THE MUMMY (US - 2017) Directed by Alex Kurtzman. Written by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman. Cast: Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari, Neil Maskell, Simon Atherton, Javier Botet. (PG-13, 107 mins) A simultaneous reboot of the Brendan Fraser franchise and at least the fourth attempt to kick off a new and updated 1940s-style monster cycle, it's obvious with the 2017 incarnation of THE MUMMY that Universal needs to get its shit together or give it up. 2004's VAN HELSING, 2010's THE WOLFMAN, and 2014's DRACULA UNTOLD all tried to reignite the legendary Universal monsters and failed, and now, in response to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, they're trying it again with the so-called "Dark Universe," an attempt to meld the classic Universal monsters with the comic book/superhero genre. There's already other films in various presumptuous stages of development, including an INVISIBLE MAN with Johnny Depp, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE with Russell Crowe, and yet another WOLFMAN with Dwayne Johnson, plus a BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, with a yet-to-commit Angelina Jolie's name being constantly mentioned. Universal's philosophy with the Dark Universe seems to be "If at first you don't succeed, throw another $200 million at it and cross your fingers."
THE MUMMY has a major A-lister at its foundation in Tom Cruise, and the 54-year-old actor is a good two decades too old to be playing Nick Morton, a smartass, devil-may-care Army recon officer and part-time fortune hunter who finds plenty of spare time to seek priceless treasure in dangerous areas of Iraq. With his wisecracking sidekick Chris (Jake Johnson), they're caught in a skirmish with Iraqi rebels, calling in an air strike that inadvertently opens a long-buried tomb housing the mummified Egyptian Princess Ahmamet (Sofia Boutella), deemed such a danger that she was entombed 1000 miles away in then-Mesopotamia. Centuries earlier, Ahmamet, after offering her soul to Set, the Egyptian god of death, slaughtered her entire immediate royal family to hasten her ascent to the throne. Forming an unholy alliance with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), with whom he recently had a one-nighter in Baghdad after which he snuck out of her hotel room and stole the map that led him to Ahmamet's burial ground, Nick boards a military plane to London, where subway construction crews have accidentally unearthed a tomb containing Egyptian artifacts that date back to Ahmamet's time. The plane is struck by a swarm of birds and Jenny ends up with the only parachute, while everyone else onboard perishes in the resulting crash.
That is, except Nick, who wakes up in a body bag in a London morgue with a tag on his toe, supernaturally kept alive after being cursed by the spirit of Ahmamet. The mummy has been taken to the London headquarters of Prodigium, a secret government organization devoted to collecting and containing the world's monsters, and led by Dr. Henry Jekyll (Crowe), who must take frequent injections of an antidote when he feels his evil alter ego Mr. Edward Hyde taking control. Ahmamet has come back to life, draining the life of those around her LIFEFORCE-style, but is now kept in chains in an underground Prodigium bunker, intent on breaking free and collecting the artifacts necessary for her to reassemble the "Dagger of Set," the weapon required to make her an all-powerful god. She eventually possesses a Prodigium tech and escapes, materializing outside as a giant sandstorm that destroys London (cue obligatory "Tom Cruise running" shot as he's being chased by sand and dust). Ahmamet reanimates the long-entombed skeletons of crusader warriors unearthed in the London excavation, as a still-possessed Nick, plagued by visions put in his head by Ahmamet, is determined to stop the mummy's reign of terror and somehow save his own spirit.
THE MUMMY is a chaotic mess that somehow took at least six writers to put together, and it doesn't seem like any of them looked over anyone else's work. Three are credited with the screenplay, including veteran journeyman David Koepp (JURASSIC PARK), USUAL SUSPECTS writer and Cruise BFF Christopher McQuarrie (who's no doubt responsible for the ludicrous climactic plot twist), and Dylan Kussman, an actor best known as Cameron, the student who turns against Robin Williams' John Keating in 1989's DEAD POETS SOCIETY. Others had a crack at it, including Jon Spaights (PROMETHEUS, PASSENGERS), Jenny Lumet (at what point did a Universal exec say "Maybe we should see what the writer of RACHEL GETTING MARRIED can do with this?"), and Alex Kurtzman (TRANSFORMERS, STAR TREK, STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS), who ended up directing. The end result is disjointed and unfocused, like a product that was cynically assembled by market research, trend analysis, and focus groups. Why is Universal so hellbent on shoehorning these characters into a superhero scenario in a "Dark Universe?" Crowe could probably make a plausibly frightening Jekyll & Hyde in a straight, serious adaptation, but here, growling and hulking out with significant CGI enhancement, he just looks silly in what amounts to the Dark Universe's Nick Fury surrogate (and why is Dr. Jekyll even here anyway? Other than 1953's ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, Jekyll & Hyde wasn't part of the classic Universal Monsters roster). The film also pays winking homage to the Universal-released AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, when Chris is killed off by a poisonous spider bite and his rotting corpse keeps returning to bust Nick's balls, much like Griffin Dunne's mauled Jack did to David Naughton's lycanthropic David in the 1981 classic. As the mummy, Boutella probably fares best, though the CGI does a lot of the acting for her. And despite the claims of some historically-challenged entertainment journalists who must be unaware of 1944's THE MUMMY'S CURSE, 1971's BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB, and 1980's THE AWAKENING, Ahmamet is not the first female mummy in a movie.
