Nelson: "You'll be exchanging this view for an 8 x 10 cell soon enough."
Osterberg: "Don't be making predictions above your pay grade, Agent Nelson. Care to stay for lunch?"
Nelson: "I'd care to kick your ass!"
ABSOLUTE DECEPTION pretty much stays at that level throughout, with Gooding sleepwalking through a paid Australian vacation as Agent Nelson investigates the murder of an American named Archer (Ty Hungerford) at the hands of hitmen in the employ of Australian media mogul Osterberg, who may have been involved in some convoluted Ponzi scheme with the dead man. Archer also led a mysterious double life, as Rebecca (Emmanuelle Vaugier), his crusading journalist wife back in NYC, believes she's a widow whose husband died two years earlier. Nelson and Rebecca team up, facing obstacles from Osterberg and the Gold Coast police all the way.
The film plods along under the clock-punching direction of Ozploitation icon Brian Trenchard-Smith, who's mainly doing Lifetime and cable movies these days, in addition to directing episodes of the Skinemax series CHEMISTRY. Trenchard-Smith gets a lifetime pass thanks to his cult-movie glory days of THE MAN FROM HONG KONG (1975), STUNT ROCK (1978), ESCAPE 2000 (1982), BMX BANDITS (1983), DEAD-END DRIVE-IN (1986), THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA (1989), and numerous others, but he hasn't made a noteworthy genre film in almost 20 years and it's really sad to see him slumming with forgettable junk like this. The kind of movie that has an establishing shot of the NYC skyline with the caption "New York, USA," ABSOLUTE DECEPTION showcases dubiously crummy visual FX, from the de rigeur CGI splatter to a yacht explosion that looks like it was achieved courtesy of an app on Trenchard-Smith's smartphone (check it out in the trailer above), and from the video-burned credits on, it looks more like an episode of CSI: MIAMI than an actual movie. With the easily-removable digital blood and the surprising lack of profanity (at one point, Vaugier calls someone "a miserable puke"), it almost looks like it was shot under the presumption that it might go directly to broadcast TV. Gooding's performance is passable--he obviously doesn't give a shit--but Vaugier, sporting some incredibly unflattering penciled-on eyebrows that make her look a decade older than she is, is just awful. (R, 92 mins)
Obviously meant to be a campy, tongue-in-cheek take on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS starts off enjoyably enough, but quickly turns tedious and repetitive. As children, orphaned Hansel and Gretel defeated an evil witch and burned her alive, and as adults, played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, they're mercenary witch hunters-for-hire, bringing along their arsenal of high-tech weaponry that's intentionally anachronistic (along with dialogue like "You gotta be fuckin' kidding me!") to rid of a village of a witch (Famke Janssen) who's been abducting children. It's admirable that writer/director Tommy Wirkola (the overrated Nazi zombie cult flick DEAD SNOW) aimed this at adults and went for a hard-R rating, but the only other surprise about WITCH HUNTERS is how boring it is. There's some tell-tale signs of a troubled production--several delayed release dates leading to two years on the shelf, choppy editing, and a noticeably truncated running time (the closing credits start rolling at the 80-minute mark, not typical of a $50 million movie). Arterton seems to be having some fun playing a badass Gretel, but Renner, who shot this before working on THE AVENGERS and THE BOURNE LEGACY, just looks bored silly, a sentiment he didn't even try to conceal during the contractually-obligated media blitz when the film was finally released in January 2013, often appearing to be in physical pain trying to sound enthusiastic about it. The film did well enough for a sequel to be announced, though I can't imagine anyone--starting with Renner--wanting one. Then again, we got a sequel to G.I. JOE, so what do I know? (R, 88 mins)
ECSTASY (Canada - 2012)
Despite its good intentions, it's hard for ECSTASY to not feel like an inferior TRAINSPOTTING knockoff that's been frozen in ice since the late '90s and just now thawed out. Like Danny Boyle's 1996 hit, ECSTASY is based on an Irvine Welsh work, in this case the novella "The Undefeated" from his 1996 collection Ecstasy, and deals with similarly drug-addled characters in Edinburgh. This time, however, the drug of choice is Ecstasy, and the central character, Lloyd (Adam Sinclair) owes money to local crime boss Solo (Carlo Rota), who doesn't approve of Lloyd and his pals Woodsy (Billy Boyd) and Ally (Keram Malicki-Sanchez) making money from raves and dealing and cutting him out of his percentage. These guys are too old to be living the wild lifestyles they are, and even Ally asks Lloyd at one point, "You ever notice we're the oldest punters in the club?" Lloyd regularly runs drugs from Amsterdam to Edinburgh for Solo, and attempts to do the proverbial "one last job" after he falls in love with Canadian Heather (Kristin Kreuk), who recently left her cheating Scottish