Good Efficient Butchery

KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE
(US/UK - 2015)

Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Cast: Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine, Mark Strong, Taron Egerton, Sofia Boutella, Sophie Cookson, Mark Hamill, Jack Davenport, Samantha Womack, Hanna Alstrom, Bjorn Floberg, Geoff Bell, Ralph Ineson, Richard Brake. (R, 129 mins)

Like 2010's KICK-ASS, director Matthew Vaughn's last adaptation of a Mark Millar comic book series, KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE (which Millar co-created with Dave Gibbons) takes unbridled joy in pushing the envelope and poking people with sticks. Without a little girl dropping countless F-and-C-bombs, KINGSMAN isn't going to attract quite the same level of controversy. Nevertheless, some are taking umbrage with the hilarious final shot, essentially a very hard-R riff on all of those quips and double entendres that would close out a James Bond movie as 007 wraps up the adventure and canoodles with the Bond girl while M or Q or Moneypenny listen or observe with their disapproving "Really, 007!" facial expressions. The entire film is an homage to the more lighthearted spy films of old, particularly Roger Moore's tenure as 007, while also functioning as a meta commentary on spy movies in general, with characters lamenting that today's genre items are much too serious and downbeat. That's an especially amusing aside, considering two of this film's stars--Colin Firth and Mark Strong--appeared in 2011's low-key and magnificently somber TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. The connection to spy films past extends to the presence of the legendary Michael Caine, who played British agent Harry Palmer in a series of five films from 1965 to 1996. Vaughn and regular co-writer Jane Goldman play these meta elements just enough that they remain amusing, wisely resisting the urge to make it too self-consciously cute. For the most part, KINGSMAN is bit on the longish side and, like so many of its present-day counterparts, suffers from some blasts of dubious CGI that's distracting in its cartoonish artifice, though I tend to be a little more lenient on that when it's a comic book adaptation. Overall, KINGSMEN is generally witty and wildly entertaining, deftly mixing thrilling action, big laughs, and shocking violence, aided by a fine cast of serious actors obviously enjoying themselves and having a good time.

Unemployed London troublemaker Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton) gets into a row at a pub and retaliates by taking the guy's car for a joyride. Arrested, Eggsy resorts to an emergency number on the back of a medal given to him 17 years earlier by Harry Hart (Firth), a co-worker of his late father, who died on the job. He was told to call that number if he ever needed anything, and 17 years later, he calls in that favor and is sprung from jail by Hart with all charges dropped. Hart tells Eggsy that he's a Kingsman--like his father--an agent in a top-secret government intelligence agency. Hart, codename Galahad, feels responsible for Eggsy, as Eggsy's father saved the lives of Galahad and other Kingsman agents by diving on top of an Iraqi suicide bomber, sacrificing himself for the greater good of the team. It so happens that there's a vacancy in the Kingsman agency--which Galahad would like filled by Eggsy-- after Lancelot (Jack Davenport) is killed by Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), a legless assassin with prosthetic, sharpened Oscar Pistorius-like running blades. Gazelle is the chief henchman to eccentric, billionaire internet mogul Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), a philanthropist whose supposed concern with climate change is a cover for a far more nefarious master plan. Valentine orchestrates a global giveaway of SIM cards that provide free phone and internet service for everyone, for life. As evidenced during a trial run at a Kentucky church, whose congregation is filled with hatemongering racists, gun nuts, and homophobes, the internet signal received by those with Valentine's SIM cards causes its users to behave in uncontrollably violent, destructive fashion. The SIM card is a mind and impulse control/manipulation signal, and Valentine has been meeting with and occasionally kidnapping the world's more important dignitaries and luminaries--including prominent climate change expert Prof. Arnold (Mark Hamill in some in-joke casting, playing a character who was originally named "Mark Hamill" in the comic book)--and implanting a chip behind their ears to make them immune from the signal, thereby giving an overcrowded, global warming-damaged world a much-needed do-over, where the lesser, more gullible people of society remove themselves from the equation and the rich and privileged one-percenters reign supreme. As Eggsy and others are trained in the ways of the Kingsman by their mentor Merlin (Strong), Galahad conducts an investigation of Valentine at the behest of the agency's leader Arthur (Caine), one that will put the entire organization to a test in order to save the planet from the megalomaniacal madman.

As goofy as KINGSMAN is, its plot isn't any more ludicrous than something like MOONRAKER (some of the climax even takes place in space!). From the various Kingsman gadgets to Valentine's insane plot and his lethal right-hand (wo)man with some kind of gimmicky physical attribute to Jackson's loud and hammy performance, KINGSMAN frequently resembles a lighthearted 007 entry if Bond was paired up with a street-smart soccer hooligan for a sidekick. Egerton does a fine job as Eggsy, with his cocky exterior masking smarts and sensitivity on which Galahad is willing to stake his reputation. The relationship that forms between the two men--one who never knew his father and the other who blames himself for it--is portrayed very nicely by Egerton and Firth. But it's really Jackson, acting like a mash-up between Spike Lee, Mark Cuban, and Auric Goldfinger, who steals the show. KINGSMAN also offers a lot in the way of ballsy, subversive jabs, not only at the massacre of a bunch of brainless Kentucky yokels who gather at the very Westboro Baptist-esque church to spread their hate and intolerance, but in the corrupt politicians in Valentine's pocket--there's digs at the left and the right here--and the way they sell everyone out to save their own asses, not to mention what Sweden's Princess Tilde (Hanna Alstrom) is willing to do if the world is saved. KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE takes the PUNISHER: WAR ZONE approach to older spy movies, but is a bit like a more refined KICK-ASS. It's still got something to offend everyone, but does so in the classiest way possible. It's a film that sets out to entertain while occasionally making your jaw drop and wondering "Did it really go there?" Yes, it does, and that's exactly why it's such great fun, and it's Vaughn's best film since his directing debut with 2004's LAYER CAKE.

COUNT DRACULA
(Italy/Spain/West Germany - 1970)

Directed by Jess Franco. Written by Augusto Finocchi. Cast: Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, Maria Rohm, Fred Williams, Soledad Miranda, Jack Taylor, Paul Muller, Franco Castellani, Jesus Puente, Jeannine Mestre, Emma Cohen, Jess Franco, Colette Giacobine. (Unrated, 97 mins)

He seems more at peace with it now, but for many years, Sir Christopher Lee openly despised his reputation as a horror icon, specifically his inextricable link with Dracula. Right on the heels of playing Frankenstein's monster in Hammer Films' THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957, 36-year-old Lee had his breakout role in the studio's HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), and while Dracula films only make up a tiny percentage of the now 92-year-old actor's nearly 300 acting credits over a storied and versatile career that's still trucking along in its eighth decade, it's indeed Dracula that will always be the first thing that comes to mind upon hearing the name "Christopher Lee." After HORROR OF DRACULA established Lee as a bona fide horror star, it didn't take long for him to spoof that image in the 1959 Italian comedy UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, but he didn't actually reprise his Dracula role in Hammer's official series until 1965's DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS. That was followed by 1968's DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE and two films in 1970: TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA and SCARS OF DRACULA. Lee was growing disillusioned with Hammer's Dracula films and the writers' refusal to stick to Bram Stoker's novel, instead concocting what Lee thought were absurd ideas that had nothing to do with Stoker's vision of the character. After resurrecting Dracula in mod, swinging London with 1972's DRACULA A.D. 1972 and 1973's THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, which had Dracula masquerading as a wealthy real estate mogul attempting to unleash a deadly virus upon the world, Lee reached his breaking point. By this time, he was openly bashing Hammer and the DRACULA films to the press and when Hammer announced a co-production deal with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers for THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES, which would pit Dracula against a team of Bruce Lee-inspired kung-fu fighters, Lee refused to have anything to do with it and was replaced by a bland and ineffective John Forbes-Robertson. The film was eventually released in the US as THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, and marked the end of Hammer's DRACULA series.

Before his frustration reached critical mass, Lee did enjoy spoofing his Dracula image in cameos in the Peter Sellers-Ringo Starr film THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (1969) and in the Sammy Davis Jr-Peter Lawford post-Rat Pack comedy ONE MORE TIME (1970), the latter at the personal request of horror aficionado and Lee superfan Davis. Even after his acrimonious departure from Hammer's series, Lee would play Dracula one last time in the 1976 French comedy DRACULA AND SON, directed by Eduardo Molinaro, who would go on to make the 1978 smash LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. In addition to appearing in two Hammer DRACULAs in 1970, Lee also made a Dracula film outside of the studio, almost as an open act of rebellion. Lee had done several films with producer Harry Alan Towers and Spanish exploitation legend Jess Franco in the preceding few years, including five FU MANCHU films (Franco directed the final two) as well as the softcore porn outing EUGENIE: THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (1970), a film in which Lee has maintained the racier elements were added after his scenes were shot. Lee was upset with Franco and Towers, but when they offered him a chance to star in a Dracula adaptation that was faithful to Stoker's novel, the disgruntled actor couldn't resist.

To put it in era-appropriate terms, Lee making COUNT DRACULA in 1970 is akin to Sean Connery making a 007 film for a rival studio while still starring in the official Bond series. Shot in Barcelona, COUNT DRACULA is a low-key affair with a script (credited to Augusto Finocchi in the print on Dark Sky's DVD, though Franco and Towers worked on it, and the US ads gave sole writing credit to Towers, under his screenwriting pseudonym "Peter Welbeck") that takes whole chunks of dialogue directly from Stoker's novel. Dracula is even introduced as an old man who gets progressively younger as the film proceeds and he gets a fresh supply of new blood from his victims. Intending to sell his decaying residence, an aged Dracula is visited at his castle by young lawyer Jonathan Harker (German actor Fred Williams). Dracula promptly puts the bite on Harker, who escapes from the castle and is transported back to a sanitarium in London, where he's treated by Dr. Seward (Paul Muller). His situation attracts the attention of clinic head Dr. Van Helsing (Herbert Lom) as a spry and younger-looking Dracula has followed Harker back to London to buy a neighboring castle so he can stalk and vampirize his fiancee Mina (Towers' wife Maria Rohm) and her friend Lucy (Franco muse Soledad Miranda). Dracula has also established a psychic hold on crazed asylum inmate Renfield (Klaus Kinski), who lost his mind after his family had a fateful encounter with the vampire years earlier.

While staying generally faithful to Stoker in spirit, COUNT DRACULA takes some liberties in its execution, especially in the way it takes elements of the book's Van Helsing's backstory and transfers them over to Renfield. The film is very slowly-paced and, like most Franco efforts, budget-deprived. Many of the sets look like they belong in a high school play, with some interiors appearing ready to topple over at any second. At times, the cheap, sparse look of Dracula's castle adds to the sense of gloomy despair looming over the elderly vampire (a happy accident I'm sure, given Franco's track record). Elsewhere, dangling rubber bats are laughably phony-looking, the camera occasionally doesn't seem to be pointed in the right direction, and the day-for-night work is atrocious, with one scene taking place at night when it's obvious it was shot in the middle of a bright, sunny day. Lee underplays it for the most part, but you can see his commitment, especially in one epic monologue to Harker early on that's delivered directly into the camera in a way that only Lee can. Lee absolutely nails this long sequence ("This was a Dracula indeed!") and it ranks with the finest acting of his career.

Franco did some of his most professional work during his years with Towers, a veteran exploitation huckster who was great at corralling money to lure name actors who maybe weren't at their pinnacle of their career (like a visibly drunk Jack Palance in Franco's 1969 De Sade chronicle JUSTINE) or were just cool with whatever as long as the check cleared (Lee and Lom, the latter having just appeared in Franco's sleazy 1969 women-in-prison classic 99 WOMEN and would continue slumming in Eurotrash until Blake Edwards rescued him to reprise his role as the perpetually-flustered Dreyfus when he restarted the PINK PANTHER franchise in 1975). Towers managed to get Lee, Lom, and Kinski together for COUNT DRACULA, but the three headliners are never seen together and were never on the set with one another. Franco leaves a lot of the plot's heavy lifting to Harker and Lucy's fiance Quincy Morris (played by American expat and Franco regular Jack Taylor), while Lee, Lom, and Kinski only worked on the film for a few days each. Dracula and Van Helsing's sole scene together is shot in a way that makes it quite apparent Lee and Lom were not there at the same time. It's worth noting that there is the possibility that Dracula and Van Helsing were meant to interact more than they do--Lom was a last-minute replacement after Vincent Price backed out just before shooting began. Perhaps his hasty casting and limited availability necessitated changes, which may explain why Van Helsing doesn't even take part in the final ambush of Dracula, instead sending Harker and Morris to deal with it after suffering a stroke from which he's apparently recovered two scenes later. Kinski's Renfield never leaves his asylum cell, where he makes funny noises, smears food on the walls, and eats flies. As an actor, Kinski only interacts with Muller, Franco Castellani (as an abusive guard) and, for one scene, Rohm, who's said that Kinski initially refused to appear in a Dracula movie and Towers had to convince him that his scenes were for another project. According to legend (and Rohm, who perhaps embellishes somewhat but it's still amusing and, considering Kinski's volatile personality, quite plausible) when Renfield attempts to choke Mina, Kinski had his hands around her neck and whispered "Maria, I think that husband of yours has me in a fucking Dracula film." Interestingly, Kinski would star in two Dracula adaptation years later, with Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE (1979) and its unofficial sequel, NOSFERATU IN VENICE (1988).

Even with its flaws and cut corners, COUNT DRACULA is an unusually ambitious project for Franco and Towers, and one that makes a good pairing with the same year's THE BLOODY JUDGE, released in the US in 1972 as the misleading NIGHT OF THE BLOOD MONSTER (it would be 1973 before COUNT DRACULA managed to find a US distributor). THE BLOODY JUDGE is obviously inspired by Michael Reeves' WITCHFINDER GENERAL, itself ripped off in 1969 with the West German tongue-ripper MARK OF THE DEVIL, starring (wait for it) Herbert Lom, but like COUNT DRACULA, it features one of Lee's best performances as puritanical Judge Jeffreys, yet another in a long line of impotent, sexually-frustrated witchfinders taking their penile inadequacy issues out on accused witches and assorted wenches, harlots, and other undesirables of dubious moral standing. Both films catch Franco just before 27-year-old Soledad Miranda's tragic death in a car accident would, for better or worse, completely alter the course of his career. Franco could hold his own as a journeyman gun-for-hire, but he was starting to explore his auteur impulses, which usually meant plotless fever dreams and constant crotch-zooms, an artistic shift that would reach its apex when he met his next muse and eventual life partner Lina Romay. There's a fine line between auteur and perv, and as Franco aged into the emeritus raconteur phase of his career in the years before his death in 2013, his work was reconsidered as that of a legitimate trail-blazer and cinematic genius. I'm not entirely onboard with that--there's some interesting films there in his post-Towers dive into horror erotica, but a large chunk of it is clearly the work of an often sloppy filmmaker who just had a fond appreciation for naked women. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

THE HOMESMAN
(France/US - 2014)

In the small frontier town of Loup in the Nebraska Territory in the 1850s, three women have gone insane: Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) suffers a breakdown after being unable to conceive a child and watching her husband (David Dencik) throw her just-deceased mother's corpse out in a heavy snowstorm before it starts stinking; Theoline Belknap (Miranda Otto), a mother of three, tosses her newborn baby into an outhouse pit; and 19-year-old Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer) loses her three children over three days to diphtheria. Rev. Dowd (John Lithgow) has decided to send them away to receive special care and treatment at a hospital in Iowa run by Altha Carter (Meryl Streep), the wife of a prominent Methodist minister. The trip is at least five weeks away and the women's husbands (there's also William Fichtner as Theoline's, and Jesse Plemons as Arabella's) are either unable or unwilling to make the journey, so Loup spinster Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) volunteers. Cuddy moved to the area from New York, owns a large piece of land, and contributes to the welfare of Loup but is still gossiped about as she's been unable to land a husband. Now resorting to proposing marriage to men strictly as a business deal, the lonely Cuddy is repeatedly turned down for being "too bossy and too plain-looking." Looking for purpose in a life that's left her "uncommonly alone," Cuddy agrees to transport the three women across the Missouri River into Iowa, and finds an unwilling partner in a man calling himself George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones). A scheming claim jumper, Briggs made some enemies and Cuddy finds him strung up in a noose and left for dead, kept alive only by sheer luck as he's managed to keep the horse holding him there from bolting. Cuddy cuts him down and offers him $300 and a jug of whiskey to help with the journey and provide protection from various threats and obstacles that may arise.

Based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, THE HOMESMAN was directed and co-written by Jones, and it turns into an interesting companion piece with his 2005 feature directing debut THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (also, like THE HOMESMAN, co-produced by unlikely Jones pal Luc Besson). Both films--and tangentially, Jones' 2011 HBO film THE SUNSET LIMITED--share the common themes of death, honor, and redemption, but THE HOMESMAN is another beast altogether. Stunningly shot by Rodrigo Prieto, it finds Jones in auteur mode, with nearly every shot intricately staged and precisely framed as exquisite works of art. There's a Clint Eastwood aesthetic in his depiction of the west that recalls UNFORGIVEN (1992), and Jones not only takes time to build the characters but also, like Kelly Reichardt's minimalist MEEK'S CUTOFF (2011), is a stickler for harsh realism. THE HOMESMAN dives into the arduous obstacles and unpleasant realities of frontier life, the very realities--disease, isolation, environment--that turns three women into "cuckoo clocks" and the five-week journey into a months-long ordeal. This is an offbeat and thoroughly unique western, anchored by two terrific performances from Jones and Swank, and it's a film that would seem to have been a natural hit with audiences until you actually see it. Between this and THREE BURIALS, Jones has proven himself to be a gifted storyteller and a challenging filmmaker unconcerned with commercial appeal, and a lot of THE HOMESMAN is just too weird to play on 3000 screens and be the next OPEN RANGE or APPALOOSA sleeper hit (it's probably the best western since John Hillcoat's brutal 2006 western THE PROPOSITION). Lionsgate didn't seem to have any idea what to do with this, releasing it under its arthouse Roadside Attractions banner and only rolling it out on 220 screens. From the situations that arise--namely a whopper of an unexpected plot turn that completely shifts gears about 2/3 of the way in, and Briggs' ultimately surreal and nightmarish run-in with an erudite and dismissive hotelier (James Spader)--and the sly way Marco Beltrami's score vacillates between the grand, sweeping accompaniment you'd expect to hear in a John Ford western to the eerie and unsettlingly discordant piano and percussion sounds during the darker moments, THE HOMESMAN is a western that consistently defies genre expectations while utilizing standard tropes like Briggs' eventual redemption still not altering his status as an outsider--think of the way John Wayne's Ethan Edwards stands outside that door at the end of THE SEARCHERS, an unsympathetic and violent man who finds salvation in bringing his family back together but still remains distanced from that family, always and forever an outcast no matter how heroic he may be. Jones' George Briggs remains an enigma--it's clearly not his real name and we never learn about his obvious outlaw past, but he does what he's been paid to do and the journey, with all its ugly brutality and outright horror, is his redemption. Therein lies Jones' niche in the western genre: he's a John Ford purist at heart in a nihilistic Sam Peckinpah world. Also with Barry Corbin, Tim Blake Nelson, and Hailee Steinfeld (TRUE GRIT), THE HOMESMAN is bold and uncompromising, quirky and unpredictable, and one of the great undiscovered films of 2014. (R, 123 mins)

V/H/S: VIRAL
(US - 2014)

