JOE (US - 2014) Directed by David Gordon Green. Written by Gary Hawkins. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Gary Poulter, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Adriene Mishler, Brian Mays, Brenda Isaacs Booth, Anna Niemtschk, Milton Fountain. (R, 118 mins)
At first glance, the rural drama JOE--not a reimagining of John G. Avildsen's controversial 1970 film--would appear to be a lot like last year's MUD, starting with Tye Sheridan again cast as a troubled kid who finds an unlikely role model played by an actor with something to prove. Where MUD saw Sheridan bearing witness to the McConnaisance, JOE finds the gifted young actor--who also co-starred in Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE--paired with Nicolas Cage in his best role in years, turning in the kind of performance that made him such a captivating presence in his younger days up to his Oscar-winning turn in LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995). Cage seemed to stop exerting himself once "Academy Award winner" was guaranteed to preface his name for the rest of his life. Sure, there were entertaining popcorn movies--it's hard to argue with the likes of THE ROCK (1996), FACE/OFF (1997), and CON AIR (1997), and the NATIONAL TREASURE films were dumb fun. But in recent years, Cage has become a case study in talent-squandering starting with the ill-advised remake of THE WICKER MAN (2006), which has become a modern-day bad-movie classic, and continuing with a string of increasingly phoned-in and decreasingly distributed paycheck gigs brought on mostly by the actor's serious financial issues in the late '00s. But even amidst the drek, there were some good performances in films like THE WEATHER MAN (2005), LORD OF WAR (2005), Werner Herzog's insane THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009) and KICK-ASS (2010). Looking over his credits from the last decade, there's numerous examples of Cage either not giving a shit (BANGKOK DANGEROUS, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, SEASON OF THE WITCH, STOLEN) or hamming it up to provide material for future YouTube videos of his overacting, but are his list of duds and misfires worse than any other coasting A-lister in a career lull? One could certainly argue that we've been a little too hard on Cage, but it's only because he, like the frequently-criticized Robert De Niro, is capable of so much more than what he's been doing. If you miss the Cage of old, the Cage that made LEAVING LAS VEGAS so devastating, the Cage that existed prior to the line "Killing me won't bring back your goddamn honey!" then JOE will be a most welcome surprise.
It's interesting that Cage's comeback effort is helmed by indie darling-turned-pariah David Gordon Green, the GEORGE WASHINGTON (2000) and ALL THE REAL GIRLS (2003) auteur who's spent the last several years in the stoner-comedy orbit of James Franco and Danny McBride with PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008) and the universally-loathed YOUR HIGHNESS (2011), in addition to producing and directing HBO's EASTBOUND AND DOWN. Green's been derided as everything from a hack to a sellout for his commercial endeavors, but it only lasted three films (he also made the instantly forgotten Jonah Hill vehicle THE SITTER) before he got back to business with last year's acclaimed but little-seen PRINCE AVALANCHE. Green's shift to commercial comedy was surprising, but perhaps he was just setting himself up with enough of a financial cushion so he'd be free to make the films he wanted to make. If he should be criticized for anything, it's refusing to abandon his doomed plan to remake Dario Argento's 1977 classic SUSPIRIA.
Green shot JOE in the outskirts of Austin, TX, and like his earliest efforts, it captures a genuine grittiness and displays a strong sense of local color. With the exception of Cage, Sheridan, Ronnie Gene Blevins, and Adriene Mishler, the cast is made up of non-professionals from Austin and surrounding towns who contribute a very palpable feeling of reality to the characters they play. Green understands these folks and he's taken the time to get to know them and get them acclimated to being on a movie set. These are not sophisticated, big-city types with cinematic aspirations. JOE takes place in what looks like a destitute area that in many ways is as isolated as the Cahulawassee River region of DELIVERANCE. Even the bit players are three-dimensional characters and not caricatures where most Hollywood films would play the white trash, hillbilly cliches--barely literate, bad teeth, ramshackle homes--for easy laughs. A Hollywood film would've worked in a subplot where Cage busted up a meth lab. JOE takes place in a part of Texas that's decidedly off the beaten path, where misfits blend in among misfits and other societal cast-offs, the kind of place where Harry Dean Stanton's Travis from Wim Wenders' PARIS, TEXAS probably could've disappeared unnoticed.
Sheridan is 15-year-old Gary, looking for a job to support his mom and mute sister while his abusive dad "G-Daawg" (Gary Poulter) beats him, drinks, and is generally useless around their dilapidated backwoods shack of a home. He gets a job working for Joe (Cage), who runs a crew of under-the-table guys who poison trees so lumber companies can come through and cut them down. Pacing the film like a good book, Green only reveals Joe's character in a very gradual fashion. We learn that he has anger management issues, spent some time in prison, drinks too much, and is the kind of guy who uses black electrical tape to secure a bandage over a bullet wound, but he treats his employees well, has a reputation as a stand-up guy and a straight-shooter, and sees in Gary someone very much like himself, a good person who's been dealt the same shitty cards and seems doomed to have his ass beaten by life. There's unspoken darkness in Joe's past: you can see him mustering all of his strength to control his temper (being that it's Cage, you constantly wait for him to erupt--which he does, but not in the fashion you expect from "Nicolas Cage"), he has very specific demands when he visits prostitute Merle (Sue Rock) at the skeeziest brothel to hit the screens in a long time, and there's a reason the local cops always seem to be on his case. It's no surprise that Joe and Gary will bond and that Joe will intervene in problems that eventually intersect to affect both of them (Blevins plays a local idiot who has an axe to grind with Joe, but he also has a run-in Gary that will prove fateful), giving Joe the obligatory One Last Shot at Redemption, but what makes JOE special is the unique way Green, the actors, and screenwriter Gary Hawkins (working from a novel by Larry Brown) tell the story.
Given Sheridan's presence and the surface similarities, comparisons to MUD are inevitable and not unwarranted. But JOE, despite lighthearted moments in the scenes with Joe and his workers busting each others' chops (the locals who make up his crew have a very improvisational rapport with Cage that's a joy to watch), is much more grim and dark. A lot of this is due to the stunning work done by Poulter, in what sadly turned out to be his only film. Poulter was a homeless man discovered by casting associates whose only experience was once being a background extra on THIRTYSOMETHING 25 years earlier. He was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after filming wrapped, and was found lying dead in shallow water a month after that. For someone who had no acting experience, Poulter commands the screen like a veteran pro. Knowing Poulter's own unfortunate story, it's impossible to watch his terrifying performance and not imagine the dark shit he'd experienced in his life. He was only 54 when he died, but looks about two decades older. There's a simmering rage behind Poulter's eyes that's disturbingly real in his scenes with Sheridan, as G-Daawg verbally and physically abuses Gary before stealing his hard-earned money. You'll hate G-Daawg like you've hated few movie villains in recent memory (Blevins' pathetic Willie-Russell is just as awful a human being), and Poulter is so good here that he manages to steal the film from the two stars.
