Directed by Dan Wolman. Written by Marc Behm. Cast: Katya Berger, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Mandy Rice-Davies, Massimo Serato, Yehuda Efroni, Annie Belle, Debra Berger, Shirin Taylor, Paul Muller, Marcus Beresford, Tom Felleghy. (R, 92 mins)
This review was originally published in slightly different form on the Mobius Home Video Forum in March 2011.
I remember NANA being in regular rotation on Showtime's "After Hours" late-night
softcore porn schedule in the 1980s, but never managed to see it, largely
because I was 11. It's spent nearly three decades in obscurity (only three user
reviews on IMDb, two of which seem to be written by the same person) before
appearing streaming on Netflix. One of several Italian-made Cannon productions
from the early 1980s, NANA is, as the opening credits clearly state, "Loosely
based on the novel by Emile Zola." Loosely? You can say that again.
Zola's novel
dealt with Nana (played here by 19-year-old Katya Berger, daughter of Eurocult
fixture William Berger), a bordello performer-turned-prostitute who uses and
humiliates every man who crosses her path as she climbs the Parisian social
ladder circa 1880. The "loosely based" film version has a similar setting, but
moves it some years ahead, since there's cars and Nana appears in stag films by
a "moving photograph" artist (Tom Felleghy). There's not much in the way of plot
here, just Nana going from zero to bitch as soon as she figures out how to
manipulate high society Parisian men who seem more than willing to let her do
it. Among them are powerful banker Steiner (Yehuda Efroni), young student Hector
(Marcus Beresford), and his father, the renowned Count Muffat (Jean-Pierre
Aumont, way too classy for this kind of stuff, especially when Nana makes the
whipped Count fetch a stick like a dog). When the financially-strapped Count
declines her demand for more money, Nana goads journalist Faucherie (Massimo
Serato) into seducing the Count's uptight, neglected wife (1960s Profumo scandal
figure Mandy Rice-Davies).
Nana also explores her lesbian side by
engaging in hot fling with Satin (Debra Berger), which is noteworthy because
Katya Berger and Debra Berger go at it in a couple of explicit, fully nude love
scenes, while offscreen, they're half-sisters with different mothers. I wonder if William
Berger ever saw this. Anyone else a little skeeved out by that casting decision? I can't recall this ever happening somewhere else. Sure, they don't really look much alike (Debra looks a lot like their father and Katya does not), but still. Can anyone imagine two half-brothers being cast in a relatively mainstream film that would require a nude sex scene between the two of them?
Pre-production trade ad. Mary
Stavin and Kevin Brennan ultimately
weren't in the film.
In addition to pushing their Hot Sis-on-Sis Lesbo Action agenda, Golan
& Globus tried their hardest to make this look pretty highbrow, and the widescreen
print running on Netflix is superb. But the plot is as threadbare as can be,
mainly an excuse for mostly tame but occasionally raunchy sex scenes. The most
explicit really don't involve the main actors, as Golan & Globus tried to
take a page out of the CALIGULA book and insert a few really graphic shots
during a sequence where some nude women are hunted on the grounds of a posh
shindig thrown by Nana. Once captured, the women have sex with the men in clumsily-staged copulation shots with often-visible genitalia while the
film cuts back to the gleeful, bourgeois revelers watching them from a distance. The main cast members watching in this scene (Katya Berger, Efroni, Serato, etc) are most likely just being told to react and probably have no idea just how explicit the other end of this haphazardly-edited scene will ultimately end up being.
Most
bewildering about this opulent-looking but dull film is just how far it strays
from Zola's novel. Zola ended the novel with the bitchy Nana dying of smallpox.
In the Golan-Globus NANA, she takes off for India to meditate and gets a warm,
applauding farewell from everyone whose lives she's ruined! And they lament that
"Paris won't be the same without Nana!" Indeed. Directed by Dan Wolman (MAID IN
SWEDEN), and written by Marc Behm, who had just scripted the 1982 slasher HOSPITAL MASSACRE for Cannon and in clearly better days, co-wrote CHARADE (1963) and HELP! (1965). Yes, the classic Beatles movie. Behm also wrote the novel Eye of the Beholder that became a memorably bizarre Ewan McGregor/Ashley Judd thriller in 2000. Music by one "Enio Morricone." Enio? Seriously? It's not like Ennio Morricone wasn't one of the go-to guys
for film scores for nearly 20 years by that point.
Really?
