THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (US - 2016) Directed by David Yates. Written by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer. Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent, Ben Chaplin, Casper Crump, Simon Russell Beale, Matt Cross, Madeleine Worrall. (PG-13, 109 mins) The latest big-screen incarnation of the legendary Edgar Rice Burroughs character has all of the expected 2016 blockbuster summer tentpole bells-and-whistles--3-D, extensive CGI, motion-capture performances for the apes, post-300 quick cut/slo-mo speed-ramping--but makes a concerted effort to remain faithful to the Tarzan of old whenever possible. The best decision made by screenwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer and latter-franchise HARRY POTTER director David Yates is to consciously avoid making this yet another origin story. THE LEGEND OF TARZAN takes place in 1890, years after Tarzan and Jane have left the jungle to return to their aristocratic life in London as Mr. and Mrs. John Clayton III. Tarzan's backstory--his parents killed after a shipwreck when he was a baby, his being raised by apes in the deep jungles of the Congo, his meeting American Jane and returning to society--is doled out in periodic flashbacks that take up only the necessary screen time. The film expects the audience to have a working knowledge of Tarzan, which is a pretty bold move considering how major studio marketing usually works and for whom the movie is targeted. It's been 18 years since the last big-screen TARZAN movie--the 1998 bomb TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY, with Casper Van Dien--and over 30 since the 1984 prestige epic GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES with Christopher Lambert and 1981's abominable TARZAN THE APE MAN with Bo Derek and Miles O'Keeffe. Tarzan hasn't been a regular pop culture fixture since the late 1960s. As was the case with last year's pleasantly-surprising THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., I guarantee there are moviegoers today who have no idea who or what Tarzan is.
In this incarnation, Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Alexander Skarsgard) resents being called "Tarzan," even though he's become a popular figure in 1890 London, with his "Ape Man" character the subject of numerous newspaper articles and pulp stories, and "Me Tarzan, you Jane" a fictional catchphrase. He enjoys indulging children who are fascinated by his legend but feels out of place in the aristocracy, having no inclination to journey back to the wild, unlike Jane (Margot Robbie), who dislikes formality and longs for excitement and adventure. Nevertheless--there'd be no movie otherwise--that's exactly where they find themselves headed after the Prime Minister (Jim Broadbent) encourages Clayton to visit the African Congo to investigate stories of tribes being enslaved by evildoers in the employ of the never-seen King Leopold of Belgium. Leopold has acquired part of the Congo and is claiming bankruptcy even though the area is rich in diamonds and minerals. Dr. George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson, cashing a paycheck), a visiting American envoy at the behest of President Benjamin Harrison and a veteran of the Civil War, takes a special interest in the slavery aspect of the allegations against Belgium and tags along, much to Tarzan's initial disapproval. The Prime Minister has suggested Tarzan go on his diplomatic mission after receiving an invitation from Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), a vintage mustache-twirling villain secretly working for King Leopold. Rom needs access to the diamond mines of Opar, which is overseen by tribal lord Chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou). Mbonga agrees to allow Rom access to the mines' riches if he hands over Tarzan, who was forced to kill Mbonga's son years earlier.
A lot of plot has to get set in motion before the action really fires up, and for the most part, it's rousing and fun, an enjoyable mix of GREYSTOKE costume epic and old-school jungle adventure. Of course, the weakest element is the dubious CGI work, which is a blurry, incoherent mess when Tarzan is swinging through the trees. Elsewhere, Yates cribs a little too liberally from past blockbusters in a way that often crosses the line from homage to ripoff, whether it's the tiresome speed-ramping or the "circling aerial shot of a band of heroes walking single file along the top of the mountain," which was played out the 247th time Peter Jackson did it in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. Tarzan and Williams being chased by a stampeding flock of ostriches looks a little too much like the gallimimus scene in JURASSIC PARK, and a shot of a gorilla roaring in Williams' face has he turns away in fright is straight out of ALIEN 3. Robbie's Jane is far too present-day snarky at times (you're almost expecting her to vocal-fry "hashtag whatever" at Tarzan), and a throwaway line implying Rom was molested by his priest as a boy has no place in a TARZAN movie, nor does Williams quipping "Do you want me to lick his nuts, too?" when Tarzan tells him to bow before an ape leader. So yeah, there are some big flaws here, but it gets more right than wrong, starting with not overstaying its welcome, clocking in at a perfectly reasonable 109 minutes. Skarsgard is a fine Tarzan, a stoical man of few words and he certainly looks the part, even if his Tarzan yell sounds suspiciously like a guttural death metal remix of Johnny Weissmuller's iconic call. Waltz was obviously hired to be Christoph Waltz, and he relishes every moment of it. He's given a lot more to do here than in his squandered turn as Blofeld in the disappointing SPECTRE, and his performance, coupled with his suit and hat and his steamboat journey upriver, combine to make a nice winking nod to Klaus Kinski in FITZCARRALDO. THE LEGEND OF TARZAN is mindless, harmless summer fun (despite the insistence of many critics and bloggers who specialize in professional outrage, tirelessly trying to find things to be offended by), but it isn't giving the Weissmuller or Gordon Scott classics any cause for concern over their place in the TARZAN canon.
