In Theaters: UNDERWATER (2020)

UNDERWATER
(US - 2020)

Directed by William Eubank. Written by Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller, Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie, Gunner Wright. (PG-13, 95 mins)

It's not going to score any points for originality, but UNDERWATER is a surprisingly engaging throwback to the undersea creature craze of early 1989, when we got DEEPSTAR SIX, LEVIATHAN, and the Roger Corman-produced LORDS OF THE DEEP in quick succession, all in a mad rush to beat the much-anticipated August release of James Cameron's mega-budget THE ABYSS (as required by law, obligatory Eurotrash knockoffs belatedly followed, like ENDLESS DESCENT from Spain and ALIEN FROM THE DEEP from Italy). UNDERWATER also wouldn't exist without the template provided by ALIEN, but director William Eubank (whose 2014 film THE SIGNAL showed some promise) has studied his economically-minded B-movies, diving right into the action within the first five minutes and keeping the pace so relentless and the stakes so high that you don't have time to think about any logic lapses or unanswered questions that the film either forgets about or just puts there to misdirect the audience. UNDERWATER is what it is, and that's not a bad thing. There's no dumb late-film plot twist, there's no deeper meaning, and there's only as much characterization as you need. It's an always forward-moving scare machine that seems so quaintly old-fashioned in the era of the IP/franchise/sequel/reboot/remake that you might wonder how it isn't premiering on Netflix.

With a fleeting shot of a newspaper headline that shows the year being 2050 (a rather optimistic outlook for print media), UNDERWATER opens in the Mariana Trench, six miles deep in the Pacific Ocean aboard Keppler Station, a massive, multi-billion dollar drilling installation. As mechanical engineer Norah (Kristen Stewart) brushes her teeth, the sound of water dripping on the floor from the ceiling above poses an instant threat. Almost immediately, walls collapse and parts of the structure begin caving due to what's presumed to be an earthquake. She manages to escape into a closed-off area, finds fellow crew member Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie), and in their search for a way out, encounter wisecracking Paul (T.J. Miller) buried under some rubble. The three make their way to the escape pod bay only to find Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel) with two survivors, Emily (Jessica Henwick) and Smith (John Gallagher Jr.). Lucien has sent 22 others up to presumed safety but the remaining pods are damaged. They're the only six survivors of a 300-person crew. With radio contact cut off and left completely on their own with the clock ticking and no other options, Lucien suggests they venture a mile down in pressurized suits and hoof it another mile across the ocean floor to Roebuck Station, the nearest drilling installation (Norah: "Can you just admit we could all die?" Lucien: "Can you just admit we might live?"). A crack in a helmet causes one survivor to make an abrupt exit, as the remaning five start their dangerous trek, only to find out too late that...something is down here. 

That's it. There's your set-up. It's DEEPSTAR LEVIATHAN: UNDERWATER and the closest it gets to making a statement is Emily frantically stating "We've been taking from the ocean and now it's taking back...we don't belong here." The script by Brian Duffield (THE BABYSITTER) and Adam Cozad (JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT) sticks to a formula that's proven to work in the hands of the right director. Eubank wears his love of ALIEN and a ton of other movies on his sleeve, but in the process, focuses on the sense of isolation and claustrophobia in a way that's intensely effective at times. It's a physically demanding project for the actors, crawling through muck-filled tight spaces in the early scenes before the ocean walk, where Eubank and veteran cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (who got his start in the late '80s on several Abel Ferrara films) frame them in extreme close-up, often getting inside their helmets for POV shots where they can barely see anything in the murky depths and can't escape the strange sounds of something uncomfortably close to them. Obviously, UNDERWATER is a creature feature first and foremost, and it also doesn't disappoint on that front, with some nasty monsters that we only see fleetingly for a long time until things take a turn that can best be described as "Lovecraftian."

I don't want to oversell UNDERWATER. It's too beholden to its influences to really take itself to the next level, but it serves its purpose as a well-done genre rollercoaster ride. And sometimes, when it's done right, that's sufficient (you'll also spot shout-outs to THE DESCENT, some always-unnerving garbled audio transmissions straight out of EVENT HORIZON, some Overlook-esque corridors before all hell breaks loose, and one of composer Marco Beltrami's catchier synth cues sounds a bit indebted to Vangelis' end credits theme for BLADE RUNNER). Stewart's Norah proves to be a quietly resilient graduate of the Ripley school, and the rest of the cast acquits themselves generally well, with Cassel a dutifully heroic leader, Gallagher cast radically against type as second-string John Krasinski, and Miller providing the smartass comic relief ("I'm getting dangerously close to shitting myself"). Admittedly, UNDERWATER has some red flags: it's a horror movie hitting theaters in the doomed dead zone of January after three years on the shelf, with 20th Century Fox attributing the long-delayed release to a business decision tied to their acquisition by Disney. I guess that's possible, though one can't help but wonder if maybe execs wanted to let some time lapse following T.J. Miller becoming a #MeToo poster boy when sexual assault allegations from his college days resurfaced some time after shooting wrapped in 2017, a situation that he followed with a 2018 encore that saw him reporting a fake Amtrak bomb threat after he was kicked off a train for being intoxicated (his ongoing implosion also cost him his job as the Mucinex booger, and Dreamworks also replaced him with Justin Rupple as the voice of Tuffnut Thorston for 2019's HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD). Regardless of the reason--Fox restructuring under the Disney regime or the cancellation of Miller--UNDERWATER being left in limbo for so long isn't an indication of its quality. We can always use more genre offerings like this that cut the shit and just do their thing. It probably won't do well in theaters, but this will enjoy a long and frequently-viewed life on streaming and cable.

On Blu-ray/DVD: A MILLION LITTLE PIECES (2019) and CROWN VIC (2019)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Retro Review: ANGEL (1984), AVENGING ANGEL (1985) and ANGEL III: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1988)

ANGEL
(US - 1984)

Directed by Robert Vincent O'Neil. Written by Robert Vincent O'Neil and Joseph M. Cala. Cast: Cliff Gorman, Susan Tyrrell, Dick Shawn, Rory Calhoun, Donna Wilkes, John Diehl, Elaine Giftos, Donna McDaniel, Graem McGavin, Mel Carter, Steven M. Porter, Peter Jason, Ross Hagen, David Underwood, David Anthony, Dennis Kort, Joseph M. Cala. (R, 93 mins)

