UNCUT GEMS (US - 2019) Directed by Josh & Benny Safdie. Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh & Benny Safdie. Cast: Adam Sandler, Lakeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch, The Weeknd, Mike Francesa, Pom Klementieff, Paloma Elsesser, Keith William Richards, Tommy Kominik, Jonathan Aranbayev, Jacob Igielski, Noa Fisher, Wayne Diamond, Ca$h Out, Kerwin Frost, Benjy Kleiner, John Amos, Louis Anthony Arias, voices of Tilda Swinton, Natasha Lyonne. (R, 135 mins) "This is me. This is how I win." You know UNCUT GEMS is going to be an audacious piece of work when the opening scene begins in an Ethiopian mine with a zoom-in journey inside an uncut opal and eventually emerges from the rectum of the protagonist, who's in the middle of a colonoscopy. That's fast-talking, hard-hustling NYC jeweler Howard Ratner, vividly brought to life by the unlikely Adam Sandler, who was exactly who the Safdie Brothers had in mind when they started writing the script over a decade ago. The filmmaking siblings--elder Josh and younger Benny--only had the little-seen 2009 indie THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED to their credit when they first approached Sandler, but after a few more small films generally seen by no one other than critics and festival audiences, they found some significant acclaim with their 2017 cult breakout GOOD TIME, a gritty '70s-style throwback with a riveting performance by Robert Pattinson. UNCUT GEMS feels like a logical extension of GOOD TIME, like the two films could theoretically exist in the same Safdie Cinematic Universe in the parts of NYC that have remained largely unchanged over the last 30-odd years (you can see the influence of Martin Scorsese, who's also one of the producers). It was probably best that everyone involved waited to make UNCUT GEMS, so the Safdies could get some directing efforts under their belt, hone their skills, and carve their niche, and for 53-year-old Sandler (after turning the Safdies down several times before finally caving when their second choice, Jonah Hill, backed out), who's sporadically tackled dramatic work before with varying degrees of success, to be at the place he needed to be in order to dive into the role of a lifetime.
Say what you will about his dubious history of mostly terrible comedies, but Sandler is a fucking revelation here (and a shout-out to A24 for pulling their most A24 move ever by releasing this wide at Christmas). His Howard Ratner joins the shortlist of cinema's top degenerate gamblers, be they cocky, schmucky, self-destructive, or self-aggrandizing, and always thoroughly doomed, right alongside the likes of James Caan in THE GAMBLER, Harvey Keitel in BAD LIEUTENANT, Edward Norton in ROUNDERS, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in OWNING MAHOWNY. Decked out in flashy clothes, designer eyeglasses, and assorted bling, Howard owns a jewelry store in the NYC diamond district. He's doing well on the surface, but he's drowning in gambling debts all over town, and his ruthless loan shark brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) isn't about to cut him any slack just because he's family. Howard's marriage to Arno's sister Dinah (Idina Menzel, or, if you're John Travolta, "Adele Dazeem") is falling apart, due in large part to Howard being a sugar daddy to his much-younger girlfriend and employee Julia (Julia Fox). But things are looking up, as Howard's off-the-books associate Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) has made the acquaintance of Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett (as himself). KG comes into the store to look at some watches, and Howard being Howard, can't resist showing off a rock filled with uncut opals that he had illegally shipped from Ethiopia with the intent of clearing $1 million at a prestigious auction house. In the midst of the 2012 playoffs against against the Philadelphia 76ers, KG is offended that Howard won't sell it to him, but pleads with him to let him hang on to the rock for luck during the semifinals, offering his 2008 NBA Championship ring as collateral. Owing Arno $100,000, Howard immediately pawns KG's ring for $20,000, with the intent of using it to place a bet on that night's game and using the earnings to pay off Arno and get KG's ring back with the basketball star being none the wiser.
That's only the beginning of Howard's Murphy's Law-esque miasma of misery and shit luck. It should come as no surprise that anything that could possibly go wrong will, which is what makes a great degenerate gambler movie. But Sandler and the Safdies have a genuine masterpiece on their hands with UNCUT GEMS, a kinetic, captivating, heart-pounding exercise in sustained intensity that many have accurately likened to a 135-minute anxiety attack. The rapid-fire dialogue, the perpetual propulsive throb of the Tangerine Dream-ish synth score by Daniel Lopatin (who also scored GOOD TIME under his alias Oneohtrix Point Never), the grimy old-school NYC mood and energy, and the live-wire performance of a never-better Sandler come together to fashion a film that's like nothing else you've seen in 2019. Whatever Sandler is doing--whether it's bullshitting his way out of a situation, getting into a club brawl with an up-and-coming The Weeknd (remember, this is set in 2012) when he catches Julia doing coke with him in the bathroom, trying to talk his wealthy father-in-law (Judd Hirsch) into jacking up an already large bid at the auction, freaking out when he needs the rock with the opals and both KG and Demany are ignoring his calls--you can't take your eyes off him. You cringe pondering the endless variety of new and innovative ways that Howard--a far-too-confident schmuck with big ideas and an even bigger mouth--can't stop making things exponentially worse for Howard. Shot by the veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji (SE7EN, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS) and expertly edited by Benny Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein, UNCUT GEMS is a nerve-shredding descent into a hell of Howard's own making that becomes an almost communal experience with a theater audience--you're holding your breath, gasping in shock, and shaking your head in disbelief at the increasingly absurd dilemmas of the hapless Howard Ratner, so much so that the occasional bits of deliberate humor (there's a great joke involving GOOD TIMES star John Amos) serve as very brief moments of relief. Boiling with relentless tension from start to finish, you don't just watch UNCUT GEMS...you survive it. And it's the best American film of 2019.
Guadagnino and his BIGGER SPLASH screenwriter David Kajganich (whose writing credits also include 2009's BLOOD CREEK, a little-seen horror film that deserved a bigger audience) fashion their SUSPIRIA with the very Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Lars von Trier-esque subtitle "Six Chapters and an Epilogue Set in a Divided Berlin." Specifically, 1977 West Berlin, with the omnipresent Berlin Wall and the city in turmoil with bombings and recurring invocations of Baader-Meinhof, the far-left militant Red Army Faction, and the October hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the PFLP. In the midst of this is Markos Dance Academy student and Red Army supporter Patricia Hingle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who befriends elderly psychotherapist Dr. Josef Klemperer ("Lutz Ebersdorf"--more on him shortly) and frantically spells out the details of a wild story that the place is run by a coven of witches. When Patricia disappears--those close to her believe she went underground with a terrorist outfit--her spot at Markos becomes available and is given to Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), who's also running away, fleeing a domineering, terminally ill mother and a repressive Mennonite upbringing in rural Ohio.
