Short on plot-driven momentum and long on atmosphere and richly-textured characterization, one's gut reaction to INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS may be that it isn't top-tier Coen Bros., but it's still very good. Though written and directed by the Coens, the film belongs just as much to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, whose contributions earned one of the film's two Oscar nominations (the other was for sound mixing). The Coens and Delbonnel use a muted color palette to bring a snowy, slushy 1961 Greenwich Village to vivid life. Inspired by the real-life Greenwich Village folk fixture Dave Van Ronk, folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is dealing with the suicide of his performing partner and the tanking of his subsequent solo album. He's homeless, crashing on the couches of area friends, including Jean (Carey Mulligan), who's part of a duo with Llewyn's friend Jim (Justin Timberlake) and is carrying a child that might be Llewyn's or Jim's. Through a series of mishaps, Llewyn's also taking care of a cat that belongs to his academic friends Mitch and Lillian Gorfein (Ethan Phillips, Robin Bartlett). Llewyn's a bit on the misanthropic side and doesn't always set out to be a jerk, but that's usually how he comes off, and the film basically follows him through one week of hassles, arguments, and letdowns, whether it's turning down royalties on a song in favor of the quick payday he needs to pay for Jean's abortion or having to carpool with two other musicians (John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund) to a gig in Chicago that goes horribly awry. In terms of story, it's one of the Coens' slighter efforts, but where it really stands out is capturing the look and feel of a unique place and time, from the work of Delbonnel to the production design to the songwriting (Isaac, in what should've been a star-making performance, performs original songs by T-Bone Burnett and Marcus Mumford). I also liked the recurring visual motif of narrow, claustrophobic hallways and the stunning interior of a massive Fred Harvey restaurant that's almost Kubrickian in its presentation. While not on the level of a FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, or NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, nor the Oscar magnet that many predicted, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS feels like one of those films that isn't initially powerful but sticks with you and quietly works on you over time. (R, 105 mins)
BEYOND OUTRAGE (Japan/France - 2012; US release 2013)
After leaving yakuza films behind following his underrated US crossover attempt BROTHER (2001), Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano (VIOLENT COP, SONATINE) spent most of the next decade--except for his 2003 ZATOICHI reboot--in personal art-house projects, most of which didn't connect with his audience. 2010's blood-splattered OUTRAGE was his "give the fans what they want" return to the yakuza genre, and while it possessed an extremely complicated plot that wasn't always easy to follow, it was enormously entertaining in the almost comedic way it kept presenting the same set pieces. You could probably stage a drinking game over how many times a bunch of pissed-off Japanese gangsters would congregate in a room, hurl insults at each other until brawling and gunfire erupted, culminating in someone being obligated to slice off their pinky to atone for their disrespect. The film was such a success in Japan that Kitano has returned with the sequel BEYOND OUTRAGE (or, as the onscreen title reads, OUTRAGE BEYOND). Kitano again stars, under his usual acting alias "Beat Takeshi," as steely, ruthless gangster Otomo, believed dead by his former yakuza associates but actually incarcerated. When a police official and a nightclub hostess are found murdered in a car dragged from the bottom of a river, the police decide they've had enough of the yakuza families overstepping the established boundaries of their cop/criminal arrangement. Going against the wishes of his superiors and colleagues, Detective Kataoka (Fumiyo Kohinata) poses as a dirty cop to get on the good sides of both warring organizations--the Sanno and the Hanabishi. The Sanno are ruled by Kato (Tomokazu Miura), who concedes most of his decision-making to his ambitious young right-hand man Ishihara (Ryo Kase), much to the resentment of the embittered old guard yakuza who don't like that it's all about pressure to meet the bottom line and long for a return to the glory of the good old days ("Fuck hedge funding!" one grumbles). Sensing some discord in the ranks, Kataoka decides to spring Otomo from prison--he's there in part because his former underling Ishihara sold him out--and pull a vintage YOJIMBO by starting a war between the two yakuza clans. Needless to say, much arguing, insults, brawling, and impromptu pinky amputation ensue.