With the help of veteran producer Sandy Howard (A MAN CALLED HORSE, THE DEVIL'S RAIN), Robert Vincent O'Neil really had his finger on the pulse of L.A. grime in the early 1980s. O'Neil spent the early 1970s directing drive-in fare like BLOOD MANIA and WONDER WOMEN before finding his niche when he co-wrote the Howard-produced 1982 hit VICE SQUAD, which kickstarted the whole Hollywood Blvd/Sunset Stripsploitation craze (SAVAGE STREETS, CRIMES OF PASSION, SUNSET STRIP, HOLLYWOOD VICE SQUAD, etc.) and cemented Wings Hauser's place in film history with his insane performance as psycho pimp "Ramrod." Following the surprise success of VICE SQUAD, Howard rewarded Hauser with his own "cop who plays by his own rules" actioner with 1983's underappreciated DEADLY FORCE, again written by O'Neil. DEADLY FORCE disappeared from theaters quickly, but Howard and O'Neil (now promoted to director) struck gold in early 1984 with ANGEL, one of the first releases from the post-Roger Corman incarnation of New World Pictures. With its memorably salacious tag line ("High school honor student by day...Hollywood hooker by night"), ANGEL became a sleeper hit in theaters and would spawn three sequels, two of which join it in Vinegar Syndrome's new extras-packed ANGEL COLLECTION Blu-ray set, because physical media is dead.

15-year-old, pig-tailed Molly Stewart (24-year-old Donna Wilkes) attends the exclusive North Oaks Prep School, where she studies hard, gets straight As, and keeps to herself. She has no close friends, doesn't participate in extracurricular activities, and turns down a date with dweeby classmate Wayne (Dennis Kort, who doesn't look a day under 45), claiming to everyone that she's the sole caregiver for her paralyzed mother, who we never see. But Molly has a secret: after dark, she's "Angel," an underage prostitute walking the sleaze-drenched, crime-infested area surrounding Hollywood Blvd. She rakes in the cash, and has a surrogate family of outcasts and boulevard denizens who look out for her, including fiercely protective drag queen "Mae" (Dick Shawn), old-time western stuntman Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun), street magician Yo-Yo Charlie (Steven M. Porter), and her eccentric landlady Solly (Susan Tyrrell), who spends her downtime doing terrible paint-by-numbers art. Perhaps playing it safe, O'Neil never lets anything get unpleasant or even remotely explicit in terms of its depiction of Angel on the job (for instance, we never see her with any johns, even though Wilkes was nearly a decade older than her character and already had several credits to her name, including 1978's JAWS 2 and 1980's SCHIZOID, and she co-starred in the much-maligned McLean Stevenson sitcom HELLO, LARRY). Instead, he saves the nastiness for the crux of the plot, which involves a deranged, necrophile serial killer (John Diehl) who's been offing hookers, including two of Angel's friends, Crystal (Donna McDaniel) and Lana (Graem McGavin). Hard-nosed but sympathetic vice cop Lt. Andrews (Cliff Gorman) is on the case, and eventually becomes another of Angel's protectors when she picks the killer out of a lineup and ends up becoming his next target.

There's some great seedy location work (and theater marquees showing RETURN OF THE JEDI, BLUE THUNDER, and THE SURVIVORS have it being shot in the summer of 1983), but ANGEL often has a rose-colored glasses view of street life that's often about as gritty as PRETTY WOMAN. All of the people Angel knows in her secret life are presented as a bunch of lovable misfits cheerfully making the best of what life has handed them, which I guess makes it more enjoyable than watching a more realistic take that sees her turning into a Sunset Strip version of CHRISTIANE F. We eventually find out the improbable truth behind Molly's mother--she abandoned her three years earlier, and that was six years after her father walked out on both of them. Left with $100 and a note wishing her good luck, then-12-year-old Molly turned to the streets and has made a good living at it, enough to pay the bills and afford private school, all while convincing everyone (only Mae knows the truth) that her mother is an invalid. In a way, Molly/Angel is a mash-up of two early Jodie Foster characters: the teenage hooker Iris in TAXI DRIVER and the fiercely independent loner Rynn, who struggles to maintain the illusion that her dead father is still alive in the unsettling THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE.

But ANGEL wisely never takes itself too seriously, plus it offers some great character roles for Shawn and Calhoun, the latter waxing rhapsodic on old cowboy stars like Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, and William S. Hart, and getting the biggest crowd-pleasing moment of his career at the end of the movie. And every few minutes, there's some diva bitchiness from Shawn, some quirkiness from Tyrrell (at her most Susan Tyrrell-ish this side of BUTCHER BAKER NIGHTMARE MAKER), or some amusing outburst or other random, bizarre vulgarity from someone, whether it's a shrieking Solly calling Mae a "cunt," the killer's repulsive O-face when he plunges his knife into a victim, or a douchey football jock and his idiot buddies at school asking Molly to "Show us your whisker-biscuit" when they find out what she does at night. ANGEL also offers an early gig for future exploitation mainstay David DeCoteau, who's credited with craft service, and O'Neil's cinematographer is Andrew Davis, a year before he directed the terrific Chuck Norris cop thriller CODE OF SILENCE, followed by two of Steven Seagal's best movies (ABOVE THE LAW and UNDER SIEGE) on his way to hitting the A-list with 1993's THE FUGITIVE.

ANGEL opening in Toledo, OH on 2/17/1984

AVENGING ANGEL
(US - 1985)

Directed by Robert Vincent O'Neil. Written by Robert Vincent O'Neil and Joseph M. Cala. Cast: Betsy Russell, Rory Calhoun, Susan Tyrrell, Ossie Davis, Robert F. Lyons, Steven M. Porter, Paul Lambert, Barry Pearl, Estee Chandler, Ross Hagen, Tim Rossovich, Frank Doubleday, Howard Honig, Tracy Robert Austin, Michael Andrews, Paul "Mousie" Garner, Hoke Howell, Debi Sue Voorhees, Robert Tessier, Liz Sheridan, Edward Blackoff, Karen Mani, Lynda Wiesmeier, Joseph M. Cala. (R, 94 mins)

"When you get to Hell...tell 'em Angel sent you." 