husband Hugh (Dean McDermott). TRAINSPOTTING succeeded because of the lightning-in-a-bottle collaboration between Boyle and several promising newcomers turning in star-marking performances (I still can't see Robert Carlyle and not think of Begbie). ECSTASY director/co-writer Rob Heydon isn't Boyle, and his cast simply isn't as compelling. It doesn't help matters that it's a Canadian production and other than Scotsmen Sinclair, Boyd, and WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?'s Colin Mochrie (as a priest), the cast is mostly Canadians attempting unconvincing Scottish accents, with Rota (doing nothing more than a Scottish variation of the mob boss he played in THE BOONDOCK SAINTS) and Stephen McHattie (as Lloyd's alcoholic dad) really struggling. Other than the unexpected casting of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson in a small role as a doctor in a rehab clinic trying to help Woodsy get clean, there's nothing of note in the bland and predictable ECSTASY. It's not a terrible movie by any means, but all it really succeeds in doing is making you wish you were watching TRAINSPOTTING again instead. (Unrated, 104 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
Written and directed by James DeMonaco. Cast: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane, Max Burkholder, Edwin Hodge, Rhys Wakefield, Tony Oller, Arija Bareikis, Chris Mulkey, Tisha French, Dana Bunch, Tom Yi. (R, 85 mins)
The dystopian home invasion thriller THE PURGE is set in 2022 America, a few years after the "New Founding Fathers" have salvaged the economy and rebuilt the country due in large part to the annual Purge: one night a year, from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am (perhaps the New Founding Fathers also instituted a singular, nationwide time zone), all crime is legal, with the exception of acts committed against certain ranks of government or police officials, and nothing above "Class 4" weapons can be used, presumably to rule out mass killings, domestic terrorism, etc. By allowing these 12 hours of cathartic release--the slogan is "Release the Beast!"--everyone theoretically gets all of the aggression, anger, and negativity out of their system for 364 more days. You can kill your boss, your cheating spouse, or anyone else who's pissed you off and be free from prosecution and the consequences. But "Purgers" are primarily the rich and entitled targeting the poor and the perceived societal moochers, the "filthy swine" that now exist only to serve as targets for The Purge. Critics of The Purge argue that it's just a new way for the one-percenters to take out their frustration against the less fortunate--the lower class and the homeless, though even its critics concede that it appears to be working.
James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) lives in a gated, suburban enclave with his wife Mary (Lena Headey), rebellious teenage daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane), and shy, tech-nerd son Charlie (Max Burkholder). The Sandins are living large, thanks to James being the top sales rep with a local security company. He sold high-tech security systems to all of his neighbors in preparation for The Purge and now has the biggest, gaudiest house on the block, which is pointed out to Mary by friendly neighbor Grace (Arija Bareikis) as she drops off some cookies, telling Mary "A lot of the neighbors think they paid for all the additions to your house...but it's just neighborly gossip." The politically neutral James doesn't necessarily agree with The Purge, but displays the blue flowers of support for it outside his house and is happy that it's provided him with so much money and material goods (he's thinking about buying a boat with its own parking garage simply because he can afford it, even as he chuckles "Who would need a car on a boat?"). The Sandins settle in for The Purge with their house on steel-vaulted lockdown, but that ends quickly when Charlie sees an injured African-American man (Edwin Hodge) stumbling down the street, crying out for help. Charlie disarms the security system and lets the man in. It turns out he was being pursued by a group of college-aged masked revelers and other products of privilege having a "Purge Party." The leader (Rhys Wakefield) demands the Sandins turn over the man, a homeless war veteran, but that proves difficult when, in the confusion over Charlie disarming the system in the first place, the man is able to run off and hide somewhere in the house. The eccentric Purge leader (Wakefield's character is in the credits as "Polite Stranger") demands James turn over the man or they'll dismantle the security system and enter to house to kill them all, explaining that "You're one of us, Mr. Sandin. We don't want to do this to you and your family." The family splits up to search for the homeless man and deal with other troubles--Zoey's boyfriend (Tony Oller) managed to sneak into the house earlier to have some words with James--but the Polite Stranger runs out of patience, ordering his Purging companions to launch a full-scale attack on the Sandin mansion.
