On Blu-ray/DVD: BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB (2018) and SIBERIA (2018)

BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB
(US/China/UK - 2018)

Have I seen this color/font combo before?

A chronicle of the early 1980s L.A. Ponzi scheme that led to lost fortunes and two murders, BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB had already logged significant time on the shelf long before it found itself tangled in the downfall of co-star Kevin Spacey. Shot in late 2015 and early 2016, the film was quietly released on VOD and on ten screens in the summer of 2018, with news outlets latching on to the film's pitiful $126 opening day gross as if audiences were staying away in protest because of Spacey, when in fact it had no publicity and was getting only one to two screenings a day at those ten theaters, none of which were located in major cities. It got all the exposure of a stealth test screening. Other sites expressed outrage that Spacey was still "getting work" after the scandal, again distorting the big picture and conveniently leaving out the crucial detail that the film was on the shelf for over two years, long before Spacey's (for now) career-ending sexual assault allegations made headlines. It would be nice if all of these articles provided the proper context for the movie's dismal box office take, and as far as releasing it is concerned, let's judge it on what it is rather than on a problematic actor who happens to be in it. Not even factoring whether the movie is good or bad, there's an entire cast and crew who worked on it and shouldn't have to see their efforts get locked away forever just because Kevin Spacey is a fucking creep on his own time. Let's just be glad the next film he and Ansel Elgort both happened to be in, BABY DRIVER, managed to hit theaters before Spacey took his rightful place among Hollywood's post-Weinstein pariahs.

Ah...yes, there it is. 

But even factoring out the Spacey situation, BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB was probably going straight to VOD anyway. It's essentially a DTV-level WOLF OF WALL STREET, with director/co-writer James Cox (making only his second feature since 2003's Val Kilmer-as-John Holmes saga WONDERLAND...yeah, I forgot that movie existed, too) taking the easy Scorsese-worship route, right down to the sub-GOODFELLAS narration by Taron Egerton (the KINGSMAN movies) as Dean Karny. Dean is a fast-talking Beverly Hills mover and shaker who gets reacquainted with prep school buddy Joe Hunt (Elgort). Dean talks junior-level investment broker Joe, a kid from Van Nuys who got into prep school on a scholarship and never really fit in, into stepping up his game and before long, Joe is engineering an investment firm called BBC (which means nothing; they just like the initials but end up calling it "Billionaire Boys Club"), which is really an elaborate Ponzi scheme that allows them all to live large (cue montage of partying and coke, accompanied by Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" and David Bowie's "Let's Dance"), but they're paper rich and cash poor. Egocentric, gay Wall Street con man Ron Levin (Spacey) is eventually brought into their circle, which marks the beginning of the end and the bottom falling out, leading to the separate murders of both Levin and a wealthy Iranian businessman (Waleed Zuaiter), on the run from his country's government and who allegedly has a safety deposit box filled with priceless diamonds the BBC wants to cover their losses. This story was already told in a more thorough 1987 NBC miniseries with Judd Nelson as Joe (Nelson plays Joe's dad here) and the sole reason for this shallow and superficial redux to exist is to let some NextGen Leo DiCaprios have some fun in a WOLF OF WALL STREET scenario. There's others in the BBC but we barely get to meet any of them (along with brief appearances by Rosanna Arquette, Bokeem Woodbine, Suki Waterhouse, and Carrie Fisher's daughter Billie Lourd), and Joe's romance with aspiring artist Sydney (Emma Roberts) is strictly by-the-numbers, serving only to try to make Joe a sensitive nice guy while he's ruining the lives of his investors but feeling really conflicted about it. Elgort and Egerton are alright, and Cary Elwes has an amusing cameo as Andy Warhol, but as much as no one wants to admit it, Spacey is the best thing about BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB. The film loses pretty much all of its spark once he's whacked with about 40 minutes to go, but if this does prove to be his last film (his completed Netflix biopic about Gore Vidal has been shelved, probably permanently), he goes out with an especially flamboyant take on his usual condescending asshole routine which, let's be honest, is something at which he excels. (R, 108 mins)



SIBERIA
(US/UK/Germany/Canada - 2018)