The third entry in the horror anthology franchise is not only the worst, but it also might be the worst portmanteau since that pair of slapped-together GEORGE A. ROMERO PRESENTS DEADTIME STORIES releases from a few years ago. Making its predecessors look like DEAD OF NIGHT and CREEPSHOW by comparison, V/H/S: VIRAL is a sloppy, incoherent, unwatchable disaster, with a wraparound story that has nothing to do with the events we see in the stories that unfold. DEADGIRL director Marcel Sarmiento handled the wraparound, "Vicious Circles," which deals with a would-be viral video dickbag who's fighting with his girlfriend but splits to follow a car chase on TV that speeds by his house. "Dante the Great," directed by Gregg Bishop (DANCE OF THE DEAD), is about an egomaniacal, murderous magician (Justin Welborn), whose magic is powered by his haunted cloak, and is notable for the land-speed record it sets in ditching its faux-doc concept to go for straight narrative. TIMECRIMES director Nacho Vigalondo helms "Parallel Monsters," where a guy (Gustavo Salmerin) encounters his doppelganger, at which time they agree to swap universes for 15 minutes but it's hardly a harmless visit. Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead direct "Bonestorm," where a bunch of skaters head to Tijuana and run afoul of a south-of-the-border death cult, with the entire segment shot almost exclusively with helmet-cams with occasional switches to first-person shooter POV shots. A fifth segment, "Gorgeous Vortex," was cut from the film just before release, with the explanation being that it slowed down the pace and changed the tone of the project, but it's included on the DVD and Blu-ray as a bonus segment at the conclusion of the actual film. Directed by Todd Lincoln (the completely forgettable THE APPARITION), it's an impenetrable, bizarre, dialogue-free fever dream that's completely pretentious bullshit that doesn't get a pass simply because it seems to be a little more high-minded than the idiocy that made the final cut. A photo-finish with RAZE as 2014's worst film and the absolute nadir of the hipster horror movement, which is pretty much that last thing I have to say about V/H/S: VIRAL. You win, fanboys. I'm out. (R, 81 mins)

BAD TURN WORSE
(US - 2014)

An intermittently interesting Texas noir, BAD TURN WORSE has moments where it looks like it'll be another twisty BLUE RUIN, but it doesn't know when to shut up and can't avoid belaboring its points. For example, when you've got a main character handing a copy of Jim Thompson's South of Heaven to another character and telling them "You've gotta read this!" at the five-minute mark, you might be trying a little too hard. A thriller with teenage protagonists that too often feels like it was written by teenagers--which is a shame because who doesn't want to love a bleak, cynical noir written by someone named Dutch Southern?--BAD TURN WORSE works in a love triangle, a haphazardly-planned heist, money-laundering, and $20,000 belonging to a Corpus Christi gangster but still ends up with the inevitable showdown at an abandoned cotton gin where the chief villain spends an inordinate amount of time dropping snide bon mots on the hapless protagonists as he spells out his master plan instead of just dealing with the issue at hand. In a small and mostly dead Texas town, Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) and his bookworm friend Sue (Mackenzie Davis)--she's the Jim Thompson superfan--can't wait to go to college, much to the disappointment of Sue's boyfriend BJ (Logan Huffman), who's bummed about losing his friends and acting out in the worst way possible. Like, stealing $20K from the safe of small-time criminal Giff (Mark Pellegrino), who runs a cotton gin owned by ruthless, big-city crime lord Big Red (William Devane). BJ blows the whole $20K on going to the city for the weekend and making it rain, showing Bobby and Sue a good time before they leave. But when they return on Monday, Giff wants to know who took the money, and to protect BJ, Bobby takes the blame. Giff wants his money back and forces the trio to steal another $20,000 from a money-laundering drop used by Big Red's guys. Needless to say, there's one double-cross after another, especially once BJ discovers that Bobby and Sue have been carrying on a clandestine fling behind his back.

Writer Southern and sibling directors Zeke & Simon Hawkins do a commendable job of establishing the downbeat atmosphere of this hellhole of a town (the film played the festival circuit a year before its eventual release, under its original title, WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE). It's the kind of place where all the businesses are boarded up, everyone works at Giff's cotton gin, and there's little business opportunities except very small-time crime (one suspects the copper wire business is booming). Even the sheriff (Jon Gries) is on Giff's payroll. Sue and Bobby are often chided by the townies for "goin' off to college," and even Bobby's mom dismisses his newfound educational aspirations with "You're not a college kid...you're a cotton kid," almost like she knows he's only going so he can be close to Sue (that's also why BJ thinks he's going). Sue is obviously too smart for BJ (and Bobby, for that matter), but unlike BJ, she never intended them to be forever. It's a depressing, dead-end town where dreams died at least a generation back, and it's the perfect setting for such a story. It's good for about 2/3 of the way, but in the final act, everything collapses as the filmmakers resort to piling on the double-crosses and have Pellegrino's Giff stop just short of donning a monocle and twirling a mustache to show how nefarious he is. Pellegrino has some great moments where he gets to spit out some memorable dialogue ("You sure like to gamble for someone with such a shit pokerface," he tells Bobby, and when he gives Bobby an ultimatum after threatening to have his goons rape Sue, he promises "I'm gonna do more to your sweet pea than hollow out her heinie-hole") but Southern has the character behave too inconsistently, careening wildly from criminal mastermind to none-too-bright doofus depending on what the story needs him to be in any given scene. Devane makes an impression with his too-brief screen time, showing up to deal with Giff and lay down the law in a bathrobe and slippers. BAD TURN WORSE is OK, but it could've easily been something a little more if the filmmakers didn't feel the need to oversell, overplot, and overexplain, like they didn't trust their audience to process the ambiguities or connect the dots. Certainly, any fan of Thompson's brand of hard-boiled pulp fiction could've made the homage-to-Thompson connection without having it stated by the characters time and again throughout. Well-intentioned and occasionally quite good, BAD TURN WORSE is more like Target Just Missed. (Unrated, 92 mins)

WHIPLASH
(US - 2014)

It's almost impossible to watch WHIPLASH and focus on anything other than the Oscar-winning work of J.K. Simmons. The veteran character actor gets the role of his career here and absolutely runs with it. As music conservatory instructor Terence Fletcher, Simmons time and again takes the character to just the point where one step more would be over-the-top, and he pulls it in. His words, his delivery, his mannerisms, his body language, and his facial expressions all come together with lightning-in-a-bottle perfection as Simmons creates one of the most indelible characters in recent years and certainly one of the best performances you'll ever see. He really is that great. He's so great, that it's easy to forget that he's not even the star of the film, and that lead Miles Teller also turns in an award-caliber performance that was doomed to be overshadowed by Simmons. Teller is Andrew Neimann, a jazz drumming student at the prestigious (and fictitious) Shaffer Conservatory in NYC. A loner, Andrew spends his free time obsessively practicing and watching movies with his high-school teacher dad (Paul Reiser), a single parent and failed writer whose wife walked out on them when Andrew was a baby. These are crucial bits of information that Andrew tells Fletcher after the abrasive instructor selects him for the school's featured studio band. It takes one minor mistake in tempo for Fletcher to take Andrew's family history and hurl it back at him as "motivation." Respected and feared by his students, Fletcher is intimidating, manipulative, unpredictable, volatile, sadistic, reassuring, seductive, and probably psychopathic. His criticisms target weaknesses, his insults degrading and frequently sexist and homophobic. These teaching methods, which make R. Lee Ermey's drill instructor in FULL METAL JACKET seem approachable by comparison, push the students, especially Andrew, who's willing to put everything aside--from his dad to his nice girlfriend Nicole (Melissa Benoist)--to be everything Fletcher demands he be.

One of the most talked-about films at Sundance 2014, WHIPLASH's buzz has been so centered on Simmons and his character that it's easy to overlook the work of Teller, who's almost as great in his own way (it helps that Teller is an experienced drummer who's played since he was a teenager). Andrew becomes so obsessed with nailing his parts, working until the blisters on his hands turn into open sores that bleed all over the drum kit, that he seems to have no love for the music. He's often irresponsible and as he spends more time with Fletcher, develops a sense of entitlement that alienates him from the other players in the band. Fletcher sees the talent in Andrew and pushes him to the brink of madness to bring it out of him. Expanding on a 2013 short film that also starred Simmons, writer/director Damien Chazelle, himself a former jazz drumming prodigy (he also wrote the goofy thriller GRAND PIANO and, improbably enough, THE LAST EXORCISM PART II), shoots these sequences in ways that maximize that tension, at times coming perilously close to provoking an anxiety attack in the viewer. It doesn't take long for your stomach to be in knots whenever Simmons purses his lips, shakes his head, and makes his hand gesture to cut the music and start over ("Not my tempo!"). The last third of the film heads in a rather unpredictable direction for an ending--keep thinking of that Charlie Parker anecdote that Fletcher keeps telling--that's open to interpretation (some dazzling camera work in that climax, too). Though it's filled with music and scenes where people practice music, WHIPLASH isn't really a film about music. It's a film about drive, ambition, obsession, abuse of power, and one that questions whether such abhorrent teaching tactics really work, and though some instructors like Fletcher exist, it's doubtful one that vicious would keep his job for very long. Other than one really boneheaded misstep (I think we can all agree that the movie almost shits the bed with that car accident and what happens immediately after), from which it somehow recovers, WHIPLASH is emotionally draining, exhausting, terrifying, traumatizing, superbly-acted, challenging, and unforgettable filmmaking that leaves you feeling almost shell-shocked when it's over. (R, 107 mins)

GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS: UNDERGROUND
(UK - 2013; US release 2014)

The Elijah Wood-headlined GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS came and went with little notice in a 29-screen 2005 theatrical run, but when it hit DVD and cable, the British import about football hooliganism became a legitimate BOONDOCK SAINTS-level cult sensation with impressionable adolescent males. It's not a very good movie, but in subsequent years, it also generated interest thanks to SONS OF ANARCHY's Charlie Hunnam being the second lead, and it led to a straight-to-DVD 2009 sequel GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS 2: STAND YOUR GROUND, with only supporting actor Ross McCall returning from the first film. Now there's GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS: UNDERGROUND, an in-name-only third installment in a franchise that's been retooled as a vehicle for DTV martial arts star Scott Adkins, who's done some terrific work in several films by action maestro Isaac Florentine, most recently the outstanding NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR. Unfortunately, GSH: UNDERGROUND (titled GREEN STREET 3: NEVER BACK DOWN in the UK) won't go down as one of Adkins' better efforts. Cliches reign supreme as Danny (Adkins), a one-time leader of West Ham's Green Street Elite (GSE) football firm who left the neighborhood and never looked back, is pulled back into his old life when his obnoxious, hooligan little brother Joey (Billy Cook) is killed in an epic hooligan brawl. Hooliganism has gone underground, and the secret, BLOODSPORT-esque fights have gotten much more violent than in Danny's heyday. Working with hands-tied detective Hunter (fight coordinator Joey Ansah), Danny puts his aged and out-of-shape old crew back together for several montages as they prepare to enter what's basically the Hooligan Kumite to find the firm responsible for killing Joey.

With a rudimentary plot that plays more like Van Damme's KICKBOXER set in the world of soccer hooligans, GSH: UNDERGROUND is a straight 90 minutes of formulaic predictability, from the character arcs to the big reveals to the tournament inevitably in montage form set to a score that sounds like the result of Survivor hooking up with the keyboard opening to Journey's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" while West Ham climbs the tournament standings, shown superimposed over the montage action. The fight scenes are boring, the direction by James Nunn (TOWER BLOCK) pedestrian, and the kitschy throwback soundtrack too overbearingly '80s sounding for its own good (check out the Asia-sounding closing credits tune and you'll see what I mean). Even the usually reliable Adkins is dull, begging the question, who is this movie for? Adkins' audience isn't going to like it, and GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS dudebros will probably react that same way HALLOWEEN fans did when HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH came out, the difference being, there likely won't be a critical and fan reassessment of GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS: UNDERGROUND years down the road. (R, 94 mins)

BY THE GUN
(US - 2014)

Or, KILLING THEM BLANDLY. Shot in 2012 as GOD ONLY KNOWS (and still sporting that title at the end of the closing credits), this Boston-based character piece from TRUCKER director James Mottern is one of the dullest mob movies ever, awash in cliches and getting nothing from the black hole in the center of the film that is Ben Barnes. The hapless British actor, fast becoming the patron saint of long-shelved trifles (THE BIG WEDDING, LOCKED IN, SEVENTH SON) is one that Hollywood keeps trying to make happen, with no success after playing Prince Caspian in the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA films. Here, Barnes is in way over his head, failing to rock a Baaahston accent as Nick Tortano, a soldier in the Vitaglia organization. A low-level fuck-up, Nick is credited with whacking a guy--it was actually pulled off by his buddy George (Boston-based rapper and crime movie fixture Slaine, previously seen in GONE BABY GONE, THE TOWN, and KILLING THEM SOFTLY)--and gets made by boss Sal Vitaglia (a comatose Harvey Keitel) as a result. Meanwhile, Nick finds himself in a star-crossed, secret romance with Ali Matazano (Leighton Meester), the daughter of Vitaglia rival Tony Matazano (an embarrassingly hammy Ritchie Coster), which threatens to erupt into an all-out mob war.

BY THE GUN wants to be one of those MEAN STREETS and FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE-type films focused on the nickel-and-dime elements of mob life rather than the glitz and glamour of THE GODFATHER, but instead of being gritty, it just comes off as forced and utterly phony, as if Mottern had the actors study Richard Pryor's "Mafia Club" bit for inspiration. Perhaps with a better actor in the lead and some more engaged or even appropriate supporting actors, things could've turned out differently (who thought it was a good idea to cast Toby Jones as a mob enforcer who calls himself "Daylight"?), but Mottern and screenwriter Emilio Mauro--neither of whom are likely to be mistaken for Martin Scorsese anytime soon--never get any momentum going. BY THE GUN gets off to the most sluggish start imaginable as roughly 35 minutes are devoted to Nick going around and apologizing to the Matazano family after his younger brother Vito (Kenny Wormald) insults Ali. Nick is shown as a punk and a fuck-up, so it's hard to buy that he'd be made so quickly (in a ceremony where Keitel mispronounces "Omerta"), but nothing in BY THE GUN makes much sense. Scene after scene depicts a bunch of hot-tempered mob guys getting in each others' faces about "this thing of ours" and yelling variations of "FUCK YOU!" and "SUCK MY DICK!" and an argument between Nick and his bitter, blue-collar father (Paul Ben-Victor) has such insightful nuggets as "You come around here, tough guy? Huh, big shot?" as he throws his son's money back at him, barking (wait for it) "This smells like blood!" and "I'm glad your mother isn't here to see what you've become!" Really, all that's missing is someone saying "Hey, bada-bing!" Former New England Patriots linebacker Tully Banta-Cain has a supporting role as a Matazano strongarm, and Slaine manages to rise above the rest and deliver an actual performance, but it's not nearly enough to save this tired, monotonous, lethargically-paced dud that you've seen a thousand times before, but rarely quite this bad. (R, 110 mins)

MAPS TO THE STARS
(Canada/Germany - 2014; US release 2015)

Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Bruce Wagner. Cast: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Sarah Gadon, Evan Bird, Carrie Fisher, Kiara Glasco, Dawn Greenhalgh, Jonathan Watton, Niamh Wilson, Jennifer Gibson, Justin Kelly, Jayne Heitmeyer, Joe Pingue. (R, 112 mins)

As we've observed with the ongoing tragedy of Dario Argento, seeing a great and influential filmmaker skidding in his elder statesman years is never a pleasant sight, and David Cronenberg's MAPS TO THE STARS is, if nothing else, a slight step up from 2012's career-worst COSMOPOLIS. Other than one character having some significant body scarring that recalls his CRASH (1997), there's very little to here to suggest that the 71-year-old Cronenberg really has his heart in this one. It's written by Bruce Wagner, best known for the 1993 Oliver Stone-produced ABC miniseries WILD PALMS, but also a novelist (his so-called "cell phone trilogy" of I'm Losing You, I'll Let You Go and Still Holding), whose chief focus has always been the skewering of cliched L.A. and Hollywood types. Wagner also wrote Paul Bartel's 1989 satire SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS and in many ways, MAPS TO THE STARS plays like a grim spinoff of that film, one that was lambasted when it was released and only remembered today by the cult of Bartel (DEATH RACE 2000, EATING RAOUL) and the most devoted Jacqueline Bisset stalkers. MAPS TO THE STARS is yet another tiresome entry in the "Hollywood taking misanthropic shots at itself" subgenre, one that's brilliant when it's done right (SUNSET BOULEVARD, S.O.B., THE PLAYER, TROPIC THUNDER) and insufferable when it's not (almost everything else). Cronenberg has been trying to get MAPS TO THE STARS made for the last decade, and Wagner's script dates back further than that (in fact, when the project stalled three years ago and Cronenberg moved forward with COSMOPOLIS, Wagner turned his script into the 2012 novel Dead Stars), only with some added mentioning of Twitter and the name-dropping of some current stars to spruce it up. Considering how long MAPS TO THE STARS was gestating in development hell, it's alarming how utterly disconnected from it Cronenberg seems. It's not a David Cronenberg film--it's a Bruce Wagner script that Cronenberg happens to be directing. Unlike guys like Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, and Robert Altman, the Canadian Cronenberg's never been a Hollywood insider (indeed, MAPS is his first film to features scenes shot in the US), so MAPS' potshots at industry types seem especially cheap and hollow. And by this point, Wagner's scripts are all the same, stuffed with loathsome, decadent L.A. asswipes drowning in ennui and self-absorption who do shitty things and screw over anyone to get ahead. Wagner's covered these subjects ad nauseum in past screenplays and novels and at 60 years old, he's starting to sound less like a guy with keenly satirical insights into the Hollywood machine and more like a bitter curmudgeon who's having a hissy fit because he never quite made it to the A-list.

MAPS TO THE STARS is one of those "everyone is connected" ensemble pieces: washed-up, pill-popping actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) desperately wants a part in a remake of an old movie that starred her late mother Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadon), who died in a fire 30 years ago and frequently appears in ghost form to taunt Havana about, among other things, the state of her career, the smell of her vagina ("That hole smells worse than I do!"), and their incestuous past as mother-daughter lovers; Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), a teenage movie star who combines the worst parts of Justin Bieber and Joffrey Baratheon, is just out of rehab and shooting the next entry in his BAD BABYSITTER franchise; his enabling mother Christina (Olivia Williams), and his father Stafford (John Cusack), a famous New Age TV therapist who counts Havana as a patient and is prone to declarations during massage sessions that go something like "I'm going to press on a personal history point--memories are stored in the thighs"; Agatha Weiss (Mia Wasikowska), an odd, burn-scarred young woman who arrives from Florida boasting of a Twitter friendship with Carrie Fisher (as herself), who gets her a job as Havana's personal assistant, or "chore whore"; and Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattinson), a limo driver and would-be screenwriter who occasionally turns up as part of Agatha's character arc until the film forgets about him once more.

Wagner's script is so sloppily-constructed that things that should be big reveals and surprises land with a complete thud. Is it supposed to be a surprise that Agatha is Benjie's older sister and the disowned daughter of the Weisses? Because by mentioning her last name as soon as we see her, we've put that together. Wagner tries to demonstrate some complexity in the various parallels that manifest between characters involving ghosts, fire, and incest, with a particularly creepy focus on the latter, and he only succeeds in repetitious overkill, especially if you're one of the four people who can recall that ghosts reminding characters of their past misdeeds was also a major part of SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS. Elsewhere, Cronenberg props things up with the unfortunate crutch of shock value in ways that do nothing to further the story, whether it's bodily discharges with Agatha leaving a menstrual blood stain on Havana's $12K couch or a constipated Havana struggling to defecate and only loudly passing gas. Yes, David Cronenberg has been reduced to fart jokes and drags Moore down with him.