Lionsgate isn't giving JOE much of a rollout, relegating it to its "Roadside Attractions" arthouse division and sending it on the VOD route. There's no reason that this couldn't be the same kind of sleeper hit that MUD was a year ago. It's a more difficult film and its slow-burn nature may make it inaccessible to some, but it's one of the year's best films, and as much as I'd love to think it's the first step of a Cageaissance, he does have some typically dubious-looking films coming down the pike, including a remake of the Kirk Cameron Rapture cheesefest LEFT BEHIND, which can't possibly be good. Hey, whatever pays the bills, but it would be an unfortunate missed opportunity if the 50-year-old Cage doesn't build on the artistic momentum of JOE for a middle-aged revitalization that shows the world why he was so special when he was a young man. JOE is as essential a Cage performance as RAISING ARIZONA or LEAVING LAS VEGAS, Sheridan is a remarkable actor who's going on to a great career, and Poulter will give you chills. JOE is one of those low-key sleepers that sneak up on you as you find yourself thinking about it days after seeing it.
THE RAID 2 (US/Indonesia - 2014) Written and directed by Gareth Evans. Cast: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad, Kenichi Endo, Ryuhei Matsuda, Julie Estelle, Very Tri Yulisman, Yayan Ruhian, Cecip Arif Rahman, Cok Simbara, Kazuki Kitamura, Roy Marten, Fikha Effendi. (R, 150 mins)
Welsh-born, Indonesia-based writer/director Gareth Evans caught the attention of martial arts fans with his 2009 cult film MERENTAU, his first teaming with Pencak Silat champion Iko Uwais. The duo paired again for their global breakthrough, 2011's THE RAID, a riveting actioner and an instant classic in the "high-rise mayhem" genre, with Uwais as a rookie cop forced to fight his way floor-by-floor through a Jakarta drug lord's apartment-building stronghold. THE RAID earned acclaim worldwide and was released in the US in 2012 as THE RAID: REDEMPTION (even though no one calls it that), becoming a rare subtitled foreign film to break out of the art-house shackles and open wide, and while it didn't exactly tear it up at the box office, it grossed a relatively respectable $4 million for Sony Pictures Classics on its way to becoming a big hit on DVD and Blu-ray. Evans and Uwais are back with THE RAID 2, and let it be said here and now: they are not fucking around.
THE RAID was a perfect, self-contained B-movie but THE RAID 2 is just...bigger. Not only is the action more expansive, but Evans has grown as a filmmaker. THE RAID was a B-movie, but THE RAID 2 is a film. Evans has already proven that he's an expert action choreographer, but THE RAID 2 is on an altogether higher and more advanced level. A few months after the events of the first film (some reviews say it begins a few hours after, but that can't be, since the hero's wife was pregnant in THE RAID and in THE RAID 2, the kid is a few months old), Jakarta cop Rama (Uwais) is talked into going undercover by his anti-corruption task force boss Bunawar (Cok Simbara), who knows police commissioner Reza (Roy Marten) is in cahoots with various crime organizations, but needs proof. Rama's assignment: get arrested, get convicted, and get sentenced to a few months in prison so he can get close to Uco (Arifin Putra), the incarcerated son of mob boss Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo), and work his way into the organization to see just how many cops are involved in Jakarta's criminal underworld. Fearing for the safety of his wife and infant son after bringing down the drug lord in the first film, Rama agrees and goes undercover as Yuda, but "a few months" turns into a two-year prison sentence, during which time he earns Uco's trust by saving his life in an attempted rubout in the yard. Bangun pulls some strings with the police to get Rama/Yuda released and Yuda becomes an enforcer in the Bangun family. Meanwhile, ambitious, duplicitous would-be gangster Bejo (Alex Abbad) wants a bigger piece of the action and decides to shake things up by manipulating Uco and playing the Bangun family against the Goto (Kenichi Endo) organization, a Japanese outfit with whom Bangun has has ten years of peaceful co-existence.
Where THE RAID's action was limited to the claustrophobic confines of an apartment building, THE RAID 2, its inital premise owing more than a slight debt to DONNIE BRASCO, INFERNAL AFFAIRS and THE DEPARTED, allows Evans to make all of Jakarta his bonecrushing playground. The fight scenes are longer, more intricate, and more violent (Evans had to make some cuts to avoid an NC-17), and by opening things up and resisting the ease of making an identical sequel, Evans and Uwais now get to expand their repertoire to include an epic car chase (watch Uwais stuck in a car with four other people, fighting them in the car, while it's being chased), a blood-drenched fight sequence on a subway with a Bejo hired gun called Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), whose weapons of choice should be self-explantory, and a long brawl in a muddy prison yard during a torrential downpour. And those are just some of the exhilarating sights on display: Evans pays obvious tribute to Scorsese throughout, especially in the way he makes two and a half hours fly by, but also to Stanley Kubrick in some of the ornate, expansive interiors. One vast cocktail lounge bears a striking resemblance to the Gold Ballroom in THE SHINING, and the tracking shots and production design in the restaurants and offices have that distinctly cold, antiseptic Kubrick aura. In these scenes, THE RAID 2 is often as stunningly beautiful as Nicolas Winding Refn's divisive Kubrick lovefest ONLY GOD FORGIVES.