A rebellious outcast in both her congregation and her own family going back to her childhood--whether she was constantly daydreaming about dancing, obsessed with learning all she could about Berlin, or being caught masturbating in her closet--Susie feels destined for Markos, and more specifically, its renowned choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), who soon takes the naive, sheltered American under her wing as her protegee for sinister reasons that have to do with more than dancing. Meanwhile, Dr. Klemperer (in the worst-kept secret of 2018, "Lutz Ebersdorf," initially described by the filmmakers as a practicing doctor and non-professional actor making his debut, is really Swinton under extensive prosthetics), haunted by the disappearance of his wife during the Holocaust 35 years earlier, is disturbed enough by Patricia's story and the notes scribbled in her left-behind journals that he begins his own investigation into her claims about the Markos Academy, one that dovetails with Markos dancer Sara (Mia Goth), who bonds with Susie but remains troubled by Patricia's vanishing.
That plot synopsis is really just scratching the surface of everything Guadagnino and Kajganich are up to here. SUSPIRIA '18 does a masterful job of capturing late '70s Berlin, with the gray, dreary atmosphere, the constant rain, the political tumult (bombs and commotion are frequently heard outside the walls of the Markos), the nods to Fassbinder and the casting of Volker Schlondorff regular Angela Winkler (THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM, THE TIN DRUM) as Miss Tanner, the right-hand to Madame Blanc. The film takes place in a Berlin that's literally divided by a wall, but also by politics and history, particularly the still-open wounds of WWII, as represented by the mournful Klemperer. That extends to the scheming and machinations going on in the academy, with the staff divided over whether to give control to Madame Blanc or the aging and unseen founder Helena Markos. The score by Radiohead's Thom Yorke is moodily effective--a complete contrast to the progasmic bombast of Goblin--but doesn't really signify "Berlin" in a musical sense.
Rest assured, Guadagnino doesn't forget that he's making an Italian horror film, whether it's numerous instances of stomach-turning gore, a truly nightmarish climax that goes completely off the rails, a Yorke piano cue that sounds directly lifted from Fabio Frizzi's score for Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND, or a late-film cameo by Jessica Harper. There's also Argento-specific callbacks, from the friendship between Patricia and Klemperer reminiscent of Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasance in PHENOMENA, and Swinton's disguised second performance recalling Adrien Brody's ridiculous "Byron Deidra" act in the dreadful latter-day Argento dud GIALLO. In a physically demanding performance, Johnson is an effective Susie, whose character arc goes in a vastly different direction than Harper's did in Argento's film, allowing Goth's Sara to resonate more for the audience in a way that wasn't required of Stefania Casini, her predecessor in the role. The dance instructors who make up the coven are well-cast, particularly Winkler, Paul Verhoeven vet Renee Soutendijk, and Sylvie Testud, who's made up in way that looks like a tribute to Jane March's "Richie" in COLOR OF NIGHT. Swinton is a terrific Madame Blanc, whose mentoring of Susie echoes Klemperer's belief that "love and manipulation...they share houses very often." Guadagnino perhaps overindulges his friend and frequent star Swinton, who actually has a third role by the end of the film, coming perilously close to making this her own personal DR. STRANGELOVE (her work as Klemperer is a triumph of old-age prosthetic makeup that the Oscars should recognize, but she doesn't do enough with her voice to totally sell the "Lutz Ebersdorf" illusion). While an over-the-top, arthouse deep dive into late 1970s West German politics, history, sociology, and culture seems like a strange approach to remaking a legendary and beloved Italian horror film, it's too lofty in its ambitions and too unpredictably gonzo to simply dismiss, regardless of how much of a daunting horse pill it can be at times.
OKJA (US/South Korea - 2017) Directed by Bong Joon Ho. Written by Bong Joon Ho and Jon Ronson. Cast: Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, An Seo Hyun, Giancarlo Esposito, Byun Heebong, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, Yoon Je Moon, Shirley Henderson, Daniel Henshall, Devon Bostick, Woo Shik Choi, voice of Jungeun Lee. (Unrated, 120 mins)
Visionary South Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho (THE HOST) returns with the Netflix Original film OKJA, his first since 2014's word-of-mouth arthouse/VOD hit SNOWPIERCER. Like SNOWPIERCER, OJKA splits its time between English and subtitled Korean, but instead of a grim, dystopian class struggle among the last remnants of humanity aboard a perpetually-moving train, it's a freewheeling, go-for-broke satire on corporate America, genetically modified foods, and idiotic TV personalities, among everything else Bong throws at the wall to see what sticks. Normally, the kitchen sink mentality on display here is a recipe for disaster, and while some of it is far too forced and over-the-top, its barbs hit and hit hard. The wild tonal shifts are by design, but Bong could've tightened the leash on a couple of the film's bigger names. OKJA opens in 2007, as Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton, in her second film for the director after SNOWPIERCER) is installed as the CEO of Mirando, an agrochemical biotechnology corporation obviously modeled on Monsanto. Lucy's taken over the post, replacing her twin sister Nancy, a PR nightmare viewed as "too mean" to sell the Mirando brand to the public. Lucy immediately starts a goodwill campaign involving 26 "super pigs"--genetically modified pigs created in a Mirando lab under the guise of maximum profits with a minimal footprint. And, as Lucy also explains, "They need to taste fucking good."
26 piglets are sent to various Mirando branches all over the world for a ten-year contest where farmers from each region raise the piglet from infancy to see who has the best "super pig." It's all a PR stunt to improve Mirando's dubious reputation and unethical practices, but in the rural farmlands outside Seoul, 14-year-old Mija (An Seo Hyun) lives with her simple farmer grandfather Heebong (THE HOST's Byun Heebong) and has grown attached to Okja, the intelligent super pig that Heebong received as a piglet a decade ago and is now the size of a small elephant. Okja is orphaned Mija's only friend, and when a Mirando entourage--including hapless South Korea branch exec Mundo Park (Yoon Je Moon) and asshole TV personality and MAGICAL ANIMALS host Dr. Johnny Wilcox (an out-of-control Jake Gyllenhaal)--plan a visit to check on the pig's progress after ten years, she's unaware that their intent is to take Okja away to show her off at Mirando's "Best Super Pig Fest" in NYC before sending her straight to the slaughterhouse. Angry at her grandfather for not being truthful with her about Mirando's plans, Mija runs away to Seoul in an effort to rescue Okja. She ends up being aided by a coordinated crew of animal rights activists from the ALF-- Animal Liberation Front--led by fiercely devoted Jay (Paul Dano), whose soft-spoken demeanor clashes with his propensity for violence when need be ("I apologize for putting you in a choke-hold...I promise you it is a non-lethal choke-hold," he calmly tells a security guard he's incapacitating). Meanwhile, at Mirando headquarters in NYC, the media attention over the incidents in Seoul are a concern to the company's PR head Frank Dawson (Giancarlo Esposito), with Lucy's standing as CEO on such shaky ground that bitch-on-wheels Nancy is given her old job to get things back on track.