Cruise looks out of his comfort zone in a horror film that can't settle on a tone (it works best as a straight adventure in its early scenes, before quickly imploding), and this just seems like a superfluous project for him to be tackling at this point in his career. Cruise has the Barry Seal biopic AMERICAN MADE due out later this year, but other than his commitment to doing his own stunts in the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and JACK REACHER franchises and in a zero-gravity scene here, can you name the last time he really challenged himself as an actor playing a three-dimensional character? The serious actor side of Cruise has become harder to locate than the whereabouts of David Miscavige's wife. Where did BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY's Ron Kovic go? What happened to MAGNOLIA's Frank T.J. Mackey? Where's that Tom Cruise? He'll be 55 this year and his next two projects after AMERICAN MADE are MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 6 and the sequel TOP GUN: MAVERICK. Dude, what are you doing? At his point, is a future sequel to RISKY BUSINESS out of the question? Are we gonna get a 60-year-old Tom Cruise reliving his glory days and dancing around in his underwear to Bob Seger? In total coast mode with declining box office results but still big enough to avoid going the Nic Cage VOD route (for now), Cruise's career is in serious danger of becoming the Hollywood version of a classic rock band hitting the summer concert circuit and still selling a sufficient amount of tickets at big venues but playing nothing but the old hits for maximum nostalgia. He's the Def Leppard of A-list movie stars. The MISSION: IMPOSSIBLEs and the first JACK REACHER and EDGE OF TOMORROW were fine, but the last time he really stretched as an actor was when he put on a bald cap and a bunch of makeup and busted a move to Flo Rida in TROPIC THUNDER. It's almost like he left the committed, serious Cruise behind on that couch during his much-analyzed OPRAH freakout.
IT COMES AT NIGHT (US - 2017) Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults. Cast: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr., David Pendleton, Griffin Robert Faulkner. (R, 91 mins) It's not surprising that A24 picked up the distribution rights for IT COMES AT NIGHT, an intense and extremely claustrophobic psychological horror film that falls in line with two other divisive genre titles they're released: THE WITCH and THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER--well-crafted, minimalist exercises in escalating tension and paranoia that attract significant critical acclaim while alienating mainstream moviegoers. It's the second feature film by 28-year-old Trey Edward Shults, a Terrence Malick protege whose 2015 indie family dysfunction drama KRISHA got some significant critical acclaim. He then worked as a production assistant on Jeff Nichols' 2016 film MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, where he met co-star Joel Edgerton, who produces and stars in IT COMES AT NIGHT, a film that will likely frustrate those looking for standard, straighforward horror with clear-cut explanations for the things that occur. Shults is more interested in symbolism, atmosphere, and creating a sense of disorientation (certain scenes have a different aspect ratio, and that's by design) and mounting unease that explodes into paranoia that ultimately leads to tragedy. It's grim and uncompromising, and as far as multiplex counter-programming goes, make no mistake--this is the Feel Bad Hit of the Summer.
Shults opens the film with the camera planted on an elderly, dying man covered in sores in what are obviously the last minutes of his life. Muffled voices try to comfort him as the camera pulls back to show the room covered in plastic sheeting and his family members wearing gloves and oxygen masks. The dying man, Bud (David Pendleton) is taken outside in a wheelbarrow as another man tells him he's sorry and that they love him before shooting him in the head, pouring gasoline over his corpse, and setting him ablaze. Bud was killed by his son-in-law Paul (Edgerton), who's moved his family--wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and 17-year-old son Travis (Kevin Harrison Jr.)--into an isolated, boarded-up cabin in the woods following some kind of plague that has wiped out an undetermined number of people. As they grieve over the loss of Grandpa Bud, who became infected only a day earlier, they cope with the day-to-day monotony of life in this post-apocalyptic dystopia. Food is rationed, they have their own water filtration system, and they never stray far from the house, and never, under any circumstances, do they go out at night. One night in the wee hours, Paul hears someone trying to break into the house through its only entrance, a red door at the end of a hallway that remains locked at all times. The intruder is Will (Christopher Abbott), and Paul ties him to a tree for a couple of days to ensure that he isn't infected. Will pleads with Paul for help, insisting he can be trusted, that he has his own family to protect and he was only looking for water, and broke into the house because he saw it boarded up and assumed it was abandoned. A hesitant Paul determines that Will can be trusted to an extent, and the two drive off to get Will's wife Kim (Riley Keough), their young son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner), and their water and food supply, which includes six chickens and a goat played by Black Phillip from THE WITCH.
The two clans quickly bond and an extended family is on the verge of forming, with Paul and Sarah agreeing with the notion of strength in numbers, especially since, if Will found them (likely after he saw the smoke from the cremation of Bud), others might find them as well, and they might not be as friendly. It isn't long before unease and mistrust sets in, from barely-perceived slights to statements that conflict with previously provided information. Paul is visibly distressed when Will mentions that he's an only child, but in his early story of how he ended up breaking into the house, he specifically stated that he had a brother (when Paul questions him about it, Will says "Well, brother-in-law...he's Kim's brother...he's like my brother"). The seeds of mistrust and simmering resentment are planted (did Will deliberately mislead Paul or was it just a wrong choice of words after being tied to a tree for two days without food or water?), and it's all downhill from there, coming to a head when Travis hears some noises in the night and finds young Andrew asleep on the floor in what was Bud's room after an apparent bout of sleepwalking. Travis notices that the red door is unlocked and ajar and his lost dog Stanley is infected and dying right outside. Who opened the door? Was it a sleepwalking Andrew? Was someone trying to break in? Is someone hiding in the house? Will and Kim deny that Andrew's a sleepwalker and they insist he's too short to reach the lock and the handle, instead suggesting that maybe Travis was half-asleep and imagined the door being unlocked. With little Andrew unable to remember if he touched Stanley and Travis possibly being infected after holding Andrew's hand and walking him back to bed, the families distance themselves on opposite sides of the cabin, and it's quite clear at this point that none of this is going to end well.