JAWS: THE REVENGE (US - 1987) Directed by Joseph Sargent. Written by Michael De Guzman. Cast: Lorraine Gary, Michael Caine, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young, Judith Barsi, Lynn Whitfield, Mitchell Anderson, Cedric Scott, Melvin Van Peebles, Fritzi Jane Courtney, Lee Fierro. (PG-13, 90 mins)
The JAWS franchise was put out of its misery (so far) after hitting rock-bottom with this inept, idiotic fourth installment, in which a now-widowed Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) is convinced that a great white shark--and the entire carcharodon carcharias species--has a personal axe to grind against her family. Yes, it's a vigilante shark (and it roars, like the shark in Enzo G. Castellari's 1982 Italian JAWS ripoff GREAT WHITE), first taking out the younger Brody son, Amity Deputy Sheriff Sean (Mitchell Anderson), then following--yes, following--Ellen when she goes to stay with eldest son Mike (Lance Guest in Dennis Quaid's JAWS 3-D role) and his wife (Karen Young) and daughter (Judith Barsi, who played Gary Busey's daughter in the 1986 B-action gem EYE OF THE TIGER) in the Bahamas, where Mike is part of a marine science research team with his Jamaican buddy (cue excessive use of "Hey,mon!") Jake (Mario Van Peebles). A grieving Ellen finds time for romance with wily local pilot and unlucky gambler Hoagie, played by a slumming Michael Caine, who infamously missed out on accepting his HANNAH AND HER SISTERS Oscar in person because he was stuck in the Bahamas working on this. An oft-cited Caine quote perfectly sums up his feelings on JAWS: THE REVENGE: "I've not seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house it built, and it is terrific."
JAWS: THE REVENGE began shooting in February 1987 and was in theaters just five months later on July 17, 1987. It's no surprise that it's rushed and sloppy, and no doubt the usually reliable journeyman director Joseph Sargent (best known for the 1974 classic THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE) could've done a better job with more money and more time. Even though this was made by Universal, it almost feels like a SUPERMAN IV-style slashed-budget hatchet job, as if Golan & Globus had somehow gotten hold of the JAWS rights and made this on the cheap through Cannon. This was Gary's first acting role since Steven Spielberg's expensive bomb 1941 (1979), and her only starring turn in a big-screen feature. The wife of Universal head Sid Sheinberg, Gary's presence here makes it tough to decide if it's a sincere nod to JAWS (there's also brief appearances by the Chief Brody-slapping Mrs. Kintner as well as the "Are you going to close the beeeeaches?" lady, and a scene where Mike's daughter imitates his actions at the kitchen table, like young Sean did with Chief Brody) or if Sheinberg gave it the green light as a vanity project for his wife. Gary is forced to do one stupid thing after another, including overacting and reacting to flashbacks to things her character couldn't possibly have witnessed (Chief Brody's "Smile you son of a bitch!" from the first film), and she really wasn't of enough importance to the first two films to build a fourth around. Now 78, Gary hasn't acted in a film since and one can't help but wonder if this movie would even exist--at least in this form--if her husband wasn't also the guy running the studio. From everything I've seen and read, she's a nice lady, but did anyone go away from JAWS and JAWS 2 thinking "Good flicks...but they could've used more Lorraine Gary"?
Universal's new Blu-ray, which looks great, has the "Mario Van Peebles survives and they blow the shark up" ending that was used for the film's European release and subsequent US home video editions. The Blu-ray's "alternate ending" (Van Peebles dies and Ellen rams the boat into the shark as it bleeds to death) was actually the US theatrical version's ending back in 1987. Honestly, the "Van Peebles dies" ending works slightly better--and I use the term "better" loosely--since the exploding of the shark involves 12-year-old stock footage from JAWS and looks exactly like the pieced-together, let's-just-get-this-over-with desperation Hail Mary that it is. JAWS: THE REVENGE did nothing for anyone involved with it, though Caine used it to mine some good-natured, self-deprecating yuks over his own mercenary career choices, which in those days were usually dictated by where they were being shot and how nice of a working vacation they'd provide. In July 1988, ten-year-old Barsi was a victim in a tragic murder-suicide in which her father killed her and her mother, then took his own life. She had two projects in the can at the time, both voice performances for Don Bluth animated films: she voiced Ducky in THE LAND BEFORE TIME, released in November 1988, and Anne-Marie in ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN, released in November 1989. Bluth dedicated both films to the young actress.