Co-produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment, the $50 million OKJA is heavy-handed at times, but for the most part, it does a good job of balancing the very Spielbergian relationship between Mija and Okja with its desire to be the DR. STRANGELOVE of GMO takedowns (in lesser hands, this would probably be called OKJA AND ME). The targets are easy, but the jokes land and the jabs leave some bruising, whether it's the tacit dismissal of US consumers having any qualms about eating genetically modified food ("If it's cheap, they'll eat it," and "It's all edible except the squeal"), or the extreme level of conviction of some of the privileged ALF kids, like rail-thin Silver (Devon Bostick), who goes days without eating to minimize his footprint and chronically passes out (Jay: "I admire your conviction, Silver, but your pallid complexion concerns me"). There's also one laugh-out-loud moment in a Mirando situation room where everyone's watching the events unfold in Seoul and each person present in the room assumes the exact position of a counterpart in the famous shot of President Obama and others watching the raid that took out Bin Laden, complete with Swinton's Lucy with her hand over her mouth just like Hillary Clinton and madman Dr. Johnny taking the Joe Biden spot. There's no reason for it other than a quick sight gag, but it's the best visual joke of its kind since the one-sheet for THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 copying THE BREAKFAST CLUB or the "everybody rips everybody else off" line in SWINGERS that's immediately followed by the cast recreating the RESERVOIR DOGS opening credits.
Sometimes Bong dampens the mood by going too dark, particularly in a horrifying and truly unsettling scene where a terrified Okja is subjected to a forced mating overseen by a drunk, cackling, rolling-around-on-the-floor Dr. Johnny. Gyllenhaal is clearly enjoying himself here, and his character's screechy, grating, whiny voice turning into Gyllenhaal's regular voice when Dr. Johnny goes in front of the camera is a amusing running gag, but the actor's performance might be a little too broad, frequently crossing the line into the grotesque, leaving zero room for any subtlety or nuance. Both of Swinton's characters are varying degrees of shrieking monsters (Nancy: "Fuck you, we're very proud of our accomplishments!" she yells in a warehouse full of genetically modified carcasses and pig parts, a blistering bit of absurdist humor that's as close as OKJA gets to "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!") that seem to spring from her Oscar-winning performance in MICHAEL CLAYTON, but she keeps it in check, even if there's no real reason she has to play twins other than Bong indulging his top-billed star who also has a producer credit on the film. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, enters the film as Talk Show Robin Williams and just escalates it further from there. There's a couple of riveting action set pieces in Mija's pursuit of Okja, and indeed, the heart and soul of the film is young An, who has a strong resemblance to Bong's now grown-up HOST and SNOWPIERCER co-star Ko Asung. An turns in a remarkable performance as a lonely, sensitive girl willing to go to the ends of the earth to save her only friend. It helps that Okja herself is a convincingly CGI'd creation in a strange, uneven action/horror/comedy/monster movie/corporate satire that tries to be too many things at once, and while it does trip over itself and teeters on the verge of collapsing into a hot mess on a few occasions, it manages to pull pretty much all of them off.
WAR MACHINE (US - 2017) Written and directed by David Michod. Cast: Brad Pitt, Ben Kingsley, Tilda Swinton, Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, John Magaro, Scoot McNairy, Will Poulter, Alan Ruck, Lakeith Stanfield, Meg Tilly, Emory Cohen, RJ Cyler, Anthony Hayes, Josh Stewart, Pico Alexander, Daniel Betts, Griffin Dunne, Aymen Hamdouchi, Nicholas Jones, Hopper Penn, Sian Thomas, Georgina Rylance. (Unrated, 122 mins)
Built around the most cartoonish and self-indulgent performance of Brad Pitt's career, the muddled WAR MACHINE, the most high-profile Netflix Original film yet, is another in a long line of absurdist political satires that try to poke fun at government and military institutions and end up coming off as irritatingly smug and self-satisfied. With rare exceptions like Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and Barry Levinson's WAG THE DOG (1997)--films that found the right tone, stuck with it, and didn't get sidetracked by ham-fisted messaging--this subgenre is filled with the misbegotten likes of WRONG IS RIGHT (1982), WAR, INC (2008), and THE INTERVIEW (2014) to name a few, though in all fairness, WRONG IS RIGHT might actually be worth another look as some of its ludicrous plot has become reality much like entertainment-driven TV news has in the decades since NETWORK (1976). "Inspired" by the book The Operators, Michael Hastings' expansion of his 2010 Rolling Stone article "The Runaway General," WAR MACHINE stars Pitt as four-star Army Gen. Glen McMahon, a fictional stand-in for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was appointed head of Coalition Forces in Afghanistan in 2009. McMahon doesn't feel the war is being won because "it's not being led," and despite orders from President Obama, along with reminders from the US ambassador to Afghanistan (Alan Ruck), and advisers who never actually served, McMahon ignores the plan to "assess" the situation and Obama's wish to wrap it up and "bring it on home," and instead plans to ask for 40,000 more troops and take control of Helmand Province and Qandahar, two areas that the coalition has already written off. McMahon's chief duty is counter-insurgency or, as narrator Sean Cullen (Scoot McNairy), a fictionalized Hastings, puts it, "Try to convince the country you've invaded that you're actually here to help."
McMahon is accompanied by his close-knit team of generals and soldiers who all come across as fawning sycophants to this military legend--nicknamed "The Glenimal"--none more disturbingly devoted than anger management case Gen. Greg Pulver (Anthony Michael Hall), a character based on future disgraced Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn/Pulver is portrayed here as a raging asshole with a dedication to McMahon that borders on a stalking man-crush. There's also de facto PR guys Staggart (John Magaro) and Little (Topher Grace, cast radically against type as "Topher Grace"), but all of them take a backseat to Pitt's scenery chewing. Pitt's McMahon is so far removed from the real McChrystal that changing his name was a no-brainer: he barks and grunts like the actor's Aldo Raine in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, gesticulates with his right hand balled up in a claw, walks around in a bow-legged strut, makes pained faces, and generally acts and moves like a combination of Popeye and Sterling Hayden's Gen. Jack D. Ripper from DR. STRANGELOVE if Ripper just had a stroke. It's an overly broad performance more fitting for an SNL guest-hosting gig, and it might've worked if writer/director David Michod could've settled on a tone.