NANA is so obscure that there isn't even a trailer on YouTube. There was probably never a trailer at all. There's a few pieces of Morricone's score, but the only thing of substance I could find is this NANA-in-15-minutes compilation of scenes, taken from an echoey German-language print. Hell, turn the volume off if you want. You'll still be able to follow it.
Oh, wait! It only seems appropriate to watch this before any viewing of a pay cable softcore relic like NANA:
Though his star seems to be fading--those NATIONAL TREASURE movies weren't that long ago, folks--Nicolas Cage is as busy as ever, even if his films aren't quite doing the boffo business they once did. Two of Cage's recent films have just been released on DVD and Blu-ray: a sequel no one wanted (GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE) and a suspense thriller no one saw (SEEKING JUSTICE).
GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (US/United Arab Emirates, 2012)
GHOST RIDER was released in 2007 to critical derision and grossed $115 million despite audiences not really giving much of a shit about it. Think about it. Do you know anyone who really likes GHOST RIDER? But yet, somehow, a sequel got the greenlight and some people were stoked about it. Why? Because the job was given to the team of Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor, who somehow have a devoted fanboy following despite making exactly one good movie (2006's CRANK). Perhaps people thought they'd bring that sense of CRANK insanity to the party, but instead, they brought their overbearing, headache-inducing CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE attitude and coupled with a barely-there Cage, the results are deadening. Cage's Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider, is in exile in Eastern Europe (to help explain the cost-cutting Romania locations), but gets pulled back into the fight against evil when the Devil (Ciarin Hinds) tries to abduct his spawn (Fergus Riordan) from his mortal mother (Violante Placido). Groan-inducing humor (Cage to Placido: "You're the Devil's babymama") and CGI that's a notch above Asylum-level abound. There's hardly a shot in this that doesn't utilize extensive CGI, and with Johnny Blaze frequently in skull-engulfed-in-flames Ghost Rider mode, Cage gets to take about half of the movie off. Loaded with shaky-cam action and jittery, jumpy zooms, the dismal GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE is a miserable experience, and had to look even worse in theaters in 3-D. Cage's crazy act feels pretty phoned-in here, almost like he can't even find a reason for this film to exist, which typifies far too many of Cage's vehicles these days. And on top of that, it wastes fine actors like Hinds, Idris Elba, and a great-to-see-him-again Christopher Lambert as the leader of a cabal of evil monks. Budgeted at a wasteful, borderline-disgraceful $75 million, it grossed $51 million, which is what GHOST RIDER made in its first weekend back in 2007. So whatever magic people were expecting from Neveldine/Taylor, it wasn't enough to make them care that much about going to see it once it opened. And as it turned out, they weren't missing a thing as the admittedly awesome CRANK looks more like a fluke for Neveldine/Taylor with each passing year. (PG-13, 95 mins)
SEEKING JUSTICE (US, 2012)
Given a limited release on 200 or so screens after two years on the shelf, SEEKING JUSTICE is often deliriously stupid, but it makes a world of difference when Cage is engaged with the material. Cage is Will Gerard, a New Orleans high school English teacher whose wife Laura (January Jones) is brutally raped. In the hospital, Will is approached by the mysterious Simon (Guy Pearce) who claims to know who the rapist is and will "take care of it" for Will...but he'll owe a favor when asked. That night, the rapist is killed. Six months later, Simon contacts Will and instructs him that he must kill a known pedophile and pornographer. When Will refuses, Simon and his ever-present team of sinister-looking associates who seem to be anywhere in New Orleans at any given moment ("we're just a small group of concerned citizens," Simon explains), proceed to make his life very difficult. Directed by veteran journeyman Roger Donaldson (1987's NO WAY OUT, 1995's SPECIES, and 2005's THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN, among numerous others), SEEKING JUSTICE is the kind of dumb thriller that probably plays a lot better at home than in the theater. It also seems to be aware of its own silliness, with countless contrivances and implausibilities and ridiculous signals (Pearce: "If you want us to take care of this for you, there's a vending machine outside the oncology department. Go there and buy two Forever chocolate bars, but you have to buy them within the next hour and we'll know your answer is yes," or the ominous secret code that a job has been completed: "The hungry rabbit jumps"). It's also amusing seeing Cage, as a milquetoast Shakespeare teacher and chess player, suddenly turn into an action hero during a wild chase scene that finds him dodging semis, jumping concrete dividers, and essentially playing Frogger across a busy highway. And of course, as the film goes on and the twists pile up, Cage reaches into his bag of tricks and like a classic rocker saving all the fan-favorite hits for the end of the gig, starts making faces, shouting, screaming, frantically running around, freaking out, and basically Caging it up.
