A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS
(US - 2014)


Arriving on DVD & Blu-ray just four days after its VOD and scant theatrical release, A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS is a bland and lifeless dysfunctional family Christmas comedy that has nothing to offer aside from Robin Williams in one of his last roles. With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to play armchair psychologist knowing what we now know about Williams' battle with depression and his health issues that factored into his suicide in August.  But even here, in a film shot in early 2013 and in his unusually subdued interview in the DVD's bonus features, it's sadly evident that he looks tired and already checked out. Still, even without that dark cloud looming overhead, it would be difficult to enjoy this laugh-deprived trifle that squanders an overqualified cast of proven funny people. Forget comparisons to CHRISTMAS VACATION or BAD SANTA: this isn't even up to the level of the made-for-TV CHRISTMAS VACATION 2: COUSIN EDDIE'S ISLAND ADVENTURE. In a performance that won't be erasing fond memories of Chevy Chase's Clark Griswold anytime soon, Joel McHale is Boyd Mitchler, a successful Chicago hedge fund manager and all-around nice-guy family man with a tendency to overcompensate on Christmas, with an obsessive determination to keep the belief in Santa Claus alive for his coddled son Douglas, nicknamed "Bug" (LOOPER's Pierce Gagnon). As if the ridiculous character names weren't already pissing you off, the reason for Boyd's fanaticism about getting Christmas perfect is his abrasive, alcoholic father Mitch (Williams), whose misanthropic issues may very well be rooted in the fact that he's named Mitch Mitchler. Mitch's drunkenness had a habit of consistently ruining Christmas for young Boyd, and when Boyd is forced to drag the family--there's also wife Luann (BAD SANTA's Lauren Graham) and daughter Vera (Bebe Wood)--four hours away to his parents' house for the holiday, we know he'll be opening wounds that still haven't healed. Then we meet the rest of the Mitchler clan: enabling matriarch Donna (Candice Bergen), daughter Shauna (Wendi McClendon-Covey) and sex-offender son-in-law Dave (Tim Heidecker), and son Nelson (Clark Duke), whose cheating wife ran off with the father of the baby she left for him to raise, and who suffers from PTSD after being discharged from the military following a head injury when he fell off a Humvee during basic training. When Boyd realizes he left Bug's gifts back home in Chicago, he attempts to drive back to get them, but his car breaks down, forcing Mitch to pick him up as the pair predictably air their lifelong grievances on the ride to and back from Chicago, getting a little magical help from a homeless drunk in a Santa costume (Oliver Platt).


There's no edge to A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS. It's a strictly connect-the-dots story that never finds a spark. Everything about it is perfunctory and forgettable. It wants to be this dark, "did that really go there?" comedy, but it just doesn't have the balls to do anything, instead choosing to pull its punches and be safe, nice, and thoroughly neutered. It makes overtures toward pushing the envelope with Dave's sex offender status and the situation with Nelson's dark-skinned son, but it's too afraid to ruffle feathers. Even the wacky elements--Boyd's pants somehow catching on fire ten seconds after he arrives at his parents' house, Bug hallucinating after his competitive eating champ cousin dares him to down a 40-year-old jar of pickles, Mitch serving Boyd squirrel with buckshot when he finds out Boyd doesn't eat chicken, Luann finding some portraits in the attic that reveal Boyd's childhood Bea Arthur obsession--land with a strangely awkward thud (in the right hands, that Bea Arthur subplot could've killed). At the height of the TV series COMMUNITY's popularity, FRIGGIN' began life as a Joel McHale vehicle at Universal with ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT directors Joe and Anthony Russo and a script by WRECK-IT-RALPH writer Phil Johnston. But it never got made and the Russos eventually moved on to CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. McHale kept the project alive through independent means, bringing regular COMMUNITY director Tristram Shapeero (also a vet of PARKS AND RECREATION and NEW GIRL) onboard. Things probably got drastically changed along the way, as an obviously displeased Johnston had his name removed from the credits, with the script now blamed on the non-existent "Michael Brown," and the film ended up being acquired by the lowly Phase 4 Films, home of many an Uwe Boll joint. A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS is so slight and has so little to say and offer that the closing credits start at 73 minutes, rolling as slowly as possible to stretch it to a reasonable running time. There's also a post-credits stinger involving two unfunny Cowboy Santa bit players as well as a nice enough tribute to Williams. He doesn't go overboard as in the recent THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, possibly his worst film, but he seems completely disengaged from the project and isn't funny, spending FRIGGIN' grunting like Clint Eastwood in GRAN TORINO, chomping on a cigar, derisively calling Boyd "Sally" or "Gladys," and barking things like "Are you on the friggin' rag?" at him. Williams had three other films completed at the time of his death--the grim indie drama BOULEVARD, which got raves at this year's Tribeca Film Festival but is still without a distributor; his last onscreen performance in NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB, due out in theaters in December; and he voices a dog in the comedy ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING, set to be released in spring 2015--and hopefully any of those will provide him with a more fitting sendoff than this friggin' depressing holiday dud. (Unrated, 82 mins)


WILLOW CREEK
(US - 2014)


1991's SHAKES THE CLOWN was annihilated by critics before becoming a legitimate cult classic, but it another decade of TV directing gigs before veteran comedian Bobcat Goldthwait would make another film. With the Comedy Central mockumentary WINDY CITY HEAT (2003), and the extremely dark and quite often uncomfortable comedies SLEEPING DOGS LIE (2006), WORLD'S GREATEST DAD (2009), and GOD BLESS AMERICA (2012), Goldthwait has unexpectedly become one of America's boldest and most interesting indie filmmakers and one of the undisputed kings of cringe. He's carved a niche for himself in that field, which makes his delving into found-footage horror a bit perplexing. WILLOW CREEK follows a couple, Jim (Bryce Johnson) and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) on an excursion into Trinity National Forest where Bigfoot enthusiast Jim intends to follow the path taken in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, the men who claim to have filmed a female Bigfoot on Bluff Creek. Kelly isn't a Bigfoot believer but goes along because it's a hiking trip with her boyfriend. Goldthwait subscribes to the Ti West slow-burn methodology for over half of the running time, but once he finally gets Jim and Kelly in a tent and lets the tension build over a 20-minute uninterrupted take as noises, wailing, growling, and footsteps get closer and closer, WILLOW CREEK really hits its stride. The sequence inside the tent could almost be its own short film and is a textbook example of slow-burn done right. Goldthwait follows the template of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, almost to a fault: someone or something wrecks the camp site and hangs Jim's sock from a tree branch while he takes a swim, and after the tent sequence, the same noises seem to surround them and they end up running in circles (interestingly, BLAIR WITCH co-director Eduardo Sanchez just released his own found-footage Bigfoot opus EXISTS). Those who like concrete explanations probably won't care much for the deliberately ambiguous ending, one that has disturbing implications and expects you to have been paying attention. WILLOW CREEK does a good job of feeling improvised but being very carefully constructed and making early throwaway lines and jokey humor turn out to be quite significant bits of foreshadowing. It's rare these days for a found-footage film to be the kind of movie that prompts discussion and debate, but therein lies the conundrum of WILLOW CREEK: it takes its rightful place among the best that the subgenre has to offer, but it arrives so far beyond fashionably late that it can't really be greeted with anything but a shrug by horror scenesters who, if found footage's waning recent box office numbers are any indication, are getting to be just about over this type of thing (they're cheap to produce and easy to turn a profit, so even with diminishing returns, these movies aren't going anywhere for a while). It's not fair to WILLOW CREEK to judge it by the all the garbage found-footage bottom-feeders that came before it, but one can't help but wonder why Goldthwait decided to make this now. (Unrated, 80 mins)

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)
(US - 2014)

Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu. Written by Alejandro G. Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr, and Armando Bo. Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Shamos, Merritt Wever, Clark Middleton, Damian Young, Bill Camp, Benjamin Kanes. (R, 119 mins)

Though it was conceived by AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and three collaborating screenwriters, the surreal dark comedy BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) could easily be interpreted as a soul-baring confessional for Michael Keaton and an analytical walk through his career. Both Inarritu and Keaton say that the film wasn't written specifically for Keaton, but after seeing BIRDMAN, it's impossible to picture anyone else starring in it. So many elements of Keaton's career and the public's perception of him--as well as the image of one co-star in particular--are woven into the fabric of the story that in many ways, you could argue that this is Keaton's ALL THAT JAZZ...minus, of course, the production numbers and the general theme of substance-abetted self-destruction. Both BIRDMAN and the 1979 Bob Fosse classic have a past-his-prime figure (actor in BIRDMAN, director in JAZZ) laying it all on the line for a production that's a culmination of his life's work, a vindication of his existence, a middle-finger response to those critics and contemporaries who doubted and dismissed him.


Similar to Keaton turning down $15 million for a third BATMAN movie in 1995, his Riggan Thomson is a faded Hollywood celebrity who gave up a huge payday 20 years earlier when he walked away from the superhero franchise BIRDMAN. His Hollywood career never regained momentum, and now, Riggan is orchestrating what he believes will be his ultimate achievement, one that finally validates him as a serious artist.  He's mounting a stage production of the Raymond Carver short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." He's the writer, director, star, and financier, and it's not going well. He's run through his fortune to the point where he has to remortgage his home in Malibu that's supposed to belong to his recovering junkie daughter Sam (Emma Stone), and the other male lead (Jeremy Shamos) is such a terrible actor that Riggan may or may not have arranged for a stage light to fall directly on his head. The play's female lead Lesley (Naomi Watts), given her big break by Riggan, suggests her boyfriend Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) step into the vacated role. Shiner is a Broadway actor of repute, and his involvement immediately boosts ticket sales and garners more publicity, which gives the notoriously volatile Shiner enough ammo to start questioning Riggan's writing and directing decisions and trying to take more artistic control over the development of his character and the staging of the play itself (as far back as AMERICAN HISTORY X, Norton has been an infamously pushy control freak, undermining directors, writers, and co-stars, and is a remarkably good sport in the way he allows Inarritu to lampoon that reputation here). Riggan is tortured by self-doubt over this project, with Shiner's constant meddling, his manager/lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis) fretting over the money, and the probable pregnancy of his girlfriend/co-star Laura (Andrea Riseborough), and when alone, demonstrates magical, telekinetic powers and is both bolstered and harangued by the deep, forceful voice of Birdman. Riggan's grip on reality is slipping with each passing day as opening night approaches, and it's not helped by a bitter, spiteful Broadway critic (Lindsay Duncan) who has vowed to destroy him and everything he represents about celebrity culture.


BIRDMAN is often bilious in its tone, as Inarritu takes aim at vacuous celebrities, the fleeting nature of fame, pretentious actors, critics more interested in tearing someone down rather than attempting to understand their art, and a public that judges the worth of something by how much it's trending on social media. Even Keaton approaches it in a self-aware, self-deprecating manner (while destroying his dressing room, Riggan rants about how he's gotten old, wrinkled, flabby, and balding, screaming "You look like a turkey with leukemia!" at the mirror). In a lot of ways, it's the NETWORK of backstage dramas, but above all that, it's a career-defining validation of Michael Keaton, one of the busiest actors of the '80s and early '90s who never really went away, but just didn't seem to be working as much as he should be, or on projects that really showcased his talent. From his first moments on the big screen in Ron Howard's NIGHT SHIFT back in 1982, it was obvious that Keaton was a star. But in walking away from BATMAN FOREVER because he thought the script was terrible and didn't want to do it without Tim Burton, he chose integrity over money, and the momentum was never the same. He never became a pariah, but at the same time, Hollywood never seemed sure of him after that. Though he had some hits (1993's MY LIFE, 1996's MULTIPLICITY) and shined in ensemble pieces (1997's JACKIE BROWN), Keaton stepped back after 1998's JACK FROST and worked very sparingly throughout the next decade, with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in the 2002 HBO film LIVE FROM BAGHDAD, a couple of straight-to-video titles and a minor hit with the 2005 horror film WHITE NOISE. To a certain demographic, he's probably best known as the voice of Chick Hicks in the CARS franchise, but in recent years, Keaton has focused on smaller films like 2006's Don DeLillo-scripted GAME 6 and his own little-seen 2008 directing effort THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, while popping up in things like 2005's HERBIE: FULLY LOADED or this year's ROBOCOP remake and NEED FOR SPEED when he has a need for money. It was probably Keaton's scene-stealing supporting turn in the 2010 Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy THE OTHER GUYS, as a beleaguered, TLC-referencing police captain forced to take a second job at Bed Bath & Beyond because he "has a kid at NYU who wants to explore his bisexuality and become a DJ," that reminded audiences of just how funny he could be. But he's a terrific serious actor as well, even though that's mostly been demonstrated by his playing villains in 1990's PACIFIC HEIGHTS and 1998's DESPERATE MEASURES. Compared to the height of his 1980s fame, the now-63-year-old Keaton was pretty much off the radar pre-BIRDMAN, but perhaps he's always been the kind of actor who wouldn't be fully appreciated until he was older. Make no mistake: this is the role of Keaton's career.


It's impossible to discuss all of the ALL THAT JAZZ parallels without going into spoilers, but a major example is the way both films take frequent leaves from reality: BIRDMAN with Riggan's telekinetic and increasingly destructive powers, and his conversations with his younger self in the Birdman costume (played by uncredited Benjamin Kanes) who eggs him on with either encouragement or scorn; and ALL THAT JAZZ's booze-addled, pill-popping Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) and his conversations with an angel (Jessica Lange) who's alternately sympathetic and derisively mocking. Riggan and Gideon are men pushing themselves to the brink, cognizant of their failures both professional and personal, both men are on friendly terms with ex-wives they treated badly but knew they kind of man they were marrying, and both try to salvage relationships with their daughters and their current girlfriends. Both will stop at nothing to prove something to...themselves? It costs Joe Gideon his life in a way that questions just how much of ALL THAT JAZZ was supposed to be really happening, and by the end, that comparison comes into play with BIRDMAN. It's a strange, funny, angry, and dreamlike film, shot by the great cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (CHILDREN OF MEN, THE TREE OF LIFE, and an Oscar winner for his work on GRAVITY) in a way that deceptively makes the entire two-hour film play like one continuous take. Inarritu doesn't spotlight the gimmickry or the trickery that goes along in maintaining the illusion, but in coupling it with a persistent jazz drumming score, there's an uneasy tension that grows throttling as the film--and Riggan Thomsen himself--careen toward their destiny. BIRDMAN isn't for everyone, but any fan of Michael Keaton must consider it a must-see as he delivers one of the great film performances in recent years.

John Cusack in DRIVE HARD.  Or maybe RECLAIM.

For all the shit Nicolas Cage justifiably gets about the crummy movies he's been making, the precipitous decline of John Cusack--Cage's CON AIR co-star in better days for both--has flown under the radar with most mainstream critics and moviegoers who likely just assume he hasn't been busy. Oh, he's been busy. Any VOD denizen who regularly prowls the fringes of Netflix Instant's new arrivals or checks out a Redbox at the grocery store has probably noticed Cusack turning up in an alarming number of bad movies of late. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was briefly generating Oscar buzz for 2007's GRACE IS GONE, headlining 2009's mega-budget disaster epic 2012, and had a hit comedy with 2010's HOT TUB TIME MACHINE. In retrospect, it seemed like he stopped trying around the time no one really responded to his well-intentioned but smug and self-satisfied 2008 anti-war satire WAR, INC. There have been a couple of positives for Cusack in the last few years--even though nobody saw it, his reteaming with Cage on THE FROZEN GROUND produced a surprisingly compelling thriller, not something you can usually say about any film containing 50 Cent, and the Spanish GRAND PIANO was a goofy but enjoyable De Palma homage that featured Cusack mainly as a voice in an earpiece taunting concert pianist Elijah Wood from the balcony, threatening to shoot him if he plays one wrong note. Cusack is in David Cronenberg's upcoming MAPS TO THE STARS, which will mark the actor starring in his first respectably A-list production in years (not counting his brief bit as Richard Nixon in Lee Daniels' LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER), but it would appear to be an exception and not the rule.

John Cusack in RECLAIM. Or maybe DRIVE HARD.

Careers have peaks and valleys, but in recent memory, few icons--yes, with SAY ANYTHING, GROSSE POINTE BLANK, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, and HIGH FIDELITY, I'd say Cusack is iconic with a certain demographic--have plummeted so quickly without some offscreen scandal or obvious and very public personal problems pulling them down. Almost overnight, Cusack went from box office draw to the undisputed king of Video-on-Demand. Working actors work, and to quote '70s exploitation producer Mardi Rustam on casting past-their-prime actors, "working's better than sitting by a phone that's not ringing," but with rare exception, Cusack's recent string of credits--THE RAVEN, THE PAPERBOY, THE FACTORY, THE NUMBERS STATION, ADULT WORLD, THE BAG MAN, and THE PRINCE--range from forgettable to flat-out embarrassing. A pilot he shot for a potential CBS series about a Wall Street investment firm wasn't picked up by the network. Cusack did star with Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li in Mikael Hafstrom's $50 million epic SHANGHAI, but it's been sitting on a Weinstein Company shelf for six years. The Cusackalyptic state of his career--honestly, an appearance in an Uwe Boll film can't be far off--has only become apparent to casual moviegoers in the last couple of weeks, when a poster for the Chinese period piece DRAGON BLADE, teaming Cusack as a centurion with Jackie Chan and Adrien Brody, made the rounds on the internet. Other upcoming Cusack projects include the Stephen King adaptation CELL, which maybe has commercial potential, and LOVE & MERCY, a low-budget Beach Boys biopic where he briefly appears as the older Brian Wilson (Paul Dano plays Wilson in most of the film) but other than that, it's business as usual, with a cop thriller called KICKBACK, where he co-stars with Famke Janssen, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Mischa Barton, and Tom Sizemore. Who knows if Cusack can pull himself out of this quagmire or if he's happy to just be working?  In the meantime, here's his two latest obscurities that you probably haven't heard of until this moment.


DRIVE HARD
(Australia/UK/Germany - 2014)


A grating buddy comedy from Ozploitation legend Brian Trenchard-Smith, DRIVE HARD isn't the action-packed fun-fest that it seems to think it is. Cusack is paired with Thomas Jane--both appeared in Terrence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE--and presumably both are only here for the paid Australian vacation. A quickie shot in Gold Coast, Queensland in a mere two and a half weeks, DRIVE HARD has Jane as Peter Roberts, a former American racing phenom who left the circuit to marry Aussie attorney Tessa (Yesse Spence). They have an impossibly cute daughter and a beautiful house, but Peter is unhappy working at his dull job as a driving instructor and misses the circuit. One morning, Peter's first appointment is American Simon Keller (Cusack), a vaping oddball in a black baseball cap and sunglasses, who claims to be in town on business. Simon's eccentric behavior irritates Peter, especially when he asks Peter to stop at a nearby bank so he can quickly run in and "take care of something." The bank is owned by the mob, and Simon is a freelance criminal from Cleveland sent to swipe some mob cash in the form of bank bonds set up by scheming executive Rossi (Christopher Morris).  The connected Rossi uses his influence to keep the cops off as various unsavory sorts spend the rest of the film chasing the two Americans--with unwilling accessory Peter specifically targeted by Simon for his superior driving skills--who have to work together to survive...if they don't kill each other first!