The terrors of IT COMES AT NIGHT exist almost entirely in the mind, as the constant state of vigilance gives way to paranoia, distrust, and hostility, bringing out the worst in everyone. Shults, who wrote the story as part of the grieving process just after his father died, tells the story mostly through the eyes of impressionable and sensitive Travis, who's loved by his parents but nonetheless feels isolated and lonely, especially when he overhears both of the couples having sex at various points. He's also fantasizing and having dreams about Kim, and even those are invaded by nightmarish visions of death and disease, offering no escape from his depressing existence. Paul notices his curious son eyeing Kim and tells him to stay focused, stern but sympathetic in his understanding that despite everything that's happened, Travis is still a 17-year-old kid with raging hormones who's had everything--his beloved grandfather, his dog, and his adolescence--taken from him by a world that's become a plague-ravaged hellhole. It's a terrific and subtly understated performance by Harrison (THE BIRTH OF A NATION and the Fox series SHOTS FIRED), who does a lot of acting with his eyes and his body language. It's refreshing how Shults exhibits some serious discipline in his handling of the story and the direction in which it heads. He demonstrates his knowledge of the masters, at times channeling Stanley Kubrick in the use of natural or very limited lighting from flashlights or lanterns, and the way the Steadicam prowls the dark and ominous hallways, making the sizable cabin feel like a smaller Overlook Hotel, or in the very John Carpenter way he has his characters barricaded inside to keep an existential evil outside. Everything that happens within the context of IT COMES AT NIGHT's world is thoroughly plausible and believably handled by the actors, who never resort to chewing the scenery and overselling the situation. Even the little kid, who only has a few lines, is really good. IT COMES AT NIGHT is a film that probably shouldn't have been given a wide release in the summer. It's a cerebral, methodical downer that people looking for another Blumhouse jump-scare rollercoaster ride will leave disgruntled and grumbling (cue audible mutterings of "That was stupid" and "Fuckin' bullshit" as the credits rolled and the audience shuffled out of a Saturday matinee showing). But, like THE WITCH and THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, IT COMES AT NIGHT is an intelligent, challenging genre offering that gets under your skin and will stay with you long after it's over.
SHIMMER LAKE (US - 2017) Written and directed by Oren Uziel. Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, John Michael Higgins, Ron Livingston, Rob Corddry, Wyatt Russell, Adam Pally, Mark Rendall, Matt Landry, Isabel Dove, Angela Vint, Neil Whitely, Julie Khaner. (Unrated, 86 mins) With screenwriting credits on 22 JUMP STREET and the awful horror spoof FREAKS OF NATURE, one wouldn't think Oren Uziel would make his directing debut by branching out with a Coen Bros. knockoff, but the Netflix Original SHIMMER LAKE isn't bad despite hinging on a gimmicky set-up. Set in the days following a botched bank robbery in a small rural town, SHIMMER LAKE plays in reverse, starting on Friday when everything has fallen apart and ending on Tuesday, the day of the robbery. It's like an arc of the FX series FARGO if showrunner Noah Hawley gave it the MEMENTO treatment (this reverse set-up was also done quite well earlier this year in the little-seen western BRIMSTONE). By the end, it's little more than smoke and mirrors to cover up a story that wouldn't be all that interesting or even remotely clever if told in a straight chronological fashion. Indeed, it often requires clumsy exposition to get the viewer up to speed, as in an early scene taking place on Friday where the sheriff is talking to FBI agents and drops this cumbersome chestnut: "We'll see if it matters when we find Andy's--my brother's--dead body!" If they're looking for Andy and have obviously already been working together, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the FBI guys already know that Andy is his brother? Nobody would say that sentence like that unless they were characters in a story being told in reverse.
SHIMMER LAKE opens on Friday, and the first time we meet Andy Sikes (Rainn Wilson), he's hiding in his basement with a duffel bag full of money, pleading with his young daughter Sally (Isabel Dove) not to tell anyone he's there. Up in the kitchen, Andy's clueless wife Martha (Angela Vint) is talking to Sheriff Zeke Sikes (Benjamin Walker of ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER), who's torn between upholding the law and looking out for his brother. As the story plays out, starting on Friday and working back to Tuesday, all of the details are gradually doled out until everything comes together at the beginning. Zeke and devoted, puppy-dog-like deputy Reed (Adam Pally) are forced to work with snide, condescending FBI agents Walker (Ron Livington) and Biltmore (Rob Corddry) to investigate a bank robbery that took place on Tuesday and resulted in Zeke taking a bullet in the shoulder. Andy is a disgraced former county prosecutor who lost his job in a corruption scandal after taking a payoff in a case involving Ed Burton (Wyatt Russell, Kurt's lookalike son with Goldie Hawn), the former star QB and local superstar who became a drug-dealing shitbag after high school. Ed was charged with murder and drug possession in a meth lab explosion at nearby Shimmer Lake that killed his five-year-old son Ed Jr., but Andy happily accepted a bribe to knock it down to manslaughter. Ed was ultimately released from prison after serving just eight months. With both men desperate for cash, Ed and Andy decide to rob the town bank, owned by local businessman Brad Dawkins (John Michael Higgins), who also happens to be the judge in Ed's trial and agreed to go with the absurd reduction in charges only because he's planning a Senate campaign and Ed and his stupid, drug-added buddy Chris (Mark Rendall) have blackmailed the married, family man judge with a videotape showing him in a compromising position with his secret side piece--a young boytoy known around town as "Meth Billy" (Matt Landry).
As Uziel moves the story back one day at a time, pieces will fall into place and some running gags will be established (on Friday, Reed is introduced freaking out over the perceived insult of being forced to sit in the backseat of Zeke's cruiser because he's giving the mailman a ride to work, and the events of Thursday reveal why he's so pissed off about it), and many sides to Ed's long-suffering, still-grieving wife Steph (Stephanie Sigman of MISS BALA and Netflix's NARCOS) will be revealed, along with several twists that make you see previous (future?) events in a different light. Despite the presence of many people known for their comedic skills, SHIMMER LAKE rarely goes for big laughs and instead exhibits the kind of morbid, pitch-black humor seen in the the great Coen Bros. classics like BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO. In the end, it's pretty minor and slight, but the performances are good, with Wilson doing a good job conveying that distinct sense of Jerry Lundegaard nervous panic, and it has some surprises up its sleeve, even when you concede that the film wouldn't be much were it not for its backtracking Leonard Shelby structure.