Look, SEEKING JUSTICE is a dumb, dumb movie. But it's also an enjoyable dumb movie, and fully illustrates the difference between Cage when he cares and when he doesn't (see GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE. Or better yet, don't). Also with Harold Perrineau, Xander Berkeley, IronE Singleton (THE WALKING DEAD's T-Dog!), and, in her second frivolous, nothing supporting role in New On DVD/Blu-ray in the last three weeks, DEXTER's Jennifer Carpenter, who really should be getting better work. Tobey Maguire was one of the producers. (R, 105 mins)
Released June 18, 1982, FIREFOX was a different kind of film for Clint Eastwood. He tried espionage thrillers before with 1975's underrated THE EIGER SANCTION, but FIREFOX, based on Craig Thomas' 1977 bestseller, was a significantly more high-tech, effects-heavy project that bordered on sci-fi. Eastwood utilized the services of famed visual/photographic effects guru John Dykstra, a protege of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, and a key figure in the visual effects of STAR WARS (1977), STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979), and the late '70s TV series BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. With FIREFOX, Dykstra pioneered the then-revolutionary use of "reverse bluescreen," which (to grossly oversimplify) involves pre-filmed objects matted onto real backgrounds, instead of the previous standard, which would've involved miniatures shot against a projected background. In today's CGI world, FIREFOX's visual effects range from charmingly antiquated to completely laughable and they've aged badly, but 30 years ago, they certainly looked much more impressive on a big screen. Dykstra's innovative use of reverse bluescreen was undoubtedly a factor in FIREFOX becoming one of Eastwood's biggest hits up to that time, even spawning a popular arcade game by Atari. It was the 15th highest-grossing film of 1982 and Eastwood was on a bit of a roll going back to 1978's EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, which was followed by ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ in 1979, and BRONCO BILLY and ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN in 1980. As a director, Eastwood had never up to this point taken on a project as large-scale as FIREFOX, with its complex special effects and James Bond-ian Cold War espionage.
But even with Dykstra's once-groundbreaking visual trickery, these days FIREFOX is generally ranked among Eastwood's worst films. Frankly, I'm surprised it was as popular as it was in 1982. It's sluggishly-paced, absurdly overlong at 136 minutes (in a rare instance of Eastwood tinkering with a movie after he was done with it, he seemed to recognize that it dragged badly and trimmed it down to 124 minutes for VHS and cable, which really didn't make much of a difference--the DVD is the original theatrical version) and takes forever to get going. Eastwood is retired Air Force pilot Mitchell Gant, in hiding and still suffering from Vietnam flashbacks. He's pulled back in by the government to work with the British on a top-secret mission to sneak into Moscow, pretend to be a Soviet military pilot (because his mother was Russian, Gant is fluent in the language), and steal Firefox, a fighter plane that's invisible to radar and has the ability to fire missiles based on the thoughts and brain impulses of the pilot.
It takes 75 minutes of screen time before Gant even gets to the hangar housing Firefox. Until then, we follow him as he slowly (very slowly) works his way to Moscow (you could make a drinking game out of every time a Soviet officer barks "Papers, please"). There's a few tense moments in the first half and Nigel Hawthorne has a brief but memorable role as Baronovich, a Soviet dissident working with the British. When Gant asks him why he's willing to let himself be considered expendable by the British government, Baronovich replies, "Mr. Gant, you are an American. You are a free man. I am not. There is a difference. If I resent the men in London who are ordering my death, then it is a small thing when compared with my resentment of the KGB." It's a powerful sentiment and probably the most emotional, insightful moment in the film, and Hawthorne just nails it. Warren Clarke also steals a few scenes as a Russian spy working with the Brits, who helps Gant get into Moscow. Elsewhere, a wild-haired, twitching, endlessly mannered Freddie Jones completely overdoes it as the British government figure overseeing the operation. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK co-stars Ronald Lacey and Wolf Kahler can also be seen in supporting roles, Fassbinder vet Klaus Lowitsch plays a Russian general, and even John Ratzenberger, then an expat American actor living in London and about to be cast on CHEERS, has a small bit on a submarine near the end.