A film whose title may also be the only place in which it played theatrically, SIBERIA stars Keanu Reeves in a ponderous thriller that feels like JOHN WICK reimagined as a European art film. The closest comparison one can make in tone and intent might be 2010's THE AMERICAN, the austere Jean-Pierre Melville-inspired mood piece that found critical acclaim but failed to win over multiplex audiences who were misleadingly sold a George Clooney action thriller. SIBERIA was written by Scott B. Smith, who also scripted A SIMPLE PLAN and THE RUINS, both based on his own novels. Smith is having a really off day with SIBERIA, with Reeves as Lucas Hill, an American diamond smuggler summoned to Russia when his business partner Pyotr (Boris Gulyarin) vanishes along with some priceless diamonds they were supposed to deliver to Russian crime boss Boris Volkov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff). Hill's search for Pyotr leads him to a remote town in eastern Siberia where he falls into an intense fling with local bartender Katya (Ana Ularu, who was memorable as Almost Milla Jovovich in 2016's otherwise completely forgettable INFERNO), despite being generally content in his marriage to Gabby (a mostly Skyped-in appearance by Molly Ringwald). Volkov grows increasingly agitated about the diamonds, which leads to one well-handled bit of excruciating cringe tension a little past the one-hour mark, but nothing really works in SIBERIA, starting with a borderline somnambulant Reeves (one of 31 credited producers), who doesn't seem to fare well these days when he isn't playing John Wick. There's no reason to care about Hill, his situation, or his midlife-crisis acting out with Katya, regardless of how vigorously Reeves and Ularu dive into their numerous sex scenes. It seems odd for any movie to rip off THE AMERICAN at all, let alone eight years down the road, and it's not even a very well-done ripoff, blandly directed by Matthew Ross (FRANK & LOLA) from a script that's so uninspired that Smith couldn't even be engaged enough to come up with a better Russian bad guy name than "Boris Volkov." (R, 105 mins)

In Theaters/On VOD: FUTURE WORLD (2018)

FUTURE WORLD
(US/Italy/France/UK - 2018)

Directed by James Franco and Bruce Thierry Cheung. Written by Bruce Thierry Cheung, Jeremy Craig Cheung and Jay Davis. Cast: James Franco, Milla Jovovich, Lucy Liu, Suki Waterhouse, Jeffrey Wahlberg, Margareta Levieva, Snoop Dogg, George Lewis Jr, Cliff "Method Man" Smith, Carmen Argenziano, Scott Haze, Rumer Willis, Ben Youcef. (R, 88 mins)

Last year, THE DISASTER ARTIST showed that director James Franco was maturing as a filmmaker and was ready to move toward the commercially viable and finally leave his self-indulgent, home-movie vanity projects behind.

FUTURE WORLD: "Hold my beer."

His entire career is shaping up to be one long display of bizarre performance art, but as a filmmaker, Franco has historically been a poster boy for misbegotten ambition. Prior to THE DISASTER ARTIST, his efforts behind the camera have been typified by a series of classic American literature adaptations--the works of William Faulkner (AS I LAY DYING and THE SOUND AND THE FURY), Cormac McCarthy (CHILD OF GOD) and John Steinbeck (IN DUBIOUS BATTLE)--projects whose primary reason for being seemed to be their utter unfilmability to the point of being unwatchable by design. Franco's directed over 20 feature films, and has another four set for release this year, including the long-shelved ZEROVILLE, completed in 2014 and co-starring Franco, Seth Rogen, Megan Fox, and Will Ferrell. Right after finishing THE DISASTER ARTIST, which sat around for about a year and half before it was released, Franco dove into FUTURE WORLD, apparently after finding a couple of hours to watch MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and rounding up some of his buddies to quickly shit out their own DIY version of it. Franco co-directs with his longtime cinematographer Bruce Thierry Cheung and called in some favors from some pals, including his frequent star Scott Haze, whose biggest contribution to the Franco legacy thus far is taking an on-camera shit and wiping his ass with a stick at the beginning of CHILD OF GOD. It should tell you everything you need to know about CHILD OF GOD that it was all downhill from there.

A throwback to the kind of post-nuke actioners that came out of Italy and the Philippines and flooded video stores and cable in the wake of THE ROAD WARRIOR back in the early-to-mid '80s is a fun idea, but where most of Franco's work as a filmmaker can be charitably described as self-indulgent home movies made for an audience of one, FUTURE WORLD doesn't even seem to interest its own director. Say what you will about his endurance test literary adaptations, but at least Franco committed to them (and to be fair, IN DUBIOUS BATTLE was a step up in many ways and, at the very least, looks and feels like a real movie). FUTURE WORLD opens in a post-apocalyptic America, after the world's been destroyed following an era of prosperous technological advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence that proved too lethal in the hands of stupid, greedy, self-serving, and self-destructive humanity. "Synthetic" sex android Ash (Suki Waterhouse) is found in an abandoned factory and revived by Warlord (Franco), the despotic leader of a marauding desert biker gang called The Raiders. He keeps her as a slave for sex and murder, and eventually they cross paths with Prince (Jeffrey Wahlberg, Mark and Donnie's nephew), a teenager from the isolated utopian community "The Oasis." Prince is journeying through the "Neon Forest" to reach "The Temple" at "Paradise Beach" or some such nonsense, in the hopes of finding a miracle cure for his deathly ill mother Queen (Lucy Liu, spending almost all of her limited screen time bedridden). At a desert titty bar called Love Town, overseen by wisecracking host Love Lord (Snoop Dogg), Warlord programs Ash to kill Prince, but she starts displaying traces of a conscience and independent thought, defying Warlord and going on the run with Prince. They eventually end up in Drug Town, ruled by the ruthless Drug Lord (Milla Jovovich), with Warlord and his goons in hot pursuit.