Trenchard-Smith's storied history in stunt-crazed Ozploitation cinema of the 1970s and 1980s would seem to make him a natural for something like this, but he hasn't made a good film in about 25 years (no, LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE doesn't count), and DRIVE HARD exhibits none of the past style and panache that have made him such an endearing figure in cult cinema. The actual car chases are sparingly shown and unexciting, things gets bogged down in Peter's marital problems and the investigation by a hard-nosed Gold Coast major crimes investigator (Zoe Ventoura), and there just isn't much of a story here. That would be fine if the action was good, but Trenchard-Smith seems so excited to be working with name American actors again that just lets them riff their way through it. Long stretches of the film consist of Cusack and Jane doing some uninspired improv in the car, with tiresome and endless banter that usually involves a yapping Cusack being an unfunny, hectoring smartass and Jane yelling, almost like they're both trying to be Vince Vaughn, and it doesn't work. Jane, in particular, is really hard to take here. He seems to be mistaking "being really loud" for being funny. His entire performance is one long spaz attack, while Cusack, who never takes off the hat and shades, has been given a green light to do whatever he wants. Simon's final monologue to Rossi, where he blathers on endlessly about Buddha before shooting the coke-addled banker in the balls, allows Cusack the kind of self-indulgent, incoherent nonsense you would've expected from late-period Marlon Brando. Cusack was obviously given the star treatment by the producers--his personal chef is credited twice--and he responds by at least coming to work awake, which is more than you can say for his contributions to THE PRINCE, but DRIVE HARD is just a dull, dumb, and loud exercise in Cusackalyptica with an Ozploitation twist, an action-comedy that struggles to find a tone and comes up lacking in both action and comedy. (Unrated, 96 mins)


RECLAIM
(US/Australia - 2014)


I don't know if RECLAIM was shot immediately after DRIVE HARD or vice versa, but Cusack's wearing the same black hat in some scenes and he's introduced vaping, which has obviously become his personal prop of choice. Released on just ten screens, RECLAIM is like a less competent version of the kind of glossy, hot-button thrillers that dominated the 1990s. Indeed, if it came out 12-15 years earlier with the same leads and a bigger budget, it would've been a huge hit. Despite his top billing, Cusack has a mostly secondary role until a little past the midway point, with the real stars being Ryan Phillippe and Rachelle Lefevre as Stephen and Shannon Mayer, a Chicago couple arriving in Puerto Rico to finalize the adoption of seven-year-old Haitian orphan Nina (Briana Roy). Unable to have children of their own after a car accident that caused a pregnant Shannon to miscarry and netted them a nearly $3 million settlement several years earlier, the Mayers are desperate to become parents and have already paid $60,000 to a charity agency run by the altruistic Gabrielle Reigert (Jacki Weaver), but still must wait several days for Nina's passport and some general paperwork to clear. In the meantime, Gabrielle sets the Mayers up at a resort where they keep encountering the gregariously pushy Benjamin (Cusack, greasy-haired and disheveled), his girlfriend Paola (Veronica Faye Foo) and their extremely surly buddy Salo (Jandres Burgos). Benjamin and especially Salo (who beats the shit out of committed-to-sobriety Stephen in a bar after Stephen declines a drink) display enough red flags for the Mayers to inform Gabrielle that they're checking into another hotel, but of course Benjamin and his crew turn up there as well, and not long after, Nina goes missing. Stephen attempts to notify Gabrielle, but no one at the agency's office answers the phone, the web site is down, and the property vacant when Stephen pays a visit. Benjamin is part of a scam overseen by Gabrielle (not her real name) to bilk people out of exorbitant adoption fees and make off with the kid. The scam is common, according to the useless local police chief, played by Luis Guzman, in practically the same role he had in the recent Gina Carano actioner IN THE BLOOD. Feeling cheated out of his share by Gabrielle, Benjamin goes rogue and concocts his own scheme to get the Mayers' entire fortune.


Australian director Alan White really wants this to be a serious expose of child exploitation and trafficking, but it's really just a rote, formulaic B-movie, and not a very good one. It starts with Stephen and Shannon being entirely too gullible too many times, but even on a technical level, RECLAIM comes up short. It sports what may go down as 2014's most ineptly-shot car chase, which hilariously shoddy greenscreen work that moves entirely too fast and jerky and looks like a Hanna-Barbera wraparound background. Coupled with a scene where the Mayers' SUV is dangling off the side of a cliff, RECLAIM has the worst car crash CGI this side of 2011's IN TIME. Phillippe and Lefevre do what's required of them, but Cusack is in PRINCE mode here, looking haggard and sleepwalking through a Puerto Rican vacation either immediately before or after his DRIVE HARD Australian respite. Until the midway point, he really isn't in it that much and until late in the film, he's more of a henchman to mastermind Gabrielle. In some scenes, he defers to the hot-tempered Salo. Why is Cusack playing a stock heavy role that any jobbing character actor could've played?  I doubt he's even reading the scripts he's given--he's choosing his films based on where they're being shot and how nice a resort the producers are willing to book him (though his personal chef doesn't seem to have made the trip for this one). Cusack's a smart actor and an insightful writer--if he was finding anything challenging or professionally rewarding about his Cusackalyptic career choices, he wouldn't resort to vaping in two different movies in a desperate effort to provide his character with some remotely interesting trait. An end caption states that over a million children are trafficked a year, adding "They're invisible and they're everywhere." These days, the same could be said for John Cusack movies. (R, 96 mins)

AUTOMATA
(US/Spain/Italy - 2014)

The visually striking but ponderous AUTOMATA succeeds in looking a lot more expensive than its $15 million budget, but it can't overcome an obvious, empty, and hopelessly derivative story that suggests at least a small percentage of whatever, if any, profit it makes should go to the estate of Isaac Asimov. Set in 2044 with 99.7% of Earth's population wiped out by solar storms that have turned the planet into a radioactive desert, AUTOMATA has the surviving humans corralled into covered cities after the ROC Corporation manufactures a line of Automata robots to build walls and climate-controlled clouds to create pockets of atmosphere amidst the dystopian hellscape. The robots have two protocols: 1) never harm a living thing, and 2) they are forbidden to alter themselves or other robots. When a robot is spotted working on itself and another sets itself on fire after being caught smuggling a piece of equipment out of a research facility, it's apparent to the powers that be at ROC that the robots have started to flagrantly disregard their second protocol. ROC insurance investigator Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas) witnesses the robotic self-immolation and is led to cybernetics engineer Dr. Dupre (Melanie Griffith), who warns him that robot evolution is well within the realm of possibility should one of them figure out how to abandon the second protocol. Vaucan is abducted by a sex robot named Cleo (voiced by Griffith) and three others, who take him on a journey across the deadly desert to meet their leader, the Blue Robot (voiced by Javier Bardem), the robot who evolved into a semi-emotional being and began working on the others, forming a rapidly snowballing rebellion that threatens to exterminate what little is left of the human race. "Life finds a way," the Blue Robot explains to Vaucan. "Your time is coming to an end."


Co-written by director Gabe Ibanez, a protege of Alex de la Iglesia, AUTOMATA sounds like a film with heady ideas but it really comes off as silly most of the time. It's extremely convoluted and seems like a piecemeal stitching of other, better sources, with a lot of Asimov's Robot series, some Neill Blomkamp allegory (there's a definite DISTRICT 9 thing going on with humanity's shabby treatment of the robots), a bit of BLADE RUNNER in the high-tech, sleazy neon cityscapes of the protected areas, and a portion of post-apocalypse with the admittedly well-done CGI in the desert sequences, which look terrific but go on forever. Once the robots get Vaucan out there (wait a minute...isn't the desert supposed to be lethally radioactive?), the pace really slows down as too much time is spent on Vaucan haplessly demanding to be taken back to the city and Cleo replying that they "can't do that, sir," repeated multiple times over. There's a bit of a HARDWARE vibe going on as well, right down to the presence of Dylan McDermott as Wallace, a rogue, robot-hating cop hired by Vaucan's boss (Robert Forster) to venture into the desert to find him and take out the fugitive robots. A subplot involving Vaucan's very pregnant wife (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) goes nowhere and has so little effect on everything that it feels like a more expanded plot thread that's been drastically cut. Banderas does what he can and is an engaging enough hero, and Cannon cover band Millennium gets better work than usual out of the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX. Ibanez obviously has a great eye for visual style, but with such a weak, hackneyed, cut-and-paste script, the terrific-looking but frustrating AUTOMATA can't help but feel like it's all surface and no substance. (R, 110 mins)


THE DAMNED
(Colombia/US - 2014)


Spanish-born director Victor Garcia has earned a dubious name for himself as a go-to guy for shitty DTV sequels like RETURN TO HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (2006), MIRRORS 2 (2010), and the unwatchable HELLRAISER: REVELATIONS (2011), a crass exercise in Weinstein audience contempt--so much so that Doug Bradley refused to reprise his iconic role as Pinhead--shot fast and cheap when they realized they were about to lose the rights to the franchise. Garcia has been a gun-for-hire on all of these, demonstrating none of the promise of other top-drawer DTV auteurs and seeming like a hack who only got the lowly sequel gigs that Joel Soisson turned down. Garcia finally comes into his own with THE DAMNED, which isn't the most original horror film you'll ever see, but it's done with such spirited verve and frenzied panache that it wins you over in spite of the usual gaping lapses in logic that seem to haunt these kinds of films. Widower David (Peter Facinelli) and his fiancee Lauren (Sophia Myles) arrive in Bogota to pick up his college-age daughter Jill (Nathalia Ramos). Jill has been vacationing with her journalist aunt and late mom's sister Gina (Carolina Guerra), has hooked up with Gina's cameraman Ramon (Sebastian Martinez), and hasn't been answering David's calls. David is persistent, but the quintet have to drive about four hours to another town to get Jill's passport, which she carelessly left behind. Ignoring the warnings of local cop Morales (Juan Pablo Gamboa), and traveling down a dangerous mountain road, they get caught in a flash flood, destroying Gina's truck, forcing them to find refuge at a decrepit inn run by Felipe (Gustavo Angarita). The guest register shows no one's stayed at the inn since 1978, and the skittish Felipe doesn't want them wandering around. Searching for a bathroom, Jill hears a voice crying for help.  She and Ramon find a little girl, Ana Maria (Julieta Salazar), in a secret locked cell in the basement. They free her, and all hell breaks loose. Ana Maria is the current host of "La Bruja," the spirit of a 17th century witch with the power to jump from body to body when the current host is killed. Felipe has had Ana Maria locked in the basement cell since 1978, and with a torrential downpour making escape impossible, now has an inn filled with interlopers to freely possess at will.


Screenwriter Richard D'Ovidio's (THE CALL) idea of an evil spirit moving from body to body isn't exactly a new concept, having been used to great effect in John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987), William Peter Blatty's THE EXORCIST III (1990), and Gregory Hoblit's FALLEN (1998) to name a few. And the notion of keeping a demonic spirit locked away owes a lot to the second-season TWILIGHT ZONE episode "The Howling Man," and Michael Mann's THE KEEP (1983). But after years of execrable swill, Garcia finally establishes himself as a legitimate talent outside the shackling expectations of bad DTV sequels. Garcia got his start working on the effects crews on several of RE-ANIMATOR producer Brian Yuzna's Spanish productions of the early 2000s, such as DAGON (2001) and WEREWOLF HUNTER (2004). A lot of those Yuzna titles dealt with travelers being trapped in a desolate place, and in that way, THE DAMNED (shot under the title GALLOWS HILL) plays a lot like something Yuzna would've shepherded a decade or so ago. Garcia is conservative with digital effects, but really seems to prefer the practical if at all possible--it's nice to see latex and wet, spurting blood in a horror movie these days. Garcia also makes terrific use of tried-and-true genre tropes like creepy dolls, a chair rocking itself, covered mirrors, and cockroaches infesting the inn. The cheap jump scares work, and there's a doomy, rainy atmosphere throughout. Sure, characters do dumb things (David: "From now on, we all stick together!" he exhorts three seconds before wandering into another room alone), but as the film morphs into one of the more highly-energized EXORCIST knockoffs (Myles, in particular, throws herself into this), there's a genuinely sinister and unsettling method to La Bruja's madness in the way it's able to see inside the souls of those around it, exposing their deepest secrets and exploiting their guilt and weakness. You've seen most of what's in THE DAMNED before, but Garcia's enthusiasm, the film's relentless pace, and the overwhelming sense of hopelessness, grief, and despair make it far more effective than it has any right to be. (R, 87 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE
(US - 2014)

Directed by Stephen Merchant. Written by Stephen Merchant, Gene Stupnitsky, and Lee Eisenberg. Cast: Stephen Merchant, Christine Woods, Nate Torrence, Kevin Weisman, Kyle Mooney, Sean Wing, Stephen Tobolowsky, Allison Tolman, Adam Campbell, Henrietta Meire, Stephanie Corneliussen. (Unrated, 80 mins)

Cancelled after one season by a network that somehow kept ARLI$$ on the air for seven, HELLO LADIES garnered enough of a fan base for HBO to greenlight a spinoff film that doubles as a feature-length finale, albeit one with a few more aerial shots than usual for a bit of a cinematic flourish. The brainchild of THE OFFICE co-creator Stephen Merchant and BAD TEACHER co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (also a writing team on the American OFFICE), HELLO LADIES dealt with Brit Stuart Pritchard (Merchant) and his escapades as a would-be player in the L.A. dating scene. Stuart is a nice guy who means well, but he tries too hard and has always been obsessed with being popular, and his awkward attempts at ingratiating himself in with the cool kids at trendy nightspots and any other social setting provided some outstanding bits of wincing, cringe-worthy discomfort comedy. That element of the show tapered off as that lone season wore on, with more of a focus on his "Will They or Won't They?" platonic relationship with his friend and tenant, aspiring actress Jessica (Christine Woods), who was spinning her wheels in a dead-end relationship with her douchebag agent Glenn (Sean Wing).

HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE picks up right where the first season left off, with Stuart still sucking up to Glenn to get into parties attended by supermodels, Jessica abandoning her acting career after a humiliating audition for a yogurt commercial, and Stuart's divorced best friend Wade (Nate Torrence) still tagging along as his hapless wingman. Stuart is panicked after getting a phone call from Trudy (Henrietta Meire), an ex from the UK who's visiting L.A. with her husband Mike (Adam Campbell). Trudy left Stuart for Mike, and Stuart was so traumatized that he moved to L.A. in an attempt to reinvent himself. Obsessed with showing Trudy and Mike that he's "won at life," Stuart manages to convince one of Glenn's Russian supermodels (Stephanie Corneliussen) to go on a double date, but she backs out to go to a party instead, prompting Stuart to press Jessica into service as a last-minute replacement. The night goes perfectly, at least until Stuart and Jessica are forced to confront their feelings for each other.


HELLO LADIES worked best when Merchant got Stuart into situations that were so awkward that it was difficult to even look at your TV (ask anyone who saw the fourth episode, "The Dinner," where Stuart starts telling jokes, gets some laughs, gets a bit overconfident, and has what he deems a smartly-conceived observational one about hypocrisy that blows up in his face...and then he somehow makes it worse). The cringing genius of HELLO LADIES at its best is a good indication that while Ricky Gervais is essentially the face of the UK version of THE OFFICE, Merchant probably came up with a lot of the show's most memorable laughs. Merchant and his co-writers packed these kinds of moments into the first half of the season and they're the ones that provided the biggest laughs, but anyone approaching HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE cold will get a perfectly entertaining movie with Merchant's love of '70s and '80s songs, with a very effective use of Gerry Rafferty's "Days Gone Down," but one more in tune with the latter part of the series. The aftermath of Stuart and Jessica taking things to the next level provides some truth bombs from Jessica that force Stuart to take stock of his life and exactly why he's the way he is. It's well-written and believably acted, but the film needs more scenes like Stuart pestering Nicole Kidman at a party because Trudy's a fan and a bullshitting Stuart claims to be friends with her. There's a nice subplot later on with Nate meeting a woman (Allison Tolman, of FX's FARGO) who's just as likably odd and as thoroughly comfortable about it as he is, and one laugh-out-loud reveal of Stuart's "assistant" Rory's (Kyle Mooney) new hairstyle, but their horndog, wheelchair-bound buddy Kives (Kevin Weisman) more or less gets relegated to the sideline. HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE seems poised to end on a bittersweet note, but it also needs to bring closure, so there's really nothing surprising about the crowd-pleasing wrap-up. It's hard to tell where HELLO LADIES would've ended up had HBO given it another season or two. Maybe there wasn't enough there for a long-running series, anyway. Amusing and occasionally heartfelt, HELLO LADIES: THE MOVIE is an enjoyable enough coda to a series that hit the ground running and didn't exactly switch gears, but seemed to burn brightest too early, losing some of its edgy fearlessness.

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2
(US - 2014)

Directed by Sean Anders. Written by Sean Anders and John Morris. Cast: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pine, Christoph Waltz, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Lindsay Sloane, Kelly Stables, Lennon Parham, Rob Huebel. (R, 108 mins)

As pointless sequels go, HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 isn't as stultifyingly unfunny as last year's ANCHORMAN 2, but in its own way, it's just as depressing. ANCHORMAN 2 was astoundingly bad, but that was due as much to the material as the creators' monumental self-indulgence and the misguided belief that what they were doing was setting new standards in comedic brilliance. After one of the most prolonged and aggressively obnoxious ad campaigns in cinema history, ANCHORMAN 2 was a stunning misfire that Ron Burgundy fans would rather just avoid discussing than admit how terrible it really is, and though I'm sure a burgeoning cult of apologists will someday declare it Will Ferrell's Pinkerton, it's a reassessment that's been very slow in its formation. But if nothing else, for all its infinite faults, ANCHORMAN 2 had ambition, whereas HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 is coasting from the start. Were there really enough unanswered questions and dangling plot threads from HORRIBLE BOSSES to justify a sequel? The 2011 original was an inspired and darkly hilarious look at three average guys reaching their breaking points with their abusive, asshole bosses.  It was a funny and mean farce that allowed the actors in the title roles--Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey--to let it rip in ways they never had onscreen before, with the possible exception of Spacey, who was cast because he's so good at playing this kind of asshole. There's really nowhere to take HORRIBLE BOSSES 2, so nowhere is exactly where it goes. File it with the likes of CADDYSHACK II, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S II, and BLUES BROTHERS 2000 on the list of thoroughly disposable, instantly forgettable sequels that everyone involved--from the cast to the intended audience--approaches with a sigh and a shrug like it's a clock-punching obligation.


Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), and Dale (Charlie Day), having extricated themselves from the clutches of the titular trio of supervisors, have gone into business for themselves by patenting the "Shower Buddy," a shower apparatus that dispenses shampoo, soap, and water all in one function. Looking to manufacture the item domestically and provide made-in-America jobs, they're wooed by catalog retailing magnate Bert Hansen (Christoph Waltz), who promises them some start-up money for a factory and an initial order of 100,000 units in exchange for exclusive retailing rights. Upon completion of the order, Hansen abruptly cancels it, which will send the trio into bankruptcy, at which point Hansen will buy them out for pennies on the dollar, own the patent, and set up a manufacturing deal with a Chinese factory. Enraged, Nick, Kurt, and Dale attempt to collect a hefty ransom by kidnapping Hansen's dude-bro son Rex (Chris Pine), who hates his father and becomes an unintended partner in the plot to extort him.


Of course, assorted hijinks ensue in order to pad the paper-thin plot and clumsily work in Aniston, Spacey, and Foxx, also returning as the trio's sage criminal advisor Dean "Motherfucker" Jones (fortunately for Farrell, his character was killed by Spacey's in the first film, thus sparing him from any phoned-in participation here). Spacey has two brief scenes probably shot in half a day, delivering a couple of Spacey-esque takedowns weakened by his wandering eyes clearly reading cue cards, but Aniston and Foxx have about as much to do here as Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in CADDYSHACK II. Both make fleeting appearances early on, with Kurt and Dale breaking into Aniston's nympho dentist's office to steal laughing gas only to find she's now running a sex addiction group as a way to hook up with fellow sex addicts, and both are awkwardly squeezed into the third act to beef up their screen time. Foxx's Motherfucker Jones at least gets to take part in a climactic car chase but Aniston has nothing to do except be the center of a potential four-way as Nick, Kurt, and Dale have an endless debate over which of them gets "face, puss, or butt." Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis don't even seem to be playing the same characters from the first film. Because there's nowhere for the writers to take them, they go with the easiest option: making them louder and dumber.  Day, in particular, resorts to screeching his way through, dialing it up to 11 and grating in ways that even the most fanatical IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA fan will find hard to take. Sudeikis also consistently mistakes yelling for actual comedy and gets to do an extended riff on his "Maine Justice" judge from SNL, while Bateman, again cast as the Michael Bluth-ian voice of reason (in other words, "Jason Bateman"), just looks tersely irritable throughout, like he'd rather be anywhere else.


None of the behind-the-scenes personnel from HORRIBLE BOSSES made the return trip, with the reins handed to the writing team of John Morris and Sean Anders, with Anders directing. This pair also had a hand in scripting SEX DRIVE (2008), HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (2010), the surprisingly good WE'RE THE MILLERS (2013) and the recent DUMB AND DUMBER TO (2014), but fail to bring anything interesting to the table with HORRIBLE BOSSES 2. It's never egregiously terrible, but it's bland, repetitive, and worst of all, dull. And what would a present-day studio comedy be without a montage set to The Heavy's "How You Like Me Now?" or '70s and '80s FM radio staples used for lazily ironic laughs, in this case, Toto's "Hold the Line" and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's "If You Leave"?  "I guess that'll do," seems to be this film's mission statement. The very definition of "perfunctory," it's the kind of movie you'll have already forgotten about by the time you exit the multiplex. Even the end-credits bloopers are boring, except for one crack Sudeikis makes regarding Bateman's acting that ends up being the one legitimate laugh-out-loud moment in the entire film.