Gant (Eastwood) in one of his
numerous disguises
Watching the film today, for the first time in 20-odd years, it's actually the slower, methodical, murky espionage bits that play better. The visual effects that dominate the second half of the film have aged so poorly that the aerial sequences just don't work at all now. And what should've been the film's major moment--a dogfight between the Gant-piloted Firefox and Firefox II, a newer prototype piloted by the guy Gant was pretending to be--is treated almost as an afterthought by Eastwood. Thomas' novel Firefox was followed by a 1983 sequel, Firefox Down, and Thomas wrote two other Mitchell Gant adventures--1987's Winter Hawk and 1997's A Different War-- before his death in 2011. Eastwood never revisited the Gant character and thus far, neither has anyone else. FIREFOX also kicked off the short-lived "Super Aircraft" craze, followed most notably a year later by the superior BLUE THUNDER (and its brief TV spinoff) and TV's AIRWOLF.
Gant goes over the plan with
Baronovich (Nigel Hawthorne)
FIREFOX opened in second place (nothing was beating E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL) and, surprisingly, remained in the top five for another month. It's a big movie with location shooting all over the globe (Vienna doubles for Moscow), and it has some scattered strong moments, especially whenever Nigel Hawthorne is onscreen, but it's just defeated by its snail-like pacing and its bloated run time. Eastwood's always had a tendency to let his films last longer than they need to, but this is perhaps his most egregious example. The film isn't brought up much today in Eastwood discussions, and when it is, it's rarely in a positive light. It's essentially Eastwood's attempt at making a huge special effects movie akin to Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, or James Bond, but his heart doesn't really seem to be in it. FIREFOX feels more like a concession to the times than a filmmaker looking to explore a new genre, and it seems like Eastwood is deliberately procrastinating when it comes to getting Firefox in the air. For the most part, FIREFOX is a draggy, laborious misfire that somehow became a fairly big hit. Eastwood had the small-scale labor-of-love HONKYTONK MAN in theaters six months later, in which he played a dying Depression-era country singer on a road trip to the Grand Ole Opry with his young nephew (Eastwood's son Kyle) along for the ride. It was a critically-acclaimed, charming period piece that didn't find an audience and became one of the biggest commercial flops of Eastwood's career. Go figure.
Also in theaters this weekend was another change-of-pace for a big name star: the heartwarming, feel-good, PG-rated comedy AUTHOR! AUTHOR! starring the king of heartwarming, feel-good, PG-rated comedies: Al Pacino. This was Pacino's first film since William Friedkin's extremely controversial CRUISING (1980), where he played an undercover NYC cop infiltrating the seedy underbelly of the gay S&M scene in search of a serial killer. To this day, Pacino has distanced himself from CRUISING and won't talk about it, and after taking 1981 off, likely wanted to do something as different as possible. And...no one cared. Despite decent reviews, AUTHOR! AUTHOR! was a flop at the box office, but at least Pacino, as a preoccupied playwright who finds himself forced to take care of a houseful of kids, was trying something different. Still several years away from an apparent voice change and the invention of his now trademark "talk quietly and then TALK REAL LOUD AND YELL FOR NO REASON!!!"/Hoo-aaah! persona, Pacino quickly shrugged off AUTHOR! AUTHOR! and returned the next year with what's arguably his most iconic role after THE GODFATHER's Michael Corleone: Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's SCARFACE.
Directed by Robert Lieberman. Written by Marek Posival. Cast: Erika Christensen, Jesse Metcalfe, Bill Moseley, Fulvio Cecere, Bill Lippincott, Thomas Greenwood. (Unrated, 80 mins)
Well-to-do young couple Elise (Christensen) and Craig Landry (Metcalfe) see their happy lives fall apart when their six-year-old son Benjamin (Thomas Greenwood) is abducted, tortured, and brutally killed by garish makeup-and-tiara-wearing psycho Kozlowski (Bill Moseley, cast radically against type as "Bill Moseley"). The cops arrest Kozlowski, who has a mass grave filled with dead kids on his property but gets his life sentence reduced to 25-to-life when he cooperates by directing police to other burial sites for his victims (what?!). Enraged by the possibility of Kozlowski being paroled in ten years (WHAT?!), Elise and Craig decide to take justice into their own hands.