The best thing that can be said about MAPS TO THE STARS is that the actors commit. Moore overdoes it, but the character requires such, and one of the few satirical bits that actually has some scathing bite to it is when she loses the role in the movie to younger rival Azita (Jayne Heitmeyer), known for "letting producers put their dick in her ass and take a piss," only to win it back when Azita's six-year-old son Micah drowns in a swimming pool, prompting her to have a breakdown and drop out of the film. The role then goes to Havana, who reacts by joyously dancing through the house and outside by the pool, shouting Micah's name and singing "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." Moore won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her scenery-chewing work and prior to her eventual Oscar win for STILL ALICE, was generating some Academy buzz for MAPS until its US release got pushed to 2015 (it was out in Europe last summer), preceded by one of the most blatantly misleading trailers in quite some time, edited in a way to make it look like Wasikowska is the psycho in a SINGLE WHITE FEMALE-type thriller. Bird does a solid job at playing a spoiled and thoroughly despicable turd, and even Cusack, taking a break from his new career in D-grade action movies, has some good moments, though he's first seen vaping--apparently his go-to prop as DRIVE HARD and RECLAIM introduced him the exact same way. Some good performances aside (though Pattinson is wasted in a rather nothing role), MAPS TO THE STARS is all bark and no bite, filled with tired depictions of debauchery, transgression, and generally bad behavior, plus an act of self-immolation that features the worst CGI fire I've ever seen. Cronenberg needn't prove anything to anyone at this point, but he's still smarter than a de facto follow-up to a forgotten 25-year-old movie that almost nobody liked. One leaves MAPS TO THE STARS wishing its poster art's tag line "Eventually stars burn out" didn't seem so oddly prophetic for its director. And as far as Wagner is concerned, his only significant contribution to cinema remains sharing a story credit with Wes Craven on 1987's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS.

FOXCATCHER
(US - 2014)

It couldn't have been that difficult to put together a riveting true crime drama about the events leading up to the 1996 murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz at the hand of billionaire philanthropist John du Pont. Du Pont, played here by a prosthetic nose attached to Steve Carell, was the heir to the Du Pont chemical company fortune who dabbled in all sorts of professions--he was best-known as a respected ornithologist who published several books on birds--but had a passion for wrestling. In 1986, Du Pont contacts Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), the younger brother of Dave (Mark Ruffalo), both of whom won gold medals in wrestling at the 1984 Olympics, about running a training facility for potential Olympic wrestlers at du Pont's Foxcatcher Farms compound in Wilmington, DE. Mark, depicted as a bit of a dumb lug, has grown tired of living in Dave's shadow, and since Dave is contractually tied down to his college coaching gig, Mark sees this as his chance to establish a legacy of his own, even though, as he constantly has to remind everyone, "I won a gold medal, too." A father-son bond forms between du Pont and Mark, though their relationship gets rocky, especially once Dave eventually joins the Foxcatcher team at du Pont's insistence, though it's not helped by du Pont's increasingly erratic behavior, including firing a gun in the gym and goading the impressionable, eager-to-please Mark into recreational cocaine use.

Director Bennett Miller (CAPOTE, MONEYBALL) and screenwriters E. Max Frye (SOMETHING WILD) and Dan Futterman (CAPOTE) play entirely too fast and loose with the facts of the case, so much so that it's hard to say which is the most egregious offense. It could be that the film seems to portray the events as taking place from 1986 to just after the Seoul qualifying tryouts in 1988, when in fact, the time period was 1986 to 1996. It could be the depiction of Mark leaving Foxcatcher after du Pont and Dave become chummy and Mark falls out of du Pont's good graces, when in fact, there was no sibling rivalry in regard to du Pont because the Schultz brothers didn't live or coach together at Foxcatcher--Dave moved his family to Foxcatcher a year after Mark quit following his last falling out with du Pont. It could be du Pont's mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and her disapproval of his wrestling fixation and the creation of Foxcatcher Farms, but in fact, she died before du Pont even created Foxcatcher Farms. Dramatic license is to be expected, but it's very vague exactly what the filmmakers are trying to show here. Essentially, it's about a rich, manipulative, socially inept weirdo whose mother had to buy friends for him when he was a child, and his codependent relationship with a none-too-bright wrestler who was tired of getting the leftover table scraps of his more popular brother. It's about a guy who develops an obsession with coaching wrestling so he can both please his disapproving mom and finally get a chance to be one of the guys, even if he has to drive a wedge between two loving brothers to achieve it. Except that du Pont didn't drive the brothers apart. FOXCATCHER is smoke-and-mirrors Oscar-baiting at its most cynical, starting with the stunt casting of Carell. Sure, it's a dramatic departure for a guy generally known for comedy, but since everything about FOXCATCHER is empty and meaningless, there's nothing there beyond the distracting fake nose. It's mind-boggling that this received five Oscar nominations, including acting nods for Carell and Ruffalo, who's good because he's Mark Ruffalo and he's always good, but this is hardly a standout performance in his career. Miller's direction and Frye & Futterman's script were also nominated, while the one legitimately great thing about FOXCATCHER--the revelatory work of Tatum--went ignored. In a textbook example of an internalized powderkeg of a performance, Tatum almost single-handedly makes the inexplicably feted FOXCATCHER worth enduring for 134 excruciating minutes. It's these kinds of performances that go unnoticed by awards outfits because they're too subtle and low-key, not like Carell acting all creepy with a ridiculous phony schnoz. FOXCATCHER is proof positive that Tatum can act, but otherwise, it's one of the worst awards-season prestige films in years. (R, 134 mins)

THE CAPTIVE
(Canada - 2014)

Coming quickly on the heels of his utterly superfluous West Memphis Three chronicle DEVIL'S KNOT, the once-great Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan continues his decade-long slide into irrelevance with the maddeningly uneven THE CAPTIVE. With only 2008's ADORATION showing signs of the Egoyan of old, the filmmaker has spent most of his time over the last ten or so years making documentaries and short films as passion projects while keeping food on the table by directing commercial thrillers like WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (2005) and CHLOE (2009), an erotic thriller that felt 15 years old the day it was released. Egoyan tries to have the best of both worlds with THE CAPTIVE and while the film has its moments, it just doesn't work as a whole. Most of THE CAPTIVE is made up of the same kind of fractured, non-linear narrative that old-school Egoyan fans will recognize from his 1990s masterpieces EXOTICA and THE SWEET HEREAFTER. In the outskirts of Niagara Falls, ON, 21-year-old Cass (Alexia Fast) was abducted eight years earlier by Mika (Kevin Durand) and kept in a locked basement room. Mika allows her webcam access to function as a "gateway," luring other young girls into a vaguely-defined underage kidnapping ring. Cass' separated parents, Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) and Tina (Mireille Enos) are shells of what they once were, and Tina blames Matthew for Cass' disappearance (he stopped at a bakery to get a pie for dessert that night as 13-year-old Cass was taken while lying down in the backseat of his truck). The cops, led by crusading Dunlop (Rosario Dawson) and hot-headed Cornwall (Scott Speedman), seem pretty set on the idea that financially-strapped Matthew is behind Cass' disappearance, at least until Dunlop herself goes missing after a benefit dinner for a charity organization that helps victims of child sex trafficking.

All of this plot is parsed out in bits and pieces as Egoyan jumps around the eight-year timeline. It gradually comes together like it does in his best work, and in that best work, attentive viewers begin piecing the puzzle and marveling at Egoyan's expert story construction and devastating emotional impact. THE CAPTIVE has the puzzle part down, but not so much the expert story construction and the devastating emotional impact. Once the pieces are in place, Egoyan doles out one ludicrous and often laughable contrivance after another. Mika is one of these limitlessly wealthy psychos who has the time and the technological wherewithal to plant cameras in the rooms of an entire floor of the hotel where Tina works, for the sole purpose of leaving Cass' childhood trinkets and mementos--a hairbrush, an ice-skating trophy, baby teeth--in plain sight for her to see, taunting her from afar as he watches her on a row of monitors on a control panel at his mansion. It doesn't help that, as in DEVIL'S KNOT, Egoyan has directed Durand to go hammy, playing Mika broadly and completely unbelievably. Like Sharlto Copley in Spike Lee's remake of OLDBOY, Durand doesn't even seem to be in the same movie as the other actors, looking like an anachronistic, erudite David Niven/Errol Flynn-type and behaving like a cartoon character, but somehow never drawing attention to himself and never becoming a suspect, even though he visits one other busted member of a pedophile ring in jail. Also, when Dunlop is roofied and taken from the gala benefit, she's at the same table as Mika and a strange woman (Christine Horne) in an obvious wig, and nobody seems to notice that the guest speaker is stumbling and bumbling and needs to be helped out of the building and into a waiting limo by this mystery woman. Is there an entire secret society of child abductors in this town? And are they less interested in pedophilia and more focused on using high-tech surveillance to spy on their parents and the cops? How in the hell does Mika have remote access to turn on the webcam on Cornwall's laptop so he can spy on Cornwall and Dunlop discussing their investigation? If Egoyan were ever to direct an episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU, it would probably look a lot like THE CAPTIVE, right down to the detectives standing around the office and chiming in with bits of exposition as the camera moves around them. The only thing missing is Dunlop calling in Richard Belzer's retired John Munch to consult on the case. Witness this stunning exercise in textbook Dick Wolfery:

Detective 1: "Maybe there was a watcher."
Detective 2: "Or watchers."
Detective 3: "A whole new class of freaks."

More than a little reminiscent of Denis Villeneuve's PRISONERS, THE CAPTIVE could've worked one of two ways: as a total throwback, give-the-arthouse-nerds-what-they-want Atom Egoyan film (fixtures like Bruce Greenwood and Egoyan's wife Arsinee Khanjian have minor supporting roles!) or as a ludicrous-but-just-roll-with-it multiplex thriller, where the contrivances and the silliness could've been easier to overlook, and a moment like Cornwall, one of the most unjustifiably cocky cops you'll ever see (he's always wrong!), finally getting clocked by an enraged Matthew would've served as a real crowd-pleaser. But Egoyan is just lost. He comes up short at both ends of the spectrum and seems to have no idea what he's doing or who his films are even for anymore. Egoyan is too smart to let the rampant stupidity of THE CAPTIVE's second half even happen, especially after making such a concerted effort to present the first half as quintessential Egoyan. I'm a sucker for depictions of cold, snowy, desolate Canada and the film does succeed on that front, and Egoyan does get two strong performances from Reynolds and Enos, both of whom seem to dominate the "smart" portions of the movie, but THE CAPTIVE is yet another sign that a slumping Egoyan desperately needs to locate his apparently abducted mojo. (R, 112 mins)

CHAPPIE
(US - 2015)

Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell. Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Brandon Auret, Jason Cope, Johnny Selema, Maurice Carpede. (R, 120 mins)

When DISTRICT 9 opened to rave reviews in 2009 and eventually landed a Best Picture Oscar nomination, it appeared as if South African writer/director and Peter Jackson protege Neill Blomkamp, making his feature debut, was going to be the next major name in sci-fi/fantasy cinema. His long-delayed sophomore effort ELYSIUM bowed in summer 2013 to mixed reviews and has seen its reputation plummet in the ensuing year and a half. ELYSIUM was heavy-handed in its politicizing, but flaws and all, it generally worked for me, and it's entirely possible that the scorn it received was just a matter of balancing out some of the overabundance of praise heaped on DISTRICT 9--a fine film, but one with plenty of its own problems. It was a situation reminiscent of Neil Marshall, feted as horror's latest wunderkind after THE DESCENT in 2005, but whose 2008 follow-up DOOMSDAY, an entertaining, John Carpenter and George Miller-inspired mix tape of '80s cult action and horror, ended up being an expensive flop dismissed and despised by fans who just didn't seem to get it. Not to sound all "haters gonna hate," but I'm still not sure what the DOOMSDAY audiences wanted that Marshall failed to deliver. The situation is similar to what Blomkamp got with ELYSIUM: some gripes and complaints that snowballed into a borderline irrational pile-on.

If anything might retroactively win over the ELYSIUM haters, it's Blomkamp's latest film CHAPPIE, the kind of misbegotten disaster that would derail a career in decades past. CHAPPIE is the work of a filmmaker who's bought into entirely too much of his own press, an agonizingly self-indulgent misfire that manages to get almost everything appallingly wrong. The tone of the film changes from scene to scene: sometimes it's a hyper-violent action movie, then it's practically a kiddie movie, then hopelessly maudlin, then stacked with half-assed political and religious subtext. Like its protagonist, Blomkamp seems to have the attention-span of a little kid, with the bulk of CHAPPIE coming off like a remake of ROBOCOP starring Johnny Five from SHORT CIRCUIT, and after cribbing from everything from BLADE RUNNER to PINOCCHIO, Blomkamp finally cashes out and ends up ripping off himself by turning it into a revamp of DISTRICT 9 with robots. There's precious little to praise and there's no way to sugarcoat it: CHAPPIE is incredibly and aggressively terrible.

An expansion of Blomkamp's 2004 short film TETRA VAAL, CHAPPIE is set a few years in the future in a Johannesburg that looks almost like a crime-plagued wasteland. In 2016, the government authorized the use of "Scouts," police robots designed and programmed by Deon Wilson (Dev Patel), an engineer with the Halliburton-like Tetravaal Corporation. The Scouts have drastically reduced the crime rate, driving the company's stock through the roof, making Wilson the golden boy of Tetravaal CEO Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver). That doesn't go over well with Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), another Tetravaal engineer whose own militarized security program--giant ED-209-like war robots controlled via neural transmitters and called "Moose"--has its funding almost completely eliminated in favor of the Scouts. Wilson has been working on a program that creates a thinking consciousness in the Scouts, allowing them to form opinions and appreciate the finer things in life. Wilson's proposal is instantly rejected by the bottom-line-driven Bradley (one of the few good lines in the film is an incredulous Bradley laughing in Wilson's face and saying "Do you realize you just came to the CEO of a publicly-traded weapons corporation and pitched a robot that can write poems?"), which doesn't stop him from stealing Scout unit #22, one that's constantly in the facility for repairs and has finally been so damaged that it's earned a spot on the scrap heap, to attempt to run the artificial intelligence program on it himself. That plan falls apart when Wilson is carjacked by a trio of criminals--Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo), and Ninja and Yo-Landi, played by Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er of the South African rap group Die Antwoord--who targeted Wilson and hope to get him to reprogram the junked Scout so it can help them in some heists they need to engineer in order for Ninja to pay back the money he owes to scuzzy crime boss Hippo (Brandon Auret). Wilson runs the A.I. program and Chappie (voiced and motion-captured by Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley) is essentially a helpless child who quickly finds his way, even calling Yo-Landi and Ninja "Mommy" and "Daddy" respectively.

It's a hokey concept at best that never properly channels its excess of uneven tones in an orderly or coherent fashion. Chappie looks like a cute robot, with antennae that resemble bunny ears, but who thought it was a good idea to put a kiddie-looking robot in an R-rated action movie with copious F-bombs and graphic violence? CHAPPIE goes straight downhill when Ninja and Amerika teach Chappie to be "gangster," as the sentient Scout spends the rest of the film strutting around with a cartoonish swagger, assorted bling (like a gold chain that reads "Hustler"), and a "$" spray-painted on his helmet, and calling people "fuckmother." Perhaps it's meant to be funny--the audience was laughing out loud when Chappie suddenly commandeers Wilson's van for a car chase--but the rest of the film isn't. Weaver is appropriately bitch-on-wheelsy as the tough CEO, but she can play that role in her sleep, while Jackman has what it takes to make a formidable villain but his character makes no sense at all, and I'm not just referring to his pointless mullet. Moore is said to be ex-military, but he's a scientist who wears cargo shorts to work and carries a gun in a holster even when he's in the office at his cubicle. He assaults Wilson--smacking him in the head with the gun--in the office in front of everyone and goes back to his desk, with no consequences. And when a security team is sent out to find the renegade Chappie, it's Moore who's leading the assault unit. What is his job, exactly? And how does he expect to get away with switching the entire Scout patrol offline, sending Johannesburg into violent, anarchic chaos as a way to convince Bradley that it's time to unleash the Moose, when he sabotages the program from his own lab, via his own computer, using his own password?

Despite being the best-known cast members, Jackman, Weaver, and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE's Patel all have supporting roles as Blomkamp inexplicably makes the criminal trio the de facto leads. Ninja and Vi$$er have more screen time than anyone, and while Copley's vocal performance is as annoying as many of his recent acting turns, it's the Die Antwoord duo who earn the top acting dishonors. A little of these two goes a long way, and Blomkamp grants them entirely too much wiggle room. It's one thing to have their songs throughout the film, and another to have them playing characters who share their own names, but why is Ninja wearing a Ninja shirt with his own image and "Die Antwoord" on it? I can see that kind of self-aggrandizing nonsense happening in a no-budget Albert Pyun movie where Big Pun plays a gangsta wearing a Big Pun shirt, but here? And Yo-Landi's bedroom--the criminals live in what looks like a partially demolished building--has Die Antwoord publicity shots all over the wall. If Blomkamp is a Die Antwoord superfan and wants to hang with them, that's great. But putting them front and center in a $50 million Hollywood movie--surprisingly low-budget by today's standards--is distracting stunt-casting at its most ill-conceived. Blomkamp presumably learned his lesson, as reports surfaced that Ninja was nothing short of an abrasive, uncooperative asshole during production--clashing the most with Cantillo, a veteran, professional actor--prompting Blomkamp to retool the script to reduce Ninja's role and the need for his presence on set. By the end of the shoot, Blomkamp reached his breaking point with Ninja and was quoted as saying "I don't ever want to be in the same room with him again." Frankly, the idea of Blomkamp and Ninja having a combative Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski working relationship is fascinating. Let's hope some behind-the-scenes meltdowns were caught by the making-of crew, because that's certain to be better than anything that ended up in CHAPPIE. It's difficult to ascertain right now if Blomkamp is a one-trick pony just three films in, but CHAPPIE is so alarmingly bad that perhaps we should hold off on getting too excited about his being handed the ALIEN franchise.

THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW
aka THE TORMENTED
aka THE SEXORCIST
aka L'OSSESSA
(Italy - 1974; US releases 1977 and 1981)

Directed by Mario Gariazzo. Written by Ambrogio Molteni and Ted Rusoff. Cast: Stella Carnacina, Chris Avram, Lucretia Love, Ivan Rassimov, Gabriele Tinti, Luigi Pistilli, Umberto Raho, Gianrico Tondinelli, Piero Gerlini, Giuseppe Addobatti, Edoardo Toniolo, Gianni de Benedetto. (R, 85 mins)

After the phenomenal success of THE EXORCIST (1973), the imitation game was on, and nobody made more entertaining--often for all the wrong reasons--EXORCIST ripoffs than the Italians. Italy started cranking them out in 1974, though it sometimes took them a while to turn up in the US (THE ANTICHRIST, released in Italy in 1974, was retitled THE TEMPTER when it was finally shown in America in 1978). Few of the post-EXORCIST knockoffs had as many titles as L'OSSESSA, which translates to "The Obsessed." Beating Alberto De Martino's THE ANTICHRIST and Ovidio G. Assonitis' BEYOND THE DOOR to Italian theaters by two weeks in November 1974, L'OSSESSA holds the distinction of being the first Italian EXORCIST ripoff. Known in various parts of the world under the far more lurid moniker of THE SEXORCIST (it's listed on IMDb as ENTER THE DEVIL, which seems to be confused with a 1972 American horror film with the same title), the film would be acquired by the exploitation outfit 21st Century, who released in the US throughout 1977 and into 1978 as THE TORMENTED. It was successful enough, at least in my hometown of Toledo, OH, to play for four (!) weeks at the two-screen theater in the tiny Greenwood Mall in April 1977. Someone at the Greenwood Cine thought so highly of THE TORMENTED that they brought it back for a week in July of that year! I don't think anything illustrates how times have changed quite like the idea of a tawdry, softcore Italian EXORCIST ripoff playing for a month straight at a shopping mall.

