On Blu-ray/DVD: FIRST LOVE (2019) and DISTURBING THE PEACE (2020)

FIRST LOVE
(UK/Japan - 2019)

With over 100 feature film credits plus some assorted TV gigs over his 30-year career, Japan's Takashi Miike is perhaps the most insanely prolific international filmmaker of the modern era. When he first gained significant notoriety with transgressive stunners like AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER two decades ago, he was averaging anywhere from five to eight movies a year. The now-60-year-old Miike has mellowed somewhat with age, and these days he works at a relatively more relaxed pace (he only made one movie in 2018, the mystery thriller LAPLACE'S WITCH, which has yet to be released in the US). His latest film--and the first to open in the US since 2017's BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL--is FIRST LOVE, which is generally restrained, but kicks off with a comedic decapitation (complete with blinking eyes and an expression of outrage on the face of the severed head) and closes with a wild bloodbath to keep the superfans from losing their shit. The opening half hour has a significant amount of exposition to establish, but once all the pieces are in place and it gets going, FIRST LOVE is an entertaining "survive the night" scenario centering on Leo (Masataka Kubota from Miike's 13 ASSASSINS), an up-and-coming boxer who's just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

A despondent Leo is wandering the Shinjuku streets aimlessly into the night after being given the bad news, and he ends up literally bumping into Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a troubled, drug-addicted young woman who's being held prisoner and pimped out by low-level drug courier Yasu (Takahiro Miura) as repayment for her deadbeat, sexually-abusive father's debts to just-paroled Yakuza boss Gondo (Seiyo Uchino). Meanwhile, Kase (Shota Sometani), an ambitious Gondo underling, is conspiring with corrupt narcotics cop Otomo (Nao Omori, best known for the title role in ICHI THE KILLER) to intercept a shipment of drugs in a foolishly-planned scheme that involves kidnapping Monica and gets dumber from there. She manages to get away--that's when she bumps into Leo, though she thinks she's being chased by the ghost of her father in a recurring hallucination--but the plot goes south when Kase kills Yasu and tries to blame it on the soldiers of Chinese Triad boss One-Armed Wang (Cheng-Kuo Yen), a longstanding rival of Gondo's who earned his nickname when Gondo hacked off his arm years ago. That sets off Julie (Japanese pop star Becky), Yasu's girlfriend and a Ken Takakura superfan who knows what Kase has done and vows revenge. As the night goes on, terminally ill Leo, already feeling like he's got nothing to lose, takes it upon himself to become Monica's protector. They're pursued by various parties, all of whom eventually converge at a huge department store, where Miike really cuts loose with some inspired mayhem, including some splattery shootouts, decapitations, amputations, and disembowelings, much of which is played for laughs.

Miike's films aren't getting the global exposure they once did, but FIRST LOVE is easily the most entertaining work of his I've seen since 2010's 13 ASSASSINS. There's quite a bit of Takeshi Kitano-esque sequences of pissed-off yakuza guys yelling at each other (and Kase's phony indignation when he's told that Yasu is dead is hilariously played by Sometani), Kubota's Leo is a hero you can get behind, and everyone takes a backseat to Becky, who delivers an impressively unhinged performance as the vengeance-obsessed Julie. FIRST LOVE has no shortage of blood-soaked insanity, but it's also one of Miike's most commercially accessible films, probably why it managed to get a little more worldwide play than a lot of his recent work. If you've lost touch a bit with Miike since 13 ASSASSINS, then FIRST LOVE is a good opportunity to get reacquainted. (Unrated, 108 mins)



DISTURBING THE PEACE
(US/UK - 2020)