In what will have to go down as one of 2012's most ludicrous sequences, they follow a transport van taking Kozlowski to the state pen. Then, they wait for the van to stop at a gas station so the driver and the guard can get coffee. While the guard is distracted by Craig barging into the store and acting drunk, Elise laces their coffee with a turbo laxative. A while later, the van pulls over because the guards have to take a massive shit in a nearby wooded area, making it easy for Craig to commandeer the van, with Elise behind him in their car, and they take Kozlowski to a cabin in the deep woods...and torture him for the rest of the movie.
With Kozlowski chained to the table, Craig (a doctor, by the way) and Elise inflict all manner of pain upon him: burns, cuts, bone-breaking, catheters, suffocation, general mutilation of various sorts. It's gratuitous and over-the-top and it's supposed to be, but to what end? This subgenre has produced clever, well-made films, but there's a reason it ran out of gas so quickly: there's only so many ways you can cut off an appendage. Marek Posival's script is insultingly stupid. A colleague catches Craig sneaking into the back of an ambulance (where he's stealing meds and syringes for the Kozlowski torturethon), and...makes small-talk and lets him go? And only after they've got their son's killer chained to a table in the basement, gagged and with cigar burns on his body, can Craig and Elise find the renewed passion to have loud, hot, sweaty, near-bed-breaking sex upstairs. And why would they leave Kozlowski unsupervised? Well, because otherwise he would be unable to break from his shackles and escape from the basement using the key that Craig tauntingly placed on a rafter just above the table. And I haven't even mentioned the absurd groaner of a twist ending that's so bad that it would even piss off M. Night Shyamalan. Director Robert Lieberman has had a long career in TV, with occasional journeyman forays into theatrical features, like 1983's TABLE FOR FIVE, 1996's D3: THE MIGHTY DUCKS and, most memorably, 1993's creepy, well-done alien abduction sleeper FIRE IN THE SKY. Already hobbled by one of the dumbest scripts in recent memory, THE TORTURED is blandly shot and Lieberman's not bringing anything to it other than workmanlike efficiency. Metcalfe is completely unconvincing and downright laughable during the torture scenes, but in the early going, Christensen displays a very credible sense of unimaginable grief and blind rage that briefly gives the impression that this might have more up its sleeve. Well, rest assured, it doesn't and she seems to come to that conclusion around the same time as most viewers will.
Charles Chaplin's 1925 masterpiece THE GOLD RUSH is treated to an expectedly exhaustive, extras-packed Criterion package, complete with two HD restorations: the original (or as close to it as possible) 1925 silent version, and Chaplin's 1942 re-edit, with added descriptive narration and Chaplin reciting the characters' dialogue. Chaplin wanted to revamp the film for the sound era and considered the 1942 cut the definitive edition. At 72 minutes, the 1942 cut runs 17 minutes shorter than the 1925 version, due to some cuts, subplot alterations, the removal of the intertitles, alternate camera angles or different takes, and the fact that it's running at the standard sound speed instead of silent. The 1925 version fell into the public domain in 1953 after Chaplin, then preoccupied with immigration battles with J. Edgar Hoover, resulting in a permanent move back to his native England, neglected to renew the copyright. The 1925 version of THE GOLD RUSH has been available in various forms over the decades, in prints, VHS, and DVD editions ranging from OK to completely unwatchable, but the complete, original version, as it was released in 1925, became an essentially lost film. That is, until enough surviving elements were found--largely from a private collector who had a print of it in his collection--and restoration gurus Kevin Brownlow and David Gill painstakingly restored it in 1993 to something very close to its original version. That restoration is given an HD upgrade here. It utilizes different sources and has numerous instances of skipped or missing frames and jumpy editing, but for a 88-year-old film long ago abandoned, it looks very good.