Jean-Claude Van Damme's DTV action films have historically been a cut above most of their ilk, but he stumbles badly with the arguably career-worst KILL 'EM ALL, a dull and uninspired Biloxi, MS-shot waste of time that sees fit to shamelessly rip off THE USUAL SUSPECTS two decades after the fact. KILL 'EM ALL jumps back and forth in time over the course of one day, opening with the aftermath of a massacre at a soon-to-be-closed hospital that's abandoned except for the emergency room. Nurse Suzanne (Autumn Reeser) is being questioned by FBI agents Holman (a ludicrously miscast Peter Stormare, looking like an aging rock band's tour manager) and Sanders (Maria Conchita Alonso) about Philip (JCVD), the mysterious stranger who took on a crew of hired killers and kept her safe during the hospital siege before vanishing. The agents, especially Holman, are skeptical about Suzanne's story and seem convinced that she's withholding details. In a brief detour that borrows a lot from EASTERN PROMISES, it turns out Philip infiltrated the Serbian "Black Hand," a crime outfit that rose from the ashes of the former Yugoslavia, and led by war criminal Dmitri Petrovic (Eddie Matthews), the man who assassinated Philip's activist father in front of young Philip 35 years ago (among other implausibilities, we're asked to believe that craggy-faced, 56-year-old JCVD is playing someone who was a little kid in the 1980s). A shootout starts at a nearby hotel and ends up at the hospital, where each of Petrovic's goons, including Radovan (Daniel Bernhardt, looking like a DTV Jon Hamm), Dusan (the mandatory bone thrown to JCVD's son Kristopher Van Varenberg, who's finally cut the shit and just decided to go by "Kris Van Damme"), and Almira (Mila Kali) not only get introductory captions but also momentum-and-time-killling flashbacks showing how lethal they are. Battling a knife wound and a concussion, Philip takes on each of them in the abandoned hospital as he fights to keep himself and Suzanne alive.
JCVD has maybe the fewest lines he's ever had in a movie, and while he has several fight scenes here, he looks tired and seems like he's going through the motions. First-time director Peter Malota, a veteran stuntman and fight coordinator who's regularly worked with JCVD going back to 1991's DOUBLE IMPACT, relies on dizzying quick edits that render every brawl a tiresome blur. A lot of is certainly used to cover the understandable fact that the aging JCVD isn't as agile as he once was, but he's at least showing up for work, unlike his contemporary Steven Seagal. But KILL 'EM ALL is cheap-looking and slapdash enough that it's too close for comfort with Seagal-level quality, and it's probably not a coincidence that co-writer Jesse Cilio wrote the recent Seagal dud THE PERFECT WEAPON. By the time the final twists start coming, each one more ridiculous than the last, KILL 'EM ALL just gives up and doesn't even attempt to be subtle about how much it's ripping off THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Even a dipshit like Fenster could've made a better movie than this. (R, 95 mins)
ENTER THE WARRIORS GATE (France/China - 2016; US release 2017)
If the gamer/wuxia fantasy ENTER THE WARRIORS GATE seems like it should've been made ten years ago, that's because it pretty much was--when it starred Jackie Chan and Jet Li and was called THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. Produced and co-written by Luc Besson, the $48 million ENTER THE WARRIORS GATE was given a huge 3-D release in China in November 2016, but was banished to VOD when it debuted in the US in May 2017, a couple of months after Zhang Yimou's expensive THE GREAT WALL underperformed in US theaters. It's not without its moments of KARATE KID-like retro charm, but at the same time, it feels awfully late to be jumping on the CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON bandwagon, making you wonder just how long Besson and regular writing partner Robert Mark Kamen (TAKEN, THE TRANSPORTER) had this one stashed away before Besson got around to assigning it to someone (in this case, COCKNEYS VS. ZOMBIES director Matthias Hoene). Jack Bronson (Uriah Shelton, most recently seen on Netflix's 13 REASONS WHY) is a bullied gamer who lives with his busy-single-mom-too-distracted-to-notice-all-the-shenanigans-going-on-in-her-house Annie (Sienna Guillory). He blows off his homework for video games and works part-time at antique shop, where his Chinese boss Mr. Chang (Francis Ng) gives him an ancient crock that turns out to be a portal to another time. He's visited through the crock by Zhao (Mark Chao), the chief guard to Princess Sulin (Ni Ni), who he leaves in the care of Jack, believing him to be the fabled "Black Knight," confusing him with his gaming avatar. Zhao has brought Sulin to the present day in order to escape Arun the Cruel (Dave Bautista), a despot who has murdered Sulin's emperor father and intends to claim her as his bride as he takes over the land. After Jack takes Sulin to the mall for some ice cream and some tired culture clash/fish-out-of-water comedy, some of Arun's men get through the time portal and end up trashing Jack's mom's house. This sends Jack and Sulin fleeing through the portal back to her time, where she's abducted by Arun, forcing Zhao and Jack, who's definitely not the Black Knight that Zhao was expecting, to set aside their differences and work together to rescue Sulin...if they don't kill each other first!