It wouldn't be until 1981 that L'OSSESSA (or whatever you want to call it) would settle on a definitive title by which everyone would refer to it from that point forward. 21st Century decided to relaunch the film for the burgeoning home video and cable markets, only this time, they ditched the rather bland THE TORMENTED and rechristened it THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW, complete with a set of ROCKY HORROR lips adorning the newly-commissioned artwork. It was attention-getting, to say the least, and the film found a cult following both in video stores and through late-night airings on Showtime, where its mix of gory horror and softcore sex made it ideal for their "After Hours" programming. The plot concerns virginal art history grad student Danila (Stella Carnacina) and a large wood carving of one of the two men crucified with Christ, recovered from a deconsecrated church. The wooden man comes to life in the form of Eurotrash regular Ivan Rassimov and quickly reveals himself to be Satan, ravaging Danila in a sexual frenzy. As expected, her behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and inappropriate, whether she's masturbating in front of her parents Mario (Chris Avram) and Luisa (Lucretia Love), trying to seduce her father, or beating her head against the wall and escaping a sanitarium with the entire town in pursuit. Like a certain blockbuster from 1973, psychiatrists are consulted but with no success and ultimately, the local clergy recommends an exorcism despite concern that almost no priests are trained in the ritual. Fortunately, the hermit-like Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli) is an experienced exorcist and happens to live high in the hills of a neighboring town because of course he does.

Like THE ANTICHRIST, there's a strong sexual element to THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW but where the former was focused more on blasphemy and other unmentionables (like the infamous rimjob-on-a-goat scene), the latter has a kinky, S&M quality to it. It's personified mainly by Danila's mother, who's having a torrid, FIFTY SHADES fling with a sadistic playboy (Gabriele Tinti), who regularly whips her with roses, leaving cuts and lashes all over her body. Luisa's cuckolding of Mario is a main reason why Danila has so many hang-ups about sex and is keeping her boyfriend Carlo (Gianrico Tondinelli) waiting. But that's not really explored and Tinti serves little narrative purpose in the film, other than upping the softcore sleaze factor. Luisa's masochistic sexual tendencies do provide an interesting but underdeveloped parallel with Father Xeno, who almost succumbs to the temptation of a Satanic knobshine from the possessed Danila and responds by shouting "Abomination!" and apologizing to God for his weakness and making amends by engaging in some self-flagellation. As the sexual escapades of THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW and THE ANTICHRIST demonstrate, Italians tended to get away with a lot more if they made the possession victim a young woman (or a young man in the case of 1975's unwatchable NAKED EXORCISM, aka THE POSSESSOR) instead of a teenage girl. One thing that differentiates THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW from THE EXORCIST and its clones is that Danila doesn't hurl obscenities in a deep, demonic voice. She mainly just cries and screams (or moans, depending on where her fingers are). She doesn't even spew green vomit until the exorcism, and that's only after she eats clumps of her own hair, essentially barfing the devil out of her.

Finally looking good on home video (the occasional scratches and print damage only enhance the experience) with Code Red's recently-released Blu-ray (!), THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW was directed by Mario Gariazzo (1930-2002), a perennial D-lister in the world of Eurocult journeymen, always sure to pop up with an obscure contribution to a then in-vogue genre, whether it's the 1969 spaghetti western GOD WILL FORGIVE MY PISTOL with Wayde Preston or the 1973 polizia THE BLOODY HANDS OF THE LAW with Philippe Leroy and Klaus Kinski. The same year as THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW, he directed the G-rated tearjerker THE LAST CIRCUS SHOW, where he somehow managed to get James Whitmore, Lee J. Cobb, and Cyril Cusack onboard. Often working under the pseudonym "Roy Garret," Gariazzo dabbled in a little of everything, whether it was 1978's unbelievably boring post-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND alien-invasion conspiracy thriller EYES BEHIND THE STARS, featuring Academy Award winner Martin Balsam absurdly dubbed by a British voice actor, or 1985's post-CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST jungle cannibal thriller AMAZONIA. Gariazzo rarely distinguished himself and THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW is probably his best-known film by default, though the some admire his 1979 giallo/porno-crossover PLAY MOTEL. L'OSSESSA's script was written by Ambrogio Molteni, another gun-for-hire who penned several insignificant spaghetti westerns before hopping on the BLACK EMANUELLE bandwagon in the mid '70s, and later, Bruno Mattei's skeezy 1982 women-in-prison classic VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON, released in the US in 1984 as CAGED WOMEN.

Dubbing maestro Ted Rusoff (1939-2013)
posing with the 2010 issue of Video
Watchdog with him as the cover story.

Molteni no doubt supplied L'OSSESSA with its more pervy elements, but a good chunk of its American EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW grindhouse/drive-in charm came from Ted Rusoff. The smooth tones of Canadian expat Rusoff can be heard in countless Eurocult films from the 1960s through the early 2000s. Rusoff spent his career in Italy and supervised the English dubbing of L'OSSESSA (with 21st Century even giving him a writing credit) while also providing the voice for Tondinelli's character. If you've seen enough of these things, you start recognizing the voices, and Rusoff brought the whole gang along for this one: his wife Carolynn De Fonseca dubbed Love, the gruff Ed Mannix dubbed one of the psychiatrists, Michael Forest supplied the voice of Rassimov's Satan, and the mellifluous Tony La Penna handled the actor playing Danila's professor. Rusoff must've had them in the recording studio after a long day and a lot of wine with dinner, because it's one of the most gloriously sloppy dub jobs this side of a vintage GODZILLA movie. In their scripting of English translations, guys like Rusoff would at least try to utilize words and phrasings that would closely match the lip movements while retaining the ideas and the intentions of the original Italian script. No such effort is put forth here. The English words rarely match the what the actors are saying in Italian, and the dialogue is often riotous, especially when Carlo yells at Luisa about her affair and "the whips and belts and other masochistic tomfoolery," pausing briefly before capping it off with a blunt, barked "Whore!" But Avram's back is turned when the dubbed voice spits "Whore!" and the over-the-top way that it's said is more comedic than anything. In other words, the voice actor dubbing Avram didn't have to say it, but it's almost like they knew it would get a big laugh, or maybe they were just amusing themselves. This is not Rusoff and his voice posse's finest hour in terms of quality control, but it's obvious they had a great time working on it...or at least a great time before working on it. Rusoff died in 2013 in the midst of a renewed interest in the world of dubbing, thanks in part to an extensive interview he did with John Charles in a 2010 issue of Video Watchdog. I corresponded with Rusoff on Facebook on several occasions and he had fascinating and often unfiltered stories to share about working with everybody in the business as well as a very self-deprecating attitude about his career, once replying with "I'm sorry you've seen so much of my work."

Stella Carnacina was 19 when she starred in THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW. It was her first significant role and it led to a brief period where she was a frequently nude starlet in Italian sex comedies (the same year, she co-starred with Italian comedian Lando Buzzanca in THE HANDSOME DEVIL). Carnacina also graced the cover of the Italian edition of Playboy in May 1975, and embarked on a singing career that eventually took precedence over acting. She's been offscreen since 1982 and her musical output seems to have ceased in 1985 as the now-60-year-old Carnacina appears to be long retired from public life. The rest of the film's main cast is filled out by several familiar Eurotrash faces, most notably Rassimov, best known for his sinister performance in Sergio Martino's THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971) and as the Jim Jones-like cult leader Jonas in Umberto Lenzi's EATEN ALIVE (1980) and Tinti, who appeared in occasional Hollywood movies like THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965) and THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE (1968), but was better known for co-starring in several EMANUELLE films with wife Laura Gemser.

Luigi Pistilli's naturally glum, sad face suits the morose Father Xeno. A respected Italian stage figure, Pistilli became a busy big-screen character actor and was a veteran of numerous westerns and gialli, even headlining Sergio Martino's YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY (1972) and co-starring with Avram in Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD (1971). Pistilli's place in film history is cemented by his brief role as Father Ramirez, the angry and heartbroken brother of Tuco (Eli Wallach) in Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966). Wallach does some of his career-best acting in his scene with Pistilli, who's dubbed but the performance shines through just with the look in his eyes. Pistilli spent most of the 1980s and into the 1990s concentrating on stage work. His life came to a tragic end on April 21, 1996 when he killed himself just before he was to take the stage for the final performance of the Terence Rattigan play Tosca, which had been shredded by critics and audiences. The 66-year-old Pistilli was believed to be depressed about the negative response to the play and was also angry and remorseful over the recent end of a relationship with Italian singer Milva, leaving a suicide note that included an apology for making several disparaging remarks about her to the press following their breakup.

ROSEWATER
(US - 2014)

ROSEWATER, a chronicle of Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari's 118 days of interrogation and torture at Tehran's Evin Prison, is the big-screen writing and directing debut of THE DAILY SHOW's Jon Stewart--viewers will recall John Oliver hosting over the summer of 2013 while Stewart made this pet project that has a direct tie to the show. A resident of London, Bahari (played here by Gael Garcia Bernal) was in Tehran covering the 2009 Iran presidential election for Newsweek and staying with his mother Moloojoon (Shohreh Aghdashloo) when he was arrested and held in solitary confinement. Initially, Bahari thinks he was arrested for filming some protests over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's questionable victory. But his interrogator (Kim Bodnia), referred to as "Rosewater" by the constantly blindfolded Bahari, who never saw his face but recognized the rosewater scent of his perfume, informs him that he's been arrested for being a spy. The proof? Bahari was interviewed in a DAILY SHOW segment by Jason Jones (playing himself), who was pretending to be an American spy incognito as a reporter.

Stewart occasionally flirts with black comedy but always pulls back, which is too bad, since he would seem to be a natural for exploring the absurdity of the situation with some satirical bite (early on, Iranian authorities label Bahari's DVD collection, with things like THE SOPRANOS and Pasolini's TEOREMA, as "porn"). Instead, Stewart fashions ROSEWATER as a reverent, inspiring, triumph-of-the-human-spirit saga that just never catches fire. There's little suspense or tension in Bahari's situation--not because we know the outcome that he gets released after 118 days and will be OK, but because Stewart tackles the subject in such a perfunctory and by-the-numbers fashion. Perhaps he wanted to be taken seriously as a filmmaker and be respectful of his subject but he erred too much on the side of caution, ending up with a film that's dull, plodding, and predictable. None of Stewart's personality comes through in a creative way and his voice is nowhere to be heard (and THE DAILY SHOW is never even referenced by name) and when he starts showing Bahari having imaginary conversations with and getting "hang in there!" pep talks from the ghosts of his late father (Haluk Bilginer) and sister (Golshifteh Farahani), ROSEWATER starts to look like something any hired gun director could've put together. In Stewart's defense, these conversations with his dead father and sister, both political prisoners, are in Bahari's memoir Then They Came for Me, and while it may have worked on the page and he wanted to remain faithful to Bahari's writing, it's a mawkish, eye-rolling cliche when put on the screen. Given his status as both a comedy figure and an astute political junkie, as well as his own indirect involvement with the situation, there's so many other approaches Stewart could've taken with ROSEWATER rather than going for superficial, transparent awards-bait. Open Road didn't really know what to do with the dry, tedious ROSEWATER, only putting it on 371 screens at its widest release for a gross of $3 million. It's doubtful it would've even gotten that without Stewart's name attached to it. There was a lot of potential here and the intentions are nothing but sincere, but all things considered, this is a major disappointment. (R, 103 mins)

PIONEER
(Norway/Germany/Sweden/Finland/France - 2013; US release 2014)

Set in the late 1970s and looking like it was made then as well, the nautical conspiracy thriller PIONEER is a throwback in every way, right down to an on-set mishap that looks like something out of the original GONE IN 60 SECONDS. Star Aksel Hennie's (HEADHUNTERS) character is being chased in his Jeep, and the actor insisted on doing his own driving. He lost control of the Jeep, flipping twice, windows shattering and top torn off before the Jeep lands upright, Hennie clearly visible in the driver's seat and looking terrified. Even as it happens in the film, it's attention-getting simply for the spontaneous and awkward way it happens...like a real car wreck would rather than one precisely engineered by stunt coordinators or pulled off with CGI. Hennie emerged uninjured but quite shaken, and even in a DVD special feature called "The Crash," he still gets emotional recounting it. It's left in the film as it happened, taking a rather humdrum car chase and making it unforgettable. The film itself has origins in fact, dealing with the installation of an oil pipeline along the floor of the North Sea off the coast of Norway. The job requires training professional divers to do the work and the project is a joint Norwegian-American venture, with the Norwegian divers, headed by Petter (Hennie) and his brother Knut (Andre Eriksen) at odds with the arrogant American divers, represented by Mike (a scowling Wes Bentley). Tragedy strikes when Petter blacks out on a dive, failing to close a valve that results in Knut's death. Aside from losing his younger brother, something doesn't feel right about what happened, and the more he presses for answers, the less anyone around him wants to talk. He begins to suspect that someone tampered with his oxygen supply. Anyone with answers turns up missing or dead, the videotape documenting the accident is nowhere to be found, the perpetually surly Mike speeds up behind Petter and tries to run him off the road, and the bottom-line-watching American oil company rep Ferris (Stephen Lang) is running out of patience with Petter's refusal to let it go.

Director/co-writer Erik Skjoldbjaerg, who helmed the original Norwegian INSOMNIA and came to Hollywood for his mandatory Horrible Harvey Weinstein experience--pretty much a rite of passage for foreign filmmakers at this point--with the four-years-on-the-shelf PROZAC NATION, really gets a solid '70s paranoia vibe throughout, helped a lot by the short, balding Hennie looking nothing like your conventional leading man. He really does look like an average, blue collar guy getting in way over his head with powerful people, but still bulldozing forward, not giving it up--even his widowed sister-in-law (Stephanie Sigman) seems content to take Ferris' fat settlement offer--and it's admirable that Skjoldbjaerg and the screenwriters aren't always concerned with making Petter appealing. Indeed, there's times when he's a bellicose prick. There's a doomy, palpable tension as the screws tighten and Petter realizes that somebody's hiding something and it could cost him his life, but Skjoldbjaerg shows his cards too soon and it's too obvious that the Americans are shady and untrustworthy. Bentley's Mike is a completely unlikable asshole, glaring, seething and yelling at the Norwegians from the moment he first appears, for no real reason. And it makes no sense when he stops someone from torturing Petter in a pressurized chamber ("I didn't sign on to kill anyone," he protests), only to resume the torture as soon as the other guy leaves the room. We've also seen Stephen Lang in enough movies to know that if he's acting altruistic and sympathetic, it's because his character is anything but. PIONEER has its glaring flaws and plot holes, and its ambiguities are such that they lead to an unsatisfying ending, but its positives still outweigh its negatives, generating significant suspense and establishing an effectively bleak, gray atmosphere, which gets an immense push from an occasionally Tangerine Dream-ish score by Air. (R, 111 mins)

BLACK NOVEMBER
(Nigeria/US - 2015)

BLACK NOVEMBER is a bad movie, but at least it's a bad movie with noble intentions. A feature-length lecture on the evils of Big Oil and government corruption, BLACK NOVEMBER opens with text explaining that Nigeria is the world's fifth largest oil supplier, while neglecting to mention that their top export is deposed princes who just need your checking account and social security numbers. A group of Nigerian terrorists led by Opuwei (Akon) and Timi (Wyclef Jean) are holding Western Oil CEO Tom Hudson (Mickey Rourke, looking embalmed) hostage in the 2nd Street Tunnel in Los Angeles. Unlike their needlessly complex plan of orchestrating a massive rush hour traffic jam, their demand is simple: arrange the release of activist Ebiere (a convincing Mbong Amata), currently in a Warri prison in the Niger Delta, where she's about to be executed. Flashbacks reveal that Ebiere attended college in America on a Western Oil scholarship, and Hudson would use her to settle disputes between Nigerians (irate that their land has been ruined by constant oil spills) and the corrupt military that acts at the behest of the oil company, frequently going over the line into atrocities like murder and gang-rape. In time, Ebiere is driven to a shocking act of violence when she realizes she's been set up by Hudson and the whole thing was a ploy to get the protesters arrested. Shockingly, the unscrupulous Hudson is one of those billionaire CEOs who cares more about profits than people, and back in L.A., he's about to pay for his misdeeds if he can't convince the Nigerian government to spare Ebiere's life.

Very sporadically enlivened by bits of action and some inexcusably crummy CGI explosions, BLACK NOVEMBER is essentially a 96-minute public service announcement disguised as a commercial movie. Characters don't speak naturally but rather, in hackneyed, exposition-heavy proclamations, almost like the script is just a bullet-pointed outline (Hudson's model-like daughter, just before he's abducted from his limo: "You always get nervous before you fly to Nigeria."). It's terrible, but that's only because Nigerian writer/director Jeta Amata (Mbong's husband--it's a family affair with Amatas everywhere in the credits, with Mbong being much more talented than the other Amatas in the cast) is more concerned with shouting his points than telling a story with any subtlety or nuance. It's too sincere in its intent to be dismissed as a mere vanity project (though Amata calling his production company "Jeta Amata Concepts" doesn't bode well), but that doesn't give it a pass. The backstory of BLACK NOVEMBER is much more interesting than the film itself. Amata took his shelved 2011 film BLACK GOLD--produced by Nigerian oil baron Captain Hosa Wells Okunbo--dumped roughly half of it and shot additional footage to restructure it into its current form as BLACK NOVEMBER. BLACK GOLD starred Mbong Amata as Ebiere, along with a veritable Who's Who of Redbox All-Stars including Tom Sizemore, Michael Madsen, and Billy Zane, the latter three nowhere to be seen in BLACK NOVEMBER. Conversely, Rourke, Kim Basinger (as intrepid reporter Kristy Ames, covering the L.A. hostage situation), Anne Heche (a virtual walk-on with maybe two lines of dialogue as an FBI agent), Jean, and Akon did not appear in BLACK GOLD. Footage of Vivica A. Fox as a US government official and former WALKING DEAD star Sarah Wayne Callies as a crusading cable news reporter comes from BLACK GOLD, as do most of Mbong Amata's scenes that take place in the Niger Delta (she looks noticeably different in NOVEMBER-shot footage with Rourke). Amata has a confused mess on his hands, but with the help of four credited editors, he almost makes the whole thing hang together, with the seams only slightly showing when Callies picks up a ringing phone in BLACK GOLD and it's BLACK NOVEMBER's Basinger on the other end of the line, and when Fox is seen at a command center that seemingly belongs in another movie, that's because it does. Jean and Akon put up some of the financing for Amata to transform BLACK GOLD into BLACK NOVEMBER, which was completed way back in 2012 and shelved after being screened for events at the Kennedy Center and the United Nations before getting its belated commercial release in early 2015. Regardless of its good intentions, BLACK NOVEMBER is still junky, cobbled-together DTV material (it's too bad the original cut of BLACK GOLD isn't included as a bonus feature for the masochistically-inclined), with Rourke, Basinger, and Heche looking especially perplexed over exactly how they ended up being Raymond Burr'd into a Nigerian protest drama. (Unrated, 97 mins)

RUN ALL NIGHT
(US - 2015)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Written by Brad Inglesby. Cast: Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Common, Vincent D'Onofrio, Nick Nolte, Bruce McGill, Genesis Rodriguez, Boyd Holbrook, Holt McCallany, Rasha Bukvic, Patricia Kalember, Beau Knapp, Lois Smith, Aubrey Joseph, Daniel Stewart Sherman, James Martinez. (R, 115 mins)

Jimmy Conlan (Liam Neeson) is introduced as a booze-soaked butt of jokes among the other Irish mobsters in the neighborhood bar. He's a nickel-and-dimer, a flunky for Danny Maguire (Boyd Holbrook), the spoiled, coke-snorting, Joffrey-like son of NYC Irish mob kingpin Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). It's Shawn's sense of loyalty and friendship that keep Jimmy around, with the boss regularly reminding the drunk Jimmy of all their glory days and how at the end, they'll cross that final line together. Jimmy was once Shawn's right-hand man and most ruthless enforcer, and now Jimmy can't sleep at night, haunted by the faces and the memories of those he's killed. While Shawn's affection for Jimmy is sincere, it's telling that he keeps him at a distance when it comes to business, instead opting to pawn him off as a gofer for perpetual fuck-up Danny, the kind of insufferable, sociopathic brat who expects to be given everything because of who his father happens to be. A disrespected sad sack reduced to dressing up as Santa for a Maguire Christmas party so Danny will loan him $800 to get his furnace fixed, Jimmy has seen better days.