Is everything OK with Guy Pearce? I only ask because, even for someone who hasn't top-lined a hit movie in a few years, he's still a fine actor, and the unbelievably bad DISTURBING THE PEACE is absurdly beneath him. Maybe he did it as a favor for someone, maybe he was scammed into it...hell, I even checked to see if he was getting divorced and had to go on a "fuck it, just pay me" B-movie spree. This is a film so strangely inept and displaying such a shocking lack of polish or even basic filmmaking and editing skills that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Pearce has been unwittingly deep-faked over a Steven Seagal performance because an embarrassed Seagal needed to distance himself from it. Pearce--yes, the same Guy Pearce from L.A. CONFIDENTIAL--stars as Jim Dillon, a one-time Texas Ranger who got busted down to marshal in podunk Horse Cave, KY (playing itself in a way that certainly won't promote tourism) after paralyzing his partner from the neck down with an errant shot in a hostage standoff. That was ten years ago, and Dillon just got word that his partner has died. He blames himself, and as a result, he hasn't once picked up a gun in the ensuing decade. He doesn't really need to in quiet Horse Cave, at least not until a biker gang rides into town looking for trouble. Their leader is Diablo (Devon Sawa, also a producer), and their plan is to commandeer the local bank and wait for an armored car to pass through with the deposit from the casino in the next town over. Diablo has his goons--among them Branscombe Richmond as "Big Dog," John Lewis as "Shovelhead," others named "Pyro," "Diesel," "Jarhead," "Spider," and "Dirty Bob," and Barbie Blank (better known as wrestler Kelly Kelly) as "Amanda," who's been working at the bank as their insider--corral all the townsfolk over to the local church, where the minister is Catie (Kelly Greyson), who also owns the local diner in addition to being Dillon's love interest. Diablo seems to know a lot about Dillon, taunting him about his dead partner while dropping melodramatic bon mots like "There's a new paradigm here," and declaring himself "the prodigal son who's come back to collect his dues."

None of Diablo's floridly verbose shit-talking ever amounts to anything significant--the big reveal about him is that his dad drank himself to death after the local factory closed and as a result, he hates Horse Cave. How the fuck does stealing the deposit of a casino that's not even in Horse Cave avenge his dead dad? Director York Alec Shackleton, last seen guiding Nicolas Cage through one of the funnier fake American suburbs on a Bulgarian backlot (prominently featuring a posh art gallery called Art Gallery) in the bank robbery standoff dud 211, at least manages a more realistic-looking town in DISTURBING THE PEACE, even though he keeps things mostly confined to one intersection (drink every time you see that "Main St/Guthrie St" sign) as Diablo and the gang follow their master plan of...standing in the street and waiting for the armored car. Pearce spends most of his screen time away from the action in a way that would make Bruce Willis proud, running around town setting booby-traps and bombs that never come into play since the bad guys never leave their comfort zone of Main & Guthrie, while periodically getting on the walkie to tell his deputy Matt (Michael Sirow) to stand down. Shackleton's 211 wasn't a good movie, but it was at least competent under the circumstances. Here, he can't direct an action scene to save his life, some shots don't even look correctly framed, and he even manages to botch the final showdown between Dillon and Diablo. This is the kind of movie where a  reasonably in-shape sheriff from the neighboring county has set up a speedtrap on the outskirts of town and gets killed by the gang, then the biker who killed him--weighing around 350 and sporting a long ponytail and a madman beard down to his belly--manages to fit perfectly into his uniform, and the armored car guys on their usual route see him and don't seem to think that anything's wrong here. There has to be a story behind Pearce's involvement in this. It's got the production values of a regional faithsploitation movie, and the entire supporting cast from Sawa on down--the guy playing the mayor is visibly reading cue cards--isn't even up to the standards of a below-average community theater group. I'm trying to think of an apt comparison of leading men, but seeing Pearce in this is like watching a circa 1970 Al Adamson joint headlined by, say, James Garner. It just doesn't make sense. There's an incongruity here that defies description. He shouldn't be here. It's like a lost David Heavener movie. I expect to see current DTV regular Devon Sawa and perpetual D-list henchman Branscombe Richmond in something like this, but it's truly beyond comprehension that nearly 30 years into a generally well-managed career, Guy Pearce is starring in a grade-Z actioner as crudely janky as DISTURBING THE PEACE. (R, 91 mins)

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017) and BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL (2017)

THE FLORIDA PROJECT
(US - 2017)