ANGEL gave the new regime at New World a hit right out of the gate, so of course, a sequel was quickly commissioned and in theaters exactly one year later. AVENGING ANGEL offered a new Angel, with Betsy Russell (PRIVATE SCHOOL) replacing Donna Wilkes who, emboldened by the box office success of ANGEL, apparently demanded more money than the producers were willing to pay, something director/co-writer Robert Vincent O'Neil still seems pretty bent out of shape about in an interview on the new Blu-ray (he blasts the "stupid producers" for not giving Wilkes what she wanted, though he's quick to point out that "Betsy was a sweetheart"). While ANGEL had some lighthearted moments courtesy of its colorful supporting cast, AVENGING ANGEL almost feels like an outright comedy much of the time after a downbeat opening. Set four years after the events of the first film, Russell's Molly is now a collegiate track star studying law and enjoying a normal life with a nice-guy boyfriend who's unaware of her sordid past. She maintains a close father-daughter relationship with Lt. Andrews (Robert F. Lyons replacing Cliff Gorman), but her new life comes crashing down when Andrews is killed after being caught in the crossfire of a mob hit on an undercover cop (Karen Mani) that's witnessed by New Wave-y looking street kid Johnny Glitter (Barry Pearl). Vowing revenge, Molly returns to the mean streets of Hollywood Blvd as "Angel" and puts the band back together in what's basically a "Denizens Assemble!" move, teaming up with Yo-Yo Charlie (Steven M. Porter) and her kooky former landlady Solly (Susan Tyrrell) to bust a senile Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun) out of a sanitarium in Solly's backfiring jalopy of a hearse (complete with "wacky" music). Angel and crew eventually recruit an on-the-run Johnny Glitter--the witness who now has a target on his back--and go after Lt. Andrews' killers.

O'Neil and co-writer Joseph M. Cala really struggle to settle on a tone. After a blood-splattered, shotgun-blasting opening that sees the undercover cop, her family, and Andrews all get blown away with some enthusiastic squib work, O'Neil throws in the Kit Carson sanitarium breakout in a long slapstick sequence that feels like something out of a lesser Blake Edwards movie of the period. It's uneven to say the least, veering wildly from Cannon-style action to goofy comedy, including a ridiculous climax at the iconic Bradbury Building where they pull a pre-WEEKEND AT BERNIE's move with the dead body of Miles Gerrard (Frank Doubleday), the sniveling son of powerful mobster Arthur Gerrard (Paul Lambert, in a role that really seems like it should've been played by John P. Ryan), who has a nefarious plot to...buy up real estate on Hollywood Blvd so he can run all the vice rackets himself? It's not exactly as suspenseful as a younger Angel being pursued by a corpse-fucking serial killer, but AVENGING ANGEL is intentionally amusing enough to be just as entertaining as ANGEL in its own way. The camaraderie among Angel and her odd squad of cohorts remains surprisingly heartfelt, even with Tyrrell's overacting and the total sitcom move of having an adorable infant named "Little Buck"--left in Solly's erratic care after his hooker mom was found dead in the alley behind her building--become part of the crew, along with a pair of bitchy, eye-rolling drag queens named Pat (Tracy Robert Austin) and Mike (Michael Andrews, who played a very similar role in Andy Sidaris' MALIBU EXPRESS the same year). Little Buck actually becomes integral to the plot when he's taken by Gerrard, leading to another ludicrous crowd-pleasing Kit Carson moment for Calhoun.

With a bigger emphasis on "family" than a FAST & FURIOUS sequel (Gerrard calls them "a ragtag group of pissant vigilantes"), AVENGING ANGEL succeeds despite a rushed production and some underdeveloped characters, including a 13-year-old runaway (Estee Chandler) that Molly briefly takes under wing, plus Yo-Yo Charlie doesn't get much to do, and the great Ossie Davis turns up for some quick cash in a thankless role as another hard-nosed but sympathetic police lieutenant. AVENGING ANGEL wasn't nearly as successful as ANGEL, but while Wilkes' career pretty much flatlined, limited to some TV spots and a role in the terrible 1988 Linda Blair horror movie GROTESQUE, Russell had a more successful post-Angel run in TV and B-movies. She married Vincent Van Patten in the late '80s and quit acting in the early '90s to focus on raising their kids, though she enjoyed a major cult and convention circuit resurgence when she came out of retirement in 2006 for what became recurring character Jill Tuck in parts III-through-VII of the hugely popular SAW franchise.

AVENGING ANGEL opening in Toledo, OH on 2/1/1985

ANGEL III: THE FINAL CHAPTER
(US - 1988)

Written and directed by Tom DeSimone. Cast: Maud Adams, Mitzi Kapture, Richard Roundtree, Mark Blankfield, Kin Shriner, Emile Beaucard, Tawny Fere, Barbara Treutelaar, Susan Moore, Anna Navarro, Floyd Levine, Kyle T. Heffner, Dick Miller, Toni Basil, S.A. Griffin, Bob DeSimone, Julie K. Smith. (R, 99 mins)

Set ten years after the events of AVENGING ANGEL, ANGEL III: THE FINAL CHAPTER finds Molly (now played by future SILK STALKINGS star Mitzi Kapture) working as a police photographer in NYC while doing freelance gigs on the side (Dick Miller sighting as a cranky newspaper editor!). While covering the opening of a posh art gallery, something about visiting L.A. gallery owner Gloria Rollins (Anna Navarro) catches her eye and prompts her to investigate. Yes, she's her long-lost mother, who abandoned her a decade and a half earlier. Molly follows Gloria back to L.A. and confronts her only to have her killed shortly after by a bomb planted in her car. It turns out Molly has a younger half-sister named Michelle (Tawny Fere), who was kidnapped six months earlier by art dealer Nadine (two-time Bond girl Maud Adams), whose gallery business is a front for a cocaine/pornography/white slavery operation with a Middle Eastern crime syndicate headed by Shahid (Emile Beaucard). This means only one thing: it's time for Molly to once again become "Angel" and tear up the streets of L.A. looking for her sister, this time with the help of street magician and ice cream truck driver Spanky (Mark Blankfield of FRIDAYS, JEKYLL & HYDE...TOGETHER AGAIN, and THE JERK, TOO) and his filmmaker buddy and Molly love interest Neal (Kin Shriner). The shamelessly mugging Blankfield and the boring Shriner aren't exactly on the level of the absent Rory Calhoun as the rootin' tootin' Kit Carson or Susan Tyrrell as Solly (the latter is mentioned but never seen), while Adams approaches this as if she's still in OCTOPUSSY mode, hissing bitchy and culturally insensitive Bond villain bon mots like "Enjoy the scenery while you can, Angel...in a few days you'll be on your back in a whorehouse in Calcutta, fucking the locals for fish heads and rice," or admonishing Shahid's extreme intimidation tactics with "This is the United States of America! We don't do car bombs here!" Richard Roundtree also periodically appears as yet another hard-nosed but sympathetic police lieutenant who warns Angel to stay out of the investigation while basically letting her crack the case for him and reluctantly complimenting her "chutzpah."