NEESON!

He gets his obligatory One Last Shot at Redemption when a domino effect of plot conveniences force him to step up and take action to protect his estranged son Michael (Joel Kinnaman), his pregnant wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and the two granddaughters he's never met. Michael, an honest family man who wants nothing to do with his father or his criminal legacy, witnesses childhood friend Danny kill a powerful Albanian heroin dealer (Rasha Bukvic) over a deal that went south. Word gets out that Danny is after Michael, so Shawn sends Jimmy to make sure Michael doesn't talk to the cops. Danny tracks down Michael and is about to kill him when Jimmy walks in and shoots him dead. He immediately informs Shawn what happened ("He was about to kill Michael...I had to do it"), but no matter how justified it was, Shawn has lost his only son and will not rest until Jimmy loses his. Mobsters and corrupt cops conspire to frame Michael for the Albanian's murder, and as the media attention grows, Shawn's inner circle of gangsters, unstoppable freelance hitman Price (Common), and the last honest cop in NYC (Vincent D'Onofrio) close in on Jimmy and Michael, putting them in a position where they must set aside their differences and survive the night...if they don't kill each other first!

NEESON!

A major improvement over January's lackluster TAKEN 3, RUN ALL NIGHT is the busy Neeson's third teaming with director Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN, NON-STOP). Collet-Serra's key to success with Neeson seems to be that the stories are frequently as ludicrous as something Luc Besson would cook up for TAKEN, but he gives Neeson enough breathing room to flex his acting muscles. Whether he's presenting Neeson as an amnesia victim in UNKNOWN or a paranoid, alcoholic air marshal in NON-STOP, Collet-Serra understands that Neeson is a real actor and works some moderately challenging characterization into the actor's now-standard action-movie badass routine. There's actually a lot of similarities between Jimmy Conlan and Neeson's Ottway in THE GREY, and like THE GREY, Neeson is surrounded by a top-notch supporting cast--there's also Holt McCallany and Bruce McGill as Maguire mob guys, and a one-scene bit by a more-grizzled-than-usual Nick Nolte as Jimmy's older brother--but the most pleasure comes from watching him play off a steely-as-ever Harris. While he can bellow and rage like the best of them, Harris has always been one of those actors who can also speak volumes with just a look, and he does a terrific job of conveying that sense of friendship just with the way he looks at Jimmy with a combination of fond memories for days gone by and pitying sympathy for what Jimmy is today. They're both outstanding in their later scene together, where they have what's essentially their own version of the HEAT diner meet in a swanky restaurant, each vowing to do what they have to do regardless of the respect and love they have for one another.

HARRIS!

RUN ALL NIGHT's strengths lie with Neeson and Harris, and it's too bad they don't have more scenes together. The father-son issues and bickering between Jimmy and Michael are played well enough by Neeson and Kinnaman (THE KILLING, ROBOCOP), but you've seen it all before. The only major misstep with the casting is Common's high-tech hitman seemingly wandering in from the nearest TERMINATOR audition. He doesn't appear until over an hour into the film, but he never quite gels with his surroundings, and we don't learn enough about him for his showdown with Jimmy to have much resonance beyond the visceral thrill of watching Neeson do his Neeson thing. The script by Brad Inglesby (OUT OF THE FURNACE) errs in the way it abruptly makes Common's Price the chief adversary when the emotional impact lies with the broken bond between Jimmy and Shawn. One other major stumble is a badly-edited car chase early on, assembled in the now-standard way of entirely too much CGI augmentation in a quick-cutting blur with frequent close-ups of a grimacing Neeson clutching the wheel, making constipated faces like he's driving a car at high speed through Times Square. Nitpicking asdie, RUN ALL NIGHT is slick and satisfying entertainment for Neeson's base, the kind of undemanding but compelling actioner that you'll happen upon and end up watching several times as it finds its permanent home in constant rotation on the various HBO channels for the next two decades.

VICE
(US/Germany - 2015)

If you fused WESTWORLD with HOSTEL--and why would you?--you'd get something that looks a lot like VICE, a thoroughly crummy sci-fi shoot 'em up boasting what might be Bruce Willis' laziest performance yet. Another in the ongoing, Redbox-ready series of low-budget action clunkers that feature frequent cutaways to a prominently-billed Willis sitting behind a desk or standing in an office looking annoyed, VICE reteams the actor with director Brian A. Miller, right on the heels of their PRINCE triumph. Willis is Julian Michaels, the CEO of Vice, a fantasy playland of the near-future where the male customers can engage in whatever destructive, illegal, and/or deviant behavior they choose because the rules of society don't apply. And it doesn't matter because the beautiful women that Vice customers beat, rape, and kill--known as "residents" or "artificials"--are just clones sprung from human DNA, significantly more human than machine, and all they need is some tweaking, rewiring, and a memory wipe to be ready for the next night's parade of sociopathic Philip K. Dickheads. One artificial, Kelly (Ambyr Childers) escapes, prompting Michaels to send his Vice officers into the city to find her, much to the chagrin of haggard, greasy-haired detective Roy Todesky (Thomas Jane), a surly cop with an ever-present toothpick in his mouth who plays by his own rules and has some ethical beefs with Vice, namely that once the population gets a taste of getting away with rape and murder with artificials, they'll only start craving it more, but with the real thing.

The real stars of VICE are Childers and Bryan Greenberg as Evan, a Vice designer who created Kelly in the image of his late wife, who succumbed to cancer several years earlier. Kelly and Evan join forces to fight off Michaels' Vice army as well as Todesky, a sort-of Blade Stumbler who has a real chip on his shoulder about artificials and doesn't want Kelly in his city. Of course, Kelly and Todesky eventually pull an "...if they don't kill each other first!" and set aside their differences when she gets an upgrade from one of Evan's associates (Brett Granstaff, one of 21 credited producers) and goes full TERMINATOR on Vice headquarters. Dull and dreary, VICE displays some fleeting hints of being something with interesting ideas, but it constantly backs off and opts for the coasting route. It's also the kind of movie where characters always talk in expository nonsense, saying things they should logically already know but doing so for the benefit of the audience, like two Vice techs working on some artificials and one going into all the specifics about the operation and how it works. Wouldn't the other tech already know that since he works there? Childers doesn't exactly stake her claim as the next Milla Jovovich, while Jane looks understandably bored in the kind of role Willis would've been playing 10-15 years ago. Few actors are worse at masking their utter disinterest in a project than Willis, and as usual for this type of gig, Bruno sleepwalks his way through what was probably two, perhaps three days on the set. His entire role consists of pacing around the Vice control room scowling at a row of monitors like he's auditioning for a role in the next BOURNE movie, and dispatching orders to his chief lackey (Johnathan Schaech), who does all of the leg work in the search for Kelly. Willis mumbles lines like "Find her" and "Whaddaya got?" and "She's experiencing flashbacks?!" and "Bring up the temperature in Sector 5" like it's a chore to even enunciate before finally waking up in the climax to yell "Initiate the kill switch!" when all of the artificials start breaking free from computer control and commence evolving into their own beings. Miller, Childers, and Jane speak gushingly of Willis in the DVD's cast/crew interviews, with Jane saying "It's like he's not even acting." Indeed. Oh, and take a wild guess which VICE star is absent from the cast/crew interviews. (R, 96 mins)

SON OF A GUN
(Australia/UK/Canada - 2014)

An excellent performance by Ewan McGregor isn't enough to overcome the trite cliches in this prison drama-turned-heist flick from Australian writer-director Julius Avery. Making his feature debut, Avery wisely lets the film rest on McGregor's shoulders, and there's a genuine sense of tension and unease in the early part of the film, but shortly after it leaves the prison, it turns into every other double-cross-filled heist flick you've ever seen, regardless of how much it's been gritted up. Brenton Thwaites (OCULUS, MALEFICENT, THE GIVER) co-stars as JR, a 19-year-old serving six months in a tough Australian prison. He's rescued from a shower rape by Brendan Lynch (McGregor), a grizzled con who's serving 20 years for armed robbery. The two bond over a mutual knowledge of chess and Lynch takes the kid under his wing, assigning him to work for him on the outside once his sentence is up in exchange for protection while he's inside. Once he's paroled, JR hijacks a chopper and stages a daring prison yard escape for Lynch and his cronies Sterlo (Matt Nable) and Merv (Eddie Baroo). Lynch is ruthless but at least has some kind of code of honor, beating the shit out of Merv and leaving him behind when a radio news update reveals that Merv was locked up for child rape ("Did you know about that?" Lynch asks Sterlo before smashing Merv's face in). Lynch, Sterlo, and JR get involved in a gold heist masterminded by crime boss Sam Lennox (Jacek Koman), the owner of Tasha (Alicia Vikander), a Russian prostitute who catches JR's eye. Of course, backstabbings ensue as Lennox tries to shaft Lynch out of the deal, with Lynch in turn trying to reduce JR's cut and advising him to stay away from Tasha. Of course, the heist goes haywire thanks to the itchy trigger finger of an incompetent idiot they're forced to take along on the job--in this case Lennox's obnoxious nephew Josh (Tom Budge). And naturally, JR must help Tasha break free from Lennox's shackles while ultimately besting his scheming mentor and all the more experienced criminals around him.

Avery's direction is fine, but his script really needs some work. It's almost as if he thinks he's the first screenwriter to concoct innovative ideas like a career criminal taking on One Last Score So He Can Retire, or an abused Russian hooker with a heart of gold, or a chess analogy for the situations in which his characters find themselves. When McGregor's Lynch (loosely based on real-life Australian criminal Brenden Abbott) is introduced as a chess aficionado, is there any doubt that once he realizes the tables have been turned on him, it'll be confirmed by a phone call that ends with a taunting "Checkmate"? And when Lynch gets the edge on the duplicitous Lennox, was it really necessary for Avery to punctuate this new plot development with a shot of a toppled king on a chessboard? SON OF A GUN starts out fine but fizzles quickly, and while McGregor works overtime to elevate things (getting no help from a dull, listless Thwaites), somebody needed to step in with some toughlove and tell the well-intentioned Avery that this wasn't the first heist movie ever made, and that his rote plot, cardboard characters, and played-out chess references were bush-league conventions more suited for a high-school creative writing exercise. (R, 109 mins)

MALL
(US/Japan - 2014)

Based on a 2001 novel by Eric Bogosian, MALL begs one simple question: is there a single reason this film exists? Who thought adapting a decade-old novel into an ennui-soaked, CRASH-like mosaic centered on a mass shooting at a shopping mall would be something anyone wanted to see? The answer: Bogosian's good friend Vincent D'Onofrio. D'Onofrio produced and co-wrote the script with his buddies Sam Bisbee and Joe Vinciguerra, his collaborators on his unwatchable, released-in-2012-after-three-years-on-the-shelf directorial debut DON'T GO IN THE WOODS. D'Onofrio left the direction of MALL to Linkin Park DJ Joe Hahn, who brought along most of his bandmates to compose the grating score. MALL is one of those films that's so stunningly awful and unrelentingly amateurish that I don't even know how to approach writing about it. It doesn't even look finished. There are bad movies and there are bad movies. Then there are movies like MALL. Movies that come around once in a great while and are so staggeringly atrocious that their sheer awfulness is beyond any and all comprehension. How does something go this wrong? D'Onofrio has been in the business for 30 years. He acts in major movies and television projects. He's worked with pretty much everyone. He knows people. Why are DON'T GO IN THE WOODS and MALL so astonishingly terrible? How is it possible that the man who brought such indelible characters as FULL METAL JACKET's Private Pyle and LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT's Robert Goren to vivid life suddenly makes the work of Ed Wood look like Stanley Kubrick when he decides to work on the production end? Has he learned nothing on the sets on which he's worked? If you're able to read these sentences, or put a sentence together, or hell, even if you've ever been to a mall, you could probably do a better job of scripting and directing MALL than D'Onofrio and Hahn. MALL fails miserably at every turn. It's inept and tone-deaf on an almost Tommy Wiseau-level. It storms out of the gate already shitting the bed, with meth-addled Mal (James Frecheville of ANIMAL KINGDOM) killing his mother (Mimi Rogers) and setting their trailer on fire before going off on a shooting rampage. Less than three minutes into the film and there's already glaring issues too distracting to ignore: the CGI fire is unspeakable; the rusted-out, ramshackle trailer is just awkwardly parked in the middle of an otherwise welcoming, good-looking, middle-class neighborhood where it's doubtful the residents would have much patience for an unstable mother/son meth-head team just loitering about; and when there's a cut to Frecheville walking away from the trailer after setting it ablaze, the filmmakers neglected to add the CGI fire to the shot, so you've got the suddenly not-on-fire trailer plainly visible in the background when, just a moment ago in the previous shot, it was engulfed in fake flames that make the visual effects in BIRDEMIC look professional by comparison. There's a reason--many, actually--that this film was on the shelf for two years before getting a one-screen theatrical release.

Mal makes his way to a nearby shopping mall, but not before we meet an ensemble so loathsome--the exception being widowed Haitian security guard Michel (Gbenga Akinnagbe)--that you're actually rooting for Mal to take them all out. There's bored housewife Donna (Gina Gershon); sleazy tux-rental store owner Barry (Peter Stormare); and lecherous perv Danny (D'Onofrio), who gets busted peeping into a dressing room where Donna is trying to lure him in for an anonymous quickie. But the central character is smug, pretentious, skinny-jeaned Jeff (Cameron Monaghan of SHAMELESS), introduced referencing Orwell's 1984, and Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf while bitching about corporate control, the mall's "dystopian landscaping," and how the fresh cookies "smell just like the ones your mom never made." When he's not perfecting his disaffected poseur act, Jeff pines for the cold, teasing Adelle (India Menuez) and takes some Ecstasy before the mayhem commences, as Mal opens fire, killing some Paul Blarts and quickly fleeing to some nearby woods. Hahn and D'Onofrio (who, over the course of the film, gets two quick sex scenes, one masturbation scene, and a handjob from Adelle, making it clear why producer/screenwriter Vincent D'Onofrio thought veteran character actor Vincent D'Onofrio was perfect for the role) can't even stage Mal's massacre with the slightest modicum of competence: he starts at the upper level where it's dark and Barry is closing the store. We see all the other store gates pulled down, but yet Jeff, Adelle, and some friends are, at the same time, down in the food court, where the mall is packed, people are shopping, and it's bright. After Mal goes to the woods where the cops stand around in one confined area wondering why they can't find him, Jeff and his friends hang around the mall and vandalize shit. Really? The mall's not closed off? There's no media, no police, no one from the coroner's office, no yellow police tape? Then you start thinking, "Were they killed in the shooting and now they're Shyamalanian ghosts wandering the mall? Because then at least this complete disregard for reality and continuity might, in context, make some kind of sense," but they weren't killed. And it doesn't make sense. Jeff eventually goes to a bar where he runs into Donna and they hook up at a nearby motel and...no. No. You know what? Who gives a shit? Fuck this movie. (R, 88 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)

EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000
(Italy/Spain - 1983; US release 1985)

Directed by Jules Harrison (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti and Jose Truchado Reyes. Cast: Robert Jannucci (Robert Iannucci), Alicia Moro, Alan Collins (Luciano Pigozzi), Eduardo Fajardo, Fred Harris (Fernando Bilbao), Beryl Cunningham, Luca Venantini, Venantino Venantini, Anna Orso, Sergio Mioni, Jose Chinchilla, Goffredo Unger. (R, 90 mins)

One of the more stunt-crazed entries in the Italian post-nuke onslaught that followed the success of THE ROAD WARRIOR in 1982, EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000 kicks off what appears to be a post-apocalypse revival of sorts on Blu-ray, apparently to coincide with George Miller's upcoming reboot MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. Shout! Factory recently released EXTERMINATORS on Blu-ray (they're also handling the original MAD MAX, and Blue Underground will be releasing 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, and THE NEW BARBARIANS this summer) in an anamorphic widescreen transfer that's a significant upgrade to the decent-looking but cropped 1.33:1 edition released on DVD by Code Red in 2010. EXTERMINATORS is surprisingly good for its type, with director Giuliano Carnimeo--using the pseudonym "Jules Harrison"--indulging in some ridiculous stunts and car wrecks as well as keeping a distinct western motif to the proceedings--even shooting in and outside of Almeria, Spain, where most of the classic spaghettis were filmed--that echoes the numerous spaghetti westerns he made in the late '60s and early '70s under his usual "Anthony Ascott" nom de plume. Carnimeo dabbled in various genres, as Italian journeymen were wont to do, but he was best known for his several SARTANA westerns with titles like SARTANA THE GRAVEDIGGER (1968), and the 1970 ellipses trio of SARTANA'S COMING...GET YOUR COFFINS READY, HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL, MY FRIEND...SARTANA WILL PAY, and LIGHT THE FUSE...SARTANA IS COMING.

Presumably set in the year 3000, where cars from the late 1970s are still surprisingly functional after 1020 or so years, EXTERMINATORS centers on nomadic, lone-wolf road warrior Alien (Robert Iannucci, billed as "Robert Jannucci"), who reluctantly finds himself helping young Tommy (CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD's Luca Venantini). Tommy and his family are part of a ragtag community overseen by a Bible-thumper calling himself The Senator (Eduardo Fajardo), and he stowed away on a recon mission in search of both water and Tommy's father, who's been missing and presumed dead weeks after being sent on the same hunt for water. The recon mission, led by Tommy's father's best friend (Venantino Venantini), is promptly ambushed by a band of marauding lunatics led by Crazy Bull (Fernando Bilbao, billed as "Fred Harris") and Shadow (Beryl Cunningham) in a truly memorable sequence filled with amazing stunt driving and exploding cars and craniums. Tommy, who has a biomechanical right arm (this is never really explained--he just has it) teams up with Alien, who's already pissed off Crazy Bull by stealing his beloved car "The Exterminator," and they make their way to grizzled old astronaut-turned-mechanic Papillon (Luciano Pigozzi, under his usual "Alan Collins" pseudonym). Papillon tweaks Tommy's bionic arm to make it super-powerful, capable of throwing something to split someone's skull at 200 yards. Into this impromptu group of Humanity's Only Hope comes Trash (Alicia Moro), Alien's car-stealing ex, and the four team up to gather water from a nearby mutant stronghold while constantly fighting off attacks by Crazy Bull and his "Mothergrabbers," as he calls them. It's mostly typical Italian post-nuke silliness, but EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000 has an undeniable energy to it with some of the best action sequences in the entire subgenre. Before the script--co-written by Italian horror stalwarts Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti--falls apart and stupidity takes over (Alien and Trash find the scarce, precious water and of course, start playfully splashing one another with it), there's actually some legitimate attempts at character development. Alien, Trash, Tommy, and Papillon form a classic spaghetti western "unholy alliance" that puts the film firmly into Carnimeo's wheelhouse.

Carnimeo got out of spaghetti westerns as the genre started slowing down in the early '70s. He dabbled in gialli (THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS) and erotic dramas (the Edwige Fenech vehicle SECRETS OF A CALL GIRL) before directing several "Butch and Toby" buddy comedy actioners starring Paul Smith and "Michael Coby" (actually Italian actor Antonio Cantafora), who had a brief run in Italy as the second-string Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. 1975's CONVOY BUDDIES was released in the US in 1978 by Film Ventures, and Smith filed a lawsuit against the company when he and Cantafora were billed in the advertising as "Bob Spencer" and "Terrence Hall" in an effort to fool hopefully inattentive moviegoers into thinking it was the latest film from the popular TRINITY duo. Carnimeo made a few obscure sex comedies before directing EXTERMINATORS, but the now 82-year-old director has been inactive since 1988's RATMAN, which has attained minor cult status thanks to the presence of Nelson de la Rosa as a half-monkey/half-rat mutant running loose on a Caribbean island. De la Rosa would go on to play Marlon Brando's "Mini-Me"-inspiring sidekick in 1996's ill-fated THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and those connections generated some belated interest in RATMAN years after it was made, and his involvement was enough to get it released on DVD in the UK with the tagline "He's the critter from the shitter." RATMAN sounds a lot more fun than it really is, and it seems to be the final chapter in Carnimeo's career.

EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000 was a one-and-done venture into acting for Ohio-born Calvin Klein model Iannucci, unless you count a bit part in the 1982 comedy YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE. He looks the part, though he's dubbed by veteran voice artist Larry Dolgin. The towering Bilbao, also known to Eurotrash fans for his appearances as the Frankenstein monster in Jess Franco's 1972 double-shot of DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN, makes an imposing villain with his very Wez-like look, though dubber Robert Sommer carries a lot of the weight, bellowing Ron Burgundy-isms like "By the beard of the prophet!" EXTERMINATORS was picked up by New Line Cinema and released in the US in January 1985, after which the Thorn/EMI VHS could be found in any video store in America.

Unfortunately, Shout! Factory's otherwise fine edition of EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000 features the 2010 Code Red commentary track with Iannucci and temperamental Code Red head Bill Olsen. True to form as the worst commentary figure in the biz, Olsen torpedoes it almost immediately by grumbling "I'm only putting this out to prove that it doesn't sell" before indulging in his usual unfunny schtick of intentionally mispronouncing names ("Anna Onion!" he says when he sees the name "Anna Onori") or taking shots at things like Detto Mariano's score and Cunningham's "big ass," and spending almost the entire track complaining about how much he dislikes the movie and how "boring" it is (less than five minutes in, Olsen gripes "No offense, Bob, but this needs more action"). At first, Iannucci seems eager to talk about EXTERMINATORS and has a good memory for the details of the shoot, but his sincerity quickly succumbs to Olsen's cynicism and he joins him in the mockery and the bitching ("Any last words?" Olsen asks at the end, to which Iannucci replies "Thank God it's over"). If you've ever experienced a Bill Olsen commentary track or witnessed his behavior online and on social media, where he claims nothing he releases sells and he frequently berates his customers, it's hard to tell if it's some kind of Andy Kaufman performance art or if he's genuinely mentally unstable. Olsen has released some fine product through Code Red and for that he should be commended, but reputable companies like Shout! and Scorpion (the latter run by Olsen's more even-tempered and socially adept brother Walter) continuing to showcase his tiresome antics on commentary tracks, ruining potentially serious discussions and good-natured reminiscing with his inane questions, pathetic jokes, and shitty attitude, is a practice that needs to stop.

THE GUNMAN
(France/Spain/UK/US - 2015)

Directed by Pierre Morel. Written by Don Macpherson, Pete Travis and Sean Penn. Cast: Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance, Jasmine Trinca, Peter Franzen, Sir Billy Billingham, Ade Oyefaso, Rachel Lascar, Sarah Moyle. (R, 115 mins)

Very loosely based on Jean-Patrick Manchette's 1981 novel The Prone Gunman, THE GUNMAN would appear, on the surface, to be 54-year-old Sean Penn's blatant attempt to get a head start hitching a ride on the post-TAKEN, Liam Neeson "aging action star" bandwagon. It even goes so far as to have TAKEN director and former Luc Besson protege Pierre Morel at the helm. Penn doing a straight-up action genre piece is a change of pace for the two-time Oscar-winner, but THE GUNMAN isn't really a TAKEN knockoff. It's more in line with last year's Pierce Brosnan actioner THE NOVEMBER MAN--a gritty, serious action thriller with a certain 1970s throwback feel to it. And with its globe-trotting locales and its protagonist being a hunted man, with filming taking place in London, Barcelona, Gibraltar, and Cape Town, it has more in common with the BOURNE movies than TAKEN. Co-producer Penn obviously had a significant hand in the somewhat disjointed script, sharing credit with journeyman script doctor Don Macpherson (his first big-screen writing credit since 1998's disastrous THE AVENGERS) and DREDD director Pete Travis, and it's pretty clear what the other guys wrote and what Penn contributed. Some have called THE GUNMAN a vanity project with Penn showing off his newly-ripped physique and shoehorning his humanitarian concerns into the story, but he mostly keeps the self-indulgence in check, at least until a whimper of an ending that's somewhat reminiscent--though not nearly as egregiously cumbersome--as Steven Seagal's environmental lecture and slide show presentation at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND. But until then, THE GUNMAN is mostly solid and diverting, similar in many ways to a 1970s conspiracy thriller with a vivid European vibe. The action scenes are coherently staged, the violence is brutal and often shocking, and a game cast of overqualified actors shine in well-written character parts, giving substance to what's essentially upscale DTV fare. THE GUNMAN is by no means a great movie, and perhaps Penn was given too much leeway to tailor it to himself, but it's nowhere near the catastrophe that the reviews and the opening weekend box office would indicate.

THE GUNMAN opens in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006, where Jim Terrier (Penn) is among the contractors working security for an NGO humanitarian effort to provide medical aid and construct an airstrip. Terrier's doctor girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) is part of the effort, but she doesn't know about the side job that Terrier and his mercenary buddies Cox (Mark Rylance) and Felix (Javier Bardem) have: to coordinate the assassination of the Congo's Minister of Mining at the behest of a multinational corporation that looks to face obstacles and lose profits if he remains in his present position. Terrier ends up being the triggerman, and flees to Europe after the job is done. Eight years later, he's back in the Congo, out of the assassination game and devoting himself full-time to aid work when three killers show up on a job site to take him out. Terrier's instinctive kill skills take over and he survives the attempt on his life and heads to London to warn Cox, now an executive with the very company that once hired them as killers, that he may be next. Terrier makes his way to Barcelona to meet up with Felix, who's now married to Annie. As Terrier and Annie's passion reignites, the attempts on his life continue, and it doesn't take long for him to realize that one of his old cohorts--Felix, Cox, or perhaps even his gregarious buddy Stanley (Ray Winstone), may be the party trying to orchestrate his murder.

Because of Morel's involvement and Penn's age, comparisons to TAKEN are inevitable, but those are surface, coincidental parallels. Penn has designed a star action vehicle to, in part, soapbox his own concerns--not always successfully, mind you--but he doesn't overplay it and turn it into a public service announcement with an overabundance of blood squibs. The action sequences are well-choreographed, the violence and bloodshed convincingly nasty, and Penn's performance, criticized by many as glum and self-serious, suits the story and the surroundings, especially in the way he's suffering from brain trauma and is bogged down by migraines and vomiting spells after some especially hard-hitting showdowns. This is not a wisecracking hero he's playing--he's a damaged guy with regrets who's starting to feel his age. Penn gets some sturdy support from the always-welcome Winstone and Bardem, and Tony-winning Shakespearean stage great Rylance (ANGELS AND INSECTS, INTIMACY) makes a rare appearance in a commercial genre film, and judging from his enjoyably hammy performance, seems to have taken the opportunity to reinvent himself as Richard Harris. Idris Elba turns up 80 minutes in for a glorified cameo as an Interpol agent who tells a drawn-out story with a treehouse metaphor. THE GUNMAN starts stumbling and bumbling on its way to a happy ending and it's probably a film best suited for a low-risk stream on Netflix. Nevertheless, Penn proves he does have potential for a Neeson-style action rebirth if he can maybe just lighten up a little and leave the issues and the statement-making out of it and just let a good action movie be a good action movie.

THE HUMBLING
(US/Italy - 2015)

Even though nobody really liked literary lion Philip Roth's universally-panned 2009 novel The Humbling, it's easy to see what appealed to Al Pacino when he bought the movie rights shortly after it was published. The protagonist, Simon Axler, is a legendary stage actor renowned for his devotion to Shakespeare, indirectly linking it to Pacino's terrific 1996 semi-documentary LOOKING FOR RICHARD and his portrayal of Shylock in 2004's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and is also roundly criticized for being past his prime and a hammy version of what he once was, charges often justifiably leveled at the inconsistent, hoo-aah!-prone 74-year-old screen legend. While Pacino does some top-notch--and restrained--work here, THE HUMBLING starts fine but quickly devolves into a grating, self-indulgent misfire, with Simon suffering an onstage breakdown and haplessly attempting to off himself with a shotgun as an homage to Hemingway ("Hemingway must've had longer arms," he concludes) before being admitted to a psych facility. Once released, he's visited by 31-year-old Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), the daughter of some past stage colleagues. Pegeen has nursed a crush on the 65-year-old Simon since childhood when he was a family friend, and though she's an out lesbian, she seduces him, much to the disapproval of her just-dumped ex (Kyra Sedgwick) as well as her parents, Simon's now-estranged friends Asa (Dan Hedaya) and Carol (Dianne Wiest). Meanwhile, Simon is badgered by his agent Jerry (Charles Grodin) to get back to work and is stalked by Sybil (Nina Arianda), a deranged fellow psych patient who wants him to kill her pedophile husband, who she claims has been molesting their young daughter.

Directed by Barry Levinson (who teamed with Pacino for the 2010 HBO film YOU DON'T KNOW JACK) and co-written by Buck Henry (penning just his fourth screenplay in the last 30 years), THE HUMBLING gives Pacino ample opportunity to shine in long, single-take monologues and he's up to the challenge. But too much of it plays like second-tier Woody Allen, right down to the very Allen-esque opening credits, the young woman throwing herself at the short old guy, and the presence of Wiest, who won both of her Oscars in Allen films (not to digress, but why hasn't Pacino ever worked with Allen?). There's also an unavoidable and wholly coincidental parallel to last year's BIRDMAN, another film that dealt with an aging, washed-up actor drifting in and out of reality while planning a comeback. The early promise gives way to endless pontificating and shouting matches, the possibly Alzheimer's-stricken Simon being an unreliable narrator in Skype sessions with his therapist (Dylan Baker), and even some tired "old lady being raunchy" humor with Simon's housekeeper (Mary Louise Wilson) matter-of-factly advising Pegeen on how to better store her sex toys, which is just an excuse to hear an elderly woman say things like "vibrator,""butt plug," and "double-dong." The subplot with Arianda's Sybil gets entirely too much screen time and goes nowhere, other than to underscore a hinted-at but never-confirmed detail about Simon and Carol's past that doesn't really need Sybil to enhance it. Pacino dials it down and plays it straight throughout and he's always great to watch when he's legitimately invested in a project, and Grodin gets some laughs as the very Charles Grodin-esque agent, but there's ultimately no reason to care about any of the characters in the forgettable THE HUMBLING. Among the critiques of Roth's novel was that it felt like a short story padded to barely-novel length at 140 pages. To that end, THE HUMBLING is faithful, having little to say and taking nearly two interminable hours to say it. (R, 107 mins)

FEAR CLINIC
(US - 2015)

Indiegogo crowd-funding helped make this feature-length spinoff of the six-episode 2009 FearNet web series a reality for its tens of fans. The web series starred A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET horror icon Robert Englund as Dr. Andover in six six-minute segments, each specifically devoted to a patient's phobia. In the film, shot in Medina, OH, Andover's clinic is in a state of disarray after comatose patient Paige (Bonnie Morgan) dies following a session in his "fear chamber," a machine that produces hallucinations of a patient's fears in order to directly face and fight them. Paige was one of several Andover patients who survived a restaurant shooting rampage a year earlier, and they've all noticed manifestations of the others' deepest fears creeping into their own reality. The FearNet series co-starred cult horror convention fixtures Danielle Harris and Kane Hodder because of course it did. Harris and Hodder dropped out of the film, so Englund is joined by future convention fixture and CURSE OF CHUCKY star Fiona Dourif (Brad's daughter) as the tough, proactive heroine Sara. You also get Kevin "Still Coasting on Being 'Waingro' in HEAT" Gage as a handyman named Gage; Thomas Dekker (TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) as a wheelchair-bound shooting survivor whose big revelation won't surprise anyone; daytime soap vet Brandon Beemer; former porn star Angelina Armani; and Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor as an insubordinate, bad-tempered orderly.

FEAR CLINIC was directed by Robert Hall, whose LAID TO REST (2009) and CHROMESKULL: LAID TO REST 2 (2011) have very minor cult followings with the most undemanding of today's horror fans. Hall and screenwriter Aaron Drane don't give Englund much to work with, but the veteran actor turns in a strong and surprisingly sympathetic performance that doesn't rely on standard mad doctor histrionics. At times recalling a subdued Jack Palance, Englund's Andover is a shattered altruist who was sincerely trying to help his patients only to find that his "fear chamber" inadvertently opened a portal to an alternate world whose evils begin materializing in the real one. A committed Englund (acquiescing to the demands of no one, he gets naked twice) is the film's sole saving grace but by the end, his work is all for naught when his face is stuck on some nonsensical CGI creature as Hall and Drane briefly elevate FEAR CLINIC from boring to shameless, opting to rip off Stuart Gordon's 1986 classic FROM BEYOND with fear subbing for the pineal gland. Robert Kurtzman--the "K" in KNB--handled some of the atrocious makeup and creature effects and just because Taylor is in the cast, the closing credits are accompanied by Stone Sour's lunkheaded cover of Metal Church's "The Dark." The film feels like it was made 20 years ago and has no ending, and afterwards, you realize the only thing you have to fear is not fear itself but rather, the idea of crowd-funding for FEAR CLINIC 2. (R, 95 mins)

IT FOLLOWS
(US - 2015)

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Bailey Spry, Debbie Williams, Leisa Pulido. (R, 100 mins)

It seems like every other month or so, there's a new indie horror movie being hailed as an Instant Horror Classic. Most recently, the scenesters couldn't shut up about STARRY EYES, which has already been forgotten. There's a lot of hype out there, and while you get an occasional OCULUS, THE GUEST, or THE BABADOOK that lives up to it, there's an awful lot of The Fanboy Who Cried Wolf when it comes it to a lot of these things. Horror is a very fan-friendly genre, and you meet the filmmakers at a horror con or they accept your friend request on Facebook, and that kind of interaction, unheard of in the glory days of, say, John Carpenter or Dario Argento or Wes Craven, tends to cloud the judgment of genre fans. When the usual suspects started shilling for IT FOLLOWS, it seemed like more of the same. But then even non-genre critics and media outlets started singing its praises, with the acclaim extending far beyond the usual insulated sycophancy of convention regulars, Rob Zombie superfans, people who think THE INNKEEPERS is good, and guys who hoard limited edition steelbook re-releases of movies they don't even really like.

With most indie horror never living up to the insider hype and big-studio releases beholden to either found footage or the tired jump-scare/shaky-cam aesthetic, IT FOLLOWS is the kind of sleeper sensation that arrives out of nowhere to save the horror genre from itself, with Radius/TWC nixing its planned VOD dumping in favor of a nationwide release once the word-of-mouth gained momentum and it turned into the best-reviewed film of the year thus far. Perhaps a good chunk of its success comes from writer/director David Robert Mitchell not being a "horror guy." His previous film was the 2011 indie THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER, a character piece following a group of teenagers over the last weekend of summer. Like SLEEPOVER, IT FOLLOWS was shot in and around Mitchell's hometown of Detroit, a city whose rundown areas and copious standing ruins almost function as another character (indeed, along with Jim Jarmusch's ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, IT FOLLOWS is a present-day Detroit version of all those early '80s time capsule movies that captured places like The Bronx in all its decaying glory). There's a disorienting sense of time and place throughout, with characters using tablets but driving '80s vehicles or watching cheesy sci-fi movies like 1954's KILLERS FROM SPACE on an old tube TV. The characters are smart, likable, and normal. There's no snark or vocal fry. In a way, the world of IT FOLLOWS is one lost in time, the kind of place where all the neighbors know one another. There's nothing about it that definitively states when it takes place (clearly the present day, given some technology), but the jarring signifiers, chiefly Disasterpeace's sublimely synthy, John Carpenter-inspired score, are there to send the message that this is the kind of movie we would've seen 30 years ago. And unlike 99% of what's out there today, we might actually still be talking about IT FOLLOWS 30 years from now. It's been deemed by some to be the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET of its generation, and that's really an apt comparison.

The story unfolds much more successfully than a synopsis might lead you to believe. 19-year-old Jay (THE GUEST's Maika Monroe, cementing her status as today's reigning scream queen), lives with her mom (Debbie Williams) and sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), and attends what looks like a small community college. After having sex with new beau Hugh (Jake Weary) for the first time, he chloroforms her and informs of what she has to do: he passed something on to her, something that only she and those who used to carry it can see. It's a shape-shifting figure that's constantly heading in her direction. It can look like a stranger or be identical to someone you know. To get rid of it, you have to have sex with someone and pass it on to them. If it catches and kills that person before they have a chance to pass it on, it reverts back to pursuing you, and you have to have sex to get rid of it again. It can only walk ("It's slow but it's not dumb," he says), and it's always in pursuit. You can drive far away to give yourself some time, but it's always following you.

Mitchell has said that the origins of the film stem from a traumatic childhood nightmare about being incessantly followed. Beyond that, the most obvious read is the "It" being a sexually-transmitted disease, but Mitchell refuses to provide definite answers, leaving some plot details intentionally vague and open to interpretation in a way that will no doubt frustrate viewers who need everything concretely explained (what's with the three guys on the boat? Or the peeping kids in the neighborhood? And what happened to Jay's pool?). In addition to Disasterpeace's score setting the mood on intense edge, Mitchell reveals himself to be a master of widescreen shot composition and choreography. Given the rules of "It," he's constantly having the camera move around the actors as you nervously observe the background--in a park, for example, when anyone walking in the general direction of Jay could be "It." And when it's not, you exhale, realizing you've been holding your breath in horrific anticipation and dread for the entire sequence. (MILD SPOILER) Mitchell is a master manipulator, often using cast members or extras with similar appearances to the stars and having them essay an incarnation of "It." Nowhere is this better handled than when Jay, Kelly, and their friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi), Greg (Daniel Zovatto), and Paul (Keir Gilchrist), who carries a torch for Jay, flee to Greg's family's cottage: Yara walks towards them in the background and we don't think anything of it because it's Yara. As the characters sit in the sand and talk, Mitchell shows Yara paddling by in the water and saying "You guys should come in!" followed by a cut back to Jay as the now-threatening "It" Yara is headed straight for her, unseen by the others. From that moment on, nothing can be trusted, and you're at Mitchell's mercy. (END SPOILER)

IT FOLLOWS has a premise that you expect to be riddled with plot holes. If "It" has to walk to get you, then sure, you could ask "Why not go to an island? Or move to Hawaii?" And yeah, it's a little silly when Mitchell toys with the rules a bit and lets Kelly isolate the location of "It" and throw a blanket on top of it, making it briefly resemble a ghost from an old movie. Because it's a horror movie that arrives pre-anointed as the next Instant Classic, you keep waiting for its inevitable collapse...but it never comes. As a metaphor for either STDs or the idea of adult sexuality closing the door on childhood or however you want to interpret it (pay close attention to a framed photo seen in Jay's house near the end of the film for a potentially major alternate interpretation of the events), Mitchell has created an inventive, original, thought-provoking horror film that transcends the confines of its genre label to be a vividly-detailed and superbly-acted post-high school/early-college-age character piece. It's the kind of film that reveals more layers of detail and character with each viewing, particularly in the way that its protagonists initially seem like predictable "types" (Gilchrist's dweeby Paul, Luccardi's frumpy, sloppily-eating Yara) but aren't treated as such by the others. IT FOLLOWS will no doubt launch a thousand thinkpieces, and along with THE BABADOOK, it's the kind of multi-layered work that gives some artistic legitimacy and credibility to an historically-derided genre. It's not a perfect film but there's a lot to digest and dissect, the kind of cinematic experience that will continue to reward and provoke debate on future viewings, confidently standing the test of time. It's rare these days to find a fright film that rewards attentive, serious horror audiences with something of intelligence and depth, while simultaneously scaring the shit out of them.

GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
(US/UK - 2015)

Written and directed by Alex Gibney. (Unrated, 120 mins)

"All Scientologists are full of shit" - actor Jason Beghe, who left the Church of Scientology in 2007.