MARAUDERS (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Steven C. Miller. Written by Michael Cody and Chris Sivertson. Cast: Christopher Meloni, Bruce Willis, Dave Bautista, Adrian Grenier, Johnathan Schaech, Lydia Hull, Tyler Jon Olson, Texas Battle, Richie Chance, Ryan O'Nan, Christopher Rob Bowen, Chris Hill, Tara Holt. (R, 107 mins) As far as B-grade Michael Mann knockoffs go, MARAUDERS isn't terrible, and it's the closest that anything in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis phones in his performance from his hotel room" series has come to being good. Yes, it's been a little over two months since PRECIOUS CARGO graced VOD menus nationwide, and Bruno's back in another luxurious hotel suite, giving vague orders over the phone to recurring co-stars he has yet to acknowledge or even meet for MARAUDERS, which reunites him with his EXTRACTION director Steven C. Miller (not to be confused with Brian A. Miller, who directed Willis in VICE and THE PRINCE). Willis is still as bored and as openly contemptuous as ever of what he does for a living, but Miller seems to be stepping up his game a bit with MARAUDERS, demonstrating surprising flair in some imaginative and well-shot robbery sequences as well as doing a nice job with some Cincinnati location work, which you don't see every day in a Hollywood movie. Also working in MARAUDERS' favor--and possibly inspiring Miller--is a marvelously entertaining performance by Christopher Meloni, who takes his Stabler routine from his LAW & ORDER: SVU days and dials it up to 11, free to drop F-bombs and bon mots to his heart's content, approaching this project like it was going to be released on 3000 screens nationwide. There's a big HEAT influence on MARAUDERS, and Meloni appropriately pays tribute to Al Pacino with a few of his own "GREAT ASS!" moments throughout. As dumb and convoluted as MARAUDERS gets, it's a must-see for Meloni fans.
A string of intricately-staged bank robberies have struck branches of Hubert National Bank, owned by financial titan Jeffrey Hubert (Willis). After the latest in Cincinnati, FBI Special Agent Montgomery (Meloni) and his team--Stockwell (Dave Bautista), Chase (Lydia Hull), and rookie Wells (Adrian Grenier)--are baffled when the only fingerprints at crime scenes are those of a dead, disgraced Special Forces soldier implicated with other rogue military personnel in the kidnapping and murder of Hubert's younger brother several years ago. The plot thickens--almost too much for even the most devoted fan of THE BIG SLEEP to figure out--as the perpetually pissed-off, ticking time bomb Montgomery butts heads with corrupt Cincinnati homicide detective Mims (Johnathan Schaech), who keeps trying to shoehorn his way into the investigation and is caught trying to stash away evidence, and a smug and evasive Hubert, who may or may not be involved in a complex plot to avenge his brother's murder, which may or may not involve bad cops, bad Feds, an in-the-closet Ohio senator, and whatever else the script (co-written by I KNOW WHO KILLED ME director Chris Sivertson) pulls out of its ass.