There's a nice '80s vibe to some of the early scenes, with Jack trying to avoid a bullying asshole named Travis (Dakota Daulby, really oozing that loathsome William Zabka prickitude) and a resulting reckless mountain bike chase through the streets (cue reaction shots with befuddled old people looking confused and scared). Jack even has the required overweight, obnoxious, comic relief best buddy in Hector (Luke Mac Davis as Jonah Hill as Josh Gad as Dan Fogler as Zack Pearlman), who tries to fistbump Sulin and rightly gets his ass kicked in the process. There's also some laughs to be had from a running gag involving Arun's incredibly stupid henchman Brutus (Zha Ka), but while it occasionally amuses, ENTER THE WARRIORS GATE never reaches beyond the level of merely OK. The action sequences are nothing special, and Shelton is as irritating here as Michael Angarano was in THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. There's too many easy, predictable jokes about Jack trying to get Zhao to loosen up, like when he provides human beatbox and club sound accompaniment to teach Zhao to dance (do they have time for this?), or sheltered, demanding Sulin learning contemporary slang ("You're the shit!" is her favorite). A Robert Zemeckis or a Richard Donner probably could've made this a lot of fun 30 years ago, but it isn't retro enough to be completely funny and it isn't imaginative enough to be anything other than a run-of-the-mill knockoff of all the Zhang Yimou epics of the early-to-mid 2000s, like HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, and CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. (PG-13, 105 mins)
THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS (Spain/France/West Germany/Italy - 1968) Directed by Antonio Isasi. Written by Antonio Isasi, Lluis Josep Comeron, Jorge Illa and Jo Eisinger. Cast: Gary Lockwood, Elke Sommer, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Palance, Roger Hanin, Jean Servais, Georges Genet, Gustavo Re, Daniel Martin, Gerard Tichy, Maurizio Arena, Armand Mestral, Fabrizio Capucci, Enrique Avala, Ruben Rojo, George Rigaud, Fernando Hilbeck, Luis Barboo, Lorenzo Robledo. (R, 129 mins) "America's free-living and free-wheeling pleasure capital and the men who came to strip it raw!" One of the great hyperbolic tag lines of its era, and it's only fitting for one of the most memorable movie titles of its day. Even if you've never seen it, that tag line tells you almost all you need to know about THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS. A late-night TV staple well into the 1980s, the film fell into obscurity for a couple of decade before Warner Archive resurrected it for a widescreen DVD release in 2010, THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS is one of many international Europe-set capers of the 1960s (along with SEVEN THIEVES, TOPKAPI, GAMBIT, KALEIDOSCOPE, GRAND SLAM, THE BIGGEST BUNDLE OF THEM ALL, and THE ITALIAN JOB to name a few) but unique in that the Spanish-French-West German-Italian co-production is required to fool the audience into thinking it's taking place in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Some great second unit Vegas location work helps, but all of the interiors and any scenes involving the actors were shot in Spain and other than the four English-speaking leads, the supporting cast is made up of a bewildering mix of actors from four different countries playing Americans but all speaking their own language and letting the dubbing team figure it out later. The effect is jarring at times, especially since the dubbing isn't all that great (if you watch enough Eurotrash movies, you'll recognize the familiar voices of dubbing fixtures like Ed Mannix and Nick Alexander), and the Euro-lounge score by Georges Garvarentz and the haunting, wordless, giallo-like vocals of the ubiquitous Edda dell'Orso almost immediately blow the movie's cover, eliminating any illusion that this is an American film, but Spanish director/co-writer Antonio Isasi (SUMMERTIME KILLER) busts his ass assembling it all together in the most seamless way possible.
Fresh off of his turn as doomed astronaut Frank Poole in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Gary Lockwood stars as Tony Ferris, a San Francisco hippie who shaves his sideburns and gets a haircut to become a Vegas blackjack dealer after turning down an offer to go in on an armored car heist with his older brother Gino (RIFIFI's Jean Servais), a mobster who's just escaped from prison. It was a smart move, since Gino and all of his cohorts end up being gunned down by the cops. At the casino, Tony has a table scam going with girlfriend Ann Bennett (Elke Sommer), who's also the mistress of her married boss Steve Skorsky (Lee J. Cobb), the owner of the security company whose armored car Gino tried to jack. It isn't long before Ann is an accomplice in Tony's labyrinthine plot to avenge Gino's death by staging an elaborate heist of a Skorsky truck ostensibly filled with casino cash that's en route from Vegas to L.A. Complicating matters is Douglas (Jack Palance), a pissed-off Treasury agent who's working undercover as an insurance investigator in a sting on Skorsky, who's been using his trucks to transport gold for the west coast branch of the Cosa Nostra. Douglas knows what Skorsky's up to, but hasn't been able to prove it, and when a surveillance team follows a decoy truck employed by Tony, Skorsky is convinced his own employees are ripping him off. The distraction allows Tony and his crew to stash the real truck--which they don't know is filled with Mafia gold--in an underground bunker they've dug in the desert, with Skorsky's employees and one of Douglas' undercover agents (Ruben Rojo), barricading themselves inside, refusing to open the door as Tony and his increasingly mutinous crew try to find a way in.
Isasi juggles multiple storylines where all parties eventually converge for a shootout in the scorching desert, with additional conflicts stemming from two of Tony's men--Merino (Daniel Martin) and Cooper (Fabrizio Capucci)--actively revolting and trying to cut him out of his own plan, and an increasingly irritable Skorsky getting it from all sides, with his scheming mistress, an incredulous Douglas and an unhappy mob boss (Roger Hanin) all breathing down his neck. Cobb and Palance have some amusing back-and-forth ballbusting throughout, and while he never became a big star, Lockwood is more than capable of holding his own as a lead here. The film has some interesting subtext with its juxtapositioning of Tony's hippie, free love lifestyle clashing with the more old-school Gino, almost like Isasi has one foot in the counterculture and another in the more refined elegance of the classic caper film. The casting of Servais is no accident, with his starring in Jules Dassin's highly-revered 1954 heist classic RIFIFI, but the "young generation" point may be a little too oversold, as Servais, 27 years older than Lockwood and looking it, seems more like his disapproving father than his protective older brother. Tony warns Gino that he's out of touch and out of his element, and that he and his aging gangster pals aren't equipped to deal with today's computers and the technological know-how required to rob a high-tech armored truck (high-tech by 1968 standards--it even has a Skype-like video feed to stay in constant contact with Skorsky's headquarters, but looks like Isasi rented a huge RV and put some steel siding on it), and sure enough, they're immediately killed for their efforts.