BEYOND OUTRAGE has its moments but it feels too much like a stale retread not just of OUTRAGE, but of other, better Kitano yakuza films in general. As a director, it seems like Kitano's just punching a clock on this one and as an actor, Beat Takeshi is offscreen far too much for what's ostensibly a Beat Takeshi vehicle (he doesn't even appear until 25 minutes in). Most of the violence is confined to the last half hour and it's noticeably more restrained than some of the things seen in the first film. There's so many double and triple crosses and conflicting loyalties that I doubt even Kitano can keep it all straight. Still, when he's the center of attention, he's as much of a badass as ever at 65 (no one twitches more intimidatingly than Beat Takeshi), and it's great fun watching him fearlessly mouth off to powerful crime bosses. But too much of BEYOND OUTRAGE feels like obligation and filler. It's relentlessly talky and it could've easily lost 20-25 minutes and been a much tighter, more exciting thriller instead of the overlong, draggy one it is. There's enough here for die-hard Kitano completists to enjoy and it's not a waste of time by any means (Kitano is smart enough to end it with a great final shot), but ultimately, one OUTRAGE was probably enough. (R, 112 mins)
SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF (UK - 2012; US release 2014)
Anybody remember Mike Figgis? With his melancholy, jazz-and-rain-soaked British noir STORMY MONDAY (1988) to his Hollywood debut INTERNAL AFFAIRS (1990), and the devastating LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995), which earned Nicolas Cage an Oscar, 1990s Figgis was poised to become one of the decade's top filmmakers. Around the time of 1999's THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE, Figgis seemed to grow bored with conventional storytelling, and 2000's TIMECODE caused a bit of a stir at the time of its release for its unique four-frame split-screen, real-time structure. TIMECODE is the kind of intriguing creative experiment that really only works once, but Figgis beat it to death in the redundant and borderline-unwatchable semi-sequel HOTEL (2002), which no one saw. Figgis has always marched to the beat of his own drum, but since the forgettable Dennis Quaid/Sharon Stone thriller COLD CREEK MANOR--clearly a paycheck gig for the director--bombed in 2003, he's almost completely gone off the mainstream cinema grid, focusing on experimental short films, music videos, and opera documentaries, though he did contribute to the 2003 PBS series THE BLUES and directed one episode of THE SOPRANOS in 2004. Now 66, Figgis has only made two narrative features since COLD CREEK MANOR: 2008's virtually unseen LOVE LIVE LONG, which still hasn't been released in the US, and SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF, which was released in Europe to mostly dismissive reviews two years ago and has only now turned up in the US as a Netflix Instant exclusive. It's a terrible film, insufferably pretentious and unfathomably dull, with a noir-based premise that might've been fun and entertaining in the hands of say, an in-his-prime Brian De Palma, but Figgis is so lost up his own ass that the film is doomed from the very start, opening with a crawl about Karl Marx's "Participation Mystique" and the blurred lines between fact and fiction. Before four minutes even pass, Figgis is already breaking out the BRADY BUNCH squares and a douchebag filmmaker (Eoin Macken) is blathering on about his "film within a film within a film."
Figgis abandons the TIMECODE quadrants around the same time he decides to ditch the notion of a coherent story, as German-born, London-based screenwriter Martin (Sebastian Koch of THE LIVES OF OTHERS) sees his latest script, an erotic thriller, put in the hands of arrogant director Greg (Macken), who casts Martin's daughter Sarah (Rebecca Night) in the lead role. Sarah still lives with her father, who hosts a birthday party for her where he's approached by a French mystery woman named Angelique (Lotte Verbeek of the Showtime series THE BORGIAS), who offers him a joint and disappears. When she's found floating dead in a nearby canal, Martin is a suspect since it also coincides with the 15th anniversary of his actress wife's (Emilia Fox) still-unsolved disappearance. Martin is half-heartedly questioned by rumpled, wheezing detective Bullock (Kenneth Cranham), who seems more interested in getting feedback on his own cop screenplay. Enter Therese (also Verbeek), Angelique's twin sister, who arrives in London to identify the body. Therese stays with Martin and Sarah, leading to dark secrets, sexual tension and still, nothing much happens. Lots of long scenes play out only to be revealed as scenes in Martin's script being filmed by Greg or as re-enactments with different actors in one of the films within the film or as a staging of one of Martin's lectures to his screenwriting class. Professor Figgis frequently halts the action to flash things like "Character Is Plot" and the Webster's definition of "twin" on the screen. At one point, Therese sits down to read Martin's latest script and on the page, it describes her sitting down and reading Martin's latest script. SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF gets so bogged down in endless academic, deconstructionist, meta bullshit that it forgets everything else. There's no mystery, there's no suspense, there's no eroticism, there's no character development...it's just a smug, meandering film-school exercise in anti-cinema that wastes Koch and a very good one-scene performance by Figgis regular Julian Sands as a sarcastically incredulous detective who takes over the case after Martin's criticisms of Bullock's script induce a heart attack in the aging, out-of-shape cop. With cheap production values making it look like a 3:00 am Skinemax offering with less skin and, somehow, even less story, SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF shows the once-relevant Figgis light years removed from the triumph of LEAVING LAS VEGAS and strictly focused on pleasing what's since become his primary audience: Mike Figgis. (Unrated, 107 mins)
Written and directed by Herbert J. Leder. Cast: Dana Andrews, Anna Palk, Philip Gilbert, Kathleen Breck, Karel Stepanek, Basil Henson, Alan Tilvern, Edward Fox, Oliver MacGreevy, Ann Tirard, Tom Chatto. (Unrated, 95 mins)
A longtime late-night TV favorite of horror fans back in the '70s and '80s, THE FROZEN DEAD boasts a memorably catchy title that only partially applies to the horrors contained in the entertainingly disjointed film. Boasting more ideas than it can handle, THE FROZEN DEAD would seem to have arrived at the Nazisploitation party about a decade early, with Nazi zombie films like Ken Wiederhorn's SHOCK WAVES (1977), Jean Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), and Jess Franco's OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1981), to the post-SALON KITTY (1976) wave of Italian scuzz that became popular around the same time. The trend even included the prestigious THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978), which gave us Gregory Peck as a crazed Josef Mengele trying to create clones of Hitler (as much as we should, we also can't forget a bottom-scraping Veronica Lake trying to resurrect Hitler with flesh-eating maggots in 1970's FLESH FEAST, which proved to be the star's swan song). For the most part, however, despite its Nazi angle, THE FROZEN DEAD is more in line with the severed-headsploitation subgenre that became a strange Z-movie phenomenon in the 1960s. The 1959 German film THE HEAD was released in the US in 1961 and soon we had THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1963) and THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS (1963), better known under its 1968 TV re-edit THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN. Written and directed by American Herbert J. Leder (who scripted 1958's FIEND WITHOUT A FACE), the British-made THE FROZEN DEAD is still B-movie trash, but it's glossier and better-made than others of the severed head/Nazi undead ilk and boasts several iconic images that have stuck with fans for nearly 50 years.