If you're of the opinion that Scientology is a cult, Alex Gibney's documentary GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF, based on Lawrence Wright's book, will do nothing to dissuade you. Delving into the history of the alleged "religion" and its formation by insanely prolific science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the film gives plenty of information and backs it up with transcripts and first-hand accounts by high-ranking "church" officials who now count themselves among the former members. But even in in-depth conversations with these former members--including CRASH director Paul Haggis and CHICAGO P.D. star Beghe--Gibney often explores the "what" at the expense of the "why" when it comes to what drew them to join. What is it about this organization that persuades its members to give it all of their money? Wright mentions that he studied things like Jonestown and radical Islam, and Scientologists follow that same pattern of fervently-devoted, cult-like thought. Of course, these days, Scientology is synonymous with its star representatives Tom Cruise and John Travolta, both of whom--need it even be mentioned?--declined or more likely never responded to interview requests from Gibney. The Scientology origin stories of both actors are explored here, with Travolta being recruited by "a female actress" during the making of his first film, the 1975 horror film THE DEVIL'S RAIN (she isn't mentioned by name, but it's Joan Prather) and top church official Spanky Taylor being assigned as his handler when he soon blows up with WELCOME BACK KOTTER and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Taylor would eventually become critical of the church and was sent to something called "Project Rehabilitation Force," billed as a retreat for stressed members but, according to Taylor, a prison camp where problem Scientologists are subjected to menial labor and sleep deprivation. She alleges Travolta knew of her predicament and did nothing about it, and that the iconic actor is, for all practical purposes, a prisoner of Scientology.

Cruise's Scientology exploits are even more unsettling than those of Travolta. Following Hubbard's death in 1986 after spending much of the 1970s and into the 1980s in hiding and on the move due to mounting legal problems, the organization has been run by chairman David Miscavige, who's virtually a figure of Mephistophelean evil by the time the end credits roll. And it's not unjustified--Miscavige lobbied hard for Scientology's tax-exempt status, even suing the IRS and individual employees until the government agency caved and granted them tax-exemption, right down to the backlist of Hubbard's science-fiction novels being classified as "religious texts," therefore making the revenue they generate non-taxable. Miscavige and Cruise are shown to have a borderline codependent relationship that was ruined for the better part of the 1990s by Nicole Kidman, who feared that Cruise was becoming too much like Miscavige. When Cruise and Kidman were away in the UK for well over a year working on Stanley Kubrick's 1999 swan song EYES WIDE SHUT, Miscavige, upset that his bromance with Cruise had fizzled over the preceding several years, set in motion a plan to end the Cruise-Kidman marriage by, among other things, getting inside information by having Kidman's phones wiretapped and also through incessant "auditing" of Cruise--"auditing" essentially being rigorous one-on-one "therapy" sessions tantamount to brainwashing the actor into breaking up with his wife. In 2004, Miscavige assigned church member and future HOMELAND actress Nazanin Boniadi to be Cruise's girlfriend (his marriage to Katie Holmes is never mentioned). Miscavige envisioned Cruise to be Scientology's ambassador, and in footage of a gala celebration of Cruise's accomplishments, it's disconcerting to see one of the world's biggest and most powerful movie stars subserviently kissing Miscavige's ass and saluting him.

Gibney delivers the sideshow horror stories but there's still an alarming lack of substance to GOING CLEAR, which is odd considering just how many ex-Scientology big shots are on board, with one former top figure repeatedly being harassed by vengeful members who brazenly show up at his doorstep (they even go so far as to rent the vacant property across the street from his house and watch/videotape him 24/7). There's allegations of physical abuse and virtual slave labor, and one story about a game of musical chairs that reveals Miscavige to be an utter sadist, but it never really gels together. Miscavige and his minions have gone all out trying to trash-talk GOING CLEAR, even launching a bullying troll campaign on Twitter, and while it doesn't disappoint in terms of illustrating just how completely batshit--yet very powerful and financially savvy--the whole organization seems to be, the film never really coalesces into a whole. Why isn't there any mention of Miscavige's wife Shelly not being seen in public since 2007, or that KING OF QUEENS star and former Scientologist Leah Remini filed a missing persons report on her behalf shortly before leaving the church in 2013? That seems important. Part of this might be that as a filmmaker, Gibney is nearly as prolific as Hubbard was as a writer. GOING CLEAR is the third of five documentary features Gibney's done since the beginning of 2014, with the two-part FRANK SINATRA: ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL airing on HBO next week. That's in addition to two short films for ESPN's 30 FOR 30 series. All told, he's directed or co-directed over 20 feature-length docs since 2010. While it's nice that the workaholic Gibney keeps himself busy, one can't help but wonder if GOING CLEAR could've been a little more consistent, cohesive, and substantive if he didn't have four other irons in the fire at the same time. Maybe Errol Morris or Werner Herzog should've made this film.

OUTCAST
(China/Canada/France - 2015)

Veteran stuntman, stunt coordinator, and second-unit director Nicholas Powell makes his directing debut with this completely generic historical epic that might've made for harmlessly diverting entertainment of the IRONCLAD sort were it not for the sleepwalking performance of Hayden Christensen. Christensen's been offscreen since 2011's abysmal VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (you didn't even notice, did you?) and is still the vacant, charisma-starved presence he was a decade ago as Anakin Skywalker. Christensen's delivered exactly one good performance, in 2003's SHATTERED GLASS, where his blank persona and complete lack of screen presence were actually integral to the ultimate unraveling of his character, New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass. But even in his own film, lucking into the most perfect role he'll ever have and owning it, he managed to be upstaged by Peter Sarsgaard (as his increasingly incredulous editor Chuck Lane) in one of the best performances of the last 15 years that didn't get a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Here, the perpetually miscast Christensen is Jacob, an opium-addled 12th century warrior, burned out and beaten down by his experiences in the Crusades. He ends up finding his shot at redemption when a Chinese king (Shi Liang) is murdered by his treacherous eldest son Shing (Andy On), who's furious about being passed over in favor of his younger brother Zhao (Bill Su Jiahang). The king has already sent Zhao and his sister Lian (Liu Yifei) off to safety when Shing publicly announces Zhao is the murderer and leads his Black Guards in pursuit. Zhao and Lian eventually cross paths with Jacob, who reluctantly (would there be any other way?) agrees to guide them and provide protection from the duplicitous Shing along the way.

Eventually, they meet up with Jacob's former mentor Gaillan, known as "The White Ghost," and played by Nicolas Cage in what might be the dumbest role of his career thus far. Sporting a samurai wig and a ridiculous British accent and playing Gaillan as blind in one eye, Cage is in prime form for some epic future Nic Cage YouTube highlights, but he isn't really in the film long enough to make an impact for his legion of Cageaholics. Cage is strictly a big-name guest star in a slightly extended cameo here, appearing fleetingly in a couple of flashbacks and not properly introduced until the one-hour mark, then he's gone 20 minutes later. Had Cage had a larger role or played Christensen's part, it's likely OUTCAST would still be terrible but probably not the stultifying bore that it is. For all his experience in big-budget stunt work--his credits include BATMAN, BRAVEHEART, and GLADIATOR--Powell's direction and action choreography are pedestrian at best, with everything shown in quick-cut succession and the requisite unstable shaky-cam. The script by James Dormer (a regular writer on Cinemax's STRIKE BACK) brings nothing new to the table and relies on every rote cliche and stereotype imaginable. OUTCAST took three countries and 23 credited producers to get made--it's not a cheap film and even the CGI is marginally better than you'd expect--but there's just no passion or energy in its presentation, running only 98 minutes but feeling about as long as The Crusades themselves. There could've been some fun in comparing Cage's and Christensen's dueling horrendous British accents, but even that's for naught since Christensen can't even be consistent about it (Cage's is laughable, but he at least commits to it). When "the CGI is marginally better than you'd expect" is the best praise you can offer, you know you're really reaching to find something positive to say, and OUTCAST just reeks of total shrugging ambivalence on the part of everyone involved. Why was it made? How can a movie with Nicolas Cage wearing a hilarious ZATOICHI wig, playing partially blind and crutching on a bizarre British accent be this dour and miserable? And while I'm sure he's a nice guy, Christensen's sabbatical did nothing to sharpen his skills. How many more times do we have to see the same corpse-like performance before producers stop trying to make him happen? (R, 98 mins)

OUT OF THE DARK
(Spain/Colombia - 2015)

American couple Sarah (Julia Stiles) and Paul Holden (Scott Speedman), and their Cockney-accented daughter Hannah (the amazingly-named Pixie Davies) move from London to a village outside Bogota, Colombia, where Sarah is taking over the management duties of the Harriman paper factory, owned by her father Jordan Harriman (Stephen Rea). Harriman sets them up in a long-vacant house where it doesn't take long for supernatural shenanigans to break out. Of course, the audience is expecting it since the film opens with a prologue where a man (Elkin Diaz) is killed by a group of ghostly children in that very house. Hannah becomes ill and develops a severe skin rash before being whisked away by the same ghost kids. The ghosts are believed to be the spirits of all the village's children who disappeared 20 years earlier in what the superstitious locals accepted as retribution for conquistadors abducting children and burning them alive in a temple centuries earlier. Or maybe it has something to with why Harriman closed his old paper mill 20 years ago and built a new one on the opposite end of the village. There are no scares or original ideas in the script by Javier Gullon (ENEMY, KING OF THE HILL), and Alex & David Pastor (the little-seen and worthwhile CARRIERS), and the direction by first-time Lluis Quilez is bland and perfunctory, relying on things slamming shut, pointless shrieks, and dead-end jump-scares that go absolutely nowhere. Most of the film takes place in almost total darkness, with approximately 75% of the screen time devoted to Stiles and Speedman wandering around with flashlights screaming "Hannah!" in a fruitless attempt to keep the audience--or perhaps themselves--awake. I hope Stiles, Speedman, and Rea enjoyed their free vacation to Bogota, because they're the only ones who got anything out of this. (R, 94 mins)

DEATH SQUAD
(Italy - 2014; US release 2015)

Released in Italy under the oddly Bruno Mattei-esque title 2047: SIGHTS OF DEATH, DEATH SQUAD is a rare present-day return to a distant era of slumming name actors turning up in cheesy, C-grade Italian exploitation. That mystique is legitimized by the involvement of director Alessandro Capone, who earned some acclaim with the 2009 Isabelle Huppert/Greta Scacchi drama HIDDEN LOVE, but cut his teeth on screenwriting credits for things like Ruggero Deodato's 1986 slasher film BODY COUNT in the waning days of the '80s Italian horror explosion. Capone went on to direct several EXTRALARGE vehicles with Bud Spencer, but with DEATH SQUAD, he's got his most eclectic and bizarre cast yet for a post-apocalyptic shoot 'em up set in a world controlled by a totalitarian regime known as The Confederation. In a not-too-subtle metaphor, they've made the rich safe and secure while the rest of the world and its lesser citizens are prisoners in a bombed-out, radioactive wasteland. An eco-terrorist organization known as Greenwar dispatches military-trained Willburn (Stephen Baldwin) to infiltrate a forbidden zone to find a stash of "anti-rad" solution that helps combat and prevent the effects of radiation poisoning. Determined to stop the mission is the deranged Col. Asimov (Rutger Hauer), who's in cahoots with sleazy mercenary Lobo (Michael Madsen) as both turn the tables on Asimov's driven, dutiful second-in-command Maj. Anderson (Daryl Hannah) to go ahead with their rogue mission to intercept and make off with the anti-rad. Anderson eventually sees the light and sides with Greenwar, an organization devoted to exposing The Confederation's war crimes, and led by Sponge (top-billed Danny Glover), who remains in constant radio contact with Willburn. Willburn, meanwhile, finds a survivor in nomadic female warrior Tuag (Neva Leoni), and they team up to take on Asimov and Lobo as the various cast members wander around an abandoned factory in Rome for the better part of 90 minutes.

Name actors schlepping their way through Italian exploitation hasn't really been a thing since the late '80s and I don't know about you, but the fact that it's 2015 and a guy like Danny Glover is turning up in a low-budget Italian post-apocalypse potboiler playing someone named "Sponge" just puts a smile on my face. There's an awful lot of skidding talent on display in DEATH SQUAD, but the actors are surprisingly engaged, particularly Hauer, doing his best Klaus Kinski in a mostly-improvised performance that finds him doing anything he can think of to keep it interesting, whether it's going wildly off script in almost every scene (often encouraging Madsen to do the same), making funny faces at everyone, or even slowly and melodramatically brushing his teeth while being debriefed on a situation in his command center. Capone obviously gave Hauer the Marlon Brando "Eh, fuck it, just let him do what he wants" treatment, with Madsen (who gets an introduction that's memorable, to say the least) following suit, while Baldwin and Hannah actually seem to be taking this thing seriously (do you think the crew was expressly forbidden to ask Hannah and Hauer any questions about BLADE RUNNER? Or Hannah and Madsen about KILL BILL?). In an apparent homage to Bruce Willis' contributions to the world of VOD, Glover never leaves his desk and is never seen with any of the other cast members, but the other once-vital heavy hitters don't do the customary one-day-on-the-set driveby while the lesser-known Italian actors carry the load. Nope...like Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2 and Brian Dennehy in INDIO, they're the stars and they're in the whole movie. DEATH SQUAD isn't very good (it's quite bad, actually) and with all the walking around and arguing, it gets pretty tedious at times, almost like it's crying out for a car chase or some Antonio Margheriti miniature explosions. But with the unexpected cast, Hauer's bonkers performance, some gratuitous splatter, Capone's connection to the golden era of Italian B-movies, a legitimately interesting but poorly-executed plot twist near the end, and Madsen being skeezy, connoisseurs of vintage Eurotrash will find that there's a strange retro charm to DEATH SQUAD that doesn't exist in your typical DTV programmer of this sort. With just a little more ambition on Capone's part, it could've flirted with "guilty pleasure" status. (Unrated, 90 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)

2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK
(Italy/France - 1983; US release 1984)

Directed by Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino). Written by Julian Berry (Ernesto Gastaldi), Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino) and Gabriel Rossini. Cast: Michael Sopkiw, Valentine Monnier, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Anna Kanakis, Roman Geer (Romano Puppo), Edmund Purdom, Vincent Scalondro, Louis Ecclesia, Serge Feuillard, Haruhiko Yamanouchi, Jacques Stany, Tiziana Fibi, Siriana Hernandez, James Sampson, Angelo Ragusa, Giovanni Cianfriglia. (R, 96 mins)

While THE ROAD WARRIOR provided the chief template for the early '80s Italian post-nuke cycle, the influence of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK weaved its way in from time to time. This was certainly the case with Sergio Martino's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, which may very well be the best that the Italian post-apocalypse subgenre had to offer, not counting Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, which isn't really a post-nuke but is almost always cited as one. Released in Italy in the summer of 1983 and in the US by Almi in December 1984 minus the "2019" portion of the title, 2019 is a case study in making the most of budgetary limitations. Even a major cue in the "Oliver Onions" (Guido & Maurizio De Angelis) score is recycled from their soundtrack for Antonio Margheriti's YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983). What Martino's film lacks in gonzo car stunts and the ability to recreate a convincing NYC (even Carpenter had to let a declining East St. Louis, IL stand in for the ruins of the Big Apple), it makes up in imagination, perseverance, and old-school special effects techniques. Sure, the matte paintings, the miniatures of a bombed-out, radioactive Manhattan, and what looks like a half-melted souvenir model of the Statue of Liberty that appear to be set up on a workbench in Martino's basement will probably evoke derisive snickering upon a first glance, but after the opening skyline shot, he makes their appearances sparse enough that they're eerily effective when you do get fleeing glimpses of them later on. Martino's got very little to work with from a visual effects standpoint and knows just how much of it to show to keep the film from collapsing in on itself.

In 1999, the evil Eurac Monarchy ("the powerful Euro-Afro-Asian unity") initiated a nuclear holocaust that left the world a radioactive wasteland. Most of America is a desert, with only torched shells of skyscrapers remaining in major cities. It's been 15 years since a human child was born, and the US government, now called the Pan-American Confederacy, based in northernmost Alaska, and run by a sickly President (Edmund Purdom), gets word that one fertile female remains in the ruins of NYC. He orders nomadic warrior and former Pan-Am soldier Parsifal (Michael Sopkiw) to venture in with the help of two mercenaries, eye-patched strongman Ratchet (Romano Puppo) and Bronx (Vincent Scalondro), find the woman, and in exchange, they get three seats on the next shuttle to Alpha Centauri, where the Pan-American Confederacy is looking to rebuild itself beyond the boundaries of Earth.

If Parsifal reminds you of Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken and the President's offer vaguely recalls one presented to Plissken by Lee Van Cleef's Hauk, then you picked up on the not-very-subtle borrowing of elements from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Parsifal, Ratchet, and Bronx eventually encounter a group of survivors, where they pick up Giada (Valentine Monnier) and dwarf Shorty (Louis Ecclesia) while being pursued by coldly ambitious Eurac soldier Ania (Anna Kanakis). Bronx takes an early exit in the form of a bullet to the head but not before he gouges out the eyes of the nefarious Eurac commander (Serge Feuillard). Eventually, the motley crew cross paths with a band of mutants led by the hirsute Big Ape (George Eastman)--or, as he was known in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, "The Duke" (you can also conclude that Shorty is this film's "Cabbie")--who ends up tagging along just because he wants to be the one to plant his seed in the fertile woman, Melissa (Tiziana Fibi), when they find her.

The more "Michael Sopkiw is almost
Kurt Russell" poster design.

2019 is consistently engrossing but really takes off with a wild climax that has its ragtag group of heroes and a hibernating Melissa packed into a steel-reinforced station wagon and driving through mined, obstacle course tunnels under NYC, during which Big Ape hurls his sword and decapitates about ten Eurac soldiers at once in one of the finest moments in all of Italian post-nuke. Again, Martino doesn't have the luxury of shooting a big action sequence in NYC, so he circumvents that hassle by taking the ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK 69th Street Bridge sequence underground in the same tunnels used in virtually all of the Italian post-nukes. Martino does have a couple of scenes early on that were shot in Arizona, prior to Parsifal being taken to Alaska (which looks almost exactly like the futuristic Mount Olympus set in Luigi Cozzi's HERCULES), but virtually the entire film was shot at De Paolis Studios in Rome. Martino (using his occasional "Martin Dolman" pseudonym) co-wrote the script with veteran screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (credited as "Julian Berry") and Gabriel Rossini, and they spend a bit more time on characterization than you usually see in ripoffs of this sort. Much like the team of oddballs helping Plissken on his mission, the crew surrounding Parsifal exhibit much in the way of character and personality, even when their actions (why would they leave Giada and Melissa alone with Big Ape?) don't make much sense. The writers don't play favorites with who lives or who dies and there's a genuine unpredictability and ambition to the way the plot builds and unfolds. It's been brought up online before (by Video Junkie's William Wilson and EUROCRIME co-producer Michael Martinez to name two) but it's worth repeating again: there's some interesting coincidences between 2019 and if not P.D. James' 1992 novel Children of Men, then at least Alfonso Cuaron's loosely adapted 2006 film version. Both are set in a dystopian, barren future where one fertile woman has been found (in James' novel, the men are infertile); both have a lone wolf hero being charged with finding her and getting her to where she needs to go to keep the human race from dying out; and both have upper-class characters (Feuillard's commander in 2019 and Danny Huston's Nigel in CHILDREN OF MEN) with Picasso's Guernica displayed on their wall. It's entirely possible that both Martino & Gastaldi and Cuaron came up with the notion of using Guernica, since it's regarded as a symbol of humanity's suffering in war. Just like it's entirely possible that Cuaron or one of CHILDREN OF MEN's four other screenwriters caught AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK on VHS or during one of its late-night cable airings in the '80s and it stuck with them enough to work it into another, much more higher-profile movie with a similar central conceit, albeit with different circumstances and metaphors.