Neither Sandy Howard, Robert Vincent O'Neil, nor Joseph M. Cala were involved with ANGEL III: THE FINAL CHAPTER (O'Neil and Cala had to threaten legal action to get a "Based on characters created by" credit). The film was written and directed by Tom DeSimone, best known to grindhouse fans for 1977's CHATTERBOX, 1981's HELL NIGHT, 1982's THE CONCRETE JUNGLE, and 1986's REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS, the poster for the latter improbably hanging in Spanky's apartment (prior to his drive-in days, DeSimone also had a busy career directing '70s gay porn under the pseudonym "Lancer Brooks"). The jacked-up quotient of skin and sleaze is instantly evident with DeSimone at the helm, and while there's a hard-R edge to ANGEL III that's lacking in the first two films, it's not nearly as enjoyable, due in large part to the lack of Tyrrell and Calhoun, who provided the unlikely heart and soul of the series amidst ever-changing Angels. Kapture is an engaging heroine, and there's a great Lou Rawls closing credits jam called "Secrets," but the market for the "Hollywood hooker by night" was long gone by this point, as ANGEL III: THE FINAL CHAPTER skipped theaters altogether and went straight to video in the fall of 1988.

The title proved false however, as 1994 saw the release of the straight-to-video ANGEL 4: UNDERCOVER (not included in the Vinegar Syndrome set), with future PACIFIC BLUE star Darlene Vogel as Molly, this time using her Angel persona to pose as a groupie in pursuit of the killer who offed an aspiring rock star. Universally regarded as the franchise nadir, ANGEL 4 features a seriously slumming Roddy McDowall as a duplicitous record exec, and was an early directing effort by Richard Schenkman (hiding behind the pseudonym "George Axmith"), who went on to make a pair of minor late '90s cult movies with his friend Jon Cryer: THE POMPATUS OF LOVE and WENT TO CONEY ISLAND ON A MISSION FROM GOD...BE BACK BY FIVE. As tame as they might seem now, given the subject matter and changing times and attitudes, there's little chance of something like the ANGEL franchise being rebooted today. And that's a damn shame because Sam Elliott or Kurt Russell would absolutely rule as Kit Carson.

In Theaters: THE GRUDGE (2020)

THE GRUDGE 
(US - 2020)

Written and directed by Nicolas Pesce. Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, John Cho, Jacki Weaver, Lin Shaye, Betty Gilpin, Frankie Faison, William Sadler, Tara Westwood, Dave Brown, John Hansen, Zoe Fish, Junko Bailey. (R, 94 mins)

Going back over the last decade and change in the grand tradition of the US remake of ONE MISSED CALL, THE DEVIL INSIDE, DEVIL'S DUE, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, THE FOREST, and THE BYE BYE MAN, THE GRUDGE continues Hollywood's seemingly annual ritual of kicking off the new year by bilking genre fans out of some multiplex gift cards with a horror movie that's forgettable at best and a contemptible piece of shit at worst. A reboot of the US franchise that was itself based on a Japanese franchise (got that?), THE GRUDGE 2020's biggest problem is its utter pointlessness. It's a step up to the major studio big leagues for writer/director Nicolas Pesce, who established some indie horror cred with 2016's THE EYES OF MY MOTHER and 2019's PIERCING. I'm not saying Pesce is an auteur, and I haven't seen PIERCING, but THE EYES OF MY MOTHER, while flawed, had some genuinely unsettling elements that showed Pesce was a promising new talent in the horror genre. But the kind of style and potential that got him the GRUDGE job in the first place is rendered moot when it's all just loud and predictable jolts and a tired story that could've been directed by anyone. GRUDGE 2020 is the kind of bland, by-the-numbers, one-note jump-scare machine that doesn't really even require a talented filmmaker as much as it needs a competent manager, someone handed a checklist and able to work through it without rocking the boat and making sure that all the same shit you've seen in dozens of other horror movies over the last several years is dutifully repeated--and instantly forgotten--yet again.

Counting Sam Raimi among its dozen or so producers, GRUDGE 2020 employs the non-linear structure used by director Takashi Shimizu in the 2004 GRUDGE and its Japanese antecedents in the original JU-ON series which, along with the likes of Hideo Nakata's RINGU films and Takashi Miike's original ONE MISSED CALL, helped establish the iconic "J-Horror" movement of the early 2000s. Set from 2004 to 2006, GRUDGE 2020 is both a reboot and an offshoot, opening in 2004 with American nurse Fiona Landers (Tara Westwood) leaving the Japanese house seen in the previous GRUDGEs, where someone was once killed in a fit of uncontrolled rage and their spirit cannot rest, forever haunting those who move into the cursed residence. But the Grudge (Junko Bailey in a brief appearance as the franchise's crawling, croaking spectre, thus sparing Japanese actress and JU-ON and GRUDGE vet Takako Fuji the indignity of embarking on the "Will Play Kayako for Food" phase of her career) also attaches itself to Fiona, following her to her home in the fictional Pennsylvania suburb of Cross River, where she's ultimately driven to murder her husband Sam (Dave Brown) and young daughter Melinda (Zoe Fish). Cut to 2006, as recently-widowed Detective Muldoon (MANDY's Andrea Riseborough, looking ready to crush her audition for the lead in THE CARRIE SNODGRESS STORY) has just transferred to quiet Cross River with her young son Burke (John Hanson), hoping for a change of scenery after losing her husband to cancer three months earlier. She's paired with weary, chain-smoking Detective Goodman (Demian Bichir) and they immediately catch a case where the charred remains of a woman are found in a car in an isolated stretch of woods on the outskirts of town. The dead woman is Lorna Moody (Jacki Weaver), an assisted suicide counselor who had been staying at 44 Rayburn Dr., the home of the Mathesons--William (Frankie Faison) and Faith (Lin Shaye, whose presence in these post-Blumhouse-era horror movies appears to be required by law)--to evaluate the terminally ill Faith's decision to end her life. Goodman wants nothing more to do with the case after hearing the address, so Muldoon goes there alone and finds a delirious Faith with her fingers hacked off and the rotting corpse of William sitting in the living room chair.

Then it cuts back to 2005, when married realtors Peter (John Cho) and Nina Spencer (Betty Gilpin) have the Landers house--at 44 Rayburn Dr--on the market, soon to be purchased by the Mathesons. In all the instances--Peter spending time at the house, Muldoon looking into the death of Lorna Moody, and Goodman's old partner Wilson (William Sadler) investigating the Landers killings in 2004 and ending up in a mental institution after blowing his face off in a failed suicide attempt (and allowing Sadler to wear what appears to be leftover remnants of Gary Oldman's Mason Verger prosthetics from HANNIBAL)--the "grudge" attaches itself to anyone who walks in the house, resulting in recurring instances of flickering lights, garbled phone calls, and out-of-nowhere appearances by little Melinda, who essentially serves as the new creepy, croaking, grudge ghost. Pesce rewrote an earlier draft penned by Jeff Buhler, who scripted last year's underrated THE PRODIGY but is also responsible for writing the recent dismal remakes of PET SEMATARY and JACOB'S LADDER. I'm willing to bet that Buhler is a big fan of Mario Bava's SHOCK, aka BEYOND THE DOOR 2, whose famous hallway jump scare was recreated in THE PRODIGY by director Nicholas McCarthy and is trotted out again here, to much lesser effect thanks to Pesce's bungled staging of it.