Twenty years after Germany's defeat in WWII, Nazi Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews) is living in London, still under the employ of what's left of the Third Reich, represented by the demanding General Lubeck (Karel Stepanek) and Dr. Tirpitz (Basil Henson). Along with his well-meaning but oafish assistant Karl Essen (Alan Tilvern), Norberg is working on reanimating SS officers who have been kept in a state of frozen suspension in Germany, France, and Egypt since the end of the war, including his brother (a young Edward Fox, paying his dues before working his way up to classier fare like THE DAY OF THE JACKAL). Thus far, he's been unsuccessful in regenerating brain activity and has only succeeded in creating a few slobbering brutes that he keeps in a dungeon in his laboratory. Things get complicated with the unexpected arrival of Norberg's niece Jean (Anna Palk) and her friend Elsa (Kathleen Breck). Of course, Jean has no idea what her uncle is up to or that he's a Nazi-in-hiding, and the same goes for American Dr. Roberts (Philip Gilbert), who arrives to help Norberg with his research. When Norberg tells his benefactors that he needs a living head to conduct experiments in brain activity, the hapless Karl Essen takes matters into his own hands and kills Elsa, prompting Norberg to tell his niece that her friend just left unexpectedly. Jean isn't buying it and has a hard time convincing Roberts that something weird is going on as Lubeck and Tirpitz get increasingly antsy about the snooping interlopers. All the while, Elsa's still-living head starts exhibiting more capabilities than Norberg thought possible.
Despite a sluggish, talky middle, THE FROZEN DEAD still holds up as enjoyable trash. This was the first of back-to-back horror films that Leder made in the UK, the other being the universally-derided golem outing IT! (1967), and it does a nice job of mimicking the look and feel of a Hammer film. Both films were released on a double bill in the US in late 1967, though for some reason, Warner Bros-Seven Arts released THE FROZEN DEAD in black & white, even though it was shot in color and shown that way to British audiences a year earlier. The color version is what appeared on TV and on the remastered Warner Archive DVD released last fall, and with its vibrant colors, the cold, icy look of the dead SS officers, and the eerie blue on Elsa's face, it's really hard to picture much of this in black & white. Leder's script is prone to clumsy exposition and lunkheaded visual foreshadowing--why else would Norberg have a wall lined with severed arms connected to electrodes if they weren't there specifically to strangle him at the end?--but the arms, the image of three SS officers hanging frozen, and especially Elsa's blue-lit face with her mouth gasping "Bury me!" are things not easily forgotten, and on that level, THE FROZEN DEAD scores.
Andrews (1909-1992) was a very popular headliner in his 1940s/1950s prime, but is rarely discussed these days other than by devout viewers of Turner Classic Movies. He was never nominated for any Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes, though he had a good reputation in Hollywood, as evidenced by his 1946 Golden Apple Award for "Most Cooperative Actor." Best known for classics like LAURA (1944), A WALK IN THE SUN (1945), THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), BOOMERANG! (1947), and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956), Andrews hadn't quite fallen on hard times by 1966 but he'd hit some rough patches along the way. He was still very much in-demand and turning up in occasional noteworthy films like Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), but his alcoholism was causing some problems and ultimately got him bounced from the A-list. That, coupled with the sin of getting older, relegated him to supporting roles in big movies and starring roles in smaller ones. In 1964, Andrews' 29-year-old son died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage, after which the veteran actor threw himself into his work, starring or co-starring in no less than eight films just in 1965, including the military epics IN HARM'S WAY and BATTLE OF THE BULGE, the low-budget old-timer western TOWN TAMER, the sci-fi outing CRACK IN THE WORLD, the germ-warfare cult classic THE SATAN BUG, the absurdist comedy THE LOVED ONE, and the Italian 007 ripoff SPY IN YOUR EYE. Like many aging leading men making the transition to character actor, Andrews went where the work was, whether he was playing a Nazi mad scientist in THE FROZEN DEAD or a square family man terrorized by some crazed kids looking for kicks in HOT RODS TO HELL (1967). He quit drinking by the early 1970s and kept busy playing old ranch owners in westerns, old generals in war movies, and on TV shows and made-for-TV movies, not to mention inevitable appearances in a 1970s disaster movie (AIRPORT 1975), on THE LOVE BOAT, guesting on various talk shows, and even popping up in GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK (1978), an early Chuck Norris vehicle. Andrews retired from acting after a supporting role in 1985's little-seen JFK drama PRINCE JACK and was soon diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He spent his remaining years in a Los Angeles-area nursing home where he was frequently visited by old Hollywood friends, including Burt Lancaster, who was visiting Andrews at the facility in 1990 when he suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered.
Andrews lends a considerable amount of credibility to THE FROZEN DEAD, playing the kind of Bela Lugosi "mad scientist" role that most actors would mercilessly ham their way through. He doesn't even overdo the German accent, instead playing Norberg as a guy who isn't even that enthused about what he's doing. It's worth pondering that the reason Norberg's been unsuccessful is because he doesn't want to succeed. While some of it may be an inherent lack of interest on Andrews' part, it's actually a refreshing alternative to the usual overacting histrionics you'd expect an actor to give to such a character. Through Andrews' portrayal, you almost get the sense that Norberg is rightfully ashamed of his past and wouldn't mind getting himself and his niece away from Lubeck, Tirpitz, and Karl Essen if he could. Of course, Leder isn't interested in exploring the psychological elements because it distracts from Elsa, who is quite possibly horror cinema's most memorably melancholy talking head, a feat that's hard to pull off, considering it's almost always hilarious, either intentionally (RE-ANIMATOR) or unintentionally (pretty much everything else). Leder seems easily distracted throughout, with the abrupt dropping of the Nazi zombie plot angle and the introduction of an interesting psychic subplot involving Elsa somehow sending messages to Jean via dreams that's never really explored. Still, flaws and all, THE FROZEN DEAD earns its place in the cult movie pantheon and the Warner Archive DVD is a must-own for fans, even with no bonus features. It looks better than ever, especially considering it's in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, was never in color for its US theatrical run and, was cropped to 1.33:1 for TV broadcasts.