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS
(UK - 1984)

Directed by Edmund Purdom and Al McGoohan (Derek Ford, Alan Birkinshaw). Written by Derek Ford and Al McGoohan (Alan Birkinshaw). Cast: Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne, Gerry Sundquist, Mark Jones, Caroline Munro, Kelly Baker, Pat Astley, Kevin Lloyd, Wendy Danvers, Lawrence Harrington. (Unrated, 86 mins)

The November 9, 1984 release of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, with its concept of a homicidal, axe-wielding maniac dressed as Santa Claus, was the subject of a major controversy, a media circus, and a ludicrously hyperbolic condemnation from Siskel & Ebert. It's not like the idea of Christmas-themed horror was new: we'd already seen Bob Clark's terrifying BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), the original "the calls are coming from inside the house!" scenario with a hidden killer stalking the stragglers at a sorority house during Christmas break, and the opening "And All Through the House" segment of Freddie Francis' TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) and Lewis Jackson's CHRISTMAS EVIL, aka YOU BETTER WATCH OUT (1980) both dealt with the idea of a killer Santa long before SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT was nearly banned because of it. The breathless panic and the cries of "What about the children?!" that surrounded SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT had more to do with the mindset of the time than anything inherently offensive in the film, which, for the record, is not very good, though even it has its one legitimately iconic moment. Thanks to HALLOWEEN (1978) and FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980), and the flood of imitators that hitched a ride on the bandwagon, the popularity of slasher films was at an all-time high. Much like today's debate over the violence in video games, there was much parental concern about things like movie violence and the "Satanic Panic" of the era, with heavy metal acts like Ozzy Osbourne, W.A.S.P., and Judas Priest being the favorite targets of outraged parents. There was a growing belief that if kids were bad, it had to be the movies they were watching, the music they were hearing, and the books they were reading.



Prior to SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT's release, protest groups announced plans to picket and demonstrate outside theaters showing the film. But, as in most cases like this, all they really succeeded in doing was drawing more attention to a cheap, forgettable film that, because of all the media hype, stayed in theaters for two weeks instead of just the one it would've lasted had the protesters simply said and done nothing at all. SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT landed in eighth place at the box office in its opening weekend, dropped significantly in its second weekend, and was gone--or "pulled from release," depending on who's telling the story--by Thanksgiving, with a May 1985 re-release generating little fanfare. It's still revered as a "classic" by '80s horror fans prone to grading on an overly nostalgic curve, and it spawned four sequels (the last two in-name-only) and an abysmal 2012 remake. But late 1984 also saw another Santa-themed slasher film that fell through the cracks: the British-made DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS only got a very limited release on December 7, 1984 by exploitation outfit 21st Century Distribution Corp. before turning up in video stores several months later courtesy of the immortal Vestron Video. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS was produced by veteran American schlockmeister Dick Randall, who had just set up shop in London after a decade-long run in Italy and Hong Kong, and Steve Minasian. Minasian was a veteran in grindhouse distribution and theatrical exhibition, a co-owner of Esquire Theaters and Hallmark Film Distributors. Minasian helped conceive the infamous "vomit bag" campaign for Hallmark's 1970 release of the German WITCHFINDER GENERAL ripoff MARK OF THE DEVIL. He was Randall's business partner on a number of 1980s European ventures, including the Spanish PIECES (1983) and the British SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986), but is perhaps best known for being involved as an investor in Georgetown Productions, the company that independently-produced FRIDAY THE 13TH. Minasian knew producer/director Sean S. Cunningham, who produced the Hallmark-released Wes Craven debut THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972). Minasian was a money man, had no creative input in FRIDAY THE 13TH or the first four sequels that carried a Georgetown Productions credit, and he isn't individually credited anywhere on the film, but that didn't stop him or Randall from exploiting that connection to the box-office phenomenon time and again throughout their partnership.

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS newspaper ad from the Temple of Schlock archives.

SLAUGHTER HIGH newspaper ad from the Brain Hammer Picks from the Crypt archives.

Purdom in a 1954 MGM publicity shot

Perhaps the most interesting figure involved in DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS was Edmund Purdom. Purdom (1924-2009) was a British actor who had some small roles in a few UK films and appeared on Broadway with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh before heading to Hollywood in search of stardom. He had bit parts in TITANIC (1953) and JULIUS CAESAR (1953), and in 1954, lucked into the lead in the lavish MGM musical THE STUDENT PRINCE. Mario Lanza quit the film over a dispute with the studio, who apparently expressed their displeasure with the star's sudden weight gain. The very popular Lanza, a beloved tenor who parlayed his voice into a movie career, was prone to binge-eating and wildly fluctuating weight. He had already recorded the soundtrack to THE STUDENT PRINCE before shooting began on the film, and as a result, MGM owned the rights to the music. This put Purdom in the awkward position of lip-syncing Lanza's vocals in a film that was actually advertised as "featuring the singing voice of Mario Lanza!" The film was a huge success, but people were going to hear Mario Lanza, not to see Edmund Purdom. Purdom's next film was the 20th Century Fox mega-budget Biblical epic THE EGYPTIAN. Marlon Brando was cast in the lead, but decided he didn't like the script and bailed at the eleventh hour. Fox courted Farley Granger and an up-and-coming Dirk Bogarde, and both declined the offer. Scrambling, they finally settled for their fourth choice--Purdom--and, coming on the heels of the Lanza brouhaha over THE STUDENT PRINCE, the Hollywood gossip rags started derisively referring to him as "The Replacement Star." MGM offered him a contract and appeared committed to making Edmund Purdom happen: he and Vic Damone romanced Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds in the musical ATHENA (1954), with Purdom's character being the only lead to get no musical numbers, presumably because MGM had no more Mario Lanza vocal tracks lying around; he starred with Lana Turner in the epic spectacle THE PRODIGAL (1955); and was billed above the likes of David Niven and George Sanders in the swashbuckler THE KING'S THIEF (1955). None of these three post-EGYPTIAN films were successes, and just like that, Purdom's Hollywood career was over. He never got past the stigma of "The Replacement Star" and after an Allied Artists quickie with 1956's STRANGE INTRUDER, he left Hollywood to test the waters of the Italian film industry. He ended up spending the rest of his life there, his career largely concentrated in Italy with a few British, Spanish, French and/or German co-productions scattered throughout his filmography.

Purdom starred in adventures, westerns, gangster dramas, and horror films during this second career, and also found much work as a voice dubber and voiceover artist. There were some prestigious Italian productions for him in the 1960s, but as time went on, he was relegated to supporting roles in everything from high-end gialli like THE FIFTH CORD (1971) to low-grade Eurotrash like Jess Franco's THE SINISTER EYES OF DR. ORLOFF (1973) and the Italian-made Randall production FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1973), featuring the infamous credit "and Boris Lugosi as Ook the Neanderthal Man." Purdom would appear as Vittorio De Sica in the 1980 TV-movie SOPHIA LOREN: HER OWN STORY and had small roles in a pair of 1983 miniseries: THE WINDS OF WAR for ABC and THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK for CBS--all American productions with scenes shot in Purdom's base of Rome--but by the 1980s, he was mostly appearing in things like Joe D'Amato's HALLOWEEN ripoff MONSTER HUNTER (1982) and grimy Randall fare like Alan Birkinshaw's INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD (1982) and the legendary PIECES, as the chainsaw-killer college dean assembling a human jigsaw puzzle out of the body parts of his victims. It was Purdom's friendship with Randall that led to their final, doomed collaboration: DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS.


Still basking in the glow of their PIECES triumph, Purdom talked Randall into letting him direct DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, where the veteran actor plays Scotland Yard Inspector Harris, investigating a string of brutal and graphically gory murders of men dressed as Santa in the days approaching Christmas. The Santas are, in no particular order, shot in the head, stabbed, have a spear run through their head and out of the mouth, forced face-first onto a grill, and in the film's most infamous scene, castrated with a straight razor while using a men's room urinal. Much of the film focuses on Kate Briosky (Belinda Mayne), the daughter of one of the victims, and her busking flautist boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist), who's immediately pegged by Harris as a suspect. There's also Harris' partner Powell (Mark Jones) doing some investigating on his own after being tipped off by sketchy journalist Giles (Alan Lake), as well as a porn palace peep show stripper (Kelly Baker) who witnessed one of the killings and is eventually abducted by the murderer.  There's an unusually large number of characters drifting in and out of the film, and many of the scenes appear awkward, choppy, and incomplete, with a seemingly romantic dinner between Harris and Kate immediately cutting to Kate alone in her apartment, or Kate suddenly seen in a waiting room and being told "Dr. Bridle will see you now," and we never see Dr. Bridle, nor was he mentioned before or after this scene, and we never know the reason nor the result of this phantom appointment. There's a reason for the frequently random, nonsensically slapdash feeling throughout DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS: even by Dick Randall standards, the production was a complete clusterfuck.


At some point during filming, Purdom was relieved of his duties as director and subsequently quit the project as an actor, with Randall handing the task of directing off to screenwriter Derek Ford. Ford was best known for scripting the excellent 1965 Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper thriller A STUDY IN TERROR and the sublimely trashy 1968 Peter Cushing plastic surgery laser hippie freakout CORRUPTION, but eventually found himself in the smutty 1970s British sex farce gutter with the likes of I AM A GROUPIE, THE SWAPPERS, SUBURBAN WIVES, and COMMUTER HUSBANDS. Randall wasn't happy with Ford's work and after a few days, fired him and brought in Alan Birkinshaw, the man responsible for the truly pathetic INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD and now in charge of saving CHRISTMAS. Now that Ford was gone, Birkinshaw was assigned to completely overhaul the script to factor in the star no longer being around, take over directing the film, and reshoot some earlier Purdom sequences with which Randall was dissatisfied. Purdom wanted to make an old-fashioned thriller, and in a revelatory archival making-of on Mondo Macabro's 2011 DVD release, he's shown directing one murder scene involving the porn-booth stripper and says "I'm not really interested in showing a lot of blood here," demonstrating a fundamental disconnect with everything Dick Randall. Both the actress and the Santa actor are not the ones in the finished film. Birkinshaw reshot this sequence with a different actress (Baker) and buckets of blood and was actually responsible for almost all of the gory murder sequences. Purdom wasn't interested in splatter, and, by all accounts, was an eccentric and well-meaning guy who wanted to direct a movie but was in over his head and really didn't know what he was doing behind the camera. This is evident in a lot of the scenes in which Purdom is acting, which have the actors positioned in odd ways in shots that have a tendency to end abruptly, sometimes in mid-sentence, in an editorial necessity that can probably be chalked up to little or no coverage. Even with Birkinshaw's reshoots, new storylines, and massive re-edits, the film just doesn't cut together well at all.

Caroline Munro in DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, for some reason

Birkinshaw rewrote much of the script, introducing the subplot about the abducted stripper (Purdom never directed Baker at all), and another explaining the long stretches where Harris, the ostensible central character played by ostensible star Purdom, is completely absent from the action. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS is entertaining for all the wrong reasons--way to waste the iconic Caroline Munro in a three-minute cameo as "herself" in a concert sequence, performing something called "Warrior of Love"--and barely hangs together, but it has its charms. Des Dolan's synth-heavy score has sections where it sounds a bit like something John Carpenter might compose on an off-day, Dick Randall aficionados will appreciate its sometimes PIECES-levels of nonsensical stupidity and incompetence, and the sight of the killer's smiling mask is undeniably effective. Birkinshaw hides behind a pseudonym, getting an "Additional scenes written and directed by Al McGoohan" credit presumably shared with Ford's equally anonymous directing contributions, and estimates that once Purdom's and Ford's useable footage was salvaged and he knew what he had to work around, he ended up directing about half of the film. Birkinshaw, the director of the 1978 video nasty KILLER'S MOON as well as dreadful remakes of THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH for Harry Alan Towers during that ill-fated late '80s Poe revival, describes Purdom as "a sweet man," but this whole grease fire begs the question: how badly do you have to fuck up and how catastrophic is the destruction left in your wake when Alan Birkinshaw is the guy who gets called in as a cleaner?

Diana Dors and Alan Lake in happier days, in an early 1970s photo with their son Jason

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS is also morbidly noteworthy for the premature and tragic ends of two of its stars. Born in 1940, Lake, a veteran British TV actor with a busy but unexceptional career, was known to UK audiences for his marriage to 1950s starlet Diana Dors in 1968 after her divorce from Richard Dawson. Dors, the British Marilyn Monroe in her prime, drifted into Shelley Winters-esque character parts as she got older but was nonetheless a popular tabloid subject throughout her life due to her sultry screen image, her weight gain as she aged, and stories of hosting celebrity orgies and homemade stag films dating as far back as the late 1950s. Lake also earned some notoriety when he served a year in prison over 1970-71 due to his part in a violent pub brawl. Dors wrote several tell-all memoirs about her storied life, and she and Lake were regulars on British talk and game shows. Dors was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1982 and was only 52 when she died in May 1984, a couple of months after Lake finished his work on CHRISTMAS. A devastated and inconsolable Lake was finding it difficult to cope with her death, and a bad situation only got worse: shortly after losing Dors, Lake was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. On October 10, 1984, five months after Dors' death and two months before the release of DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, Lake, just 44, took a shotgun to his head and ended his life, leaving the couple's 14-year-old son an orphan.


Born in 1955, Sundquist was a promising young actor who arrived on the scene in the mid '70s, and was soon labeled "the best-looking man on British TV." His biggest success in British cinemas was THE MUSIC MACHINE (1979), a knockoff of the 1977 blockbuster SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER that never got released in the US. Outside of the UK, he's known for the 1978 German sex comedy BOARDING SCHOOL, a favorite on late-night cable in the early '80s thanks to an early appearance by Nastassja Kinski, but his most high-profile role in the US was as the love interest to Esmeralda (Lesley-Anne Down) in the Anthony Hopkins-as-Quasimodo CBS/Hallmark Hall of Fame TV-movie THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1982). Sundquist also had a supporting role in the 1984 ABC miniseries THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII just prior to DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, but his momentum was quickly stalling. The actor was plagued by depression throughout his life, and he developed a serious drug problem as his career fizzled out in the mid '80s. He only managed to score a few sporadic TV guest spots over the next few years, and his personal issues worsened into the next decade. In 1993, the 37-year-old Sundquist committed suicide by jumping in front of a train at London's Norbiton train station. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS was the final film credit for both Lake and Sundquist.

Purdom in his later years

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS opened in several theaters in and around NYC on the same day as BEVERLY HILLS COP, 2010, and CITY HEAT. It never expanded nationwide and didn't attract any of the controversy or media attention heaped upon SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, which was already out of theaters and yesterday's news. DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS got some coverage in Fangoria and became a video store fixture in the VHS glory days. It's earned a solid cult following over the years, mainly due to increased interest in the trashy grindhouse legacy of Dick Randall (1926-1996), who also produced the 1980 Bruce Li epic CHALLENGE OF THE TIGER and the 1981 Weng Weng classic FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY, both of which, like PIECES, have to be seen to be believed. Purdom licked his wounds and kept working throughout the '80s and '90s, either in voice work or in brief onscreen appearances in films like the Golan-Globus prestige project THE ASSISI UNDERGROUND (1985), and in ENDLESS DESCENT (1990), PIECES director Juan Piquer Simon's contribution to the late '80s undersea monster craze. He never attempted to direct another film. His final screen appearance came in Pupi Avati's medieval Italian epic KNIGHTS OF THE QUEST (2001), headlined by F. Murray Abraham, Thomas Kretschmann, and an unlikely Edward Furlong. He died of natural causes on January 1, 2009 at the age of 84, a highly recognizable, respected figure to fans of Eurotrash cult cinema. Purdom seemed to realize very quickly that Hollywood stardom wasn't in the cards for him, and he instead stayed consistently busy in movies that were mostly far beneath him, but he seemed OK with it. He was a working actor who went where the work was. He likely lived a very comfortable life of luxury in Europe, but he's still regarded--if at all--by devotees of Hollywood's Golden Era as "The Replacement Star," a heavily-hyped washout and the George Lazenby of his day, a strong and capable actor thrown into a can't-win situation and rejected by moviegoers mostly for not being someone else.

THE CONGRESS
(Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/Belgium/France/India - 2013; 
2014 US release)


Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008) was a unique, gut-wrenching animated documentary with Folman addressing traumatic, long-suppressed memories of his time serving in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War. It was powerful enough to be banned in Lebanon, and Folman immediately began conceiving his next film, THE CONGRESS. Shot in 2011 and loosely based on Solaris author Stanislaw Lem's 1971 novel The Futurological Congress, THE CONGRESS is split just about evenly between live-action and animation, a hard sci-fi mindbender headlined by Robin Wright as a fictionalized, alternate-universe version of herself. A single mother of two--snarky daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and mildly autistic Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who suffers from a rare disease that's slowly robbing him of his hearing and vision--who lives in a refurbished hangar next to an airport, Wright has been out of the Hollywood scene for some time and has a reputation as an unreliable, temperamental diva with an abundance of burned bridges in her wake. Her concerned, fatherly longtime agent Al (Harvey Keitel) laments the squandered potential after THE PRINCESS BRIDE and comes to her with an offer from Miramount Pictures: sell her digital likeness for a massive, one-time lump sum payment and have that likeness function as an undetectable CGI "Robin Wright" for 20 years worth of acting while she's free to live her life and never worry about working again ("Keanu Reeves and Michelle Williams just did it!" Al insists). Miramount head Jeff Green (Danny Huston, clearly basing his performance on what we imagine Harvey Weinstein to be) lays it on the line for Wright: she's got a bad reputation, she's not getting any younger, and her son has some serious health issues that will require her attention.  "You gotta be what, 45? 48?  You can be 34 forever!" he promises. Wright agrees to have her body and the gamut of her emotional responses scanned and captured and then Folman jumps ahead 20 years. An aged Wright is venturing to an event known as "The Congress," which takes place in a world where one must morph into animated form to visit. Six other "Robin Wright"'s are at The Congress, and she learns that the digital manifestations of herself that have been used in movies also "exist" in this animated realm. She finds she's been the star of a blockbuster sci-fi franchise called REBEL ROBOT ROBIN, and that the powers-that-be at Miramount have another plan for "Robin Wright." Movies are done, she's told by the animated recreation of Green. Miramount has gotten out of the movie business to become a pharmaceutical empire. Celebrity is a substance to be consumed. "Robin Wright" will now be available to her fans in liquid form.


There's some heady themes running throughout THE CONGRESS, a trippy and wildly ambitious film that unfortunately gets lost up its own ass time and again. The idea of "experiencing" your favorite celebrity recalls--and predates, considering it was conceived before--Brandon Cronenberg's ANTIVIRAL, but it's not really explored by Folman, and the notion of the digital actress is straight out of Andrew Niccol's underrated and virtually forgotten Al Pacino bomb S1M0NE, while the ability to traverse real and animated worlds owes a bit to Ralph Bakshi's COOL WORLD. As Wright enters the world of The Congress, the film incorporates numerous animation styles that alternately channel Bakshi, Rene Laloux (FANTASTIC PLANET, LIGHT YEARS), the 1981 cult classic HEAVY METAL, and the work of PINK FLOYD: THE WALL animator Gerald Scarfe. Folman is aiming at so many targets that THE CONGRESS eventually collapses in on itself and becomes a ponderous, patience-testing slog. He has some pointed observations about the banality of modern pop culture, the struggle of aging actresses in an industry that worships youth, and a sense of societal disconnect in the way that the world of The Congress is ultimately shown to be the product of Wright's subconscious. There is no reality--only what people construct in their mind after taking a pill available to everyone in the dystopia of 2033--everyone literally lives in their own world. The film looks superb--the production design of the live-action sequences is eye-catching and the animated sections have some surreal, midnight-movie appeal--but Folman has a pronounced lack of discipline and focus here and can't really decide what his film is about. Genuinely emotional moments are scattered here and there, and there's a good performance by Paul Giamatti as Aaron's sympathetic doctor, but a second-half subplot with animated Wright falling in love with activist Dylan Truliner (voiced by Jon Hamm), and joining him in a rebellion to break out of the animated world goes nowhere, and while Wright is fine, her casting makes no sense. Do we know all that much about the real Robin Wright?  The idea of presenting herself as this horrible Hollywood asshole who closed every door that was opened for her seems pointless without comedic motivation, like seeing Ted Danson or Michael J. Fox playing boorish versions of themselves for laughs on CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. Usually, in those instances, the whole reason is to play off and have fun with a celebrity's image (like, say, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH). What's the point of Wright playing this scripted, dramatic version of Robin Wright, unlikable and with a fading career, if it says nothing about the real Robin Wright?  Has anyone ever read a negative Robin Wright story in a tabloid? She may as well be playing a faded actress named "Jane Smith." This is the kind of meta role that could've used an 45-or-older actress with a history of being difficult on a movie set, like a Sharon Stone or a Madonna, or maybe an actress like Catherine Keener, by all accounts a nice woman who's great at portraying cold, brittle bitches and it could've made a statement about the pitfalls of typecasting. As it is, THE CONGRESS is a stylish and extremely well-made film but in terms of story, it's just blowing a lot of hot air and it's ultimately a long, slow road to tedium. A major disappointment after Folman's triumphant WALTZ WITH BASHIR. (Unrated, 123 mins)


GUTSHOT STRAIGHT
(US - 2014)


There's enough intriguing, quirky touches and flashes of a legitimately interesting film in GUTSHOT STRAIGHT to make you wish it was something more. Its biggest fault is that there really just isn't much of a story, and what's there has been done countless times in the past. But director Justin Steele commendably avoids going for yet another belated Tarantino knockoff and does a really nice job of capturing the seedy side of Vegas that you don't see much of in movies anymore. He catches a lot of location footage on the fly, as evidenced by tourists looking at the camera in a welcome throwback to the old-school guerrilla tactics on the mean streets of Times Square in the '70s and '80s, and he has scenes take place not in the flashy, tourist-friendly establishments, but in the aging and past-their-prime Vegas casinos that have seen much better days. The film stars CSI's George Eads (also one of 30 credited producers) as Jack, a perpetual Vegas small-timer in a porkpie hat who tries to pass himself off as a high-roller but always loses big. He's $10,000 in the hole to loan shark Paulie Trunks (a surprisingly well-cast Steven Seagal) and sees no way out until a chance meeting with rich gambler Duffy (Stephen Lang). Duffy presents Jack with a business opportunity that happens to be worth $10,000: "I want you to fuck my wife," Duffy says, adding "$20,000 if you let me watch." Understandably skeeved out by the proposition, though he's tempted once he sees Duffy's wife May (AnnaLynne McCord), Jack declines and when he rejects $50,000, a scuffle ensues and Jack ends up killing Duffy in self-defense. May takes charge of the situation, telling Jack that Duffy was abusive, that she was a prisoner, and she'll deal with disposing of the body. Jack goes about his business until he realizes he left his wallet at Duffy's house, and when he tries to sneak back in the next night, he encounters the outwardly gregarious but incredulously sinister Lewis (Ted Levine), who wants to know where his brother Duffy has gone.