THE PURGE is written and directed by James DeMonaco, who's got some experience with these sort-of "siege" situations, scripting 1998's excellent THE NEGOTIATOR and the surprisingly good 2005 remake of John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Hawke starred in the PRECINCT 13 remake, and he and DeMonaco are good buddies who also worked together on 2009's little-seen STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK. DeMonaco introduces some very politically-charged exposition in THE PURGE but it soon gets sidelined as much of the film turns into your standard home-invasion thriller that owes a tremendous debt to Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS (1971) and the more recent THE STRANGERS (2008), in addition to a first-season STAR TREK episode titled "The Return of the Archons," which DeMonaco actually cited as an inspiration for the "Purge" period of lawlessness. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as THE PURGE often works on a purely visceral level, especially in some of the incredibly violent confrontations in the third act (it's hard not to feel the adrenaline when James not only buries an axe in a Purger's back, but then blows his head off for good measure), but the very concept is crying out for more substance--more bite--than DeMonaco chooses to give it. It doesn't really explore the critiques that it lays out--greed, entitlement, selfishness, the inherently violent nature of America today--and instead opts to become a mostly by-the-numbers thriller, at least until it's shown that the have-mores can be just as despised as the have-nots. But even then, it builds to a weak finish, and in films like this, the house (or whatever structure is under siege) must also be a character in the sense that the viewer must know the layout and the basic floor plan, otherwise it makes no sense. We never get the tour of the Sandin home and it's such a maze that we never really know where people are. Once the Purgers force their way in and start pursuing the family and the homeless man, it seems ludicrous that 8-12 people can wander through a house and down long hallways and not run into anyone else for long periods. Perhaps the intent was to illustrate how ridiculously big the house is, but I doubt it.
Given its invasion/siege plot, I couldn't stop thinking about what someone like the aforementioned John Carpenter--in full-on, angry THEY LIVE mode--could've done with this concept. DeMonaco obviously finds Carpenter an inspiration, not just in his previous work scripting the PRECINCT 13 remake, but also in some of THE PURGE's suspense sequences being punctuated with the kind of driving, repetitious score that makes Carpenter films so identifiable. A hypothetical "John Carpenter's THE PURGE"--or say, Paul Verhoeven or George A. Romero or even Joe Dante--other genre filmmakers who have expertly balanced suspense/horror with eviscerating social commentary--would've fully explored and fleshed-out the political ramifications of THE PURGE, while DeMonaco only hints at them early and late, with the bulk of the film feeling overly familiar. As far as summer movies go, it's fast-moving, never boring, knows how long to stick around (the credits start rolling just shy of the 80-minute mark), and the performances are fine, especially Headey, who's very good toward the end. THE PURGE isn't bad, but it could've followed through on its premise and been something a little more substantive.
Beating the all-star THIS IS THE END to theaters by a couple of months, this indie apocalypse comedy continues the end-of-the-world depictions of recent films like MELANCHOLIA, TAKE SHELTER, 4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH, and SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD. Featuring several members of the improv comedy outfit The Vacationeers, writer-director Todd Berger's IT'S A DISASTER has four couples meeting for Sunday brunch at the home of the about-to-divorce Pete (Blaise Miller) and Emma (Erinn Hayes), only to find out that a series of dirty bombs have gone off and that an incredibly toxic, lethal nerve gas has enveloped the city and possibly beyond. Petty bickering and long-held grudges boil over as the couples are trapped inside the house, and it works when it's played for some squirm-inducing comedy of discomfort, a specialty of David Cross, who plays Glenn, the newcomer to the group on his third date with Tracy (Julia Stiles). But mainly, it's a lot of ennui and whining among the eight characters. There's also the six-years-engaged Hedy (America Ferrera) and Shane (Jeff Grace), who's preoccupied with an eBay auction for a rare X-Men comic, and swingers Lexi (Rachel Boston) and Buck (Kevin M. Brennan, who reminded me of a young Nicolas Cage), who try to goad Glenn into a threesome. Some of it is cleverly-written, dark, and well-delivered, particularly Stiles coldly refusing to let a perpetually tardy fifth couple in the house after they arrive late and clearly infected with the nerve gas ("Maybe you should learn to show up to things on time, huh?") and getting emotional over the things she's never done: "I never went to Europe. I never even went to Montreal...that's almost like Europe. I never went scuba-diving. I never went to the ballet. I've never been in love. I never even watched THE WIRE!" to which Cross replies "All of those things are overrated. Well, except for THE WIRE. That was really good. Maybe not the last season, but..." But these characters generally aren't very interesting despite some laughs throughout, and a late-film revelation of a previously unseen side of someone does result in the term "Johnny Crazyballs" being introduced into the lexicon. IT'S A DISASTER has some good moments, the closing scene is very funny (the cut to the credits is perfect), and it's still recommended, but there's just not quite enough here to sustain feature length. (R, 90 mins)
CHARLIE ZONE
(Canada - 2013)
Shot in 2011, this wildly uneven and frequently heavy-handed Canadian thriller runs the gamut from sincere drama to sleazy exploitation and is effective and trite in almost equal doses. Set in and around Halifax, Nova Scotia, the film finds disgraced First Nations boxer and ex-con Avery (Glen Gould) hired by Ava (Jennie Raymond) to rescue her younger, junkie half-sister Jan (Amanda Crew) from the clutches of a pair of drug pushers. Avery quickly infiltrates their drug den in the seedy "Charlie Zone" slums and rescues Jan, but gets more than he bargained for when people show up to kill her. The people Ava represents are indeed not Jan's "parents" at all but a pair of contract killers hired by Ava to make Jan, and Avery by association, disappear for reasons that will form a bond between the two outcasts as Jan tries to start her life over and Avery finds protecting her as a path to redemption.