While the story becomes increasingly improbable and bogged down by predictable twists--not helped by the clumsy way Miller telegraphs them--it's always watchable thanks to Meloni's junkyard-dog of a performance. He also seems fully cognizant of the cliches he's been tasked with incorporating into his character. You can almost see him rolling his eyes at the notion of yet another lone-wolf cop mourning the loss of a dead wife (an undercover Fed tortured and killed by the leader of a Mexican cartel, the investigation of whom was fucked up by--who else?--that asshole Mims) by going into the same bar every night and ordering a glass of pinot noir and not drinking it while once again listening to the last two voice mails she ever sent him, then going home and sitting in his empty apartment and pointing a loaded gun to his head. Meloni obviously knows MARAUDERS is junk, but he's still giving 110% and quite clearly having fun with it. As a result, he almost single-handedly elevates a fairly routine cops-and-robbers story into something that's intermittently insane enough to be legitimately good in fits and starts. I don't want to oversell MARAUDERS. It's a dumb B-movie that's perfectly at home on VOD (it probably would've been a moderate hit in theaters ten years ago, when Meloni was still on SVU), but anyone who follows these kinds of movies will almost instantly recognize this as being significantly better and more ambitious than much of its ilk. Had Willis bothered to stay awake for his scant few appearances (this is another one where he's on the set for two days tops, but to Miller's credit, he manages to coax Willis out of his downtown Cincy hotel suite for a couple of scenes) and approached this the same way Meloni did, MARAUDERS might've been even better. But even that wouldn't help the film's tendency to get bogged down in supporting character subplots that go nowhere (why is so much time spent on Mims and his cancer-stricken wife while we know almost nothing about Stockwell or Wells?). It's a page taken straight from the HEAT playbook (Pacino and De Niro's relationships with the women in their lives; Val Kilmer and Ashley Judd's marital problems; Dennis Haysbert's paroled and doomed getaway driver), but it doesn't work in MARAUDERS, which should be a lean, mean 85-minute action thriller but seems padded pushing 110. Schaech isn't a very interesting actor and nobody gives a shit about dickhead Mims and the film's hapless attempts to make him a good guy by showing his tender side with his terminally ill wife. MARAUDERS doesn't even need Bruce Willis. It just needs Chris Meloni glowering, yelling, and getting in some sick burns on all the idiots standing in his way.
THE NEON DEMON (France/US/Denmark - 2016) Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Written by Nicolas Winding Refn, Mary Laws and Polly Stenham. Cast: Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Desmond Harrington, Alessandro Nivola, Charles Baker, Jamie Clayton, Stacey Danger. (R, 118 mins) With his latest film THE NEON DEMON, DRIVE director and cult filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is aspiring to be the same kind of poking-with-a-stick provocateur as his fellow Danish countryman Lars von Trier. Refn's last film, 2013's hypnotic and hyper-stylized masterpiece ONLY GOD FORGIVES (infamously booed at Cannes, which is essentially a badge of honor, if not the entire endgame to guys like Refn and von Trier) is a key influence here, at least in terms of the throbbing synth score by Cliff Martinez, the obsessive perfectionism of the Kubrickian shot composition, and the red and blue Dario Argento colorgasms. But THE NEON DEMON is Refn's worst film, a huge disappointment that looks like the equivalent of an ONLY GOD FORGIVES B-side, with the visual and aural elements crammed into a puerile, simplistic, and embarrassingly heavy-handed metaphorical allegory that's part supernatural spin on BLACK SWAN and part good vs. evil lecture on whatever it takes to get ahead in the Los Angeles modeling world. One senses around 3/4 of the way through that it's all a goof to amuse Refn, no doubt chuckling to himself thinking about how cineastes will sift through every last bit of faux symbolism and gawk in astonishment at some of the shocking imagery on display. Sure, THE NEON DEMON is the most transgressive summer release to hit mainstream multiplex chains in years, but it feels like lukewarm leftovers otherwise: Refn seems like he's just copying himself, and even the score sounds familiar and uninspired. The busy Martinez--a former drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in the Freaky Styley days-- has composed some of the most memorable film music of the last several years, but even he appears to be on autopilot here, with only the sights and sounds of an early club scene hitting the exhilarating, intoxicating heights of DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES.
A proverbial wide-eyed innocent just off the bus and on her own on the mean streets of L.A., Jesse (Elle Fanning) is a 16-year-old orphan posing as 19--"18 is too on-the-nose," she's told by her agent (Christina Hendricks)--and trying to make it in modeling. She befriends nice-guy photographer Dean (Karl Glusman of Gaspar Noe's LOVE), who takes some shots for her portfolio, and at a test shoot, she meets makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone, in the film's best performance). Ruby senses Jesse is something special, and more or less takes her under her wing, advising her how to navigate the pit of vipers that is the world of fashion modeling. A natural beauty of virginal purity who catches the eye of every photographer and designer she meets, Jesse quickly earns the jealous derision of Ruby's friends Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), models in their very early 20s who have undergone extensive cosmetic surgery and are quickly aging their way out of the business. It doesn't take long before Jesse is well on her way to becoming the next big thing after a photo shoot with starmaker Jack (Desmond Harrington) and closing the latest show by L.A.'s hottest fashion designer (Alessandro Nivola). It's the designer who drives home the notion that "Beauty isn't everything...it's the only thing," passive-aggressively chastising Gigi and her cosmetic artifice. As Jesse is indoctrinated--in an almost ritualistic, sacrificial way--into this new world, she rejects the sincere affections of both Dean and Ruby, starts lording her gift of beauty over others, and the seething Gigi and Sarah decide they've had enough of the ingenue usurping the attention and adoration for which they've had themselves almost completely surgically reconstructed but have yet to reap the benefits.