But all that aside, fans of THE RAID are seeing THE RAID 2 for the action, and on that front, Evans and Uwais deliver, and then some. Rama/Yuda's late-film, restaurant-kitchen battle with a Bejo assassin (Cecip Arif Rahman) is one of the most jaw-dropping fight sequences ever shot in a film full of unforgettable, innovative set pieces. Except for some sparingly-utilized CGI gore (and not the distracting, over-digitized kind), Evans goes practical and avoids the modern propensity for shaky-cam action and leaning on the crutch of CGI. Of course, it's there, but it's used to subtly, conservatively enhance rather than do all of the heavy lifting. The action is clear and coherent, and the characters and the viewer feel the pain of every blow. Limbs are snapped, faces are shot off, throats are ripped out, people are disemboweled, one poor bastard gets hibachied, and heads scrape along the road as they're held out of a door that flies open during a car chase. THE RAID 2 is gloriously, breathtakingly brutal, an action film for action fans who think they've seen it all, with an insane 40-minute climax that should be required viewing for any director working in the genre. While the set-up and the police corruption angle are nothing new, THE RAID 2 is the kind of balls-out action ass-kicking that fans have been awaiting for a long time. I don't want Evans to come to Hollywood unless it's on his own terms. He's doing just fine on his own in Indonesia. THE RAID established him as a new voice in cinematic action. THE RAID 2 is a masterpiece.
Imagine what the characters in found-footage horror movies could accomplish if they just had both hands free. Late in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, a guy is frantically running around a house, trying to find an exit, and he comes across a boarded-up window. He half-heartedly tries to pull the board down with his left hand and it budges just a very little bit. Here's a thought: put the camera down and use both hands. Pitched as a Latino-targeted "cousin" to the PA franchise, THE MARKED ONES actually ties in pretty directly to the increasingly ludicrous spirit-world shenanigans. Oren Peli's effective, out-of-nowhere 2009 original has become a distant memory as the franchise has morphed into the brainchild of DISTURBIA screenwriter Christopher Landon (son of legendary TV icon Michael), despite the guys from CATFISH getting all the attention when they were hired to directed PA3 and PA4. Landon has scripted every entry since the first sequel (except for the 2010 Japan-only spinoff PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: TOKYO NIGHT, still unreleased in the US) and gets promoted to director here. PA3 grossed $104 million, while PA4 had a massive drop-off, bringing in only $53 million. Still not bad considering how cheap these are to produce, but the fact that THE MARKED ONES topped out at $32 million, didn't open at #1 like its predecessors, and that other similar films are suffering from diminished grosses are major red flags that fans are experiencing some found-footage fatigue. A 70% domestic drop between two installments seems like cause for alarm, but since THE MARKED ONES only cost $5 million, it still made a big enough profit that these things will just continue until they stop breaking even. Perhaps audiences are growing tired with the way the PA films are progressing as there appears be no plot twist too ridiculous for Landon to pull out of his ass in a desperate attempt to keep this franchise gasping for one more run. PA4 revealed that a witches' coven has been orchestrating all the paranormal mayhem, and now THE MARKED ONES introduces wormholes and time-travel. No, really.
Set in Oxnard in 2012, the film follows Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), after he buys a video camera with his high school graduation money. He and goofball buddy Hector (Jorge Diaz) start off by filming JACKASS-style pranks but soon get involved in a mystery when Jesse's neighbor is killed by valedictorian Oscar (Carlos Pratts), who then vanishes. After breaking into the victim's apartment, Jesse awakens the next day with a strange mark and begins acting possessed and displaying bizarre powers (for a good chunk of its running time, this seems more like a knockoff of the overrated CHRONICLE) and is eventually abducted by some mysterious women as Hector and their friend Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) recruit Oscar's gang-leader brother (Richard Cabral, memorable as the drug mule "The Green Hornet" in THE COUNSELOR) to track down Jesse. Of course, other characters from the franchise make token appearances (Molly Ephraim from PA2, and series mainstays Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat), but the direction in which THE MARKED ONES steers things is a pretty clear sign that Landon is just trying to belatedly explain away the inconsistencies and contradictions that have been popping up in all of the sequels. There's no "master plan" here: he's making it up as he goes along. The only interesting element Landon brings to the table--think the camera on the oscilatting fan in PA3--is having Jesse communicate with the spirit via an old Simon. But time travel portals? Enough. (R, 84 mins) NURSE (US - 2014)
Another pre-fab cult film lovingly embraced by horror hipsters before it was even released, the long-delayed (shot in 2011) NURSE thinks it's being edgy and outrageous, but it's just tired and boring. Loaded with numbing CGI splatter, NURSE centers on Abby Russell (Paz de la Huerta), the titular psycho, who spends her off-hours picking up and slaughtering adulterous men with their "cheating cocks." She's fixated on bright-eyed new nurse Danni (Katrina Bowden of 30 ROCK), who she quickly roofies and seduces in a series of selfies that she presumably plans to send to Danni's paramedic boyfriend Steve (Corbin Bleu of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL). When the bodies--including Danni's lecherous, asshole stepdad (Martin Donovan)--start piling up, Danni can't convince irate detective Rogan (Boris Kodjoe) that she's being framed and that Abby's a serial killer. With it being shot in 3D with copious amounts of digital gore and de la Huerta nudity, and no shortage of ironic stunt casting (there's Bleu, Judd Nelson as a sexually-harrassing doc, Niecy Nash as a sassy nurse, and Kathleen Turner as the head nurse), NURSE is one of those fakesploitation films that flaunts the Alexandre Aja/PIRANHA-remake mentality of assuming that it's already a cult movie, blithely and smugly unaware that such status is earned. Director/co-writer Doug Aarniokoski (HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME) tries to go for some John Waters outrageousness (why else would he trot SERIAL MOM's Turner out for one scene?) with some occasional giallo lighting and music cues that echo those of Ennio Morricone in his minimalist percussive phase, but it's not amusing, and it's not scary, and how exploitative can it be when you have a star in Bowden who obviously refused to do nudity? Arms always strategically covering her breasts and two scenes where she's showering in her underwear? No offense, Ms. Bowden, but you know what kind of movie you're in. If you're not gonna play, then don't take the gig. I'm no Corbin Bleu fan, but at least he had the sack to lay his Disney rep on the line and show his thrusting ass in a sex scene with you.