It's not that THE GRUDGE 2020 is an overtly terrible movie, though it does start to get pretty dumb near the end when Muldoon inexplicably takes her son--who Pesce leaves offscreen for so long at one point that you might start wondering if he's a Shyamalanian figment of her imagination--with her to 44 Rayburn Dr in the middle of the night and tells him "I want you to be safe!" and to...wait in the car, as if he's really going to listen to her (also, why is everyone driving beater cars from the late '70s and early '80s in a film that's explicitly set from 2004-2006? I don't know what small-town detectives make, but they should be able to get something newer than a primer-colored 1981 Caprice Classic). It's not an offensively bad movie, it's just an unbelievably routine one that does nothing to justify its existence or, at the very least, explain why it's opening on 2400 screens instead of premiering at your nearest Redbox. It not only squanders an overqualified cast (Bichir and Weaver have three Oscar nominations between them), but it takes the time to set up new metaphorical implications for the Grudge and doesn't even bother to explore them. With Muldoon's late husband and the cancer-stricken Faith, along with mention that Goodman's mother recently succumbed to cancer and pregnant Nina learning that her unborn child has the brain disorder ALD, THE GRUDGE 2020 seems poised to make some statement about the effect that terminal illnesses and grief have on caregivers and survivors, but it never does anything to work those ideas into the Grudge mythos, instead falling back on more ominous burps and croaks and jump scares you'll see coming a mile away. So why even bring them up and use them to develop the characters if nothing's going to be done with them? Maybe there was something more here and the studio whittled it down. Who knows? There is one telling moment that could almost be interpreted as a cry for help from Pesce. Faison's William gives a long speech about how all we really have is hope and love and we gotta hold on and be there for each other every day as the sentimental music cue swells and Pesce just abruptly cuts it off and goes to a shot of Riseborough in another location, and it's accompanied by the faint sound of a needle dragging across vinyl. It's a jarring cut that doesn't really have any artistic purpose unless you consider it an in-film auto-critique from Pesce, possibly incredulous that things have gotten so far off course that veteran character actor Frankie Faison is being forced to embody the archaic "Magical Negro" trope in the first goddamn movie of 2020.

On Blu-ray/DVD: THE KILL TEAM (2019) and DANGER CLOSE (2019)

THE KILL TEAM
(Spain/US - 2019)

If the title THE KILL TEAM sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it's also the name of an acclaimed 2014 documentary by filmmaker Dan Krauss, chronicling a war crimes case where Army Staff Sgt. Calvin Diggs and four soldiers in his platoon were charged with murdering Afghan civilians in Kandahar in 2009. This new film sporting the title THE KILL TEAM is a narrative dramatization of those same events, starring Alexander Skarsgard in the Diggs role (here renamed "Deeks"), and written and directed by...Dan Krauss?! It's a mystery why Krauss saw fit to revisit the same material in fictionalized form so soon after (this was shot in 2017), other than giving potentially meaty roles to Skarsgard and Nat Wolff (also one of a dozen credited producers), the latter playing "Andrew Briggman," a rechristened version of initial whistleblower SPC Adam Winfield. THE KILL TEAM gets off to a good enough start with a shocking opening sequence where the platoon's staff sergeant is killed by an IED, leading to Deeks' arrival. Deeks is stern and no-nonsense, and tells the men "Give me your loyalty, and I'll give every one of you a chance to be a warrior." But he treats them well, grills steaks for them made to order, and winkingly looks the other way when he catches some of them smoking hash. Such actions form a tentative bond and allow him to insidiously manipulate the men under his command, some of whom already regard the Afghan civilians as "goat fuckers" and don't need much of an encouraging push to go along with whatever Deeks orders or even suggests. Briggman is rattled enough by what he sees that he sends instant messages about the goings-on to his military vet dad (Rob Morrow), who contacts US Army CID. Of course, it gets back to Deeks that someone close to him is talking and it doesn't take long for the guys to figure out who it is.

Known as the Maywand District Murders, the case provided ample riveting and shocking material in a documentary form but struggles to justify its existence as a narrative feature film that feels plodding even under 90 minutes. Skarsgard is fine and Wolff continues to demonstrate the credibility he unexpectedly showed in 2019's equally unseen SEMPER FI, but unless you're a fan of either of the two stars (or a Rob Morrow completist), there's really no reason to watch this when Krauss did a much more effective job the first time out. A24 didn't seem to see a lot of HURT LOCKER-type potential for THE KILL TEAM--the kind of well-intentioned film that just dies instantly once it leaves the secure confines of the festival circuit--giving it no push whatsoever with a release on just 39 screens and VOD. (R, 87 mins)

DANGER CLOSE
(Australia/UK/US - 2019)

Outside of 1979's THE ODD ANGRY SHOT, the experience of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War has been generally unexplored in the movies. Far removed from the post-PLATOON explosion of the late '80s and at a time when the interest in Vietnam cinema has tapered off in favor of WWII or the various conflicts in the Middle East (like THE KILL TEAM above), DANGER CLOSE chronicles The Battle of Long Tan, which occurred on August 18, 1966, a day that has since been declared Vietnam Veterans Day in Australia. Its very setting of the Vietnam War almost gives it a throwback feel that's a bit dampened by some CGI and other obvious digital accompaniment, but director Kriv Stenders does an otherwise admirable job of shooting the battle sequences in a coherent fashion, avoiding the hyper-editing and the shaky-cam that a current Hollywood take on the same subject would've doubtlessly utilized. The Battle of Long Tan took place on a rubber plantation where Australian and New Zealand forces were outnumbered 108 to approximately 2000, and running out of ammo as they battled an onslaught of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces that surrounded them and kept coming from all sides.