GUTSHOT STRAIGHT is the sort of indie-noir that filled the new release shelves of video stores 20 years ago in the wake of sleepers like RED ROCK WEST and THE LAST SEDUCTION. There's bits of HARD EIGHT mixed with BODY HEAT and INDECENT PROPOSAL and the cast is populated with colorful character actors and recognizable faces (there's also Vinnie Jones, doing his patented "fookin''ell, mate!" shtick as a Paulie Trunks strongarm, and a useless one-scene bit by WAYNE'S WORLD's Tia Carrere), but there's just not much here and Jerry Rapp's script is lacking. The climax doesn't make much sense, Jack is too arrogantly full of himself and too stupid for the audience to really get on his side, and it's painfully obvious from the start that May is your standard-issue femme fatale. The film plays out as if the actors are working from a checklist rather than a script, which may explain why it never feels like Jack is in serious danger, and that overwhelming, crushing feeling of there being no way out is essential for a film like this to really work. There are worthwhile elements to GUTSHOT STRAIGHT--where most films today hold off any credits until the end, this has got one of the best opening credits sequences of the year, a total homage to the fun and catchy opening credits of the 007 franchise. I'm not sure why it's in this movie, but it works beautifully. Levine and Lang are always effective at playing creeps, and Seagal, in rare character actor mode, steals the few scenes he's in, breaking out a not-bad Vito Corleone voice as the feared mob figure with an inexplicable soft spot for the hapless Jack. If you watch enough of Seagal's recent starring vehicles, then you know it's a small victory if you can get him to simply show up for work awake, let alone turn in an actual performance. According to Eads in the DVD's making-of segment, Seagal was only on the set for one day, so maybe he was excited about not having to stick around, but he's very good here. He gets a terrific monologue about why he's called "Paulie Trunks" and has a few genuinely funny, possibly ad-libbed lines and though his screen time is limited, he makes every moment count. GUTSHOT STRAIGHT has a lot of positives in its favor, and there's much here for Steele to build upon, but it just needed a stronger foundation than the weak script provides. (R, 89 mins)

THE NAKED FACE
(US - 1985)

Written and directed by Bryan Forbes. Cast: Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, Elliott Gould, Anne Archer, Art Carney, David Hedison, Ron Parady, Deanna Dunagan, John Kapelos, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Dick Sollenberger, Cynthia Baker Schuyler, Virginia Smith. (R, 105 mins)

Action movies and ninjas may have been what kept the lights on during their heyday, but Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus wanted to take Cannon in a classier direction. Occasional prestige projects like Jason Miller's THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON (1982) would get made, but it wasn't until 1984 that Golan & Globus started to actively court respectable filmmakers who were on the outs with Hollywood or fed up with playing the major studio game: 1984 saw the release of John Cassavetes' LOVE STREAMS and Golan's own Woody Allen-esque OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE, while 1985 brought Robert Altman's FOOL FOR LOVE, Liliana Cavani's THE BERLIN AFFAIR, and two American films from famed Russian auteur Andrei Konchalovsky with MARIA'S LOVERS and RUNAWAY TRAIN. With the late 1984 hit MISSING IN ACTION, and then the likes of MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING, DEATH WISH 3, INVASION, U.S.A., and AMERICAN NINJA, 1985 was really the year that Cannon blew up and that beautiful logo became a weekly staple in American multiplexes. However, there were several big-star Cannon offerings in 1985 that, for various reasons, fell through the cracks and didn't get much exposure: Anthony Harvey's offbeat dark comedy GRACE QUIGLEY, an unlikely pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte in a doomed production whose troubles began when original director Hal Ashby quit during pre-production and ended with the film existing in three different versions that satisfied no one; Desmond Davis' Agatha Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, starring Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway, and Christopher Plummer; J. Lee Thompson's THE AMBASSADOR, a very loose adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 52 Pick-Up, with Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, and Rock Hudson in his final big-screen appearance; and THE ASSISI UNDERGROUND, written and directed by Polish author Alexander Ramati and based on his own novel, dealing with the Catholic Church's rescue of Italian Jews from the Nazis. ASSISI, starring CHARIOTS OF FIRE's Ben Cross, Maximilian Schell, Irene Papas, and James Mason in his last film (it was released over a year after his death), was originally a three-hour epic that Cannon chopped down to two before they stealthily unveiled it in a few markets.




One such 1985 cast-off was THE NAKED FACE, based on a novel by Sidney Sheldon. The project was chosen by Roger Moore, who was growing tired of his James Bond persona and was looking to branch out into more serious acting roles. Moore tried to leave the 007 franchise after 1981's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, but was wooed back for two more films: 1983's OCTOPUSSY and 1985's A VIEW TO A KILL. Golan & Globus were happy to accommodate Moore and even went along with his recommendation of hiring Bryan Forbes to write and direct the film. One of Moore's oldest and dearest friends since the two met while in the British Army just after WWII, Forbes was a veteran British journeyman with numerous highly respected films to his credit: THE ANGRY SILENCE (1960), THE L-SHAPED ROOM (1962), SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON (1964), KING RAT (1965), THE WRONG BOX (1966), and his biggest commercial success, THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975). He also wrote several novels and acted occasionally, with his best-known role being Turk Thrust, the guitar-strumming attendant at the nudist colony visited by Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwards' A SHOT IN THE DARK (1964). Forbes also produced and co-wrote Basil Dearden's doppelganger suspense thriller THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF (1970), regularly cited by Moore as his personal favorite performance of his career. Forbes took the job and THE NAKED FACE was shot entirely on location in Chicago in the fall of 1983 when Moore had some downtime between OCTOPUSSY and A VIEW TO A KILL. During this period, Moore also managed to fit in a cameo as a post-plastic surgery Clouseau in 1983's misbegotten CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER, where he was credited as "Turk Thrust II" as an inside joke for his buddy Forbes that's more amusing than anything in the movie.


THE NAKED FACE presents Moore as Dr. Judd Stevens, a successful Chicago shrink who finds himself the target of a killer. First, a patient is stabbed two blocks from his office after Stevens loans him his raincoat and he's mistaken for the doctor. Then Stevens' receptionist is killed. Stevens, who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident two years earlier, leads a quiet life and is greatly disturbed by these events. Not helping matters is Lt. McGreevy (Rod Steiger), the irate cop assigned to the case with the more sympathetic Det. Angeli (Elliott Gould who had just starred in OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE). Loud, bad-tempered bigot McGreevy thinks Stevens is the killer and has something to hide, so he harasses the doctor mercilessly, probing every aspect of his life to find incriminating evidence against him. McGreevy's beef with Stevens is personal: several years earlier, McGreevy's former partner was killed by a perp who got to plead insanity thanks to Stevens' testimony. McGreevy ignores any leads that don't involve arresting Stevens, and even when two gunmen break into his apartment and try to kill him, Stevens still can't convince McGreevy that someone is trying to kill him. Angeli sees that McGreevy is trying to railroad Stevens and gets him taken off the case, which then adds him to McGreevy's endless shit list. While Angeli actually works the case, Stevens resorts to eccentric private eye Morgens (Art Carney), who finds a bomb planted in Stevens' car and quickly finds out who's causing all the mayhem, as McGreevy secretly follows Angeli to stay peripherally involved in the case, plotting his next move.


THE NAKED FACE is a simple and straightforward thriller with some moments of genuine suspense and a good performance by Moore. Moore seems enthused to be away from his winking and increasingly self-deprecating James Bond act and playing a real character who's often presented as weak and vulnerable. Frequently sporting thick lenses in a set of large and unflattering eyeglass frames (even by 1985 standards), Moore's Stevens is hardly a fighting man of action and takes his share of physical and verbal abuse throughout. When he's trapped in his apartment by a gunman, he's practically cowering in the corner of his bedroom when he's rescued by his surgeon brother-in-law (David Hedison, Moore's LIVE AND LET DIE Felix Leiter), who scares away the intruder. There's no wry, snide one-liners here and Moore is quite good in a more subdued role than audiences were accustomed to seeing him play. The major problem with THE NAKED FACE, other than its overbearing score by Michael J. Lewis, is that once the antagonist and their motivation are revealed, your response will likely be along the lines of "And?!" It seems like a lot of people are killed for not much of a reason, and having the villain order his flunkies to kidnap Stevens and bring him to his base of operations so he can talk and talk and over-explain his motive and address Stevens in a dismissive tone seems like something that would happen in a 007 movie. Forbes also changes the ending of the book in a way that does nothing to help the film, which fades to black on a truly bizarre note that doesn't seem to know the difference between "open-ended ambiguity" and "opening a whole new can of worms." The ending of the film wants to be a shocking twist, but it's handled very poorly and comes off as botched and clumsy.


There's still a lot to like in the mostly enjoyable THE NAKED FACE. Though Gould, Carney, Hedison, and Anne Archer (as one of Stevens' patients), turn in solid performances, they have little to do (the rest of the cast is rounded out by Chicago-based actors, including John Kapelos and former Northwestern University theater professor Ron Parady in prominent supporting roles, which begs the question: where's Ron Dean?). Perhaps everyone was just deferring and leaving the scenery for Steiger to gorge himself on. Shouting throughout like a Windy City Chief Gillespie and sporting a terrible toupee, Steiger turns in one of his great bellicose asshole performances in THE NAKED FACE. Moore may have been trying to show some range here with a sincere, serious performance, but Steiger just goes Full Throttle Rod, and while it could easily be construed as self-indulgent overacting, it's a performance that works considering the all-consuming bitterness of the character he's playing. It's hardly the most out-of-control he ever was in a film, and it still pales in comparison to his legendary "You wanna fuck me?!"outburst to Danny Aiello in the otherwise insignificant THE JANUARY MAN (1989), but still, the incomparable Steiger is on fire in THE NAKED FACE.


THE NAKED FACE wasn't the breakaway from Bond that Moore anticipated. Cannon sat on it for over a year before dumping it in a handful of theaters--mostly in the Chicago market--for a one-week run on January 25, 1985. There were reports of disagreements between Forbes and Golan, particularly when Moore's mother became gravely ill during production and Forbes rearranged the shooting schedule to allow the star to take a week off to visit her in London without consulting Golan about it first. A furious Golan reportedly slashed the budget and shortened the shooting schedule, forcing Forbes to make rushed compromises that may be an indication of why the film seems so clumsily-structured in its second half (among other things in the unsatisfying finale, it feels like there should be one more scene between Moore's and Steiger's characters). Whatever the reason--and the clashing with filmmakers and the shelving of relatively prestigious fare out of spite sounds more like Harvey Weinstein than Menahem Golan--THE NAKED FACE was one of several high-end, big-name Cannon projects from 1985 that were buried and quickly forgotten as Golan & Globus turned their attention to the money generated by guys like Chuck Norris, Charles Bronson, and Michael Dudikoff. It was also Forbes' last big-screen directing effort. He went on to make the 1990 Showtime miniseries THE ENDLESS GAME, based on his own 1985 spy novel, and he co-wrote Richard Attenborough's CHAPLIN (1992) before retiring from movies. Forbes died in 2013 at the age of 86.

Sir Roger Moore in a publicity photo for his 2014 memoir One Lucky Bastard

Now 87, Sir Roger Moore has acted sparingly in the years following his 1985 retirement from the world of 007, instead focusing on charity work and his tireless humanitarian efforts (he was knighted in 2003 for his work with UNICEF). Cannon's proposed remake of the classic GUNGA DIN, announced in 1988 with Ben Kingsley in the title role and Moore, Michael Caine, and Sean Connery as British soldiers, obviously never happened, though Moore would star with Caine in the straight-to-video comedy BULLSEYE! (1991) for Golan's short-lived, post-Cannon outfit 21st Century Film Corporation. He played the villain in the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle THE QUEST (1996) and had campy turns opposite the Spice Girls in SPICE WORLD (1998) and as a flamboyant passenger on a gay cruise ship, aggressively hitting on Horatio Sanz ("Would you like a bite of my sausage?") in the Cuba Gooding Jr. atrocity BOAT TRIP (2003). He's done some voice work in a few animated films, usually spoofing his 007 image (2010's CATS & DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE had Moore voicing debonair feline spy Tab Lazenby in a joke almost certainly over the heads of the film's intended audience), and in 2006, recorded essential DVD audio commentaries for all seven of his Bond outings. He's written a personal history of the James Bond films (2012's Bond on Bond: The Ultimate Book on 50 Years of Bond Movies), and penned two enormously entertaining memoirs (2008's My Word is My Bond and 2014's One Lucky Bastard), and even if he isn't busy on the big screen, he shows no signs of slowing down.  Kino Lorber recently released THE NAKED FACE on Blu-ray, and it's a shame they didn't get Moore to contribute a commentary. As his books and his work on the 007 DVDs demonstrate, he's grown into one of the cinema's great raconteurs. Let's face it: Roger Moore was never going to win an Academy Award. He's rarely busted his ass as an actor and most of his non-007 career choices seemed dictated by where the films were being shot and how nice of a working vacation they'd provide. But Moore has always been the kind of charismatic guy who could get away with that. He's never pretended to be a great actor, but he's a class act and many of those critical of his more lighthearted interpretation of 007 have rightfully come around to appreciating him as a living legend in his emeritus years.

DYING OF THE LIGHT
(US/Bahamas - 2014)

Written and directed by Paul Schrader. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Anton Yelchin, Alexander Karim, Irene Jacob, Ayman Hamdouchi, Claudius Peters, Adetomiwa Edun, Robert G. Slade, Serben Celea, Silas Carson, Arsha Aghdasi. (R, 94 mins)

Evan Lake (Nicolas Cage) is a legend at the CIA headquarters in Langley. He's received virtually every honor the CIA can bestow. One of the most brilliant minds in the history of the agency and a loner who's devoted his entire life to his country, Lake's been saddled with "temporary" desk duty that's now in its sixth year. He's desperate to get back in the field, but his right hand twitches, he drinks too much, and he's been prone to mood swings that are becoming more erratic by the day. He also hasn't been able to let go of a Beirut assignment from 22 years earlier where he was captured and brutally tortured by terrorist Mohammed Banir (Alexander Karim), who repeatedly beat him over the head with an oar and snipped off part his ear before an extraction team swarmed in, took out Banir and his men, and rescued Lake. Lake hasn't shaken the gnawing notion that Banir is still alive, and when he brings it up around the office, it usually provokes eye-rolls and a stern word from the CIA chief to drop it. And the news just got worse for Lake: he's been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, an aggressive brain disease similar to Alzheimer's that provokes difficulty focusing, outbursts, lack of emotional control, and wildly inappropriate overreactions. Respected around the office but stand-offish and cold, Lake's only work friend is young analyst Milton Schultz (Anton Yelchin), who's been doing some investigating in his spare time and gets a hit on a medication that's being smuggled into Bucharest after being prescribed by a Kenya-based doctor (Serben Celea). It's a seldom-used med that treats a rare genetic blood disorder that killed Banir's father and that Banir is known to carry. Knowing Banir has associates in both Mombasa and Bucharest, Schultz presents his findings to Lake, who is more convinced than ever that Banir faked his death and is alive, if not well. When the CIA honchos refuse to hear him out and practically force him to retire when his efforts to conceal his condition fail, Lake has a meltdown that ends up getting him escorted out of the building. With nothing to lose and wanting to nail Banir and prove he was right all along, Lake decides to spend what little time he has left finding Banir and exacting revenge. Lake and Schultz go rogue, heading to Romania where Lake attempts to infiltrate Banir's off-the-grid hiding place by posing as the new hematologist being secretly paid to visit and treat him.


DYING OF THE LIGHT sounds like a standard-issue post-9/11 terrorism thriller, and that's pretty much what it is. But that's not what writer/director Paul Schrader had in mind. Schrader, the oft-embattled '70s auteur whose screenplays include the Martin Scorsese essentials TAXI DRIVER (1976), RAGING BULL (1980), and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988) and whose directorial credits feature BLUE COLLAR (1978), AMERICAN GIGOLO (1980), CAT PEOPLE (1982), and AFFLICTION (1997), had the film taken away from him during post-production, when the producers decided they didn't like the version he assembled, saying it looked nothing like the script he originally presented to them. In October, Schrader, backed by Cage, Yelchin, and co-producer Nicolas Winding Refn (DRIVE), all contractually forbidden to publicly badmouth the film, staged a silent protest on social media that went viral, where they simply wore T-shirts with the contractual clause about not badmouthing the movie printed on the front. Schrader said nothing, other than he was locked out of the editing room and the released version of DYING OF THE LIGHT is not his work, while primary producer Grindstone Entertainment and distributor Lionsgate have predictably offered no comment.

Clockwise from top left: Cage, Yelchin, Schrader and Refn display their grievances with the producers and distributor of DYING OF THE LIGHT

Everything on screen was indeed shot by Schrader, but of course, editing can make a huge difference. Film Comment's Kevin Jagernauth has seen both versions of DYING OF THE LIGHT and says the differences aren't that extensive but that the sense of terror and disorientation in Cage's character has been downplayed in the released cut. In its present form, DYING OF THE LIGHT's biggest sin is its bland, generic execution, looking and playing very much like any random Romania-shot straight-to-DVD actioner. The action is mainly confined to the last 10-15 minutes and feels crammed in, and most of the way, it's a talky drag with performances that never really click. Yelchin is completely miscast, while Cage sporting a gray version of one of his new Christopher Lee hairpieces, has been given a free pass to Cage it up thanks to the symptoms of his character's illness. He has a few of his patented outbursts, loves to overdo the hand twitch, gets to shout "As-salamu alaykum, asshole!" and absurdly mispronounces "Benghazi" to keep himself amused. There's fleeting hints of a more serious character study with Lake, and Schrader could probably draw a straight line through his past characters like Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER, William Devane's Charles Rane in ROLLING THUNDER (1977), Willem Dafoe's John LeTour in LIGHT SLEEPER (1992), Nick Nolte's Wade Whitehouse in AFFLICTION, plus others, directly to Evan Lake. They're all men who feel lost and alienated from the world and are reinvigorated when they find a purpose--typically revenge of some sort. That sometimes comes across in some of DYING OF THE LIGHT's more introspective moments, but those are few and far between. What's here is as much of a standard B-actioner that Grindstone and the producers could assemble. It could've just as easily been directed by regular Grindstone hack Brian A. Miller (THE OUTSIDER, THE PRINCE) and starred Dominic Purcell.  Refn was attached to direct in the earliest pre-production stages in 2010, along with Harrison Ford as Lake and Channing Tatum as Schultz, but that fell apart when Ford bolted after disagreeing with the ending of Schrader's script, which does stay intact even in this compromised version.


Obviously, the behind-the-scenes discord with DYING OF THE LIGHT is more interesting than anything that's in the movie. Whatever its intentions, it's yet another in a long line of Redbox-ready Nic Cage trifles that seem to come along every couple of months, allowing him to chew the scenery and add to the endless YouTube "Nic Cage Freaks Out!!!" clips.  He's almost a pet doing tricks at this point. Perhaps we'll never know what really went down, but at this point, it's hardly shocking when it comes to Schrader. Back in 2003, he found himself in a very similar situation when Morgan Creek execs took his EXORCIST prequel away from him when they didn't appreciate the cerebral, spiritual film he made that featured very little in the way of levitation, green vomit, and mothers sucking cocks in Hell. Renny Harlin was hired to reshoot some scenes and beef up the crowd-pleasing horror factor, but his additions became so extensive that Schrader's version was scrapped entirely and completely refilmed by Harlan as the awful EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING (2004) with the same lead actor (the patient and presumably well-compensated Stellan Skarsgard). The story caused such a stir with Hollywood insiders and fans that Schrader's shelved version, retitled DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST, was given a limited release in 2005. It's not always successful, but it's very character-driven and intelligently-written, and it's certainly better than Harlan's remake.