The script (co-written by David Loughery, a regular Joseph Ruben collaborator) requires its characters to be complete idiots. Witness the scene where a bloodied Abby gets away when someone turns their back for two seconds. The guy turns around to see she's gone but has left a trail of bloody footprints down a long hallway. How far could she get in two seconds? And does he go after her? Of course not. More sloppy craftsmanship: it's revealed that Abby's real name is Sarah and that the reasoning behind her actions is that, as a child, she walked in on her doctor father having sex with a nurse and killed him; she ultimately changed her name from "Sarah" and moves from hospital to hospital, changing identities and splitting town when things get out of control, and her current alias is "Abby." OK, fine. Then why, in the flashback to her childhood, is her mother calling her "Abby"? The grating de la Huerta plays Abby in her typical talking-too-slow fashion with a look on her face that's perpetually stuck somewhere between "I'm confused" and "Who farted?" and her voiceover narration is obviously the work of another actress, always a sign of post-production Band-Aiding (as terrible as de la Huerta is, she's at least game for Aarniokoski's hard-R intentions, unlike Bowden). The only real high point of NURSE is provided by Melanie Scrofano as an impossibly, annoyingly chipper HR exec. In just a few scenes, Scrofano nails the out-of-touch idiocy of corporate higher-ups who have no idea what it's like in the trenches. Imagine what she could've done with the Abby role instead of the dazed and dull de la Huerta. Other than Scrofano's performance, NURSE is a complete waste of time. (R, 84 mins)
IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION (Canada/Germany/Pakistan - 2014)
When the hit series PRISON BREAK ended its run in 2009, co-star Dominic Purcell dove straight into movies and seemed to have what it takes to become a tough, chiseled big screen action guy. The problem is that all of his starring vehicles are terrible. He can be alright in supporting roles (the not-as-bad-as-everyone-says STRAW DOGS remake, KILLER ELITE, and the recent THE BAG MAN), but when he's left to carry a film, he seems to be going for the "man of few words" thing, but something in his line delivery and his body language makes him come off like a lumbering oaf. Regardless, the guy's phone apparently never stops ringing and he hasn't stopped working since PRISON BREAK wrapped up. He starred in five films--almost all DTV--in 2013 and has already been in four this year, with another on the way. I suppose it was inevitable that Purcell would get sucked into the orbit of Uwe Boll. The director's latest, the in-name-only DTV sequel IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION ("Too intense for theaters!" the packaging boasts), the third entry in this improbable franchise (Purcell follows the first film's Jason Statham, and the second's Dolph Lundgren, neither of whom got along with Boll at all), is also the third pairing of Boll with his current favorite actor, after the deck-stacking histrionics of ASSAULT ON WALL STREET and the pointless remake of the Presidential assassination thriller SUDDENLY. It's a partnership that's yielded nothing worthwhile, and while they may get along just fine, it likely exists simply because Purcell works cheap, and cheap is where Boll's at as he still adjusts to his post-German tax loophole world.
Purcell, knowing he's in another Boll joint and not trying any harder than he needs to, grunts his way through this ARMY OF DARKNESS/GAME OF THRONES ripoff as Hazen Kaine, a present-day American hitman working in Sofia for Bulgarian crime boss Avaylo (Marian Valev, who looks like Bulgarian Sean Bean). Avaylo orders Kaine to kidnap the two daughters of the heir to the Bulgarian throne, and Kaine finds one of them possesses a strange medallion. The medallion matches one of Kaine's tats. Yep...he's The Chosen One. Cue the wormhole portal sucking Kaine back to medieval times as he aids two sisters, Arabella (Ralitsa Paskaleva) and Emeline (Daria Simeonova), and their uncle Tybalt (Nikolai Sotirov) in their battle against the tyrant Tervin (Valev, again) and his giant, flying, fire-breathing dragon. Boredom ensues (watch Boll pad the running time by having Purcell make an espresso and drink it in real time!), both in terms of story and Purcell's performance, but the batshit Boll of old shines through in the last 15 minutes, when Kaine and the dragon get sucked back into the wormhole and dropped in present-day Sofia. The dragon is chasing Kaine through the streets of Sofia as Kaine carjacks some Bulgarian guy, as if the dragon can't follow a car by flying over it ("Take a right!" Kaine tells the hapless driver. "Lose it!" IT'S A FLYING DRAGON! IT CAN STILL SEE YOU!). Realizing the error of his ways, Kaine, who's somehow eluded the dragon, releases the two kidnapped girls he's kept in a shipping container, while the dragon, now apparently a good guy, shows up and carries away one of Avaylo's flunkies. Kaine kills Avaylo and takes the girls back to their father, who's OK with the fact that, even though Kaine returned them unharmed, they wouldn't have been missing in the first place had Kaine not abducted them, and lets him go ("Thanks...appreciate it," Purcell mumbles). As Kaine ambles away, the dragon can be seen taking a leisurely flight through the skies over Sofia. Nope, no worries. Everything's fine. Nobody's taking cover. There's no police or emergency personnel anywhere. Everyone's just back to their business, disregarding that a fire-breathing dragon just appeared out of nowhere and destroyed half the city and is now apparently a permanent resident of Sofia, but hey, just let it fly around and do its thing, it won't bother anyone. (R, 86 mins)
VIKINGDOM: THE BLOOD ECLIPSE (Malaysia/US - 2013)
Purcell also stars in this "300 Meets THOR in Middle-Earth" would-be epic that was shot in 3D by Malaysia's KRU Studios, founded by three Halim brothers who, since 1992, also comprise that country's leading chart-topping pop group KRU when they aren't being movie moguls. Boasting embarrassingly primitive CGI and the same quality of greenscreen backdrops usually favored by local TV meteorologists, VIKINGDOM: THE BLOOD ECLIPSE was supposed to be KRU's big splash in the US (CLASH OF EMPIRES went straight to DVD in 2011), but it only made it to a few screens and VOD, and even that's a stretch considering how shoddy it looks. The visual effects, including some tame CGI splatter, aren't even on the level of a typical Asylum title, though in a few scenes, the sets have that cheap-but-charming quality that brings to mind early '80s Roger Corman productions like THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS or DEATHSTALKER. But still, that's probably not what director/set designer/visual effects supervisor Yusry A. Halim (or, "Yusry KRU" in his teen idol years) was going for with a budget equaling $15 million US. Sure, that's not big bucks by today's standards, but for that amount, one should be able to say something more positive than "some of the sets come close to looking like a 30-year-old Roger Corman production." The incoherent plot has Viking leader Eirick (Purcell) killed in battle and resurrected by the ghost of his dead betrothed Freya (Tegan Moss) in order to take on an evil Thor (Conan Stevens), who's plotting some scheme to gather ancient relics for the apocalyptic "Blood Eclipse." Eirick assembles a crew of warriors, including Sven (Craig Fairbrass) and Brynna (Natassia Linn Malthe), as well as martial arts expert Yang (Jon Foo, from the ill-fated TEKKEN movie) to battle the forces of Thor, which includes a papier-mache dragon that looks like a rejected prop from a high school drama club production of THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG.