The satirical elements work best in the early-going, with McMahon introduced taking a shit before chest-out strutting through the airport to the tune of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's "Confused," or McMahon meeting Afghan president Hamid Karzai (Ben Kingsley) and giving him a moment to finish praying until it's revealed that the president is not kneeling toward Mecca, but actually trying to set up his new Blu-ray player (Karzai is later seen sick in bed laughing hysterically at DUMB AND DUMBER). McMahon also gets off a few good zingers like walking into a command center and scoffing at what's on TV, saying "Let's lose the Fox News...we don't need a bunch of angry perverts yelling at us all day." But it doesn't take long for Michod to lose focus, as the satire is largely abandoned in favor of making a serious look at McMahon's ambitions blowing up in his face. His wife (Meg Tilly) spends their 30th anniversary lamenting that, by her calculations, they've spent an average of 30 days a year together for the previous eight years, and Cullen tags along on a trip to Europe to visit other coalition government officials, during which time McMahon and everyone else have a few too many drinks at a Paris bar and start openly trash-talking President Obama and VP Joe Biden (Hillary Clinton is also a character, played by Sian Thomas, though she's largely left alone and depicted as an image-conscious company woman). The resulting article ended McChrystal's military career, but even as the same fate befalls McMahon, the biggest question you might have is why is the story being told this way? As things get more serious and events start becoming less absurd and more centered on actual incidents, Pitt's mannered, over-the-top performance starts to resemble talk-show Robin Williams, a sure sign that Michod, the Australian auteur behind 2010's ANIMAL KINGDOM and 2014's underrated THE ROVER, simply deferred to the wishes of producer Brad Pitt regarding how star Brad Pitt should treat the material. Considering his degree of fame and tabloid notoriety, Pitt is an actor who relishes offbeat and decidedly non-mainstream projects (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, KILLING THEM SOFTLY, THE COUNSELOR, BY THE SEA). In the end, WAR MACHINE is less a cutting, cynical, satirical look at the military and war and more a Brad Pitt vanity project where the actor is clearly off on his own in some other movie instead of the one his director and co-stars are working on.
The finale to Uwe Boll and Brendan Fletcher's RAMPAGE trilogy is the clumsiest and preachiest yet. On the positive side, Boll seems to be walking back his gushing admiration for Fletcher's insane lone-wolf domestic terrorist Bill Williamson. Where the first sequel RAMPAGE: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT felt like a love letter to mass shooters, PRESIDENT DOWN at least admits that words and actions have consequences and by the end, Bill is most certainly the villain with a lot of blood on his hands. But the road there is paved with some welcome bits of old-school Boll idiocy that's not helped by the director struggling with his lowest budget yet. His German tax shelter heyday of being able to afford the likes of Ben Kingsley, Jason Statham, and Burt Reynolds a fading memory, Boll can't even corral cheap labor on the level of past RAMPAGE co-stars like Matt Frewer or Lochlyn Munro. Boll unsuccessfully tried to crowdfund the film--originally titled RAMPAGE 3: NO MERCY--on Indiegogo and Kickstarter but failed to meet his goal, leading to an inevitable YouTube meltdown excoriating fans for giving their money to Hollywood studios while not helping out important artists like Dr. Uwe Boll. So with a lot less money at his disposal, Boll relies heavily on flashbacks and stock footage from the first two films, and mainly has Fletcher's Bill posting YouTube rants from his hiding place in the middle of nowhere, which may be the perfect metaphor for 2016 Uwe Boll.
Long thought dead after the events of the previous film, Bill emerges from hiding to assassinate the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense during a speech to Congress. Of course, how he manages to accomplish this is a mystery, since it happens offscreen. The FBI, vowing to get to the bottom of the assassinations, assigns two--yes, two--agents, Molokai (Steve Baran) and Jones (Ryan McDonnell) and a Bureau computer expert (Scott Patey) to run the investigation out of what looks like an underfunded police precinct. Bill manages to hack into their computer system with the help of a mole inside the FBI, and once Molokai and Jones (worst cop show title ever?) spot him on some surveillance footage outside the White House, he starts taunting them from his undisclosed location and threatening their families. Unfortunately, the agents are unable to convince their bosses that Bill is the culprit because a publicity-hogging ISIS claims responsibility for the assassinations, prompting the reactionary new Commander-in-Chief to round up all the Muslims and Syrian refugees in the US, close all the mosques, and nuke the Middle East "with the full support of Russia and China." The notion of an irrational, knee-jerk US President content with blowing up a good chunk of the world is an uncomfortably prescient notion that Boll completely sidesteps and never mentions again. There's no satire, no poking people with sticks--instead, the focus is on Molokai and Jones finding out where Bill is hiding and leading a raid where of course, Bill gets the edge on everyone, but Jones makes it easy by not even bothering to wear a bulletproof vest.
The message is muddled: Bill says he wants a world without violence in a film that opens with him shooting a random pedestrian in cold blood and concludes with him killing about a hundred FBI agents. Nothing here makes sense: why does Bill suddenly have a girlfriend (Crystal Lowe) and a kid? And how can he be presumed dead when he's actively posting videos to his YouTube channel to his legion of supporters? And when news of the assassinations of the President, VP, and Defense Secretary hits the wire, watch the only two news anchors seen in the film exclaim "Oh my God! The President is dead!" as the camera pans down to her reading the info off of a second page, as if that news a) would come over a teletype in 2016, and b) would be relegated to the second page. And are we to believe that the only two guys investigating the murder of the President, VP and Defense Secretary would exit a building and be confronted by one reporter? And it's one of the two news anchors we just saw? Boll ineptly inserts talking points about gun control and police brutality, but then he and Fletcher (they co-wrote the script together) go off on tangents about Hollywood's richest celebrities. There's jabs at Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston, and the murders of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Mark Zuckerberg among others are announced over the course of the film. These bits sound less like legitimate grievances about tabloid culture and more like a case of sour grapes from Boll and Fletcher because they aren't in the club. Canadian actor Fletcher's been around since the late '90s and was in hits like AIR BUD and FREDDY VS. JASON, and some Canadian arthouse films. He's also made eight movies with Uwe Boll. Dude, maybe that's why you're not in the club. You were in THE REVENANT (notice that Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't make Bill's Hollywood shit list). Maybe take a break from Uwe and start hanging out with Leo or Alejandro Inarritu a little more. You'll have time: Boll was so angry about the lack of fan support for the funding of RAMPAGE: PRESIDENT DOWN that he announced it would be his final film. Indeed, a post-credits stinger finds a pensive Boll tipping his hat to the camera and walking into the sunset. If that's the case, let me just say that for all your many, many faults, you were certainly never boring, Dr. Boll. Thanks for everything. I guess. (Unrated, 100 mins)
A BIGGER SPLASH (Italy/France - 2016)
The first English-language work by acclaimed Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino reunites the director with Tilda Swinton, the star of his 2009 art-house breakthough I AM LOVE. Where that film showcased the director's adoration of all things Stanley Kubrick and Alain Resnais before settling into a sort-of Luchino Visconti autopilot mode (faux-Visconti is something THE GREAT BEAUTY director Paolo Sorrentino does a lot better), A BIGGER SPLASH feels a lot like the 1990s Bernardo Bertolucci that made THE SHELTERING SKY and STEALING BEAUTY. A remake of Jacques Deray's 1969 film LA PISCINE (released in the US as THE SWIMMING POOL), A BIGGER SPLASH is essentially one of these European films where some wealthy bourgeois types get together and things escalate into a powderkeg of unresolved issues and psychosexual mind games. Aging glam rock legend Marianne Lane (Swinton) blows out her voice on tour and has to take a significant amount of time off to recover from vocal cord surgery. She can only speak at a whisper and is convalescing on Pantelleria, off the coast of Sicily with her younger lover, photographer/filmmaker Paul De Smedt (Matthias Schoenaerts). Their days are spent lounging naked by the pool, getting massages, reading, and having a lot of sex until they get an unannounced visit from Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes), Marianne's producer and ex-boyfriend, who's brought along Penelope (Dakota Johnson), the 22-year-old daughter he only recently found out he had. The boisterous, gregarious Harry brings a manic and disruptive presence to their quiet, idyllic getaway, even inviting a couple of other people--Mireille (Aurore Clement) and Sylvie (Lila McMenamy)--along, and it's clear that there's a past between these people that's still gnawing at both Harry and Paul. There's also numerous instances of Harry acting in a not-fatherly way with Penelope, and an uncomfortably close rendition of "Unforgettable" between the two at a karaoke bar creeps out Marianne enough that she confronts him, leading to Harry shouting "I'm not fucking my daughter!" in front of a bunch of people in the street. As Harry keeps professing his love for Marianne, Paul and Penelope go off exploring on their own, and anyone who's ever seen a movie before can see that things aren't going to end well.