Greatest credit ever?

2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK marked the debut of Sopkiw, an American model whose acting career lasted three years and four films. Born in Connecticut in 1954, Sopkiw was a wandering sort in his youth, with stints in merchant sailing and the maritime shipping industry, during which time he served a year in prison for transporting marijuana. He briefly studied acting in NYC and fell into modeling in Europe, which got him the 2019 gig (he's still dubbed by someone else--this was one of the few Italian genre films of the era not handled by the usual crew of American and British dubbers working in Rome, but by SPEED RACER voice actor Peter Fernandez's crew in NYC). In 1984, Sopkiw made two films with director Lamberto Bava: the entertaining DELIVERANCE/FIRST BLOOD hybrid BLASTFIGHTER, which reteamed him with Eastman, and the future MST3K-favorite DEVIL FISH, which again paired him with Monnier. In 1985, he starred in Michele Massimo Tarantini's MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY, a belated entry in the post-CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST gut-muncher craze, and that was it. Sopkiw went back into modeling in NYC before pursuing his interest in medicinal plant science, and went on to run the Los Angeles-based American importing office of the Dutch glass company Miron Violettglas. As 2019's cult grew over the years, so did the interest in the elusive Sopkiw, who re-emerged from obscurity to be more or less a bystander on a controversial, kamikaze commentary by a "post-nuke expert" on Shriek Show's 2003 DVD release of the film. The DVD was quickly withdrawn and re-released without the commentary, which found the moderator in question more or less using the opportunity to take cheap shots and settle scores with various figures and discussion forums in Eurocult's online community. The DVD's anamorphic transfer holds up well, but with the re-released version out of print for several years now, the film is long overdue for a Blu-ray upgrade. In recent years, Sopkiw has maintained a low profile but periodically appears at fan conventions, usually when there's a panel on '80s Italian cult movies.

The veteran journeyman Martino's only direct contribution to the Italian post-nuke movement (though you could argue that 1986's HANDS OF STEEL, with its arm-wrestling cyborg hero and John Saxon hoisting an over-the-shoulder laser bazooka, belongs under the umbrella as well), 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK featured several Eurocult mainstays in its cast, such as Eastman, Puppo (billed as "Roman Geer"), Purdom, Jacques Stany as a Eurac flunky, and Hal Yamanouchi in a small role as the leader of a band of radiated mutant goons who gets his head split open in a memorable shot. The other noteworthy cast member was 20-year-old Kanakis as the ambitious Ania. Kanakis made headlines five years earlier when she was named Miss Italy 1977 only to be disqualified from the eventual Miss World competition when the organization discovered that she was only 15 years old. She claimed that the Miss Italy people never told her that the minimum age requirement was 17 (1977's Miss Malta, also 15, was given the boot as well), but she soon ended up with an acting career, with 2019 her second post-nuke in quick succession, following Enzo G. Castellari's THE NEW BARBARIANS (1983), released in the US in early 1984 as WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND. Kanakis, who was married to Goblin leader Claudio Simonetti from 1981-1984, remained sporadically busy over the next 20 years, primarily on Italian television. Her last acting appearance to date was a starring role in the 2007 Italian TV mini-series LA TERZA VERITA.

THE VOICES
(US/Germany - 2015)

A hired-gun gig for PERSEPOLIS graphic novelist and director Marjane Satrapi, THE VOICES is a dark splatter comedy with Ryan Reynolds as Jerry, a socially-awkward but generally nice and eager-to-please guy who works at a small-town bathtub and sink factory. Jerry has a history of mental illness and was institutionalized when he was a teenager and may have had a hand in his schizophrenic mother's death. Jerry lies to his psychiatrist Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver), telling her that he dutifully takes his meds every day, but he's not. As a result, his home life is a fantasy world where he spends his evenings in his apartment above a vacant bowling alley, carrying on conversations with his cat Mr. Whiskers and his dog Bosco (Reynolds voices both animals--a sarcastic, foul-mouthed Scottish brogue for Mr. Whiskers and an aw-shucks, Cecil Turtle voice for Bosco). He has a crush on Fiona (Gemma Arterton) in accounting and through a convoluted chain of events, ends up accidentally killing her. He dismembers the body and stores her head in the fridge, where she whines that she's lonely and wants a friend. Lisa (Anna Kendrick) also works in accounting and likes Jerry, even sleeping with him before making the mistake of dropping by his place uninvited just as Jerry is most vulnerable to caving to the horrible suggestions made by Bosco and Mr. Whiskers.

When Jerry is off his meds and happily conversing with his cat, dog, and Fiona's head, we see his apartment through his eyes: clean, colorful and pleasant. When he tries going back on his meds, the animals are silent, Fiona's head is rotting, he has no one to talk to and is confronted with the reality that his home resembles an abattoir, with blood-splattered walls and floors and Fiona's body parts and entrails stacked in countless Tupperware containers. Satrapi and screenwriter Michael R. Perry (a veteran of TV shows like THE PRACTICE, MILLENNIUM, and LAW & ORDER: SVU) dutifully keep the film on track when it could easily fly off the rails and become a high-end Herschell Gordon Lewis film. Satrapi wisely has Reynolds underplay it, even when he's having imaginary conversations with a severed head, and they succeed in actually generating sympathy for an obviously sick person who feels tremendous guilt over his actions but can't stop himself, is too hesitant to make new friends because he's concerned his mental problems will scare them off, and is terrified to take his meds because then the voices go away and he has nothing to keep him company. It's a difficult performance that could've veered toward Jim Carrey in maximum "Allllrighty then!" mode, but even amidst the black humor and the buckets of gore being spilled, Reynolds--an underrated actor who can't seem to shake his VAN WILDER image with critics and audiences alike--is grounded and believable. It's too bad that Satrapi lets things bog down in the home stretch, the film runs about 15 minutes too long and it probably could've done without ending with a musical number. But THE VOICES is a quirky and interesting comedy/drama/horror mash-up that was an undeniably tough sell (shot in Berlin in 2013, it played at Sundance in January 2014 and only got a small theatrical release in February 2015), but has "future cult movie" written all over it...in blood. (R, 104 mins)

PRESERVATION
(US - 2015)

A sort-of YOU'RE NEXT GOES CAMPING, this survivalist horror film has a few moments of credible suspense (the creepiest moment being one character taking a selfie at night, with the flash revealing a split-second glimpse of a masked figure in the trees behind him), but it too often falls victim to contrivances and outright stupidity. On no less than four separate occasions, characters carelessly turn their backs on someone they thought was dead only to turn around and find them either gone or very much alive and ready for the kill. Anesthesiologist Wit (Wrenn Schmidt of BOARDWALK EMPIRE) and her stockbroker husband Mike (Aaron Staton of MAD MEN) were supposed to have a romantic camping getaway but Mike invited his war vet brother Sean (Pablo Schreiber, best known for his recurring role as a serial rapist on LAW & ORDER: SVU) along. Right from the start, things seem off: Mike keeps fondly reminiscing of sadistic childhood pranks, Wit seems distracted, and Sean, still psychologically scarred from his time serving in Afghanistan, obviously has feelings for Wit. They illegally enter a closed state park to go deer hunting and after one drunken night, they awake to find their guns, gear, food, water, shoes, Sean's dog, and Mike's cell phone gone and "X"'s Sharpie'd on their foreheads. Irrational, braying jackass Mike immediately accuses Sean of having a PTSD breakdown and wanting to sleep with Wit, and as the parties split up--Wit and Sean go off to the find their SUV while Sean looks for his dog--it soon dawns on them that they're being stalked by three masked murderers--actually teenage boys--intent on slaughtering them.

Actor Christopher Denham (ARGO, SOUND OF MY VOICE) wrote and directed PRESERVATION, and while there's intermittent instances of directorial skill, his script is really dumb. It's not just the way the characters constantly turn their backs on lethal threats, but in the predictable way everything plays out. Of course, hot-headed bro-type Mike is going to blame his brother for what's going on, and of course he's too preoccupied with taking calls from work to have time to talk to Wit, who secretly buys a home pregnancy test at a convenience store on their way to the state park. Of course, the old-school trap Mike sets in the woods will ultimately trap (wait for it) Mike, and the way Mike (notice what a dick this guy is?) carelessly leaves the necks of broken beer bottles near a rest area park will come into play much later. And how does Wit have time to set off a bunch of flares and decorate the ranger station with paraphernalia to taunt the killers in a way that references something that happened between the killers and Mike and that Wit, separated from the dead Mike (oh yeah, spoiler alert) couldn't possibly know about? It doesn't get much dumber than Mike (this guy again) hiding in a Port-a-John while one of the killers is trying to kick the door in. Mike kicks the top off the Port-a-John and climbs out, kicking and grunting the whole way, then sneaks from the back around to the front to find the killer still looking at the door of the Port-a-John to figure out a way in, as if he could somehow miss all the noise Mike was making while climbing out of the top. Denham also tries to say something about technology and interpersonal disconnect in the way Mike and Wit can't find time to talk and in the way the killers take a break on the edge of a lake and don't talk, but rather, sit down and text one another in silence. Oh...because people don't communicate! Get it? These kids today with the texting and the video games and the stalking and the murder. Do yourself a favor and stick with RITUALS instead. (Unrated, 88 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant).

LATE PHASES
(US/Mexico - 2014)

An unusual if not altogether successful werewolf movie, LATE PHASES distinguishes itself from the CGI crowd by relying on practical effects that recall the nearly 35-year-old transformation work of Rick Baker on AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and Rob Bottin on THE HOWLING. There's only one big transformation sequence, and Spanish filmmaker Adrian Garcia Bogliano (HERE COMES THE DEVIL) errs in showing too much of the werewolf in the attack scenes, as it looks as if the producers scoured eBay for the cheapest, rattiest werewolf costume they could find. LATE PHASES really gets a boost from an excellent performance by cult actor Nick Damici (STAKE LAND, COLD IN JULY), playing about 20 years older than his age as Ambrose McKinley, a blind, widowed Vietnam vet being taken to a retirement community by his son Will (Ethan Embry). On his first night in his new residence, Ambrose's dog Shadow and his neighbor Dolores (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER's Karen Lynn Gorney) are killed by what's thought to be a giant dog. The useless local cops dismiss it ("This kind of thing happens all the time...old people can't defend themselves") but Ambrose, his other senses heightened with the loss of his sight, rightly feels something is off here, and not just because he dislikes the concept of retirement communities in general ("People don't come here to live...they come here to die," he tells Will's wife). Still a crack shot even without sight, Ambrose quickly alienates his chatty neighbors who want nothing to do with him (among them are GILLIGAN'S ISLAND's Tina Louise, AMITYVILLE II's Rutanya Alda, and HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE's Caitlin O'Heaney), but finds a mutual understanding in his philosophical conversations with local priest Father Roger (Tom Noonan), who has enough sympathy for old Ambrose that he arranges for church employee Griffin (THE LAST STARFIGHTER's Lance Guest) to transport him on outings when the other residents refuse to ride the bus with him.

With the coughing, wheezing werewolf having a distinct smell that Ambrose picks up on when he talks to two different coughing, wheezing characters, it doesn't take long to figure out who the werewolf is (and much like THE HOWLING's "The Colony," the werewolf situation seems to be an open secret, at least with the cops and the community staffers), but LATE PHASES is less about werewolfery and more a character study about an old man trying to find purpose and dignity in a bad situation (LATE PHASES referring to both the lunar cycle and Ambrose's life). It's an odd mix--imagine GRAN TORINO if Clint Eastwood's neighbors were werewolves instead of Hmong immigrants--that stays mostly interesting thanks to the outstanding work of Damici, who brilliantly channeled William Smith in STAKE LAND and here seems like a somber and even more stoical Charles Bronson. Only when Bogliano goes full throttle horror near the end does the film start falling apart, starting with a confusingly-shot sequence where the werewolf (one of them, at least) makes its presence known and explains itself as it transforms. Moody and character-driven, LATE PHASES has a few generous gore scenes but isn't really scary or particularly suspenseful, but when Damici is onscreen, he commands your attention. Plus, that supporting cast (Tina Louise and Karen Lynn Gorney sightings?!) is pretty fascinating. (Unrated, 96 mins)

LOST RIVER
(US - 2015)

Written and directed by Ryan Gosling. Cast: Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan, Iain De Caestecker, Ben Mendelsohn, Eva Mendes, Matt Smith, Barbara Steele, Reda Kateb, Rob Zabrecky, Torrey Wigfield, Landyn Stewart. (R, 95 mins)

When it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival a year ago, LOST RIVER, the writing/directing debut of actor Ryan Gosling, was booed and jeered and declared a pretentious, unreleasable disaster. It seems Cannes audiences had their knives sharpened for Gosling, with LOST RIVER coming a year after the actor starred in Nicolas Winding Refn's ONLY GOD FORGIVES, which got a similar reaction but has already secured a sizable cult following (ONLY GOD FORGIVES is quite brilliant), and that seems to be the path that LOST RIVER will take as well. Recut by Gosling after Cannes and trimmed from 105 to 95 minutes, LOST RIVER isn't any more commercially viable, which is certainly why Warner Bros, who quickly snatched it up at Cannes only to immediately and unsuccessfully try selling it off after the toxic response, shelved it before opting to release it on just three screens and VOD in a stealth burial the likes of which the studio hasn't pulled off since Sondra Locke's RATBOY (1986) or Emir Kusturica's ARIZONA DREAM (1994). That's too bad, because LOST RIVER would probably look stunning on a big screen.

I wonder if anyone from Warners actually bothered watching LOST RIVER before acquiring it or if they saw the words "A Film by Ryan Gosling" and offered a deal on his name recognition alone. While he does appear in major Hollywood movies that pay well (THE NOTEBOOK, CRAZY STUPID LOVE), Gosling is typically drawn to smaller films of the offbeat (LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, DRIVE) or challenging (HALF NELSON, BLUE VALENTINE) sort, and one thing is certain: Gosling made the film he wanted to make with absolutely no concern for commercial appeal or mainstream acceptance. A surreal, one-of-a-kind hybrid of David Lynch, Dario Argento, Stanley Kubrick, Harmony Korine, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann and quite a bit of Gosling's buddy Refn, with a haunting score by Johnny Jewel (another Refn collaborator) that recalls Goblin, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream, LOST RIVER is a triumph of style over substance. Filmed in Detroit, MI, it's also an essential entry in the ongoing cinematic chronicle of the urban blight of the once-mighty Motor City. In recent years, Detroit has taken on the aura of the Bronx in the late '70s and early '80s, providing some starkly effective locations in arthouse horror films by people who typically don't work in the horror genre, like Jim Jarmusch's ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE and David Robert Mitchell's IT FOLLOWS. While Gosling's script leaves a bit to be desired, his eye for shot composition (he definitely has a Kubrickian thing going with center placement and framing), colors, camera movement, and his use of standing ruins in and around the Detroit area are remarkable, with LOST RIVER being perhaps the most visionary fusion of sight and sound since Panos Cosmatos'BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW (2012) and Jonathan Glazer's UNDER THE SKIN (2014). Filled with one striking image after another, it's so compulsively, hypnotically watchable that's zero doubt that the more adventurous, fringe audiences out there will lovingly embrace it.

The plot deals with the last denizens of a dying suburb called Lost River. Billy (MAD MEN's Christina Hendricks) is desperately trying to hang on to her family home in a mostly condemned area where houses are being torn down around her. Three months behind on her mortgage and with two sons--teenage Bones (AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Iain De Caestecker) and young Franky (Landyn Stewart)--she takes a job at a bizarre torture cabaret at the suggestion of sleazy, partially deaf bank manager Dave (Ben Mendelsohn, currently earning raves for the Netflix series BLOODLINE). Bones, meanwhile, tries to help out by raiding the ruins of buildings for copper, only to run afoul of Bully (former DOCTOR WHO star Matt Smith), a terrifying, self-described Lost River crime boss who claims ownership on all the copper in the city. Bones also spends time with the family's only remaining neighbor, Rat (Saoirse Ronan), who lives with her catatonic grandmother (Barbara Steele sighting!), who spends her days in her hoarder's nightmare of a home, dressed in her best and watching footage of her wedding decades earlier. Grandma's husband was killed many years ago in an accident when several towns were purposely flooded to make a reservoir at the edge of Lost River. The towns remain intact underwater, and local legend claims that Lost River's bad fortunes will turn around if someone can bring any kind of artifact from the flooded city to the surface.

The plot doesn't really hang together all that well (and most of what was cut from the Cannes version is said to involve some egregious overacting by Smith), but Gosling and cinematographer Benoit Debie (IRREVERSIBLE, ENTER THE VOID, SPRING BREAKERS) dare you to turn away. LOST RIVER is cult movie fan's wet dream, from the small-town oddness of Lynch, the cold and clinical staging of Kubrick, Bones and Rat's date filled with a neon glow and a Tangerine Dream-ish cue that recalls both Michael Mann's THIEF and Caleb and Mae getting ice cream in Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK, and the endless Argento homages. Apparent Argento superfan Gosling's got a ubiquitous Fulvio Mingozzi-like SUSPIRIA/INFERNO cabbie played by Reda Kateb (at the risk of sounding like of a lecturing, condescending dick, if you get the reference to Mingozzi and cabs in SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, it's a good indication that LOST RIVER could work for you); a blatantly SUSPIRIA-like music cue plays throughout; there's some underwater shots that remind you of the secret flooded room under Mater Tenebrarum's stronghold in INFERNO; and the outside of the club where Billy works looks very similar to the Via de Bagni No. 49 library that Eleonora Giorgi enters in INFERNO (again, if that makes sense, LOST RIVER is for you), as well as the poster art for the Canadian horror film CURTAINS, oddly enough. And if all that isn't enough to get your Eurocult boner on, how can you not be won over by the casting of '60s genre icon Steele (BLACK SUNDAY, THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK) in a small but important role? Say what you will about the movie--true, it's little more than a series of fun and stylish references for the nerdiest of cult movie obsessives and a filmmaker's loving tribute to his Blu-ray and DVD collection--but the presence of Steele really sells Gosling's sincerity. I don't think he had a good idea of what he wanted to say with LOST RIVER, but he sure knew what he wanted it to look and sound like and once in a while, that's enough. What you get out of LOST RIVER depends on how much you bring to it from your own cult cinema experience. Many people will hate this hot mess of a film and you can't really blame them, but Gosling made it for himself first and foremost. However, if you're among those who "get" it, LOST RIVER might be 2015's most fascinating flawed masterpiece so far.

In Theaters: KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE (2015)

Cult Classics Revisited: COUNT DRACULA (1970)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE HOMESMAN (2014); V/H/S: VIRAL (2014); and BAD TURN WORSE (2014)

On DVD/Blu-ray: WHIPLASH (2014); GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS: UNDERGROUND (2014); and BY THE GUN (2014)

In Theaters/On VOD: MAPS TO THE STARS (2015)

On DVD/Blu-ray: FOXCATCHER (2014) and THE CAPTIVE (2014)

In Theaters: CHAPPIE (2015)

Cult Classics Revisited: THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW (1974)

On DVD/Blu-ray: ROSEWATER (2014); PIONEER (2014); and BLACK NOVEMBER (2015)

In Theaters: RUN ALL NIGHT (2015)

On DVD/Blu-ray: VICE (2015); SON OF A GUN (2014); and MALL (2014)

Ripoffs of the Wasteland: EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000 (1983)

In Theaters: THE GUNMAN (2015)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE HUMBLING (2015) and FEAR CLINIC (2015)

In Theaters: IT FOLLOWS (2015)

On HBO: GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF (2015)

On DVD/Blu-ray: OUTCAST (2015); OUT OF THE DARK (2015); and DEATH SQUAD (2015)

Ripoffs of the Wasteland: 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (1983)

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE VOICES (2015); PRESERVATION (2015); and LATE PHASES (2014)

In Theaters/On VOD: LOST RIVER (2015)