The action scenes try to copy both the speed-ramping of 300 and the choreography of wuxia, but Halim doesn't quite pull it off, and while he might be going for that graphic novel artifice in the visuals, it ends up looking like a laughably cheap, dated ripoff. If this film and IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION show us anything, it's that Dominic Purcell doesn't get your movie into theaters--he gets it a spot on a Wal-Mart DVD department planogram. Halim should've known he wasn't going to find success in the US market when his lead is Uwe Boll's go-to guy (Malthe and Fairbrass have also logged time with Dr. Boll), but even Boll's movies look better than this. VIKINGDOM's cheapness--the wigs look like mop heads, and Thor's hammer appears to be a block of silver-spray-painted packing styrofoam stuck on a broom handle-- might've had some B-movie charm if Purcell wasn't once again sleepwalking his way through the whole thing. This is easily the narcoleptic thespian's worst performance yet. He speaks in a monotone that doesn't even mask his utter boredom with the project, and with his often halting and hesitant moves in the battle scenes, he looks like someone who's nursing a recent back injury. He frequently looks confused and irritable, not even hiding that he's just in this for the free Kuala Lumpur vacation. VIKINGDOM does little other than establish Halim as the Uwe Boll of Southeast Asia, getting stilted performances from his cast of C-listers, and his staging of the action scenes is awful: it's obvious he's got about 25 extras that he unsuccessfully tries to make look like an army. Old-school directors back in the day knew how to pull that off. (Unrated, 115 mins)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (US - 2014) Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Cast: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Jenny Agutter, Toby Jones, Hayley Atwell, Maximiliano Hernandez, Callan Mulvey, Garry Shandling, Chin Han, Georges St-Pierre, Salvator Xuereb. (PG-13, 136 mins)
Around the time Joss Whedon got the AVENGERS gig, there seemed to be a conscious effort by Marvel to bring some outside-the-box personality to the proceedings while still meeting the demand for intense action and grandiose visual effects. Shane Black brought his patented LETHAL WEAPON smartassery to IRON MAN 3 while semi-regular GAME OF THRONES director Alan Taylor fashioned an appropriately darker THOR: THE DARK WORLD. One could argue that the trend started before Whedon, as CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER director Joe Johnston utilized some of the same WWII-set atmosphere way back in 1990's THE ROCKETEER. For the sequel, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, the sibling directing team of Anthony and Joe Russo seem as unlikely a choice as you can conceive. Best known for directing episodes of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and COMMUNITY, the pair hadn't made a film since the 2006 comedy YOU, ME AND DUPREE but here reveal themselves to be secret '70s post-Watergate political paranoia/conspiracy fans. The spirit of Alan J. Pakula seems to permeate THE WINTER SOLDIER, and it's an interesting approach that keeps things fresh and exciting. Does the world need another run-of-the-mill superhero movie? Most of these films are entertaining on their own, but I've found that even the ones I really like--SPIDER-MAN 2, IRON MAN and THE AVENGERS, for instance--I never feel compelled to own or even revisit (Christopher Nolan's DARK KNIGHT trilogy being an exception). Letting the filmmakers bring their own style or ambitions to these films gives them something more tangible than just wall-to-wall CGI. I mean, be honest--it made a ton of money, but how many people really like IRON MAN 2?
The Russo brothers and returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely open the film in the present day, two years after the events of THE AVENGERS. Steve Rogers/Cap (Chris Evans) is still adjusting to the modern world, regularly updating his list of things to check out ("See ROCKY (ROCKY II?)" S.H.I.E.L.D. head agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) informs Rogers of Project Insight, a secret operation involving three helicarriers routed to various spy satellites around the globe for the purpose of pre-emptively halting terror threats. After he receives a flash drive from Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Fury is unable to access the encrypted data and is soon ambushed by mysterious agents posing as cops. Meanwhile, Rogers incurs the wrath of top-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. official Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), who believes he's up to something with Fury. Soon, Rogers, Romanoff, and Sam Wilson/The Falcon (Anthony Mackie) find themselves on the run after uncovering information about HYDRA, a rogue unit operating within and against S.H.I.E.L.D., and their top assassin is the unstoppable Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), whose true identity--not a surprise to Marvel fans--makes him closer to Cap than the hero realizes.
I enjoyed Johnston's THE FIRST AVENGER but found it generally forgettable despite the wonderful WWII-era production design. But this is a different story. One of the best films in the Marvel canon, THE WINTER SOLDIER is a much darker work, jettisoning the 1940s idealism for a strong sense of modern cynicism. There's a rampant mistrust of government and its abuses of power throughout, and while Cap decries the measures S.H.I.E.L.D. is taking in the name of protecting the people, Fury reminds him that the Greatest Generation has its own issues and shouldn't be pointing fingers. Also note how Pierce informs Cap that "building a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down." There's much humor throughout, with Rogers and Romanoff frequently coming off like a pair of ballbusting partners in a cop buddy movie, and Cap looking at another night in by explaining "All the guys in my barbershop quartet are dead," and nods and inside jokes (including a quick reference to Jackson's Jules Winnfield from PULP FICTION). But where THE WINTER SOLDIER really succeeds is not with its title-sharing villain (Stan is fine, but he's really a secondary bad guy), but with its vividly 1970s atmosphere--not in terms of the look, obviously, but in the style. It plays a lot like a Marvel superhero version of THE PARALLAX VIEW, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, or ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (watch the tense scene where Rogers boards an increasingly crowded elevator and realizes he's a target), and one of the key elements is the inspired and almost subversive casting of Redford as the primary villain. Redford acts infrequently these days, and never in huge films of this sort, but seeing him play the kind of callous, duplicitious, well-connected string-puller that his characters used to face decades ago is a treat for fans of the screen legend. Redford's casting isn't mandatory for the film to work, but it adds a clever layer to the proceedings (had he turned it down, I can picture Warren Beatty serving the same function), and fortunately, the Russos don't let him down.