Despite the serious subject matter, A BIGGER SPLASH is fairly lighthearted a lot of the time, right down to its slapsticky title that seems more fitting for a romantic comedy. It certainly doesn't portend the shift the story takes in the last 35 or 40 minutes, when an unexpected event occurs that gets the local police involved. A lot of this is due to a rambunctious performance by Fiennes, whose Harry is really a grating, insufferable asshole but the actor finds ways to make you like him and even feel sorry for him. Whether he's yammering on about his sexual exploits (it's suggested that Mireille and Sylvie, who may be mother and daughter, are among his conquests), humble-bragging about his uncredited contributions to the Rolling Stones' 1994 album Voodoo Lounge, or busting out the moves like Jagger while blasting their 1980 hit "Emotional Rescue" (a scene that must be seen to believed), Fiennes is the unabashed show-stealer here and even dominates the film when he's not onscreen. Working with screenwriter David Kajganich (whose credits include, of all things, the underrated 2009 horror movie BLOOD CREEK), Guadagnino leaves enough ambiguity to keep an audience discussing the events after the film is over, and manages to keep things focused even with the many changes in tone and some showboating filmmaking techniques in the early going, things that are mainly used when Fiennes is onscreen to accentuate what a loud jackass Harry can be. Guadagnino, Kajganich, Swinton, and Johnson are tentatively reuniting for the latest announced incarnation of the perpetually in-development remake of Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA. (R, 125 mins)
THE DARKNESS
(US - 2016)
With 2005's WOLF CREEK, Australian filmmaker Greg McLean seemed to be a new voice in horror, but that voice has had nothing to say for several years running. His follow-up film, the outstanding killer crocodile flick ROGUE, was buried by the Weinsteins, and McLean has yet to bounce back, with another six years passing before he resurfaced with the belated and over-the-top WOLF CREEK 2. Working with horror factory Blumhouse, THE DARKNESS is McLean's first Hollywood production and it couldn't possibly be any more predictably generic and lazy. During a family trip to the Grand Canyon, autistic Mikey Taylor (David Mazouz) finds some rocks with strange symbols and takes them as souvenirs. It isn't long before paranormal activity manifests itself back home, with Mikey talking to an unseen entity called "Jenny," and sooty handprints turning up all over the house. Dad Peter (Kevin Bacon, visibly bored) and Mom Bronny (Radha Mitchell) are too preoccupied to notice the supernatural goings-on or that their angry older daughter Stephanie (Lucy Fry) is bulimic and saving containers of her purgings under her bed as a way of acting out her resentment toward Mikey. After more shenanigans, like a possessed Mikey starting a fire and trying to kill his grandmother's cat, and all manner of standard-issue Blumhouse jump scares, Bronny discovers that some Anasazi curse has latched itself to Mikey and starts to believe this is some kind of karmic retribution over her past alcoholism (she falls off the wagon) and Peter's past infidelity (and he's tempted again by young intern at work).
Taking a page from THE EXORCIST in the way the demon enters a world in disarray, making it easy to possess Regan, McLean and co-writers S.P. Krause and Shayne Armstrong (the latter two co-wrote the Australian "sharks-in-a-supermarket" opus BAIT) toy with the idea of the demonic invasion of the home being a response to the various unspoken dysfunctions in the family. But they don't really do anything with it and everything is resolved too easily to get to the rote horror histrionics. Keeping your vomit in bags and tupperware containers under your bed is pretty odd, but hey, one visit to a therapist and moody, abrasive Stephanie is healthy and chipper. Instead, the filmmakers follow a Blumhouse checklist right down to the last-15-minutes introduction of a pair of eccentric demonology experts who do a quick drive-by exposition drop before an impromptu exorcism of the house. The film's twists and turns come straight out of Plot Convenience Playhouse. Is Paul Reiser only in this for a few scenes as Peter's fist-bumping, asshole boss just because the boss has a wife (Ming-Na Wen) who happens to have recently started pursuing an interest in Hopi Indian mythology? Well, that immediately qualifies her as an expert to advise Bronny after she figures out they're being haunted by a pissed-off Anasazi spirit. What are the odds? It's that kind of movie. THE DARKNESS plays like a Blumhouse sampler platter with a dash of INSIDIOUS and a scoop of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, but topped off with a generous sprinkling of some old-fashioned POLTERGEIST to make a total shit sandwich of a horror movie. It's a film that doesn't even try, and it's almost perversely impressive how it manages to go an entire 90 minutes without pursuing a single original idea. Where did THE DARKNESS go wrong? Who cares? Blumhouse and Greg McLean certainly don't. (PG-13, 92 mins)
THE ZERO THEOREM (UK/Romania/France - 2014) Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Pat Rushin and Terry Gilliam. Cast: Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Lucas Hedges, Matt Damon, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Peter Stormare, Emil Hostina, Pavlic Nemes, Dana Rogoz. (R, 106 mins)
A Terry Gilliam film for those who have never seen a Terry Gilliam film, THE ZERO THEOREM is the sort of dystopian sci-fi nightmare that can't help but feel like reheated leftovers coming from the guy who gave us the 1985 masterpiece BRAZIL. For longtime Gilliam devotees who have followed the auteur's post-Monty Python work for the last 35 or so years, THE ZERO THEOREM will have the distinct feeling of a classic rock act releasing a "give 'em what they want" record after several years away. Known as much for his groundbreaking vision as for the obstacles that have stood in his way over the years--battling Universal execs over BRAZIL, the collapse of his THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE chronicled in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA (2002), clashing with Harvey Weinstein over THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005), and restructuring THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (2009) when Heath Ledger died a third of the way into filming--the independently-financed THE ZERO THEOREM is a rare example of Gilliam being able to make exactly the film he wanted to make, with minimal interference. That's all the more reason that the underwhelming result is a bit on the disappointing side. With a budget reportedly in the vicinity of just $10 million--shoestring by today's standards--Gilliam has miraculously fashioned an arresting visual experience. But when a sci-fi film is released in 2014 and much of the plot hinges on virtual reality, it's a pretty safe bet you're working from a script that's been kicking around for a while. University of Central Florida English prof and screenwriting neophyte Pat Rushin gave his ZERO THEOREM script to producer Richard Zanuck way back in 2004. It didn't end up in Gilliam's hands until 2009 and it's hard telling just how much of Rushin's original script remains (Gilliam is also credited with "additional dialogues"). But even if you factor out the dated subject of virtual reality, Gilliam just doesn't seem like he's bringing his A-game to this one.