Though THE FLORIDA PROJECT shares some surface similarities with the little-seen SUNLIGHT JR, it benefits from a loose, improvisational, verite feel with its effective location shooting in the seedy vicinity around Walt Disney World (whereas SUNLIGHT JR was filmed in economically-depressed areas of Clearwater). Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince) lives at the Magic Castle motel in Kissimmee with her single mother Halley (Bria Vinaite), who redefines the concept of the irresponsible parent. While Moonee plays with downstairs neighbor Scooty (Christopher Rivera) and Jancey (Valeria Cotto), a little girl who lives with her grandmother (Josie Olivo) at a nearby motel, Halley gets high, watches TV, and engages in various scams to get the necessary weekly rent money for Magic Castle manager Bobby (Willem Dafoe). The kids are a handful, and certainly products of their environment and upbringing, with Moonee especially prone to being a foul-mouthed brat. Bobby's patience is always wearing thin (when they spit on someone's car, spill ice cream in the office, or sneak into the maintenance room and turn off the power to the entire motel), but he's very protective of the kids and realizes it's not their fault. Director/co-writer Sean Baker (TANGERINE) lets the story develop very slowly, instead focusing on the world in which these characters live in ways that recall the work of British filmmaker Andrea Arnold. Vinaite's performance in particular is reminiscent of Katie Jarvis, a non-professional who won the lead in FISH TANK after Arnold happened to see her arguing with her boyfriend on a street corner, as well as Sasha Lane, who was cast in AMERICAN HONEY after Arnold saw her sunbathing on a beach. Likewise, Vinaite had no acting experience and ran a small marijuana-themed clothing line when Baker discovered her on Instagram. Her performance--Halley's attitude boiling with rage and desperation but doing what she does because she loves her child even if she still acts like one herself--is quite remarkable.

The same goes for young Prince, who's a natural (watch her give Jancey the tour of the motel and the rundown of the residents: "This guy gets arrested a lot and this lady thinks she's married to Jesus"), and both actresses work beautifully with an Oscar-nominated Dafoe, playing perhaps the warmest and most empathetic character in a career largely spent personifying creeps and weirdos. Baker delves into a little of Bobby's life too and the wrong turns that make him sympathize with Halley and Moonee, even when Halley doesn't really deserve it. We see Bobby's day-to-day job duties, which include fixing a broken ice machine, dealing with the removal of a mattress in a bedbug-infested room, chasing a pedophile off the property when he starts talking to the kids, plus he has a fractured relationship with his own son (Caleb Landry Jones), who he frequently calls to help him with stuff around the motel. Perhaps the most moving scene in the film is when Halley and Moonee take Jancey to an empty field to watch the Disney fireworks from a distance for her birthday, celebrated by blowing out a candle on a small cupcake the three of them share. As the fragments begin to cohere into a genuine story, the outcome isn't going to be good, but it does put you in the mindset of children forced to use their imagination to survive the grimmest of circumstances. (R, 112 mins)




BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL
(Japan/UK - 2017)

A lot of years have gone by, but it's easy to forget the impact that incredibly prolific Japanese auteur Takashi Miike had on connoisseurs of cult cinema when his films began hitting the US in the early '00s. That first wave--AUDITION, DEAD OR ALIVE, MPD PSYCHO, VISITOR Q, ICHI THE KILLER, THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS, and even the much-maligned GOZU--were so gonzo and transgressive that even hardcore cult cinephiles were often left aghast at that they were seeing (after I described VISITOR Q to a friend, he screened it at a movie night at his place, pissing off half of his guests and gleefully describing it as "a total room-clearer"). Miike was known enough in horror circles by 2005 that he was invited to helm an episode of Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR series. The result was "Imprint," which went into such dark and disturbing places that the cable network wouldn't even air it. Miike has been directing since 1991 and has dabbled in every conceivable genre (even retro spaghetti westerns and kids movies), hopping around from cinematic extremes to mainstream commercial fare (he also helmed the J-Horror hit ONE MISSED CALL) with remarkable ease, but while his notoriety in the US has diminished in recent years, his output hasn't slowed down at all. His latest effort, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, is his first to get any US distribution beyond the festival circuit since 2015's YAKUZA APOCALYPSE. To give you an idea of how much and how fast Miike works, the last of his films I've seen is 2011's HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI, and between that and BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, he's made 13 feature films and had a hand in directing two different series for Japanese television, and since BLADE wrapped, he's already got another movie completed.

