quite good, especially in the second half. Given the extreme length and the myriad of directions the story takes, von Trier generally keeps things on point even when it threatens to derail at any moment. It only starts to feel choppy as things wind down, especially in the debt collection tangent, which comes out of nowhere and doesn't really feel like it belongs. As shown in her scenes at her jobs, Joe really has no skills other than sexual, which wouldn't seem a prerequisite for tough-talking collecting for a loan shark (perhaps the manipulation aspect?). Also, Joe's relationship with P is never fleshed out, at least not to the point where some of P's actions near the end make complete sense. I see the way the tables get turned and Joe is looking at things from another perspective, but it just feels like something's missing or got lost in the editing.
Like Seligman, the viewer is likely to be skeptical of some of Joe's story. There are many times over the course of the four hours when both Joe and to a lesser extent, Seligman seem like the classic "unreliable narrator." In many ways, NYMPHOMANIAC is film loaded with sex and not really specifically about sex. One popular theory is that Joe is a stand-in for von Trier and that Seligman is every stuffy, erudite, out-of-touch film critic who's judged and vilified him, though this involves a revelation by Seligman that I won't spoil. But Seligman doesn't judge Joe (other than being incredulous over some too convenient developments), which makes him different from every other man she's ever known other than her beloved father. There's a lot to take in--no pun intended--with NYMPHOMANIAC, so much so that sometimes the filmmaking itself is easy to overlook. There are some stunning shots and a strong Andrei Tarkovsky vibe throughout--one shot of older Joe finding "her" tree is breathtaking, and clothed or otherwise, the camera simply adores Martin, who has the most hauntingly seductive gaze you've seen in ages. Even seeing it split into two films--if you see it in its American incarnation, it's best to set four hours aside and just binge it--it probably still needs to be seen again in von Trier's original director's cut. Judging from viewing it in this format, it's not von Trier's best film--it seems to start stumbling with the introduction of L, though that's no fault of Dafoe's-- but it may be his most personal one, and one that reveals more of itself on repeat viewings, however soul-crushing and exhausting that may be. But that's vintage Lars von Trier. Love him or hate him, his films get you talking.