I suppose it's some kind of auto-critique that a film calling out the shallowness of surface beauty is all shallow surface itself. THE NEON DEMON is an exercise in tedium for its first 90 minutes, riddled with cliches and going nowhere slowly, and by the time the really sick and twisted shit starts in the last half hour, it doesn't come off as shocking, but rather, juvenile and attention-seeking. Refn has nothing new to say here about L.A., fashion, or fame--he's just trying to outrage people and get a reaction. All the foreshadowing about "fresh meat" and the like should give you an idea of where at least some things are going, and it ultimately plays like an unfilmable short story from the halcyon days of splatterpunk, a lot of stuff that reads better on the page than it can possibly play out on the screen. Refn manages to create a few striking images here and there, mostly in the early going (the aforementioned club scene is a highlight), and Hendricks has a memorably acidic line about small-town girls pursuing modeling because "some guy named Chad in the food court told them they were beautiful enough to be a model." But there's an awful lot of very little otherwise, from extraneous supporting characters who serve little or no purpose (Glusman's Dean is absent for long stretches, then just vanishes altogether, and Keanu Reeves seems to have put in a day's work tops, as the repugnant manager of the fleabag motel where Jesse lives) to its painfully obvious metaphor for the way "the scene" chews up the naive innocents and spits them out. There's absolutely no doubt that a cult will form around this and I'm not ruling out another look at it down the line, but this seems like it's all smoke and mirrors, with Refn making a lot of noise but having very little to say.
NIGHTFALL (US - 1988) Written and directed by Paul Mayersberg. Cast: David Birney, Sarah Douglas, Alexis Kanner, Andra Millian, Starr Andreeff, Charles Hayward, Jonathan Emerson, Susie Lindeman, Russell Wiggins, Larry Hankin. (PG-13, 83 mins)
As an acclaimed screenwriter working in conjunction with an experienced, visionary director, Paul Mayersberg has been a key figure in at least two legitimate classics and several other fascinating works. A frequent collaborator with Nicolas Roeg, Mayersberg scripted the director's 1976 masterpiece THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH as well as his eccentric 1983 curio EUREKA. He also worked with Roeg in 1979 in the early stages of an abandoned adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel High Rise, which ended up getting made decades later by Ben Wheatley in 2016. He also co-wrote the 1983 WWII drama MERRY CHRISTMAS MR LAWRENCE with director Nagisa Oshima, and enjoyed a short-lived renaissance when he wrote GET CARTER director Mike Hodges' 2000 comeback CROUPIER, which became a word-of-mouth hit on the arthouse circuit and made a star of Clive Owen. But in the three instances he's been left to his own devices to direct his scripts himself, without a Roeg, an Oshima, or a Hodges at the helm, Mayersberg simply implodes. He made his directing debut with 1986's obscure, Patty Hearst-inspired straight-to-video UK kidnapping thriller CAPTIVE, which starred Oliver Reed but is only remembered today because its score was composed by U2 guitarist The Edge, with vocals by a then-unknown Sinead O'Connor (the soundtrack was released as an Edge solo album). In 1988, Mayersberg wrote and directed NIGHTFALL, a bizarre adaptation of a highly-regarded 1941 Isaac Asimov short story, for Roger Corman's late '80s company Concorde.
Born in 1941, the British Mayersberg had a history with Corman: Roeg was the cinematographer on Corman's 1964 classic THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, on which Mayersberg served as a production assistant. It's possible Mayersberg just needed the work, but it's hard to believe the guy who wrote THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE was responsible for the mess that is NIGHTFALL, which has just been released in a limited edition Blu-ray sold exclusively on Code Red's web site. It's not particularly faithful to Asimov's story, which involved a planet existing in eternal daylight thanks to it being surrounded by six suns, but that got whittled down to just three suns by the time Mayersberg got the green light. In one of those vague settings that may be the future or the past, guru-like astronomer Aton (David Birney, sporting what looks like a discarded Ritchie Blackmore wig) is the science-minded leader of the populace of a planet that's never experienced the darkness of night but is about to thanks to an event that, until then, has only occurred every 2500 years. His followers are looking for guidance into this heretofore unknown phenomenon, but a distracted Aton has been bewitched by the alluring Ana (Andra Millian) and is blowing off his work for some constant afternoon delight. This opens the door for an insurrection led by blind prophet and fearmongering doomsayer Sor (Alexis Kanner), who claims "The Book of Illuminations" has foretold that Nightfall means the end of the world. Sor has brainwashed his acolytes and also seduced Aton's estranged wife Roa (Sarah Douglas), eventually strapping her in some bizarre contraption where birds peck out her eyes in a rather blatant bit of "blind leading the blind" symbolism.