Directed by Eugenio Mira. Written by Damian Chazelle. Cast: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Kerry Bishe, Tamsin Egerton, Alex Winter, Don McManus, Allen Leach, Dee Wallace, Jack Taylor. (R, 90 mins).
Damian Chazelle's drama WHIPLASH earned some significant buzz and the audience and jury awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival, just in time for the US release of the Chazelle-scripted high-concept thriller GRAND PIANO, several months after it debuted in Europe. Both films--WHIPLASH was acquired by Sony and will be released later this year--deal with psychological pressures on a music prodigy, though GRAND PIANO takes a decidedly different approach in the hands of director Eugenio Mira. The term "Hitchcockian" has been bandied about for decades, but it applies here. Unfortunately, the longer GRAND PIANO goes on, the more silly and nonsensical it gets, and despite his background in music, Chazelle seems to have no idea how classical and orchestral performances go down. Do conductors kibitz with the audience in between movements? Does the featured pianist get up and wander around for long stretches of time while the rest of the orchestra carries on? As a suspense piece, GRAND PIANO has a doozy of an idea that ultimately collapses once the villain's motivations are revealed. It's fun while it's happening, but even before the movie's over, you'll be scratching your head and listing all the ludicrous lapses in logic. If you want to make it Hitchcockian, then go for it. Sure, not every Hitchcock thriller is airtight, but Chazelle and Mira are pretty much jamming a funnel down your throat to make you swallow the absurdities that they keep piling on.
Five years after suffering a breakdown in mid-performance and becoming a recluse, stage-fright-prone classical pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is set to make his comeback appearance. He's not eager to do so, but his glamorous movie-star wife Emma (Kerry Bishe) insists he re-enter public life. He's set to play the priceless grand piano that belonged to his late mentor Patrick Godureaux (played in photos and lobby posters by American expat Spanish exploitation icon Jack Taylor), and is visibly nervous about his return to live performance but, as the gregarious conductor (Don McManus) reassures him, "You play music this dense, you're gonna hit a wrong note. The audience never knows." Things quickly head south when Tom sits at the piano and notices some writing in his score: "Play one wrong note and you and your wife die." There's a laser pointed at Emma and at Tom's hand. He turns the page: "During the next break, go back to your dressing room."
OK, how many breaks does a star pianist get? It's his comeback performance and he's chosen a composition that seemingly involves as little piano as possible? Tom makes his way to his dressing room and finds an earpiece radio transmitter waiting for him. "Get back on stage!" orders the unseen sniper with the voice of John Cusack, perhaps calling from the set of one of the other two new movies he's had dumped on VOD in the last two weeks. "Call for help and I will hear it. Get a guard involved and I will know it. Play a wrong note, you will die." What does the sniper--named "Clem"--want? "I don't want your money. I want you to play the most flawless concert of your life." And what's the concluding piece for this comeback concert? An extraordinarily complex original composition by Godureaux known ominously in the world of classical music as "The Unplayable Piece"...the very piece that caused Tom's public meltdown five years earlier.
This should be a can't-miss nail-biter, and sometimes, it is. It's hard to get around the gaping breakdowns in logic in Chazelle's script (WHIPLASH may be great, but it's worth noting that he also wrote THE LAST EXORCISM PART II). and as the plot gets dumber and the motivations of Clem and his accomplice (Alex Winter--yes,that Alex Winter), who's posing as a stage assistant, are spelled out, you start thinking "There has to be an easier way." Where is the stage manager? Why does Tom just arrive at the hall to play a highly-publicized concert on a piano he's never used with an orchestra with whom he's never played...and no practice, nothing. Five years since he's played and he's just winging it? Mira's direction is so stylish, enthusiastic, and brimming with a love of cinema that GRAND PIANO almost pulls it off. Aside from the Hitchcock influences--particularly the Royal Albert Hall sequence in 1956's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH--there's the constant classical music, the rich, lush colors, the long tracking shots and widescreen shot compositions of cinematographer Unax Mendia (who did similarly memorable work on Kolda Serra's little-seen 2006 film THE BACKWOODS), and the sweeping camera in constant motion, telling us Mira has obviously spent a lot of time watching Brian De Palma and Dario Argento movies. There's even a vintage De Palma split screen at one point, and parts of "The Unplayable Piece" sound like something Claudio Simonetti would've written for an Italian horror film. There's also one brilliant bit where Mira pulls a 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY "bone to spaceship" match cut with a glass shard about to slit a throat seamlessly becoming a bow sliding across the strings of a cello. Stuff like that will put a smile on the face of anyone who loves cinema. What Chazelle doesn't seem to understand, and what Mira is forced to work around, is that with high-concept thrillers of this sort--be it Keanu Reeves on a speeding bus in SPEED or Colin Farrell trapped in a phone booth in PHONE BOOTH--the key is to keep them in that spot to maximize the suspense. PHONE BOOTH is by no means a great movie but it understands why it's called PHONE BOOTH. GRAND PIANO works best when Tom is at the grand piano being harangued by an endlessly taunting Clem. It's too much that he's constantly getting up from the piano, is having loud conversations with Clem while playing, and is actually texting for help at one point...all the while never flubbing a single note.