Delta Company was led by Australian Maj. Harry Smith (Travis Fimmel of VIKINGS), a generally unlikable and arrogant hardass who frequently complains to his C.O. Brigadier Oliver David Jackson (Richard Roxburgh) that he needs a more worthy assignment than overseeing a group of mostly conscripts averaging 20 years of age. Of course, after fighting with these "kids" and seeing their courage and sacrifice, Smith has a change of heart and is proud of them. That's about the extent of the character building in DANGER CLOSE (COLLATERAL screenwriter Stuart Beattie was one of five script contributors), which juggles a lot of characters who eventually start to blur (Luke Bracey as Sgt. Bob Buick, Sean Lynch as Sgt. Paddy Todd, and Daniel Webber as Pvt. Paul Large get a little more screen time and development than the rest). A Nancy Sinatra/"These Boots are Made for Walkin'" needle-drop provides a little too on-the-nose FULL METAL JACKET reference, but while DANGER CLOSE doesn't break any new ground in Vietnam cinema, it's well-made, sufficiently harrowing in spots, and it marks a long overdue tribute to the brave Australian and Kiwi forces who fought at Long Tan. (R, 118 min)

I Watched These So You Don't Have To: THE TEN WORST FILMS OF 2019

2019 offered no shortage of cinematic dumpster fires, so much so that this year's Ten Worst list features 14 titles, with one spot holding a four-way tie. Congratulations to Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage--who didn't make the final cut despite their best (or, in Willis' case, least) efforts to secure a position--and especially to John Cusack, who only appeared in one movie in 2019, and it was actually very good (the grim western NEVER GROW OLD--well worth seeing). But don't be alarmed--Ten Worst perennial Steven Seagal puts in his usual appearance, along with a couple of legendary filmmakers who had their worst year, some awful sequels, some long-shelved duds, and one thriller containing what might be the single most ridiculous plot twist in film history.

Before we begin, one film deserves special mention, and I'm talking about THE FANATIC. Don't misunderstand me--it's quite awful. But it's on such a different plane of awful that it transports you to a level of Bad Movie Nirvana that's rarely seen in the modern era. From the moment that still of a bowl-mulleted John Travolta--as "Moose," a socially inept and obsessive autograph hound and unhinged celebrity stalker--went viral, alerting the world to the existence of an ostensibly serious John Travolta thriller directed by Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, THE FANATIC instantly became 2019's must-see bad movie. And my God, it was everything I hoped it would be. Travolta's absolutely go-for-broke performance is a sight to behold. He screams at people, he cuts off conversations because "I gotta poo," he drools, he rubs behind his ears and sniffs his fingers when he gets nervous, he practices what he'll say when he gets to meet his favorite actor Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa, who actually seems to be taking it seriously), he sneaks into Dunbar's house and sniffs his toothbrush, and he ties Dunbar to his bed and cuddles with him. You simply can't take your eyes off Travolta no matter how ridiculous and cringeworthy he gets, and that has to count for something (but maybe not the "For Your Consideration" ads that have been taken out). The movie is all kinds of terrible, but it's such a misguided, jawdropping train wreck and it's so alive with the kind of shamefully perverse fascination that comes with, say, being in a checkout line behind a Karen screaming for the manager--you just wanna see where this goes--that I can't, in good conscience, include it among these ten (14?) other films that offer absolutely zero entertainment value whatsoever (starting with #9, click on the title for the original review). And with that, let's get this over with and get ready for 2020.



10. THE DEAD DON'T DIE

Deadpan to the point of catatonia with a cast that seems to be in a somnambulant HEART OF GLASS trance, THE DEAD DON'T DIE is a completely DOA misfire from cult icon Jim Jarmusch, who displays no affinity for the zombie genre, leaving one to wonder exactly what he was going for with this lifeless zom-com spoof. Sure, there's a lot of cool people on hand here--Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Chloe Sevigny, Caleb Landry Jones, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, RZA, Rosie Perez, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, and, of course, Larry Fessenden--but they probably had more fun hanging out on the set than you'll have watching the end result. One amusing joke about the Sturgill Simpson theme song is subsequently beat to death, but aside from that, I counted three times where I almost laughed but only chuckled: a fourth wall break where Murray calls Jarmusch a dick, cop Driver rolling up to a crime scene in a tiny Smart, and Buscemi as a local racist sporting a red "Keep America White Again" hat and complaining that his coffee's too black. Everything else falls flat. Sure, you get Swinton as a Scottish samurai mortician but is that the extent of the joke? Or did Jarmusch just assume that his eclectic ensemble and the idea of "Jarmusch zombie comedy" would predictably lead to hipster approbation and instant accolades sight unseen?  It's his worst film.


9. DOMINO

Brian De Palma's first film since 2013's PASSION, the counterterrorism non-thriller DOMINO was shot back in 2017 and finally got a stealth VOD burial from US distributor Lionsgate this past summer. That was a couple months after the trailer went online, when De Palma was already actively distancing himself from the released version (he denied initial rumors that it was cut down from 148 to 89 minutes). His name is still on the film, though other than a few scattered deployments of his signature split diopter shots--which everyone does now in homage to him--the severely-compromised DOMINO never feels like a De Palma film until the climax, and even that is so gutted and badly-assembled that it plays more like someone trying to rip off De Palma and blowing it. De Palma claimed this wasn't his project and that it was given to him by the Danish producers who never had enough money, were constantly cutting corners, and didn't even allow him to properly finish the movie. He even called it the most miserable experience he's ever had on a film, and that's coming from the guy who made THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. The only thing more embarrassing than DOMINO itself was the number of incoherent word salads tossed by the filmmaker's most fervent and delusional admirers in the days after its release to passionately defend a film already disowned by its own director. Why are you doggedly championing a Brian De Palma film that Brian De Palma didn't even want you to see? There's no need for anyone to die on this hill.


8. POLAROID

Pulled from the release schedule in the fall of 2017 when it became a casualty of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, POLAROID was eventually picked up by Vertical Entertainment and given a publicity-free VOD release just in time for Halloween. Forget being in limbo for two years--POLAROID feels like a forgotten, expired roll of film that's been left undeveloped and slowly deteriorating since the waning days of the post-SCREAM craze as an attempt to cash in on both FINAL DESTINATION and THE RING. It's bad enough that it comes off like a tired retread, but the filmmakers also made the bizarre decision to set the film in almost complete darkness. Making it even worse is the total lack of logic, with the primary antagonist being a possessed Polaroid instant camera from the '70s that claims the lives of anyone who's in a photo snapped by it. The camera was once owned by a serial killer who abducted and murdered several high school students back in the 1970s, and none of the kids in this small rural town where this tragedy took place seem to know something that would certainly be passed down from generation to generation as the urban legend of their area. Why does the heroine have to go to the archive room at the local library--a building that appears to be lit by a single 15-watt bulb--to peruse old newspapers for this shocking discovery? Prior to the Weinstein scandal breaking, POLAROID was bounced around the release schedule several times, almost as if they knew they had a dud on their hands and finally had a horrific enough excuse to pawn it off on another distributor.