There's some prescient themes of science vs. religion in NIGHTFALL, culminating in Aton admonishing the zealot-like Sor (a terrifically hammy performance by Canadian stage vet Kanner) with "You took our doubts and turned them into fears." Unfortunately, Mayersberg lets the plot get bogged down with endless new age babbling and tiresome subplots involving the bedhopping extracurricular activities of Aton and Ana, Sor and Roa, and later, Ana leaving Aton and having a clandestine affair with Kin (Charles Hayward), who happens to be married to Aton and Roa's daughter Bet (Starr Andreef). For a PG-13-rated film, there's a surprising amount of skin and sex, with Millian's Ana frequently naked and with one scene showing a post-coital Kin being bitten by a snake, with Ana sucking the venom out of his upper inside thigh with Millian's face practically buried in Hayward's copious pubes. Mayersberg takes great advantage of a terrific location with the commune-like Arcosanti, an experimental "arcology" community set up in Arizona in 1970 by architect and ecology enthusiast Paolo Soleri (some Arcosanti residents and University of Arizona students served as extras). That and some surrounding desert areas shot by debuting cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who would go on top be a top figure in his field with films like THE CROW, DARK CITY, the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series, and numerous Ridley Scott titles like PROMETHEUS, EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, and THE MARTIAN, give NIGHTFALL a vivid and distinctive look despite its pitifully low-budget.
While it doesn't work for a variety of reasons--paltry budget, comatose pacing, Birney's dull performance (did he only take this gig because he got to roll around in some sex scenes with Millian?)--there's a strangeness to NIGHTFALL that makes it too odd and too ambitious to just simply dismiss as schlock, even though it's generally considered one of the worst films to come off the Corman assembly line. It's filled with sequences and images throughout that just need more of an auteur touch than Mayersberg--a significantly better writer than he is a director--is capable of providing. There's an eccentric and surreal vibe to NIGHTFALL that's crying out for the masterful guidance and artistic vision of an Alejandro Jodorowsky, a Ridley Scott, a Nicolas Roeg or even the late Andrei Tarkovsky. Indeed, this is as close to an abstract, avant-garde art film that a Corman production would ever get during the Concorde era. Alas, there's too many things working against Mayersberg--time, money, Paul Mayersberg--to make it a success. He's obviously trying hard, but it's tough to figure out if he's making a serious Asimov adaptation or providing the inspiration for a terrible David Arkenstone concept album. By the end, it basically looks like Corman just commissioned a cheap knockoff of DUNE. Now 75, Mayersberg has laid low in the years since CROUPIER. He only directed one more film after NIGHTFALL--the South Africa-shot adventure THE LAST SAMURAI (not to be confused with the Tom Cruise epic), with Lance Henriksen and John Saxon, released straight-to-video in 1995 after six years on the shelf--and co-wrote a 2000 straight-to-video thriller titled THE INTRUDER, with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Nastassja Kinski. Apparently still owning the movie rights to Asimov's story, Corman produced a straight-to-video remake of NIGHTFALL in 2000, directed by Gwyneth Gibby and starring David Carradine.
THE SHALLOWS (US - 2016) Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Written by Anthony Jaswinski. Cast: Blake Lively, Oscar Jaenada, Brett Cullen, Sedona Legge, Angelo Josue Lozano Corzo, Jose Manuel Trujillo Salas. (PG-13, 86 mins) THE SHALLOWS doesn't give JAWS any cause for concern about losing its place as the greatest shark movie ever, but it gets the job done as mindless summer entertainment and the kind of relatively low-budget film ($17 million--pocket change by today's industry standards) that can quietly become a very profitable sleeper hit. It's handled in the best B-movie fashion by director Jaume Collet-Serra, who's become a reliable genre craftsman in the last several years with 2009's underrated and insane ORPHAN, and a pair of enjoyable Liam Neeson vehicles with 2011's Hitchcockian UNKNOWN and 2014's NON-STOP. Keeping the film lean and fast-moving (the closing credits start just shy of the 80-minute mark), Collet-Serra and screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski (the terrible VANISHING ON 7TH STREET) plow through the exposition as quickly as possible and get to the heart of the surfer vs. shark story.