Wood turns in a credibly frazzled performance when he's at the piano, and though he's mostly heard and only briefly seen, Cusack is a formidably intimidating bad guy. But Clem's ultimate motivation is hardly worth the effort, the climax is weak, and the film ends with an abrupt whimper. There's hints that there's more going on between Clem and Godureaux and Taylor's presence in the closing credits without actually acting in the movie might be an indication that he shot some scenes that were cut, even though the film doesn't run long (this is the second movie I've seen this week where the closing credits sloooowly crawl over ten minutes to pad the film to 90). Still, there's no denying GRAND PIANO has its moments. Mira's made a few films prior to this, none very noteworthy (he did serve as second unit director on THE IMPOSSIBLE), and he sported a fake mole and mugged shamelessly as the young version of Robert De Niro's character in the forgettable RED LIGHTS. But GRAND PIANO is irrefutable proof that the guy's got something...and just needs a better script to take it to the next level.
Directed by Noam Murro. Written by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad. Cast: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro, David Wenham, Hans Matheson, Callan Mulvey, Jack O'Connell, Andrew Tiernan, Igal Naor, Andrew Pleavin, Ben Turner, Ashraf Barham, Christopher Sciueref, Peter Ferdinando. (R, 103 mins)
Zack Snyder's 300 became an unexpected blockbuster in early 2007, earning the director the clout to make the long-planned big-screen version of WATCHMEN and giving Gerard Butler what will likely go down as the role of his career. A hyper-stylized, CGI-heavy depiction of King Leonidas (Butler) of Sparta leading 300 brave Spartans on what amounts to a suicide mission against the Persian army of god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), 300 has inspired countless parodies and quotes and its digital splatter, slo-mo, and speed-ramping have become, for better or worse, standards of modern action cinema from sword & sandal epics of this sort to martial-arts to sci-fi, though you could argue that THE MATRIX really got the ball rolling; 300 wasn't the first to use these techniques, but it was the biggest factor in its current ubiquity. The biggest surprise with 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE is that it took seven years to happen. 300's story was self-contained but it seemed like a DTV franchise or cable-TV series would be inevitable (you can probably file the Starz' SPARTACUS under the "inspired by 300" category). Presumably so he could focus his attention on incurring the hyperventilating wrath of fanboys the world over, Snyder only produced and co-wrote here, opting instead to hand directing duties off to the unlikely Noam Murro, whose only previous feature is the 2008 comedy-drama SMART PEOPLE, RISE OF AN EMPIRE isn't exactly a sequel but rather, a spinoff that--courtesy of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks--takes place before, during, and after the events of the first film.
Opening after the death of King Leonidas and his fallen warriors (Butler is seen fleetingly in footage taken from 300), RISE begins with Leonidas' widow Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) recounting the story of famed Athenian general Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton of Cinemax's STRIKE BACK), his legend cemented upon killing Persian King Darius (Igal Naor), naturally prompting Darius' son Xerxes (Santoro again) to vow revenge upon making himself a god. Themistokles leads his ships against the Persian naval forces of Xerxes, led by the ferocious Artemisia (Eva Green), a former Greek slave who has pledged allegiance to Persia. Themistokles unsuccessfully lobbies for help from the Spartans, who end up in their own battle. Though the Spartans are defeated, it inspires Themistokles and his men as Stapleton gets his own "We are Sparta!" catchphrases to bellow ("Let it be known...we chose to die on our feet rather than live on our knees!"). Murro wisely opts against fixing what isn't broken, instead taking the action set pieces and violence to extremes, making this even more of a hard-R, CGI bloodbath than its predecessor, and in 3-D on top of that. Given its graphic novel roots (RISE is based on Xerxes, a yet-to-be-published Frank Miller work), the artifice is essential to the experience and for the most part, RISE looks magnificent on the big screen (one shot of Xerxes looking down upon his kingdom is dizzyingly breathtaking), though there is some occasional murkiness and one sequence where Themistokles rides a horse onto Artemisia's ship that's distractingly video-gamey in its execution.
The idea with RISE is that everything's bigger and bloodier. It avoids the jingoistic subtext of the first film, instead zeroing in on the carnage, the action, and the sex. If anything, it's even more of an adolescent pulp fantasy than Snyder's film. While Stapleton is competent if unspectacular as Themistokles (he looks like he's readying himself to be the second-string Michael Fassbender), RISE gets its biggest oomph from a gloriously over-the-top nemesis in Green's Artemisia. Best known for Bernardo Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS (2003) and as Vesper Lynd in CASINO ROYALE (2006), Green has spent recent years exploring her inner psycho-bitch. With her wicked snarl and her wild-eyed yet piercing glare showing no limit to the potential for crazy, Green writhed and vamped across the screen as Angelique Bouchard and was the best thing about Tim Burton's otherwise ho-hum DARK SHADOWS (2012). Here, she goes even further but never turns Artemisia into a cartoon. Whether she's kissing a severed head or seductively cooing to Themistokles about "the ecstasy of flesh and steel" like a Greco-Persian-era femme fatale before a vigorous round of mutual hate-fucking, Green absolutely owns this film from the moment she first appears (Green fans should also check out her work in the unsettling cloning/incest drama WOMB). When Artemisia defies Xerxes' orders to stand down by snapping "Just sit on your golden throne in the safety that I provide," even the ruthless god-king is left speechless and intimidated. If they choose to make another 300 offshoot, they shouldn't even bother unless it's focused squarely on Green's Artemisia.