Despite its counterculture elements in the early scenes, THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS didn't exactly become the EASY RIDER of Euroheist movies, but it was a moderate success for Warner Bros. in US theaters in 1969 and was cycled through the regional drive-in circuit for a number of years. It made its TV debut in prime-time on NBC on Saturday, July 16, 1977, going against THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE on ABC and the Bob Barker-hosted Miss Universe pageant on CBS, with the R-rated, 129-minute film hacked down by at least 30 minutes to fit in a two-hour time slot with commercials, which likely made an occasionally confusing film completely incoherent. Since its very welcome DVD release seven years ago, uncut and with Juan Gelpi's outstanding cinematography in the desert sequences restored to its widescreen glory (Isasi shot these scenes in the same stretch of desert in Almeria, Spain where Tuco sends Blondie on his agonizing march in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY), THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS has been in semi-regular rotation on Turner Classic Movies and remains an instantly recognized cult item even by movie buffs who haven't seen it, and one of the best examples of the 1960s Euroheist caper thriller.
THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS opening in Toledo, OH on April 16, 1969
TV listing for THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS,
airing in prime time on NBC on Saturday, July 16, 1977
THE GREATEST BATTLE aka THE BIGGEST BATTLE aka THE GREAT BATTLE aka BATTLE FORCE (Italy - 1978) Directed by Umberto Lenzi. Written by Umberto Lenzi and Cesare Frugoni. Cast: Helmut Berger, Samantha Eggar, Giuliano Gemma, John Huston, Stacy Keach, Ray Lovelock, Henry Fonda, Edwige Fenech, Evelyn Stewart (Ida Galli), Aldo Massasso, Venantino Venantini, Guy Doleman, Patrick Reynolds, Rik Battaglia, Andrea Bosic, Giuseppe Castellano, Luciano Catenacci, Giovanni Cianfriglia, Geoffrey Copleston, Tom Felleghy, Manfred Freyberger, Marco Guglielmi, Fulvio Mingozzi, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Bill Vanders, Robert Spafford, Olga Pehar Lenzi. (PG, 102 mins) WWII movies were extremely popular all over the world from the mid-1960s through the 1970s, and journeyman Italian director Umberto Lenzi was no stranger to the genre. He'd already made "macaroni combat" movies like 1967's DESERT COMMANDOS and 1969's BATTLE OF THE COMMANDOS in response to the 1967 blockbuster THE DIRTY DOZEN, but then he moved into gialli like 1972's SEVEN BLOODSTAINED ORCHIDS and really hit his stride with a string of ridiculously entertaining and extraordinarily violent poliziotteschi like 1974's ALMOST HUMAN and 1976's ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH among many others. But between his crime movies and his jumping on the post-CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST gut-muncher bandwagon with 1980's EATEN ALIVE and 1981's CANNIBAL FEROX, Lenzi cranked out two more "macaroni combat" films. Differing from the DIRTY DOZEN-inspired "men on a mission" formula of his late '60s genre contributions, 1978's THE GREATEST BATTLE and 1979's FROM HELL TO VICTORY (which starred George Peppard and George Hamilton, the same year he had a huge hit with LOVE AT FIRST BITE) seemed like responses to the more large-scale, all-star ensemble epics that were being produced at that time, like 1976's MIDWAY, 1976's THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, and 1977's A BRIDGE TOO FAR. Both films had casts of big-name actors who carried significantly more prestige than you'd expect in a run-of-the-mill Italian knockoff, but from the looks of THE GREATEST BATTLE, the entire budget went to paying those actors because for the most part, it looks like how a WWII epic might turn out if it was directed by Jess Franco or Al Adamson.
THE GREATEST BATTLE was shown under a plethora of different titles: it was shot in Rome, Almeria, and Los Angeles in 1977 as IL GRANDE ATTACCO, and then alternately known as THE BIGGEST BATTLE (the title it carries on Amazon Prime), THE GREAT BATTLE, and BATTLE FORCE, but THE GREATEST BATTLE is what it initially went by when drive-in outfit Dimension Pictures released it in the US, cut down to 90 minutes, with Lenzi pseudonym "Humphrey Longan" credited as director, and with added narration by Orson Welles, who's not heard on the complete 102-minute, English-dubbed BIGGEST BATTLE version streaming on Amazon (dubbing fixture Anthony La Penna handles some incidental narration in a few spots). Stacy Keach is among the stars, and in his very enjoyable 2013 memoir All in All, he refers to the film under yet another title, THE MARETH LINE, and calls it "flat-out awful." A fair assessment, though as Keach points out, "It gave me a chance to work with Henry Fonda and John Huston," and they're only a few of the reputable actors called upon to star in a film by the future director of CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD, MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, and FATTY GIRL GOES TO NEW YORK. THE GREATEST BATTLE opens in Berlin in 1936 just after the Olympics, as a small group of friendly acquaintances meet for a formal dinner: German Major Manfred Roland (Keach), British war correspondent Sean O'Hara (Huston, not even attempting a British accent) and his wife (Lenzi's wife Olga Pehar Lenzi), West Point legend General Foster (Fonda), and renowned German actress Annelise Ackermann (Samantha Eggar). They discuss the rise of Hitler and his disdain of Jews and "American negroes" in the wake of Jesse Owens' Olympic triumph, but all parties foolishly conclude that everything is fine, that war is unlikely and they'll all be friends for many years to come.