As good as the 1925 cut looks, the 1942 version looks even better, with darker blacks and greater textural detail. Call me a purist, but despite the 1942 cut being Chaplin's preferred version and it being the better of the two transfers here, I think it's the 1925 cut that holds up better. I don't recall ever seeing the 1942 cut before now, though it has appeared on TCM. When I saw THE GOLD RUSH in college, it was on VHS and I'm almost certain it was a pretty beat-up and incomplete print of the 1925 version. While the 1942 cut was a concession to sound audiences at the time (the first sound films appeared in 1927 and had become the standard by early 1930, when only a few stray silents wandered into theaters before vanishing completely; Chaplin was the last silent holdout and didn't make an all-sound feature until 1940's THE GREAT DICTATOR, by which time he'd finally embraced the talkies), today it seems superfluous and pandering. Silent comedy spoke for itself, and the comedy of THE GOLD RUSH is timeless: the Thanksgiving dinner of boiled shoe with spaghetti laces; the dance of the dinner rolls; the cabin dangling off the mountain; the complicated timing and choreography of the Lone Prospector (Chaplin), Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain), and escaped fugitive Black Larson (Tom Murray) trying to close the doors of the cabin during a blizzard. THE GOLD RUSH doesn't need Chaplin narrating and reciting dialogue synched to the characters' lip movements. Just playing devil's advocate here, but is it possible that as the years went on, Chaplin preferred the 1942 cut simply because, due to the copyright lapse, it was the only version from which he and his family could profit? Yes, he was an artist, but who doesn't like money? Watching them back-to-back, the 1925 cut is clearly the superior version. Both were included on Warner's 2005 DVD, but this new Criterion set, on DVD and Blu-ray, must be considered the definitive home video edition, with numerous documentary featurettes, four trailers, a booklet with an essay by critic Luc Sante and a reprint of Andrew Sarris' Time review of the 1942 release, plus a commentary on the 1925 version by Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance. (Unrated, 1925 version: 89 mins/1942 version: 72 mins)
SHALLOW GRAVE (UK, 1995)
I remember working at Blockbuster in the mid '90s and SHALLOW GRAVE being one of those offbeat gems that everyone on the staff loved. Danny Boyle's debut feature also marked his first collaboration with producer Andrew Macdonald and writer John Hodge. This team would go on to worldwide fame with 1996's TRAINSPOTTING, would work in together in various combinations on other projects, though the three haven't teamed since 2000's ill-fated THE BEACH. It's probably been at least a decade since I last watched SHALLOW GRAVE, and it's held up quite well. Memorable images and bits of quotable dialogue hit me like I just saw the film last week. Boyle, already nearly 40 at the time, had done a lot of TV directing and shows a remarkable sense of style throughout. The way the camera fluidly snakes through the large, spacious Edinburgh flat is almost hypnotic. Equal parts Hitchcock and BLOOD SIMPLE, with dashes of giallo and Dario Argento thrown in, the unrepentantly mean-spirited SHALLOW GRAVE is the twisted, dark-humored story of three thoroughly unlikable flatmates--doctor Juliet (Kerry Fox), accountant David (Christopher Eccleston), and tabloid hack Alex (Ewan McGregor, in his second film)--looking for a fourth roommate. Cruelly dismissing everyone not up to their standards (most memorably Colin McCredie's much-abused Cameron), they finally settle on mysterious Hugo (Keith Allen), who claims to be a novelist and flashes huge wad of cash. The next day, they find Hugo naked and dead from a drug overdose. Under his bed is a suitcase full of cash. Deciding to leave the cops out of it, they dismember Hugo's body and bury it in the titular spot in the woods. Almost immediately, paranoia sets in among the three friends. With the money in the equation, they no longer trust one another. David stops going to work and moves to the attic, drilling holes in its floor so he can keep constant watch on his roommates, and two thugs (Peter Mullan, Leonard O'Malley) come looking for Hugo and the money, followed closely by the cops. Terrific performances not just from the three leads, but even down to the smallest supporting roles, with the standouts being McCredie as the hapless Cameron, and Ken Stott's dry and subtly hilarious performance as the utterly incredulous Inspector McCall, who doesn't for one moment buy what these three smug roomies are trying to sell him.