7. REPLICAS

Or, HONEY, I CLONED THE FAMILY. We all love Keanu Reeves, and the upcoming BILL & TED reboot will probably be a lot of nostalgic fun, but if it wasn't for the JOHN WICK movies, he'd be stinking up your nearest Redbox kiosk with Bruce Willis, Nicolas Cage, and Steven Seagal (anyone a fan of recent Reeves gems like EXPOSED, THE WHOLE TRUTH, THE BAD BATCH, or SIBERIA? And you just wait until that fourth MATRIX movie you're all so excited about ends up reminding you how much you hated the second and third ones). REPLICAS arrived in theaters in the second week of 2019 adorned with all the tell-tale signs of an ignominious January dump-job that should've gone straight-to-VOD: multiple bumped release dates after playing everywhere else in the world months earlier; credits sporting a 2017 copyright; bush-league CGI that can charitably be described as "almost finished;" a script that's a melange of half-baked ideas shamelessly stolen from at least a half-dozen other, better sci-fi movies; and a slumming star who seems mildly irritated that his paid vacation is being interrupted by work. Shot in a pre-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico in 2016, REPLICAS is an utterly illogical and thoroughly incoherent mess with Reeves as a scientist who clones his wife and three kids after they're killed in a car crash. The film's idea of science is just giving Keanu a bunch of gobbledygook exposition that's ultimately just him trying to look serious while blurting Philip K. Dipshit-sounding buzzwords like "Stasis modality!" and "Execute the memory cortex!" and "Initiate the neural implant!" while he dons a virtual reality headset and starts emphatically conducting a symphony in front of a MINORITY REPORT holographic screen. REPLICAS might've been stupidly enjoyable with someone like Nic Cage going off the chain, but Reeves numbly walks through it with the look of an actor who knows things just aren't clicking and is just doing his professional duty by sticking around until it's over.



6. SERENITY

Another January 2019 release that spent most of 2018 being frantically shuffled around the release schedule, SERENITY is truly something special. And it's not just because Matthew McConaughey (born in 1969) and Anne Hathaway (born in 1982) are supposed to be former high-school sweethearts. It's not just because it has Hathaway as a convincing and very game femme fatale and wastes it by having her purr clunky and flaccid dialogue like "We're both the same...damaged but in different ways." It's not just because it takes place in some fishing town where everyone obsessively follows McConaughey's pursuit of a mythical giant tuna named "Justice." It's not just because it asks you to buy Diane Lane as a woman who has to pay a man to sleep with her. And it's not just because McConaughey plays a guy named "Baker Dill." No...what makes SERENITY so special is a third-act development that's a legitimate contender for the dumbest plot twist in the history of motion pictures. What was sold as a perfectly acceptable BODY HEAT noir knockoff becomes something else entirely. The end result feels like an homage to the heyday of the erotic thriller borne of a doomed alliance between James M. Cain, Joe Eszterhas, M. Night Shyamalan, Charlie Brooker, and Jack Daniels, and for generally respected LOCKE writer/director and PEAKY BLINDERS creator Steven Knight (he also wrote EASTERN PROMISES and got an Oscar nomination for scripting DIRTY PRETTY THINGS), SERENITY is the kind of catastrophically bad career-killer the likes of which we haven't seen since GIGLI sent BEVERLY HILLS COP and MIDNIGHT RUN director Martin Brest into the DGA's witness protection program, apparently never to be seen or heard from again.



5. GENERAL COMMANDER

Yet another DTV excretion pinched off by former action star and probable Russian sleeper agent Steven Seagal, GENERAL COMMANDER has an even shakier foundation than usual. It was conceived in 2017 as a 12-episode TV series, but the project was abandoned after just two episodes were shot. The solution? Just cram those two 40-minute episodes together and release it as a new Seagal movie. That certainly explains the abrupt non-ending that probably served as a cliffhanger to the third episode. Almost nothing happens in the first half of GENERAL COMMANDER, since it has to establish all the characters and exposition that any premiere episode of a TV series has to do, but in the context of what GENERAL COMMANDER became, it takes up literally half the movie, and the situations that develop in the second half have no payoff. Seagal plays another mysterious black-ops CIA operative, this time going after wealthy creeps who rule the "dark web," dabbling in everything from cryptocurrency to black market organ harvesting. Not a bad idea for the kind of CBS procedural that our dads would watch, and it could work with a real star who was either invested in the project or could convincingly pretend to give a shit, but even in the two completed episodes, there's still long stretches where Seagal disappears, which is pretty much on-brand for the laziest actor on the planet.




4. THE LAST MAN

The first narrative feature from Argentine documentary filmmaker Rodrigo H. Vila is a resounding failure on almost every front, save for some occasionally atmospheric location work in what appear to be some dangerous parts of Buenos Aires. A dreary dystopian hodgepodge of THE MACHINIST, JACOB'S LADDER, and BLADE RUNNER, the long-shelved THE LAST MAN (shot in 2016 as NUMB, AT THE EDGE OF THE END), is set in a constantly dark, rainy, and vaguely post-apocalyptic near-future in ruins from environmental disasters and global economic fallout. Oppressively dull and with classic rock references inanely smuggled with a wink-and-a-nudge into some dialogue exchanges (one character is admonished with "You're trading your heroes for ghosts!"), THE LAST MAN is further dragged down by Hayden Christensen, who still can't act (2003's terrific SHATTERED GLASS remains the only film where his limitations have worked in his favor), and is saddled with trite, sub-Rick Deckard narration on top of that (at one point, he's actually required to gravely mumble "If you look into darkness, the darkness looks into you") as a PTSD-stricken combat vet obsessed with building a fortified bunker after being convinced of the coming apocalypse by a deranged street messiah played by Harvey Keitel, who looks like he's been caught in the midst of some hardcore C. Everett Koop cosplay. Vila achieves a gloomy and foreboding atmosphere with the Buenos Aires cityscapes, which just reinforces the notion that he should stick to documentaries.



3. (tie) UNDERCOVER BROTHER 2, THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE, BACKDRAFT 2, and JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN

Universal's 1440 DTV division has spent years cranking out belated sequels demanded by no one, turning one-off projects into unlikely franchises that are only discovered when someone browsing through some streaming options suddenly realizes "There's three sequels to JARHEAD?!" Recent years have seen Universal 1440 raiding the studio's back catalog to come up with HARD TARGET 2 (with Scott Adkins in place of JCVD), KINDERGARTEN COP 2 (with the always-available Dolph Lundgren stepping in for Arnold Schwarzenegger), and COP AND A HALF: NEW RECRUIT (with Lou Diamond Phillips subbing for Burt Reynolds) among others, but things went completely off the rails very early in 2019 when they unveiled THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE, coming 42 years after 1977's THE CAR. It has almost nothing to do with the first film, and Universal 1440's boasting that CAR co-star "Ronny Cox returns as The Mechanic" is a strong indication that no one in their marketing department has even seen THE CAR, since Cox played not a mechanic but rather, the deputy to sheriff James Brolin, who was probably the first to get a call to appear in THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE before wisely letting it go to voicemail and blocking the number.