Like most of the cast, Gould (who projects a very Danny Trejo persona here) has logged a lot of time on various Canadian TV shows (only Crew seems to have cracked the US market extensively, co-starring in SEX DRIVE, THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT, and CHARLIE ST. CLOUD) and handles himself well when the material permits it. Plausibility isn't one of CHARLIE ZONE's strong suits (what exactly is it about his past as a boxer that makes Avery an ideal undercover bounty hunter?), and you'll realize Avery is being duped long before he does. It's structured very much like a TV-movie throughout, only with copious F-bombs and hard-R violence, and the too-tidy climax feels like the wrap-up of a LAW & ORDER: SVU episode. CHARLIE ZONE is an odd little film, almost like director/co-writer Michael Melski couldn't find a specific focus and threw in a little of everything: we spend a lot of time with the drug den shitbags long after they're no longer pertinent to the story, and there's a rush to cram in elements of Avery's past when we meet his grandfather (Agumeuay Nakanakis) and ex-girlfriend (Cindy Sampson) that he walked out on years ago. There's also some embarrassing dialogue along the lines of Avery telling Jan "You've got me in your corner now." CHARLIE ZONE tries to accomplish too much, can't settle on a tone, glosses over some seemingly important details, and could've benefitted from more sure-handed direction, but Gould and Crew do some good work throughout. (R, 103 mins)
THE BIG BAD
(US - 2012)
This very low-budget Long Island-shot indie horror film was somehow picked up for VOD release by Phase 4 last year, though it's hard to believe this ever made it beyond the festival circuit. A dreary, ugly, and molasses-paced revenge thriller/werewolf movie, THE BIG BAD draws obvious parallels to "Little Red Riding Hood," but transplanted to a modern setting, largely in a dive bar called The Big Bad. Red-headed Frankie (screenwriter Jessi Gotta) is after an elusive werewolf named Fenton Bailey (Timothy McCown Reynolds), who slaughtered her family and happens to be her ex-stepfather. Frankie loses an eye in the process, allowing Gotta and director Bryan Enk to pay homage to THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE (there's also a JAWS-inspired scene with Gotta and lesbian lycanthrope Jessica Savage comparing scars), and eventually has her showdown with the big bad wolf, but man, what a tedious movie. It's shot through the kind of hazy filter that ABC uses on Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer, and Enk is far too reliant on pointless shaky/jump edits that try to make it seem "edgy" or "grindhousey" but instead make it look like a VHS tape with tracking issues. The werewolf makeup is surprisingly OK, but otherwise, THE BIG BAD isn't particularly clever, well-written, or original, the performances are community theater-level at best, it feels hours longer than it is, and it isn't the least bit enjoyable as a thriller, a horror movie, or an homage. It looks like a bunch of friends got together and had all the equipment and software necessary to make a professional-looking home movie. I'm sure Gotta and Enk are nice kids and everyone has to start somewhere, but this is just terrible. (R, 78 mins, also available on Netflix streaming)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Written by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Zoe Isabella Kravitz, Sophie Okonedo, Glenn Morshower, Kristofer Hivju, David Denman. (PG-13, 99 mins)
Opening to apocalyptically bad reviews despite Columbia keeping the involvement of Hollywood pariah M. Night Shyamalan as quiet as possible, AFTER EARTH is, yes, first and foremost, a Smith family vanity project. There's two things going on here with the almost universal pre-release hate directed toward this film: first, the Shyamalan factor. Over the last few years, critics seem to be taking pleasure in the sinking of the director's career. To his detriment, Shyamalan has made it very easy for them to resort to these rarely-reached levels of schadenfreude. His hubris and his inflated ego made him an easy target, especially once the SIXTH SENSE novelty wore off and films like LADY IN THE WATER and THE HAPPENING started to torpedo his reputation. Critics piled on THE LAST AIRBENDER to an absurd degree, but don't misunderstand me: THE LAST AIRBENDER is not good, but it's nowhere near as awful as critics made it out to be. At this point, it's almost expected for critics ranging from serious professionals all the way down to IMDb message board shut-ins to bag on anything Shyamalan does and that's probably not going to change. Call him an asshole, a hack, a one-trick pony, whatever, but too many people are judging him and his past disappointments, and not the movie in question. Hell, Michael Cimino bankrupted a studio and he never had this kind of abuse leveled at him. Cimino made movies after HEAVEN'S GATE and the one-sheets still hyped his involvement. At this point, Will Smith should be lauded just for having the courage to hire Shyamalan in the first place.