That's not to say it's a bad movie, but Gilliam just has nothing significant to say. THE ZERO THEOREM is packed with visual and thematic callbacks to earlier Gilliam films (most notably BRAZIL, 1991's THE FISHER KING and 1995's 12 MONKEYS, and eagle-eyed viewers will spot a quick cameo by Gilliam's late FISHER KING star Robin Williams), but not in a way that advances the film or Gilliam as an artist. Instead, it's done in a way that makes what was once innovative and groundbreaking seem uninspired and stale. In a future that's equal parts BRAZIL, BLADE RUNNER and the Martian red-light district in Paul Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL, ManCom worker drone/"entity cruncher" Qohan Leth (Christoph Waltz) lives in the ruins of a fire-ravaged church that was abandoned by a sect of monks who took a vow of silence (in one of the film's few inspired moments, Leth quips that "No one broke the silence to yell 'Fire!'"). Leth works as a mathematician of sorts at a Kafka-esque workspace that looks like a video game console. He pleads for a work-at-home assignment because he's waiting for a special phone call--a phone call he's been waiting on for years--and doesn't want to miss it. He gets his wish, and is assigned by his jokey ("I'm a few raisins short of a full scoop!") but condescending supervisor Joby (David Thewlis) to work on finding "The Zero Theorem," a guaranteed dead-end of an equation that manages to defeat anyone who attempts to solve it. Leth slowly loses his mind as he obsessively tries and fails to conquer the Zero Theorem, all while dealing with the impossibly demanding upload schedule, represented by calls from a judgmental-sounding automated computer voice. Sensing that Leth is stressed out, Joby has Bainsley (Melanie Thierry) visit him. Leth once met Bainsley at a party of Joby's that he reluctantly attended, and he's crushed when he eventually learns she's a sex worker who was paid to see him. He also gets intrusive visits from ManCom intern Bob (Lucas Hedges), the 15-year-old son of ManCom manager Management (Matt Damon).
That Damon's cold, unfeeling manager character is actually named "Management" is a pretty solid indicator of just how heavy-handed the dark-humored elements of THE ZERO THEOREM can be. Tilda Swinton also turns up, still sporting her SNOWPIERCER teeth, as Leth's online therapist, named "Dr. Shrink-ROM." Really? Subtlety is not the name of Gilliam's game here. The dated concepts, the Gilliam's Greatest Hits selections (at least three supporting characters are almost identical variants of those seen in BRAZIL), and the ham-fisted ways he demonstrates the dehumanized nature of Leth's corporate-saturated world that's a garish interpretation of our own conspire to present a Terry Gilliam that may have reached that late-period Stanley Kubrick or present-day George Romero/Terrence Malick tipping point where an influential, trail-blazing genius is getting a little older and is starting to come off like a guy who doesn't seem to get out much.
While it has a sizable number of issues on the writing front, THE ZERO THEOREM does score in a strictly visual sense. The decaying church that Leth calls home is marvel of production design, and a ghoulish, hairless Waltz, looking like a futuristic Nosferatu, has never been creepier. Waltz plays Leth as aggressively unlikable as possible and it's a challenge for the actor to keep the audience focused on a thoroughly irritating and unappealing character who generates little sympathy. Leth speaks in plurals, constantly referring to himself as "we" and "us," and he's always testing the patience of those around him with his extreme OCD ways. It's a tough performance, and even though the endless tics and mannerisms bring to mind Brad Pitt's Jeffrey Goines in 12 MONKEYS, the great Waltz is up to the task, which helps as it's largely The Christoph Waltz Show throughout. The actors and the production design team persevere through a bit of a misfire that has a difficult time overcoming its "been there, done that" vibe. Gilliam is past the point of proving himself, and by no means is THE ZERO THEOREM an exercise in futility like, say, a new Dario Argento film. At 73, Gilliam has every right to coast into his emeritus years by raiding his back catalog if that's what he wants to do, but I don't think it's demanding too much to expect something a little more substantive from someone of his stature. But then, it's not like Gilliam's been on a roll lately: PARNASSUS was his first good film since 1998's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, with 2005 giving us the Gilliam career-nadir double-shot of THE BROTHERS GRIMM and TIDELAND. PARNASSUS was a welcome return to the filmmaker's fun, ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN side and a step in the right direction. Five years later with THE ZERO THEOREM, and Gilliam is simply running in place.
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (UK/Germany/Greece/France - 2014)
A moody, melancholy vampire film as only Jim Jarmusch could make, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE has almost no concern with the horror angle or any other genre trends. Jarmusch's centuries-old protagonists--Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston)--have loved one another through time and have been witness to countless historical and cultural touchstones: they knew Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, Adam worked with Nikola Tesla, ghost-composed pieces for Schubert, and was an early supporter of his friend Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. They've drifted apart, with Eve living in Tangier and Adam in Detroit. She passes her days devouring great literature and he holes up in his dilapidated Brush Park mansion with his extensive collection of guitars, recording shoegazing garage rock instrumentals. A limitlessly-wealthy shut-in, he gets his necessities from local rock club kid Ian (Anton Yelchin) and procures blood at a local hospital from hematologist Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright). Bored in Tangier, seemingly destined to live forever, and encouraged by her vampire mentor and blood supplier Marlowe (John Hurt), Eve flies to Detroit to rekindle her romance with Adam, but everything gets thrown in jeopardy with the arrival of her irresponsible, hard-partying sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) from Los Angeles.