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL was sold as Miike's 100th film. While the exact tally is a mystery and might even be to Miike himself, this is an odd choice to herald such a milestone. It's based on a popular manga by Hiroaki Samura, but Miike doesn't really bring much of a personal touch to it. As he pushes 60, it's entirely possible he's moved beyond the poking-people-with-sticks years that helped establish his legend (or he's just exhausted), and while he's done very well in this genre before (2010's 13 ASSASSINS was his best film in years), he really seems to be going through the motions with BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL. The convoluted story has disgraced samurai warrior Manji (Takuya Kimura) on the run after killing his corrupt lord and his six shogun constables, including his brother-in-law, whose death drove Manji's sister Machi (Hana Sugisaki) mad with grief. After Machi is killed by a bounty hunter and Manji massacres his small army, he nearly dies from his injuries until he's granted immortality by 800-year-old witch Yaobikuni (Yoko Yamamoto). 50 years later, a depressed Manji wanders the countryside wishing he could die, but he finds a purpose when he's sought out by Rin Asani (also played by Sugisaki), who wants revenge on shogun warrior Kagehisa Anotsu (Sota Fukushi) after he kills her parents and gives his associate Kuroi Sabato (Kazuka Kitamura) the severed head of her mother to mount on his shoulder. Manji feels sorry for the girl, who reminds him of his baby sister and may very well be her reincarnation (Rin even starts affectionately calling him "Big Brother"), so they embark on a journey to kill Anotsu and anyone who stands in their way. Of course, there's shifting alliances, double crosses, and various supernatural hijinks, but after a smashing start, the film rapidly devolves into repetitive set pieces and becomes a laborious slog. Even when it comes alive for an epic climactic showdown, it still feels like Miike's just recycling ideas and images from 13 ASSASSINS and other similar films. Manji is a sort of Wolverine/Logan crossed with a shogun HIGHLANDER, so no matter what happens to him or how many appendages get hacked off in battle, the "bloodworms" planted in him by Yaobikuni will heal him by reattaching the limb and he continues to live. There's plenty of spectacular action sequences and squishy sound effects as inventive weaponry guts through flesh, and KILL BILL fans will like seeing Chiaka Kuriyama--aka "Gogo Yubari"--in a supporting role, but at nearly two and a half hours, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL is a good 35-40 minutes too long as Miike somehow manages to be both self-indulgent and disconnected from the material at the same time. (R, 141 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: DEADFALL (2012), ALEX CROSS (2012), UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (2012), and HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI (2012)

DEADFALL
(US/France - 2012)

This Montreal-shot fugitives-on-the-run thriller from Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky (ANATOMY, THE COUNTERFEITERS) offers an intriguing set-up but quickly gives way to cliches and contrivances before completely collapsing in the third act.  Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are siblings who pull off a day-before-Thanksgiving Michigan casino heist before wrecking their car on a snowy rural road.  With Detroit cops and highway patrol in hot pursuit, they split up, Bana finding refuge with a family at a cabin where he kills the abusive stepfather, and Wilde with ex-con Charlie Hunnam, a disgraced boxer who may have accidentally killed his crooked manager about ten minutes after being paroled that morning.  Hunnam and Wilde have some drinks at a bar and have sex in a motel room, so of course, they're in love the next morning and he takes her home to the family farm to meet mom Sissy Spacek and dad Kris Kristofferson.  Naturally, an injured Bana is already there holding Mom and Dad hostage, and he's not very happy that his sister, for whom he harbors controlling and probably incestuous feelings, is in love with Hunnam.  So with local deputy Kate Mara and her sexist, asshole sheriff father Treat Williams (why do the filmmakers make this character even more hateful than Bana?) closing in, an increasingly wild-eyed Bana decides to gather everyone for Thanksgiving dinner and poke them with sticks by getting into their heads and re-opening family wounds.  Because hey, why not?  It's not like the clock's ticking or anything.