And speaking of Will Smith, particularly in his role as father to son Jaden, it's very unbecoming of professional, adult movie critics to take cheap shots at someone's kid. Yes, Jaden Smith is a pampered Hollywood rich kid and he's kinda cocky and he's not nearly as charismatic as his dad, doesn't have the same screen presence, and isn't as good of an actor. But he's still a kid and having said that, a 14-year-old kid, even if he's insanely wealthy and reaping the benefits of nepotism, shouldn't be the object of such pithy scorn and mean-spirited ridicule by people who should know better. I'm not implying that kids who act should get a pat on the back and a pass. Some child actors are terrible. But there's a way to say that without sounding like an asshole. Furthermore, while Jaden is guilty of the unpardonable sin of hanging out with Justin Bieber, it's not his fault that he was born to rich and famous parents. I only say this because when it comes to people like Shyamalan, and now Jaden Smith, critics seem to be attacking the people personally, with unbridled and frankly disturbing glee and some of the reviews of AFTER EARTH, many almost certainly written in part before the critics even saw the movie, actually border on bullying. Shyamalan probably has a thick enough skin by now and doesn't really care what critics think, but a 14-year-old kid is still a 14-year-old kid. I've been guilty of sarcastic comments and cheap shots in print and on this blog, but what is it about Shyamalan and the young Smith that turned an alarming number of critics into the tampon-throwing bitches from the opening scene of CARRIE? I say this not to mount some passionate defense of AFTER EARTH or the Smith family, but only to say that no, it's nowhere near as awful as critics would have you believe and perhaps they were more concerned with being snarky dicks and joining the cool kids in the pile-on rather than objectively looking at the film.
AFTER EARTH gets off to a rocky start with a confusing and clumsily rolled-out exposition involving Earth being declared uninhabitable after various catastrophes both natural and man-made, with humanity relocating to a distant galaxy on a planet called Nova Prime. Over 1000 years later, the Ranger Corps regularly battle large reptilian creatures known as the Ursas, which hunt by sensing the fear in their enemy. The Rangers, led by legendary war hero Gen. Cypher Raige (Will Smith), are experts in a technique called "ghosting," which masks their fear, allowing them to defeat the Ursas. Cypher has been away in battle for several years, and is a largely absent figure at home, where his wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo) is raising their son Kitai (Jaden Smith), who was just rejected by the Rangers for his inability to follow orders and still blames himself for not stepping up several years earlier when his older sister Senshi (Zoe Isabella Kravitz) was killed by an Ursa. Kitai was only nine years old, but he also feels that Cypher blames him as well. Cypher has one last training mission before his retirement, and Faia convinces him that Kitai "doesn't need a commanding officer...he needs his father" and talks him into taking Kitai along as a way for the two to bond. The ship is hit by an asteroid storm and breaks apart, crashing on Earth, which no longer supports human life for long periods as they've adapted over time to the atmosphere of Nova Prime. Cypher and Kitai are the only survivors, and the distress beacon is with a part of the ship that landed 100 km in another direction. Both of Cypher's legs are broken in the crash, and Kitai must travel on foot to retrieve the beacon. Also making his journey difficult: the high probability that an Ursa that was onboard the ship to be used as a "ghosting" training exercise has survived the crash may make things difficult for Kitai.
Shot in beautiful locations in areas like Costa Rica, Pennsylvania, and Utah by veteran David Cronenberg cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, AFTER EARTH looks great on a big screen. The script, by Shyamalan and Gary Whitta (THE BOOK OF ELI) with uncredited contributions from Stephen Gaghan (TRAFFIC, SYRIANA) and Mark Boal (THE HURT LOCKER, ZERO DARK THIRTY) was based on a story idea by Will Smith. The film suffers from far too predictable character arcs and the absence of anything really innovative or surprising (there's no Shyamalan twist ending here), but it's an involving enough adventure and young Smith doesn't come off like the spoiled, talentless brat that internet mouth-breathers would have you believe. It's nothing I'd watch a second time and I'm not saying it's a FIELD OF DREAMS-level man-weepie, but I wasn't bored and it's a nice movie for dads and younger sons to see together. And honestly, if you want to talk Summer 2013 sci-fi flicks so far, I'd rank AFTER EARTH above STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS.