Schrader with his stars during a break in filming

The 68-year-old Schrader has made great films over his long career, but he never seemed to get over the demise of 1970s maverick auteurism in the wake of Michael Cimino's United Artists-bankrupting HEAVEN'S GATE (1980).  Like Terry Gilliam, he appears to enjoy putting himself in situations where he's David taking on the Goliath-like "system." I'm all for giving a filmmaker of Schrader's stature as much wiggle room as he wants. He's earned it, but he's also been in the business long enough to know that a theory-filled religious drama with EXORCIST in the title wasn't going to fly with anyone and that the producers would eventually get their way (was he completely unaware of William Peter Blatty's battles with the same Morgan Creek guys on 1990's THE EXORCIST III?). But even when he works outside the studio system and helms the partially crowd-funded THE CANYONS (2013), the result is a self-indulgent disaster. Did Schrader not see this coming when he got in bed with a bunch of B action producers like Grindstone and the Bahamas-based Tin Res Entertainment and tried to make a serious, meaningful film?  Did he think Refn would have enough clout to get him his way? Do any of these guys have an understanding of the business in which they work?  Schrader is living in a past where all filmmakers have final cut and it's all about art. It would be great if it could be that way, and it was until Cimino ruined it for everyone, but has Schrader heard of GANGS OF NEW YORK, the film that proved even Martin Scorsese doesn't get final cut and has to answer to his backers? Schrader answering to no one gave us THE CANYONS. I got the impression from that film that Schrader was bitter and angry about a lot of things, and maybe he's justified. Like many of his protagonists, Schrader has been left on the fringes and removed from the process after demonstrating an inability to adapt to a changing world. When he made THE CANYONS, he said he was on the cutting edge of a revolution with crowd-funding. Now, here he is, a year later, fighting the same old battles and expecting a different outcome. Maybe Schrader's director's cut of DYING IN THE LIGHT is his masterpiece. I doubt it, but I'd love to see this once-relevant and frequently brilliant filmmaker knock one out of the park again. Schrader deserves better, but at the same time, you have to wonder if he, like Terry Gilliam, brings a lot of this on himself.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS
(Belgium/France/Luxembourg - 2014)


With 2010's AMER, the French filmmaking team of Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet wore their love of the Italian giallo on their sleeves, fashioning an extremely stylish film whose visual intoxication was largely smoke & mirrors obscuring the fact that they didn't have much to say other than "We really love early Dario Argento movies." Though it contained obvious homages to Argento and Mario Bava, and eventually featured the belated appearance of a black-gloved killer, AMER wasn't so much a giallo as it was a filmmaking experiment that co-opted the style of the giallo, much like Peter Strickland's frustrating BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (2013).  Forzani and Cattet have returned with THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, and it's an altogether more satisfying experience, even if they let their story unfold with little regard for narrative flow or a coherent plot. STRANGE COLOUR is the kind of trippy descent into madness where everything might be imaginary and almost nothing makes sense, but it doesn't matter. It's a triumph of style over substance, and it would seem that since AMER, the filmmakers are at least attempting to pay lip service to the idea of plot mechanics and committed themselves to utilizing the giallo style for something that could be mostly deemed a giallo. Of course, there's the endless visual references and the appropriation of the era's score cues by the likes of Bruno Nicolai, Ennio Morricone, Franco Micalizzi, Nico Fidenco, and Alessandro Alessandroni, but every scene and every shot is a small masterpiece of dazzling artistry. Whether the filmmakers are using a Brian De Palma split screen, conveying the claustophobic, walls-closing-in psychological terror of Roman Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy" (REPULSION, ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE TENANT), staging an innovative and highly-choreographed Argento-style murder (hearing noises in the apartment above, a man drills a small hole in the ceiling and sneaks into said apartment while his wife listens with a stethoscope and hears the killer's steps approaching her husband as she witnesses the murder through the hole in the ceiling), or simply granting us the sight of a few Lucio Fulci maggots, their love of that era of Italian thrillers bleeds as profusely as the victims onscreen. THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS is probably a love-it-or-hate-it proposition and those unfamiliar with gialli may scoff at the perceived pretentiousness of it all, but even if you're not a fan, it's awfully difficult to not be seduced by the virtuosi filmmaking on constant display.


Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange, who has a striking resemblance to Willem Dafoe) returns from a business trip to his lush, ornate building and has to break his door in when it's chain-locked from the inside and his wife Edwige (Ursula Bedena) is nowhere to be found in the apartment. None of the neighbors have seen her and instead, they complain to the building manager (Sam Louwyck) about Dan. Incredulous detective Vincentelli (Jean-Michel Vovk) finds Dan's story increasingly difficult to believe, and doesn't buy his claims of a mysterious bearded man (Joe Koener) sneaking into his apartment when none of the other neighbors have seen him. As Edwige's absence goes on and all manner of psychosexual imagery abounds, Dan's grip on reality and sanity slips as he, Vincentelli, and the building manager all have their own neuroses exposed, all involving an alluring mystery woman known as "Laura," while a mad killer makes their way through secret corridors behind the walls, emerging from hiding to stab people in the head. Argento is the chief influence here, especially with the production design of Dan's apartment building evoking Mater Tenebrarum's NYC stronghold in INFERNO (1980), and Dan's discovery of a dark secret behind a false wall and his misreading of a vital clue being callbacks to DEEP RED (1975). But there's more: certain portions recall the fashion gialli of Sergio Martino, whose THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971) and YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (1972), along with Giuliano Carnimeo's WHAT ARE THOSE STRANGE DROPS OF BLOOD ON JENNIFER'S BODY? aka THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS (1971) helped coin the film's awkwardly verbose title. Dreamy, slo-mo shots of beautiful women with long, Medusa-like hair draped over pillows are straight from Fulci's A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (1971). THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS does get too obfuscating for its own good on occasion, especially the long, circular sequence where an hallucinating Dan keeps buzzing himself into the building, and there's a few instances where Forzani and Cattet hit a wall and the film has to get itself back on track. They don't break any new ground here, instead mining decades-old material and presenting it in a way that's fresh, alive, and fascinating. It makes little sense in terms of linear plot, but it doesn't matter. Let THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS wash over you and cast its spell. It's an enigmatic, nightmarish, and stunningly beautiful film. (Unrated, 102 mins; also streaming on Netflix Instant)


DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD
(Norway/Denmark/UK/US/Iceland - 2014)


After licking the wounds incurred from 2013's HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, his disastrous attempt to break into Hollywood, Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola goes back to his roots with an English-language sequel to his 2009 cult zombie hit DEAD SNOW. Intermittently amusing but not nearly as much as it thought it was, DEAD SNOW nevertheless got a lot of love from the horror community with a style that attempted to emulate early Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson as a group of vacationing skiers encountered an army of resurrected Nazi undead. The last thing the world needs is one more zombie movie, but Wirkola surpasses all expectations with bigger-budgeted and wildly inspired follow-up that's got something to offend everyone. Beginning moments after the events of the first film, sole survivor Martin (Vegar Hoel, promoted to co-writer with Wirkola and co-star Stig Frode Henriksen) manages to get away from the horde of flesh-eaters led by zombified Nazi Gen. Herzog (Orjan Gamst) and winds up in a hospital, where he's accused of killing all of his friends and can't convince the cops that the zombies did it. Doctors have also surgically attached what they think is Martin's right arm, which he chainsawed off immediately after he was bitten. The reattached arm actually belongs to Herzog, and now Martin's right arm has immeasurable strength and the ability to reanimate the dead by touch. He escapes from the hospital and makes his way to a nearby town, which is exactly where Herzog's army is heading, still following Hitler's orders to invade and destroy. With the cops on his trail, Martin befriends barely-closeted local museum employee Glenn Kenneth (Henriksen) and adopts an affable and helpful zombie sidekick (Kristoffer Joner) that he can keep putting in dangerous situations and revive if necessary. They're soon joined by a trio of nerdy American siblings calling themselves The Zombie Squad--Daniel (Martin Starr of FREAKS AND GEEKS, PARTY DOWN, and SILICON VALLEY), STAR WARS-obsessed Monica (Jocelyn DeBoer), and brainy Blake (Ingrid Haas)--and they get additional help from a reanimated--and still pissed-off--Russian platoon for a BRAVEHEART-style throwdown where nothing is too over-the-top.


DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD is one of the few zombie comedies that comes close to replicating the anarchic, anything-goes, fuck-you-if-can't-take-a-joke spirit of Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE: anyone can be killed in any number of hilariously horrifying yet slapsticky ways, whether they're infants in strollers or geriatrics in scooters; resourceful zombies yank out some guy's intestines so they can siphon gasoline from a bus to a tank; Martin spends the entire film covered in blood and there's no shortage of inventive ways Wirkola has him forgetting to realize his own strength with Herzog's supercharged arm, with a disastrous attempt at CPR on a little kid being particularly memorable and gross; endless impalings, smashed heads, and creative and incredibly gory zombie kills, and in one truly off-the-rails segment, a female zombie coming back to life and screwing her still-grieving boyfriend, all to the tune of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." I didn't really get all the love DEAD SNOW received from fans, but DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD is an improvement across-the-board, in every aspect. It's the PUNISHER: WAR ZONE to DEAD SNOW's THE PUNISHER. Fun performances all around, and it gets a lot of mileage from its visiting American cast members, who help make this the most oddly-appealing zombie-battling ensemble this side of SHAUN OF THE DEAD.  Back home after an ill-fated Hollywood sojourn, Wirkola gets it right and delivers the gonzo line-crosser that the first film should've been. (R, 100 mins)



FRANK
(UK/Ireland/US - 2014)


Inspired by Welsh journalist Jon Ronson's brief late '80s tenure as the keyboardist in Frank Sidebottom's band, FRANK updates the setting to the present day and gained some film festival notoriety as the indie where Michael Fassbender spends 95% of the film wearing an oversized papier-mache head. The head is almost identical to the one sported by "Frank Sidebottom," a character played by British comedian/performance artist/musician Chris Sievey (1955-2010) from the '70s well into the '90s. The film, co-written by Ronson (who also wrote the book The Men Who Stare at Goats, and was played by Ewan McGregor in the 2009 film version), centers on Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a would-be songwriter who lucks into a gig filling in with an experimental, avant-garde band called The Soronprfbs when their keyboardist has a breakdown. Fronted by the eccentric Frank (Fassbender), whose own bandmates have never seen him without his mask, the Soronprfbs take off to a seaside cottage in Ireland to work on a new album with manager/producer Don (Scoot McNairy). The rest of the band--theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), bassist Baraque (Francois Civil), and drummer Nana (Carla Azar)--have little use for Jon and his mainstream, pop aspirations, and even though Jon offers them his life savings to work on the album after they run out of money, they allow him no creative input.  Eleven months of isolated living go by before Frank is comfortable enough to begin recording, and Jon, who has been secretly posting their sessions to social media and building the band's brand, has endeared himself to Frank and convinces him to take the band to SXSW. Arriving in Austin on a wave of underground hype thanks to Frank's unique stage presence, the Soronprfbs promptly implode over Jon's increased influence on their sound. This turns the band into the unplugged duo of Frank and Jon as Jon is forced to function as caretaker for the delicate and damaged frontman, who has his reasons for adopting his unusual persona.


Director Lenny Abrahamson keeps FRANK quirky to a fault for most of its running time, and the humor in the defiantly uncommercial, inaccessible, Captain Beefheart-inspired songs quickly runs out of steam. It does gain some significant traction in its late stages once things turn serious as Jon gets to the root of why Frank is the way he is, and Fassbender is such a gifted actor that he can turn nothing into something and create a fully-developed character with his face concealed for most of the film, just on the basis of body language and his muffled vocal inflections. Fassbender is very good and McNairy gets some laughs as the dour, depressed manager with an unusual sexual fetish for mannequins, and while it gets better as it goes along, FRANK is just too aggressive in its bid for prefab cult appeal and too blatantly pandering in its need for the loving embrace of the hipster crowd. (R, 95 mins)

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS
(US/Spain - 2014)

Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian. Cast: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Maria Valverde, Hiam Abbass, Ewen Bremner, Isaac Andrews, Indira Varma, Golshifteh Farahani, Ghassan Massoud, Tara Fitzgerald, Dar Salim, Andrew Tarbet, Ken Bones, Hal Hewetson, Kevork Malikyan, Giannina Facio. (PG-13, 150 mins)

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, Ridley Scott's epic, gargantuan retelling of the saga of Moses and Ramses, arrives on a wave of controversy so large that it could riding the parted Red Sea. Yes, the lead actors have an overwhelmingly white shade to them, no matter how much bronzing makeup they're wearing, and such casting is as antiquated a notion as massive, bloated Biblical epics of the Cecil B. DeMille variety. On one hand, it's nice to see something like this getting made today, but on the other, whether it's the legitimate issues of casting or addressing concerns of religious audiences, attempting a film of this sort in 2014 just seems to be asking for trouble, as evidenced by the myriad of theological hissy-fits surrounding the release of Darron Aronofsky's NOAH earlier this year.



Scott doesn't go as far off the rails here as Aronofsky did, and if there's any director who could pull something like this off today, it's the seemingly ageless BLADE RUNNER director. 77 years old and showing no signs of slowing down (though, like Clint Eastwood, he cranks his movies out so quickly that you have to question how much work he's delegating to the second unit, overseen by his son Luke), Scott is to be commended for making his CGI spectacles look as organic and practical as possible.  He's come a long way from the blurry, unconvincing Coliseum crowd shots of GLADIATOR in the primitive days of 2000.  With EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, Scott goes old-school to a certain extent: the CGI and VFX teams handle the bulk of the heavy lifting, but there's an unusual number of actual sets in Spain and the Canary Islands, with real, costumed people milling about on them, and it makes a difference. It brings a living, breathing vitality to these scenes. Of course, digital takes over when it has to, but even then, Scott and the technicians go the extra mile to make it look convincing. As it is, EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS isn't one of Scott's essential films, but it's one of his best-looking.


The core story remains the same: in Memphis in 1300 BCE, Moses (Christian Bale) is a general in the army of Egyptian pharoah Seti (John Turturro as Mark Strong). Seti trusts Moses and views him as just as much of a son as his actual offspring, the vain Ramses (Joel Edgerton). Seti even privately confesses to Moses that he feels he would make a better leader than Ramses. Moses goes on an official mission to Pitham to check in on Seti's Viceroy (Ben Mendelson) overseeing the Hebrew slaves and concludes that the Viceroy is living too much like royalty, wasting too much money, and blatantly mistreating the slaves. While there, Moses is informed by aged slave Nun (Ben Kingsley) that he was born a Hebrew and raised an Egyptian. Moses refuses to believe Nun's story but when the Viceroy gets wind of it, he reports the news to Ramses, who has just succeeded his late father. Ramses is conflicted, but exiles Moses out of Memphis. Nine years pass and Moses is now a shepherd married to Zipporah (Maria Valverde) and with a son, Gershom (Hal Hewetson). When Moses is hit on the head during a mudslide, he has a vision of God, personified as a young boy (Isaac Andrews), who tasks him with freeing his people. Once back in Memphis, where Ramses has become every bit the cruel tyrant Seti predicted, Moses' efforts are slow and ineffective, prompting God to take matters into His own hands and unleash the ten plagues on Egypt. Ramses, perhaps one of civilization's earliest one-percenters, refuses to free the Hebrew slaves, citing the economic impossibility, though after the plague of the first-born claims his own son, the devastated Pharoah tells Moses and the slaves to leave. He quickly has a change of heart, swearing vengeance on Moses and leading his army into the mountains to kill Moses and the slaves, who had a four-day head start but are stopped by the Red Sea.


Scott and the committee of screenwriters (among them SCHINDLER'S LIST Oscar-winner Steven Zaillian) borrow a little of Scott's GLADIATOR with the recurring theme of a king father expressing doubts about his son's ability to rule (think of Richard Harris' Marcus Aurelius'concerns about Joaquin Phoenix's petulant Commodus). There's other interesting elements, like some present-day political parallels and the vengeful, Old Testament God being a little kid. Bale is a suitably driven, intense Moses and there's some ambiguity whether this could all be in his head. Though he doesn't take a strictly secular approach, Scott attempts to rationalize some of the more spiritual elements, such as the parting of the Red Sea being a catastrophic weather event complete with storms and swirling funnel clouds. The visual effects in the last third of the film, particularly the show-stopping parting of the Red Sea and Ramses' army's chariots trying to navigate narrow mountain roads, are jawdropping in 3D. But there's some negatives: as Ramses, Edgerton has little to do but scoff and scowl after a while, and the rest of the cast is really left adrift by some choppy editing and what would seem to be a contractual stipulation that Scott keep the film at 150 minutes, which it clocks in at exactly. Scott is one of the chief proponents of director's cuts and extended versions for DVD and Blu-ray (the director's cut of his 2005 epic KINGDOM OF HEAVEN being a textbook case held in especially high regard), and it's often painfully obvious that there's a longer EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS that will be surface at some point in the future (maybe doing this as a high-profile HBO or Netflix miniseries where characters and conflicts could be adequately established and built upon would've been a better idea). After a strong start, details start getting glossed over on the way to Moses' exile and then again during his return and the plagues, and Scott starts filling in the blanks with montages. Kingsley is in the whole film and is the focus of a few scenes, but mainly he's just hanging around in the background. At least he gets the spotlight once in a while, which is more than you can say for Aaron Paul as Joshua and Sigourney Weaver as Seti's wife Tuya, both of whom have almost no dialogue and whose entire roles consist of little beyond nodding or looking concerned about something someone else has said (Ramses is reluctant to banish Moses, and it's implied that Tuya is actually behind his forced exile, but it's hard to tell, since all she does is glare at him when it's brought up). Weaver had more screen time with her cameo in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, and she and Paul are nothing more than prominently-billed extras here. Like KINGDOM OF HEAVEN's theatrical cut, it's a safe assumption that what's here is a compromised, incomplete version, and it's likely that a longer cut will expand on the themes and give its supporting cast something to do. As it is, EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS is a visually stunning piece of filmmaking, but unfortunately, it feels like you're only getting about 75% of it.

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
(US - 1989)

Directed by Larry Brand. Written by Daryl Haney and Larry Brand. Cast: Patrick Macnee, Adrian Paul, Clare Hoak, Jeff Osterhage, Tracy Reiner, Kelly Ann Sabatasso, Maria Ford, Daryl Haney, George Derby. (R, 82 mins)

One of the strangest, most ill-conceived, and universally rejected fads in the history of horror cinema took place from 1989 to 1991. To honor the 140th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), veteran exploitation producers Roger Corman and Harry Alan Towers separately initiated a competing series of Poe remakes and adaptations that were supposed to be released throughout 1989. This Poesploitation explosion probably seemed like a good idea, especially since some of Corman's best films as a director were his numerous 1960s Poe adaptations for AIP (THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, THE RAVEN, etc) that usually starred Vincent Price, and those were classic films still revered by critics and audiences. On the other hand, it was a fool's mission: there was little chance of these remakes doing anything but paling in comparison to respected adaptations that came before them and they were often beset by so much financial and behind-the-scenes turmoil that the majority of them never even made it to theaters. What was meant to celebrate the legacy of one of America's most influential writers ended up being the most ill-fated 1989 cinematic resurrection this side of EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS II: EDDIE LIVES. Corman produced some occasionally worthwhile films under his then-current Concorde banner (STRIPPED TO KILL, CRIME ZONE, EYE OF THE EAGLE 3) and had a few minor hits that stayed in theaters for two weeks instead of just one (BLOODFIST, TWICE DEAD, CARNOSAUR), but typically, Concorde product was shot fast and cheap and vacated multiplexes quickly on their way to America's video stores. Unlike his days running New World in the 1970s, Corman didn't have much in the way of breakout directors during the Concorde era. Corman's proteges at New World included the likes of Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, and James Cameron. At Concorde, Corman was focused more on turning a quick profit than shepherding talent, though guys like Carl Franklin (EYE OF THE EAGLE 2) and Luis Llosa (CRIME ZONE) would find some A-list success at the big studios (Franklin with the Denzel Washington vehicles DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS and OUT OF TIME, and Llosa with SNIPER and THE SPECIALIST), and both Franklin and Rodman Flender (IN THE HEAT OF PASSION) are still busy with steady TV directing gigs. Both Corman and Towers (who bankrolled many a Jess Franco film in the 1960s) were past the point of caring about quality, but they got movies made, knew how to turn a profit, and had been in the game long enough to woo recognizable names who were not exactly at their career pinnacle and were cool with whatever as long as the check cleared.