SHALLOW GRAVE, made for the US equivalent of $2.5 million, looks absolutely brilliant on this Criterion Blu-ray edition. Beautiful colors, crystal clarity, perfectly-defined imagery--this film has never looked as good as it does here. As usual, it's filled with extensive supplementals: two commentaries (one with Boyle, taken from a 2009 UK DVD release, and a new 2012 track with Macdonald and Hodge); new interviews with Fox, Eccleston, and McGregor (on his character: "He's a wanker, really"); a 1993 behind-the-scenes doc directed by Macdonald's brother Kevin, who went on to make THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND; a 1992 video diary of the team trying to sell the script at the Edinburgh Film Festival; and an essay by film historian Philip Kemp. In short, as is customary with the Criterion Collection, this is pretty much the last word on SHALLOW GRAVE, and the ultimate edition for fans of this smart, dazzlingly-shot thriller from the heyday of the 1990s indie explosion that's held on to become one of the top cult films of its era. (R, 93 mins)
Filmed in 2009 and barely released to a handful of theaters in January 2012, DON'T GO IN THE WOODS is not a remake of the 1981 cult horror cheapie. A remake would've preferable to whatever the DON'T GO IN THE WOODS of 2012 is. Veteran actor Vincent D'Onofrio makes his feature directorial debut with this unbelievably bad slasher musical. Yes. Slasher musical. Ambitious, dictatorial singer/guitarist Nick (Matt Sbeglia) takes his shitty emo band deep into the woods for the weekend to work on songs for their album. No booze, no weed, no phones, and no girlfriends. He tosses out the weed, smashes the cell phones (that's convenient), and scares them with the story of the Wendigo legend, apparently for no other reason than to get Larry Fessenden excited if he ever watches this. Then the girlfriends show up anyway and Nick's plans get derailed, prompting him to...break into song! For the first 65 of its 83 minutes, DON'T GO IN THE WOODS might as well be called BAND PRACTICE: THE MOVIE, as we spend a ludicrous amount of time listening to the band's impossibly trite, banal tunes ("Break my fall, tear down these walls..."). By the time the cloaked figure roaming the woods finally starts doing everyone in with a sledgehammer, you'll be thankful. The characters behave so stupidly and the twist ending so obvious that it's possible D'Onofrio intended this to be funny, except that it's not. I can't see any reason he wanted to make this movie. He cast actual aspiring musicians in the leading roles. Did these guys paint his house or something and he promised to put them in a movie and they held him to it? Did he go to some open mic night at a bar and they saw him and said hi and asked him some questions about FULL METAL JACKET and they ended up chatting all night and thought dicking around in the woods for a couple of weeks, drinking some beers, playing some tunes, and making a horror movie sounded like fun? Is it some kind of elaborate inside joke? Is it all a D'Onofrio tax write-off? The cast is all unknowns and I trust it'll stay that way, but D'Onofrio's old LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT co-star Eric Bogosian appears briefly, which tells me Eric Bogosian is truly a loyal friend. (Unrated, 83 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
DEMOTED (US, 2012)
Shot in suburban Detroit in 2008, DEMOTED has a few sporadic chuckles (like, maybe five) and never seems like anything more than a stale NINE TO FIVE meets OFFICE SPACE retread. Michael Vartan and Sean Astin are two asshole sales reps at a tire company. They're the favorites of boss Robert Klein and treat everyone else like garbage, including the long-abused secretaries. When Klein drops dead from a heart attack after a night of partying with them at a strip club, Vartan and Astin are horrified to find his replacement is weaselly, ass-kissing David Cross. Cross, long the butt of Vartan's and Astin's vicious pranks, demotes the two down to secretaries. Where, of course, they realize what jerks they've been and turn over a new leaf, inspiring the secretaries to stick up for themselves and take on Cross and the other sexist sales reps. Cross' ridiculous character gets the few legitimate laughs (like when he's caught preparing to masturbate to a picture of himself), even if he's basically playing Tobias Funke as Dwight Schrute. Director J.B. Rogers, a Farrelly Brothers protege who also directed AMERICAN PIE 2 (2001) and spent time with the Roger Corman factory back in the early '90s, goes for the requisite grossout gag here and there (Cross sitting on an exploding toilet and rolling around in a mix of water and shit), but this mostly plays like an R-rated sitcom. Vartan and Astin are such pricks that it's really hard to care about them or their redemption, and the character arcs are completely predictable. The main problem with Dan Callahan's script is that workplace satires need to exist on some level of reality (which is why NBC's once-brilliant THE OFFICE is no longer funny and often quite terrible) to effectively make their points, and DEMOTED really doesn't have any. It goes for the easiest and cheapest laughs, and while a gag might occasionally land, that's largely why this sat on the shelf for four years without a distributor, only playing a couple of festivals in Michigan because it was made there. DEMOTED is uninspired and does the bare minimum to get by, but it at least reunites Cross with MR. SHOW castmate Jay Johnston, so it's not a total waste. (R, 94 mins)
Released June 11, 1982, E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL is arguably the moment that Steven Spielberg became "Steven Spielberg." With a resume already boasting JAWS (1975), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), E.T. surpassed them all at the box office, remaining at the top for six weeks and ultimately grossing a then-unheard-of $359 million during its initial theatrical run. It was still in first-run theaters a year after its release. But it started relatively small, opening in first place with $11 million on 1100 screens. But great reviews and positive word of mouth caused it to get more popular as the weeks went on and moviegoers went back to see it multiple times. By its sixth week, it was still making more than it did during its initial weekend. Throughout the rest of the summer, it would be knocked out of the top spot three times by new films, but would be back on top the next weekend. As late as the weekend of October 15, 1982, E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL was still the #1 movie in the country.