Directed by Louis Leterrier. Written by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, and Edward Ricourt. Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Melanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Common, Michael Kelly, David Warshofsky, Jose Garcia, Caitriona Balfe. (PG-13, 110 mins)
A sort-of OCEAN'S MAGICIANS if you will, the fast-paced NOW YOU SEE ME is a light-hearted and mostly enjoyable caper movie that has elaborate, large-scale heists being pulled off by a team of celebrity illusionists. The team--dubbed "The Four Horsemen"--consists of the cocky J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), mentalist/hypnotist Merritt Osbourne (Woody Harrelson), escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), and con man Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), assembled a year earlier when they were scraping by as small-time hustlers and street magicians, brought together by an elusive fifth horseman. The Four Horsemen stage the first of three jobs as part of a mysterious plan that, of course, doesn't reveal itself until the very end: first they somehow empty a bank vault in Paris while on stage in Vegas. Then, in New Orleans, they drain the bank account of their sponsor and insurance magnate Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) and deposit the money into the accounts of the audience members, all victims of Hurricane Katrina whose claims were shot down by Tressler's company. Finally, they plot to steal a huge safe in NYC. But why?
Irate FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) teams with French Interpol agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent) to investigate, but can't hold the Horsemen because there's really no proof that they did anything. The magic isn't real and despite their open admission of guilt, they can't be detained or charged because, as Doug Henning might say, "it's an illusion!" Also tracking the Horsemen is Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), a magic expert who hosts a popular cable TV show that exposes and debunks magic tricks and those who perform them. Bradley is being paid $5 million by a mystery benefactor to expose the Horsemen and their tricks, and Rhodes immediately suspects him to be the fifth Horseman.
"The closer you look, the less you'll actually see" is a common refrain for the characters in NOW YOU SEE ME, and with the inevitable twist--and it's a whopper--the film kinda flies off the rails a bit. The filmmakers--director Louis Leterrier (TRANSPORTER 2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK) and writers Ed Solomon (MEN IN BLACK), Boaz Yakin (FRESH, SAFE), and Edward Ricourt--generally play fair when you go back and re-examine the film upon learning the fifth horseman's identity, but it does get a little silly by the end, and the subplot about the secret magician's society and the "Eye of Horus" never really comes together. But when NOW YOU SEE ME is focused on the caper and the characters, it's great fun throughout. The banter between the magicians is well-played, particularly by Eisenberg and Harrelson, and Ruffalo's teeth-gritting slow burn throughout, especially when losing his patience with Eisenberg (playing his SOCIAL NETWORK smug condescension act for laughs) or in his verbal sparring with Freeman (illustrating a trick, Freeman asks "What's the magic word?" to which Ruffalo replies "Blow me") is very entertaining. The film tries too hard to knock your socks off by the end, and of course you can pick it apart and see the lapses in logic if you really want to (and there's too much CGI in some of the magic trickery), but we're not dealing with THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, BOB LA FLAMBEUR, or THIEF here. It's a summer movie with laughs, suspense, and a likable cast (even Freeman is uncharacteristically loose throughout, and it's always great to see an enraged Caine spitting out his dialogue), but it finally stumbles when it isn't content to just be what it is. Another script polish--and fleshing out or just eliminating all the Horus stuff--might've made a good movie better, but as it is, it's still quite fun.
John Cusack's career is in a strange place that his fans never would've expected a decade ago. At 47, he's obviously outgrown the boyish romantic roles that made him so iconic back in his younger SURE THING and SAY ANYTHING days. For a while, beloved favorites like GROSSE POINTE BLANK, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, and HIGH FIDELITY made it seem like Cusack would be "John Cusack" forever. But long careers have peaks and valleys and he's in a major slump these days. When he tries to go for hammy character parts, as in THE RAVEN and the embarrassing THE PAPERBOY, he doesn't seem comfortable, instead remaining reserved in roles that call for him to go over the top (even when he's rubbing one out to Nicole Kidman in THE PAPERBOY). And misfired personal pet projects like 2008's WAR, INC come off as smug and preachy. So, for the most part, he stays busy by settling for unchallenging roles as cops or detectives (he was terrible in this year's pathetic THE FACTORY), or in the case of THE NUMBERS STATION, a burned-out CIA agent. After botching a job in New Jersey when he refuses to kill a teenaged girl who witnessed one of his government-assigned hits, Emerson Kent (Cusack) is banished to a CIA-operated numbers station in the middle of nowhere in Suffolk in the English countryside. Still haunted by the girl's death--carried out by his boss Grey (Liam Cunningham)--Kent self-medicates with booze and has a cordial working relationship with Katherine (Malin Akerman), the contracted cryptographer he supervises. It's just the two of them in a secret underground bunker, filled mainly with long hours of staring at the wall until the occasional message comes down for Katherine to covertly broadcast. Kent and Katherine arrive at the facility for their shift and find it compromised, with the supervisor and cryptographer on duty murdered. They're trapped inside as a team of enemy agents are trying to find their way in, and when he calls for help, Kent is told to terminate Katherine.