While the conspiracy elements inevitably take a back seat to non-stop CGI action in the latter half, it's generally convincing and well-handled. Some of the up-close fight scenes have a too-dizzying shaky-cam element to them, but it's not too overwhelming and it makes up a small percentage of the film. In keeping with the '70s aesthetic, many of the action scenes and a couple of car chases are handled, for the most part, practically, thanks to second-unit director and veteran stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos, who cut his teeth working on B-movies by the likes of William Lustig (MANIAC) back in the '80s. Razatos has done second-unit work for a number of CGI-heavy action films in recent years, like THE EXPENDABLES and last two FAST & FURIOUS entries, but the Russos use him for his old-school skills here, and he does some exemplary work. Given my lukewarm response to THE FIRST AVENGER and my general one-and-done sentiments when it comes to watching most of these things, I found THE WINTER SOLDIER to be a cut above the norm. It's a superhero film with a dark, gritty streak, and its unusual fusion of comic book action and cynical conspiracy thriller makes it an unpredictable spring surprise at the multiplex.
NYMPHOMANIAC (Denmark/Germany/France/Belgium - 2013; US release 2014) Written and directed by Lars von Trier.
VOL I: Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Connie Nielsen, Jens Albinus, Hugo Speer, Cyron Melville, Felicity Gilbert, Anders Hove, Jesper Christensen, Saskia Reeves, Ananya Berg, Nicolas Bro. (Unrated, 117 mins)
VOL II: Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, Michael Pas, Caroline Goodall, Kate Ashfield, Ananya Berg, Shanti Roney, Kookie Ryan, Papou. (Unrated, 124 mins)
Arthouse provocateur Lars von Trier prides himself on walking the fine line between visionary auteur and misanthropic asshole, a firm believer that any publicity is good publicity, whether he's putting his lead actresses through hell to get the performance he needs from them, or prompting John C. Reilly to walk off of 2005's MANDERLAY over filming the actual slaughter of a donkey, or getting kicked out of the Cannes Film Festival for saying he sympathizes with Hitler. Like a bratty kid, von Trier revels in attention but with rare exception, backs it up with great films. When he announced NYMPHOMANIAC would run over five hours and include professional actors in unsimulated, hardcore sex scenes, the buzz was on. While the director's complete five-and-a-half hour cut was released in Europe, the US release was split into two films running around two hours each, released a few weeks apart (the director's cut will likely surface on Blu-ray). Von Trier supervised the US cuts, and while much explicit material was removed, quite a bit remains, including some penetrative shots that involve body doubles and CGI trickery melding the below-the-belt region with the name actors' bodies from the waist up. In other words, Shia LaBeouf may have auditioned for the film by sending von Trier a homemade sex tape, and while he's doing frontal nudity, the erection and beyond are the work of his body double. The same goes for actress Stacy Martin fellating a man (Jens Albinus) on a train. It's a very real-looking prosthetic penis, and while we see semen drooling out of Martin's mouth, the director's cut apparently shows the spurting ejaculation, for those so inclined.
A lot of this is von Trier just being von Trier, but contrary to initial reports and the director's own incessant hype, NYMPHOMANIAC, at least in its US incarnation, isn't quite the wall-to-wall porno fuckfest that it's been made out to be. In many ways, it's a von Trier greatest hits package, with cues from and callbacks to his past films like DOGVILLE (2003), ANTICHRIST (2009) and especially BREAKING THE WAVES (1996). It's von Trier's third straight film with Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's become his muse in misery after the harrowing ANTICHRIST and MELANCHOLIA (2011), where she initially has a supporting role but becomes the focus as the film progresses. Von Trier has a history of pushing his actresses to their limit and getting incredible work from them: Emily Watson's Oscar-nominated performance in BREAKING THE WAVES remains one of the greatest in all of cinema, while Bjork surpassed all expectations in DANCER IN THE DARK (2000). DOGVILLE's Nicole Kidman and MANDERLAY's Bryce Dallas Howard also survived von Trier and lived to tell the tale. In Gainsbourg, von Trier has found a kindred spirit who's willing and eager to go to the dark places others won't. She's the Klaus Kinski to his Werner Herzog, minus the mutual death threats.
As the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC opens, bookish academic Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) happens upon the unconscious Joe (Gainsbourg) lying in an alley, beaten and bloodied. He helps her back to his apartment, lets her shower and makes her some tea. They begin talking, first about little things, and then she agrees to tell her story. Von Trier plays with the time element a bit, but in the first volume, much of the dramatic weight is carried by 22-year-old newcomer Martin as young Joe. As older Joe explains, "I discovered my cunt as a two-year-old," and before her age is in double digits (Ananya Berg plays Joe at this age in some discreetly-shot sequences that imply more they show), Joe and her best friend B are exploring themselves in ways that are already threatening to go beyond sliding down the bannister and grinding themselves against the bathroom floor. At the age of 15 (and now played by Martin), Joe asks local stud mechanic Jerome (LaBeouf) to take her virginity, which he does in the most perfunctory fashion imaginable. Nevertheless, the beast has been unleashed as Joe and B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) have contests like sneaking on to a train and screwing as many men as possible during the trip. They even form a club at school devoted to the pursuit of sex without love, though B eventually comes to her own realization that "the secret ingredient to sex is love." Joe believes that love complicates things, and continues sleeping with as many men as possible, eventually reconnecting with Jerome when she applies for a secretarial job at a printing company owned by his uncle (Jesper Christensen), even though she has no secretarial skills. She resists Jerome's advances, spending her evenings maintaining a busy schedule of hourly appointments with men who drop in to have sex with her, often passing one another as one arrives and the other leaves. By her own estimate, she's sleeping with up to eight men on a typical evening, and even devises an elaborate system for deciding which men she'll call back among the many messages on her answering machine. At the end of Vol. 1, Joe decides to settle down for domesticity with the now-successful Jerome, when she finds she can no longer reach orgasm.
In a brilliant debut, Martin is the focal point of the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC, and like Watson in BREAKING THE WAVES, she's up to the challenge even though von Trier saves the worst for Joe for when Gainsbourg assumes the role. For the first half, Gainsbourg is limited to sitting in bed as Joe tells Seligman her story, and the kind-hearted intellectual listens intently, often going off on thematic tangents involving fly fishing, cake forks, Bach, Poe, and mathematical theories that sort-of tie into the psychology of what Joe is telling him. Von Trier also gives Christian Slater his best role in years as Joe's doctor father in flashbacks. Joe loves her father deeply, and the two bond over their shared love of trees and flowers, neither feeling a connection to Joe's "cold bitch" mother (Connie Nielsen). As good as Martin and Slater are, the show-stealer for the first half is Uma Thurman in a one-scene stunner as the enraged wife of Mr. H (Hugo Speer), one of Joe's regular hookups. When Mr. H leaves his wife and shocks Joe by showing up at her place with his suitcases in tow, he's followed closely by Mrs H, who's dragged their three young sons along with her. If that wasn't awkward enough, Joe's next guy (Cyron Melville) shows up and everyone watches Mrs. H maniacally melt down, introducing the boys to Joe so they can "put a face to the all the therapy they'll need down the road," and saying "Would it be alright if I show the children the whoring bed? They need to see it! Let's go see Daddy's favorite place!" Thurman is onscreen for less than ten minutes but she makes every second count, and it's an instant classic of laughing while cringing in pained discomfort, one of those rare instances where a cameo is actually Oscar-worthy.