The first of the new Poe adaptations to hit theaters was MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, which opened on October 27, 1989 and moved around the country into January 1990 as Corman was still continuing his New World practice of striking a small number of prints and shipping them to different regions week by week. Corman's own THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964) is regarded as one of his best films as a director and arguably the artistic pinnacle of his 1960s AIP Poe cycle. The remake again utilizes the same essential story of Prince Prospero (Adrian Paul) barricading himself in his castle along with the elite nobleman who suck up to him while a plague decimates the peasants in the surrounding countryside. All the while, a mysterious red-cloaked figure on horseback makes his way to the castle for the Masque, a grand ball where Prospero and his ilk finally get their comeuppance. Corman's 1960s Poe films were known for their sometimes campy elements and Vincent Price's hammy acting, but as the series went on, things generally got more serious, especially by the time of the 1964 MASQUE and the next year's THE TOMB OF LIGEIA. Price's Prospero was a smiling, gleeful sadist reveling in his power over those beneath him. As played by Paul, Prospero is gloomy and depressed, and the mood is much more bleak and funereal. Director/co-writer Larry Brand is hindered by an obviously low budget that causes some interiors to resemble a community theater production, but he uses that to his advantage: in the 1964 MASQUE, the opulent, brightly-colored look of Prospero's castle helped sell the Prince and his fellow debauched hedonists on the notion that they were immune from the Red Death and that they'd be safe among their wealth and privilege. In Brand's MASQUE, the flimsy sets and gray, decrepit decor only convey the idea that the sense of security is an illusion, and while the oblivious sycophants overindulge, a somber, morose Prospero knows that judgment day is coming.


Of course, being that it was 1989 and an R-rated Roger Corman production, Brand was allowed to throw in some more modern elements. There's some sporadic gore and some nudity in a grueling and seemingly endless scene where some orgiastic noblemen make three servant girls (among them Corman regular Maria Ford) strip. Prospero is also involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister Lucrecia (Penny Marshall's daughter Tracy Reiner, who took her stepdad Rob's name), who grows jealous over his attraction to peasant girl Julietta (Clare Hoak). This triangle also existed in the 1964 film, with Prospero's lover Juliana (Hazel Court) and peasant villager Francesca (Jane Asher), but there was no sibling/incest element. The other major change is that the biggest name in the cast is playing the Red Death, in this case Patrick Macnee, best known as John Steed on the classic 1960s TV series THE AVENGERS. It's hardly a spoiler, as Macnee's distinctive voice is heard emanating from behind the Red Death's covered face throughout (in other words, it's not Macnee in these scenes). Sporting what resembles a clip-on mullet, Macnee is seen briefly in a dream/flashback to Prospero's childhood as his mentor Machiavel in the opening scene, and his face isn't seen again for another hour, when Machiavel arrives at Prospero's castle for the Masque and quickly reveals himself to be the embodiment of the plague that's sweeping the vicinity. Macnee provides enough of a credible headlining name for Corman, but he's really just a top-billed guest star.  MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH has acquired a minor cult following over the years due to the presence of soon-to-be HIGHLANDER: THE SERIES star Paul, who already logged time on ABC's DYNASTY spinoff THE COLBYS and was co-starring in the syndicated TV series WAR OF THE WORLDS at the time he got the lead role in MASQUE. Considering its low-budget origins, Brand's MASQUE has a bit more going on than most Corman productions of that era. Brand achieves several striking shots throughout, and the film makes creative and pragmatic use of its budgetary limitations. With its melancholy tone and glacially slow pace, it also does a very effective job of capturing a foreboding and very palpable sense of doom and despair. It has its scattered moments of ineptitude--the male actors' wigs, the padded leggings on Hoak's stunt double clearly visible during her roll down a hillside in the climax--but count Brand's MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH as one of the more intriguing and ambitious projects to emerge from the Corman/Concorde factory in the late '80s.


Scorpion has just released MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH on DVD (but not Blu-ray), in a very nice 1.78:1 transfer with an audio commentary track by Brand. The track is moderated by serial-one-man-commentary-wrecking crew Bill Olsen, the Code Red head who found some down time to fit this in between alienating his customer base with his constantly-vanishing web site, fighting with cult movie fans on message boards, and his various other daily social media meltdowns. Olsen has done some atrocious work in the past and this commentary gets off to a dubious start with the gaffe-prone emcee introducing the director as "Rally Brand," and Brand not even remembering shooting the opening credits sequence before admitting "It's been years since I've watched this." Olsen asks some expectedly dumb questions (though not as dumb as asking an incredulous Isabelle Mejias about her inspiration in the way she stirs Nestle Quik into a glass of milk on the commentary for 1983's JULIE DARLING), but once Brand gets comfortable, he has enough things to say that Olsen doesn't get much of a chance to indulge in his usual schtick, namely mocking the movie he's watching and mispronouncing actors' names on purpose in the least funny manner possible. Brand is a little delusional about how "beautiful" the sets look, but he has some interesting things to say about working on the Roger Corman assembly line and how Corman was generally hands-off as a producer and granted a director almost total freedom so long as they didn't go over budget and delivered the requisite amount of gore and/or nudity. Brand says that Macnee was their second choice for Machiavel after Michael York had a scheduling conflict, and calls himself a "prude," stating he wasn't really as interested in the exploitative elements as much as his Concorde colleagues, though he did have to tone down one torture scene where a restrained man is impaled in his skull when Corman feared it would get the film an X rating. MASQUE was Brand's second film for Corman, following 1988's THE DRIFTER, a FATAL ATTRACTION knockoff with Kim Delaney being stalked by psycho hitchhiker Miles O'Keeffe after a one-night stand at a cheap motel (the trailer declared "Love can be deadly, when the attraction is fatal!" just in case you weren't sure what blockbuster movie it was ripping off). Corman was pleased enough with the results of THE DRIFTER to offer Brand his choice between this or BLOODFIST (Brand on turning down BLOODFIST: "I wasn't really interested in kickboxing or working in the Philippines"), and he would go on to make the 1990 Catherine Oxenberg erotic thriller OVEREXPOSED before leaving the Corman stable, where he's generally worked in DTV thrillers except for scoring a co-writing credit on 2002's HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION.


Just as MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH finished making its rounds and playing to mostly empty theaters, the next Poe offering from Corman and Concorde arrived in the form of Jim Wynorski's THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA. MORELLA opened in February 1990 and traveled the same regional route for one-week stands across the US. It bore little resemblance to Poe or to the "Morella" segment in TALES OF TERROR as Wynorski took the core concept of the dead Morella taking over the soul of her grown daughter Lenora and added splatter, gratuitous nudity, and lesbian sex scenes to fashion the kind of T&A-filled romp that Brand showed little interest in making with MASQUE. A post-CHARLES IN CHARGE and pre-BAYWATCH Nicole Eggert (her last name misspelled on the poster) plays Morella/Lenora, with David McCallum, years before his NCIS-abetted resurgence, is Lenora's father/Morella's widower husband, with the main cast rounded out by the inevitable Maria Ford and BARBARIAN QUEEN's Lana Clarkson, a Corman veteran by this point, but tragically best known today for accepting an invitation back to Phil Spector's mansion one fateful night in 2003.



While Corman got the ball rolling on the Poe revival, the legendary producer quoth "Nevermore" and pulled the plug on future Poe-related endeavors, putting the onus on Towers to leave audiences nodding, nearly napping with the bulk of the other offerings. Towers had distribution deals with both Menahem Golan's short-lived 21st Century Film Corporation as well as a post-Golan Cannon led by Yoram Globus and Christopher Pearce. Towers was on a classics tear during this 1989-1991 period, producing not only Poe movies for 21st Century, but also the Robert Englund-headlined PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (also for 21st Century, and the doomed company's only nationwide release), yet another remake of TEN LITTLE INDIANS for Cannon, and the spectacularly sleazy Jekyll & Hyde/Jack the Ripper hybrid EDGE OF SANITY for Miramax offshoot Millimeter Films (a sort-of B-movie predecessor to the later, more successful Dimension Films) with Anthony Perkins as the high society Dr. Jekyll turning into a coke-addled, masturbating Mr. Hyde on a serial-killing spree of lascivious Whitechapel streetwalkers. While PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and EDGE OF SANITY were shot on the same sets in Budapest, Towers' other films of this period were shot in Apartheid-era South Africa at a time when it was cost-effective but politically and socially frowned upon to do so. While PHANTOM, SANITY, and TEN LITTLE INDIANS made it into theaters, 21st Century was in immediate financial trouble and after MACK THE KNIFE tanked in limited release and THE FORBIDDEN DANCE (aka "the other Lambada movie") had to be distributed by Columbia, the money was gone and all of the company's titles (including Albert Pyun's CAPTAIN AMERICA, which was supposed to be 21st Century's meal ticket) were left in limbo on the shelf, only to trickle out on VHS courtesy of RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video over the next few years.


Towers' Poe projects were shot over 1988 and 1989 but didn't start turning up in video stores until late 1990 and into 1991 (shot in 1989, CAPTAIN AMERICA was unseen in the US until its VHS release in 1992). Despite some interesting casts, Towers' Poe titles are a pretty sorry lot. Unlike Corman, who chose to keep the MASQUE remake and THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA as period pieces, Towers' Poe titles are updated to the present day, but the modernization brings no new perspective to Poe or the themes in his work. BURIED ALIVE, shot in the fall of 1988 and released straight to video two years later, borrows the central conceit of The Cask of Amontillado by having the killer wall his living victims into a tomb, but it's mostly a bland slasher movie with minor supernatural elements and occasional shots of a black cat roaming around. Set at a school for troubled girls run by an ascot-sporting Robert Vaughn in prime "smug asshole" mode, BURIED ALIVE offers a few bits of spirited gore and some nudity and sleaze courtesy of French hardcore porn director Gerard Kikoine, who also helmed EDGE OF SANITY for Towers, but is a pretty tired affair, with Donald Pleasence hamming it up as a toupeed, German-accented doctor, a young Arnold Vosloo (THE MUMMY) as a sheriff's deputy who keeps trying to hook up with the heroine (Karen Witter), and an 18-year-old Nia Long in her first film, a couple of years before co-starring in BOYZ N THE HOOD. If BURIED ALIVE is remembered at all, it's because it was the last film of the legendary John Carradine, fourth-billed in what amounts to a bit part, with two brief appearances for a total screen time of less than a minute. 82-year-old Carradine died just days after his scenes were shot. He decided to treat himself to a brief European vacation after leaving South Africa, but he died suddenly while in Rome and never made it home to the States from his BURIED ALIVE gig.


THE HOUSE OF USHER, also shot in 1988 and unseen until its belated arrival in video stores in 1991, is one of the most boring horror films ever made, despite a hilariously surreal wedding sequence, a discreetly-shot scene of rat-on-genital torture, and a crazed Donald Pleasence going on a power-drill killing spree in the last third. Lots of secret passageways and long corridors in this updating, but director Alan Birkinshaw keeps this moving at a snail's pace, and it only briefly comes to life very late once Pleasence and Oliver Reed share the screen and engage in a full-throttle ham-off that's ruined by a total cop-out ending, and the chief music cue is a blatant recycling of Gary Chang's 52 PICK-UP score. Towers also had his own THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH remake to butt heads with Corman's MASQUE, this one directed by the busy Birkinshaw, with Herbert Lom (a replacement for Jack Palance, who bailed at the last minute) as a dying millionaire hosting a "Red Death"-themed party where the attendees are offed one-by-one in what amounts to another slasher movie disguised as a Poe adaptation. Lom and MASQUE co-stars Frank Stallone and Brenda Vaccaro were also in Towers' and Birkinshaw's TEN LITTLE INDIANS, and presumably shot their scenes during the same ethically-challenged trip to South Africa in 1989.


While Corman and Towers were the primary purveyors of the stunningly unsuccessful Poe revival, there were contributions from others to commemorate the anniversary of the great writer's passing. The most high-profile was the two-story George A. Romero/Dario Argento collaboration TWO EVIL EYES, an Italian production shot in Pittsburgh in 1989 but unreleased in the US until late 1991. Romero's "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar" was a remake of the concluding story in Corman's TALES OF TERROR (1962), where the dying, comatose Valdemar (Vincent Price) is under the influence of a conniving hypnotist (Basil Rathbone) who's after his fortune and his wife (Debra Paget). In Romero's version, the hypnotist (Ramy Zada) and the wife (Adrienne Barbeau) are in cahoots in their plot to get Valdemar's (Bingo O'Malley) money. Argento's "The Black Cat" is a mash-up of Poe stories with crime-scene photographer Rod Usher (Harvey Keitel), his girlfriend Annabel Lee (Madeliene Potter), their black cat, their neighbors the Pyms (Martin Balsam, Kim Hunter), a sultry bartender named Eleonora (Sally Kirkland), and a body walled-up Amontillado-style. Despite its pedigree, neither director is at the top of their game with TWO EVIL EYES, and though this catches Argento in the infant stages of a several-decade career nosedive that shows no signs of stopping, he does manage a couple of memorable sequences and a committed, if a bit mannered, performance by Keitel, and while Romero's more or less resembles an R-rated episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, it's fairly entertaining and slightly better than its reputation.


With the possible exception of Brand's MASQUE, RE-ANIMATOR director Stuart Gordon's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1991) is probably the best film from the Poesploitation movement. It has the same dark, dour mood as MASQUE but benefits from a bigger budget, much better production design, and an absolutely riveting performance by Lance Henriksen. Released by Full Moon in the wake of the collapse of Empire Pictures, Gordon's PIT doesn't really follow Poe or Corman's 1961 film, instead telling a WITCHFINDER GENERAL-type story with witch-hunting inquisitor Torquemada (Henriksen) and his rabid, self-loathing sexual obsession with an accused spellcaster (Rona De Ricci). Shot in Italy, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM has a distinct European flavor to it and, despite its requisite amounts of gore and T&A, has a certain element of class to it, with Henriksen, in one of his best roles, bringing much legitimacy to the film's more lurid elements. Gordon was planning this PIT remake since the late '80s and actually had Peter O'Toole signed on to play Torquemada at one point until the project fell apart. Also featuring cult actors Jeffrey Combs, Tom Towles, Stephen Lee, and Mark Margolis, and a cameo by Oliver Reed in a nice nod to Ken Russell's THE DEVILS (1971), THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is one of the best and most serious films to come from the studio best known for its PUPPET MASTER and DOLLMAN franchises. Even Troma got into the act with Fred Olen Ray's HAUNTING FEAR (1991), an alleged adaptation of The Premature Burial (previously made into a 1962 film by Corman, with Ray Milland stepping in for the director's lone '60s Poe movie without Vincent Price) with a cast of straight-to-video erotic thriller regulars like Brinke Stevens and Delia Sheppard mixing it up with fallen A-listers Jan-Michael Vincent and Karen Black as well as cult figures like Michael Berryman (THE HILLS HAVE EYES) and Robert Quarry (COUNT YORGA: VAMPIRE).


As if the Poe revival wasn't already going badly enough, two other completely unrelated films were pulled in to help absorb some of the flop sweat. Cannon's SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (1990) began life in 1986 as a miniseries for Italian TV starring Lou Ferrigno and directed by Luigi Cozzi. Cannon fired Cozzi during pre-production and replaced him with Enzo G. Castellari. The project was shelved after Cannon deemed Castellari's six hours of footage unusable, but three years later, the cash-strapped company rehired Cozzi to piece together 80 minutes of salvageable footage from the rubble and shoot new wraparound sequences with Daria Nicolodi as a mom reading a bedtime story to her daughter, played by Cozzi's daughter Giada. The bedtime story was Poe's Arabian Nights parody "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade," which of course had little, if anything to do with the movie other than give Cannon an excuse to open the film with a crawl about Poe. SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS is a dumpster fire of a movie that's still worth seeing for an incredibly entertaining performance by John Steiner as the evil wizard Jaffar, but the whole thing is a badly stitched-together disaster, perfectly summed up by an amazing moment where Ferrigno's clean-shaven Sinbad dives into the sea and either Castellari or Cozzi cuts to a stock footage underwater shot of a bearded Ferrigno swimming, clumsily cribbed from 1983's HERCULES. Around the time he was trying to piece together something resembling a watchable SINBAD, Cozzi also found time to direct DE PROFUNDIS, featuring cult actors such as Caroline Munro and Brett Halsey, a film intended to be an unofficial third chapter to Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy, which to that point consisted of SUSPIRIA (1977) and INFERNO (1980). Argento eventually officially completed that trilogy himself with 2008's MOTHER OF TEARS, while Cozzi's DE PROFUNDIS was attempting--and failing--to be meta before meta was cool. It's largely nonsense, with a director played by Urbano Barberini planning a sequel to SUSPIRIA about a witch named Levana, who keeps appearing as an apparition to vomit green goo on everyone. 21st Century acquired the film for the US and retitled it THE BLACK CAT with the cynical intention of selling it as another Poe title. Of course, it was shelved like all the others, debuting on US cable and promptly vanishing shortly after without even getting a VHS release. It was available to stream on Netflix Instant for a while and can easily be found online, but despite some nice Argento-inspired color schemes and approximately 17 opportunities to hear Bang Tango's lone hit "Someone Like You," it's a mind-boggling, incoherent mess that's really only for the most devout Italian horror obsessives, and certainly not for anyone looking for anything even remotely related to Edgar Allan Poe.

AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR
(US - 2014)


Writer/director Nicholas McCarthy's THE PACT (2012) was one of the most effective feature debuts in the horror genre in recent years. A terrific example of slow-burn done right, THE PACT was a genuine sleeper that's found a major cult following thanks to its streaming on Netflix Instant. McCarthy's follow-up effort, AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR (shot and shown at festivals under the title HOME), shares some common themes with THE PACT and again allows the director to indulge in his gift for establishing an ominous sense of dread that grows more stomach-turning and uneasy with each new sequence. But McCarthy tries to tackle too much here: too many characters and too many detours lead to too many cut corners and too many loose ends.  As in THE PACT, McCarthy's key concern is family: THE PACT had adult sisters whose memories of their dysfunctional upbringing manifest in unexpected ways in the present day. AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR has adult sisters who seem to have been orphaned at a relatively young age, with the older Leigh (MARIA FULL OF GRACE Oscar-nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno) seeing herself as the mother figure to the younger Vera (GLEE's Naya Rivera). But before we get to any of that, McCarthy's focus is on a teenager (Ashley Rickards) who falls hard for a boy (Nick Eversman) and ends up (I guess) inhabited by some kind of demonic spirit after playing a high-stakes shell game with the boy's creepy uncle (Michael Massee). Some initially unspecified amount of time passes as McCarthy then shifts to Leigh, a real estate agent tasked with selling the house where the girl used to live, and whom Leigh occasionally sees in the house only to flee when she tries to talk to her. Circumstances soon put Vera in the position of central character, when she's forced to take it upon herself to find the mystery girl and get to the bottom of assorted supernatural goings-on.


McCarthy plays his cards close to the vest in the early going, with some narrative time-jumping and a major reveal involving Rickards' character that probably should've landed better than it does. It's not unusual for a filmmaker to shift protagonists in the middle of the movie--PSYCHO is the granddaddy of that move--and Zack Parker's PROXY is probably the most recent example of one that does it successfully, but McCarthy has three alternating lead shifts before we get a real handle on any of them. Once he settles on Vera, it works somewhat because Rivera turns in the kind of strong, intense performance that THE PACT got from Caity Lotz, but Vera's story seems to gloss over important details and how she gets from one point to another. Throughout, the characters remain too enigmatic for us to be fully engrossed in the story. This is especially the case with Moreno's Leigh, who is saddled with the film's clumsiest exposition, whether McCarthy has her mentioning her immigrant status (younger Vera was born after their parents came to the US)--which seems to come about more from his unnecessary concern over explaining Moreno's accent than anything to do with advancing the narrative--or her inability to have children and her wish that Vera settle down and have some of her own. Like THE PACT, there's much focus on motherhood, children, and family, but it just doesn't seem as well-planned or fully-realized. If you'd never seen these films and watched them back-to-back, in either order, and were told both were made by the same guy, you'd swear AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR was the one made by a nervous first-timer throwing everything he's got at the wall and seeing what sticks because he might not get another chance, and THE PACT was the solid, sure-handed later effort of a filmmaker with confidence, discipline, and experience. On the basis of THE PACT alone (if you haven't seen it, you really should), McCarthy is one of the most promising horror prospects going today, and there are occasions where AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR works (there's one unnerving sequence with Rickards at a babysitting job that could almost function as its own short film, and the notion of a spirit taking over someone and "wearing them like a costume," is a uniquely creepy description), but it too often feels like he's just belaboring points made in THE PACT and stumbling over half-baked ideas about things like infertility and the immigrant experience that don't seem to belong here. Maybe this is the kind of film that improves on a repeat viewing, or would play better if you haven't already seen THE PACT, a simpler and much superior work. (Unrated, 93 mins)


THE DEVIL'S HAND
(US - 2014)


After two years on the shelf and no less than four title changes, THE DEVIL'S HAND received a cursory VOD dumping by Lionsgate sub-label Roadside Attractions in October, a full year after they took it off the Halloween 2013 release schedule when it was called WHERE THE DEVIL HIDES. That's rarely a good sign, but while THE DEVIL'S HAND isn't all that great, it does have some moments where it seems that a better, smarter film is trying to break out of the merely mediocre one that got released. Opening on June 6, 1994 in a cult-like, Amish-looking religious community called New Bethlehem, the film deals with a foretold prophecy that the sixth girl born on the sixth day of the sixth month will be the Drommelkind--"the Devil's Hand"--Satan reborn to wreak havoc on God's world, and it so happens that six women are giving birth this very night. One of the six newborn girls is suffocated by her own mother, and New Bethlehem leader Elder Beacon (Colm Meaney) is thwarted in his attempt to kill the other five by the progressive-minded Jacob (Rufus Sewell), who not only doesn't believe in Beacon's sternly fire-and-brimstone leadership style but also happens to be father of one of the other babies. 18 years later, the five surviving girls are best friends and barely-tolerated outcasts in the community, and starting with Hannah (Nicole Elliott), they're being offed one-by-one by a scythe-wielding maniac in a black-hooded robe. Jacob's seizure-and-visions-prone daughter Mary (Alycia Debnam Carey) starts to question the ideology of New Bethlehem, much to the disapproval of her bitter, bitchy stepmother Rebekah (an underused Jennifer Carpenter). As the body count rises--some of the girls' parents start dropping like flies, either by their own hand or by the scythe killer--Elder Beacon's tight grip on the community starts to slip, and with young, blossoming teenage girls ignoring his orders, that's all the evidence he needs to conclude that it's the Devil's work.