It's too bad Ruzowitzky and debuting screenwriter Zach Dean gather all of these fine actors around a table only to have them go through some really tired soap opera melodrama. DEADFALL has some OK moments and there's snippets of genuine suspense, but the whole thing is so rote and hackneyed that it rarely rises above the level of strictly average. Most of the cast can't win playing such implausible characters (Wilde and Williams, in particular), but Kristofferson and Spacek do some really nice work here, convincingly conveying the strong sense of familiarity of a hard-working couple who've been together forever and can communicate in their own verbal shorthand or with just a look. DEADFALL feels most real in these few quiet moments with these two. (R, 95 mins)


ALEX CROSS
(US - 2012)

Tyler Perry steps out of his comfort zone and into Morgan Freeman's shoes in this reboot of the wildly popular "James Patterson"® bestsellers that previously spawned the films KISS THE GIRLS (1997) and ALONG CAME A SPIDER (2001).  Judging from the film's paltry box office, audiences weren't really interested in Tyler Perry: Action Hero.  It's easy to mock Perry and make Madea jokes, but while he gets some points for trying, he's really not good here, though a lot of it is just bad writing.  Maybe Freeman can sell the whole Sherlockian awareness of everything going on around him and being able to "tell that you had scrambled eggs for breakfast at 100 yards," but where Freeman plays authoritative and dignified, Perry glowers, growls, and overacts, turning Cross into more of a gun-toting, vengeance-obsessed, action-movie badass.  It doesn't help that Cross is squaring off against a cartoonish supervillain in Matthew Fox's hired assassin "Picasso," on a spree at the behest of a corporate benefactor and so-called because he leaves clues to his next killing in intricate charcoal drawings at the murder scenes.  Fox lost an alarming amount of weight for the role and turned what he had left into pure muscle.  It's an unusual level of dedication for a film so silly and inconsequential, and he might've been more effective if his performance didn't rely on so many cliches (bulging eyes, wicked grins, calling Cross and taunting him, etc).  There isn't one surprise here, unless you count how the filmmakers give police psychologist Cross a pass for breaking almost every law in the book, justifying it with Picasso killing Cross' pregnant wife (Carmen Ejogo).  The film moves the novels' setting from D.C. to Detroit, presumably for production tax incentive purposes, though most of the film has downtown Cleveland filling in for Detroit, at least until Cross and Picasso's climactic showdown at the old Michigan Building, in the theater refurbished as a parking garage. 

Also with Edward Burns and Rachel Nichols as Cross' partners, Cicely Tyson as Nana Mama, Jean Reno as a French billionaire targeted by Picasso, John C. McGinley as Cross' boss who's always reading Cross the riot act even though he's right 100% of the time, numerous scenes with Cross revealing key plot information to his clueless associates while the camera urgently circles around them, and one of the least-convincing CGI explosions ever seen in a major theatrical release. The one-sheet's tag line reads "Don't ever cross Alex Cross." Well, it's probably a good idea to not ever watch ALEX CROSS, either. (PG-13, 101 mins)


UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING
(US - 2012)

Sometimes a really ambitious and inventive film can get made when nobody's paying much attention, and UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (the fourth film in the franchise, sixth if you count two made-for-TV movies) is anything but another by-the-numbers action outing.  Its VOD and limited theatrical release in late 2012 got some unexpected praise from some serious critics, and the film displays a level of depth and intelligence that demand it to be taken seriously.  Director/co-writer John Hyams made 2010's UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION and returns with original UniSols Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, essentially supporting characters with the focus on John (Scott Adkins), who sees his wife and daughter brutally murdered in a home invasion led by UniSol Luc Devereaux (Van Damme).  Awakening from a coma nine months later, John struggles to figure out who he is and why he's haunted by these painful memories.  It turns out Devereaux is rounding up a rogue army of former UniSols and implanting a chemical that makes them consciously aware of their status as mind-controlled government killing machines.  John discovers Devereaux is living deep in the Louisiana bayou, a messianic cult leader to a band of rogue warriors acting on their own volition, away from a government that can no longer control them. Is John one of these UniSols?  Is Devereaux the real Devereaux?