Jarmusch tells his tale with a significant amount of dark and deadpan humor that could come across as "cute" in the wrong hands but he plays it perfectly, with everything from Eve and Adam enjoying frozen bloodcicles to Adam sounding not at all like the cultured immortal he is when he expresses his everyman hate for his de-facto sister-in-law and complains that their uninvited, imposing houseguest is "drinking all the O-negative." Jarmusch makes very effective use of Detroit locations, not merely shooting there but incorporating the city's culture, blight, and wasteland-like surroundings into the story. Adam takes Eve on a tour of crumbling and decaying Detroit landmarks like the Packard Plant and the old Michigan Theater, and they serve as metaphors for relics of a long-gone day, much like Adam and Eve themselves. Unlike the misanthropic, dour Adam, Eve sees beauty in the ruins and its cultural significance ("I love Jack White!" she exclaims as Adam shows her the musician's childhood home in a now-rundown neighborhood). Swinton and Hiddleston are excellent in this very offbeat genre piece that's unlike any vampire film you've seen. Like most Jarmusch films, it's extremely slowly-paced, very much the distinct work of its maker, and mostly quite rewarding in the end. (R, 123 mins)
FADING GIGOLO (US - 2014)
An odd, low-key comedy written, directed by, and starring John Turturro, FADING GIGOLO seems like it's going for goofy and raunchy early on, but it settles into a very quiet and leisurely-paced (almost to a fault) character piece. Turturro's film is set in the kind of Brooklyn you don't see much of in the movies anymore, very nicely shot by Marco Pontecorvo, son of legendary Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo (THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS) and has a definite Woody Allen influence, which even extends to Allen co-starring in one of the rare occasions over his 50-year career that he's acting in a film he didn't write and/or direct (the last were Douglas McGrath's barely-released COMPANY MAN and Alfonso Arau's even less-seen PICKING UP THE PIECES, both back in 2000). Allen is Murray Schwartz, an aging Brooklyn bookstore owner who's closing up shop and in dire need of money. His bisexual dermatologist (Sharon Stone) happens to tell him that she and her girlfriend (Sofia Vergara) are interested in a menage-a-trois, prompting Murray to offer the services of his nice-guy florist pal Fioravante (Turturro). Before long, Fioravante becomes a sought-after Brooklyn gigolo with Murray his unlikely pimp (if this sounds like a nebbishy version of the HBO series HUNG, you're right), but things get complicated when Fioravante develops feelings for a Rabbi's widow (a de-glammed Vanessa Paradis), who's being courted by an angry Hasidic beat cop (Liev Schreiber).
The premise starts out like an R-rated sitcom and has some funny moments from Allen, coming up with would-be intimidating pimp names for himself, such as "Iceberg," and "Bookmaster Moe." But once Fioravante starts pining for the widow, the laughs get dialed down quite a bit and a somber Turturro frequently comes off like a black hole in the center of his own movie, almost like he knew Allen would steal all the scenes, so he's not even going to try. But even some of Allen's scenes don't work all that well, particularly a dreadful sequence where he's hauled off to some Hasidic kangaroo court with his lawyer (Bob Balaban). Fioravante's transformation from shy homebody to sexual dynamo seems forced, as does Turturro casting himself as someone that Brooklyn's sexiest, richest wives can't resist. FADING GIGOLO is a strange film that never settles on a tone and never really comes together, but Allen seems to be enjoying himself, even if this is just a minor footnote to his long and storied career. Allen's onscreen appearances, even in his own films, are a rarity these days and maybe if this was called FADING PIMP and focused on him, it would've been a bit more successful. This ended up being a small arthouse sleeper hit for Cannon cover band Millennium over the spring and summer of 2014, almost breaking into wide release like the company's BERNIE after landing in the top 15 on just 356 screens. (R, 90 mins)
THE SACRAMENT (US - 2014)
Ti West got a lot of attention in the cult horror scene with his impressive THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009), a very creepy and very methodically-paced '80s throwback that seems to have spawned a "slow-burn" movement in the genre: films where long periods of time pass with very little happening. An assured director uses this to ramp up the tension, and while it worked with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, it failed with West's follow-up THE INNKEEPERS (2012), an inexplicably acclaimed horror film that was all slow-burn and nothing else. West, in many ways the Wes Anderson of horror, is so revered and coddled so gingerly with kid gloves by both critics and cult horror hipsters that it often seems like his career was granted by the Make-a-Wish Foundation. On the basis of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, I want to like Ti West's films (he also directed and disowned the long-shelved CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER), but I just can't get on the bandwagon. Something's just not working for me when it comes to his films and I don't know if it's the films themselves or that everyone seems to be seeing some kind of magic that's eluding me.
Boasting the opening credit "Eli Roth Presents," which is probably the point where the target audience had seen enough to conclude that it was a new masterpiece of modern horror and the Academy should bestow its first Participation Oscar to its maker, West's latest, THE SACRAMENT, may be the most pointless film of the year. And in using the 1978 Jonestown tragedy in Guyana as the story template, I can't imagine a more dead-on metaphor for the Kool-Aid guzzling, fanboy adoration of West's work. Here we have a film specifically engineered for the uninformed or those younger genre fans who are blithely unaware of anything that happened prior to their lifetime. If you've been waiting patiently for Jonestown recreated as a found footage/faux-doc--and if you have, then you're not quite ready to run with the grownups--then THE SACRAMENT is for you. Sure, it's set in the present day and has two Vice staffers (AJ Bowen and the inevitable Joe Swanberg) tagging along to make a doc with a colleague (Kentucker Audley) whose recovering drug addict sister (Amy Seimetz) has run off with the cult. And yes, it changes the name of the cult's compound from Jonestown to Eden Parish and the messianic leader is known simply as "Father," but he's Jim Jones, right down to the folksy drawl, the black hair, and the dark glasses. Gene Jones (best known as the gas station clerk in the "friendo" coin toss scene in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) is OK in the role, but he doesn't do anything that Powers Boothe didn't already do in the then-topical 1980 TV-movie GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES or, for that matter, Stuart Whitman as "Jim Johnson" in the spectacularly trashy GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED (also 1980). But everything you know about Jonestown, right down to the cult members being held captive, the brainwashing, the Kool-Aid, the sex, and the drugs, is all here. There's nothing surprising. If you know the story of Jonestown, then you know what's exactly what's going to happen in THE SACRAMENT. So who is this movie for? Why does it exist? Why retell this story now, in this fashion? If West thinks the faux-doc angle with obligatory CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST/BLAIR WITCH PROJECT dropped-camera shots justifies a rudimentary, connect-the-dots, Wikipedia retelling of the story--and even the would-be doc stuff is handled erratically and inconsistently--then I'm calling bullshit on the entire Ti West mythos. In fact, I may even take it one step further and go full ROOM 237 and say THE SACRAMENT is West's confession that he's all smoke and mirrors, that he's been punking us all along, and that there really is nothing there. (R, 99 mins)
Directed by Bong Joon Ho. Written by Bong Joon Ho and Kelly Masterson. Cast: Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Ko Asung, Alison Pill, Luke Pasqualino, Vlad Ivanov, Adnon Haskovic, Emma Levie, Clark Middleton, Tomas Lemarquis, Paul Lazar, Steve Park, Marcanthonee Jon Reis, Karel Vasely. (R, 126 mins)
The instant cult classic of the summer, the $40 million SNOWPIERCER was released in its native South Korea and the rest of Asia a year ago, where it became a blockbuster hit. It opened in Europe not long after, but its US release hit a roadblock. The Weinstein Company acquired the US distribution rights, but expressed concern over its commercial viability if it was to get a wide release. Harvey Weinstein wanted changes made, demanding the 126-minute running time be cut down to 100 minutes with voiceover exposition added at the beginning and end--in short, the same demands he made on Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTER. SNOWPIERCER director Bong Joon Ho (MEMORIES OF MURDER, THE HOST), making his (for the most part) English-language debut, refused to comply. Weinstein made the changes anyway and focus-grouped both cuts of the film to test audiences. When Bong's version got a better response, Weinstein agreed to release the director's cut, but demoted the film to Radius/TWC, the company's B-movie/genre outfit, presumably for VOD and a brief theatrical run. Word of the film's purported burial spread online and that, coupled with overwhelmingly positive critical reviews, the fact that it was a huge hit overseas, and a knockout US trailer, led to a groundswell of interest from North American audiences who wanted to see the film. It opened on eight screens two weeks ago, expanding to 250 last week, and now it's on VOD in what the Weinstein Company is spinning as a "bold new distribution platform," or some such industry jargon. Maybe it was planned all along, the same way Paramount released PARANORMAL ACTIVITY only because we "demanded" it, or maybe Weinstein's just being a bullying dick, but regardless, SNOWPIERCER is finally being made accessible stateside.