There's a thought-provoking film to be made about the terrifying, blind fervor of religious fanaticism, but only Meaney seems to be acting in that film. He's perfect as the unsympathetic, power-mad elder, overseeing his flock like a junkyard dog and prone to barking excuses like "As long as the Lord governs my actions, I can do no wrong!" With its concealed scythe killer evoking memories of the post-SCREAM-and-I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER slashers of the late '90s, Mary's romance with the sheriff's sensitive dudebro son (Thomas McDonnell), and most of the cast coming from shows like THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, THE ORIGINALS, THE 100, and REIGN, too much of THE DEVIL'S HAND plays like The CW commissioned a remake of Wes Craven's DEADLY BLESSING. Other than Meaney, the relatively older vets like Sewell and Carpenter have little to do (both vanish from the movie by the end), but the performances of the younger actors are better than expected, especially Australian actress Carey, who was recently cast in the WALKING DEAD spinoff COBALT. Written by Karl Mueller, who co-wrote the reprehensible THE DIVIDE, and directed by one Christian E. Christiansen (if indeed that is your real name, sir), whose previous credits include the 2011 Leighton Meester/Minka Kelly SINGLE WHITE FEMALE ripoff THE ROOMMATE, THE DEVIL'S HAND also demonstrates sure signs of cutting to secure a PG-13 rating, and as we all know, horror fans want things as watered-down and PG-13 as possible. There's lots of splattery aftermaths to the mayhem, but little is shown during, and some of the murder scenes are rather choppy, no pun intended. THE DEVIL'S HAND is pretty mild and forgettable, but it's fast-paced and short enough that it gets the job done if you're just looking for a dumb movie to unwind to after a long day. There's just a lot here to back up the nagging feeling that it really could've been something more and that maybe it's just been hacked down to its most basic mainstream and safest, unchallenging elements, like some suggestions that Elder Beacon is molesting some of New Bethlehem's teenage girls--don't expect anything with a PG-13 rating to explore that plot thread. As it is, THE DEVIL'S HAND is little more than the intersecting union of a "CW viewers" and "Colm Meaney stalkers" Venn diagram. (PG-13, 86 mins)

THE INTERVIEW
(US - 2014)

Directed by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg. Written by Dan Sterling. Cast: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Lizzy Caplan, Randall Park, Diana Bang, Timothy Simons, Reese Alexander, James Yi, Paul Bae. (R, 112 mins)

Looking beyond the Sony hack, the alleged involvement of North Korea and the awkwardly-worded threats of another "11th of September" from the so-called Guardians of Peace that led to the leading American multiplex chains going into full-on pants-shitting mode and opting to not show it, prompting Sony to cancel the release altogether only to give it a VOD and limited run in indie theaters on its original Christmas Day release date anyway as debate that the whole controversy resulting from the hack is nothing more than an elaborate hoax continues...is THE INTERVIEW worth all the hassle? Sadly, no. It's not. But now that seeing the movie has become a matter of "free speech" and "America! Fuck yeah!" what would've been a minor and mostly forgettable comedy is now a phenomenon, and once audiences get a chance to show their patriotism by watching it, the message will be received loud and clear: everyone involved knew this was a dud. And we all got scammed.  Merry Christmas!


With its plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un, you'd think THE INTERVIEW would be an edgy, ballsy political satire, perhaps the present-day equivalent of Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR or Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE. It's not a thoughtful, intelligent takedown of global politics--instead, it's a thinly-veiled remake of ISHTAR, only with more LORD OF THE RINGS references and talk of sharting and "stinkdick." Vapid Dave Skylark (James Franco), host of the tabloid/entertainment news show Skylark Tonight, is happy doing celebrity puff pieces, but his producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) has more ambition. An opportunity presents itself when the pair discover that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is a Dave Skylark superfan. The North Korean government invites Skylark to Pyongyang for a sit-down interview with Kim in an effort to show the world that he's not the insane dictator that he's been portrayed as by the world media. The CIA has other plans for the pair's visit: Agents Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) and Botwin (Reese Alexander) want Skylark and Rapoport to "take out" Kim with a handshake dose of ricin that will absorb through his skin and kill him in 12 hours. But once Skylark meets Kim (Randall Park), he's won over by his gregarious side despite warnings from Lacey that he's a master manipulator.


There are a few laughs in THE INTERVIEW, mainly in the early going, with cameos by Eminem (outing himself as gay) and Rob Lowe (revealing he's been wearing a wig all these years), and things pick up for a while once Park first appears at around the mid-point. The actor's portrayal of the bashful, misunderstood Kim is very well-played, whether he's reluctantly admitting he loves margaritas and Katy Perry or dunking on Skylark while the pair shoot hoops. But that only works to the point where Kim inevitably turns into the monster the heroes have been sent to kill, as Rogen and his THIS IS THE END co-director Evan Goldberg resort to a CGI-filled, action extravaganza finale since Sony gave them $45 million to fuck around. The bulk of THE INTERVIEW is a self-indulgent misfire, with entirely too many jokes that just fizzle no matter how many times they're repeated, and even watching it on VOD, you can practically hear the crickets chirping in a theater packed with holiday moviegoers. Rogen does an okay job of playing the flustered, slow-burning straight man to Franco's spotlight-loving Skylark, but Franco's over-the-top performance is grating and mannered, and any characterization he might be after is completely squelched by his shameless mugging. Former DAILY SHOW and THE OFFICE producer Dan Sterling's script (based on a story idea by Rogen and Goldberg) wallows in toilet humor, which can be funny, but what's the point in approaching such an obviously hot-button issue if all you're going to do is have Rapoport shoving a dauntingly-wide metal container up his ass, Skylark obsessing that Kim "doesn't pee or poop," or resort to stereotypical standbys like "Me so solly!" and jokes about Asians eating dogs? There's a couple of legitimately scathing zingers (Kim's information minister, played by Diana Bang, asks Skylark "How many times can the US make the same mistake?" to which the Ugly American proudly and emphatically replies "As many times as it takes!") amidst the toothless attempts at satire and a climactic montage set to Scorpions'"Wind of Change," but THE INTERVIEW's biggest offense--aside from Franco's truly unbearable performance--is that it's comedy that's simply not all that funny.

THE BABADOOK
(Australia - 2014)

Written and directed by Jennifer Kent. Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Hayley McEllhinney, Daniel Henshall, Barbara West, Ben Winspear, Cathy Adamek, Craig Behenna, Tim Purcell. (Unrated, 94 mins)

Even before the initial appearance of a sinister monster sprung from the pages of a childrens' pop-up book, THE BABADOOK is a extraordinarily unsettling film that constantly threatens to suffocate the audience with despair and dread. Making her feature debut, Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent has created an instant cult item that not only avoids genre trends, but utilizes relatively primitive, low-budget visual effects in a stylish and effective way and still manages to leave most modern horror films and the so-called "masters of horror" who made them in the dust. The film centers on Abigail (Essie Davis) and her six-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). They live in a gray, dreary house with their dog Bugsy, and it doesn't take long to conclude that there are problems in this family. Abigail is raising Samuel on her own, as her husband Oskar (Ben Winspear) was killed in a car accident...driving her to the hospital to have Samuel. A former magazine journalist who settled for the 9-to-5 world after becoming a single mother, Abigail is barely hanging on to her nursing job at a retirement home, and Samuel is convinced there's a monster in the house and has started constructing homemade weapons to combat it and protect his mother. Things get worse when a pop-up book about a boogeyman called Mister Babadook suddenly appears, and the story's promise of "If it's in a word or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook" traumatizes Samuel to the point he starts having seizures when he believes the Babadook is nearby and approaching him.


All of this does nothing to alleviate an already tense situation between mother and son. Davis turns in a fearless, Oscar-worthy performance in the kind of role that would be tough for most Hollywood A-listers to pull off. As the film works its way to the introduction of the Babadook, Abigail is shown to be a mom who really doesn't like being a mom. She also doesn't seem to like her kid all that much. The sound of his voice makes her wince and grind her teeth. Make no mistake, Samuel is one of the most irritating, helpless, and perpetually needy children that the movies have ever offered. Abigail is filled with such sorrow and resentment of her beloved husband's death and the current state of her life that, however unintentional it may be, she clearly blames Samuel for the direction things have taken. Samuel is always demanding her constant attention, and she can't even enjoy some downtime with her vibrator without the boy barging into her room, craving more attention. It's a bold move on Kent's part to almost openly encourage the audience to dislike Samuel, though it's all part of the design once the Babadook is "let in" and seems to take possession of Abigail. Yes, there's a possession element to THE BABADOOK, but this is not another EXORCIST knockoff.  In less capable hands, yes, it would be. But Kent is interested in more than just horror formula, though she does borrow another bit from THE EXORCIST in the way that the malevolent force is allowed into a tumultuous situation, in this case a household mired in co-dependence and dysfunction. The Babadook itself can be seen as a symbol of Abigail's rage and grief and the mental illness that has resulted from it or was there all along--we don't know. Note how Samuel has fits when the "Babadook" is near, almost like it's the paralyzing fear of the person his mother becomes during these episodes.  Is she bipolar? Schizophrenic? Or just unable to get over the death of her husband, a man she obviously cherishes more than the child he fathered, a constant reminder of the void in her life that cannot be filled?


There's some ambiguity in that sense, at least until some clarity is provided in the final scenes. THE BABADOOK is so terrifying at times that you almost forget the titular figure (played in some shots by prop effects tech Tim Purcell) is barely in it. The Babadook will no doubt become the iconic Freddy and Pinhead of its generation, and rightly so, but the figure itself is seen only fleetingly. It doesn't need to be seen that much, really, especially once he's let into Abigail, in a possessive sense. Kent is thankfully uninterested in standard-issue jump scares and gross-out moments and more focused on character and story with sporadic shots that give you the willies. She lets the story build very deliberately, allowing us to get to know Abigail and Samuel, and it's a smart move, though it wouldn't work were it not for the stellar performances of Davis and young Wiseman. As terrific as Wiseman is--and he masters the extremely difficult move of winning back your sympathy after spending the first half of the film establishing Samuel in the unappealing ways possible--the success of THE BABADOOK rests mostly on Davis' shoulders. It's an astonishing performance, physically and emotionally draining, and in a just world, would be getting significant attention during the upcoming awards season, but it'll never happen because it's a horror movie with a silly title. And it's not just in her raging and her bitterness toward Samuel, but also in the little, fleeting moments of peace and happiness that seem almost heartbreaking, whether she's taking off work early to have some time alone and getting an ice cream cone at the mall, or watching her elderly neighbor (Barbara West) drink tea and laugh at a movie she's watching on TV, quiet moments of leisure that are completely alien to her. Richly-textured, gut-wrenching, often uncomfortable (if Mike Leigh ever made a horror movie, it would probably end up looking a lot like this), and scary as hell, THE BABADOOK is not just one of the top horror offerings to come along in some time, but it's also one of the very best films of 2014.

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
(US/New Zealand - 2014)

Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, Aidan Turner, Stephen Fry, Billy Connolly, Sylvester McCoy, James Nesbitt, Jed Brophy, Stephen Hunter, Ryan Gage, Manu Bennett, John Tui, Mikael Persbrandt. (PG-13, 143 mins)

"One Last Time" seems to be the resounding theme throughout this final chapter in the HOBBIT trilogy as well as in its advertising. The films in Peter Jackson's original 2001-2003 LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy stand--especially in their extended editions--among the most monumental achievements in all of cinema. But by splitting J.R.R. Tolkien's relatively light and quick-reading Hobbit into another colossal, epic trilogy and insisting on shooting them in the absurd 48 fps "high frame rate," a format that makes everything look like a live TV broadcast, really only works for expansive exterior shots and is preferred by no one with a name other than "Peter Jackson," Jackson seems guided more by hubris and self-indulgence than anything. The Hobbit isn't meant to be as huge as The Lord of the Rings. It's a smaller, more brisk story and by importing elements of Tolkien's The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, bringing Orlando Bloom back to play Legolas, a character not even present in Tolkien's novel, and even going so far as to invent his own entirely new character--the elf Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly--and granting her as much, if not more plot and screen time than the key principals, Jackson is only demonstrating that he doesn't know when or where to stop. It's great that Jackson loves Tolkien so much, but where his LOTR trilogy ranks with the original 1977-1983 STAR WARS trilogy, his bloated, three-part HOBBIT, while well-acted and enjoyable on its own terms, is his STAR WARS: EPISODE I-III, and like George Lucas, he's surrounded by yes-men and basically at the point where he's too rich and powerful for anyone to tell him "no." When Jackson made the original LOTR trilogy, he had an insane ambition and something to prove. Remove that and the HOBBIT trilogy feels like little more than an extended victory lap.


At least the third part of the HOBBIT trilogy, THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES, is the shortest at a mere 143 minutes. Roughly half of the running time is devoted to the epic battle at Erebor, where Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) has reclaimed the Dwarven birthright following the dragon Smaug's (motion captured by Benedict Cumberbatch) rampage on Laketown and its subsequent death courtesy of the black arrow fired by Bard (Luke Evans). Thorin has been driven mad with power and is obsessively hunting for the Arkenstone, which has been stolen by Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who knows that it's dangerous for Thorin to possess. Meanwhile, Bard has led a large band of Laketown refugees to Dale, where he's formed a tentative alliance with elf king Thanduil (Lee Pace), who wants elven jewels being kept in Smaug's former stronghold. Legolas and Tauriel also turn up, with Tauriel still dealing with her forbidden love for the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner) as Orcs launch an offensive and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) dispenses sage advice.


With FIVE ARMIES, Jackson attempts to send the trilogy off with multiple extended battle sequences that play like a bunch of Helm's Deeps strung together. There's some occasionally inspired bits of action and some dazzling visuals that look fine in standard, 24 fps 3D (though the waxy sheen and gauzy Barbara Walters soft focus on some of the actors, particularly Bloom, can be distracting), but after a while, it's hard for it not to become an exhausting, eye-glazing CGI blur, quite often looking more like a video game than a movie. FIVE ARMIES works best in its few small-scale and quieter moments, be it a smiling nod from Gandalf (again, McKellen has little to do here aside from "show up and be Ian McKellen," but he owns this role so thoroughly that even watching him phone it in is a pleasure) or Thorin coming to his senses and realizing that he's been treating his friends horribly. There's so many characters and intertwining subplots that Freeman's Bilbo more or less disappears into the ensemble until it's time for him to say goodbye to the dwarves and head back to his home at Bag End. Despite some good performances by Evans and Armitage, there's too little of the sense of emotional connection that worked so brilliantly in the LOTR trilogy, where its many scenes of friendship and camaraderie never fail to get the waterworks going for fans. It's not like the magic is gone, but the freshness definitely is, even with brief, shoehorned-in appearances by other LOTR alumni like Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Christopher Lee as Saruman, and Hugo Weaving as Elrond (their bits were intended for THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG but cut from it and edited into this film instead), and in using more CGI than ever in this closing installment (the shot of Legolas running along a bridge as it collapses is dreadful), there's a very diminished sense of humanity compared to before.


In his LOTR trilogy, Jackson paid loving tribute to Tolkien and captured the writer's voice and spirit with nothing less than absolute perfection. But by stretching THE HOBBIT from a 300-page breeze of a read to three films totaling around eight hours--even longer once you factor in the DVD/Blu-ray extended editions--Jackson is only paying tribute to Peter Jackson, capturing the voice and spirit of a gifted visionary who can no longer do anything without completely overdoing it, like a three-hour-plus KING KONG. I probably sound like I hate the three HOBBIT films, but I don't. They're entertaining and demonstrate flashes of past LOTR greatness (Cumberbatch's Smaug in the second film is probably the highlight), but the overall feeling is one of shrugging ambivalence. The LOTR trilogy is one that vividly entertains and still richly rewards. The nice-enough-while-you're-watching-it but forgettable HOBBIT trilogy is just there. People still talk about LOTR in reverent tones, but do you know anyone who really loves the HOBBIT movies and speaks of them as highly as the LOTR films? Everybody's gone to see the HOBBIT movies but it seems like we've approached this new trilogy more out of a feeling of obligation than out of the feverish excitement we collectively had a decade ago. I'm actually sort-of glad that it's done.

THE GAMBLER
(US - 2014)

Directed by Rupert Wyatt. Written by William Monahan. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Brie Larson, Michael Kenneth Williams, George Kennedy, Andre Braugher, Anthony Kelley, Emory Cohen, Alvin Ing, Domenick Lombardozzi, Richard Schiff, Simon Rhee. (R, 111 mins)

In remaking the Dostoevsky-inspired, James Toback-scripted, Karel Reisz-directed 1974 cult film THE GAMBLER, screenwriter William Monahan (THE DEPARTED) and director Rupert Wyatt (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) initially make a sincere effort to stick to the gritty, character-driven ideals of the source. Many scenes in the early-going are almost defiant in the way they let dialogue-heavy interactions and conversations go on with little concern for audience restlessness and in no hurry at all to move at the quick-cut, short-attention-span pace of most of today's multiplex offerings. In many ways, it's part of a current throwback movement to the 1970s as seen in recent films like THE DROP and A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES. THE GAMBLER '74 had the rock-solid foundation of James Caan entering the post-GODFATHER pinnacle of his career, all cocksure swagger and Sonny Corleone rage as Ivy League-educated, NYU literature prof Axel Freed, who's in debt to loan sharks to the tune of $44,000. Toback's script was largely autobiographical and THE GAMBLER '14 lacks that personal touch and its '70s aesthetic has a certain artificiality to it as the film goes on (gifted prodigies acting out against suffocating family expectations would be a theme Toback explored further in his brilliant 1978 directorial debut FINGERS). While films like THE DROP and A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES have a '70s mindset in the present day, THE GAMBLER '14 strays from its source as it progresses, becoming more beholden to commercial expectations and predictable character arcs, and despite drastically higher stakes thanks to inflation, it never really feels like L.A.-based literature prof and one-and-done novelist Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is in any serious danger.




Hailed as a bold new voice in fiction in 2007, Bennett never got around to writing that second novel and instead berates his students for their lack of inspiration and effort and not possessing the talent to do so anyway. Amy (Brie Larson), his one student with potential, knows his secret life: she's a waitress at a seedy gambling den owned by Korean mobster Mr. Lee (Alvin Ing), who staked over $100,000 to Jim, who promptly lost it all in one doomed spin of a roulette wheel. These early scenes establish the purely suicidal self-destruction of the character in the same way as the 1974 film, and both Axel Freed and Jim Bennett seem to be rebelling against their family wealth and privileged upbringing. Wyatt wrings considerable suspense out of intensely stomach-turning scenes of an addicted Jim at a blackjack table, $80,000 on the line, angrily demanding another card when he's already at 18. Of course he loses it all--Jim's only really satisfied when he loses it all, and he seeks out the most dangerously shady people imaginable for extra cash, whether it's powerful crime lord Neville Baraka (Michael Kenneth Williams) or God-like loan shark Frank (John Goodman, who's terrific). The film opens with Jim visiting his dying grandfather (George Kennedy sighting!), the 17th-richest man in California, who refuses to leave him any money because he needs to build his character. Once Jim is $260,000 in debt to both Mr. Lee and Neville, and turns down a stake from Frank because he refuses to meet Frank's demand of admitting "I am a piece of shit gambler," and "I am not a man," he hits up his wealthy mother (Jessica Lange), who gives him the money, after which he drives to Vegas with Amy and almost immediately blows it all at a blackjack table.