Vol. 2 picks up with Joe and Jerome married and having a baby. A few years pass as Martin exits and Gainsbourg takes over. The child, Marcel, is now three and though they love each other, Joe and Jerome's sex life has stalled. Jerome encourages her to see other men if it will help her psychologically ("If you buy a tiger, you have to keep it fed," he says). This goes on for some time and eventually leads Joe to the mysterious K (Jamie Bell). K seems to be some sort of Craigslist-type sex therapist/sadist who lives in what appears to be an abandoned office building where women show up for appointments to be beaten. K does not offer sex, and he doesn't allow safe words. You do what he says, period. Joe's sessions with K involve him renaming her "Fido," tying her to a couch, bent over, while he whips her bare ass with a riding crop, then inserting his fingers into her vagina to gauge her arousal. Things just get worse for Joe as her sex addiction, self-loathing and degradation cause her to lose her family. She can barely hold down her office job, routinely fucking male co-workers in the restroom or a closet space. She's ordered into therapy, where she lashes out against a society that judges her and tries to shame her. Now in her mid-40s, she eventually loses any feeling of pleasure, as her vagina is so scarred and worn from the thousands of men over three decades of hook-ups that it spontaneously bleeds, and causes numerous bouts of unbearable, debilitating pain. Joe eventually gets a job as a debt collector/extortionist for the shady L (Willem Dafoe), which leads to her shot at redemption by becoming a mentor to troubled teen P (Mia Goth).
While the first half of NYMPHOMANIAC has its share of dark moments, it's also surprisingly amusing in spots, such as Joe comparing her vagina to the automatic doors at a supermarket ("only with a stronger sensor") or when Seligman echoes the audience's call of bullshit with every one of Jerome's improbably hackneyed returns to the narrative. There's also the standard von Trier button-pushing bits like Joe getting wet standing by her father's death bed, and later in Vol 2, unsubtle Christ metaphors and Joe admitting that she feels a sympathetic kinship with a pedophile (Jean-Marc Barr) because of their "outcast" status (drawing thematic parallels to past von Trier outcasts ike the tragic Bess in BREAKING THE WAVES, Selma in DANCER IN THE DARK, and Grace in DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY). But it's the second half where things take a grim turn, largely with the intensely disturbing sequences involving Bell's K (the much-ballyhooed "Silent Duck" moment when K fists Joe is mostly implied, at least in the US cut), and the effect Joe's behavior has on Jerome and Marcel. I'm still not convinced that his recent public implosion isn't some extended von Trier-coordinated publicity stunt, but credit where it's due--funny accent and all, LaBeouf is actually quite good, especially in the second half. Given the extreme length and the myriad of directions the story takes, von Trier generally keeps things on point even when it threatens to derail at any moment. It only starts to feel choppy as things wind down, especially in the debt collection tangent, which comes out of nowhere and doesn't really feel like it belongs. As shown in her scenes at her jobs, Joe really has no skills other than sexual, which wouldn't seem a prerequisite for tough-talking collecting for a loan shark (perhaps the manipulation aspect?). Also, Joe's relationship with P is never fleshed out, at least not to the point where some of P's actions near the end make complete sense. I see the way the tables get turned and Joe is looking at things from another perspective, but it just feels like something's missing or got lost in the editing.
Like Seligman, the viewer is likely to be skeptical of some of Joe's story. There are many times over the course of the four hours when both Joe and to a lesser extent, Seligman seem like the classic "unreliable narrator." In many ways, NYMPHOMANIAC is film loaded with sex and not really specifically about sex. One popular theory is that Joe is a stand-in for von Trier and that Seligman is every stuffy, erudite, out-of-touch film critic who's judged and vilified him, though this involves a revelation by Seligman that I won't spoil. But Seligman doesn't judge Joe (other than being incredulous over some too convenient developments), which makes him different from every other man she's ever known other than her beloved father. There's a lot to take in--no pun intended--with NYMPHOMANIAC, so much so that sometimes the filmmaking itself is easy to overlook. There are some stunning shots and a strong Andrei Tarkovsky vibe throughout--one shot of older Joe finding "her" tree is breathtaking, and clothed or otherwise, the camera simply adores Martin, who has the most hauntingly seductive gaze you've seen in ages. Even seeing it split into two films--if you see it in its American incarnation, it's best to set four hours aside and just binge it--it probably still needs to be seen again in von Trier's original director's cut. Judging from viewing it in this format, it's not von Trier's best film--it seems to start stumbling with the introduction of L, though that's no fault of Dafoe's-- but it may be his most personal one, and one that reveals more of itself on repeat viewings, however soul-crushing and exhausting that may be. But that's vintage Lars von Trier. Love him or hate him, his films get you talking.
This low-budget, Bahamas-financed thriller was shot in Louisiana in 2012 and released on 15 screens a month ago. It plays like one of those forgettable post-PULP FICTION Tarantino knockoffs that flooded video stores well into the late 1990s. There's an added bit of THE USUAL SUSPECTS tossed in, along with some occasional would-be David Lynch eccentricity that provides a few fleeting amusing moments but mostly just feels rote and tired, with cinematography so dark and murky that it's often hard to tell what's going on. Based on an unfilmed screenplay titled MOTEL (the film's original title) penned by veteran actor James Russo, THE BAG MAN is the debut of writer/director David Grovic, who manages to corral a pair of slumming big names like John Cusack and Robert De Niro for a sort-of THINGS TO DO IN NEW ORLEANS WHEN YOU'RE COASTING. By now, it's no surprise to see Cusack or De Niro in this kind of Redbox-ready clunker that keeps a roof over the heads of guys like Michael Madsen or Tom Sizemore or Val Kilmer or Christian Slater, but not that long ago, this would've been a major release in theaters nationwide. De Niro's been taking mercenary jobs for a few years now (you think he even remembers making RED LIGHTS?), and once in a while, a SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK might accidentally happen, but Cusack's fall from the A-list has been shocking in its suddenness because nothing really brought it on. It's not like he got old or was involved in a scandal or had a string of bombs or a reputation for being unusually difficult. What gives? Who did he piss off? What the hell happened to John Cusack?