Still mourning her mother's death from cancer and seeking some kind of closure, med school dropout Nancy (Blake Lively) is ditched by her hard-partying friend and opts to go alone to an isolated Mexican beach that her mother visited while pregnant with her. An experienced surfer, Nancy rides some waves, enjoys the scenery, and briefly chats with a pair of nice locals who soon head back to the shore. Of course, that's just about the time Nancy is bitten and dragged under the water. She gets free, climbing onto a nearby decomposing whale carcass floating in the water. The shark, a great white, rams the carcass, throwing her off and sending her swimming for a nearby rock formation sticking out of the water. From there, it's Nancy vs. the great white, one trying to outsmart the other as Nancy fashions a tourniquet from her wet suit to stop the profuse bleeding from the bite on her leg (a great excuse for Collet-Serra to show off Lively in the skimpiest swimwear this side of Jacqueline Bisset in THE DEEP, at least until the gangrene makeup gets applied), which she holds together using her earrings as makeshift stitching. She finds an unlikely sidekick in an injured seagull she dubs "Steven Seagull." A few other characters wander into the water despite Nancy screaming "Shark!" and of course, they usually end up as dinner. As the tide comes in, Nancy needs to get off the rock as the persistent shark just endlessly circles her, almost sending Nancy a message that it's got nowhere else to be and she's got nowhere to hide.
THE SHALLOWS is a high-end junk movie that knows it's a junk movie. Lively makes a strong and believable heroine and for the most part, the CGI effects are pretty good (the shark is much more convincing here than the technology allowed in, say, 1999's DEEP BLUE SEA, a wild and fun shark flick completely undone by primitive CGI work that was unconvincing then and simply embarrassing now). Structurally similar to OPEN WATER, THE SHALLOWS is a lot prettier to look at, not just with Lively but with some crystal clear blue ocean off the coast of Queensland, filling in for Mexico. There isn't much depth and there isn't whole lot to say with this--it's a classic case of "It is what it is," and it works. It's not trying to be another JAWS, though it certainly acknowledges its influence, from the always-unnerving shots of the shark fin protruding from the water to giving Lively her own Roy Scheider last word when she finally gets the shark where she wants it. However, it's a sign of the times that the comparative gentlemanly elegance of "Smile, you son of a bitch!" has given way to the more blunt and verbally economical "Fuck you!" but I suppose it's an appropriate farewell.
Terrence Malick makes movies for no one other than Terrence Malick, and by this point, you're either onboard with his improvisational, self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness journeys up his own ass or you're not. So if you've been open to his increasingly prolific output in recent years or found him stretching well beyond the point of myopic self-parody, KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't going to do a thing to change your opinion. Similar to 2013's ponderous misfire TO THE WONDER--notable for being the first instance of some of his most devoted acolytes finally having the stones to admit he kinda lost them with this one--Malick continues to move away from the concept of narrative altogether in his presentation of Hollywood screenwriter Rick (Christian Bale, who worked with Malick on 2005's significantly better THE NEW WORLD), a man hopelessly lost in a suffocating malaise of L.A. ennui. No, KNIGHT OF CUPS isn't one of those bile-spewing insider takedowns of Hollywood but that might've actually been preferable. There's lots of scenes of Rick walking and driving around various obligatory recognizable locations (other than Bale, the most screen time goes to the 405 and some Death Valley wind turbines, and yes, at one point, he engages in some thousand-yard staring at the nearly bone-dry concrete of the L.A. River, whose appearance in a Los Angeles-set film is apparently required by law) and replaying the bad decisions and lost loves in his life. It's all accompanied by the expected ponderous, insufferable, pained-whisper narration by various characters that's become Malick's trademark (note: these make even less sense in context):
"Fragments...pieces of a man...where did I go wrong?"
"I want you. Hold you. Have you. Mine."
"All those years...living the life of someone I didn't even know."
"You gave me peace. You gave me what the world can't give. Mercy. Love. Joy. All else is cloud. Be with me. Always."
"We find me."
"Oh. Life."
"Begin."