The relationship that develops between Jim and Amy is one of the more problematic elements of Monahan's script. Monahan tries to draw a parallel between Jim and Amy's alcoholic mother by showing that she's inherently drawn to the addicted and the damaged, but at the same time, her actions and decisions never really feel plausible. She knows what kind of guy Jim is and the sorts of people with whom he's entangled--she even works at an illegal casino--but the character as shown is too level-headed and smart to so easily fall for a shit magnet like Jim. It doesn't help that the film loses track of her as it goes on, and Larson (robbed of an Oscar nomination for last year's SHORT TERM 12) is too good for such a muddled and sketchily-written role. Her attraction to Jim would make a lot more sense if Wahlberg was playing the part like Caan played Axel Freed. Where Axel publicly possessed a magnetic sense of indestructible, self-confident bravado no matter how much money he lost, Wahlberg's Jim is disheveled, glum and glowering, with a constant Joe Btfsplk dark cloud hovering over him from the moment he's introduced. Axel Freed tried to make it rain, it blew up in his face, and he defiantly asked for more, while Jim Bennett just shrugs and places another five-figure bet on one hand. Both are committing slow suicide, but Wahlberg's characterization doesn't have the same sense of consequences-be-damned kamikaze fervor, regardless of how good he is in the role. Caan's Axel Freed came off like a dumbass, but he was a dumbass with balls. Wahlberg's Jim Bennett just comes off like a dumbass.


The change in the main character's mindset probably has more to do with Wyatt and Monahan needing to do something different in order to avoid a straight scene-for-scene remake, but all the changes do is put a spotlight on what worked so well in 1974. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the climax, after which Jim has talked one of his students, a star basketball player and guaranteed NBA prospect (Anthony Kelley) to shave points in a game in order to settle his debt with Neville. Reisz and Toback had Axel Freed celebrate by going to the wrong side of town looking for a fight, getting one, and ending the film in an ambiguous, nihilistic fashion that shows there's no limit to his mad quest to take increasingly dangerous risks, essentially gambling himself to death. Wyatt and Monahan, in accordance with THE GAMBLER '14 being a major-studio movie released at Christmas, have to give Jim a crowd-pleasing happy ending. It doesn't gel with the tone of what came before, and Jim's done nothing to really make the audience care about his shot at redemption. On top of that, too much of the film feels like Scorsese-lite, from the DEPARTED-style soliloquizing of the characters to the classic rock soundtrack, with incongruous reggae covers of Pink Floyd's "Time," and "Money," a Billy Bragg version of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," and Scala & Kolacny Brothers' take on Radiohead's "Creep."


Whatever the extent of THE GAMBLER '14's problems, the performances aren't among them. A scrawny-looking and obviously committed Wahlberg reportedly dropped 60 lbs and does a solid job with an often unplayable role, and while Amy is a woefully underwritten character, the promising Larson still shines--Wyatt gives her a great and very odd little scene where she's doing this strange walk/dance in slo-mo while heading to class and the actress' goofy facial expressions are guaranteed to turn you into a Brie Larson fan; it's a throwaway moment that almost looks like it's edited together from a set of outtakes, but turns into her best moment in the film. THE GAMBLER '14's biggest strengths come from its supporting cast, with Lange getting a couple of devastating scenes as Jim's mother, torn between her disgust with her son and the hole into which he's dug himself, but also remorseful that maybe his upbringing, her shrewdness, and her obsession with wealth are what drove him to be the fuck-up that he is. Goodman sinks his teeth into his role, frequently seen holding court in a steamroom, telling Jim how to play it smart and get himself to a "Fuck you" position in life, and unable to comprehend Jim's story about how he was once up $2.5 million and lost it all on one hand. It's great seeing 89-year-old Kennedy, an Oscar-winner for 1967's COOL HAND LUKE, back on the big screen again, though his prominent billing and his one minute or so of screen time probably indicate he had a larger role at some point. It's also worth noting that veteran character actor Leland Orser's name turns up in the credits but he's never seen--he was cast as a rival lit professor in a subplot that appears to have been completely excised, along with most of Andre Braugher's scenes as the college dean (he has one brief bit talking to Jim in a hallway), all of which point to some eleventh-hour editing still going on shortly before the film's release (Orser is briefly seen in the trailer). As far as remakes go, you can do a lot worse. THE GAMBLER '14 has its strong points, but ultimately, it pales in comparison to THE GAMBLER '74, which still held up beautifully as of a revisit a month or so ago. The original GAMBLER came out 40 years ago and is still held in high regard today.  Will people even remember the remake of THE GAMBLER 40 days from now?

REACH ME
(US - 2014)

Though it's largely forgotten today, John Herzfeld's 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY (1996) was one of the better Tarantino knockoffs that came in the wake of PULP FICTION (1994). If it's remembered at all today, it's for giving moviegoers their first exposure to Charlize Theron, whose icy presence and epic catfight with Teri Hatcher managed to upstage the bigger names in the cast. Making his first feature film since the 2001 Robert De Niro thriller 15 MINUTES, Herzfeld returns to the Santa Monica settings of VALLEY for REACH ME, but the results are decidedly different. Like VALLEY, it's packed with big names (or, at least, familiar faces), but REACH ME falls into the played-out, post-CRASH, "everything is connected" ensemble subgenre, a simple-minded MAGNOLIA with a laughably hokey self-improvement slant that makes it resemble what might happen if a more-sanctimonious-than-usual Paul Haggis tried to make a movie version of the 2006 Rhonda Byrne bestseller The Secret. The premise is shaky from the start, and the film is so badly-assembled that it's obvious something bigger was planned before they settled on this 92-minute cut that ended up being barely released. As it is, REACH ME is so choppy and sloppy, which such whiplashing changes in tone that Herzfeld is never able to establish any dramatic or narrative momentum. It's just a collection of scenes that never come together and ideas that never coalesce, populated by characters you don't care about, played by actors who have no chance of overcoming the project's countless deficiencies. REACH ME is as preachy and pandering as any evangelical film and can only be described as "self-helpsploitation." This isn't a movie made for general release--it's a motivational DVD for businesses to play at workshops and training seminars they force their employees to attend. It's WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW!? for the self-improvement crowd.


As the self-help book Reach Me blows up on social media and skyrockets to the top of the bestseller list, the world searches for its enigmatic and reclusive author, Teddy Raymond (Tom Berenger), who spends his days anonymously wandering the beach, desperate to avoid the spotlight. Ambitious journalist Roger King (Kevin Connolly) works for a TMZ-like tabloid site run by celebrity blogger Gerald (Sylvester Stallone in rare character actor mode, going for "gregariously eccentric" but really just "loud"), who's obsessed with getting an exclusive interview with Raymond. King falls for Raymond's press agent (THE WALKING DEAD's Lauren Cohan) after tracking him down and finding he has a peculiar and effective method for making major life changes: Raymond simply has chain-smoker King stand on the beach and yell "My name is a Roger and I'm not a smoker!" at the top of his charred lungs for several hours and just like that, he's a non-smoker. The book has also affected the lives of others: ex-con Colette (Kyra Sedgwick), who discovered it while serving time, giving her the nerve to face down a bullying inmate; famous rapper E-Ruption (Nelly), who's built a hip-hop empire since absorbing Raymond's words; and dim-witted hitman Thumper (David O'Hara), who uses the book to convince his cohort Dominic (Omari Hardwick) to leave their mobster boss Frank (Tom Sizemore) and open a restaurant together instead of killing a Weiner dog that belongs to the guy (Christoph M. Ort), who's now with Frank's model ex Denise-Denise (Rebekah Chaney, Herzfeld's wife and one of 30 credited producers). Others drawn into the story's wobbling orbit include Colette's actress friend (Elizabeth Henstridge) who's sexually assaulted by an asshole movie star (Cary Elwes); rogue cop Wolfie (Thomas Jane) who acts like a spaghetti western gunslinger and keeps intentionally getting himself in situations where he's forced to kill his way out, angering the alcoholic priest (Danny Aiello) who has to hear his confessions; powerful gangster Angelo Aldobrandini (Kelsey Grammer), who's fed up with the incompetence of Frank and his chief flunky (Frank Pesce); Raymond's tough-but-sensitive spokesman (Terry Crews), who advises E-Ruption that it's not polite to curse in public; and a movie stuntman (Ryan Kwanten), whose Tourette's was cured by Raymond.


In his quest to turn REACH ME into the self-help IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD you never knew you needed, Herzfeld also finds room for bit parts by Frank Stallone, Danny Trejo, Sally Kellerman, Jillian Barberie, Noel Gugliemi, Darius McCrary, Frankie Valli Jr., Chuck Zito, and yes, even Herzfeld himself as a movie director in arguably REACH ME's biggest casting stretch. There's no story here, no observations made about the self-improvement industry--just a staggering waste of actors who must really like Herzfeld, as they all took significant pay cuts on a strapped production that found Herzfeld and his benefactor buddy Stallone resorting to Kickstarter and Indiegogo to get the funding to complete the movie. The idea of Stallone asking people for money on Kickstarter is as absurd as his Nic Cage-meets-Al Pacino performance, with one scene where he's painting what looks like a giant vagina on a mural while incoherently screaming at Connolly that's begging to become a viral sensation. This is a shockingly bad film, one of the year's absolute worst and so awful that it makes something like THE POWER OF FEW look good. It scrapes the bottom of the barrel of an already historically dismal subgenre--poorly-written, amateurishly executed (watch the inept and awkward Fake Shemping for Stallone and Berenger in their scene together as Herzfeld can't cover for the obvious fact that the actors weren't there at the same time) and almost unparalleled in 2014 in its utter disregard for the concept of entertainment. Even with this cast, there is no commercial audience for REACH ME, which is probably why Cannon cover band Millennium only gave it an under-the-radar VOD debut just a month before its DVD release. (PG-13, 92 mins)



AS ABOVE SO BELOW
(US - 2014)

The Catacombs of Paris are a natural setting for a horror film and if nothing else, AS ABOVE SO BELOW and its cast and crew deserve some credit for actually shooting on location and trekking further in-and-downward than any other commercial film crew before them. It's too bad that extra effort is wasted on yet another assembled-via-checklist found-footage horror film, with imagery too dark and handheld camera work too shaky to maximize the unique opportunity offered by the Catacombs. With all the screaming, shouting, dropped cameras, and blurry, jittery imagery, the Catacombs rarely get a chance to convey their inherently ominous, claustrophobic nature, regardless of how many tight passageways and narrow tunnels the characters have to squeeze themselves into and through. Urban archaeologist Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks) is dedicated to continuing the work of her late father, an alchemy historian who was after the magically healing Philosopher's Stone, believed to be discovered by 14th century alchemist Nicolas Flamel. Flamel's body, along with six million others, is buried in the Catacombs, and through ancient Aramaic carvings translated by her ex George (Ben Feldman)--who's still bitter about her leaving him behind in a Turkish jail during their last expedition--Scarlett makes a startling discovery: from the alchemist belief that the Number of the Beast is 741, she surmises that the Gates of Hell are located approximately 741 feet under Paris. Scarlett, her cameraman Benji (Edwin Hodge), and a reluctant George hire Parisian urban explorer Papillon (Francois Civil), who brings along two of his friends, and the group venture deep into the Catacombs and, of course, start going in circles and winding up at the same spot. It gets worse when they begin encountering physical manifestations of long-suppressed memories--George finding a battered piano with the same bum A-key that was in his family's house when he was a kid; Papillon happening upon the specter of his brother who died when he couldn't save him from a burning car; and Scarlett answering a ringing rotary phone and hearing her dead father on the other end of the line. Faster than you can say EVENT HORIZON, the explorers are being haunted by their own psychological traumas as they get closer to Hell, which may very well be nothing more than a vast room filled with found-footage horror films.


Directed by John Erick Dowdle (the [REC] remake QUARANTINE and the M. Night Shyamalan-produced DEVIL), who scripted with his brother Drew, AS ABOVE SO BELOW couldn't really have been made as anything but found-footage, given the close confines of the Catacombs and the whole hook of actually shooting down there but it's a moot point when you can't tell what's going on anyway. There's a fundamental problem with the Dowdles' approach when you're squeezed into some of the tightest confines a film crew has ever worked, and in a naturally terrifying location and the end result is not intense claustrophobia but rather, frustration and boredom. In the long-ago, ancient days of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and even the first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, found-footage was a clever way for no-budget, DIY filmmakers to produce effective, scary horror movies. Now, with studios like Universal and production houses like Legendary backing the $5 million AS ABOVE SO BELOW (still cheap, but mega-budget compared to the $23,000 spent on BLAIR WITCH), the entire subgenre's transformation into a cynical cash-grab is complete, and judging from the rapidly declining box office that recent titles have seen, the public is finally growing tired of them. AS ABOVE topped out at $29 million--far below what found-footage hits were raking in just a couple of years ago, but still making 6x its budget. With that kind of profit margin, you can rest assured that even with decreasing appeal and fan fatigue, you're getting more of these things whether you want them or not, and they'll be claiming squatters' rights at multiplexes nationwide for several years to come. That's not to say there haven't been interesting offerings here and there--Barry Levinson's THE BAY and Bobcat Goldthwait's WILLOW CREEK were limited-release/VOD standouts--but AS ABOVE SO BELOW squanders its access to the Catacombs and is as middling and forgettable as the majority of its ilk. (R, 93 mins)



RAGNAROK
(Norway/Sweden/Denmark - 2013; US release 2014)

Some key personnel from Norway's hugely popular COLD PREY slasher franchise are behind this terrifically enjoyable homage to the commercial, crowd-pleasing heyday of Steven Spielberg, with some added James Cameron nods as well. Museum researcher Sigurd (Ryan Gosling lookalike Pal Sverre Hagen) is ridiculed and cut off by his financial backers and demoted to tour guide by his boss over his insistence that much of Norse mythology, particularly Ragnarok, essentially the Norse End of Days, actually happened. A widower who lost his wife and research partner to cancer five years earlier, Sigurd drags his two kids, daughter Ragnhild (Marie Annette Tandero Berglyd) and young son Brage (Julian Rasmussen Padolski) along with fellow curator Allan (Nicolai Cleve Brach), adventurer Elisabeth (Sofia Helin), and grumbly driver/terrain guide Leif (Bjorn Sundquist) to the mountains of Finnmark near the Norway/Russia border where they find runestones and Viking gear in a hidden cave. They're left behind by the scheming Leif, who steals the findings and has no interest in museum preservation, but he's killed by something in the surrounding lake. Brage finds a strange egg from which emerges a baby snake-type creature secretly stashed away by Allan. Soon, they all encounter a massive serpent documented in the runestones of Viking queen Asa over 1000 years earlier. The serpent is huge, hungry, and pissed off at the intruders, going on a motherly rampage to recover its missing offspring.


Director Mikkel Braenne Sandemose (2010's COLD PREY III, still unreleased in the US) and writer John Kare Raake (awesomely-named producer and COLD PREY director Roar Uthaug is credited as "screenplay consultant") wear their love of '80s and '90s Hollywood blockbusters on their sleeves.  The Spielberg influences are all over the place--you'll spot elements of JAWS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and JURASSIC PARK (the latter in particular when the serpent pursues the kids), and even more recent monster fare like 2007's THE HOST and 2008's ROGUE, and the idea of a giant creature unleashing hell to rescue its offspring from human interlopers dates back to the beloved British GODZILLA knockoff GORGO (1961). The CGI and special effects throughout RAGNAROK are top-notch and the cinematography by Daniel Voldheim is superb. This looks and feels like a huge movie, and there's some surprising depth to it as well, especially in the relationship between Sigurd and his kids and in the way loner Elisabeth is drawn to Ragnhild, a child forced to grow up too soon. Sigurd is a loving dad, but he has a habit of letting the kids down, not in a neglectful way but more out of absent-mindedness and focus on his research, and it's something the kids have just learned to work around. All issues get put aside to focus on survival, and once Leif is out of the picture, the remaining characters are turned into a tough and likable team...for a while, at least. RAGNAROK is formulaic and offers nothing original, but it's very good at what it sets out to do. It's filled with appealing performances, impressive and suspenseful action set pieces, and excellent visual effects. It's the kind of popcorn movie that just wants you to sit back and have a good time, getting to the point and not overlong, old-school in its execution, and light on the gore, making it acceptable for kids but intense enough for adult audiences to get sucked in as well. They need to make more movies like RAGNAROK. (PG-13, 95 mins)

THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2: 
ANGEL OF DEATH
(US/UK/Canada - 2015)

Directed by Tom Harper. Written by Jon Croker. Cast: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Helen McCrory, Adrian Rawlins, Oaklee Pendergast, Leanne Best, Ned Dennehy, Leilah de Meza, Jude Wright, Pip Pearce. (PG-13, 99 mins)

When it hit theaters three years ago, THE WOMAN IN BLACK was a nice throwback to gothic, old-school British horror and was one of the very few offerings from the newly-revived Hammer Films that was worthy of flaunting the beloved house of horror's treasured name. Other than THE WOMAN IN BLACK and the LET THE RIGHT ONE IN remake LET ME IN (2010), there hasn't been much for horror aficionados to get excited about with Hammer, which will henceforth be referred to as "Hammer" because, let's face it, it's not really the same Hammer and the current owners are just using it for name-branding to get a pass from horror scenesters. It seemed to work until last year's pedestrian THE QUIET ONES seemed to alienate everyone and finally expose "Hammer" as an in-name-only fraud. Now, "Hammer" is trying to win them back with the unnecessary THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2: ANGEL OF DEATH, a sequel with no returning cast members, filmmaking personnel, or characters, save for the titular ghost. This would seem to have "straight-to-DVD" written all over it, but it's a very atmospheric film with impeccable production design and some good performances, but after an intriguing set-up, it doesn't take long for the film to play all of its cards and exhaust the few original ideas it's got. Repetition sets in and the vivid period detail can only carry things so far.


Set roughly 30 years after the events of the first film, the sequel opens in 1941 during the Blitz in WWII. As London reels from the nightly destruction brought by German bombing raids, a small group of children, some orphaned, some with parents unable to leave, are sent off with their school headmistress Mrs. Hogg (HARRY POTTER vet Helen McCrory, also of PENNY DREADFUL and PEAKY BLINDERS) and young teacher Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox) to the distant and presumably safe confines of Eel Marsh House, home of the ghostly Woman in Black. Eve is drawn to young Edward (Oaklee Pendergast), a shy, lonely boy who hasn't spoken a word since his parents were killed. On two different occasions, Eve catches a glimpse of the Woman in Black (Leanne Best) only to have her disappear, and Edward begins behaving strangely after an encounter with her in a locked room, after which one of Edward's bullying tormentors (Jude Wright) is found dead. Mrs. Hogg will hear nothing of Eve's claims that someone else is in the house with them even as the bodies of children start piling up, and the only person willing to listen to Eve is Harry (Jeremy Irvine of WAR HORSE), a shell-shocked pilot still haunted by a botched mission where everyone under his command was killed.


Working from a story by Susan Hill, the author of the 1983 novel The Woman in Black, screenwriter Jon Croker offers an unexpected depth to the characterization. Much like Daniel Radcliffe's widower lawyer in the 2012 film, everyone is silently nursing some devastating emotional trauma that makes it easy for the Woman in Black to prey on their weaknesses, whether it's Harry's war memories, Mrs. Hogg's concern over her grown sons fighting in battle, or a traumatic event in Eve's past that explains her motherly concern for the troubled Edward. Croker and director Tom Harper let the tension mount in an admirable fashion, but once everything is established, there's really nowhere to take it, and Harper soon reveals himself to be a one-trick pony when it comes to his overuse of piercingly-loud jump scares. There's a few occasions where it works, like Eve bending down to pick something up and the camera panning back up with her to show a writhing, shaking body hanging from a noose in the middle of the room. But long before the 17th or 18th time Harper pans across and has the camera stop and focus on a dark spot in the middle of a barren room--and this is a very darkly-shot film--for seconds on end only to have a horrific CGI ghost face suddenly appear, accompanied by a shrill scream, you've figured out his game. It gets almost farcical after a while, as Harper comes dangerously close to turning the third act into EXORCIST MAZE GAME: THE MOVIE. In its quieter moments, THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 is more successful, with the depressing, dilapidated interior of Eel Marsh House and the perpetually gray skies and rain doing their part to convey an appropriate sense of melancholy and despair. The lone road to Eel Marsh House--that long causeway leading to the house that disappears when the tide comes in--remains an effectively chilling image and Harper pulls off a few striking shots both inside and outside the mansion. Despite these positives--and Fox is a very appealing heroine--THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2 suffers from a sense of indecisiveness and an uneven tone that stems from its wish to stay true to the Hammer of the past and its mandate to placate fans of the "Hammer" of the present. It wants to be a moody gothic chiller but it has to please the cheap jump-scare crowd. At least it doesn't pander to found-footage aesthetics, and in that respect, it's a major improvement over the quite disappointing THE QUIET ONES.