Here, Cusack is Jack, a flunky for Dragna (De Niro), a powerful New York mobster prone to windy, overly-scripted speeches that reference the likes of Herman Hesse and Sun Tzu. Dragna gives Jack an easy, quick-money assignment: retrieve a bag, don't look inside, drive it to no-tell motel in an off-the-beaten-path podunk town, and wait for him to arrive. Jack arrives at the motel with complications already in tow--a guy who tried to get the bag from him is now a corpse in his trunk. The situation doesn't improve once he goes through the hassle of checking in (Crispin Glover is the twitchy, wheelchair-bound desk clerk): Jack shoots some mystery men waiting for him in the next room, then finds himself paired up with Israeli hooker Rivka (Rebecca Da Costa), who's being hassled by a pair of vicious pimps, one an eye-patched Nick Fury lookalike (Sticky Fingaz), the other a bad-tempered Serbian dwarf (Martin Klebba). Bodies start piling up and the sheriff (Dominic Purcell, who's actually good here) keeps nosing around before Dragna makes his explosive reappearance to inform Jack why he was selected for this job, and it's a front-runner for 2014's dumbest plot twist. There's lots of would-be Tarantino dialogue ("If you could fuck any woman from history, who would it be?") and quirky touches (Glover sternly telling Cusack "Don't touch my wheelchair...it belonged to my dead mother!" gets a big laugh), and De Niro, hamming it up and sporting near-George Romero-eyeglass frames and a big silver pompadour in a role that seems like it was written with Christopher Walken in mind, has a long monologue that centers on an episode of FULL HOUSE, but those moments are disbursed in a stingy fashion throughout a drab, dull, stagy noir that's going nowhere fast, much like Cusack's career if he doesn't stop seemingly choosing his scripts at random. (R, 109 mins) AT MIDDLETON (US - 2014)
If you happen upon AT MIDDLETON in its last five minutes, you might think you missed a powerful, heartfelt look at two people who make a connection over the course of a day and are forced by the circumstances and the realities of their lives to part ways and return to their respective spouses. But if you watch the rest of the film leading up to that finale, you'll get a grating, phony, and pandering middle-aged rom-com filled with obvious jokes, cliched plot turns, cardboard characters, and some frequently atrocious acting, the kind of fawned-over festival favorite that ultimately gets dumped on 20 screens with little fanfare. There's a good film to be made--one that could deftly balance drama and comedy--about parents of an only child facing an empty nest when that kid goes off to college, but until its surprisingly poignant ending, AT MIDDLETON takes the easy route to stale laughs and even staler drama nearly every time and has almost nothing substantive to offer. Taking place over one day at the mid-level, mostly average Middleton College, the type of place no one really wants to go but they just sort-of end up there, AT MIDDLETON finds heart surgeon George Hartman (Andy Garcia) and his son Conrad (Spencer Lofranco) arriving for a campus tour when George has a meet-cute with Edith Martin (Vera Farmiga), when she steals his parking spot. Edith is there with her ferociouly ambitious daughter Audrey (Farmiga's little sister Taissa of AMERICAN HORROR STORY; there's a 21-year age difference but they look so much alike that the initiallly odd casting works). George is a milquetoast sort who wears a bow tie, while Edith is brash, loud, and free-spirited and prone to embarrassing Audrey. Gee, is there any way opposites won't attract and that dweeby bow tie won't be undone before the end of the movie?
George and Edith get separated from the tour group and spend the afternoon on their own, stealing a couple of bikes, crashing a drama class, going into the music building and playing "Chopsticks," climbing the campus bell tower, watching THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, watching a young couple have public sex, running through a fountain, and generally making nuisances of themselves campus-wide. In the film's worst stretch, George and Edith blaze up with a couple of stoner pre-med students. Can you do anything new with the concept of square parents getting high? As evidenced by a baked Garcia rapping "I'm a cardiac surgeon!" over some background reggae beats, the answer is a resounding "no." It just gets worse when one of the stoner dudes starts talking about a diseased dog's distended ballsack, which leads to the mantra "The ballsack is life," which is at least a brief respite from the film busting its ass to make "feckless" a punchline. A mannered Vera Farmiga, who appears to have prepped for the role by visualizing the worst of Diane Keaton and running with it, is really hard to take at times, and in the most unintentionally telling shot, she actually grabs a crutch and starts using it for no reason. The younger actors don't fare much better, though they aren't required to embarrass themselves quite as much. Still, Taissa Farmiga gets one of the worst lines after a spat with Conrad--when he puts his earbuds back in and walks away, she yells "Confusion has a lot of great soundtracks!" What? What does that even mean? Peter Riegert appears briefly as a cynical DJ named Boneyard Sims, who gives communications major Conrad some pointers. The best performance is a two-scene bit from Tom Skerritt as a famed linguistics professor who advises the driven Audrey to slow down and use college to explore her options when she melts down after he declines her request to be her mentor. Skerritt brings a quiet, scholarly dignity to the role that's completely at odds with the cookie-cutter histrionics going on almost everywhere else, and with about four minutes of screen time, he succeeds in making you wish this was a film about his character. As George and Edith grow closer over the day, they question the decisions they've made and the complacency that's set in, but AT MIDDLETON isn't interested in that. It's the kind of movie where a staid, uptight guy loosening his bow tie and rapping after a couple of bong hits is supposed to be instantly hysterical. And there's the moment when Edith starts crying because the day's coming to an end, and she looks at George with tears streaming down her face and says "I thought you fixed hearts!" Really? Pros like Garcia and Vera Farmiga read that line in director Adam Rodgers' script and said "Yep...sounds good! Let's do this!"? But then at the end, something happens. It gets serious, and the final moments are genuinely emotional as the two parties go to their respective vehicles and get on the road home, presumably never to see each other again. The expressions on Garcia's and Farmiga's faces convey the pain, the missed opportunities, the uncertainty over the future. They're exhibiting the best acting they've done in the whole film and then you realize why: because they aren't talking. (R, 100 mins)