Spielberg directing Henry Thomas
It became a huge film yet, at its core, it was a small, deeply personal film for Spielberg. According to the director, E.T.'s origins go back to an imaginary friend he created as a child, around the time his parents divorced. Working with screenwriter Melissa Mathison (who, at the time, was married to Spielberg's RAIDERS star Harrison Ford), Spielberg constructed the story around that sense of loneliness and isolation he felt during this traumatic period of his childhood and continued to be affected by as an adult. And as a filmmaker who related to the typical American moviegoer better than perhaps all of his contemporaries, Spielberg's film spoke to people: Ten-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas) is the middle child in a home with a divorced, stressed-out single mom (Dee Wallace). He's playfully pushed around by his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and annoyed by little sister Gertie (six-year-old Drew Barrymore). Like the Freelings in POLTERGEIST, this was another family that seemed very much like any in our neighborhood.
Spielberg's film uses a stranded alien and his friendship with a little boy as the springboard to a story that is essentially about the innocence of childhood. This point is brought home by Elliott's conversation late in the film with scientist Keys (Peter Coyote), who wants to capture the stranded E.T. and study him, but only entered his field of study because of a childhood fascination with alien life. He would've wanted E.T. for a friend, but as an adult, he views it not as a friend, but as a scientific specimen. Keys sees himself in Elliott and also represents the grown Elliott, who displays wisdom and self-reliance beyond his years, due in part to his parents' divorce and a preoccupied, working mom.
Thomas, Drew Barrymore, and Robert MacNaughton.
Like any huge success, E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL became a pop-culture phenomenon, and not just for adding "penis breath" to the lexicon. Sales of Reese's Pieces skyrocketed, "E.T. phone home!" became a catchphrase, Neil Diamond based his hit song "Heartlight" on it, and it also led to what's largely considered the worst Atari 2600 game ever created.
Neil Diamond was a big fan of the film and in response to it, wrote "Heartlight" with Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach. Released in late 1982, "Heartlight" is, to date, Diamond's last chart-topping single, though it cost him and his co-writers $25,000 to utilize the ideas from Spielberg's film in the song.
E.T. also spawned the usual ripoffs, though less in number than you'd expect. One highlight was the Spanish-made POD PEOPLE (1983), which became a classic MST3K episode. Directed by Juan Piquer Simon (PIECES), POD PEOPLE had a young boy befriending an aardvark-looking alien and naming him "Trumpy." Even worse than that was the positively fecal MAC AND ME (1988), a feature-length McDonald's commercial disguised as a movie. MAC AND ME is an embarrassment even by the standards of shameless ripoffs.
E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL is due out on Blu-ray later this year, and Spielberg has assured fans that the ill-advised changes he made to the 20th anniversary edition in 2002 will be reversed. Apparently suffering from an acute bout of George Lucasitis, Spielberg digitally removed some guns being waved by federal agents and replaced them with walkie-talkies. After the changes met with much criticism, Spielberg regretted his decision and vowed he was finished digitally altering his past films. If only he could convince Lucas to do the same.
The only other film to open this weekend was the ill-fated GREASE 2. GREASE was one of 1978's biggest hits and that film's choreographer, Patricia Birch, was promoted to director for the sequel. But with most of the core cast opting to take a pass (Didi Conn as Frenchy was the only major cast member to return, with supporting players Eve Arden, Sid Caesar, and Eddie Deezen also reappearing), it was hard for GREASE 2 to generate much excitement without John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. In their stead were two relative unknowns: Maxwell Caulfield as the visiting cousin of Newton-John's Sandy, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Stephanie, the new leader of the Pink Ladies. Universally panned and ignored by fans, GREASE 2 disappeared from theaters quickly, but over the years, GREASE fans have warmed up to it a bit and it's generally not considered the train wreck it once was. But even those who didn't like it in 1982 (meaning, almost everyone) agreed that 24-year-old Pfeiffer, in her fourth film, was the best thing about it, and most critics correctly predicted that she'd go on to bigger and better things. And sure enough, a year later, she co-starred with Al Pacino in Brian De Palma's landmark SCARFACE and her career, which thus far boasts three Oscar nominations, grew from there.