Cut to 1942, and the entire world is at war. From then on, THE GREATEST BATTLE is an episodic and seemingly random series of vignettes that eventually form some semblance of a story but it still feels choppy and haphazardly-assembled. There's copious amounts of stock footage from newsreels and other movies, and sometimes the various film stocks don't even match. Foster's son John (Ray Lovelock) has enlisted after flunking out of college, unable to win over his old man like his older, war hero brother Ted (never seen, but played by a framed photo of future CEMETERY MAN director Michele Soavi); Roland and Annelise are now married, but he's conflicted about pledging his allegiance to Der Fuhrer and the Nazi party and determined to keep Annelise's being half-Jewish a secret from his superiors. We also meet other characters who have nothing to do with the initial expository set-up of the Berlin dinner, such as British Capt. Martin Scott (Giuliano Gemma), his ex-wife (Ida Galli) and her new husband (Venantino Venantini), and German Lt. Kurt Zimmer (Helmut Berger), who's fallen in love with French prostitute Danielle (Edwige Fenech) who may or may not be a member of the Resistance. Some of these people cross paths, and some of them don't. Huston's O'Hara is the most confusing character of them all, a grouchy old cynic who seems far too old to be playing a roving war correspondent chasing a story at the center of the action, and it's anyone's guess why some characters occasionally refer to him as "Professor O'Hara" or why he's shown strutting around and barking orders at some officers in one scene. Huston--just four years removed from co-starring in CHINATOWN--doesn't even seem to know or care what he's doing, as he has one of the most jaw-dropping exits you'll ever see, a barely-concealed breaking of the fourth wall, almost as if he said "Alright, Lenzi, I'm done here...I'll show myself out of this movie." In between the Ovidio G. Assonitis classics TENTACLES and THE VISITOR, Huston isn't even hiding his disinterest in THE GREATEST BATTLE, further evidenced by an anecdote Keach shares in his memoir. Concerned about not overdoing his German accent and having difficulty communicating with Lenzi, who didn't speak English, Keach asked Huston, his director on 1972's FAT CITY and THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN, for some advice. Huston replied "I'm only an actor here. I didn't ask you about my accent. Talk to the director," adding "Learn Italian or find an interpreter."
Speaking of TENTACLES, both Huston and Fonda appeared in that 1977 Italian JAWS ripoff about a giant mutant octopus, though they shared no scenes. Fonda has a few fleeting appearances scattered throughout TENTACLES, always on the phone yelling at someone. His entire role was shot in one morning at his house, and his dialogue is vague enough ("Well, take care of it!") that I remain convinced he had no idea he was in a movie about a giant mutant octopus. While Fonda gets out a bit in THE GREATEST BATTLE in both the opening dinner sequence and the closing scene at a cemetery, the rest of his appearances are, once again, by himself and on the phone in what looks suspiciously like a very 1970s Beverly Hills home in which a famous movie star might reside. Was this Fonda's thing prior to capping his stellar career with ON GOLDEN POND? Forcing journeymen Italian directors to make house calls if they wanted him in their movie? THE GREATEST BATTLE makes a lot of noise but very little sense, jumping from place to place with an ensemble whose members vanish for long stretches or right after they're introduced. The supporting cast is an impressive who's who of jobbing Italian supporting actors who always turn up in this sort of genre fare (I'm pretty sure Tom Felleghy owned that general's uniform, and having gravelly-voiced dubber Robert Spafford appear on camera as Gen. George S. Patton was an inspired choice), but the performances of the main cast are all over the map, with Huston looking visibly inconvenienced and demonstrably irritable in a way that borders on acting out, and Fonda mostly phoning it in TENTACLES-style (oddly, in Tony Thomas' 1983 Citadel Press-published The Complete Films of Henry Fonda, THE GREATEST BATTLE was absent even though his role is considerably more than a cameo, and in the early days of pay cable, this aired on HBO quite often). Berger is relatively restrained, considering his reputation and that he'd recently been in the 1976 Nazisploitation epic SALON KITTY, though if anyone can figure out why he and Fenech are even in this, let me know. The usually reliable Eggar is absolutely awful, but for whatever reason, Keach, the same year he co-starred in Sergio Martino's vile MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, is trying a lot harder than his other big-name co-stars and is the only one who seems interested in creating a three-dimensional character, even if the sloppiness of Lenzi's direction and the scattered script by Lenzi and Cesare Frugoni give him little with which to work. Franco Micalizzi's by-the-numbers "rousing" score lacks the maestro's usual catchy pizazz, and some of the miniatures in the battle sequences would make Antonio Margheriti cringe and look away in embarrassment. But for fans of "macaroni combat" movies, there's plenty of action sequences and a lot of big and loud explosions. Just don't expect it to make much sense. Maybe that's why Huston looks like he's breaking character and literally walking out of the movie.
RUPTURE is the first directing effort in a decade from Steven Shainberg, who had some significant critical acclaim with 2002's SECRETARY. But after the mixed reception of his 2006 Diane Arbus biopic FUR, he concentrated on producing until ending his filmmaking sabbatical with this strange horror film that tries to straddle the line between arthouse and grindhouse and comes up short in both. Renee Morgan (Noomi Rapace) is a divorced Kansas City mom who drops off her son Evan (Percy Hynes White) for the weekend with his bitter, angry father. Heading to meet a guy she's been dating for a skydiving excursion, her plans are derailed when a device attached to her rear tire causes it to blow out and she's abducted on the side of a deserted road by several people in a hauling truck. Shackled and with black tape wrapped around her head with only her eyes, nostrils, and mouth exposed, she's taken several days away to a grimy, dimly-lit, generic horror movie warehouse at an undisclosed location and strapped to a table in an observation room. Various mysterious personnel--Dianne (Kerry Bishe), Dr. Nyman (Lesley Manville), and a well-dressed Bald Man (Michael Chiklis)--interrogate her with personal questions that seem to focus primarily on her fears. Exploiting her fear of spiders--which they already know because of hidden surveillance cameras throughout her home--their goal is to get her to break, to "rupture," to reach the point where she "destroys" her fear. These mystery people--are they part of a secret government operation?--are researching a genetic code known as "G10/12x," which they believe is the key to fear, and to lose that sense of being afraid causes an inner mutation that makes carriers of that gene the next phase of human evolution.