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE isn't a lesson in historical accuracy, but it succeeds as thoroughly enjoyable trash. I wasn't as enamored of Snyder's film as many were, mainly because it seemed to take itself a little too seriously (for what it's worth, I stand by WATCHMEN and consider SUCKER PUNCH to be Snyder's masterpiece). RISE, on the other hand, feels looser and is a lot more fun. It's a big-budget B-movie that embraces its exploitative elements, knows exactly what it is, and makes no apologies for it.
Directed by Michael J. Paradise (Giulio Paradisi). Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy. Cast: Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Nail, Franco Nero, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters, Paige Conner, Wallace Wilkinson, Elizabeth Turner. (Unrated, 109 mins)
(Note: for a more in-depth review of the film, click here; this is a follow-up piece specifically covering the 2013 re-release by Drafthouse Films and the just-released Blu-ray)
A couple of years back, Drafthouse Films, the distribution offshoot of cinehipster mecca The Alamo Drafthouse, managed to create a legitimate cult movie sensation out of the delirious 1988 martial arts actioner MIAMI CONNECTION (and lest you think they're only showcasing "bad" movies, they also did a fine job of resurrecting the legendary, semi-lost 1971 Outback nightmare WAKE IN FRIGHT). Late last year, they tried to go for another MIAMI CONNECTION with the original 109-minute uncut version of the insane 1979 Italian horror film THE VISITOR. While the re-release wasn't greeted with the same level of enthusiasm as MIAMI CONNECTION, it did bring some increased notoriety to an utterly batshit, singularly unique film that's been patiently awaiting its day in the sun. Released on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit in America in a truncated 90-minute version in 1980, THE VISITOR was quickly consigned to late-night TV and video stores to be discovered by cult movie aficionados, Eurotrash addicts, and insomniacs who, for the most part, kept it to themselves for the next 30 or so years. With its perfect storm of past-their-prime actors, an incoherent script, and Italian filmmakers ripping off blockbuster American hits like THE OMEN and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, it's the kind of B-movie that only could've happened in the late 1970s. Perhaps one reason that the re-release of THE VISITOR didn't catch on like MIAMI CONNECTION did was that, while completely bonkers, it's not as MST3K hilarious as MIAMI CONNECTION, and also because it wasn't quite as obscure. Code Red released a fine DVD special edition of the uncut version (1.85:1 anamorphic) in 2010, with a great transfer and a wealth of extras, including two commentary tracks--one with star Paige Conner, moderated by filmmakers and VISITOR superfans Scott Spiegel (co-writer of EVIL DEAD II) and Jeff Burr (director of LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III), and another with star Joanne Nail, moderated by cult movie expert Marc Edward Heuck.
None of those Code Red-produced extras (which included interviews with Conner, Nail, producer Ovidio Assonitis, and Atlanta location manager and future John Carpenter associate Stratton Leopold) are carried over to the new Drafthouse Blu-ray, so if you bought that DVD in 2010, you better hang on to it. The Conner and Nail commentaries are essential listening for VISITOR nerds, even if Conner has to repeatedly tell Spiegel and Burr that the movie was shot over the summer and she didn't need permission to be out of school, that Spiegel is incredulous over "no writers being credited," despite a "Written by Lou Comici and Robert Mundy" credit at the beginning of the film, and, in a real whopper, Spiegel declaring "Mel Ferrer and Jose Ferrer are brothers." Burr: "Are they?" Spiegel: "They're at least first cousins." No. Wrong and wrong. No relation. Drafthouse's Blu-ray (again framed at 1.85:1) may not have the extensive bonus features that Code Red offered but it does make itself unique with a great Lance Henriksen interview. A relative unknown at the time with small roles in DOG DAY AFTERNOON, NETWORK, and DAMIEN: OMEN II under his belt, Henriksen recalls the film as a "hodgepodge...with space babies, birds, and Jesus Christ," and often asked himself "What were they thinking? Where was the narrative in this thing? I had no idea what I was doing." He says that shooting was sometimes problematic because director Giulio Paradisi refused to speak English and the dialogue sometimes felt like it hadn't been translated accurately. He doesn't think very highly of the film itself but has fond memories of working with the veteran actors and thought it unusual that Assonitis actually showed up at his agent's office and told him "You're going to sign this contract and you're going to Rome, and you're going have a good time." Henriksen also recalls dragging a group of his friends to Times Square to see the movie in a 42nd Street grindhouse, where someone in the balcony yelled "I want my money back!" (Henriksen: "There were 30 people in the audience, and 15 of them were my friends").
In addition to a short segment with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri, where he discusses some locations and visual effects, co-writer Comici is also interviewed and has some even more wild stories. Initially hired because he spoke both English and Italian, Comici's main responsibility was taking Paradisi's ideas and forming them into a story ("Giulio didn't have a story, he just had scenes"). Paradisi, a former assistant to Federico Fellini who primarily worked in TV commercials and nature documentaries, had some insane ideas (Comici: "He wanted elephants in one scene because he thought people liked elephants..." and "He was always trying to work in scenes of people on the toilet") and was even fired at one point during pre-production before (and Comici stresses that he heard this second-hand) "one of Giulio's relatives put a gun to the producer's head and told him to hire Giulio back." Comici's involvement in the film ended when he showed up at Assonitis' office with a complete script and handed it to Paradisi who, without even looking at a single page, dismissed it and threw it out of the fourth-story window.