THE NUMBERS STATION's opening 25 or so minutes are surprisingly engaging, but once it settles in, with Kent and Katherine trapped inside as the villains, led by Max (Richard Brake), try to get in, it becomes a sluggish sort-of Black Ops RIO BRAVO. There's no real surprises and no escalating tension, bickering takes the place of character development, the climax hinges on Kent doing something uncharacteristically stupid because the script requires him to, and the story doesn't really build to a suspenseful conclusion as much as it ambles towards a quick and easy wrap-up. If you remove a few F-bombs, with its relatively short running time, it almost feels it could be the pilot of the CBS cop/agent procedural that Cusack will inevitably be doing after a couple more years of forgettable fare like this. Released to just a few theaters a month ago, THE NUMBERS STATION is a diverting enough time-killer on a slow night (and it probably plays a lot better streaming on Netflix than it would dropping $10 on seeing it theatrically) and Cusack is better here than in his other recent efforts, but this is a paycheck for him and he doesn't need to do anything more than show up and be a professional. In a way, it seems like he's been getting the gigs that Nicolas Cage turned down because they didn't really give him enough of a chance to "Nic Cage" it up. It's only fitting that the two actors, far removed from their box-office glory days of 1997's CON AIR, are reunited (with the added bonus of the inevitable 50 Cent) in the upcoming thriller THE FROZEN GROUND, which will most likely be bypassing theaters near you later this year. (R, 89 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
DARK SKIES (US/UK - 2013)
Is it just me or does every horror film released these days boast "From the makers of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and INSIDIOUS"? DARK SKIES combines elements of both (no found footage, thankfully) and plays a lot like a reworking of INSIDIOUS, employing the same essential template, but with aliens filling in for malevolent spirits. It has an eerie vibe throughout and isn't without a legitimately chilling moment here and there, but there's just such an overwhelming feeling of familiarity to the whole endeavor that it's just really hard to get excited about it. The Barretts are a middle-class family in a rough patch: dad Daniel (Josh Hamilton) recently lost his job and mom Lacy (Keri Russell) is a real estate agent in need of a sale. 12-year-old son Jesse (Dakota Goyo) is starting to rebel and five-year-old Sam (Kadan Rockett) starts sleepwalking, wetting himself, and saying he's getting nocturnal visits from someone he calls "The Sandman." Food is scattered throughout the kitchen in the middle of the night, items are perfectly stacked ceiling-high on kitchen counters, and all of the family photos disappear from their picture frames. Three different flocks of birds fly directly into their house from different directions, all of the family members start hearing individual ringing in their ears, Daniel has a strange mark behind his ear, and Lacy loses six hours when she blacks out and starts banging her head against a sliding glass door while showing a house. Lacy's research leads her to a freelance alien contact expert (J.K. Simmons), who verifies their story, tells them he lives it every day, and that "The Grays," as he calls them, have been here for millions of years, will not leave a family alone once they've "chosen" one, they observe their targets for years, and only make their presence known when they're about to abduct someone.
Much like the family in INSIDIOUS dealt with the paranormal and couldn't escape it even after they moved ("It's not the house that's haunted...it's your son that's haunted"), DARK SKIES puts its family in a hopeless situation that isn't going to get better, and when strange markings start appearing on Jesse's and Sam's bodies, the authorities start investigating Daniel and Lacy for child abuse. The film gets off to a shaky and sometimes unconvincing start, beginning with the family's glib non-reaction to food being strewn about their kitchen and not really all that concerned that something got in their house and into the fridge (Daniel: "A big rabbit with opposable thumbs?"), to the elements pilfered from other movies (the stacking straight out of POLTERGEIST), and, as long as I'm being nit-picky, who goes to a job interview at a prestigious design firm sporting the kind of five-day vacation/stay-at-home-dad stubble that Daniel does? Surprisingly, DARK SKIES improves as it proceeds, and I liked the way writer/director Scott Stewart (whose dubious track record includes LEGION and PRIEST) handled Simmons' character. In most cases, the crackpot extraterrestrial expert would be wildly eccentric with a tinfoil hat, with the actor hamming it up for comic relief. Simmons plays his character dead serious and resigned to the fact that "The Grays" have dominated his life, which seems to be a struggle just to get through the day. It's the one legitimately unpredictable element of a script that's so by-the-numbers that you'll even be able to utter certain lines of dialogue moments before the characters do. And yes, there's a twist ending because of course there is. DARK SKIES is OK for what it is (and Simmons is quite good in his minimal screen time), but it just seems like it could've--and should've--been a lot more. (PG-13, 97 mins)
If you stumble upon the largely-improvised GENERATION UM... in its last ten minutes, you might think you're catching the tail end of a very good movie. Until then, it's an insufferably self-indulgent, pretentious, meandering mess that exhibits every possible pompous, smug caricature that the average Joe Multiplex moviegoer hates about art-house cinema. It's the kind of movie where the director plants the camera in front of Keanu Reeves as he sits on a bench outside a bakery and eats a cupcake in real time. Reeves has only been working sporadically the last few years (though to be fair, a lot of that time has been spent on the troubled and long-delayed 47 RONIN, due out later this year), and for those who hear his name and immediately picture Ted "Theodore" Logan, Johnny Utah, Neo, or a speeding bus, it seems impossible to believe he's pushing 50 these days...at least until you see him here. Gaunt and disheveled, Reeves is underachieving John, a Lower East Side denizen who shares a rat-hole apartment with his annoying younger cousin Rick (Jonny Orsini) and works as a driver for a pair of escorts, Violet (Bojana Novakovic) and Mia (Adelaide Clemens). Following John and the girls over a 24-hour period, director Mark L. Mann includes several sequences shot guerrilla-style as John wanders the streets of Manhattan--getting that cupcake, stopping for coffee, watching some hula-hoop performance artists dressed as cowboys--but the people gawkishly looking at the camera only serve as a distracting reminder that we aren't observing a gritty slice-of-life look at the Lower East Side but rather, a bunch of people watching some guy with a handheld follow Keanu Reeves around. John steals a camcorder from one of the cowboy hula-hoop performance artists and turns into an amateur documentarian, filming squirrels and water fountains in the park, then interviewing the coke-snorting Violet and Mia about their lives and what drove them into their profession before taking them to their appointments for the night.