The script by Brian Nelson (HARD CANDY, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT) is filled with heady concepts, but once RUPTURE takes a hard turn towards sci-fi in its third act, its half-baked ideas don't hold up under much scrutiny. For the most part, it's a claustrophobic and unpleasant mix of MARTYRS, HOSTEL, and William Friedkin's BUG, but its disparate elements never really gel. RUPTURE might've made for a solid TWILIGHT ZONE episode, but by the end, there's more questions than answers (such as why, if these mystery people are capable of what they are, do they still have to rely on old-school security cameras to learn more about Renee prior to abducting her?). It's hardly the triumphant return of a briefly-lauded filmmaker, and it's hard telling what it was that made Shainberg decide RUPTURE was the project to lure him back behind the camera. RUPTURE stumbles with some embarrassingly bush-league CGI spiders and shape-shifting that appear to be on loan from a 1997 NuImage production, and other than Rapace, the cast--which also includes Peter Stormare, cast radically against type as "Peter Stormare," as the leader of this mysterious outfit--seems lost. Just as odd as Shainberg directing, it's hard telling what inspired Mike Leigh regular Manville (HIGH HOPES, TOPSY-TURVY, ANOTHER YEAR) to go slumming in something like this, unless it just seemed a lot smarter on the page. Similarly, someone forgot to tell Rapace that she's starring in a garbage B-movie, because she admirably gives this thing everything she's got. She's so committed--mentally and physically--to this character and her situation that she single-handedly makes RUPTURE worth seeing for fans of the original Lisbeth Salander. (Unrated, 101 mins)
XX (US - 2017)
XX got a lot of buzz in horror circles for its unique standing as an anthology project created by and centered on women. In its initial stages, the filmmakers involved were set to be Jennifer Lynch (BOXING HELENA), Jen & Sylva Soska (AMERICAN MARY), Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO), Karyn Kusama (THE INVITATION), and former Rue Morgue editor Jovanka Vuckovic. By the time the XX was officially underway, Lynch, Harron, and the Soskas dropped out, with Kusama and Vuckovic joined by Roxanne Benjamin (SOUTHBOUND) and Annie Clark, better known as musician St. Vincent, with Mexican stop-motion animator Sofia Carrillo handling the wraparound and the "interstitial" segments between the stories. Oddly enough, it's the least-experienced filmmakers of the bunch who fare best, with Vuckovic's opener "The Box," based on a Jack Ketchum short story about a child's curiosity about the contents of a gift box held by a stranger on a train ultimately sending a family into emotional and physical turmoil as everyone who finds out what's in the box begins starving themselves. Clark's "The Birthday Party," which she co-wrote with Benjamin, is a deadpan farce with Melanie Lynskey as a wife and mom desperately trying to carry on with her seven-year-old daughter's birthday party even though her husband drops dead right before the guests arrive. It's a one-joke story that gets an admittedly huge laugh at the end, but perhaps not big enough to justify the elaborate buildup.
At that point, XX fails to heed its own advice with "Don't Fall," a useless ten-minute trifle from Benjamin with a group of obnoxious campers being pursued by a shape-shifting desert creature. The closer is "Her Only Living Son," and it's quite a disappointment from Kusama, who doesn't keep her INVITATION momentum going. Waitress and single mom Cora (Christina Kirk) is having a hard time dealing with her rebellious son Andy (Kyle Allen) on the eve of his 18th birthday. He's in trouble at school and he's prone to nasty mood swings, but his increasingly violent behavior is justified or outright ignored by those seemingly under his spell, including the overly friendly mailman (Mike Doyle) whose job it's been to "watch over him" all these years. It's bad enough that Kusama's script doesn't even follow its own internal logic, since much is made of Andy's resentment that they've had to move around every few years to avoid "Andy's father," which immediately calls into question how the mailman has watched over them "all these years." But what really makes "Her Only Living Son" collapse in on itself is that it's ultimately nothing more than fan fiction derived from a certain late 1960s supernatural horror classic that's obvious the moment "Andy's father" is mentioned. It's interesting that three of the four stories--and Carrillo's animation, to an extent--deal directly with the lengths a mother will go to protect her family, but Benjamin's story is not only the odd woman out, but it's also a complete waste of time. XX is a good idea, but two of the filmmakers fall asleep on the job: Benjamin torpedoes any momentum this thing had going, and anyone who watches enough horror anthologies knows you have to finish big, but Kusama completely drops the ball and regardless of XX's intent, the result is an underwhelming disappointment. (R, 81 mins)
The concept of a haunted VCR board game sounds like something Charles Band would've commissioned at Empire in 1985 around the time of THE DUNGEONMASTER or TERRORVISION, and while that's ultimately the direction BEYOND THE GATES heads with the world inside the game being shrouded in thick fog and purple/pink neon lighting and some probably intentionally janky-looking practical splatter effects, director/co-writer Jackson Stewart takes entirely too long to get there. The script makes an effort to create strong characters, and Skipper and Williamson are believable as distant siblings forced to rebuild their long-lost bond, but BEYOND THE GATES loses its way. There's a sense of lingering resentment toward recovering alcoholic Gordon, both from John and his bullying, asshole friend Hank (Justin Welborn), while Margot is saddled with unsubtle exposition drops about having a hard time sleeping after injuring her wrist in a vague "fall," a obvious red flag that the cycle of alcoholism and abuse has been passed on to Gordon and it's the very reason he split when he was 18 and never looked back. These are interesting ideas and characterizations that are left flailing as BEYOND THE GATES devotes entirely too much time to Gordon and John sitting around twiddling their thumbs while they decide to enter the game and rescue what's left of their dad. This could've been a smart film with a deeper subtext--like, say, THE BABADOOK or IT FOLLOWS--but it never finds the right balance between its character-driven, mumblecore components and its mandatory indulgence in heavy retro '80s worship. That opening synth jam is a keeper, though. (Unrated, 82 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