If Comici's memories seem slightly embellished, then wait until you read the Blu-ray's accompanying booklet, written by Zack Carlson, featuring an interview with Assonitis. Assonitis has been prone to hard-to-swallow statements in the past, like saying he never saw THE EXORCIST before making the blatant EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR, and while it's not impossible to believe that other writers--including Oscar-nominated SERPICO and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER screenwriter Norman Wexler--made some uncredited script contributions, you can't help but question the producer's claim that, upon visiting an ill John Huston a week before his death in 1987, he noticed a VHS copy of THE VISITOR on a table near the cinema icon's sickbed. Carlson's essay is nicely-done and he obviously displays a great affinity for the film, which he describes as a "distinctly European skull-wrecker," and "disorienting, uncomfortable, misanthropic, and a genuine masterpiece." Code Red's DVD looked superb and they deserve a significant amount of credit for making this available before the hipsters had the chance to embrace it. But Drafthouse's Blu-ray, an HD upgrade from the same materials provided by Assonitis, takes it a slight step further, and I'm in favor of anything that makes this one-of-a-kind, looney-tunes mindfuck as accessible as possible, and I have no doubt that anyone who's cherished THE VISITOR for as long as I have finds the idea of this being on Blu-ray almost as nuts as the film itself.
Not as good as EUROPA REPORT but still far better than STRANDED, THE LAST DAYS ON MARS is, like those films, another throwback ,'80s-inspired outer space horror outing that only managed the get the slightest of theatrical releases. This one tries to be a thinking person's sci-fi film along the lines of EUROPA REPORT, MOON, and SUNSHINE, but it works best when it's content to be a straight-up B-horror movie. Indeed, MARS gets off to an extremely brisk start for these kinds of things, barely establishing most of the characters before they start getting offed one by one. Then, faced with a lot of time and too few people left to kill, things slow down to the point where it becomes a crushing bore. It almost feels like director Ruairi Robinson and screenwriter Clive Dawson have more highbrow things in mind but decided to get the commercial obligations out of the way first and finding nothing else on their plate to fill the second half of the movie. They should've slowed down and paced themselves for the long haul. And have fun with it--this should've been titled SPACE ZOMBIES or even MARS NEEDS ZOMBIES and just rolled with it.
On the last day of a six-month international mission to the red planet, crew member Marko (Goran Kostic) is investigating trace evidences of life when a crater opens up and sucks him under the Martian surface. Captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) leads some of the crew on a search, and they lose Dalby (Yusra Warsama) in the process. While Brunel and a few others are still out, a zombified Marko and Dalby turn up at the ship and try to kill the others. As the infection spreads and the dead crew members revive to attack, second-in-command Campbell (Liev Schreiber) is forced to find his inner Ripley and take control. LAST DAYS works best in the early going, and it starts so well that it just barrels through its limited number of actors and grinds to a halt right when it should be gaining momentum. It's a backwards approach that might've worked if the filmmakers had anything significant to say, but this isn't exactly hard sci-fi we're dealing with here. It's zombies in space but somehow finds a way to screw it up. With location shooting in the vast deserts of Jordan, LAST DAYS looks terrific, the interiors on the ship have an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere, and the cast (Schreiber and Koteas are good, and there's also Olivia Williams, Romola Garai, and Johnny Harris) is unusually credible for such standard genre fare. It's suspenseful and engrossing for about 50 minutes before its slow, shambling stagger to an unsatisfying conclusion. Universal put up some of the budget, but must not have seen much potential, opting to hand the US distribution rights over to Magnet, who dumped it on 13 screens for a $24,000 gross. (R, 98 mins)
COLD COMES THE NIGHT (US - 2014)
The late, great Anthony Perkins' son Osgood Perkins co-wrote this drab, tired would-be film noir that offers no suspense and no surprises other than a shockingly bad performance by the usually infallible Bryan Cranston. Using the dual crutches of fading eyesight and a garbled Russian accent, Cranston is Topo, a money mule on a delivery with his dumbass nephew/driver Quincy (Robin Lord Taylor). They stop for a few hours' sleep at a shitty motel run by widowed Chloe (Alice Eve), who lives on the property with her daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker of LOUIE). The motel primarily functions as a brothel for the local hookers and a safe haven for drug dealers, overseen by corrupt cop Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), an ex of Chloe's who gives her a cut of his proceeds (Chloe, of course, has a heart of gold and the illegal activities are just a way to make ends meet). When Quincy attacks a hooker and both are killed in the melee, his Jeep--with the money Topo was supposed to deliver--is impounded by the cops, led by (who else?) Billy, who searches the vehicle and makes off with the loot he finds inside. Desperately needing his money and helpless with his poor eyesight, Topo kidnaps Chloe and forces her to help him recover what belongs to his employers.