US: DOR has Christopher Nolan-sized ideas on a DTV budget and you'd have to possess the ability of psychic premonition to have expected a film like this from Hyams (son of veteran director Peter Hyams), whose efforts to date have been unimpressive, to put it mildly.  While some plot elements may borrow liberally from INCEPTION, THE TERMINATOR, and APOCALYPSE NOW (it's an intentional homage as John's journey down a river to Devereaux's camp even has a nearly-identical repetitive music cue heard when Martin Sheen arrived at Marlon Brando's compound), Hyams creates a surreal, disorientingly harsh, horrifyingly violent (30 seconds of splatter were cut to avoid an NC-17 rating), and potentially audience-alienating atmosphere throughout US: DOR.  At times, the film feels like a waking nightmare that's being secretly directed by Gaspar Noe.  It's almost experimental in the way it uses sound and visuals (particularly a dizzying strobe effect), and even with the impressive action sequences, there's no doubt that some people will absolutely hate this.  Hyams even says as much on the commentary track, stating the script is admittedly "a little far off the reservation." It occasionally bites off more than it can chew and it goes on a bit longer than it needs to, but Hyams deserves a lot of credit for not going the easy route, and attempting--and very often succeeding--to create a significantly more unique, daring, and thought-provoking film than anything you'd expect something titled UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING to be. An instant cult classic.  (R, 113 mins)


HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI
(UK/Japan - 2011; 2012 US release)

Originally shot in 3D, Takashi Miike's remake of Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 classic HARAKIRI examines the same themes of honor and hypocrisy and retains most of the major plot details while deviating quite a bit in the third act.  Miike, who's not quite as prolific and eager to shock as he was in his AUDITION, VISITOR Q, and ICHI THE KILLER glory days, fashions his HARA-KIRI as a dramatic companion piece of sorts to his excellent 2010 remake of Eiichi Kudo's 13 ASSASSINS (1963).  Where 13 ASSASSINS finds unemployed samurai overjoyed at finally having a way to go out in a blaze of glory, this film has warriors on the other end of the spectrum:  broke, jobless, without purpose, and struggling to survive in a world that no longer requires their unique skills.  Miike's HARA-KIRI is one of his most restrained films, a samurai story with powerful drama, emotion, and tragedy at its core.  In feudal Japan of 1630, peace has led to many unemployed samurai attempting suicide bluffs, where, in the name of honor, they request to commit seppuku in the courtyard of a feudal lord, usually resulting in a small job, a meal, or in the best cases, a financial handout from the sympathetic lord.  The lord of the House of Ii is away when penniless ronin Hanshiro Tsugomo (Ebizo Ichikawa) requests to use the courtyard for ritual suicide.  The lord's chief counsel Kageyu (Koji Yokusho) tries to talk Tsugomo out of his decision by telling him the story of Monome (Eita), who similarly requested to commit seppuku in the courtyard, resulting in Kageyu and the Ii samurai calling Monome's bluff and making him go through with it despite not even having a real sword, instead just one made of wood for show.  Monome had a sick wife and child at home and heard about the suicide bluffs and decided to use it as a last resort.  Tsugomo then informs Kageyu that he indeed knows Monome, and tells his own story about how the two are connected, and why he's really at the House of Ii.  Ichikawa turns in a devastating performance as Tsugomo, often rivaling the finest work of Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai in the samurai classics of old.  Miike's film is leisurely paced but never dull, and there's a bizarre finale with long takes and intricate choreography that feels like a Kurosawa samurai battle restaged by Blake Edwards. (Unrated, 128 mins)