You know the writers really put in the time and effort with the script when you've got "Love Town" run by a guy named "Love Lord" and "Drug Town" ruled by someone named "Drug Lord." One could argue that it's a cynical, Terry Gilliam-esque dystopian commentary on people being defined by their work, but that's probably giving FUTURE WORLD a little too much credit. Jovovich doesn't turn up until the midway point, and she provides FUTURE WORLD's only spark of life with what seems to be a largely improvised performance. Her character is completely despicable--and gets naive, innocent Prince hooked on drugs--but while a little of her manic, bug-eyed overacting and general smartassery goes a long way, it shows Jovovich is at least trying to make something out of nothing. Waterhouse, who tread similar ground in last year's dismal-but-suddenly-looking-better-now THE BAD BATCH, doesn't have much to do other than look like she's Pearl Prophet in a 2018 riff on the old Van Damme sci-fi favorite CYBORG. Top-billed Franco is absent for long stretches--probably the case behind the camera as well--and can't help but come off as a poseur Toecutter and Immortan Joe, turning in the kind of performance that makes one wonder whether he was perhaps spending too much time with Tommy Wiseau while prepping THE DISASTER ARTIST (how is a walking freakshow like Wiseau not in this?) Wahlberg doesn't quite have the presence of his uncle Mark or even his uncle Donnie, and it's gotta be an ominous sign that his acting coach gets an onscreen credit. Like most of his "hanging out and dicking off with his buddies" auteur endeavors, Franco corralled a potentially interesting and eclectic cast--there's also Method Man, Rumer Willis, and veteran character actor Carmen Argenziano, who gets killed by Warlord after about ten seconds of screen time--but, as usual, he abandons them, this time in a dull post-nuke flick that's not even up to the level of late-career Cirio H. Santiago.

James Franco in one of Warlord's more pensive moments.

There's an attempt at an intriguing subplot involving Ash discovering her emotions and falling for Lei (Margarita Levieva), Drug Lord's techie mechanic, but it leads to nothing but a tame sex scene, as Franco can't even be bothered to make something like that look exciting. Other than Jovovich's inexplicably spirited and wildly gesticulating performance, the only other positive is Franco managing to secure the services of acclaimed cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, who's been Werner Herzog's go-to D.P. for the last 25 or so years (including the great documentaries GRIZZLY MAN, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, and CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS). He likely met Zeitlinger while starring in Herzog's globally-panned QUEEN OF THE DESERT, one of approximately 258 movies Franco's been in over the last five years. Zeitlinger does a nice job with some of the desert footage and some long Steadicam takes, but overall, the film has the same ugly, cheaply digital look you'll see in any random clunker on the straight-to-VOD scrap heap. Only Franco could follow the universally-acclaimed THE DISASTER ARTIST with a project that makes him look like he's chucking it all to become the next Albert Pyun.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE BAD BATCH (2017) and IT STAINS THE SANDS RED (2017)

THE BAD BATCH
(US - 2017)

In the first ten minutes of THE BAD BATCH, heroine Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is banished to a vaguely post-apocalyptic desert wasteland in Texas, abducted by marauding cannibals who hack off her right arm and right leg and cook them on a grill, then she covers herself in her own shit to make the rest of herself less appetizing. So begins writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour's followup to the acclaimed A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. THE BAD BATCH is a bigger film with bigger names, but it's definitely a classic case of a sophomore slump. Arlen manages to escape her flesh-eating captors and is taken by a mute, nameless hermit (Jim Carrey, of all people) to a makeshift town called Comfort, ruled by a guru-like cult figure known as The Dream (Keanu Reeves, looking like Joe Spinell circa MANIAC). After encountering one of the women who initially abducted her, Arlen, now sporting a prosthetic leg, kills her and takes the woman's young daughter Honey (Jayda Fink) back to Comfort. Honey was stolen from her father Miami Man (Jason Momoa) with the intention of grooming her for a life of sexual servitude to The Dream. Miami Man--himself a cannibal but hey, he's a sympathetic flesh eater and a loving father with artistic talent-- then ventures into the desert and enlists the aid of Arlen and the hermit to find his daughter.