COLD COMES THE NIGHT just never works, whether it's the inconsistency of Topo's eyesight (he can't drive, he can't count money and can't see to write anything on a piece of paper in front of his face, but he's a point-blank crack shot and can get the edge on several people who can actually see), the cartoonish ludicrousness of Cranston's accent, which is less like a BREAKING BAD badass and more like Evil Yakov Smirnoff (at one point, he pulls a gun and orders someone to "Shut fuck up"), or the complete lack of urgency in the slumbering direction of co-writer Tze Chun, who never gives this any sense of pacing, energy, or logic. Watch the scene where Billy pulls Chloe and Topo over for a traffic stop, swearing at them over his PA speaker in the middle of town, in no way behaving like a dirty cop who knows how to keep a secret. There's ultimately no reason for Topo to be blind or Russian other than to indulge Cranston with a character who comes off more like an SNL parody than a credible, threatening villain. There's so little here that the film actually ends at around the 78-minute mark, but there's an absurdly slow-moving, 12-minute (!) closing credits crawl to pad this thing out to 90 minutes. Cranston is uncharacteristically off his game here, but Marshall-Green (PROMETHEUS) is worse, and KIDS star Leo Fitzpatrick is wasted in a nothing role as a second driver who taxis Topo around. A bland misfire, the thoroughly forgettable COLD COMES THE NIGHT opened on just 16 screens in January 2014, pulling in a paltry $17,000. (R, 90 mins)
The sex scenes in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR caused quite a sensation and make no mistake, the NC-17 rating is earned. But there's nothing trashy or exploitative about them and they aren't what the film is about. They match the intensity of the performances of the two stars, who shared the Best Actress award at Cannes. Seydoux has been seen in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and had a small but memorable role as an assassin in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, but Exarchopoulos is new to me. It's an astonishing performance and an egregious oversight that she wasn't nominated for an Oscar. Often, Kechiche will just leave the camera lingering on Exarchopoulos' expressive face, and with the film taking place over several years, even her physical transformation from confused and sometimes awkward 17-year-old to a grade-school teacher in her mid 20s feels extensive even though she doesn't pull some De Niro/Christian Bale tricks. The film doesn't feel three hours long, and Kechiche makes every moment and every shot count. Funny, emotional, exhilarating, exhausting and devastating in equal measure (their late-film meet in a coffee shop is just heartbreaking), BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is like an absorbing novel played out on the screen, rich with characterization and detail, and an extraordinary work that will stay with you long after it's over. (NC-17, 180 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
MR. NOBODY (France/Germany/Canada/Belgium - 2010/US release 2013)
When Jared Leto started getting accolades for his performance in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, he kept saying it was the first movie he made in six years, even though MR. NOBODY was in limited release just a few weeks prior. He wasn't lying or pretending it didn't exist: MR. NOBODY was filmed in 2007, premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in 2009 and was released in Europe in 2010 where it's developed a significant cult following. It finally received a very belated US release in the fall of 2013. Leto took a sabbatical from acting after MR. NOBODY, focusing on his band Thirty Seconds to Mars and, under the pseudonym "Bartholomew Cubbins," directing the music industry documentary ARTIFACT, which played the 2012 Toronto Film Festival but still hasn't been picked up for distribution. Leto probably needed a break after the workout he got in MR. NOBODY, an often astonishingly ambitious mind-bender from Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael (best known for 1991's TOTO THE HERO). Exploring the idea of alternate universes, the Butterfly Effect, and theories of parallel and diverging timelines, MR. NOBODY opens in 2092 and tells the story of 118-year-old Nemo Nobody (Leto), the world's oldest man and also the last mortal on Earth. Some years earlier, humanity was able to achieve "quasi-immortality" via cell regeneration courtesy of pigs. Now, no one ages, no one is born, and no one dies, but it's a rigid, sexless, clean, overly-safe utopia--regarding the Earth of his youth, the aged Mr. Nobody says "There were cars that polluted. We smoked cigarettes. We ate meat. We did everything we can't do in this dump and it was wonderful! Most of the time nothing happened... like a French movie." The world is now how it shall always be, with Mr. Nobody the final relic of a mortal, flawed era. Reflecting on his life to a journalist (Daniel Mays), Mr. Nobody's memories seem inconsistent and incoherent. He tells of multiple lives, wives, children he did or didn't have, jobs he worked, how he had two distinctly different childhoods when his parents (Rhys Ifans, Natasha Little) split up. As nine-year-old Nemo's mother boards a train, Nemo tries to jump on the train--in one memory, he makes it and in the other, he doesn't. But he's lived both existences. The argument is that if one happenstance doesn't occur in one reality, it happens in another simultaneous one. He has multiple lives with three different wives--Anna (Diane Kruger), Elise (Sarah Polley), and Jean (Linh-Dan Pham)--and the circumstances (and the wife) might change several times in a scene.
It's an impressive feat that Van Dormael and his editors manage to keep the potentially unwieldy plot and its endless possible directions on task and coherent. The only recent film that occurs to me that juggles this many complex narratives without dropping the balls is 2012's CLOUD ATLAS. MR. NOBODY has a lot of obvious influences but still manages to be its own film, even if it sometimes feels like Benjamin Button has become unstuck in time and dropped into a precious reimagining of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE directed by Wes Anderson. There's a lot to absorb, though Van Dormael sometimes belabors the point--in one life, Elise is suffering from crippling depression, and around the sixth or seventh Polley crying breakdown, you almost want to tell Van Dormael "OK, we get it"--and he lets the film go on forever (the DVD and the Blu-ray contain his 156-minute unrated director's cut, which runs 18 minutes longer than the barely-released R-rated US theatrical cut). But with its incredible fusion of romance, tragedy, and sci-fi epic, incorporating stylistic and thematic elements of other films as diverse as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976), DEATH WATCH (1980), SOLARIS (1972), and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and even taking a version of Mr. Nobody into Neanderthal times as well as a future incarnation living on Mars, MR. NOBODY is quite possibly the most batshit insane, yet oddly touching and sentimental, big-budget epic sci-fi art film that you haven't seen. Also with Juno Temple (unknown when the film was made), Allen Corduner, and an impressive Toby Regbo as the teenage Nemo. (Unrated, 156 mins)