Universal 1440 had a busy year, and while the utterly unnecessary INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED--the sequel to Spike Lee's heist thriller that only has IMDb head shots of Denzel Washington and Clive Owen to connect it to its 2006 predecessor--wasn't terrible, the rest was one shitshow after another: the 28-years-later BACKDRAFT 2 managed to get a returning William Baldwin and Donald Sutherland to embarrass themselves for a quick paycheck, and BACKDRAFT director Ron Howard has a courtesy executive producer credit even though he probably won't even be aware of BACKDRAFT 2's existence until his accountant shows him his 2019 tax return. JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN--starring Devon Sawa, capitalizing on that FANATIC momentum--is a series of sub-literate bro-downs that offers formulaic action and bonus One America News Network-level xenophobia for the MAGA hat crowd. And the 17-years-later UNDERCOVER BROTHER 2 has BLACK DYNAMITE's Michael Jai White replacing Eddie Griffin and then spending 75% of the movie in a coma while Undercover Brother's Brother (grating comedian Vince Swann) takes center stage. 2019 also saw Universal 1440 release such highly-anticipated gems as DOOM: ANNIHILATION (a sequel to the 2005 Karl Urban/Dwayne Johnson video-game dud that nobody liked, and obviously, neither one of the stars are back), GRAND-DADDY DAY CARE (with Danny Trejo, Barry Bostwick, George Wendt, and Hal Linden), and BENCHWARMERS 2: BREAKING BALLS (with Chris Klein and Jon Lovitz), but I didn't watch them because, well, frankly, I feel I've suffered enough. Don't worry, 1440 is kicking off 2020 in a big way with BULLETPROOF 2, the sequel to the 1996 buddy action comedy with Faizon Love and Kirk Fox in place of Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler, as well as DRAGONHEART: VENGEANCE, featuring a dragon voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, who really should have better things to do. Hey, Universal 1440...wake me when you get around to convincing Scott Eastwood to risk being cut out of his dad's will with HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER 2.



2. (tie) KILLERS ANONYMOUS and MARY

Remember when Gary Oldman ruled the awards season a couple of years ago and capped it off with a Best Actor Oscar for his work as Winston Churchill in DARKEST HOUR? By any chance, does Gary Oldman remember? I only ask because the projects he's chosen in the wake of an actor's greatest triumph have been enough to make Cuba Gooding Jr and Adrien Brody look away in embarrassment. At least it took those two several years to squander their good fortune and scrape bottom. It took Oldman about three months. Not since Michael Caine followed HANNAH AND HER SISTERS with JAWS: THE REVENGE has an Oscar curse been so maliciously cruel. The laughless, unwatchable "support group for assassins" comedy KILLERS ANONYMOUS looks like something that was shot five years ago and was only released because of Oldman's DARKEST HOUR triumph. But no...it began production in the summer of 2018, with Oldman arriving on the set a newly-anointed Academy Award-winner. He appears sporadically and usually alone, as his character is running surveillance, meaning this was probably a Bruce Willis-type gig where he was on the set for a few days and split. Likewise, the ludicrous "possessed yacht" horror movie MARY is not something that a recent Oscar-winner should be doing, and it's an even more bizarre career choice when you discover that Oldman stepped in after Nicolas Cage bailed during pre-production. Dude, you just won an Oscar and you're taking Nic Cage's turndowns? Sure, Oldman also appeared in Steven Soderbergh's Netflix film THE LAUNDROMAT with Meryl Streep, but projects like KILLERS ANONYMOUS, MARY, and THE COURIER (I haven't seen it yet), a straight-to-VOD action thriller where he's second-billed to Olga Kurylenko--currently third on the action heroine depth chart after Milla Jovovich and Noomi Rapace--are proof positive that if Uwe Boll was still making movies in 2019, Oldman probably would've turned up in one.




And the worst film of 2019:



1. 3 FROM HELL

If you thought Rob Zombie shit the bed with 31, then fuckin' hold his motherfuckin' beer because the unwatchable 3 FROM HELL is so bad that even some of his "gooble gobble, one of us!" fanboy faithful began turning on him after the film's three-night Fathom Events run a month before its Blu-ray/DVD release. The third chapter in what's--fingers crossed--a trilogy that began with 2003's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and 2005's THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, 3 FROM HELL seemed like a desperation move after his pointless remake of HALLOWEEN and its disastrous sequel, his ambitious but unsuccessful THE LORDS OF SALEM--which at least tried to do something different before falling apart in the end--and the dismal 31 were all starting to make him look like a hick-horror one-trick pony whose entire filmmaking career was an endless tribute to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. A brutally intense and absolutely uncompromising throwback to '70s grindhouse at its grittiest, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS remains Zombie's masterpiece, and he's never come close to duplicating it since. Even with 14 years to think about it, he doesn't even seem to have the slightest semblance of a game plan with 3 FROM HELL, which ends up looking like a flimsy excuse for Zombie, his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, and some friends from the convention circuit to hang out under the guise of belatedly continuing the saga of the homicidal, serial-killing Firefly clan. There's clearly no script. Zombie and the actors are just making it up as they go along, and it's even capped off with a big shootout set to Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida," as if goddamn MANHUNTER doesn't already exist.

Sid Haig (1939-2019)

The sole saving grace is the brief appearance of the late Sid Haig, returning as Captain Spaulding before exiting the film at the seven-minute mark. Frail-looking and obviously gravely ill, the beloved cult legend, who died just a few days after the Fathom Events screenings in September, nevertheless brings his A-game to his one scene, but when he's gone, 3 FROM HELL crashes and burns and never recovers. Tedious, ploddingly-paced, and ridiculously overlong at just under two miserable hours, the embarrassingly self-indulgent 3 FROM HELL is Rob Zombie fuckin' scraping rock fuckin' bottom, and the only thing it accomplishes is proving once and for all that THE DEVIL'S REJECTS was a fluke. But no matter how bad it gets, Zombie will always have a loyal--albeit dwindling--core of die-hard apologists who will stand by whatever he does, so best of luck to them going forward. I'm leaving.



Missing the cut (in alphabetical order)

ABDUCTION
CORPORATE ANIMALS
ELI
JACOB'S LADDER
KILLERMAN
LUCKY DAY
A SCORE TO SETTLE (which does have this amazing moment)
SLAUGHTERHOUSE RULEZ
10 MINUTES GONE
TONE-DEAF


And for the record: Ten Favorite Films of 2019 (so far)