After an intriguingly strange opening act, THE BAD BATCH just goes nowhere. Repetitive scenes of people walking through the desert and mumbling give the film the distinct feeling of an '80s post-nuke fused with Gus Van Sant's GERRY. An endless mid-film acid trip after a rave at The Dream's stops the film cold and it never recovers. Waterhouse is OK in the lead, but Amirpour can't decide if the focus should be on Arlen or Miami Man, a quandary that isn't helped by Momoa sporting one of the worst accents ever heard in a movie. He's supposed to be from Cuba, but he sounds like Mushmouth trying to do a Scarface impression, making about 90% of his dialogue unintelligible without putting on the subtitles. There's some nice cinematography and the film's vision of a dystopian hellscape is intermittently effective, as are some incongruously '80s and '90s-sounding music choices by present-day indie bands like Federale, whose track "All the Colours of the Dark" is used in a nicely-done montage. At the same time, a woman getting her neck snapped to Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" and Arlen getting her arm sawed off to Ace of Base's "All That She Wants" comes off as silly and pointless, and reeking of "Well, we got the clearance on these songs, so I guess we have to use them." Watching THE BAD BATCH, it's apparent that Amirpour had the beginnings of an idea but didn't know where to take it. There's certainly some political commentary to be mined from a fenced-off area of Texas, deporting undesirables--"The Bad Batch"--to the harsh outside, and Miami Man being an illegal immigrant, but Amirpour doesn't bother. She also wastes a potentially interesting supporting cast, with Giovanni Ribisi serving no purpose whatsoever as a nutcase called "The Screamer," Reeves getting a long monologue about where shit travels after it's excreted, and the unexpected casting of a silent, grizzled, barely recognizable Carrey in easily the strangest role of his career. Agonizingly overlong at just shy of two hours, and low-key to the point of catatonia, THE BAD BATCH is a barely half-baked concoction that falls almost completely flat and fails to follow through on the promise Amirpour displayed with her impressive debut. (R, 119 mins)



IT STAINS THE SANDS RED
(Canada/US - 2017)

Under their collaborative moniker "The Vicious Brothers," Colin Minahan and Stuart Ortiz earned a small degree of cult notoriety among horror scenesters with their 2011 found-footage debut GRAVE ENCOUNTERS. The wrote and produced that film's 2012 sequel, and they wrote 2014's EXTRATERRESTRIAL, with Minahan directing solo. That arrangement continues with IT STAINS THE SANDS RED, the duo's day-late-and-a-dollar-short contribution to the zombie apocalypse genre. There's a couple of clever ideas here, but they're enough for maybe a 15-minute short film as opposed to a padded, laborious, 92-minute slog. Opening in medias res with the zombie invasion underway and Las Vegas in ruins, we're introduced to stripper Molly (Brittany Allen, also the star of EXTRATERRESTRIAL) and boyfriend Nick (Merwin Mondesir) speeding down a desert highway on their way to an air field where one of his friends has offered to fly them into Mexico. The car gets stuck in the sand as one lone, shambling zombie (Juan Riedlinger) approaches. Nick wastes his remaining bullets trying to shoot it in the head and is eventually killed and eaten when he tries to get out of the car to retrieve his dropped cell phone. Molly gathers what supplies she can--water, smokes, and a vial of coke--and begins hoofing it 30 miles through the desert in her Gene Simmons platform shoes with the zombie following in persistent pursuit. It moves slow enough that she can get a good distance and take periodic breaks, but it never stops and never gets tired, sort-of like a zombie version of IT FOLLOWS.

That's a nifty idea for a short film, but Minahan and Ortiz really struggle to get this thing to 90 minutes. Once the premise is established, along with a gross but admittedly clever bit where she manages to distract the zombie--who she eventually names "Smalls"--by offering it her bloody tampon to munch on while she gets a head start on her next getaway, this thing runs out of gas in record time. Minahan shoots in a saturated and frequently garish style that's more ugly than anything, and hardly any time has elapsed before Molly's babbling to herself and Minhan's already breaking out the surreal, grotesque, NATURAL BORN KILLERS-esque flourishes. She eventually forms a bizarre kinship with Smalls that comes out of nowhere and makes no sense--she even declines rescue from military personnel on one occasion because she doesn't want to leave the zombie alone. There's also a pointless detour involving a pair of yahoos who rescue then rape her, and she keeps having flashbacks to the son she abandoned in favor of her irresponsible, Vegas party girl lifestyle. The sliver of remaining humanity left in Smalls awakening Molly's dormant maternal instincts might've been a good idea if it had any foundation, but nothing in IT STAINS THE SANDS RED (a cool title, at least) makes sense, and everything that happens requires Molly to be conveniently stupid in order to advance the plot. Riedlinger is OK as Smalls, but he's not giving DAY OF THE DEAD's Howard Sherman any competition when it comes to great zombie performances. It doesn't help that he exits the film with nearly 30 minutes to go as Molly, much like IT STAINS THE SANDS RED, continues on aimlessly. An interesting set-up, but this thing just goes nowhere fast and has nothing to add to an already overcrowded genre. (Unrated, 92 mins)