Reeves, Novakovic, and Clemens are capable actors, but they struggle in these endless, laborious scenes that feel like outtakes from an unsuccessful acting workshop (Novakovic, in particular, is especially grating), and only at the end, after the girls take turns servicing the douchebag groom at an unpleasant bachelor party and John drives them home as all three ponder the choices they've made in their lives, does the film finally feel effectively authentic (and, it should be pointed out, nobody's talking). Unfortunately, it's far too little, far too late, as the preceding 85 minutes are an absolute endurance test. Sometimes movies just get lost in the shuffle and sometimes they get buried for a reason: GENERATION UM... (what a terrible title) debuted on VOD and got a two-screen US theatrical release earlier this month after two years on the shelf. Draw your own conclusions. (R, 97 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
LORE (Germany/Australia - 2012; 2013 US release)
Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland, who received accolades for her 2004 debut SOMERSAULT, directed this powerful German-language drama set in the days just after Hitler's death and the fall of Nazi Germany. When her cowardly father (Hans-Jochen Wagner), a high-ranking Nazi official, and mother (Ursina Lardi) abandon the family for fear of arrest by the Allies, 14-year-old Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) is left to take care of her four younger siblings: Liesel (Nele Trebs), fraternal twins Jurgen (Mika Seidel) and Gunther (Andre Frid), and infant Peter (Nick Holaschke). With just the belongings they can carry and their mother's jewelry and silverware their only currency, Lore leads the children on a 560 km trek to their grandmother's house in Hamburg. She quickly steps into the role of parent, taking charge and doing what needs to be done, even if it means lying to the other children and promising them that their parents will be waiting for them. They're joined by Thomas (Kai Malina), a young Jewish man who escaped from a concentration camp and becomes an unlikely protector to the children--and possible object of Lore's awakening sexuality. Her womanhood isn't the only thing to open Lore's eyes--living a sheltered bourgeois life with her parents, she was led to believe that the world had fallen in line with Hitler's vision, that Nazi Germany was victorious and that Der Fuhrer was respected worldwide as a leader and a hero. She's quite surprised to find that isn't the case and her whole life has been a lie, though she still struggles with the indoctrinated beliefs instilled by her parents. When Thomas ultimately resists her blunt advances in a frank but discreetly-filmed scene, she immediately resorts to an ignorant statement about "you filthy Jews are all alike," and never really understands why she's saying it, only that she's supposed to think it.
LORE drags a bit in spots and Shortland sometimes channels a little too much of an inner Terrence Malick, but its slow build leads to a heartbreakingly angry finale where she finally rejects everything she's been taught and told to believe (note the symbolism of the ceramic figurines) and it's an interesting perspective on the immediate post-war Germany, seen entirely through Lore's eyes. While the entire ensemble of child actors does exemplary work (even the baby seems to be a natural actor with an ability to cry on cue), it's largely Rosendahl's film and the debuting actress--17 when she was cast and 18 at the time of filming--convincingly establishes herself as one with a promising future. While Rosendahl received--and deserved--the lion's share of the acclaim, it's unfortunate that 12-year-old Trebs got somewhat lost in the shuffle: she has a significantly less-showy role and her Liesel doesn't say much, but Trebs speaks volumes with her facial expressions, and with these and other subtle touches, this equally impressive young actress succeeds in showing her character's maturity over the course of the film. (Unrated, 109 mins)