Many familiar faces drift in and out throughout, some playing characters (Cate Blanchett as Rick's ex-wife; Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Isabel Lucas, Freida Pinto, and Teresa Palmer as various lovers; Wes Bentley as Rick's brother, who commited suicide; Brian Dennehy as their dad; barely visible bits by Nick Offerman, Jason Clarke, Clifton Collins Jr., Joel Kinnaman, Dane DeHaan, Shea Whigham, and Kevin Corrigan as Rick's buddies or colleagues) and others playing themselves in what amounts to an arthouse ZOOLANDER 2 (Ryan O'Neal, Fabio, Joe LoTruglio, Joe Manganiello, Thomas Lennon, and Antonio Banderas, who offers this bit of sage relationship advice to Rick: "It's like flavors...sometimes you want raspberry and after a while, you get tired and want strawberry," in a way that sounds like Antonio Banderas imitating Chris Kattan imitating Antonio Banderas on SNL). TO THE WONDER was terrible, but at least it captured the beauty in the bland sameness of middle America in a vividly Antonioni-esque, RED DESERT fashion. With KNIGHT OF CUPS, shot way back in 2012 and endlessly tinkered with by its dawdling maker, Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki don't even find a unique visual perspective of Los Angeles, mainly because we've seen all of these places in 50,000 other movies and Malick, currently American cinema's top auteur who doesn't seem to get out much, has no new perspective to offer. Sure, Malick injects some personal pain into the story--his own brother committed suicide--but does it matter when his writing has regressed to the level of an angsty teenager who's just had his heart broken for the first time? Do we need another movie about depressed and loathsome L.A. dickbags and their first-world problems? The Malick of old could bring a singularly original perspective to this tired and played-out concept, but all the Malick of today has to offer are sleepy, enigmatic voiceovers and more California cliches than a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Look, film snobs. Let's just cut the shit. Stop giving Malick a pass simply because of your fond memories of what he once was. (R, 118 mins)
45 YEARS
(UK/Germany - 2015)
A quiet and low-key character piece that subtly grows more tense and uncomfortable as it goes along, 45 YEARS is also a showcase for a pair of late-career triumphs for stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Rampling received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Kate Mercer, a retired schoolteacher in a small, rural British town. The film follows Kate and husband Geoff (Courtenay) over the week leading up to a swanky party with all of their friends--the Mercers never had children--celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary (a party was planned for their 40th, but Geoff's heart attack and bypass surgery led to its cancellation). On Monday of that week, Geoff receives a letter from Germany informing him that the still-preserved body of Katya, his German girlfriend who died over 50 years ago, was found in a melting glacier where she fell into a crevasse while they were mountain climbing in Switzerland. Memories from a half-century ago come back to haunt Geoff, and while Kate is initially supportive of the wave of grief overcoming her husband, she grows increasingly concerned over the week as long-buried details of his relationship with Katya come to the surface. He was contacted because the initial report listed him as her next-of-kin, which leads Kate to think Geoff and Katya were married. He insists they weren't, only that they pretended to be since it was a much more conservative era. After a failed attempt at sex due to Geoff's mind being elsewhere, she catches him rummaging around in the attic in the middle of the night, looking for pictures of Katya. Geoff starts smoking again, tries to back out of a lunch with some old work buddies, and even their friends remark that he seems distant, agitated, and preoccupied. He starts reading up on global warming and Kate finds out he's been talking to a travel agent about booking a trip to Switzerland. While Geoff is out one afternoon, Kate goes through his old photos and notebooks in some boxes stashed away in the attic and finds something that makes her question everything about their 45-year marriage.
Based on David Constantine's short story "In Another Country" and written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who cut his teeth working on the editing team of several Ridley Scott films (GLADIATOR, BLACK HAWK DOWN, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN), 45 YEARS is a fascinating, unsettling, and often deeply moving meditation on marriage, trust, love, and the disturbing realization that no matter how long or how well you've known someone, you'll never know everything about them. Kate was aware of Katya's death when she met Geoff, but it never occurred to her just how much of a presence the memory of Katya was in her marriage to Geoff, or the ways in which Katya has been the driving force in many of Geoff's--and by association, Kate's--decisions over the years. Haigh doesn't ask the audience to pick sides--indeed, there are times when Kate seems insensitive to Geoff's grief, but Geoff doesn't make it easy, yammering on about "my Katya" in ways that sometimes seem like an inadvertent slap in Kate's face. There's no doubt that Geoff loves Kate dearly, but it's just as clear that Katya has always been on his mind. In their best roles in years (probably decades for Courtenay, who's been nominated for two Oscars and was big in the mid '60s but seemed to consciously avoid the commercial pursuits of his British "angry young man" contemporaries like Richard Burton, Albert Finney, and Peter O'Toole), the two living legend stars are just superb, their body language and mannerisms expertly conveying decades of lived-in familiarity and shorthand communication, culminating a long, static shot near the end that up-ends all of that in a devastating portrait of ambiguity and uncertainty. (R, 95 mins)