First off, let's not kid ourselves: there's no way this was going to play as a wide-release summer blockbuster, even if Bong relented and cut 26 minutes out of it. Length is not the issue in terms of commercial viability, especially when TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION runs nearly three hours. No, SNOWPIERCER is just a strange film. It exists in that place that precious few films can thrive, especially in today's cinematic culture: the tiny space between the multiplex and the arthouse. There's enough action to please the blockbuster crowd, and SNOWPIERCER has its own singularly unique vision and imagination. But it hammers its points so hard that its overtly aggressive lack of subtlety almost becomes comical at times. Of course, it's intentionally heavy-handed in its mission and its points are valid, but this kind of metaphorical narrative can spill over into self-parody if it's not handled the right way. Bong never loses control of the story, but it goes in directions that will fly just fine in the art house but probably elicit eye-rolling and dismissive snickers in a packed multiplex. That's not a judgment on the intelligence of a movie audience--indeed, SNOWPIERCER, while enormously entertaining and a film I'll revisit frequently, isn't quite as smart or deep as it thinks it is--it's just an observation on a distributor understanding moviegoer expectations and knowing its target audience. Releasing this nationwide on 3000 screens would've resulted in a box-office flop. By letting word-of-mouth spread, SNOWPIERCER has the potential to gain momentum and become something we don't see much of anymore: a genuine sleeper hit.
In the year 2014, the governments of the world worked together to disperse a cooling agent called CW-7 into Earth's atmosphere as a way to combat escalating temperatures caused by global warming. It worked a little too well, freezing the planet and rendering humanity extinct. The relatively few survivors are corralled onto The Rattling Ark, an impossibly-long supertrain on an equally impossible track that circles the entire planet over the course of a year. Cut to 2031, and the Rattling Ark is a high-speed symbol of the world's economic and social structure: it churns in perpetuity, with its own ecosystem and food sources, gathering water from the snow it filters from the exterior of the train, and seemingly self-propelled so long as everyone and everything are in their right place. Order must be kept. The privileged live in comfort toward the front of the train, the underclass "freeloaders" are herded in the rear in horrific living conditions The front dine on sushi, they frequent salons, and their children attend school, the rear subsist on gelatinous "protein bars" made of ground-up insects and vermin and are routinely beaten and subjugated by ruthless, militarized security officials. The denizens of the tail, led by Curtis (Chris Evans), Edgar (Jamie Bell), and the wise Gilliam (John Hurt) are plotting a takeover of the train to make it to the front and gain control of "The Sacred Engine." Mason (Tilda Swinton) is the representative of the Rattling Ark's engineer, the revered Wilford the Benevolent (Ed Harris), the limitlessly wealthy magnate who designed the train and the global track and, as she often reminds those in the tail, was kind enough to allow them to live. Mason and her goonish guards try to quash the uprising but it backfires, and Curtis and company take Mason hostage and start moving up car by car with the help of Namgoong (Bong regular Song Kang Ho), who's been held in the prisoner car with his daughter Yona (Ko Asung, who also played Song's daughter in THE HOST). Both are addicted to a drug called Kronole, which Curtis uses to bribe Nangoong into aiding their cause. Nangoong helped design the lock system on the train and knows how to get through each doors leading to each car, but has his own idea about what to do when they finally get to the front.
Essentially a REVOLT ON THE DYSTOPIAN EXPRESS or THE SACRED ENGINE THAT COULD, if you will, SNOWPIERCER is pretty blunt in its politics: the one-percenters rule the world and will do what they have to do maintain order and keep everyone in their place (it's certainly no accident that there's no middle-class on the Rattling Ark). It's not subtle in its messaging, which is rather obvious and ham-fisted to the point that your enjoyment of the film is probably predicated on where you stand on the political spectrum. Needless to say, this is probably not a film that's going to play well with the Fox News crowd (SPOILER ALERT: Swinton's Mason is not the hero). SNOWPIERCER's strengths lie the sheer audacity of its story and its presentation, incorporating elements of class struggle, post-apocalyptic nightmare, and dark humor bordering on absurdism. It's equal parts Terry Gilliam (as in Hurt's character's surname), Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Luis Bunuel. It may not be the best film of the summer, but you won't find one that's more ambitious, visionary, and just plain odd.
Based on the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, SNOWPIERCER was scripted by Bong and Kelly Masterson (BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD). The cast is excellent across the board, headed by a never-better Evans, who gets solid support from Hurt, Bell, Song, Ko, and Octavia Spencer as a mother whose son is taken to the front of the train for undisclosed reasons after Wilford the Benevolent's sinister attack dog Claude (Emma Levie) sizes him up with a measuring tape and has him taken away. As good as everyone is, they all take a backseat to an absolutely brilliant performance by Swinton, who's unforgettable as the ruthless Mason. Looking like a political cartoonist's mean-spirited caricature of Margaret Thatcher with a vocal impression to match and a case of the crazy eyes to rival Eva Green in 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, Swinton owns SNOWPIERCER whenever she's onscreen (though honorable mention must go to Alison Pill as a deranged teacher indoctrinating the children with the philosophy of Wilford). Whether she's coldly reciting the rules of the train ("Everyone in their place!") or gleefully awaiting the outcome of a clash between the rear dwellers and her officers ("Precisely 74% of you shall die...this is going to be good!") or hospitably offering sushi after she's been taken prisoner, Swinton delivers a master class in scene stealing, and in a just world, both she and Mason's dentures would be duking it out for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
